#so it's hard out there

[zmediaoutlet]

in the tags of your rb what did you mean by “ao3 house style”? sorry if it’s obvious 😭

oh it's probably not, no worries. Unfortunately it's one of those things that someone else said to me and I instantly knew what they meant, and now find very hard to explain in a way that is both a) coherent and b) not mean. So uh, hm.

there's a style of writing that's very very prominent in fanfiction. Everyone copies each other because most of what they're reading is fic, and so the stories start to all take on a really similar gloss of how plots go, how characters react to things, how characters sound both in their dialogue and in how the narrative describes things. A lot of stories, you could find-and-replace the names of these characters to characters from another fandom entirely, and you wouldn't really notice a difference in how the story felt other than in some random details (an Impala vs a Jeep, say).

It's very... redolent of the light romcom. Cute snappy dialogue. References to pop culture that's relevant to the writer & readership but not necessarily anything the characters would or should know. Stories hit the same beats and have the same concerns. Very... pastel. Breezy, surface-level. Generic, but generic in the meaning both of 'wow this is like everything else' and of 'this has become a genre in itself and it is hitting those beats to perfection'.

I'm given to understand that there's a readership out there who are looking for these types of stories specifically -- like, it really doesn't matter who the characters are and what the fandom is, because we can sink into this fic as comfort food and enjoy it regardless. This is not at all at all at all how I read anything but hey, it'd be a funny ol' world if we were all alike, etc.

(*Note: it's not like darky darkerton angst and miseryguts sadness and anti-fluff are magically the only kind of fic that's allowed, either. You can have wildly distinct, characterful, delightful writing that's pure fluff romcom. But the distinction maybe lies in how you can tell the writer cares about these characters and this story rather than copy-pasting some details on top of the writing equivalent of a Starbucks iced latte. Lots of people love those! But they are all the same, even if the heart the barista drew on the cup was real cute, and I'm just... looking for something else.)

[shamebats]

[zytes]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

[ducktracy]

sharing a very sage bit of advice from The Simpsons' own John Swartzwelder that i've been trying to hamper down in my writing and drawing alike. let your inner crappy little elf do his worst

[donnieisaprettyboy]

can we stop pretending like it’s so super easy for trans men to pass. “oh just put on a baggy shirt and cut your hair-“ it literally doesn’t work like that and I refuse to believe you actually think it’s that easy

[hinamie]

10 years later

[katsinspats]

I think my copy of the game is broken they've been doing this for 30 minutes

Crop of the Biolizard edit I did bc it makes me laugh:

[midnight-coffee94]

No single line has ever wrecked me as hard as this one from the Good Place and I think about it constantly

[v0idwraith]

quite frankly idgaf what Luigi Mangione’s politics are, he actually did something to make a change and that’s more than most people can say

[girpgorp]

decided my fetal kwamis deserved a little lore

[canisalbus]

✦ Freshly ordained ✦

[andstuffsketches]

girl who lives in a cave

[stil-lindigo]

hobie motherfuckin' brown!!!!!!

[cassandragemini]

19th DC Gay Pride Day Festival, Washington DC, June 5th, 1994, by Elvert Barnes Photography

[chloesimaginationthings]

The REAL lore from the FNAF survival logbook,,