I know I’ve talked about this before, but I’m really sick of seeing writers who should know better say things like, “Tragedy is more compelling than stories where characters have a nice day and nothing bad happens!” without understanding why.
Tragedy is an effective story element when it’s a deviation from the norm. A character’s peaceful existence is disrupted by a catastrophic event that throws everything into chaos. The character now has to either develop so they can cope with the new status quo, or find a way to put things back the way they were. There’s a good story in that.
But when a character’s life is an unrelenting cavalcade of misery, another heaping dose of shit isn’t all that interesting. At that point, a compelling deviation from the norm would be said character having a nice day where nothing bad happens. And modern fiction is chock-full of misery porn, so by this logic, it’s no wonder the coffee shop AU is such a popular fanfiction trope.
Derek Hale getting a dog and putting his life back together is way more interesting than Derek Hale’s life getting worse for the 26th consecutive episode.
Creators like to hold up “everything is fine and nobody dies” as a sign that fanfic is bland and badly written, but if anything, it’s an indicator that mainstream fiction is bland and badly written.
(me in a labcoat pointing at charts with incomprehensible math scribbles on them): listen jade and rose had grimdark arcs that PARALELLED EACH OTHERS. why else would this be included if not to intwine them romantically. the only conclusion i can draw from this is that they’re going to get married
The most dramatic moment during my Camp Counseling career at an all girls camp was when a girl got a letter from a friend saying that Zac Efron had died and one of her bunkmates ran out of the cabin and shouted “ZAC EFRON IS DEAD!!!!!” and the camp immediately fell into chaos girls were crying in the middle of camp and running around spreading the news everyone was yelling and the counselors had to look up wether or not Zac Efron was dead (this is a wireless camp so the girls couldn’t access the internet and check for themselves) and then get out a megaphone and be like “ZAC EFRON IS NOT DEAD PLEASE REMAIN CALM” outside of all the cabins it was insanity.
Queue cutting is rampant in China, and offenders are not often called to task for it. When a foreigner falls victim to it, though, there is often a language barrier preventing a response. This wasn’t an issue for one foreigner who called out a perpetrator in not one, but three Chinese dialects.
The man repeatedly tells the woman that cut in front of him, in flawless Mandarin, “Hello? Hello? Can you please line-up in the queue behind?” The woman pretends not to understand him, and ignorantly says in a Wuhan dialect, “What is this ‘zebra’ talking about? I don’t understand a word you are saying.”
The man responds in the Wuhan dialect, “Don’t cut in line. Do you understand me now?”
The woman tries to gain the upper hand by responding in a Dongbei dialect. “What do you want? When did you see me cut in line?” and used a common Chinese insult meaning “You must be sick.”
Without breaking a sweat, the man answers in the Dongbei dialect, “Go stand in line, otherwise everyone here will criticize you. What do you mean ‘What do you want?’ Your cutting in line should have a rational reason.”
The woman, clearly (and rightly) giving up, said “Are you sick? I’m not eating, not eating!” as she walked away from the line.
We applaud this unnamed man for not only calling out someone for jumping the queue, but also for calling out her ignorant comments with dignity. Good on you, sir!
Yesterday I went to dinner to catch up with my buddy from the math department, and he told me this story about how he ran the city marathon in 2 hours, 59 minutes. That’s an amazing time. He was 19th out of thousands.
He was doing pretty well for the first half, but then his ankle started to hurt. He slowed down for a bit, but then this girl he passed before passed him, and he started overthinking whether or not it was awkward to pass the same person multiple times, and, like, what if they small-talked about it? He decided it was better to pass her and stay ahead, so he picked up the pace. A few miles later, he fell in with two dude-bros who started talking to him. Not pleased to find himself in the company of dude-bros, he pulled ahead once again. This continued for a while; every time he got closed to a group of other marathoners, his social anxiety kicked in and he ran faster because he felt nervous being near people.
TL;DR A mathematician ran an record marathon to avoid making small-talk with randos. He introverted his way into qualifying for the Boston marathon.
