Rebel Spirit

who is old enough to be part of the fanfic.net era where we literally talked to our characters? like, had conversations with them?

cause I do. as a lonely child of 12 who had no friends, it was a favorite pasttime of mine to boot up the dial-up internet and type out imaginary conversations with ouran high school host club characters in the beginning notes before even starting the damn chapter (which was inevitably 500 words long and absolutely awful)

Modern Author’s Note on Ao3: might discuss some possible triggers, thank readers for comments, apologize for a delay in update, etc–talking to reader, essentially.

Author’s Note on FFN back in 2010: 

Author: Y’all are gonna love this cahpter!!!! [Character] not sooooo much

Character:…wh–what’s gonna happen?

Author: Don’t worry about it! ^.^

Character: WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME??

Author: ;)

Character: D:

those were dark, dark days, man. Today’s Fandom Freshman are sure lucky they missed this. 

This when right alongside the detailed disclaimers to avoid lawsuits.

Don’t forget that the author was broken into at least five separate voices, ‘Inside Out’ style.

or where you would have ask blogs for your ocs except it was just in a ff.net story. basically an entire classic authors note except people would ask questions. that was my childhood.

Y'all forgot that sometimes we also appeared in the middle of the text with notes like “(author: noooo >:( character is such a b*tch!!!! character: I’M NOT!!!!)” And it was the crimgiest shit ever but we had fun doing it lmao

What irks me most about the whole “we can’t do what the audience expects!” attitude that has developed for big franchise stories is that, honestly, 95% of the audience isn’t thinking about it that hard. It says that creators are looking at the 5% of their audience who care the most, who are really invested in their work, often the people who care about stories and narratives in general…and perceiving that not as care, as a positive offering, but as the opening of intellectual combat. 

What a deeply tiring way to interact with the rest of the world. 

“perceiving that not as care, as a positive offering, but as the opening of intellectual combat.”

That is a great way of phrasing things.  I feel like a lot of the spoiler/nonsense-twist problems are coming from a belief that writers are somehow in competition with their audience - like they have to prove themselves better or smarter by creating a plot that can only be followed or predicted if you’re the author.

Now maybe I’m biased because of my personal preferences.  I love mysteries and police procedurals.  I’m the kind of dork who used to religiously watch Air Crash Investigations.  My favourite RPG puzzles are ones where you’re rewarded for observing and forming strategies based on details and in-game information.  I love re-reading books for all the little things I missed on the first pass.

The end result is that I’m a firm believer in the idea of The Fair Mystery approach to storytelling.  Basically the idea that (with the exception of worlds that intentionally run on whimsy, randomness and/or coincidence) an attentive reader/viewer should theoretically be able to predict part or all of the coming plot. 

An Unfair Mystery is one that the audience has no hope of solving; because essential information is completely withheld, because they’re being deliberately fed incorrect information without any way to distinguish it from the truth in order to keep them off-track, because the ending/ twist/ reveal has no real connection to the preceding events/ information - because there is no way to reasonably infer or deduce what will happen based on the material provided. With an unfair mystery all you can really do is sit back and watch passively as the writers flex how “clever” they or their characters are. (Hbomberguy’s Sherlock video-essay gives some nice analysis of how this ended up hurting the BBC adaptation).

With a Fair Mystery the audience has the possibility of working out the plot for themselves.  It doesn’t mean that it has to be easy, or even probable, just that it’s possible.  (JustWrite made a good video about this.)

The ironic thing is that it actually takes a lot more effort and intelligence to write a Fair Mystery; to ensure details are consistent and cohesive, conceal clues and foreshadowing within the dialogue and setting/ background descriptions, maintain a sense of internal logic in how things connect/ flow on from each other, and so on.  Unfair Mysteries are often talked about as though they’re “outsmarting” the audience, but it takes a lot less work to throw in an unsupported, contrived plot point and exclaim “ha! bet you didn’t see that coming” than it does to carefully set up a story that completely supports its conclusion throughout while still keeping the audience guessing.

You can think of it in terms of making a jigsaw puzzle.  The image can be extremely complex and composed of a large number of pieces.  Quite a few people will be happy to just enjoy the final product and let someone else assemble it for them.  More people will enjoy trying but will only be able to solve it after looking at the box (i.e. a spoiler) for reference.  A good number of people would probably be able to work through it slowly, but couldn’t do so in a short time frame.  And there will be some who are innately skilled or practised enough at puzzle-solving to work it out quickly.  The point is that the audience was invited to solve it.

If your jigsaw can only be assembled by you, you’ve created a bad puzzle.

bucky is the driving force of all 3 cap movies…steve becomES cap for buckY he stops being cap foR bucky it’s a constant cycle of star crossed..something for these two n it’s always cap fighting towarD something wiTH bucky bc that’s the only person he has left from before he was Captain America™️ and if bucky were a girl it’d be obvious that this is the romance of cap’s entire story but because bucky’s a man they were too scared to explore the inherit intimacy that comes with their relationship and-

Damn if it ain’t true

April showers bring…

endgame cry headache reblog if same

Avoid the trolls looking to divide the left wing.

Interviewer: where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Me: I used escapist fantasies as a coping mechanism to get through years of trauma and therefore never learned how to plan for a real life future

Alternatively: I went through periods of depression so frequent and intense that I never considered that I’d actually make it to my 20s so now I’m kinda just making it up as I go

Or: I always thought I’d be better by now so the fact that I’m nowhere near recovered means what little future I saw for myself is out the window

Also: I have one single Thing in mind but i haven t started working towards it due to my own fear of failure and the years of telling myself i can t do anything right and now i m stuck living day to day telling myself that when that One Day comes where i know i ll be better, i ll do my Thing and everything will be Fine

one of the hardest things to learn as a depressed former Gifted Kid™ is that half-assed is better than nothing. take the 50%, 40%, even 20% job. scrubbing your face is better than not taking a shower at all. picking up your clothes is better than never cleaning. nibbling on some bread is better than starving.

DO THINGS HALFWAY. NOW YOU’RE 100% BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE BEFORE.

One of my college professors used to say “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.”  I didn’t understand that for years because I didn’t do anything poorly, I couldn’t do anything poorly, I had to Do Everything Perfectly.

But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting.  Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible.  Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible.  Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly… because doing it poorly is better than not doing it.