—+— if you're just tuning in, walk into the light AO3 profile mid to long fics teeny fics beautiful fanart Fic Recs Fanfic Masterlist music that i dig Who's this douchebird? —+—
ferrrox said: Your gift!!!!!!!!! I’m still smack in the middle of it but plz assist if you know whether their use of “Southern Point” as a landmark placename is a gift to you or an ID tell (jk it’s both)
Whoever wrote this deserves to be smug for a century. My comment on the story will be textbook length and disgustingly lovey-dovey. I don't know what I did to deserve this fantasticness. They tapped my brain-stem for like... so many things that I wanted? Stunning blend of elaborate prose and choppy dialogue. Messy quadrant polyamory. The Handmaid kisses life into Aradia. WHY DOES THIS NOT HAVE ONE THOUSAND KUDOSES
Would you ever consider writing another DaveSol fic?
Oh man, I have considered a whole lot. I think it would be really interesting and a rad experiment to write another one, especially because my tastes have changed a ton. I've had an idea simmering in the back of my mind for a few months, but it's really just an idea (that I have no clue how to work frankly, but that's part of the fun). It's this weird AU loosely based off of The Prestige, which is mainly just an excuse to do Angier!Dave♠Borden!Sollux (because the shit between Borden and Angier is TEXTBOOK kismesissitude). This makes more sense if you've seen the movie already. Yeah.
Other selfish reasons that I thought up this dumb AU:
Tesla!Equius and his chipper, cat loving assistant Alley!Nepeta
somehow changing the whole Sarah and Olivia stuff to make Aradia and Feferi run away together or something sexy and self-indulgent like that
somebody as Mr. Cutter, probably Terezi which would basically mean Terezi♣(Dave♠Sollux) which is horrendous and kinda great, I mean think about it (TRAINWRECK)
fudging the plot to make Root!Davesprite, because dreamy sigh, it's so awful
but mostly Tesla!Equius
also the fact that the idea is pleasantly and dramatically different than Roommate, which is neat
Dunno if I'll ever get around to it though, because WRITING. It's been kinda tough lately (this is mostly due to lots of good real life stuff and reading a shitload of Neal Stephenson, but also a legitimate funk). We'll see how I feel after cranking out my Ladystuck fic!
Hello! It’s been a long time since we came to you to ask for recs, and while we’ve been getting a nice trickle of submissions, we’ve now worked through most of our backlog. Yay, all the things you recced will soon be posted! At the moment we’ve got enough queued for ten days. We’re hoping you all would like this blog to continue posting recs, and so we’re turning to you and asking for submissions again!
It’s not hard. All you have to do is drop the link to a fic you’d like to reccommend into our submit box. Offering an excerpt is helpful but not required in any way. Here’s the masterlist of fics we’ve already got on the blog if you’d like to check that before reccing, but please send us good stories you enjoyed that you want other people to also enjoy! We’d love to keep this blog going and we need you to help us. Thank you! ♥
I hope this letter finds you in good spirits! Even after receiving my hilariously massive prompts HAHAHA. But for real, don't get too caught up in all of the random details I shoved into each one, those are just things that popped into my mind that sounded cool. They're mainly meant to... spark ideas, I guess? Make whatever the heck you're driven to make! That's basically the main point of this letter: I want to read your story, not mine. If you're an artist, oh my goodness you are amazing and I don't even care if there's naught but a smidgen of the prompted story in the piece, so long as it's got the girls and it's cool. Outfits, a single scene, whatever! Do have fun with it.
That being said, here's a bunch of stuff (including narrative kinks as well as regular kinks) that I love a lot, and not so much! They are all over the place, so hopefully something clicks with your interests as well.
STUFF I LOVE A LOT
Sci-fi settings: specifically really gross ones that you find in cyberpunks or biopunks (or even sci-fi westerns), with clustered cities and robot arms and whatnot. Clean and shiny sci-fi doesn't do much for me.
AMERICANA, boy do I love Americana. Or, uhh, the Alternian equivalent (Alterniana? w0w that s0unds stupid). But yeah, basically all of those roadside pancake houses, themed gift/rest stops, detours to check out that cool rock formation, covering the dashboard with wildflowers, etc etc. Americana+road trips are my life.
