jake 🪐

Big announcement!

Im hosting the Mattfleck Nation Zine. Everyone is welcome regardless of skill level and you can contribute art, fics and edits of mattfleck and their characters. It’s going to be epic! I already shared this on my twitter (in_vanillaskies if you’re not already following, it’s where im most active) and we already have some incredible things being made for it!! I promise it’s going to be awesome

Sign ups:

Whump is a subgenre of the hurt/comfort genre where the hurt is at least in part a physical hurt--this can be anything from a character being sick with a bad cold (often labeled under its own subgenre of 'sickfic') to freezing in the wilderness during a blizzard to being kidnapped and tortured. But there tends to still be a very strong emphasis on emotional hurt as well, with a lot of the focus going to the psychological effect such scenarios have on the character. The comfort half of the hurt/comfort is technically unnecessary for it to count as whump despite its status as a subgenre of hurt/comfort, but I would argue in such cases there is still comfort being provided in a meta sense by the reader themselves. The whump genre tends to emphasize the importance of validating a character's pain and/or trauma, and by eliciting the reader's empathy the reader themselves is in that sense drawn in to providing that form of comfort through the act of reading itself. Short-form content here on tumblr is more likely to just show brief scenes of hurt with no comfort. Long-form works are more likely to spend a lot of time depicting a character's recovery from the hurt, often through the support of another character in a caretaker role.

Felicity’s story was set in the beginnings of the American Revolution, and addressed the conflict that she faced when her loved ones were split between patriots and loyalists. It also covered the effects of animal abuse, and forgiving those who are unforgivable.

Samantha’s stories centered around the growth of industrial America, women’s suffrage, child abuse, and corruption in places of power. Also, it emphasises how dramatically adoption into a caring family can turn a life around.

Kit’s story is one of my favorites. Her family is hit hard by the Great Depression, and they begin taking in boarders and raise chickens to help make ends meet. Her books include themes of poverty, police brutality, homelessness, prejudice, and the importance of unity in difficult times.

Molly’s father, a doctor, is drafted during the Second World War. Throughout her story, friends of hers suffer the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers overseas. Her mother leaves the traditional housewife position and works full-time to help with the war effort. They also take in an English refugee child, who learns to open up after a life of traumatic experience.

And then there are the later dolls, that kids younger than me would have grown up with (I was just outgrowing American Girl as these came out), like Rebecca, the Jewish girl who dreams of becoming an actress in the budding film industry, or  Julie, who fights against her school’s gender policy surrounding sports in the 70s, or  Nanea, the Hawaiian girl whose father worked at Pearl Harbor.

Nah.

OP (of the tweet thread) was either a actively trying to start shit or is just a huge fucking moron. Probably both.

I’d like to point out that the company that makes American Girl dolls actually doesn’t skimp when doing their research and they don’t make the dolls with the intent to be offensive in any way:

i think back on this & realize that as third graders we were talking about how awful slavery was & because we were simply innocent kids without any societal or institutional influence yet, all of us could kept saying “why would you treat a HUMAN like that ?!” this one girl for her birthday invited all of us for her party & she got the Addy doll - every single one of us (boys included) held her & was in awe of this doll - it was such a touching experience.

i went back home about a year ago & ran into my third grade teacher in the grocery store. she said that year opened up a whole new teaching structure for her. she now reads american girl stories to her students starting day one of class every day to calm them down after recess & she’ll get through maybe four or five sets of books a year. she has the dolls in the room with packets on information from the doll’s time period that her students can “check out” to take home for weekends to care for them.

we oftentimes overlook how powerful toys can be in influencing young children & american girl honestly knew that kids could read intense moments in history & synthesize the issues to learn how to be a better person. my grandma bought me my first doll, molly, when i was only six & the dolls became a huge part of my childhood. when i turned 21 a couple years ago - we were living in minneapolis - she took me to have lunch for my birthday at the american doll place in the mall of america & bought me the Addy doll for my birthday. it was such a powerful moment i hasn’t expected.

I learned a lot of my core beliefs from these girls.

These are from one of their latest books, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Body Image:

They got a lot of flak from conservative parents for this and they did. not. back. down.

Their newest historical doll, Claudie, is a black girl growing up in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her story is about Black artists thriving, and making a safe, beautiful place for themselves in a society that tries to reject them. It teaches about the NAACP’s protests against lynchings, in ways kids can understand, but there’s also so much Black joy and creativity showcased in her story.

Another historical doll, Melody, is growing up in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement. She faces the struggles and triumphs of attending a newly integrated school, and learns about the bombing of a Black church in Alabama that killed four little girls her age. Her stories show how black people found support and community within the church, as well as music— she loves to sing! If you have a free hour, I highly recommend watching her special on Amazon (free with prime). It stars Caila Marsai Martin from Blackish and it will make you weep.

The girl of the year for 2022, Corinne, is Asian, and her story touches on the issues of anti-Asian hate in the wake of covid. When conservative parents threw a fit about this, American Girl went ahead and made the girl of the year for 2023 Asian, too.

Any of their dolls can be customized with assistive devices like hearing aids, service dogs, and wheelchairs. They also have bald dolls, to include stories about girls battling cancer or alopecia. And it’s not just girl dolls— they have boy dolls now, too! And dolls with no gender assigned to them! People complained that they couldn’t find any dolls in the Just Like Me line that looked like them, so they now give people the ability to create their own custom doll, with tons of different options.

April 2026 is Archaic April here at the Prompt Foundry! There are many things that once were everyday parts of life, that most people rarely if ever encounter anymore. Chores, occupations, and ways of doing things that have fallen by the wayside—let's take time to remember them, the place they once had in our lives and communities, and the fact that none of them are gone, even if they've become rare, even if they've changed.

Feel free to combine different days’ prompts with each other, or combine them with other events! 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:

Here it is, 40 prompts chosen by the results of your voting! Please send an ask if you have any questions. Good luck everyone, and happy planning!!!

Written out list under the cut ⬇️

There's plenty of whump challenges in April if that's your thing—@whumpril, @chaos-company, and @aprilisthecruelestmonth—but plenty of other challenges if that's not—@hanahaki4hanami, @autistic-character-month, and @au-pril-blog! @thepromptfoundry is also running archaic April, and @monthlywritingchallenges is running a second AU prompt challenge! (As always, check out the actual blog if you want to know the full list of prompts!)

Hi!