#i just don't get it

[cassy-rp]

I don't think I'll ever understand why in most Tomarry story Tom is the one depicted as the strongest.

Like I get it that he's taller, but Harry is literally a quidditch fanatic who had been on the team since his 1st year and had managed to keep up with Oliver Wood's schedules at 11, had grown up around bullies and abusive relatives and come out of it relatively unscratched (at least phisically) and is canonically very fast not just when flying but even while running (and usually fast people have an at least decent muscular mass).

On the other hand, Tom is an academic who had preferred to use magic over strength even before he knew what magic was and had spent half of his life studying around the world...

Like... How would that be possible? Not even genetics could make up for it if one had trained constantly and the other had spent all his time pouring over books.

(talking about Tom here, not Voldemort because who knows what that ritual had done to his body)

[phantom-shell]

Everytime I dare to get comfortable with the idea of my future being in the animation industry, I get hit with a wave of "fuck you" in the form of beautiful animated shows being removed from existence. I know it would absolutely break me if a beloved project of mine was treated like this.

There's no legal way of watching some of these anymore. What the hell. Why is this considered the norm now.

Why are there a bunch of showrunners, animators, writers and other various artists that need to pirate THEIR OWN SHOWS?? Y'know, the things that THEY made???

It breaks my heart that the only thing keeping these works of art from collecting dust in some corporate basement and eventually becoming lost media is pirating websites.

This is so frustrating, fuck

[sbrown82]

[yoinkschief]

Every time I finally start feeling some sort of blissful about the Eddsworld fandom and how cool it is Hargreaves starts hating on the fandom again

[grellssquishyhusband]

Saw a post online complaining about the new style saying that they made Sebastian look ugly

My brother in Christ this is what you're missing???

Look, look at him with your eyes

[amtrak12]

After a conversation with a friend about this weird trend of fic readers who only want epic length fics (and also what seems to be a massive misunderstanding between parties on terms and their definitions), I went searching for the fandom sources I cut my teeth on. I don't have much bookmarked from those days anymore, but googling got me to this fiction length/terminology breakdown from a Livejournal blog. (Which also has good fandom definitions for other terms like A/N and fanon too, so if you're super new to fandom, go check that out.)

The definitions come from the publishing world (hence the page counts), but fandom and fanfic has always borrowed heavily from official publishing terminology. Flash fiction (aka, anything less than 1k words) is called a 'ficlet' within fandom. We call everything else a fic until it reaches the novella mark -- which may start at 20k words but as synecdochic breaks down on their Dreamwidth blog, there's a lot of overlap between short stories and novella word counts. Because, when you're not constrained by physical page counts, the real dividing line between short stories and novellas are the number of plots and themes you're using. (Seriously, go read their meta on this topic. It's fantastic!) Either way, once you're hitting tens of thousands of words, you're in longfic territory. And then if your fic is even longer than that -- 100k+ like shown in the screenshot above -- it's called an epic fic.

And these terms, longfic and epic, are important because they're used to differentiate these stories from the average fic. Because, at least in the 2000s up until the 2020s, the most common fic lengths you ran into were between 1k-20k words. "Fic" made the reader assume only a few thousand words at most. It's only when you changed the term to drabble or ficlet or longfic that they would realize 'oh this is going to be shorter or longer than normal'.

I don't really understand why that baseline assumption has changed amongst the newer demographics (and maybe amongst some long-running fandom members too?). I've seen a lot of theories and 'tiktokification' complaints, but I honestly don't know what's true. And I don't want to start a fight or even try to change anyone's minds if they are dead set against reading short story length fics. You can do what you want!

Just maybe shift your attitude about it a little bit? Remember that it's a personal preference the same way tropes are, and that one story length isn't better than another. Just like tropes, each story length serves its purpose. Some stories are best told in 1-2k words. Some are best told as 100 word drabbles -- or even a single sentence! And then, yes, some stories do need to be 100k+ in order to be told properly.

But that's not every story. And it shouldn't be expected of fic writers to pad a 1500 word plot into some sprawling epic just because they left it on a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger is probably the point of that fic! Short stories are an entirely separate art form to novels and as such are able to cover different topics than novels can or cover the same topics differently. And that's what makes them special!!

And look at that word count breakdown by genre! That's mainstream publishing standards! Now, go back up there to the definition of a novel and notice that the average published novel is 80k words long.

Let me repeat that:

The average length of a published novel is 80,000 words long.

Could a novel go longer? Sure! And if you're dipping into adult sci-fi or fantasy, absolutely it will be longer! But does your fic need to be longer than the average novel in order to be good? In order for you to feel satisfied when you finish reading it? Why does the length of the fic matter more to you than the content?

idk just some rambling food for thought, but I guess too long, don't read:

~✨~ Every story length is valid ~✨~

It just depends on the plot you have and the structure you want to use to tell it.

[awkwardrocker]

The funniest part about George's meltdown today is that it was wholly unnecessary.

All he had to do was come out today and go, "I said my side of the story in the stewards and obviously Max didn't take kindly to that but what's done is done and we'll move on."

But instead he tried to go scorched earth and it made him look so much worse.

[bi4demibuddie]

“I think there is no longer a fulfilling way to make buddie happen now”

My brother in Christ what the fuck are you talking about? If buddie happens next season it will be the most fulfilling ship I’ve ever shipped.

There are 5 seasons of slow burn plus season 7, which has buddie breadcrumbs all over it. Episode 7x04 was all about Buck being jealous because Eddie was getting along with another man.

Eddie’s life is crumbling down and he will rise from the ashes, hopefully realizing who he really is at the end of it.

This season they’ve gone out of their way to show Buddie being a family unit, always being there for each other when they need support.

How can you look at all of this and say that them getting together would not be fulfilling?

[pepstarvanmoon]

I keep wanting to do byler analysis while also giving milkvan a fair chance and it just does not work. They're not even dating (yet), and byler feels a lot more intimate. I yapped about S3 in my last post, but for being the season where they're finally dating and are ready to have that cute, summer whirlwind romance, milkvan as a romantic pairing falls laughably flat. It's like 8 episodes of them trying to tell us that it DOES NOT WORK, and then they spend S4 reinforcing that.

It's hard for me to understand why people enjoy them as a romantic couple when they're written and directed so strangely. It feels like they're never on common ground, and there's always an opportunity to compare them to other couples just to see how out of sync they are.

It really bothers me how unsatisfying their relationship feels. They barely have any screen time together in S2 if you don't count the longing, and even then Mike is eventually occupied with Will and El with the discovery of her sister.

I feel like El gets dragged away for self-discovery/personal growth in every season besides S1, and that's always done without Mike. On the other hand, while she's gone, Mike spends his time in self-pity before eventually forgetting about it.

Like if they're endgame this is the weirdest slowburn to a healthy relationship I've ever seen.

There are posts discussing how the Duffers know how to write romantic relationships, and how that's proof that Mike and El won't stay together, but damn. Some people really expect this to be El's first and ONLY relationship? How unhappy does she have to appear? How many times does she have to convey to people she that she feels like a monster? How often will she have to beg for love?

How many times do El and Mike have to look at each other like they're strangers? Like they don't understand each other? Like they're not what the other needs?

If they hit me with another "oh no! Our relationship is having issues, let's just not talk for a while. Man, being without you is kinda chill. Are we... good friends? Maybe we can—whoa! Is that a traumatic experience? Guess I actually need you, like, romantically, and it's not because of the crippling loneliness and fear of abandonment! I left that in the closet, along with some other things. Oh, and those problems we were having, let's not talk about them. There's no need! We're in love after all, and love conquers all!" I'm gonna lose it.

[bandzboy]

at least they didn't make him do an apology bc that's when i would genuinely be pissed

[jmiehyter]

the one thing i will never understand about the original xmen movies is that logan was obsessed with jean when storm was RIGHT THERE

[symeraid-s]

I had to take some measures before looking up Ultraman: Rising and I think I accidentally created a wasteland.

[zhoudadudugongjin]

Hey I have a question for people who make blogs and follow you and then never interact with a single post: why

[aroacebooknerd]

does anyone else forget that other people have shit in their pants

it may be the fact that i don't have dysphoria down there and i'm agender so like-

but i just genuinely forget that people i know, friends i have, actually have dicks and shit

that's so weirdly surreal to me, idk how to explain it

the combination of agender, aromantic, and asexual may have something to do with it but i just don't understand how people are out there worrying over the shit that's in people's pants, like why are you thinking about that???

[pseudophan]

have you seen those tiktok comments where the creator is weirdly insistent that dan and Phil are NOT DATING. acting as if they know them personally or something it's so weird. "Just two gay guys who are single and live together platonically". yeah ok lol. at what point does it just circle back to being homophobic?

YES i was so irrationally pissed off about that yesterday lol like if you really want to pretend we don't know then just say we don't know, why lie ?? especially including 'they're both single' like lmao and how would you know that

it annoys me cause so many non phannies are asking if they're together and people are just lying to them?? for no reason???? like thanks so much now these people are gonna continue thinking phannies are delusional that's so cool good job