For domestic fics: disgusting apartments with really old carpet, half-working appliances, mattresses on the floor set-ups. BUT, the characters embrace it. It's either their happy place, or their current hide-out.
Any kind of reversals, especially of general fandom norms: this is super vague I know, but like... for example, Nepeta is cheerfully dominant during sex, or Kanaya gets sick of relationships and just wants to find herself, if that makes any sense. In a nutshell: something different.
smoking (specifically cigarettes or cigars) and drinking
Humor to convey something really sad, if that makes sense... or giddiness, the kind you get with a best friend after getting away with something spectacularly stupid.
characters on equal footing, despite caste differences
characters NEEDING each other, lovingly or hatingly or friendingly, because they are comrades against the world
xenobiology: tentabulges are just fantastic, as well as any other weird stuff you can cook up
powers from the game, either in a canon setting or just as a parallel (I especially love characters getting off on their powers, cause let's be real those aspects are hottt)
consensual D/s
transformation, but not troll->human, I like characters transforming into something creepy/er (that being said, humanstucks are totally A-OK with me as long as there's a great story! heh)
gore
hurt/comfort
characters getting ruined, and then finding themselves at the end
characters feverishly rising to face a challenge
characters with weaknesses that they have to face
questions of self
slow-burn (plot or romance)
pesterlogs
GEN, for real, please don't feel obligated to do shipping, I love me some gen
good stories
AND NOT SO MUCH
plotless fluff
plotless angst (I'm cool with angst, but I really prefer it delivered through humor, or serving a specific purpose)
PWPs: well, sort of. I am SO DOWN with a sexy fill, but I do love me some good context, subtext, and smidgens of backstory. Random details are super-duper.
clear top/bottom sexual roles: switching is more my jam
kidfic
rape/noncon without a purpose (dubcon is fine! I do prefer if it gets addressed/hashed-out in the fic though)
bad stories
Okay that's pretty much all I can think of at the moment. Do with these bullets what you will! Honestly honestly honestly, use them or don't (and like... a lot of them don't even work with my prompts, PFFFFF), I really just want you to have fun with your fill. I'm already interested purely because of the characters that I requested, so don't feel pressured to cater to me exclusively. Cater to yourself! Feel free to go as weird or dark as you want, I'm super tough to squick. My blog has lots of examples of stuff that I love (#oooh shiny! and #my ships let me show you them are definitely chock full of that).
Oh one last thing: thank you so much for participating in this exchange. It is probably one of the coolest things out there in the HS fandom, and you are fantastic for doing it. And preemptive gushing thanks for working on something for me! I do hope you enjoy it. See you on New Years!
In an exchange like Ladystuck, drop-outs and defaults are nigh-inevitable. Of course we hope that everyone will post their story or illustration on time, but experience tells us this almost never happens. That’s where pinch-hitters come in! Pinch-hitters are wonderful people who, out of the goodness of their hearts, cover the assignments of Ladystuck participants who have dropped out, so that everyone in the exchange will have a piece of fic or art just for them when the collection opens. They’re the ones, more than anything else, who make challenges like ours run smoothly.
Anyone can sign up to pinch-hit; you don’t have to be a Ladystuck participant. If you are interested in writing or drawing something cool about ladies, not to mention being a Big Damn Hero in the eyes of your moderators, we encourage you to sign up for the pinch-hitters’ mailing list.
Here’s how it’ll work: during the challenge, the two of us will send pinch-hits out to the mailing list. You read the pinch-hit assignment, and if you’re interested, reply to the email with your AO3 username. (If you don’t have an AO3 account, you can still sign up to pinch-hit! Just be sure to let us know you need an account when you claim an assignment. We will get an invite to you so that you can post your fanwork to the challenge :>) We will assign the pinch-hit to the first person who responds.
