The whole thing is a fun ride! I got most, but definitely not all of them!

This one in particular pleased me, of course 😊

Put your height in the tags

Reblog if you think fanfiction is a legitimate form of creative writing.

I don't really enjoy fanfiction. It's not something I read in my spare time, but I believe in the value of a varied media diet, and I enjoy seeing what my internet acquaintances are reading.

As someone with a more traditional literary education fanfiction is bizarre to read. It's like an entire mode of writing that completely missed the boat on narrative multivalence and complex figurative language, but has an absolutely scalpel-fucking-sharp hand at pacing.

I find that fascinating! Maybe it's just the things I've been exposed to, but I feel like theres a pattern. I've found that even lackluster fanfiction prose tends to be delivered with a fairly advanced understanding of narrative pacing.

I don't know much about the broader culture of fan authors, but if I had to hazard a guess, it probably comes from a culture of discussions around what could make an existing story better. That would be an excellent trial-by-fire for getting a sense of when the important beats should happen.

You can tell that a lot of FF authors have never really studied poetry, or done close readings of other literature. Authors often seem entirely unaware of or uninterested in cultivating a symbolic language. Which isn't necessarily bad, but it's leaving a lot on the table.

Set dressing, objects, even actions, are given comparatively little attention. They're almost suggestions, with the vast majority of the narrative legwork placed on dialogue and blocking. The effect is that fanfiction in my mind reads less like literature, or short stories, and more like a film or stage script. It's strikingly theatrical.

I think that's a lot of my displeasure with fanfiction. To my ear, it reads like someone trying to cram a one act play into a short story shaped hole.

Of course a lot of fanfiction pieces don’t devise or present set dressings or symbolic language within themselves. They’re assuming a familiarity with the symbolic language of the canon it’s drawing from!

If you're ever curious as to what it sounds like when someone just throws fancy words around to confuse you into thinking they're saying something profound 🤣

Familiarity with an established canon does not preclude someone from scene description. I also never said this was a bad thing, adult Harry Potter fan.

For my part, I have tried to include some of this symbolic language in my own fanfic, though I won't claim to be good at it. (I tend to draw on Watchmen's example.) I suspect that for better or worse, most fanfic authors just aren't interested in repeating what they assume their readers already know.

Ok, so something I've noticed that is utterly baffling to me is that all the Americans I know primarily dry their clothes using a machine called a dryer. I don't even own a dryer. So, I need to know:

We NEED a Guthrie family Mini, Marvel!

Favoritism among mutant families MUST BE harsh 😬

Where's "Depressed because he was FINALLY with Julia, and then the X-Men ignored his 'DNR (Do Not Resurrect)' order"?

I mean…no one want to remember that Chuck Austen storyline…in the fives defense 😂🤣🤣

Storytelling night at the Guthrie household:

"The gift of flying through the air is given to only the most holy of people, and I am only a woman like other women."

--from A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L'Engle

We NEED a Guthrie family Mini, Marvel!

Favoritism among mutant families MUST BE harsh 😬

Where's "Depressed because he was FINALLY with Julia, and then the X-Men ignored his 'DNR (Do Not Resurrect)' order"?

I mean…no one want to remember that Chuck Austen storyline…in the fives defense 😂🤣🤣

Storytelling night at the Guthrie household:

"The gift of flying through the air is given to only the most holy of people, and I am only a woman like other women."

--from A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L'Engle

Hey so!

Some people have made fics where Rand has a sibling (usually female) that goes with the EF5 on their fun adventures. But like taking that idea, which OTHER character do you think would have a younger sibling that comes along for the ride.

COMMENT ON OLD FICS, I BEG YOU!

I swear to god after like a week people will still be reading but nobody leaves comments anymore and I just want to make it absolutely clear that I would be excited and elated to get a comment on these fics one hundred years after I post them.

A FIC IS NEVER TOO OLD TO LEAVE A NICE COMMENT ON. GO FORTH AND COMMENT!

THIS.

YES

raises my hand. does anyone else have a deeply held, firm belief that other people do not think about you if you aren’t directly in front of their face / immediately interacting with them at that moment 

“WoT is too long get to the point”

The POINT IS they’re friends* having fun** adventures actually, I want 20 more books***

*debatable

**also debatable

***the characters do not want any more books

@demilypyro @kyriathanatos

remember, it's imperative to turn your aesthetic preferences into moral ones. you can't just dislike neutral colors, or glass-and-steel skyscrapers, or flat design, they have to be symbols of neoliberal capitalism in decay. it's incredibly important that you make sure everybody knows that the only reason anyone could like the things you don't like is that they're an empty shell of a person.

I'm reading Rand's first dream sequence in EoTW and there's so much here that foreshadows Rand's arc for the entire series

1. Rand remembers Dragonmount, at least subconsciously

2. Being controlled on puppet strings/anger and pushing back at not being able to make his own choices

3. Savior and Destroyer

4. No matter what he does, he can't escape the White Tower

And this is all from just one dream sequence

@ writers, just out of curiosity.... when you write multichapter fics, do you have each chapter in a separate doc or have everything on one big doc?