smokeymalone

[smokeymalone]

[smokeymalone]

Fanfic tiktok is wild... I see so many people saying shit like "I could never read anything below 60k!!", or "What story can you even tell in under 5k words?" or "A oneshot below 10k isn't even a story!" or "I always filter completed fics by 100k< only!"

And I'm like...

A) which fandoms are you reading fics for where you have this kind of offerings on the regular?

B) have you heard of short stories? If you truly think every story NEEDS to be longform to connect with people, I sincerely feel sorry for you.

C) Average novel length is between 50k to 100k. I'm sorry, but CONSISTENTLY demanding fic writers to push out fics of that length is insane. Just think about it: YOU DEMAND AUTHORS TO PUT OUT FICS THAT COMPARE TO COMMERCIAL NOVELS IN LENGTH (AND QUALITY) AS A BASELINE.

Yall are wilding.

[smokeymalone]

[smokeymalone]

The thing about general life weirdness is that it's accumulative. If you open the door and allow one (1) unusual thing into your life, that significantly improves the odds of other weird things happening. Just one mildly odd thing is just one mildly odd thing, but they lead the way for things that can be a perfectly logical consequence of the first thing, that would never, ever happen to someone who hadn't invited the first odd thing into their life.

Like let's say you decided to get an iguana. That's not the most common kind of pet, but not unheard of. Perhaps you thought you wanted a cat, but then decided to see what other animals your local animal rescue has available, and holy shit they've got an iguana. So now you've got an iguana.

And being a responsible pet owner - which, again, is a normal thing to do - you make sure you take good care of your new baby. And being a rescue, your iguana might have some issues that they've got from being poorly handled by the previous owner. So you see what you can do about it, and find out a vet who is specialised enough to do physical therapy on an iguana. And naturally, you call them right up and get your iguana cared for. And being such a specialised professional, naturally this vet makes sure to keep their work and personal life neatly separated.

All of these are perfectly logical steps into an unusual direction, but they are also the way you may find yourself saying something like "my iguana's therapist blocked me on grindr."

[smokeymalone]

well actually my favourite scene in goncharov was when the walrus showed up at his door

[smokeymalone]

[smokeymalone]

Funny what a little bit of Holocaust denialism will get you trending with.

[smokeymalone]

I'm kind of at a point where the "queer spaces" i feel safest in are the ones that have a pet cishet dude or two hanging around

[smokeymalone]

Being on Tumblr from ten years ago until now and seeing how it's aged is so funny. When I first got here everything was like "haha lol so random, superwholock, taquitos, tumblr university!" but today I just scrolled past three different memes about tax season

[smokeymalone]

[smokeymalone]

[smokeymalone]

genuinely one of the saddest parts of this new era of the internet is how hard it is to rick roll someone now. with people's attention spans shortening so much, they wouldn't even get through the first few bait seconds before clicking off the video. like i saw a comment that ended with "btw i made all of this up" and the replies kept treating it so seriously because none of them finished the entire 4 sentence comment. and We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I (do I) A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

[smokeymalone]

[smokeymalone]

Happiness Will Come To You.

[smokeymalone]

Things that are a fanfic writer’s responsibility:

The category for relationships (Gen, F/F, M/F, M/M, a combination, something else)

The right category for ratings (is it for General Audiences, Teenagers, Mature, Explicit, R-Rated, Nc-17?)

The relevant warnings (violence, rape, underage sex, anything else you deem relevant)

The relevant tags on it (what relationships are covered in the fic? What characters? Is it light and fluffy fic? Funny? Sad? Dark? Does it have sex, and if so, what kind? Is there violence? Tags are used by readers to find fic and to avoid fic)

A summary that informs the reader of what kind of fic they’re gonna read.

Author’s notes for everything else. You can use the summary or author notes to explain certain tags, or add caveats, or thank your beta’s.

Things that are not a fanfic writer’s responsibility:

Kids stumbling across your fic and reading your fic and assuming that whatever is written about in the fic is 100% cool and normal.

The mental health of people who don’t like the subject matter of your fic.

[smokeymalone]

[smokeymalone]

Absolutely fascinated by the Fairy Walrus Discourse. Naturally, I have a take:

This actually is also a fantastic illustration of a truism about Telling Stories that we all implicitly know but rarely acknowledge aloud: the improbable is far less believable than the impossible.

When you invoke the impossible, you silence the critically thinking, reality checking, lie detecting circuitry. Simpler rules reign supreme.

The Walrus, however implausible, is a thing which is real, and so whatever narrative you imagine either precedes or follows the reveal will be constrained by the envelope of the possible.

This is a webbed site all about Narrative.

The person answering the door to a Fairy is in a fairy tale, and frankly most of us would be overjoyed to find ourselves in a fairy tale. Fairy tales have sensible rules, structures we understand, tropes we love and hate.

A Walrus on your doorstep is just one more giant reminder that the world is a maelstrom of chaos, incomprehensible in its complexity, full of moving parts which obey no narrative. It’s another dose of “what fresh hell is this?”

A Walrus on your doorstep is a burden. A Fairy on your doorstep is an escape.