Thank you for your time! And again, pinch-hitters is good people, so we are endlessly grateful to anyone who volunteers for the task. ♥
Boosting for pinch hitters! It is way cool; you sit back, relax, and wait for great prompts to roll into your email whenever fills are needed. You can grab one early into the challenge the second you see it, or you can do what I did and wait and wait and wait until you get one that hooks you... right at the last minute. And then you have this badass self-challenge where you're like, "Okay. I have to write a story/draw a picture about ladies in two days. Okay. Okay. I can do this. I CAN DO THIS. HULK SMASH!!!"
All in all, it is incredibly rewarding and really good for you! Especially if you don't manage to make the cut this time around, but still want to participate in such a great fandom event. It can be fast, stressful, terrifying, and fantastically awesome when you're finished because you KNOW that you did a good thing. I would recommend doing it a hundred times over.
So. How rad is LADYSTUCK. No no, it’s okay! You don’t need to get up or anything, I hear ya I hear ya, I’m with you there, it is SO. TOTALLY. RADICAL.
I have a lot of thoughts about this challenge, most of them being along the lines of “Oooh what a cool idea and look at all of the neat things that came out of it! All these stories that I longed for… FINALLY COME TRUE!!!!!” If you have the time, definitely absolutely please check out the rest of the collection because it is just a big ol’ pile of quality and I just cherrypicked a bunch of my personal favorites to get started.
So, Ladies and Ladies and Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado…
Remember when I read or at least attempted to read basically everything and it was ill-advised and I woke up on the side of the road covered in lipstick with a whopping lady hangover, except instead of feeling run over by an eighteen-wheeler coated with dead grasshoppers it felt like being run over by rainbows and glitter? Also overnight pinch-hitting with a 102º fever. Good times.
Here's a sampler pack of great stuff from last year! Everyone should throw a trillion bazillion roses and love at ink for running this again. It's such a great thing and holy what there's a cap, I haven't even thought about requests at all, this is what happens when I am busy busying instead of internetting for a week, oh god oh man oh god
Squinting at the pale horizon and scrunching up her lips, Dragon Breath takes a great big sniff and decrees that it is morning and time to wake up! She climbs up to the tippiest top of the old house's skeleton and pulls off the big trumpet strapped across her back. One puff, a wiggling of the keys, and she is ready. She licks her lips and takes a HUGE breath, squeezes her eyes shut, and blows all of the air out in one great big note! It is SO LOUD and she is so pleased that she takes another big gulp of air and blows another screaming sound out of her trumpet. When she runs out of great big breaths, she slides the trumpet's strap back into places and scrambles back down to her comrades to see their dumb waking faces. She hops over debris and then stands in front of them with a giant grin, hands on her hips, feet spread and ready to take on another day.
"Good morning, Coolkid!"
"G'morning," Coolkid mumbles and uses The Mayor's arm to push himself up so he can stretch and yawn.
"Good morning, Mayor!"
"G'morning, Mayor."
The Mayor clicks and hisses in his cool secret language that they have been getting way better at understanding and Dragon Breath runs forward to grab his giant claw hand, pulling him up. She grabs Coolkid's hand too and drags them outside of the empty house to sit in a circle and eat breakfast (bananas for Dragon Breath and Coolkid, a giant can of peaches and a whole box of Hamburger Helper for The Mayor). Dragon Breath pulls out her treasure map and sniffs all over it until she finds their current hiding spot, which she has named Ghost Town Number Eight. Coolkid puts a big X through it with a marker and then draws a dotted trail to their destination for today, a few miles north of Ghost Town Number Eight, closer and closer to The Great Big City by the Ocean.
When they are finished planning their adventure for today, they pack up their sleep things into one big pack that The Mayor pulls onto his back. He's better at carrying stuff than Dragon Breath and Coolkid, seeing as how he's like a MILLION times bigger than they are, at least. He watches patiently while Coolkid pulls the strap of his snare drum across his shoulders and Dragon Breath ties a rubber band around her icky hair. When their sneakers' laces are nice and tight, they reach up to grab The Mayor's claws and grin at him. It's going to be a really great day.
what if i was to draw another long promised fanart for Roommate but someone else already drew that scene ;n; would you still like it
YEA VERILY DEAR ANON, you sweet person, you. <3
Holy cow, did you know that it's been a year since I finished that story? Two days ago exactly. Huh.
