Okay well, I have a bunch of rationalist followers now so I guess I might as well use them:  What the hell is glowfic and why doesn’t Kingdom Hearts count?

Oh. Nevermind. I think I see what’s going on here. I get it. I mean I’ve only read like a page so far but it seems a bit like improv-but-with-the-dumb-self-improvement-and team-building rules optimized out, and the pre-established background of each borrowed character serving as a mutual point of narrative understanding between authors as they cooperate to make something interesting but also compete to make sure each of their contributions is considered worthwhile.  If my read is wrong, and that’s not what it is, where can I find some of the thing I just described?

That’s a really interesting read on it! Seems accurate enough, though it certainly emphasizes different features than I’m accustomed to seeing emphasized.

Community member and tumblr user @kaylin881 wrote this answer for your original ask:

Glowfic is a subgenre of RP fiction which stereotypically includes rationalist themes such as exploitation of magic to solve wider societal problems, characters talking about their problems, and a general tendency towards power creep. It encompasses significant amounts of fanfic and crossover fanfic but also a lot of original characters and settings. One of the genre-defining features of glowfic is the phenomenon of “alts”, or alternate universe instances of characters, meeting each other and interacting. Kingdom Hearts isn’t glowfic because (a) it’s not in an RP format, (b) it’s not particularly rationalist in theme as far as I know, and © none of the people involved are members of the glowfic community (again, so far as I know).

There’s also a general-audiences intro linked here, which might be useful for seeing how people usually try to explain it, even if you’re coming at it from this more experience-oriented angle.

Thank you, @kaylin881. Are the rationalist themes a prescriptive or merely descriptive staple of the genre?  The clarification re Kingdom Hearts implies a name was attached to a thing that happened, but has it thereby become prescriptive? Would collaborative stories like this require b) and c) in order to claim to be Glowfic?  And on a trollier note, can it truly be rationalist themed if there are “alts” meeting each other? That amounts to more than one outcome occurring in the same universe, which creates a giant ambiguity in the second and third axioms of probability theory. What does it mean to be rational in an irrational universe? Can I join and RP David Hume?  

I’m not a glowficer, but you may want to ask @luminousalicorn and @aestrix.

@marrinikari too

There’s very little about glowfic that’s prescriptive. It may or may not have rationalist themes (certainly nothing I write does, I’m not a rationalist), it may use an existing universe fanfic-style or it may be original world-building; it may feature original characters or canonical characters or a mix of both; it may or may not involve more than one author; and so on. The closest constant we have is that it’s written on the site I built for it, but there’s almost certainly still some old stuff out there predating the site still floating on Dreamwidth. You are absolutely welcome to RP David Hume, I don’t know why not xD Basically the only thing required here is that you want to write something and you want to call it glowfic?

So uhh, my clothing dye ate through my gloves…..

+3 spellcasting +1 summoning EFF: 2XDAM vs undead

The tattoo makes it more demonic than undead.

So Now You’re a Necromancer: Beginner’s Guide.

This says @shitifindon​ aesthetic to me

Announcer on radio: This next one’s dedicated to Findekáno from Midnight.  Findekáno, he wants you to know he’s deeply sorry for what he did.  He hopes you can find it in your heart to forgive him.  *plays song*

Findekáno: *picks up the phone to call the radio station.

Announcer on radio: *stops song* Uh, we’ve just gotten a call from Findekáno and he told us what Midnight did.  It’s pretty appalling and, Midnight, if you’re listening, I don’t want to play your song anymore.

Responding to tags: The original is from Friends! Cannot presently open Youtube but best guess for sauce based on Google results is this video.

{context, followup}

Favoriting:

[On the top right of a story, next to the title, there is hamburger menu. If you click it it drops down. One of the dropdown options is Favorite.]

Also note that if you favorite an author what this appears to do is put all their threads in your favorite list. (And if they don’t have any there is no change I could discern). 

(Favoriting an author:

[On author page on the left there is a menu of links. The bottom one is Favorite.])

Don’t know about the other thing atm.

Hi! I am tech support!

There are three things you can favorite: authors, continuities, posts.

I am not an efficiently replying person at the moment because I’m vacationing but I am otherwise more than happy to help!

@luminousalicorn said: I don’t own glowfic.com.

Oh. Who does then? Are these people you and/or Kelsey know? Can I contact them?

I just thought that a wiki is something the fandom would be happy to build by its own effort (of course the authors will have admin access to everything), and it would be really useful for the RPers and save you the need to answer the same questions over and over. Tell me if you don’t like the idea for some reason, I don’t want to make a mess of the game, just trying to help.

