What Is The Second Part To Sick Day Called If There Even Is One

Flower Asks

Alisons: Sexuality? 

Amaranth: Pronouns/Gender? 

Amaryllis: Birthday? 

Anemone: Favorite flower? 

Angelonia: Favorite t.v. show? 

Arum-Lily: What’s the farthest you’d go for a stranger? 

Aster: What’s one of your favorite quotes? 

Aubrieta: Favorite drink? 

Baby’s Breath: Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? 

Balsam Fir: Have you ever been in love? 

Baneberries: Favorite song? 

Basket of Gold: Describe your family. 

Beebalm: Do you have a best friend? Who is it? 

Begonia: Favorite color? 

Bellflower: Favorite animal? 

Bergenia: Are you a morning or night person? 

Black-Eyed Susan: If you could be any animal for a day, what would it be?

Bloodroots: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? 

Bluemink: What are your thoughts on children? 

Blazing Stars: What are you afraid of? Is there a reason why? 

Borage: Give a random fact about your childhood. 

Bugleherb: How would you spend your last day on Earth?  

Buttercup: Relationship Status? 

Camelia: If you could visit anywhere, where would you want to go? 

Candytufts: When do you feel most loved? 

Canna: Do you have any tattoos?  

Canterbury Bells: Do you have any piercings?  

California Poppy: Height?  

Cardinal Flower: Do you believe in ghosts? 

Carnation: What are you currently wearing?  

Catnip: Have you ever slept with a nightlight? 

Chives: Who was the last person you hugged?  

Chrysanthemum: Who’s the last person you kissed?

Cock’s Comb: Favorite font? 

Columbine: Are you tired? 

Common Boneset: What are you looking forward to? 

Coneflower: Dream job? 

Crane’s-Bill: Introvert or extrovert? 

Crocus: Have you ever been in love? 

Crown Imperial: What’s the farthest you would go for someone you care about? 

Cyclamen: Did you have a favorite stuffed animal as a child? What was it? 

Daffodil: What’s your zodiac sign? 

Dahlia: Have you done anything worth remembering? 

Daisy: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment? 

Daylily: What would you do if your parents didn’t like your partner(s)?  

Dendrobium: Who is the last person that you said “I love you” to?

False Goat’s Beard: What is something you are good at? 

Foxgloves: What’s something you’re bad at? 

Freesia: What are three good things that have happened in the past month? 

Garden Cosmos: How was your day today? 

Gardenia: Are you happy with where you’re at in your life? 

Gladiolus: What is something you hope to do in the next year or two? 

Glory-of-the-Snow: What are ten things that make you happy/you’re grateful to have in your life? 

Heliotropium: What helps you calm down when you feel stressed?  

Hellebore: How do you show affection? 

Hoary Stock: What are you proudest of? 

Hollyhock: Describe your ideal day. 

Hyacinth: What do you like to do in your free time?  

Hydrangea: How long have you known your best friend? How did you meet them?

Irises: Who can you talk to about (almost) everything?

Laceleaf: How many friends do you have?

Lantanas: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received? 

Larkspur: What do you think of yourself? 

Lavender: What’s your favorite thing about yourself? 

Leather Flower: What’s your least favorite thing about yourself?  

Lilac: What’s something you liked to do as a child? 

Lily: Who was your best friend when you were a kid? 

Lily of the Incas: What is something you still feel guilty for? 

Lily of the Nile: What is something you feel guilty for that you shouldn’t feel guilty about?  

Lupine: What does your name mean? Why is that your name? 

Marigold: Where did you grow up? Tell us about it. 

Morning Glory: What was your bedroom like growing up? 

Mugworts: What was it like for you as a teenager? Did you enjoy your teenage years?  

Norwegian Angelica: Tell us about your mom.

Onions: Tell about your dad.  

Orchid: Tell about your grandparents. 

Pansy: What was your most memorable birthday? What made it be so memorable? 

Peony: What was your first job? 

Petunia: If you’re in a relationship, how did you meet your partner(s)? If you’re not in a relationship, how did you meet your crush/how do you hope to meet your future partner(s), if you want any? 

Pincushion: How do you deal with pain? 

Pink: Where is home? 

Plantain Lilies: If you could go back in time, what is one thing you would stop/change? 

Prairie Gentian: Who is someone you look up to? Describe them. 

Primrose: Describe your ideal life. 

Rhodendron: What is something you used to believe in as a child? 

Ricinus: Who’s the most important in your life? 

Rose: What’s your favorite sound? 

Rosemallows: What’s your favorite memory? 

