things with stuff

Here’s some edits of both Shiro’s actually meeting each other and being in the same scenes as requested

[image description: an AO3 comment thread on chapter 4 of The Ancient Sea. AO3 user szzzt comments: “Lambert…. Lambert’s bullet journal…. (I’m just gonna imagine that spread as one of the really pretty ones, with calligraphy and stickers.)

bomberqueen17 replies: “OH MY GOD WASHI TAPE  HE’S GOT IT COLOR-CODED  GOLD STAR STICKERS”

szzzt replies: “SO MUCH WASHI TAPE   gold stars *dies* XDDDD”]

I just had to share this gem from the comments on the last chapter of The Ancient Sea, which features Lambert creepily keeping notes on Geralt’s sex life, among other things. (Listen in the games Geralt always has to write things in his journal and I just rolled with that.)

Lambert totally has one of those really beautiful hand-lettered layouts. It’s completely customized and he’s got a habit tracker with gold star stickers in it.

Sometimes I have an entire conversation with Ripley before stepping back and realizing how cool that is.

I arrive home late from a potluck and the house is dark. From the bottom of the stairs I say, "Hey Ripley, I'm back."

"Wanna come out," he answers, which is a pretty standard reply when I first get home. It's midnight, way past his bedtime, but he hasn't been out of his cage at all today because we're dog sitting my mom's very untrustworthy dog (with whom Ripley is unfortunately fascinated). So I say, "Sure."

As I walk into his room he lifts up a foot in a way I recognize as meaning "I'm ready to step onto your hand," so as I open his door I say, "Let's go in the kitchen." I offer him the chance to poop in the trash can, but he declines with a small clicking noise. I ask him if he would sit on a chair, but warn him that first I need to move Coat Shirt off of it (shirt is his catch-all word for clothing), and he makes a little "hm" of acknowledgment.

After he steps onto the back of the chair I say, "I've gotta go downstairs, can I leave you up here for a minute?"

"Okay," he answers as I leave the room.

Upon returning I say, "Thanks for waiting in here." It's taken years of practice for me to talk to Ripley like he's a person (he is), but now it's second nature. He gets insistent if I'm quiet for too long.

"Do want a carrot," Ripley says, leaning toward the fridge.

"I can get you a carrot." My usual reply when he asks for a healthy food. I hand him a baby carrot from the fridge.

He takes a couple bites and shakes the carrot around gingerly in his foot. "I like it."

"I'm glad. Can I touch you?" I reach out to pet his back but he gives me a subtle look: a twitch of his pupils and a fractional declination of his head that means "no thank you." Ignoring this is a serious offense.

"Okay, no touch. A kiss, then?" He leans toward me and squints: an invitation. As I lean back, he makes a trilling sound and smushes the top of his head against my face. "Thank you," I say.

After several more kisses I ask him what kind of bedtime treat he wants. "A peanut."

Alright are you DUMMY THICC with POWERFUL THIGHS that keep DESTROYING YOUR JEANS?  Are you super fucking broke and can’t afford new clothes?  Would you rather not contribute to disposable fashion, one of the MOST UNETHICAL industries of the modern age, on which I have many thoughts?  I’m here to show you how to keep your pants on unnatural life support until they literally disintegrate off your legs.

You’ll need some basic sewing skills and supplies.  If you don’t have a sewing machine, jump to the end, I’ll add an epilogue just for you.

Step one: look at this disgrace.  How did this even happen.  What was I doing.

Now you don’t need to do this next bit, especially if it’s a less extensive repair, but I’m going to show you how to make a nice pattern for this, if you like nice patterns.

Turn one leg inside out and put it into the other, so you can see the tear.

Put a piece of paper on the area and trace around the hole - it’ll take some guesswork, but you can figure it out.  You want it big enough to cover the hole, and extending far enough from it that you aren’t just sewing into places where the fabric is worn super thing.  I like to stop at the crotch and inner leg seams, both because the pants are shaped there so it’s hard to get a patch to span it without something puckering, and because it’s a good sturdy anchor to sew to.  Mine looks like this.  Yours will…probably be smaller.

