Omnipresent Lemon

EVENTUALLY THIS KID WILL WHAT . HE WILL WHATTTTTT . ALTO SUREBREC GET BACK HERE

i cant tell if its supposed to mean something like "eventually this kid will die because i cant take care of him properly down here" or something like "The Ground Will Do Something To Him" .

ill feel silly if i start theorising about the ground being magically toxic to rudo specifically and it ended up just being like the former idea . though , you can see the black markings starting to form on rudo's fingers , so perhaps the ground (and not alto) did do something supernatural to him

and baby rudo :(( hes so cute . he looks about one here , and its been a year since enjin and alto met , so i think he was born soon after alto met enjin ? alto did say "i have a kid that i gotta name" last chapter .

THATS SO FUCKING CUTE.

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply. 

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” these stories are only “easy” to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start rewarding the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

I can pick a hurt comfort or a slow burn or an angst with a happy ending.

I can remove the tags I don’t want to see, I can check word count,check if it’s finished and it’s so much easier than books

I know these characters and I see them in my mind so they can pull me on journey into a world I love, unless it’s au universes