One Wank After Another

[coalcube]

A blank assignment is a funny thing, isn't it? When you have it, you don't appreciate it, and when you miss it, it's gone.

Wednesday 10 December: Default deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 17 December: Assignment deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 24 December: Main collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

Mini-Challenges:

Crueltide | Femslash Festivus | Yulebuilding | Three Turtle Doves | Two for One | Yuleporn  
Family Matters | Queering the Tide | Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational | TransTide 
Chromatic Yuletide | Unconventionyule | Wrapping Paper | Babytide | MultiLingYule 

Yuletide Discord for Hippos & Exchanges After Dark for namespace drama 18+ discussion.

yuletide | yuletide_admin | yuletide_pinch_hits | App

2025 Collection | 2025 Madness | Tagset | Letters

Flat / Recent | Top-Level (Last) | FAQ | Search

 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Are you telling me everyone in here writes telepathy canons or idk House of Leaves and also for some reason thinks this is about their canon?

[(Anonymous)]

They are not telling you that.

[(Anonymous)]

Ayrt

I'm saying that if your italics don't have a purpose, you shouldn't be using italics in the first place.

If your italics do have a purpose, then taking them out blindly without making any narrative adjustments will make the story worse and some things might not make sense anymore.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, and if you were forbidden from using the word "magic" fanfics for some canons might be effected a lot more than others! Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Well, I hope your solution for "DNW: magic" wouldn't be "Just write the fic as you normally would and then do a find-and-replace and delete every instance of the word 'magic'".

But I guess if you think handling italics like this is a great idea, you probably think handling every other DNW like that works well too....

[(Anonymous)]

Literally what the fuck are you talking about, mate?

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

We're talking about the inane suggestion "Wouldn't you just write the fic as normal and then paste it into ao3 with all the formatting removed?"

[(Anonymous)]

It may astonish you to find that formatting isn't the same as load-bearing words

[(Anonymous)]

Weren't you the one who made the comparison between italics and magic in the first place?

And the argument here is that using italics IS load-bearing and you can't just strip a fic of its formatting and expect the content not to suffer.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I wasn't. And italics are not loadbearing in the way that plot elements are.

[(Anonymous)]

But they're also not irrelevant enough that stripping them away won't change the meaning

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, they are.

[(Anonymous)]

That's completely different to removing the word magic from a magic canon. If you tend to use italics for emphasis, it's way easier to write as you normally would, then dispense with the italics, and fix anything that definitely no longer makes sense, than to try and write without emphasis in the first place. Removing magic literally changes the plot.

[(Anonymous)]

and fix anything that definitely no longer makes sense

That's the important step right there. Just stripping the formatting alone is NOT a useful strategy.

[(Anonymous)]

SC

(Having said that, it's not something I'd be willing to do. I wouldn't enjoy this compromise, and the recipient would likely be happier with another author.)

[(Anonymous)]

Fascinating new wank, thank you, coalie.

Italics are most commonly used for structural purposes (for example, internal thoughts, or flashbacks, or telepathy or what-have-you) and for emphasis. The average fic or published novel probably won't collapse into illegibility if all the italics were lost, but that doesn't mean they don't serve a purpose.

The reason italics are overused is that you formatting a specific word differently to give it emphasis inherently comes with diminishing returns. If you emphasize every other word or are relying on it in lieu of making sure your prose sounds strong regardless of how it's formatted, then yes, that's bad.

But that's true of many stylistic tools.

[(Anonymous)]

"and for emphasis"

99% of the time in the fics I read? It's this. Rather than relying on their prose to make the flow natural, fanfic writers add italics. Thought bubbles in italics are a very early 2000s writing style which I've stopped seeing in the wild except for Yuletide. I rarely see thought italics except for fic in canons with canonical telepathy, and it's rare even there.

Part of amateur writing is having fun exploring stylistic tools. Overuse of those tools is a stage in writing which some people stay in for their entire writing lives. When you are giving a gift to someone, they will have varying opinions about the equivalent of your fourteen year old self's obsession with glitter stickers on all your folders. Some will love it and others won't, especially if the glitter interferes with their accessibility device.

[(Anonymous)]

*jerking motion*

[(Anonymous)]

Overusing any stylistic and rhetorical device is bad. But "DNW: italics" (or even "DNW: italics for emphasis") isn't simply preventing overuse, it's preventing it altogether. If it's an accessibly issue, obviously that's fair. Otherwise, it's just a silly attempt at DNWing bad writing that's so broad it also catches a lot of things that are not bad writing and it will most likely make bad writing (which sometimes relies on emphasis markers to make sense) worse.

You can do it, of course. But, to paraphrase what you said, writers will have varying opinions about you limiting the stylistic tools they are allowed to use because you think you unlocked the secret to avoiding bad writing.