#spacebattles

My point was that while as adults we realize how much of the tales from the 001.9 section of the library that we devoured as kids was baloney, learning about the very real mysterious and little-studied creatures of our world can scratch some of that same itch.

When I was a little girl, there was a book from the 70s at my local library about the Loch Ness Monster that ended with several blank pages and the heading "These pages are for when they finally find out what the Monster is. Paste in the article from the newspaper and the photos here.", which enticed me with its suggestion of progress towards a coming resolution (and an action for the reader to take when that day came!) I remember being nine years old and thinking I know you can't cut up library books or paste things into them, but I hope they make an exception when they finally find the Monster! Maybe the librarians will even let me be the one to paste it in!

In retrospect, it feels like a perfect encapsulation of the frustration of cryptozoology as a rational adult— a book already thirty years old with a forever-frozen, immediate-sounding ending admonition to do something that could not be done.

Because the Loch Ness Monster isn't a real mystery that can really be resolved, it's a legend whose entire symbolic power lies in being "a mystery that is not resolved". And from that position, tourists can be attracted, books can be sold, movies can be made, and there can be the occasional titillating tease of underwater photographs that turn out to be tree stumps and sonar returns that turn out to be schools of fish that provide that ever-so-enticing sense of progress towards a immediate-seeming resolution, ever-elusive, ever just beyond our reach like the torture of Tantalus… but there can never, never be an actual resolution.

And there can be plenty of fun had in that status of mythology and "mystery as mystery"! I don't begrudge anyone for taking a trip to Scotland to eat shortbread and buy some cute little plesiosaur souvenirs and take vacation photos of a foggy lake, because in the right mindset, that does sound like a lot of fun!

But if you try to present it to me as an actual scientific problem on which progress is being made and a resolution is ever-so-immediate but never arrives… then eventually all I'm going to feel is frustration and disappointment, the same way that the public gets tired of J.J. Abrams' "mystery boxes".

Because I've seen actual intriguing scientific mysteries of my childhood resolved over the course of my life. I remember being 6 years old and wearing out a VHS tape of this documentary from the previous year about scientists attaching cameras to the heads of sperm whales to try and get footage of a living giant squid. Again, the incredibly intriguing mystery— a creature 40 feet long that has never been seen alive in the wild— and, again, the promise of progress towards an eventual resolution— this project did not succeed, but the scientists will keep trying. The narrator's wording burned itself into my brain, someday we would have "a living portrait of Architeuthis".

Of course, such a photograph would no doubt be terrifying, giant squids being what they are, but it would be progress for marine biology to have it all the same, and as I got older, the mystery was repeated again and again, in other documentaries and books and museum exhibits. It's never been seen alive in the wild.

When I was 12 years old, that day finally came. There was the headline on the National Geographic News site I visited every day and the eerie, blue-tinted image I knew was the product of so much work and struggle. A few weeks later, it was the cover story of the issue of Scholastic News that was passed out to us in class, and I saved it, although I didn't have any book to paste it into the end of. A frightening creature, yes, but also a great sense of victory and satisfaction because They finally did it!

To someone born in 2003 or 2013, the giant squid has never been mysterious in quite the same way it was to me, born in 1993. There is still much unknown about it, but it is an animal that has been photographed and now filmed alive, several times.

Hello! This is my first time properly posting on Tumblr, so I hope I am doing it right.

So, I am part of a team that runs a subreddit called r/AsoiafFanfiction, and we are holding our end-of-year awards! It is the perfect time to discover new fics. Over the last couple of months, we have been doing our best to showcase each category and each fic within them, either through Reddit or externally via a Google document and Google sheet created by members of the mod team.

Now the voting is open, so please feel free to browse what the fandom has put forward as their favourites for this year and vote for your favs!

All will be linked on the post

well well well

1. Open dms on the relevant platform

2. “Hey! I really enjoy reading your story every time a new chapter comes out. Would it be ok with you if I turned it into audio with LyricWinter for my personal use or to share with my friends”

Decision Tree:

-> yes

Go for it

-> no

Don’t.