Now cut that shape out of some fabric.  I cut two, because I have similarly shaped holes on both sides.  You do NOT need to add seam allowance.  For the fabric, I recommend cotton twill or canvas (not treated canvas, you don’t want anything plasticky on your crotch).  Twill is what most casual pants are made of (denim is a kind of twill).  Canvas is the same but heavier.  You’ll want something that roughly matches the color of your pants, obviously.  I did not have this.  I decided I do not care.  My pants will look DUMB but I am a GOBLIN.

I serged the edges of mine (because I’m the kind of goblin with a SERGER but not TAN FABRIC?? apparently) but that’s not necessary.  Turn your pants inside out and pin the patch in (one at a time, if you’re doing multiple).  Make sure the patch lies completely flat against the pants fabric, and isn’t bunching or bubbling.

Now shove it under the sewing machine and stitch around the edge.  I recommend sewing right on top of the existing seams where you can, since the pants are sturdy there.  The tricky thing is not accidentally catching other parts of the pants while you’re sewing around the patch, but you can do it, I believe in you.  If you mess up, just seam rip that bit and try again.

Once the patch(es) are in, turn them right side out.  The holes are covered, but there’s a bunch of loose, ragged fabric flapping around that’s just going to keep getting shredded.

So take it back to the sewing machine, and just…sew everywhere.  Start at the edge and make a big spiral to the center.  Or make a bunch of parallel lines.  Or start wherever you want and just go wild.  But fill the patch with stitching everywhere there are two layers of fabric.

This not only keeps the layers together but REINFORCES them, so your sad pants will be STRONGER THAN EVER.  It’ll look like this, and you’ll be like “ew, everybody’s going to see my butt stitching.”

But they won’t.  Trust me.  They won’t.  Because it’s all up in your butt crack, and if they’re looking close enough you’re legally allowed to kick them.  Even with my dumbass fabric choices, you can’t see it at all from the front (enjoy weird blurry shot of my crotch).

And you can barely see it from the back.

AND NOW YOU CAN WEAR YOU FAVORITE PANTS, AND NEVER BUY NEW CLOTHES EVER AGAIN.  I think I’ve done this to EVERY pair of pants I wear on a regular basis.  Some MULTIPLE TIMES.

My note for people without a sewing machine:  you can do this by hand, it’ll just take longer.  Use sturdy thread and sew with a prick stitch (or pick stitch, depending on who you ask).  That means that when the thread is on the outside of the fabric, make the stitches absolutely tiny.  That leaves less surface area to be abraided by the aforementioned slapping of your thighs.  It also looks nicer - so I would do that if you’re fixing some really nice dress pants whether you’ve got a sewing machine or not.  This is what a prick stitch looks like on the outside.

If you’re doing it by hand, and if you want extra reinforcement, I’d also recommend getting some Heat ‘n Bond (or Wonder Under, etc, there are a few different brands, any permanent iron-on adhesive will work) and affixing the patches with that first.  I only didn’t do that because I don’t have any.  I would not recommend putting the patches in ONLY with iron-on adhesive, even though the manufacturers say it will work.  It’s not strong enough for your powerful thighs.

I have seen many conversation threads going round on the subject and just wanted to pop up to say my own feeling is, I am uncomplicatedly happy and pleased by the Hugo nom, and if you have contributed to the AO3 in any way, I hope you too feel happy and seen and recognized by it, and we don’t need to pin down who has earned it or who it belongs to. 

Thankfully, the AO3 isn’t Twitter or Tumblr: we don’t need to figure out who has the legal right to strip-mine it for billions and run away after setting it on fire. :P Nobody does. Because we deliberately refused the lie, from the beginning, that a space like the AO3 was or could ever be the work of one or even a few people. 

The AO3 is not a statue that one artist has made. It’s a living space, a community garden. And the first group of us stood up together and said we wanted a garden for our community and talked about what it should look like, and many of us committed to build it, and many started the work, many left, many joined in along the way. Because of all the early people, we were first able to open the garden, with paths and beds and the organization to keep it going.

But that alone wouldn’t have made the garden. The garden is made new every day, by the people who stop in and plant a flower, or a whole bed of strawberries, and the people who come in every weekend and do the weeding and teach the gardening lessons, and the ones who run the annual fundraiser and the ones who go to the local community board meetings to protect it. And the beds and paths wouldn’t still be there if people weren’t maintaining them and adding new ones and figuring out better ways to lay them out and occasionally bringing in a whole new tree and putting up a gazebo to make things even better. 

And because the garden is there, many random passers-by can wander through and enjoy the flowers, and some of those people will stuff a few bills into the donation box or fill out the suggestion form, and some will come back often and some will come every day, and some will one day become caretakers and some will come in once and never again, and some who did huge amounts of work will move across the country and never see it again.

The garden is the work of and a place for all those people. It was built for the person who wanders through once and for the person who comes every day, for the person who contributes and the person who only comes long enough to enjoy the beauty and warmth they can find in a place built only for human pleasure and goes away enriched. And all the people who build it have made a choice to give their work to such a place and for that cause.

Hi all! The Course of Honour (and A Short Speech) will be coming down from AO3 on April 15th. It is likely to be available in some form or another in the future, but I can’t give any certainty as to what form (it may just turn up on a random website again in five years!! who knows!!) so if you know you’ll absolutely want to reread it over the next few months then I recommend AO3′s handy ‘download fic’ feature. 

alright so in the fic I’m not gonna write, this was his idea, and everyone’s sitting in the lounge together while they plan so he doesn’t have to be alone

…

Hold me fast, part 1

Guys, this is the fic from which my earlier deleted scene ficlet was deleted. And it’s the fic that happened, as shown above, because I REVERSE-BANGED MYSELF.

It’s been getting worse.

There are limits to what he can do and what he can say, but they slip out of his head, right through his fingers like dreams. Every time he runs into one, it’s a memory he can’t move out of short-term into long-term; as soon as he stops rehearsing it, it’s gone. He’s ashamed it’s taken him this long to put the pieces together, but for all he knows he’s realized it a dozen times before.

The blinding pain on that last mission, though, and how it nearly doomed the paladins, the shield station, and all the innocents on the planet below. The long, staring silence during debrief when he couldn’t tell them what happened, or even acknowledge it had happened. These are external facts that stick with him, and the timeline of evidence is very clear when considered by a tactical mind.

Shiro writes the note without looking at it while Lance is visiting on one of his awkward, dogged check-ins. Shiro doesn’t look at the hardlight slate or the stylus he uses, not even peripherally; he looks at his bed while Lance asks him, with various circumlocutions and asides, if he’s sleeping better. He doesn’t answer. Lance is quick to fill the silences for him.

When Shiro’s done writing, he slides the slate off the desk, turns his back and holds it out behind him. Then he goes to make his bed and give Lance time to read. Shiro’s been rehearsing how to do this, how to pass a note without seeing it written or received. It’s why he was so scatterbrained in training today. He left the writing materials out and his bed unmade on purpose this morning.

He hopes the note is readable. He’s literally never written in English with his Galra hand, and his Japanese penmanship with it was atrocious at first.

LANCE I’M COMPROMISED HAGGAR USING ME, SPYING THRU ME YOU NEED BLINDFOLD, EARPLUGS, CLAMP SHOW ALLURA & LOTOR

When he turns around the slate’s gone and Lance looks normal, though he’s pale. He’s been learning a lot lately. He looks straight at Shiro and says, “I want you to know we’re all here for you.”

Shiro smiles, a perfunctory thing when he wants to scream.

“I’m fine.”

——–

alright so in the fic I’m not gonna write, this was his idea, and everyone’s sitting in the lounge together while they plan so he doesn’t have to be alone

…

Hold me fast, part 1

Guys, this is the fic from which my earlier deleted scene ficlet was deleted. And it’s the fic that happened, as shown above, because I REVERSE-BANGED MYSELF.

It's been getting worse.

There are limits to what he can do and what he can say, but they slip out of his head, right through his fingers like dreams. Every time he runs into one, it's a memory he can't move out of short-term into long-term; as soon as he stops rehearsing it, it's gone. He's ashamed it's taken him this long to put the pieces together, but for all he knows he's realized it a dozen times before.

