#just thinkiing thinky thoughts

[ao3commentoftheday]

While looking for something else, I found an old ask I answered about "ideal chapter length" in terms of word count.

I've been asked this probably a dozen or more times, and each time I need to take a moment and adjust my thinking to take the asker's point of view into account. Because the thing is? The only time I ever try to factor the word count into how I write a story is when I'm aiming for a true drabble.

For whatever reason, this difference in thinking stuck with me today and I actually considered why that might be. And I think it's because I'm in my 40s and the first 25-30 years of my life, any stories I was reading were printed on paper and bound into physical books.

When I imagine a novel, I still think of a mass market paperback on my bookshelf. An average one would be maybe an inch thick, probably in the neighbourhood of 300 pages. A long one would be maybe as much as two inches thick and 500 or more pages long. A short one was always nice to have because it filled in the gaps in the shelf because 200 page books were so much narrower. Or so it seemed.

When I started posting my fic online, I still thought in terms of pages. I'd type them out in whatever word processing software I was using at the time, and I'd usually get a chapter's worth of ideas into 3 or 4 pages. Turns out that's about 1000 words, which makes sense with the number of 1000 word essays I wrote in high school. I'd been trained to encapsulate an idea into approximately that length.

And that's what it comes down to. The thing that always made that question seem weird to me. A chapter isn't about how many words there are in it, just like a cake isn't about how many cups of flour exist in each slice. A chapter is a an idea that helps make up a bigger idea called a story, and it needs to be however many words that idea needs to be to get it out.

[ilions-end]

i was listening to an elizabeth vandiver lecture on the greek pantheon where she points out the theme in greek myths where male lovers of goddesses often end up suffering in some way, and how that can be seen to tie into the ancient greek preoccupation with who penetrates who (the higher status person may penetrate the lower status person, and never vice versa). within that framework, someone like ganymede is "safe" from narrative punishment because being a passive mortal eromenos of zeus is in accordance with the hierarchy, while tithonus, willing or unwilling, commits an offense against the "order of things" by penetrating and impregnating eos.

vandiver uses the union of aphrodite and anchises to illustrate how consent is not a factor at all (in the hymn, anchises is very aware that he mustn't have sex with a goddess, but aphrodite tricks him into it). even unknowing, he commits an outrage by sleeping with a goddess, and is in various traditions eventually struck lame, blinded or killed by a thunderbolt.

i think this theory adds an interesting facet to the beginning of the odyssey, where calypso then has odysseus basically locked into a perpetual outrage-against-the-gods loop by forcing him to be her lover. are the seven years trapped on her island a narrative punishment for that? is it why he needs literal divine intervention to break the loop and escape?

[an-idiotic-villager]

Soooo today I got the denial ending, and I only ever found Joel, Leigh and Dan as followers so I had them up on the roof with me and it made me feel feelings and imagine imaginings and now all everyone who sees this has to do the same

"CHAT IS THIS REAL??" (Just saw his best buddy get deconstructed)

The other side of the equation, Leigh is prolly pumped since Sam's gonna get a monster form

And once they get back inside... my baby... my poor baby boy. He loses literally so many people I just want him to be happy.

Dan has no clue how to deal with this... Have I mentioned how much I've grown to love Dan throughout this run?

[half-bakedboy]

I just think that Buck feels like just a little guy with Tommy. He gets to be the little spoon (literally) and the tippy toe kisser (kinda) and he can hide his face in Tommy’s chest when he’s embarrassed and blushy and lean back again his boyfriend with arms around his waist and cleft chin on his shoulder and I just— 🫠🥰 He deserves to be the little guy, you know?

[tavina-writes]

love how every time I finish up a major wip I'm always like "I'm done! I've did my best! I wrote the best thing that I've ever written!" and then I wake up the next day and it's like "oh yeah actually I have more to say" and when I do finish the next work it's a better work than the one that came before it.

And that's nice because sometimes I'm like, "what if I have said all I have to say about a beloved ship/trope/fandom/whatever" and you know what that's the devil speaking because in the past I've always found something else to say.

anyway! if you're down in the dumps like me today about "have I actually peaked?" the answer is no you haven't. You're just getting started.

[deathofacupid]

𝐖.𝐈.𝐏. 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓. ˎˊ˗ ➙ there's really no release date for these, i just wanted to get down my long work ideas. title and synopsis, for these, may change. this will be updated as i get new ideas. banner credits to @/bronzewasp.

good cop, bad cop. | cop!nanago x criminal!reader. ➙ they'll get the truth out of you, one way or another. as different their tactics, they agree on one thing; you don't deserve to be let off easy.

untitled. | ceo!nanami x officesiren!reader. ➙ you are the star of the show, if the show was multimillion dollar corporation. after all, if the ceo isn't going to do his job, then someone does, right? and, someone did. you. "did" being past tense, of course. when the new ceo comes in, it's a battle of power. a forlorn one, given that they're the clear winner. now, all you have to do get used to it.

all in jest. | jester!gojo x princess!reader. ➙ you're not sure which weighs more heavy on you, the call of duty - or the call of love. each path is yet a step away, one more a burden than the other. when your marriage is announced to the kingdom, well before it is to you, you realize you don't have much a choice. right?

save a horse, ride a cowboy. | cowboy!gojo x bartender!reader. ➙ satoru gojo is an enigma. specifically, an enigma that enjoys to sit at the bar for hours at a time, babbling nonsensically to you. as annoying as he can be, he is interesting. he's got that certain flair, eccentric as it is. certain something, you'd say. well, maybe you can fuck it out of him.

butterfly effect. | f1!sukugo x reader. HERE! ➙ no summary (yet), no thoughts (yet). just based solely off this art by @to00fu. ➙ lied, there are thoughts. this could go on of two way, one of which is fan!reader. ➙ or, established relationship, in which reader is caught between them, who're on different teams (bare with me, i am clueless about f1...). no angst, all fluff, maybe, perhaps smut.

always an angel, never a god. | angel!satoru x sacrifice!reader ➙ satoru is tired of being forgotten, of being left in the shadows of a god. as the world threatens to leave him behind, desperate times, well, they call for desperate measures. he just needs to know that the mortals below still love him. thrive for him. if they don't, he'll make them rue. no worries, though, he knows exactly what he wants as apology. you.

reclaimed thorns. | bullies!sukugo x reader. ➙ there's something so romantic about the fear they send your way. based off this art by @kcokaine.

butterfly. | creep!nerd!jo x bimbo!reader. ➙ satoru gojo doesn't collect art, not in the traditional sense. he collects moments. glimpses. snippets of you. a stolen laugh, a furrowed brow, the way the light catches your hair. he stores them away, in photo albums or digital files, but also in the meticulous catalog of his mind. he admires you, yes, the way a lepidopterist admires a rare butterfly. beautiful, delicate, and pinned beneath glass.

seven deadly sins. | jujutsu-kaisen men x reader. ➙ the men as the seven deadly sins, likely to be a series for each one. mostly, it would consist of angst/smut. ➙ satoru; pride, suguru; wrath, sukuna; greed, toji; envy, kento; sloth, choso; lust.

[emilys-bangs]

In another life, Hotch would've been a paramedic. It's almost as gory as the BAU, and he's able to handle all the blood and carnage with a straight face, a calm demeanor. He comforts people in shock and tries to calm them down with his even tone, his low voice, "you're going to be alright," "I'm gonna take care of you," distracting them by asking about themselves, hobbies, pets. He rides in the back and holds their hands if they're alone, making sure he calls someone if they've got someone to call. He doesn't carry a gun; he carries a medical kit, and the part of his brain that knew how to interrogate serial killers rewires so that he knows how to draw blood and start an IV instead. The part that knows how to talk to victims, to calm them down, stays the same. He gets to save lives, and feel the same blow when they slip through his fingers.

[enquiringangel]

Thinking random thoughts about the filmmakers’ decision not to give any of the vampires explicit backstories in The Lost Boys and the show vs. tell element of storytelling:

- They wanted the viewer to be drawn in by the vampires but to ultimately not root for them. A futle endeavour of course, but that was the intent imho. Joel Schumacher went out of his way to add the beach massacre because he thought audiences would like the vampires too much - AND HE WAS CORRECT lol

- They also wanted to keep up the mystery. The way the film is shot during the attack scenes through vampire POV is intended to keep a distance and build suspense. The vampires are meant to be something Other, and knowing too much about them would go against this.

Marko and Paul have barely any dialogue. The only reason people know Dwayne’s name is because of the credits. Joel himself points out that David has the least amount of dialogue of the three main characters (which he considered as Michael, Star and David, despite the meagre size of Star’s role). This is again, done deliberately for the cool guy mystique

- We do get glimpses of backstory and characterisation through costuming, setpieces and (less so) through dialogue. David implying that he was familiar with the hotel before the 1906 earthquake is about as subtle as a brick to the face.

So yes, deliberate storytelling decisions there. I quite like it, it gives a lot of creative freedom. But I do understand the frustration too. As I always say:

This is why we have fanfic.

[sad-girl-sad]

Me and who?

🍄⭐

The only difference I deserve is the height ✨

Where is my knight? 🤔

[beeandthescreen]

They gave John walker a son because no one would be able to handle it if he was a girl-dad.

