coaltide | One Wank After Another

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2025

One Wank After Another

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.

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Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

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Okay, then it's difference between looking at a painting and a payntin covverred ina mud or only occasionally visible between the gossamer fronds of ostentatiously shimmery ferns. To be fair, I don't think there's anything actually wrong with a distinctive writing style. Lots of people have one and it works perfectly fine. But if I am paying more attention to the *structure* of *your* prose than the *contents* of your *story*, you done fucked up. That's what "prose should be invisible" people mean when they say that, not "you can't have style at all". (Some people are actually saying the latter, but those people are dipshits. Also, the asterisks make no sense. Why did I emphasise "your"? Are you thinking about the intent of the sentence or about that?)

I just thought you *were* writing in *te's* style.

Boy that dates me, doesn't it.

Sure does but it gave me flashbacks so win some kill some

I *first* encountered *Te* in DC comics fandom and I *thought* it was really *interesting* and *cool* how they'd chosen to *mimic* the weird way *classic* superhero comics used *emphasis* in *dialogue*.

...then I read some of their stuff in other fandoms

NC

I still have fond memories of their writing, quirks and all.

cyrt Yeah I loved a lot of their stuff! But I think the quirks really did work a lot better with some fandoms than others.

It's the difference between looking at a *painting* or looking at the *brush strokes* and going "oh, those are some weird strokes, what's that supposed to be?" except if you want to make some statement out of it like "brush strokes should he invisible" you'd be a *cretin*.

I mean... if the painting is supposed to be photorealist, "the brush strokes should be invisible" would be a perfectly reasonable thing to say. As opposed to an Impressionist exhibition where it would be incredibly stupid.

That said, the vast majority of paintings before the Impressionist era were done in styles that intended to make the brush strokes as invisible as possible, the idea for most of the history of painting was to create an image where most people didn't notice the limits of the medium, so someone talking about how it's ridiculous for anyone to think any painting wouldn't have obvious brush strokes also sounds kind of stupid.

Well, yes, if you thought paintings of the 18th century were the apex of art and what people strived to achieve through most of history, I can see why you'd hold similar beliefs about invisible prose.

cyrt Invisible prose is very much *not* what people strove for in writing in the 18th century... but it is the most common style now. So, yeah, someone assuming that's the default for English prose in the 21st century is approximately as correct as someone in 18th century France was about painting.

Coalie please, I’m begging you. Go look at some paintings in real life.

If I look at a story with "invisible prose" I will also see words! Curious.

Coalie, you need to learn a) how it's possible to use the word "invisible" to describe something that it's literally possible to see if you get up close and look really hard (is it... is it figurative language??? Oh no! Fancy prose!!) and b) that "I want people to pay attention to the images I am creating and not the tools I used to do it" is not the same as "tools don't exist."

Coalie please, I don’t need more confirmation that you don’t know what you’re talking about. I already figured that out. Painting are just really cool and I think it’d be nice for you to go see them.

coalie, please go look at some paintings sometime up close instead of in a book or on the internet. For fuck sakes.

yuletide fic (and fic in general) doesn't need to be realist and strictly speaking literary realism has a long history of including rich prose, you dork

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One Wank After Another

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up

Re: Your stylistic quirks too precious to give up