Behold! A Woman With No Impulse Control

If someone wants to tell a light-hearted comedy story that's sold on the basis of 'minority groups can see themselves represented in a positive light', but they kill off The Disabled CharacterTM in a really dodgy way... the writers probably weren't intending to be ableist. But the actuality is that they created a product that feeds into horrific ableist ideas about 'killing disabled people is kinder, actually'. They failed at telling the story they wanted to tell, possibly because of unexplored prejudices or just a lack of skill.

If someone wants to tell a fun story for kids that involves child soldiers, but because of genre conventions, etc., this isn't actually a serious issue.... then decides they want to engage with 'child soldiers' and 'military states' and 'genocide' as the serious, fucked-up issue they are, and makes the point that this world has to change... then decides that actually, no, they're not going to dig any deeper into that, and we're all just going to accept that military states and child soldiers are a genre convention, actually, and the world doesn't need to significantly change in order for a 'happy ending' to feel earned? Then they told the story they wanted to tell, but they arguably told it badly.

For example: an author wants to write an enemies-to-lovers romance novel, does so, and it's a complete flop. There are two possible reasons:

Reason one: this story is not a romance. The characters may be well-written and complex and believably traumatized and have wonderfully entertaining interactions, but they never once seem to even so much as find the other useful to be around, much less like the other's company enough to fall in love with them. For 95% of the plot they visibly, vocally hate each other, and then at the end they kiss and get married and all the other characters go "ah isn't this romantic". This is a "bad story" because it failed to tell the story it was trying to tell. The author wanted to tell a romance and did not do that.

Reason two: this story is badly written. It is a romance, yes, it ticks all the boxes and hits all the plot points and the characters go on a perfectly charted arc from enemies to lovers, but the writing is just plain bad. The characters are flat and uninteresting, the prose is hard to read, the setting is generic, the plot is stupid. This is a "bad story" because it told the story it wanted to tell but told it badly. The author wanted to tell a romance and did in fact do that, but it's still badly done.

New work, Solarz System © Peter Solarz

if we post too fast, we get accused of using ai (no, you don't know how fast someone can write. you don't even know if the "too-frequent-to-be-human updates" you see are something that have long been finished and sitting in an author's drafts for god knows how long. just because it's recently posted, doesn't necessarily always mean it's recently written too. a lot of writers finish the whole thing first before they start posting it chapter by chapter).

if we take "too long to update", we get people pressuring us to "update faster" even though fanfics are our hobbies and we write for ourselves first and foremost.

if our works are grammatically correct, we get accused of using ai (some of us just love correct grammars).

if our works are not grammatically correct, we get insulted/criticized (mind you, not everybody writes in their native language. kudos to writers who write in their second, or third, or fourth language — I'm willing to bet a lot of people who criticize fanfics because of poor grammar can't even speak other languages besides english).

if our paragraphs are "too long and too detailed", we get accused of using ai.

if our paragraphs are "too short", we also get accused of using ai.

if we are autistic and we write in ways some deem "too robotic", we get accused of using ai.

Card Captor Sakura 🌸

"Breach of Dawn"

First full painting of the new year, after a very long week. 💔

Soft morning with Fenris

Speaking of behavior, this has to be the single best image of thermoregulatory gaping I've ever seen. It could not display more of the hallmarks of a chilled-out croc if it was trying. This is from Crocodiles of the World in England, and features a gorgeous Cuban crocodile:

So let's start from the belly up. How do we know this guy's super relaxed? Look at those legs! We're in full-on sleepy feet! Sleepy feet are a great sign that a crocodilian or lizard is relaxed. When they're comfortable and tired, they'll relax their legs, and the front ones tend to flip over, with the palmar side facing up. They don't do this every time they feel relaxed, but if they're doing it, they feel safe and cozy enough to be in a position that they can't just bolt out of.

Then, look at the lower jaw! See that pouch? You almost NEVER get the pouch! That's the submandibular skin, and it, too, is completely relaxed.

The palatal valve is open- that's the valve at the top of the tongue. It forms a watertight seal so that crocodilians can hunt underwater. You can see that this one is relaxed- another way to help vent heat.

The mouth, even though it's open all the way, is relaxed at the corners. There's no tightness. Crocodilans don't grimace the way mammals do, it's not a grimace- it's just tension from the "I am ready to bite you now¹" muscles as opposed to the "we're gonna keep this nice and loosey-goosey²" suite of connective tissue.

The eyes are all the way open, no squinting or wincing.

This crocodile is about as chill as it is possible to be, and if you know anything about Cuban crocodiles then you know that is hilarious. (If you don't know anything about Cuban crocodiles, they're extremely spicy, temperament-wise. Chill is not what they typically do.)

Refs below the cut.

the best of Sassy-Wan™ Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy