#none of it at all

[alphabetboyluvr]

Ok so I saw that long ass post that anon sent you about the vote thing on Wattpad, and while I don’t agree with some of what they said where they told you what to do (which they shouldn’t have done, they were rude) I do actually agree with them where they said people don’t tend to look at the votes when deciding whether or not to read a story. I actually think the whole vote thing is just something only authors care about, not readers.

As an avid reader on Wattpad, I do give votes just because authors like it- but I don’t actually give a shit about how many votes a story has when I’m looking for my next story to read. I look at the number of views- which I think you’ll find most readers do, even though the view count can be skewed.

Either way, I do think the whole vote thing should be taken off Wattpad as to the majority of readers, they really don’t care about it and it doesn’t give a good representation of how good a story is

I've been thinking about this all a lot ever since the last anon came in. I'll probably avoid answering questions about this topic again, but there does seem to be disconnect between the writer and reader standpoint, so I'll try and explain my thoughts as best I can without waffling for ages lol

my answer is to this ask, but also to the topic in general, and thoughts I've had regarding that last anon.

it's a really difficult topic to discuss because wattpad has an algorithm that is never really explained to writers. i cant say its important because xyz - i can just give you my own experience. ive been on wattpad for 11 years and have seen it through many changes. i used to use the activity tab to find new stories, and i honestly think getting rid of that was detrimental to the user experience tbh.

as it stands, we don't know what the algorithm favours, so we have to do what we can.

and what can we do? we can tag our work, we can acquire reads and votes, and then we can do more laborious things such as entering award books run by other users and engaging with our readers in various ways.

the tag system, and trending stories under those tabs, are really skewed. for instance, I don't think any of my stories have ever made it onto the fanfic tab, nor have I ever ranked highly under tags despite having really engaged readers and metrics which would suggest I would be.

so, unlike what the last anon said, my stories haven't always been 'out there'. word of mouth, and some stroke of luck tiktoks, are what's pushed them more than anything. so in that way, yeah the desire for votes is flawed—but personally I don't think read count is indicative of quality. if we're thinking about it from a marketing standpoint and conversion rates etc, votes a far more indicative of quality and I'd rather be known for quality over quantity.

the last anon also specifically noted the number of reads/follows I have on wattpad, and suggested that I shouldn't care because those numbers are high—which, respectfully I disagree with. if I didn't care in the early days, I wouldn't have pushed myself to make it to where i am. you can't just expect me to switch off that part of my personality. I'm ambitious and I really care about the things I create.

my girliepop oc's tend to have ambitious streaks and personal goals that they work hard for. they take after their mother, in that sense.

i think what confuses me the most is why it irks people, when you boil it down. its a tap on the screen for readers—and having just uploaded an 11k chapter that took hours to write, to edit, to craft, only to then be told its not worth it? i dunno man, it's just mean lol.

you can think these thing by all means, but don't come into my space just to be cruel. sometimes it okay to keep your opinions in your group chats.

the system is flawed, but I don't think you can blame a gal for just trying to work with it in the only way she knows how

[izukuer]

characters have to be a little bit awful in ways that you cant defend. its good for the ecosystem. your honor he did do that. He did in fact do that

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[adriles]

they are Cancelling me for dealing with my grief as best i can . also for the vicious war Crimes

[xgoldenlatiasx]

I’m really glad that Aaron’s self-immolation for Palestine is getting attention, but on November 8th there was also a Congolese man who did the same thing for the genocide happening in the DRC. From what I read in the article above, his fate and identity are unknown but I think his story should be getting equal amount of traction and I haven’t really seen anyone talking about it on Tumblr specifically yet.

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

Also increasingly aware that a LOT of people "manage" getting through the 40+ hour work week by sleeping less than is healthy and relying on stimulants like coffee and energy drinks to keep them going.

For people who are unwilling or unable to do this...work really does just dominate your life. Like we really should not have to rely on unhealthy practices just to have a social life or keep on top of housework or whatever.

I know I post about this a lot but I'm so TIRED all the time and it's just so depressing that this is how we're expected to spend the one life we have.

[apollos-boyfriend]

fun fact there's a pretty sizable area under the greater smp just absolutely INFESTED with mushrooms. like i have never seen so many of these spread so far before

[bastardlybonkers]

i feel like not enough ppl are factoring in the cultural clash between laios and shuro and the many micro agressions shuro faced while being in their group. literally the name 'shuro' in itself is one

his name is toshiro 😭 lets also not forget that he has his own communication issues, in the opposite way that laios does- thats literally a factor in their argument, that his envy for laios's ability to express himself sincerely manifested as part of his distaste for him.

ig all this to say like, was their fight heart wrenching, especially when reading laios as autistic? absolutely. anybody whos ever been in laios's position knows how much it hurts to realize someone you thought was your friend doesnt actually like having you around, especially when they didnt tell you and you had no way of knowing due to not understanding their cues. but im begging yall to step back and see the nuance of this situation cause im gonna be real a lot of you are kinda just brushing over it acting like everything is toshiros fault and that hes a terrible person when in reality hes an average guy who really, really clashed with laios and it led to a very long misunderstanding due to their supremely opposite methods of communication. even laios and toshiro, after letting everything out in their fight, were able to come to an understanding and start a foundation for an actual friendship built on better communication

ok yknow what Edit: i shouldve made it even more explicit at the end of this post, i hadnt thought i would need to since i started the post with this, but i think a few too many people are missing my point so i just wanna clarify. i shouldnt have said 'really clashed' and left it at that because yeah they did, but it wasnt just their opposite methods of communication, it is also very much that toshiro was experiencing microaggressions via laios. it may have been unintentional on laios's part, but it still happened and wore him down, made it harder for him to communicate on top of both the more subtle social cues that he was raised with and his own communication difficulties. i also want to say that the fandom reaction to toshiro and the complete ignorance of this point is also racist tbh or at the very least ignorant. i understand that the anime did not cover this panel, and neither did the manga, as this was an omake, but im gonna be real with you guys. there are enough context clues within the story to clue you into this. if you didnt pick up on it thats ok, but i think this is a good lesson in picking up subtext in the stories that youre watching and/or reading. kui shouldnt have to explicitly say 'by the way laios was racist to toshiro' for this point to be understood, and at the very least, when the author portrays a character in a sympathetic light (as kui clearly does) it should make you question Why they are doing so and what makes them sympathetic, rather than youre immediate and only reaction to be 'well i hated what this guy did/said so i hate them and they suck'. idk exactly how to finish this, just. idk. question your biases and gut reactions to things you see in media and stories, and think about whether or not theres subtext that youre missing.

[chloesimaginationthings]

You think FNAF Pit Bonnie has William’s memories?..

[nebulo-philiac]

I find it incredibly hilarious that there's so much ship discourse in the gravity falls fandom regarding more controversial ships with people arguing shit like "alex hirsch would hate you" meanwhile-

He does not give 2 shits about any shipping discourse, like these are literally his responses to getting asked questions like this, please stop dragging him into this

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[aethersea]

another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!

(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.

actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)

a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.

deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.

the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.

and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.

however.

you do have to know which one you're doing.

the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).

and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.

the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.

the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.

point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.

[c--3phoe]

please tell me you guys see my vision

like its the same, theyre the same

i mean it even works this way, cause you know silver/grey, same same but different.

[apollos-olives]

before october 7th this blog was a meme page btw.

[sunnywalnut]

Important thing to remember: the only reason the number of deaths in Palestine are going down is because there isn't enough people to kill.

Read that again.

The only reason the number of deaths in Palestine are going down is because there isn't enough people to kill.

The genocide is still happening. The cruelty and inhumanity is still happening.

People are not numbers.

It is time we stop treating them as such.

Free Palestine.