Just Found Maiden Holmes On YouTube. Oh No, Im Obsessed. Also, The A/B/O Canon Adjacent Fic Can Stop

Just found Maiden Holmes on YouTube. Oh no, I’m obsessed. Also, the A/B/O canon adjacent fic can stop building up in my brain any time now.

Got the divorce. Imma cry if they get back together. Since I can see the writing on the wall, I will be crying.

Still reading the dogsblood drama. The male protagonist is so flipping toxic, I’m begging this to end in the promised divorce. Can i go back to MDZS and their healthy romantic relationship please?

I'm trying to prove a point to my brain: Reblog if you think fanfiction does not need sex to be good.

There is a trend I’ve noticed that smut fics tend to be much more popular than anything else and honestly I just want to have something to look at to remind myself and that writing doesn’t have to have sex to be worth putting out into the community.

Oh just wait, Scanlan will have his day. I’m not sure how they’ll track throughout the campaign, but his character arc is just, so good.

Percy has Depths.

I have discovered the wonder of Critical Role: Legend of Vox Machina.

I too have discovered the wonders of Legend of Vox Machina (the netflix adaption anyway) and like- wow it's so good. And this is coming from someone who really doesn't like animated gore.

(Scanlan can be a bit much though).

Percy is a gem.

“Accidental DomTop Acquisition” is possibly one of the best tags of all time. Thank you, Ao3 authors, for bringing this into my life.

Frodo and Sam in Mordor wouldn’t have been nearly so heart wrenching if we hadn’t seen them in the Shire. Cinderella’s cheerful nature makes her breakdown when her stepsisters ruin her gown and chance to attend the ball so much worse. Sora’s never-give-up attitude makes his total collapse in the Keyblade Graveyard poorly foreshadowed even more worrisome.

Contrast is everything. In every form of art, from the visual to the auditory to the written word. It’s why we have images like a campfire on a snowy day, curled up with a good book and a beverage in front of a rainy window.

It’s also probably why so much of mainstream fiction is so messed up. They keep piling on calamity upon atrocity to keep the horror going, when they could keep things manageable just by having some light.

“The closer you get to the light, the darker the shadow.”

It’s why authors of tumblr toss around posts about the ways to make a death more impactful, by having it come out of nowhere in the midst of joy.

Making your angst hurt: the power of lighthearted scenes. 

I’m incredibly disappointed with the trend in stories (especially ‘edgy’ YA novels) to bombard the reader with traumatic situations, angry characters, and relationship drama without ever first giving them a reason to root for a better future. As a reader…

I might care that the main siblings are fighting if they had first been shown to have at least one happy, healthy conversation. 

I might cry and rage with the protagonist if I knew they actually had the capacity to laugh and smile and be happy.

I might be hit by heavy and dark situations if there was some notion that it was possible for this world to have light and hope and joy to begin with.

Writers seem to forget that their reader’s eyes adjust to the dark. If you want to give your reader a truly bleak situation in a continually dim setting, you have to put them in pitch blackness. But if you just shine a light first, the sudden change makes the contrast appear substantial.

Show your readers what light means to your character before taking it away. Let the reader bond with the characters in their happy moments before (and in between) tearing them apart. Give readers a future to root for by putting sparks of that future into the past and the present. Make your character’s tears and anger mean something.

Not only will this give your dark and emotional scenes more impact, but it says something that we as humans desperately, desperately need to hear. 

Books with light amidst the darkness tell us that while things are hard and hurt, that we’re still allowed to breathe and hope and live and even laugh within the darkness.

We as humans need to hear this more often, because acting it out is the only way we stop from suffocating long enough to make a difference.

So write angst, and darkness, and gritty, painful stories, full of treacherous morally grey characters if you want to. But don’t forget to turn the light on occasionally.

Support Bryn’s ability to provide writing advice by reading their debut novel, an upbeat fantasy about a bloodthirsty siren fighting to return home while avoiding the lure of a suspiciously friendly and eccentric pirate captain!