Ryn: Level up.
You attempt to perform your most magnificent LASS SCAMPER yet, and bodyslam that next radical AUTHOR TIER, but what you really do is drag your ass and collapse onto the platform, ascending to sort of satisfactory GOLD STAR, YOU TRIER.
Your writerly stats are maybe, like, a tiny bit better than they were before. The amount of WORD WIZARDING that you gain is... uh... well it's, you know, it's the thought that counts, right? Ha ha. Keep grinding, champ.
Oh god I was just about to write up a link post, and now I'm too flattered to think, asldfkjasld;flsdfkjs;dlfkj.
So yeah, I wrote this! I had set aside this fic a few weeks ago because bluuuuuuuhhhhh, but then the updates reminded me of it and inspired me enough to finish it! Written for a wonderful kink meme prompt asking for John/Rose consensual and romantic tentacle porn where Rose tops. How could I not?
Thank you millions for the recs folks, it means so much.
Rose Lalonde answers a curious advertisement and Jane Crocker gives her brain a run for its money. Totally self-indulgent, terribly thought out, junk-food-ish Inception AU ficlet inspired by this perfection here, because I needed it.
Warnings for emetophobia, brief gore.
—+—
"Sir, I'm afraid I have to postpone this chat until a later date, I have a—yes that sounds lovely, ye—sure, sure yes, that's—thank you sir, you as well. All right then. Yes, until then, bye-bye." She snaps the phone closed and stares at it for a moment slightly stupefied. You shrug off your coat to hang it and step into the office. Closet. Spare broom-cupboard rented by the college? In any case, it's not what you expected and you can't decide if the chaos dwarfs the girl behind the desk, or if it bends around her like a fisheye lens made of pure junk with her at the focus. The closet-office is inundated with documents and books, wildly tacked maps on the wall, newspaper clippings, and a somewhat alarming assortment of corked flasks and you are both quite unsure of this opportunity and wonderfully intrigued. The girl sets the cell down as if it were triggered to explode any minute. "My goodness, he talks fast."
"You held your own, I think. May I?" you say and gesture toward a wheeled chair with fraying plaid upholstery. It's not the only thing that delightfully lacks taste in here; the carpet is but a jilted memory of a lovely emerald green and the dusty window framing the girl's mischievous black hair is lopsided, letting in streaky light that falls on sagging bookshelves, ugly wood paneled walls, and yet... The girl manages to stand out like a pop art piece in a house full of antiques. She looks up and her eyes go wide, as if remembering herself suddenly.
"Oh, of course! Sit sit, let me pour us some coffee. Pardon the um," she pauses to hop over a teetering stack of banker boxes stuffed with papers that stick out like renegade locks of hair, "The mess. Just got dumped in and haven't had the time to tidy, hoo, no siree."
You get the feeling that this is a constant. "Sounds profitable."
"Hah! Sure, sure, on the business end of things we're positively booming!" she says and grabs two mugs from inside an unplugged mini-fridge. "Which has done diddly-fucking-squat for my sense of calm, thank you very much."
"Umm..." you start and watch her splash steaming coffee into the mugs. The casual f-bomb makes you reconsider your initial description of her as quaint, which means you like her already. "I'm sorry?"
She practically splutters, then waves her free hand wildly and shakes her head, somehow not spilling a single drop. "Oh no no no, don't be, my gosh! I'm just making a stink and also a rather regrettable first impression, ugh, come on now Crocker, think sharp!" You smile briefly to yourself; all that formal interview knowledge you had brushed up on suddenly seems gauche. You relax the set of your shoulders as the girl nimbly steps over stacks of textbooks and boxes as if they were just part of the terrain and holds out a mug for you to take, grinning. "Hello, I'm Jane Crocker."
"Rose Lalonde," you say and take the mug, nodding gracefully. "A pleasure to meet you."
"Pleasure's mine, I hope! Depending on how you answer my questions, I suppose, hoo hoo."
"I shall try to perform at my utmost, then."
"Pshaw! I'd rather you be honest," she sets her mug down on a stained coaster and hops back around to the boss end of her desk. Honest, you think sarcastically, how novel. But maybe it's worth the risk. Jane rummages briefly through the piles of documents for a legal pad and flips to a blank page, scribbling the point of a pen on the corner until it lets out ink. "So, I presume you're here because of the advertisement?"
"'Current architecture student wanted for definitely illegal business that will probably get you killed. 4.0 grade point required, triple that preferred. Must get off on puzzles,'" you recite from memory with a quirked eyebrow. The flier had been hammered to a cork-board for Official Department Announcements Only on top of the official department documents with a neon pink golf tee, typed up in every offensive type face you thought possible. You had torn it from its post immediately upon read-through and folded it into a neat square, thinking why the hell not, it's Friday. And here you are, watching a busy looking, scarf tied and corduroy clad girl execute a magnificent eyeroll.
"Yeah, that erm. He took that to printing that without my approval. As usual."
"He?"
"Don't worry about that for now. So, do you like puzzles?"
"I do."
"Good! And your grade point?"
"4.0," you say and slide her a glossy black folder containing your CV, transcript, and samples from your portfolio. She rifles through it immediately and starts circling randomly with her pen, chewing on her lip gently with large incisors. You can't see what she's emphasizing and you resist the urge to lean and peer over the box of office supplies and... horse figurines? Hmm. She nods every once in a while and you wait patiently until she nears the end of your packet. "So, if I may..." you interrupt carefully and she waves her hand again, continuing to mark up your credentials. "What exactly is this job? I admit I'm here mostly due to curiosity."
"Why architecture?"
"I'm sorry?"
She looks up and presses the pen gently into her chin. You are struck suddenly by the piercing blue of her eyes; you hadn't noticed until now, charmed by her softly curled hair, rounded face, and chipper disposition, but she seems keen as a knife now that you're really looking. Her eyes are the exact color of a dusty noon sky, but sharpened to a point. "You have an awful lot of philosophy and literature under your belt. Why are you majoring in architecture, then?"
"It's relaxing."
"Relaxing!" she echoes brightly and sits back in her chair, grinning. "I must say, I've never heard anyone call it that before."
You sip politely at your coffee and smile, "Neither have I. It seems to not be the prevalent opinion."
"Hoo hoo! No, definitely not." She props the pad against her forearm and poises to take notes. "And yet," she says and nods at you, pressing the pen against her chin again. "We're looking for someone with both technical mastery and exceptional creativity."
"That's a bit vague."
"It is!" she says and laughs her soft little hoots. "Well, hmm. How can I put this. Are you satisfied with your capabilities?"
"I'm not quite sure what you mean," you say and she scrunches up her face in thought.
"Umm... Do you ever... ugh, that buffoon's parameters are impossible to put into interrogative form," she mumbles to herself and smacks the legal pad down on her desk. Intrigue bubbles up inside of you with every mention of this mystery "buffoon" and his cryptic job opening, and you're more glad you came with each passing second. Jane huffs a sigh that flutters her soft bangs and you can't help but grin, patient but itching to know her secrets. She leans forward after a pause and holds out her hands emphatically, "When you design things, offices, houses, what have you. Are you content?"
Ah. Now things are really getting interesting.
"No," you say, your heart sparking. You're beginning to think that the advertisement was not as exaggerated as you had assumed. She nods vigorously.
"Okay. Why not?"
"I suppose it's because there seem to be an surfeit of limitations to the craft."
"Exactly! Oh drat, I'm leading you on, aren't I..."
"Not at all," you say and laugh softly. "It has been my opinion for a good while now. Physics is a rather cruel mistress."
"How do you mean?"
"She taunts you with such romantic possibilities and then right as you get to the edge," you smack the desk lightly, "She cracks the whip."
Jane hoots and chews on her lip again, "Oh, he'll like you."
"And who is this he that keeps popping into this interview?"
"My colleague and primary source of frustration. Your employer, I guess you could say."
"You make it sound as if I'm hired already."
"Well um, considering your qualifications... and the turnout..."
"I'm the only one who's answered?"
"We'll need to do some basic tests and such, you know, see if you've got the knack for it," she continues without addressing your question and drops her chin into her hand, drumming her fingers against her cheek in thought. "Are you free the rest of this afternoon?"
"I can be."
"Brilliant! Oh, though..." she pauses mid-rise and squints her eyes in thought. "Perhaps my noggin's not the best course for a first-timer... I'm a tad, er. Difficult to dupe."
Oh, you are definitely glad you're skipping classes today. You make no move, steeling yourself as stubbornly as possible and after a moment of consideration, she claps her hands together once and nods.
"Well, nothing for it! We'll just run a make-or-break."
- - -
You wake up screaming and just barely roll over in time to vomit everything you've ever eaten on the floor, accidently scratching angry red lines on your forearm when you rip out the cannula from your vein. In between racking dry heaves, you do a count of your limbs and drag your palms across your stomach, neck, and then push soaking bangs out of your eyes. You don't even know what the fuck. There had been magic, wonder, an orgasmic sloppy fuck-around with every law of physics that you knew, and you had turned to grin at Ms. Crocker and she smiled, brilliant and impressed, and then...
Then she dropped a half-burned cigarette from her small, tough hand and stomped it out while you suddenly noticed the entire universe curving violently inward, the benign crowd of tourists suddenly wholly uninterested with the Piazza San Marco fractal and its thousands of dark pigeons replicated in swirling spirals. Jane placed a hand on your shoulder and looked a little sad, but it quickly gave way to thrill and a strange sort of curiosity, like she was about to double-dog dare you. The broken mirror beauty of the world suddenly had seemed pointed at you, like magnifying glasses copy/pasted to infinity, and you heard Jane say something short before it shattered into a maelstrom of dimensions and pain.
One last thing.
There are a thousand things you want to spit, curse, ask, beg for, but the words die in your throat when you whip up to face Jane and there's someone else in the laboratory with you. You stare dumbfounded as Jane flicks her thumb on an old brass lighter over and over and over, a cigarette in her gentle smiling mouth. When she's satisfied that it won't light, the mid-height, wiry blond with old sneakers, dirty jeans, a toolbox hairstyle, and the most outrageous affront to fashionable glasses you had ever seen smoothly holds a lit bunsen burner out in front of her. She snorts and lights her cigarette, pulls out the cannula from her own arm, and throws you a winning, smoky smile.
You spit lingering filth on the floor and say to Jane with a gravely post-hurl throat, "I hadn't pegged you as the type."
"Oh trust me, she's a chimney," the smug stranger monotones and Jane blows a cloud of smoke up at his face. So this must be the mystery employer. You are suddenly venomously pissed that the flier was so eye-catchingly terrible. This was not what you had signed up for. He tilts his head minutely at Jane, "So?"
"Mm-hmm," Jane hums cheerfully and the blond looks dispassionately pleased, somehow, when he slides forward to hold out a hand. You don't take it, favoring an upward glare instead, and he lets out a short exhale through his nose. Jane steps up and hands you a damp, warm washcloth, which you drag across your face as they stare at you. The initial shock of being torn to literal pieces by ethereal strangers—guts ripping out of your abdomen and bones snapping under their furious hands while Jane Fucking Crocker just watched with her hands clasped behind her back—fades slightly, letting through that gnawing curiosity that had led you here. You're glad to know you still possess your dangerous reckless streak, despite having a moment where you wanted to overturn every cart of medical instruments on your way out the goddamn door. When you're composed enough to drop the washcloth to the puddle of vomit without shaking, the blond holds out a hand again. This time, you take it.
"Name's Dirk," he says and Jane leans against his arm, exhaling noxious smoke to the side with what had to be a hundred twinkles in her eyes; despite wanting to punch her in the jaw, you find that you're still terribly charmed. Now you definitely wanted to know her secrets, and this Dirk's too; who they were, what they did, and what they wanted you for. And just like that, your boredom becomes a distant memory when Dirk continues, "And welcome to my merry band of miscreants."
