Okay well, I have a bunch of rationalist followers now so I guess I might as well use them:Ā What the hell is glowfic and why doesnāt Kingdom Hearts count?
Oh. Nevermind. I think I see whatās going on here. I get it. I mean Iāve only read like a page so far but it seems a bit like improv-but-with-the-dumb-self-improvement-and team-building rules optimized out, and the pre-established background of each borrowed character serving as a mutual point of narrative understanding between authors as they cooperate to make something interesting but also compete to make sure each of their contributions is considered worthwhile.Ā If my read is wrong, and thatās not what it is, where can I find some of the thing I just described?
Thatās a really interesting read on it! Seems accurate enough, though it certainly emphasizes different features than Iām accustomed to seeing emphasized.
Community member and tumblr user @kaylin881 wrote this answer for your original ask:
Glowfic is a subgenre of RP fiction which stereotypically includes rationalist themes such as exploitation of magic to solve wider societal problems, characters talking about their problems, and a general tendency towards power creep. It encompasses significant amounts of fanfic and crossover fanfic but also a lot of original characters and settings. One of the genre-defining features of glowfic is the phenomenon of āaltsā, or alternate universe instances of characters, meeting each other and interacting. Kingdom Hearts isnāt glowfic because (a) itās not in an RP format, (b) itās not particularly rationalist in theme as far as I know, and Ā© none of the people involved are members of the glowfic community (again, so far as I know).
Thereās also a general-audiences intro linked here, which might be useful for seeing how people usually try to explain it, even if youāre coming at it from this more experience-oriented angle.
Thank you, @kaylin881. Are the rationalist themes a prescriptive or merely descriptive staple of the genre?Ā The clarification re Kingdom Hearts implies a name was attached to a thing that happened, but has it thereby become prescriptive? Would collaborative stories like this require b) and c) in order to claim to be Glowfic?Ā And on a trollier note, can it truly be rationalist themed if there areĀ āaltsā meeting each other? That amounts to more than one outcome occurring in the same universe, which creates a giant ambiguity in the second and third axioms of probability theory. What does it mean to be rational in an irrational universe? Can I join and RP David Hume?Ā Ā
Iām not a glowficer, but you may want to ask @luminousalicorn and @aestrix.
@marrinikari too
Thereās very little about glowfic thatās prescriptive. It may or may not have rationalist themes (certainly nothing I write does, Iām not a rationalist), it may use an existing universe fanfic-style or it may be original world-building; it may feature original characters or canonical characters or a mix of both; it may or may not involve more than one author; and so on. The closest constant we have is that itās written on the site I built for it, but thereās almost certainly still some old stuff out there predating the site still floating on Dreamwidth. You are absolutely welcome to RP David Hume, I donāt know why not xD Basically the only thing required here is that you want to write something and you want to call it glowfic?


















