i find having to hit “next chapter“ deeply annoying - especially if, say, i’m on the road and thus may lose service in between chapters, but i also find it annoying in general. as such, i probably won’t even notice if a fic is 50k but only one chapter, since i pretty much always load all chapters. (tiny scrollbar does not matter to me, & in fact i prefer it cause then i have a good idea of how far i am into the fic. if i lose my place on mobile i ctrl+f a phrase i remember reading recently, or failing that a chapter # (if it is a chaptered longfic.))
I am now reminded of Ye Olden Days before ao3's fic downloading feature, when I used to copy+paste entire epics from ff.n and lj into word documents to save them. I eventually converted some of them to epubs to load on my nook, and so I'll run into the way I kept track of where I was when I had to close the doc-- a giant [[BOOKMARK]] in the middle of a paragraph or sentence sometimes.
My browser is supposed to save my place. Usually it does. I loses it just often enough that I don’t think to plan for it. @spockandawe, I remember that that fic was long but I definitely did not remember that it was one chapter. I mostly remember how well I thought the characterization struck a balance of someone who understands social things intimately, but not intimately enough to want them in his personal space. I can’t say I’m much invested in whether your formatting happens to cater to my every whim.
I think it's a good idea to include non-cis non-het characters in stories which are not wholly about being non-cis/non-het, but I'm not quite sure what the best way is to get it across without coming across like a flashing neon sign. Tips?
well, i recently wrote a fic where dave strider was trans, and without ever having him explicitly say "i am trans" i would mention specific things--rose and him are twins down to the chromosomes, he changed his name, he cut his hair, etc. you could mention characters getting top surgery or buying binders or breastforms, or have them talk about hrt in conversation. mentioning things like that casually, in passing, is a good way for the reader to go "oh, they're trans" without beating it over their head or making the story about that. for non-het relationships, you could have them talk about current/past relationships/crushes/flings "oh, my boyfriend said" and so on, or mention them thinking a same-gender character is attractive.
Non-het is easier to do than non-cis, I will say. I don't want to accidentally come across as creepy fetishising with the latter.
Another question about that; would it be weird or jarring if I used different pronouns for a character than are used in canon without explicitly having a coming-out scene? Like, for example, I dig agender Terezi but would people have trouble following it if she went through the process of becoming a "they" offscreen as it were? I don't think it would be a problem but I'd like a second opinion.
hmmmmm, i might say something in the notes or tags? like, if i'm headcanoning that, i'd tag it like #agender terezi or put "terezi is agender and uses they/them pronouns" in the notes! purely because otherwise singular they is going to confuse the hell out of me, and my pronoun is singular they
That sounds reasonable! I wondered if it'd just come across as the viewpoint character being really shit at telling gender, maybe a quick statement from the character in question which isn't made a big deal of? (Speaking of characters shit at telling gender, this is funny.)
i’ve definitely seen fics that just refer to a certain character as “they” without explicitly saying that’s what they’re going to do in the notes, though they do often use an appropriate tag (ex. “Nonbinary Lafayette,” “Nonbinary Kokichi Ouma.”) mentioning it in the notes does improve clarity tho!
A gripe that came up in an otherwise sweet AU; when the characters hate another character because the author does, when in canon they didn't. Even if the character's a douche, the rest of the cast weren't that vitriolic to them.
I'm with you there. Especially cause, like. I've read fic where the author plainly despises Kylo Ren, which is fine, but then they make Leia and Han hate him, and it's really tonally off. There's one I'm thinking of in particular, a high school AU where Ben's a normal ("normal") ass teenage boy who is obnoxious but also a fucking fifteen year old boy, and the narrative is like "no, of course his parents would hate him and openly talk shit about him to other kids, that's super understandable and reflects what great parents they are and what an ungrateful brat Ben is for not appreciating them", and it was. A weird thing to read with my human eyes.
Yeah, in the case I was thinking of it's kind of debateable as to whether many of the pre-Scratch troll players actually like each other very much at all, but Kankri doesn't get angry at the mere mention of Cronus' name.
Wasn't Kankri, like. Supportive of Cronus or something? I remember him taking Cronus's humankin thing more seriously than Cronus himself.
Related: when the author turns the character they hate into raging douche that bullies the character they like (I am looking at you, authors that set up Eridan angst using SOLLUX of all people). Yup! Cronus almost had a moment of clarity of "maybe I'm actually doing this for attention," and Kankri shut that the fuck down.
Wasn't Kankri also the one person Cronus wasn't seen to obnoxiously hit on? Admittedly obnoxiously hitting on everyone else would be a reason not to be friends with him, but it didn't bother Kankri that much in canon.
"ebony" already has some unfortunate implications, but can you please not use it every single time you're referring to something black? Like, you can just use, you know. "Black."
