{"id":95848,"date":"2016-06-22T09:10:41","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T09:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/06\/22\/secularbakedgoods-i-know-ive-talked-about-this\/"},"modified":"2016-06-22T09:10:41","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T09:10:41","slug":"secularbakedgoods-i-know-ive-talked-about-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/06\/22\/secularbakedgoods-i-know-ive-talked-about-this\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/secularbakedgoods.tumblr.com\/post\/145271316765\" target=\"_blank\">secularbakedgoods<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I know I\u2019ve talked about this before, but I\u2019m really sick of seeing writers who should know better say things like, \u201cTragedy is more compelling than stories where characters have a nice day and nothing bad happens!\u201d without understanding <i>why<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Tragedy is an effective story element when it\u2019s a <i>deviation from the norm<\/i>. A character\u2019s 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\u2019s a good story in that.<\/p>\n<p>But when a character\u2019s life is an unrelenting cavalcade of misery, another heaping dose of shit isn\u2019t all that interesting. At that point, a compelling deviation from the norm <i>would <\/i>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\u2019s no wonder the coffee shop AU is such a popular fanfiction trope.<\/p>\n<p>Derek Hale getting a dog and putting his life back together is <i>way<\/i> more interesting than Derek Hale\u2019s life getting worse for the 26th consecutive episode.<\/p>\n<p>Creators like to hold up\u00a0\u201ceverything is fine and nobody dies\u201d as a sign that fanfic is bland and badly written, but if anything, it\u2019s an indicator that <i>mainstream fiction<\/i> is bland and badly written.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>secularbakedgoods: I know I\u2019ve talked about this before, but I\u2019m really sick of seeing writers who should know better say things like, \u201cTragedy is more compelling than stories where characters have a nice day and nothing bad happens!\u201d without understanding why. Tragedy is an effective story element when it\u2019s a deviation from the norm. A &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/06\/22\/secularbakedgoods-i-know-ive-talked-about-this\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[931,4,45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}