The blinding pain on that last mission, though, and how it nearly doomed the paladins, the shield station, and all the innocents on the planet below. The long, staring silence during debrief when he couldn't tell them what happened, or even acknowledge it had happened. These are external facts that stick with him, and the timeline of evidence is very clear when considered by a tactical mind.

Shiro writes the note without looking at it while Lance is visiting on one of his awkward, dogged check-ins. Shiro doesn't look at the hardlight slate or the stylus he uses, not even peripherally; he looks at his bed while Lance asks him, with various circumlocutions and asides, if he's sleeping better. He doesn't answer. Lance is quick to fill the silences for him.

When Shiro's done writing, he slides the slate off the desk, turns his back and holds it out behind him. Then he goes to make his bed and give Lance time to read. Shiro's been rehearsing how to do this, how to pass a note without seeing it written or received. It's why he was so scatterbrained in training today. He left the writing materials out and his bed unmade on purpose this morning.

He hopes the note is readable. He's literally never written in English with his Galra hand, and his Japanese penmanship with it was atrocious at first.

LANCE I'M COMPROMISED HAGGAR USING ME, SPYING THRU ME YOU NEED BLINDFOLD, EARPLUGS, CLAMP SHOW ALLURA & LOTOR

When he turns around the slate's gone and Lance looks normal, though he's pale. He's been learning a lot lately. He looks straight at Shiro and says, "I want you to know we're all here for you."

Shiro smiles, a perfunctory thing when he wants to scream.

"I'm fine."

--------

** Permission to post it was granted by the artist Do not repost/edit the art without permission Please, support the artist on their pages too **

Artist : @2g2glaruri

I was planning to do one of these anyway, but then @bosstoaster​ tagged me (<333!!) and I had to make it b i g g e r

Works in progress (all started this year):

Second Skin (4/7 chapters, 19,020 words)

The Adventures of Colonel Gunderson and the Bad Cadets (2/4? chapters, 18,444 words)

Cost of Living (10/13? chapters, 44,904 words)

Completed:

All Spread Out (843 words)

Something New, Something Blue (48,524 words)

Of All the Graves (25,764 words)

Unwinding (1,721 words)

Reset (17,678 words)

put on your blue kirtle, little farmer boy (7,500 words)

Total Fics: 9 Total Words:  184,578

Ship/character breakdown…

Ship breakdown:

Shiro/Keith/Lance/Hunk/Pidge/Allura - 2 fics

Allura/Lance - 2 fics

Shiro/Lance - 1 fic

Shiro/Keith + a lot of other subtext and unrequited feels - 1 fic

Allura/Zethrid - 1 fic

Character breakdown:

2 fics are solidly Pidge POV, and 1 of those is very much a character piece for her with a side of Keith

2 fics are Shiro POV and focus (porn)

1 fic is Kuron-focused with Allura and Lance also as POV

1 fic is Allura, Lance, and Shiro switching POV and pretty equal focus between them

1 fic is Allura and Lance switching POV and pretty equal focus between them

1 Lance POV and focus

1 small Allura POV and focus (porn)

Characters that had the main focus:

Lance edged out slightly in the lead, I guess, but also a lot of Shiro and Allura with a side of Pidge? I’ve written a Hunk-centric piece but it’s a zine fic so it’s not up this year. Someday I’ll write Keith, lol.

Specifics…

Best/worst title?

Best title:  Honestly my favorite title is The Adventures of Colonel Gunderson and the Bad Cadets. Worst title:  Unwinding, it is an eh serviceable title for a short porn fic I guess.

Best/worst first line?

Best first line:  “Playing Truth or Dare was probably a bad idea, but in Lance’s defense, it is absolutely not his fault that everyone else actually took him up on it.” I don’t feel like I have a standout first line this year, but I kinda like this one. (Something New, Something Blue.) Worst first line:  “Lance has thought, in the back of his head, about what might happen the next time he feels that strange tingling on his face, so he’s done things.” Rambly and unpunchy. Proud of the fic overall tho. (put on your blue kirtle, little farmer boy.)

Best/worst last line?

