#Merrikat

[dispatch-eddie]

How i read fics

[snake-inmydaffodils]

Another Thing I will never shut up about….

My love for Merrikat.

Look at these two 🥹🥹🥹

[broeckchen]

[rememberingsunday44]

Love a band that loves each other

[danswank]

[asmileforyourscrapbooks]

i'm a jalex girl for life obviously but... i MAY have been mildly converted to the merrikat side.... THEYRE CUTE OK 😭

[alltimefanfiction]

Zack works as a lifeguard. One day his boyfriend Jack visits him at work and they have fun after hours.

For the ATL Microfic Challenge - July

[homealonejackskellington]

[jackinalex]

https://www.instagram.com/p/C40v2_JLmDd/?igsh=MTZ6YTYxbmp0YzdqcQ==

THE WAY I RAN HERE AFTER THIS POST…

JACK IS JUST A LITTLE LOVER BOY AS WE KNOW… BUT HE POSTED BOTH OF HIS BOYFRIENDS IN ONE POST. MERRIKAT LOVERS ARE THRIVING… JALEX LOVERS ARE QUAKING. IT IS ALL JUST BEAUTIFUL

I just love that the first pic is of him and Alex. 🥹 Jack is in looooooove. I don’t ship Merrikat, but I’m happy for the Merrikat girlies, too.

[tirednotflirting]

guys we’ve got a problem i can’t find the fucking cornelia street lab boys doc

[dispatch-eddie]

Hello, yes, I'd like to order Bartender AU with a hint of demonic elements, thanks

[snake-inmydaffodils]

This moment lives rent free in my head(I fear)

[rain-shoshana]

As a lifelong Margaret Atwood fan I am now discovering the wonder that is Shirley Jackson! I’m reading We Have Always Live in the Castle and learning that I really am that simple. Give me an unreliable female narrator written by a woman and I am immediately ready to support violent murder.

Anyway Cousin Charles definitely needs to die, get his ass, Merrikat.

[clumsyclifford]

i see the merrikat girlies (gender neutral) have come out of the woodwork on the heels of my small merrikat moment yesterday. love this for us.

[icarus-suraki]

Oh man, as a horror fan? I am enjoying the evolving discussion about "cozy horror" on my dash here today, tee hee. I agree with everyone that it's a terrible idea but I'm still like "Is it possible?" So:

Cozy mysteries, also referred to as "cozies", are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur off stage, the detective is an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community. Cozies thus stand in contrast to hardboiled fiction, in which more violence and explicit sexuality are central to the plot. The term "cozy" was first coined in the late 20th century when various writers produced work in an attempt to re-create the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. (Wikipedia)

So, to summarize:

Violence is off-stage

Amateur sleuth

Small community

Usually a female protag/sleuth

The problem is that for a lot of horror to work, some measure of it has to take place on-stage. The other question is "How do you define 'horror'?" As a librarian (emerita), we rolled with the genres publishers identified, but we sometimes disagreed with a book being placed in Speculative Fiction or in General Fiction. "The Shining Girls" was originally shelved in general fiction and then got moved to the speculative fiction section and was stickered as "horror."

Most people agree that Stephen King is a horror writer (though he's written in other genres), so unless a book is obviously Not Horror, his books go straight to the horror section. One could argue that at least some of his books verge on the definition of "cozy horror": small towns in Maine, someone dragged into the horror unexpectedly (amateur sleuth parallel), but not usually a female protagonist, and there's usually at least some violence on-stage.

See, that's the thing: you gotta hear about what's horrifying or it's kind of dull (but if you over-tell the horror, then it gets boring--that's my feeling on it). It's a lot harder to leave the horror unknown, though it's possible in some genres. The Backrooms lacked a lot of explanation at first, which made the concept of boring offices that go on forever more horrific.

Ironically, some old Southern Gothic works could count as "cozy horror," which isn't fair to the Southern Gothic genre. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" might work because there's no viscera on-stage. It's all implied and has a maybe/maybe not ending. But the implications of viscera and violence are writ large. Quite a bit of Faulkner meets the requirements, but, again, the blood and guts are sometimes on-stage.

"We Have Always Lived in the Castle" might also work, though I think there's some violence/horror on-stage; certainly it's described by Merrikat (full disclosure: it's been a while since I last read it).

Certain parts of the definition transfer over easily: small community, female protagonist, even an element of being an "amateur" or someone dragged into the horror unexpectedly all transfer.

But, no, I don't think "cozy horror" is really possible in the same way that "cozy mystery" is possible. There's so much of horror that must be on-stage as a convention of the genre that trying to cozy it up by moving it off-stage is impossible.

I may have more thoughts on this. This is just off-the-cuff lunchbreak posting.

[alltimefanfiction]

What makes a great best friend…?

It starts with answering your phone at 6pm on a late Tuesday evening, because it’s unlike Jack to make a random call on a weekday. 

Entry for The April All Time Low Microfic Challenge.