Sage: What’s your least favorite memory? 

Snapdragon: At this moment, what do you want?  

St. John’s Wort: Is it easy or difficult for you to express how you feel about things? 

Sunflower: What is something you don’t want to imagine life without? 

Sweet Pea: How much sleep did you get last night? 

Tickseed: What’s your main reason to get up every morning? 

Touch-Me-Not: How do you feel about your current job? 

Transvaal Daisy: What’s your favorite item of clothing? 

Tropical White Morning Glory: Describe your aesthetic.  

Tulip: What would be the best present to get you? 

Vervain: What’s stressing you out most right now? 

Wisteria: How many books have you read in the past few months? What were they called? 

Wolf’s Bane: Where do you want to be in life this time next year?

Yarrow: Do you know what vore is?

Zinnia: Give a random fact about yourself.

This Is Why We Go To Camp

At six years old, Keith was a scrawny, pale, wild haired little boy. He was short tempered and quiet, had a difficult time making friends, and preferred his books and karate classes to playing on the playground and going outside. 

As such, Keith had also never been up to the mountains. Mountains were hard to come by in the stifling desert heat of Arizona. So when a flier from the local parks and rec department came, advertising a six week sleep-away camp, his parents had thought it was a great idea to send Keith away to “make some friends” and “have a good time” away from home. He was less than thrilled for many reasons.

Keith’s List of Reasons Why He Should Not Go to Summer Camp:

(Presented by Keith. Written by Keith. Copyrighted by Keith.)

1. Summer camp is outside. Outside has bugs. Bugs bite.

2. There are going to be lots of other kids.

3. I won’t be able to read in the outdoors.

4. I have never spent the night away from home.

His list of reasons was very convincing, but not convincing enough for his parents not to put him on a bus full of loud children with a suitcase full of clothes and only one book for the whole trip. 

Keith can’t remember much of the bus ride there, now that he’s older, but he does remember stepping off the bus and stepping into a sea of children, overwhelmed and definitely smaller than everyone else. He had always been a nervous child, but this was like nothing he had ever experienced in his life. There were so many children, all of whom weren’t paying him any attention. 

“Hey! Are you lost?”

Keith remembered this moment quite clearly — it was one of his most fond memories. He looked up at a tall, gangly, grinning boy. There was a bandaid on his knee and dirt smeared on his cheek. He had the bluest eyes Keith had ever seen. 

“Yes,” he remembers saying, tilting his head back to look up at him. 

“My name is Lance,” the boy had said, holding out a hand to him. “I’ll help you find where you’re supposed to go.”

That was the day he met his best friend.

*

“Keith!”

Twelve years later, and Keith was still going to the same camp, but now he was a counselor instead of a camper. He was still a little awkward, still a little hot tempered, but this camp had done a world of good for him. Besides, he had met the single most important person in his life here.

“Hey, Lance.” He looks up from his clipboard, grinning at his best friend. Lance had grown into the gangly limbs. Now he was tall and handsome and often the object of many middle school girls’ affection (not that Keith could blame him, be still his gay little heart). 

“You get stuck in the Beavers cabin again?” Lance teases, slowing to a stop in front of Keith and reaching out to ruffle his hair.

Keith ducks away from his hand, swatting at him with his clipboard. “Um, excuse you, but the Beaver cabin is the best cabin.”

“Uh, no. The Turtle cabin is superior, obviously.” Lance laughs. 

Keith rolls his eyes. “Yeah, we’ll see about that at the tug of war competition.”

“Hey! It’s not my fault it rained and the mud got my kids.” 

“No, but maybe it’s because you have no upper body strength.” Keith teases. 

Lance gasps, pretending to clutch his pearls. “The audacity. How dare you come into my house-”

“This is the woods.”

“-with that sort of talk! Keith Akira Kogane, I expected better of you. And to think, they let you around children.” Lance whispers the word children, shaking his head gravely. 

“Yeah, it’s a tragedy.” Keith agrees, looking down at his clipboard.

“How many kids do you have this year, anyway?” Lance peeks over his shoulder. 

He does a quick count, smiling when he sees a couple familiar names. “Mm… seven, I think. They said they might add a couple kids if there are any last minute scholarships.”

“Hey, same!” Lance grins, taking his hand and pulling him along toward the place where the buses were going to pull in. “Come on, the kids will be here any second.”

“I’m coming!” Keith laughs, stumbling after him and shaking his head. 

He looks up at his best friend as they walk, his smile melding into something softer. Lance had been his best friend for twelve years, but at least in the past two, he’d developed a, er… crush. It was no secret that Lance was attractive — there was a reason he was the most popular counselor among all the kids. Not only was he handsome, but he was charismatic and had a way with the kids that Keith was always bordering on jealous of. 

But there was no way that Keith would ever make a move on it. They lived in different states, for one, and he wasn’t even sure that Lance even leaned toward guys. He didn’t want to ruin what they had. So, for now, he was happy with spending six weeks of his summer with his best friend and spending hours on the phone after camp was over, counting down to the next summer. 

There was no need to dwell on this, though, not with the buses pulling up to the campgrounds. He looks over at them, letting a smile tug at his own lips. This was the start of yet another great summer. 

And to think, twelve years ago, he’d tried to talk his parents out of sending him here.

Day Five: Haunted House

*

“And… there!” Lance sits back to admire his work. “Wow, you look really scary.”

The actor smiles at the makeup artist, thanking him before getting up to go get into costume. The Cuban smiles, dabbing his brush onto a cloth before sliding it into his makeup bag and zipping it shut. That had been his final actor. All of the people for the opening night of the haunted house were all made up and he was free to roam the park.

“It’s funny to me that you’ll do this, but you won’t watch Saw with me.”

Lance turns, looking over to see his boyfriend leaning on the doorframe of the dressing room. He smiles, looking over his beat up leather jacket and the braid Lance had managed to weave into his hair before his shift (with minimal grumbling, of course).

“There’s a difference between making people look like a monster and watching a movie about a psychopathic serial killer.” He quips.

“It’s still funny to me that you took a job at a haunted house. Of all places.” Keith snorts, pushing off the wall and walking over to help Lance with his bags. “You jump at shadows.”

“I’m creating these shadows. There’s a difference!”

“Uh huh,” Keith presses a kiss to his cheek. “Come on, let’s go. I lost a bet to Pidge and now she’s making me get my face painted.”

“I could do it.” Lance offers.

“Nah,” he shoulders the makeup bag. “She wants it to be embarrassing, and you’d make it pretty even if it was embarrassing.”

“This is true.” Lance laughs, taking Keith’s free hand and squeezing it. “Why do you have to get your face painted, anyway?”

The Korean’s cheeks heat up, his ears going slightly red. “You’ll laugh at me.”

“You lost a bet to Pidge, of course I’ll laugh at you.” He chuckles.

“Fair enough…” Keith grumbles. He chews on his lip for a moment before he huffs. “We went into the kids haunted house across the way, and… I got scared.”

“You… got scared?” Lance raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, well… the deal was that we had to keep a straight face the whole time. And everything was fine! Until this kid bumped into me and I freaked out.”

The Cuban swallows a laugh. “And what was this kid dressed like?”

Keith deflates. “A puppy.”

“Sounds like you really deserve that face paint, babe.” Lance teases, swinging their arms. “C’mon, I wanna help pick what it is.”

“You guys are so mean to me!” Keith whines, trudging along beside him.

“Yeah, yeah.” He chuckles, leaning up and giving him a kiss. “You brought this on yourself. Let’s go.”

The two walk hand in hand toward their friends, the haunted house at their backs and Lance’s endless palettes of makeup and brushes clacking together in the bag. Keith grumbles about the injustice of unforeseen circumstances and backstabbing best friends. Lance tightens his fingers around Keith’s hand, smiling and shaking his head.

Oh man, if only Keith knew that Lance had taken this job so that Keith had an excuse to go to the scream park every night. He was pretty sure that his boyfriend might keel over from the sheer amount of joy. So Lance kept that little part to himself, simply enjoying Keith’s juvenile happiness at the proximity to his favorite holiday. It was well worth designing scary characters and painting them into existence every single night.  

shidge request with the prompt: reunion. thanks!

Shidge is love. Shidge is life. 

***

Eight months. Two hundred and thirty four and a half days since Shiro had waved goodbye to his wife from the gate of the local airport. He had watched her walk away to a plane that took her half a world away from him, watched her leave and hoped that she came back safe and in one piece.

Those eight months were horrible. Even the constant skype calls and letters and ten minute phone conversations did nothing to ease his constant anxiety. Shiro waited for every second he got with his wife with baited breath. But she was coming home today and he couldn’t be more excited.

The house was clean, the bed was made, the clothes were folded and washed. Dinner was in the crockpot and Shiro was at the airport holding a dramatic glittery sign and waiting impatiently.

The plane had landed a half hour ago and he was checking his watch every couple of seconds to see if time had gone any faster. It had not. Shiro sighs, pulling out his phone and flipping through it. Checking that he was in the right terminal. Checking he got the time right. Checking that it was the right day. Everything was right - he was just so impatient.