[swordbisexual]

I also know that Gale/Tav kids are a polarizing subject but idk, I think there’s something to be said for exploring how that changes a relationship and what it’s like when parents are loving but not necessarily “good” and perfectly doting. I could see Vissenta and Gale both doing it because it feels expected of them, and only getting better at it through actually doing it, and learning to love the way their lives have been upended as time goes on.

Plus I think Morena Dekarios would be the kind of grandma who’s going to Win At Grandmothering and suddenly it’s very apparent why Gale is the way he is.

[ltb-oc]

It changes of my usual content but.... need ur opinion

It only works for male characters, for women characters they are all gorgeous, i'm just down for any women ♥︎....

[jacqcrisis]

Found a fic with this in the summary: "WARNING: AI Generated, this started as a way to satisfy my own prompt without spending months. W/o AI, this would have been abandoned."

And... I could not fucking imagine using AI to finish a WIP for me. No AI could write the fuckass way I do, focus on the weird, innocuous shit I do, over-describe meaningless details I find important like I do. There's not a reality where I would put a WIP into an AI and find the end result anything less than more disappointing than something written by my own brain. Even at my worst, an AI could not meaningfully fulfill my expectations for a WIP on the verge of abandonment to save it from being left to gather dust in my documents folder.

There's a story I want to tell, in the way only I can tell it, focusing on and expounding upon the details I have decided are relevant and necessary. An AI could not and cannot take the core conceit of what I want out of a work and make it the exact way that I want it with my thoughts and needs and ideas transposed into something meaningful and conveying the emotions I want the reader to know and to feel. I don't want a machine to finish my works in a way I know it can't just like I don't want to read something made by a machine that cannot replicate the way a person makes art: with their own flourishes, mistakes, and voice.

If the work in progress is going to be abandoned unless you use AI to fill the parts you couldn't, then abandoned it should be.

[normalbrothers]

you know john's whole 'tommy i need a wife now because my kids are running around at night and i can't handle it bla bla ' is funny. because maybe if he got less drunk in pubs and spend some time at home, this wouldn't be an issue. and thinking of, on the topic of who's the most like arthur sr? you bet it's john.

[breadandblankets]

ya know the thing is Bruce could try and pull his patented "in worried about you and instead of expressing that I'm going to pull you off of vigilante work" on Duke and it Would Not Work.

Bruce could pull him off the outsiders sure but 100% Bruce could not make Duke stop patrolling

Duke, staring Bruce's lil bat peepers down, with the power of gd and anime on his side: you could call Superman to sit on me and it Still wouldn't keep me from going out

[amagicbeyond]

okay confession time: I watched Good Omens when it first came out, and had a perfectly lovely time. It was fun and David and Michael are spectacular to watch and they were clearly having the time of their lives playing these characters together. I saw the love there and like, fully supported the ship in theory but could not for the life of me fathom how these two, who'd been dancing around each other for six thousand years or more, could possibly ever move out of the subtext and the dancing into something more explicitly romantic. I couldn't conceive of it, it didn't seem feasible. They seemed, to me, perfectly content to continue on as they always had, as the single most important person in each other's lives and the person each most enjoyed spending their time with, perhaps just a little more ready to stop pretending that wasn't the case. I didn't buy the holding-hands-on-the-bus thing. I couldn't read fic about them, no matter how brilliant or well-written! None of it seemed plausible to me. I couldn't see the pathway, the journey they still needed to take to get there. Not without another couple of thousand years to do it.

(I want you to know that I write this with full respect and admiration for those who've actively shipped it from the start - I'm just working through my own experiences as a viewer who wanted to ship it whole-heartedly but just couldn't manage it, and could never quite put my finger on why.)

When the heart shaped started popping up on all the promo materials for season 2, I thought oh no. He's gonna do it. How on earth is he gonna make me buy in?

Well.

I get it now. This is the angel and the demon who love humanity the most, who have made Earth their home, who have learned to revel in Earthly pleasures like food and drink and music and books and cars, not all at once but over time. It makes perfect sense for them, with the evident changes in their relationship in the years since we've last seen them, to finally endeavor into human touch, and to explore it together. Dancing. Human expressions of comfort, and love. Reaching out, a simple touch on the shoulder, or chest. A kiss, all wrong, for all the wrong reasons. A kiss, eventually, all right, made even more exquisite by the knowledge of the wrong one, and the journey they took to get there. Maybe someday more.

I know none of this is groundbreaking or new and everyone else saw it a long time ago. But I get it! I see the vision! I understand.

What was the point? The point is the best of humanity. They get to have it too, and to express it and wonder at it and learn it together. The point is love.

And I am fully on board.