Best last line:  “But now—now they hold him, and there’s happiness swelling in his chest, and something inside him is clean and bright, and all the cramped circles his mind had moved in have broken open, reset.” Maybe the title drop at the end was cheesy, but I liked it, it said something. (Reset.) Worst last line:  ““You deserve it,” he breathes. “Always.”” Eh. (Unwinding.)

General questions…

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

Way…….way…….WAY more. I have never had a year this prolific. I mean, at the point I hit about 175k a month or two ago, I kinda hoped I’d break 200k, but life and cans happened.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? I’d say any of Voltron, but I was starting to blurt out chunks of Second Skin last December, so I guess I already knew I was falling down that chute. BUT OK, I have never written a college AU before, not even for an 800-word porn ficlet, and never thought I would, and may never again. What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Of All the Graves, tbh. Writing it—most of it in a few days for a deadline rush—was flow all the way, and I was pretty darn proud of some of the abstract and high-concept stuff I pulled off.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

By hits and bookmarks, Something New, Something Blue. By kudos, Unwinding. Story most underappreciated by the universe? I…okay, this is going to sound like a strange thing to say, given that it is my most popular by several metrics, but I kinda hoped Something New would get more traction than it did. There wasn’t much in the way of longform or explicit Allurance when it came out, and I really hoped it’d fill a need and take off more, and I still regret not abandoning the kink bang entirely and just posting it chapter by chapter to get more traction with updates. >.> Story that could have been better? Cost of Living has suffered less than I expected from being my “I am just going to brainfart this and barely edit lol” fic, but I think it has suffered from scope creep control and idea evolution/refocusing as I went. The premise has more potential than merely a feelings jam, and I’ve thought often about other things I might do to make it more dramatic or more shippy or both, but I decided to scope creep control it into its current form and planned (getting close!) ending. Most ways of making it better would probably double its size, so. :’D Sexiest story?

Colonel Gunderson, absolutely. I fucking outdid myself there. Saddest story? Honestly I don’t know how to answer this. Cost of Living is the angstiest, but it’s far more angsty than it is sad. Second Skin is the most traumatic. Of All the Graves deals with genocide, but it’s not as personal as some other stuff. put on your blue kirtle goes probably the darkest emotional places, given how horribly depressed and borderline suicidal Lance is, but it also ends really well. Eh?? Most fun? I suck at fun. Something New has a fun carnival date, I guess that counts? Story with single sweetest moment? Nah I’m going to say Something New again, because the friendship bracelet collaring at the end rotted my teeth out as I wrote it.

Hardest story to write?

N…one of them? Part of the reason I’ve been so prolific this year is that I was word-vomiting in flow because I’d been stuck writing IF for a while and going back to linear prose was so rainbow-barfing easy by comparison that I just went. Reset, I guess, because the once-a-day kinktober updates were a little stressful and brain-eating, especially when I fell behind.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Tens of thousands of words of Cost of Living wrote themselves, that’s why that thing existed at all, never mind got that big.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

Hrn. I’ve definitely had some gently evolving character perceptions, but they rarely come from the actual process of writing, more from new seasons and endless chatter with @mllelaurel​. I guess the closest I come to this was how quiet and gentle and thoughtful Keith ran in Of All the Graves, and then some of that also showed in Cost of Living (mostly because in that fic he is trying very hard to be the sane one.)

Most overdue story?

The rest of Second Skin, dear fucking god. >.<

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Posting in this wanky-ass fandom at all? :D Honestly I was pretty scared to at first, but it’s been a blast. Uh. Spontaneously starting longfics and posting word-vomit like Cost of Living felt risky, since I haven’t done stuff like that since my college years, and it’s mostly had the expected effect of a) lots of fic and b) unfinished WIPs.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

FINISHING THESE WIPS sob. And I have the ladylove bang fic in progress, of course! There’s also a long one-shot I’ve been picking at for almost all of 2018 that I really want to finish and post, even if it’s currently 100% out of continuity, since it might be some of the best aftermath-of-trauma shit I’ve ever written. Beyond that, I guess we’ll see. I’m hoping to wrap up WIPs and outstanding commitments in case another fandom eats me—this is a while in one place for me, and I don’t know how much more momentum I’ll have—but I also have more things I could write if the momentum keeps up.