It Really Is Insane How Waking Up Early Will Grant You Access To Some Of The Most Beautiful Sights And

Yesterday was a bad day, my apartment was too quiet. Too empty. There was nothing, nothing.

Then suddenly I was turning on lights and they were the perfect shade of yellow and the music from my little speaker hit me so hard I almost cried in the kitchen and those socks I bought kept my feet warm and my warmed-up tortellini were so good with the scrapes of my mom's pesto.

I listened to Billie Eilish and Hozier and The Neighborhood and suddenly they were just people.

Sometimes I lay in bed terrified that I'll stop feeling. Yesterday was not that day.

head empty just this fresco:

TROPED Chapters

Welcome to TROPED Chapters, a brand new TROPED Multifandom Challenge!!! Everyone loves a good chapter fic, but have you ever tried writing one where you don’t know where the story is going? Can you write a fic that has tropes chosen for you without backing yourself into a corner? See if you’re up to the challenge and join us for Chapters!

HOW IT WORKS:

Multi-Fandom Event & No Sign-Ups Required! If you would like to participate, we’d love to have you! Just take a look at our prompt, pick your tropes, and get to writing!

Chapters Prompt! We’ve selected an overall Story Arc for you to follow which will span the three chapters of your fic! From there, in each round you must include three (3) tropes, one (1) we chose for you, and two (2) you select from our Trope Bouquet, which includes 16 Tropes! The theme is completely free choice, just make sure it’s from our list!

Write your fic in 15,000 words or less! You will upload your fic anonymously to the AO3 Collection linked at the bottom of this post. Make sure you put what your theme is and what tropes you used in your fic summary, or in the notes at the TOP of your fic, so we can keep our eyes peeled for them as we read the fic! (If you are worried the tropes/themes will spoil your fic, you may put them in the notes at the bottom, but please let us know at the top if you choose to do so, and be sure that all of your tropes and themes are in the same place!)

Read and Review! Once you’ve submitted your own fic, take a look at the others in the competition! Please try to read as many as you can! Take some notes, leave some kudos/comments for the authors, and help us vote on the winners! This is not a requirement for participation, but it is highly encouraged and helps make TROPED build a strong community!

Community Voting! The voting for this event will be pretty simple! We will keep a list of all fics submitted to the event, and then at the end there will be a voting poll! Voting categories are listed in the Google Doc, but the voting will include all fandoms together and will be based on the fic as a whole, and the USE of the chosen prompt! If you do not want your fic included in the voting, you can let us know, or you can simply upload your fic to our non-anon collection instead! We will still share it along with the other fics and it will be included in all masterlists! We will provide a link when voting begins.

For Round One, please write us a chapter that includes:

Chapters Overall Story Arc: ARRANGED MARRIAGE

Pre-Selected Round 1 Trope: MEET CUTE or MEET UGLY

Trope Bouquet: Select two (2) tropes per round from the list below. You can, of course, choose more than two, but only the first three tropes (1 pre-selected + 2 trope bouquet) you list will be included for voting. You will choose two new tropes from the Trope Bouquet each round so don’t use them all at once!!!

More in depth definitions of the tropes and the overall story arc can be found here! Please take a look at this list, as there will be extra information you NEED to know regarding how to use the tropes, plus all the rules, and if you have questions don’t hesitate to ask!

Timeline:

Writing Period: June 1st — July 11th

Round One

Writing Period: June 1st at 12:00am EST — June 11th at 3:00am PST / 6:00am EST

Voting Period: June 12th at 12:00am — June 14th at 11:59pm

Winners Announced: June 15th

Round Two

Writing Period: June 16th at 12:00am —June 27th at 3:00am PST / 6:00am EST

Voting Period: June 28th at 12:00am — June 30th at 11:59pm

Winners Announced: July 1st

Round Three

Writing Period: July 2nd at 12:00am EST — July 11th at 3:00am PST / 6:00am EST

Voting Period: July 12th at 12:00am — July 14th at 11:59pm

Final Results and Author Reveal: July 15th!

*All times are in Eastern Standard Time (EST) unless otherwise specified! Times are subject to change due to potential writing extensions.

RULES

Don’t forget the rules! Follow the overall story ‘theme’, and include ALL the tropes! You will be disqualified if you don’t! 15k word count max! Also, no rape. no incest. no underage. no negativity!

The General Rules for all TROPED Events can be found here!

LINKS

Google Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/107nKA7LMJoBdgMqixeI_6s2aBitShVcfsSCMUQwisCY/edit

The AO3 collection can be found here, and the name of the collection that should be entered when submitting your fic is ‘TROPED_Chapters’!

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Troped_Chapters

Non-Anonymous TROPED Collection: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/TROPED_Non_Anonymous

Follow along here on Tumblr, the TROPED Twitter, the TROPED Instagram, or our Discord Server for more information on the event! We will release our prompts in these places and then everyone is free to start writing!!! We are super excited to see what you guys create!!

