Anon: (BTW it’s not me throwing shade @you! I LOVED little lion man and you honestly breathed some fresh air into my dry exhausted lips djsajsjhd.. Just waiting for more people to realize how precious Tomlinshaw as a ship is!)

First, I’m so glad you liked Little Lion Man!!! Also, I totally get the desire for new Tomlinshaw stuff, because it’s a glorious ship. I would say based on the fact most of my ships in other fandoms are the largest slash ships and the fandoms are pretty big, I have almost the opposite issue of the ships being so big new stuff can get lost and authors who are not already known or active in the fandom can get overlooked unless they are writing for an anon fest. I think that can be really intimidating for authors thinking about writing some of those ships. Although I hope it doesn’t put people off, I know I’m having those thoughts right now myself about a fic I want to write for a big, long-running ship in a fandom I haven’t written in yet, so I imagine it’s not uncommon. There can be over-saturation with massive ships which can be hard for readers and creators alike, although I guess a nice problem to have! One of the things I loved when I started writing Tomlinshaw was the fact it wasn’t huge. It felt - and still feels - like a really happy space for me, fandom wise, like this awesome little corner of a wider fandom space, and it’s 100% helped me get to know the people playing in it much more quickly than I think I might have done with a massive ship.

 Although it can be frustrating for readers looking for new content when a ship is smaller, I feel like it can create quite an encouraging landscape for new writers interested in the ship and the new Tomlinshaw when it does appear is invariably good which is always so exciting to see. If it makes you feel better about new stuff, we’ve had a bunch of Tomlinshaw sign-ups for @grimmyappreciation fest and of course the wonderful @tomlinshawexchange will be posting later this year so there is new stuff coming, it’s definitely not a ship that’s so quiet because people just aren’t writing it anymore which I think is a v. good thing! I also have 4 Tomlinshaw fics nearly finished, one is a collab and 3 are almost there, so I will def be posting at least one new fic at some point over the next fortnight if that’s good news at all ;-) 

Hi anon, thank you for the ask! I sure can, although I recommend reading ALL the Tomlinshaw. It’s also impossible to choose just 10 because there are so many great ones so I’ve gone with the first 8 that sprung to mind for me and then a shout out to a few newer Tomlinshaw writers. There are undoubtedly fics and authors I love that aren’t on this list, which I’ve cobbled together pretty quickly, so I’m sorry if I’ve missed you out. Basically anyone writing Tomlinshaw should keep at it because we can never have enough Tomlinshaw :D

Full rec list below the cut.

I’m sorry for  the delay, anon. I had hoped to post it last week but I’ve been pinch hitting for a Drarry fest and have had five other fest obligations in Harry Potter fandom and a paper for an academic conference which I’ve been working on completing, so I’ve had to put Little Lion Man down for a minute while I finish those. That being said, once my fest pieces are finished it will have my full attention to I’m hoping for speedier updates with the remaining chapters. Chapter 6 is nearly complete so I’m hopeful I can get it posted next week.

I hate this topic because Nick still gets shit for it, but because I’ve seen people talk about recently it in a way which completely misrepresents the facts, I’m going to set out what happened here.

In October 2013 Louis posted his #papsaretwats tweet about not being able to leave the hotel room, when 1D were touring. The Breakfast team mentioned the tweet on the show, with Nick saying “I love a complainy popstar. It’s my favourite thing” and then saying Louis should wear a mask. A Finchy mask. Finchy was a former producer on Breakfast. Nick seems reluctant to talk about the tweet when it gets raised initially, he says it’s a bit “sweary” but they do go on to have a brief moment of banter about it.

Louis then tweeted @grimmers < @chrisdjmoyles. For those that don’t know, Chris did Breakfast for years and Grimmy took over from him.

Chris tweeted to say how delightful and handsome Louis is. 

After the tweet from Louis, Nick tweeted ‘ooooh Stacey got out the wrong side of bed this morning’ with the nail painting emjoi. Meanwhile, Zayn waded in supporting Louis (saying something like he doesn’t know why people have to ‘get brave’) and Eleanor responded to the Eleanor update account with ‘me neither’ when they tweeted that they’ve never liked Grimmy. During this time, Harry tweeted ‘Shania Twain is so good’ because he’s a ridiculous human and I love him.

On Nick’s show a few months after (February 2014) there was a feature ‘who’s more annoying than…’ on Showquizness. Nick’s producer said Louis. Nick never mentioned his name and listed a bunch of different people. That didn’t stop people getting up in Nick’s mentions to the extent he had to ask ‘hey 1D fans!!!!! i never mentioned the word “Louis” on my show today so enough with the charming homophobic death threats yeh?’

As far as I know, Nick has never had any interaction with Eleanor or mentioned her name on social media, the radio or anywhere else. The only other thing I can think of is the picture of Nick and Miquita looking bored and holding hands, which gets used as ‘evidence’ that he was throwing shade at Eleanor. I don’t pay much attention to that as it tends to be used to drive forward conspiracy theories. The tweets above are the main public record of the ‘feud’ that gets brought up when people talk about Nick and Louis hating one another. It’s worth reiterating, Nick has mentioned Louis plenty of times on Breakfast before and since, they have been friendly at events they have attended together and Louis has said on multiple occasions he’s let knee-jerk reactions get the better of him on social media - something he’s even said during an interview with Nick. Of course, because it’s far less exciting to believe they might actually get on fine and just aren’t particularly friendly, those instances rarely get pointed out and there’s a tendency to focus on late 2013/early 2014 stuff and to paint Nick as the villain of the piece.

I love this prompt. It feels very Tomlinshaw for Louis to instigate something just to prove a point. Then he’s like, oh shit, I was not expecting these PESKY FEELINGS and now my point is lost (actually can’t even remember what the point was in the first place) because Nick looks fit, I can’t stop thinking about him and when the fuck did that happen? :D