-> no answer

Ask again and if you get no answer,

don’t.

him: no this is the first time

spacebattles elder: you had him rapidly accumulate the skills needed to systematically destroy and/or seduce taylor hebert's bullies on her behalf. who taught you this?

him: it seemed the right way

For those who don't know what this entails essentially it's a sortof... random power creep system? Every x words, you get random thing from bag of powers/items/companions/skills

As you can probably guess, it gets very much too much very quickly

And I find these things fascinating because they represent a form of narrative I consider antithetical to the basic principles of story telling.

There are a lot of issues, so I just wanted to rattle a few off:

1. Power creep: Right, so let's say I'm writing idk, a game of thrones fanfic. It's a celestial whatever SI OC (which I hate as a descriptor, it's an oc insert not an si at that point). I draw spy skills, neat, next chapter I draw super strength, cool, next chapter I draw magical runes. At this point already there's not much in setting that can threaten me. We are on chapter 3. Now, can you build a narrative with an OP protag. Yes. But it is difficult. It requires a good amount of thought in how you're going to handle it (for example, you can do the 'despite their powers they're only one person and can't solve everything' route). This storytelling set up is just not conducive to being able to handle this sortof theme.

2. Power as a premise: this is fundamentally an issue with a lot of fanfic, especially worm fanfic. A description of a power is not a premise. The lack of further planning past that description is why a lot of these fanfics die so quickly. An issue I especially find frustrating with celestial x fics is best illustrated by one I haven't read but have heard of. I haven't read it because its on QQ. It was a game of thrones insert. Apparently the first roll was skyrim blacksmithing, 2nd was a big skyrim mine that protag could move around. So we have an expert blacksmith able to make semi magical weapons. So: I legit think there's something potentially interesting here if we adjust it a bit. What if a random GoT peasant was gifted with the skills to make magical weapons and armour? We know valerian weapons are highly prized. The guy is just a peasant but he can make a lot of money quickly, but the maneuvering around him? Trying to secure his favour or manipulate him, to get access to these weapons. The conflict that can be caused by the weapons, what happens when each house can have multiple valerian equivalent swords. Or if one house manages to monopolise him. Etc etc. That all sounds potentially interesting. But because its a celestial x fic what probably happened is 2 chapters later he got the power to shoot lasers out of his eyes and the next he got functional immortality. It's a story set up that can throw out potentially interesting ideas through a monkey with a typewriter style set up but also fundamentally can't do anything with them because by the time you've started thinking about the implications you're onto the next power.

3. Word count. So many of these tie power gain to word count. It is an insane thing to do. For so many reasons. A) so the new power needs to be explored. Let's say we roll every 5000 words. Depending on the writer you're gonna spend a few thousand of those writing about the character thinking about the power. Especially as 90% of these are self inserts that need to fellate themselves over how cool the new ability is. That leaves probably about 40% of the writing to be dedicated to actual story beats. That's not a story, that's essentially a list of powers. B) Additionally it means there's no struggle to progress. The character could literally sit in their room for 3 days and come out a god. It torpedoes any chance of an interesting story. C) there's other reasons but this is me shotgunning before bed.

4. Power irrelevance. You know syndrome from incredible whole thing about how if everyone's super, no ones super. Similarly if you have a 1000 powers, none of them really... matter. I know this seems paradoxical with my last point, but like, let's say we are 20 chapters in and they roll magical singjng. We'll throw it on the pile with the 90 other forms of magical power we have and maybe the author will remember it in 5 chapters for a random scene before it becomes irrelevant. Why should I care at this point.

5. Difficulty structuring plotlines. Let's say we are doing a storyline in the worm verse. Author wants to set up narrative of trying to fix noelle (character heavily distorted by her power if this somehow escapes containment). They're buzzing along: they have a magic rune thing, they try setup some sortof return to normal rune. They have a conceptual doohickey, force the concept of wellness on her etc. Then next chapter they roll the power to turn off other people's powers. Oh well, there's a potentially interesting narrative thread gone. I'm glad I wasted my time reading through the last few chapters, should've known a literal dice roll would have solved the issue.