After a few minutes of flipping through his social media, Shiro is surprised by somebody tapping on his shoulder. He clicks his phone off, looking up and blinking.

Hazel eyes sparkle up at him from underneath a mess of orange waves. “You are really easy to sneak up on.”

It takes him a moment to fit the pieces together. Then he gasps, dropping his sign and taking a step back. He stares at his wife, in all her air force uniform and combat boots, her bag slung over her shoulder. Her hair had been sheared off into a severe (and very attractive) undercut, hanging in her beautiful eyes. Pidge was stunning.

“Are you crying?” She asks after a moment, dropping her bag and rushing to pull him into a hug. “Please don’t cry, I’m gonna cry!”

“I’m sorry,” he sniffs, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her off the ground. “I just… I missed you so much.”

“I missed you, too, Takashi.” She mumbles into his shoulder, wrapping her legs around his waist and clinging onto him like a koala. “So much.”

“But you’re home,” he cries, rubbing his tear stained cheek on her hair. “You’re home now.”

“I’m home.” Pidge repeats, pulling back a bit when he sets her down, reaching up and cupping his face. “I’m here now.”

Shiro leans into her hands, smiling and holding onto her wrist with his own hand. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she grins. “You big teddy bear.”

“Dinner should be ready soon.” He pulls away, leaning down to pick up her bag, slinging it over his shoulder. “Let’s go home. I wanna take you home.”

Pidge watches her husband fondly, taking his free hand and walking with him to the exit, leaning her cheek on his bicep. “Okay,” she agrees. “Take me home.”

***

Shidge is in mine and my girlfriend’s top two favorite ships. I loved writing this. 

Requests are still open!

This is a Moving Forward PSA for everyone using AO3. I am witnessing the results of a culture class and communication failure. Not a lack of communication, but a misunderstanding caused by changes in fandom culture.

Before fic tagging was common, fics weren’t tagged. You had a pairing, if applicable, an author’s note about genre or general content, and if they were feeling charitable, a vague content warning. There are even a few genres of fic where even vaguely tagging literally spoils the plot and impact (such as horror, psyche thriller, in which the likely content is implicit to the genre). As a result, there is a basic category tag that permits this, as a courtesy to “old-fashioned” writers.

“No Archive Warnings Apply” means the fic is PG13 at worst, probably fluff, totally safe.

“Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings” is the polar opposite. It’s a glaring Enter at Your Own Risk billboard. It means: a shitload of warnings apply but I ain’t telling because this story requires shock value. It’s very important to read the author’s notes for those fics because they might be using that older format from above.

But without the context of fandom culture that generated AO3, it’s understandably easy to conflate the two categories, given their similar wording.

When I say “writers don’t want your unsolicited criticism” and “leaving unsolicited criticism on fanfiction hurts writers” THIS is what I mean.

This isn’t even all of them, this is just from a FEW posts on the subject. Read through these, and then look me in the eyes and say you’re ~helping writers~ by leaving that criticizing comment on someone’s fic when they didn’t ask you to.

You’re hurting or, at best, annoying us. You’re hurting fandom.

You’re not helping us.

Let me know if my summaries don't catch you and give me tips on what you'd like to see! I'm kind of shit when it comes to introductions (I like the middle parts when stuff is happening) so any help would be appreciated!

@fanfic writers, I am literally begging you please put a summary on your work. It doesn’t even have to be good. It could be an excerpt from the writing itself. But you need that summary. It’s what gets people’s attention. Even if you’re writing a cliche, don’t just write “oh just your average so and so fic, you know the drill.”

And give yourself credit too! Don’t write “oh I suck at summaries,” or “oh, this sucks, it’s my first time writing.”

Readers don’t know that! Let them be the judge of that, because if you advertise your bad writing they’ll take your word for it and scroll past.

You deserve those views fam! Just put a summary, it makes your story look way more appealing.

And, as I mentioned above, if you don’t know how to write a summary, just take a bit of the writing that you already have a put it as the summary. That’s effective too. It can even be more effective, cause sometimes I see that and I go “oh my gosh! That’s funny! I want to see this in context.”

But y'all need summaries. And y'all need to stop selling yourselves short. You can do it! I believe in you.

OH MY GOSH!!! I am so flattered you look amazing!!!

60's Era Bee inspired by @renywrites fic You Hold My Future In Your Eyes.

I went more legit 60's then their writing but yeah.

“Nope,” I whisper as I exit out of a fic with no paragraph breaks.

I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.