Don’t be shy! If you have any questions about this event, fandoms or pairings, or any other concerns please send them to our Ask Box or DM a Mod (@dylanobrienisbatman or @thelittlefanpire)! Happy TROPED Writing! We are so glad you are joining us for this challenge! xo S&B

"There's no hope for the future." And that's how they felt during the Atomic Age, during the World Wars, during the Enlightenment Revolutions, during thr plagues, during the Viking raids, during the fall of Rome.

Yet, we persisted.

via @/_weloveyou__ on tiktok

“reasons not to kiss her 1.) this sort of love is not allowed. you are both too soft, and the world around you is all knives and chipped teeth 2.) no one ever taught you how to love. your war paint and scarred hands could never hold her like she deserves 3.) no one has ever loved you this full surely you would drown in it all 4.) she belongs in a museum, and you are merely here to gaze. look around you, all the signs scream ‘do not touch’ 5.) she touches you like youre fragile, and if you break you wont be able put yourself together again 6.) she is all bubblegum skies and chapped stick kisses, and you cannot watch the love run out of another persons eyes 7.) if you jump, she might catch you, and then youd have to watch as she tumbled through the dark 8.) her gaze is too gentle. you will not be the one to tell her that not everything can be fixed with a smile 9.) she is so good. she is so good, and you cannot ruin one more good thing 10.) you will not watch her crumble under the weight of your sins. she is too light, too breathless to be caught up in the dizziness of your heart reasons to kiss her 1.) she loves you, and her eyes are closed, and didnt your mother ever tell you not to leave a good thing waiting”

— lessons in listening to your heart, and not your head

you worry the cardboard sleeve around the coffee and think about landfills and the future without straws. you are worried about prion disease and deer. you are worried about the rising temperature of mushrooms. you are worried about teflon and microplastics and carcinogens and whatever else you're being quietly lied to about.

your mother used to jokingly say you are "a worrier," which always kind of oddly hurt your feelings. you feel like a person. and besides, you've been told one-million-times that this is normal. examples get trotted out in a pony show each time: everyone gets nervous sometimes. they talk about public speaking and picturing people naked and how when they get nervous they just-get-over-it.

you run your hands down the grater of your life and feel the sharpness. you started holding your breath in tunnels as a kid, worried that if you relax, the ceiling would cave in. like years of architects and engineers weren't responsible - you, and your faith, you were responsible for the success of infrastructure. if you slipped for a moment, your whole family would be swept away under the ocean. and the problem is that it worked - no tunnel collapsed.

you once broke a coffee carafe and even though you didn't drink from it after, you worried that there had been some previous invisible micro-break that had made you drink glass particles. you stayed awake for 24 hours, constantly dreading each swallow, waiting to taste blood.

you hate being late, you worry about it. you go to grab literally just lunch with a friend - no pressure, no emergency - and you still park the car an hour early and just sit there scrolling on your phone aimlessly. maybe you just don't like surprises or change. you triple-check you locked the doors, and then go to bed, and then get up out of bed to check twice again.

a worrier. like a strange and dreadful bingo card, you collect weekly experiences. someone tells you that you're overthinking, that's 2 points. you have to physically turn around and go back in your house to check you unplugged everything, that's 1 point. spiraling about climate change or politics or the state of the world is a free space, that's basically every evening.

you worry you're being selfish and not a good person because how come you're worried about your dog's health and the itch in your eye when you know people who are really very ill or who have it worse or who are genuinely struggling. then you worry that you're being annoying by infantilizing them. then you worry that your priorities are wrong, that you should be infinitely more worried about the state of a dying planet.

you wanted to be a person, is all. you wanted to go through life in a softness, to hold the world gently and have it whisper past you. and instead you are a worrier. everything that touches you is hard and raw and sharp like diamonds.

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

Ophelia (2018) // November Nights, Arden Mae // House of the Dragon (2022-) // Persephone Returns, Emily Rose Cole // Ophelia, Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Heyser // Mystery of Love, Sufjan Stevens // Fire with Fire (1986) // Spring and All, Cathy Park Hong // On-drakón (2015) // The Complex Sentence, Tony Hoagland // The Musketeers (2014-2016) // [from a letter], Sylvia Plath // 1883 (2021-22) // The Leaving Season, Jihyun Yun // Dorian Gray (2009) // The Lady of Shalott, Alfred Tennyson // Anne of Green Gables (1985) // Advantages of Being Evergreen, Oliver Baez Bendorf // Ophelia, John Everett Millais // Hamlet, William Shakespeare // Melancholia (2011) // Wild Geese, Mary Oliver // Revenge of the Sith (2005) // Summer Morning, Mary Oliver