Hello! How can I help :D

i want a setting that was once a high fantasy world but time has passed and the days of quests are over while the age of indoor plumbing has begun but the elves and stuff like still exist 

like i want fuckin.. space operas where humans weren’t all that phased by aliens because there had always been other species, and our starfleet utilizing translation potions to help communicate

or a cyberpunk world with like digital magic and the hideous, deformed descendants of dragons creeping through the deepest darkest alleyways of the cities, devouring any fool who dares go down where the neon lights don’t reach

magic mecha to defend us from the giants awoken form their slumber by fucking dwarfs who couldn’t stop mining where they knew they shouldn’t, meanwhile rival mage factions are getting close to all out war to be fought with spellcasting pistols and rifles rather than wands or staffs

come on guys what the fuck happens 1500+ years after our young hero leaves his village to become a mighty warrior i gotta know y’all

*cracks knuckles*

This is a small, but highly interesting genre that I find absolutely fascinating because, generally speaking, Epic Fantasy worlds are VERY OLD and they DON’T EVOLVE (see: Harry Potter, Game of Thrones).

But anyway. I think Brandon Sanderson was writing something like that, which means that in the not to distant future, someone will probably claim he invented it, but IN THE MEAN TIME, here are some recs:

1. Cold Magic by Kate Elliot 2. The Curse Worker Trilogy, by Holly Black 3. The Order of the Air series by Jo Graham and Melissa Scott (these are in the same ‘verse as Graham’s other Numinous World books which take place after the fall of Troy, during the ascension of Ptolemy I, the reign of Cleopatra, and the French Revolution, as well as short stories throughout history). 4. The Many-Coloured Land books by Julian May 5. Actually, I think the Trillium books that Julian May co-wrote would count too, but you have to read MZB to get there so I understand if you don’t want to. 6. The Buried Age, which is a Star Trek book about the theory of very old thing being more advanced than you, an advanced society

I think Kevin Hearne has a series too? Iron Druid or something?

MY POINT IS: please write more of these, they sound like fun.

The Belgariad and Mallorean by David Eddings have the “Fantasy worlds are static and can never move past their medieval fantasy trappings” thing as an important plot element between the two series, with the latter making trying to break that stasis the overall goal of the series.

This is true! And Eddings doubles down in the Elenium and the Tamuli by introducing sci-fi elements to the world-building and mythology. Also at one point there’s kind of a space ship? It’s a little vague (again, bc of the plot).

Elder Scrolls lore - yes, that Elder Scrolls, Generic-White-Guy-In-Horn-Hat-Shouts-At-Dragons!Elder Scrolls- is chock-full of this, though it’s mostly in Morrowind-era stuff and/or stuff that doesn’t make it into the games proper. 

KINMUNE is a short story about an AI time-traveling into the past. If you know even a little bit about TES lore, you can sort of understand what’s going on. 

Then you have C0DA. C0DA is… special, it’s the script to a comic that was never properly published, and … it’s full of weird, trippy mysticism, I haven’t read it through all the way, but it’s about the future of the Elder Scrolls universe. It’s good. For reals. 

Mercy Thompson! Coyote shapeshifter raised by werewolves working as a VW mechanic in the Tri Cities. Fae recently decided they were inevitably due for exposure and revealed themselves to the world in a preemptive media campaign; this did not go disastrously but welp that sure could’ve gone better and now they’re mostly in reservations. Werewolves are not public but man are they ever nervous about modern technology, take your pick between cameras and medicine. Vampires are NOPE NOPE NOPEing around quietly cause wow that would go so badly, vampires are definitely a myth kids, nothing to see here. Coyote shapeshifters should keep their heads down. Mercy is very, very bad at this.

Something else that makes me cringe? People who think they’re irregularly dark. You know the type.

“I’m not like normal girls lol I read the wikipedia page on Bundy! I’ve got such dark fascinations.” “I guess I’m such a twisted person, I watch horror movies for FUN!”. “Haha unlike other girls….I LIKE night time!” “I know who cthulu is so im basically satanic, I bet my mom would be so shocked!!!”. “I reblogged one picture of a skull, so yeah you could say I’m morbid >:3” “I’m insaaane!!! The dark depths of my soul would scare anyone”

Like come on am I the only one who gags at this stuff

tbh i really dont like it too a lot of the time but on another hand i feel like i often fall into the category lmfao

well if you think about it, it’s kind of fucked up that girls absorb this notion of what girls are supposed to be like that’s so sweet and so clean and so harmless and so pleasant, that young teens genuinely judge themselves to be crazy or freakish for their totally normal human interests in horror, crime, and monsters. it takes them until their late teens and twenties to have the maturity and self-confidence to realize that these are normal human interests that lots of other women share. 

That kind of self-perception and social presentation as “lol dark XD” probably comes from someone who’s been bullied and ostracized for being a bit weird and wants to head off the rejection as soon as possible  It’s an attempt to make friends who won’t provide that experience of rejection, by warning away anyone who would police that kind of shit.   To me it’s a sign that they haven’t found a community they feel safe in.

Back when I taught beginner swordplay for a medieval re-enactment group, I had a lot of girls come in and try that on me–“I’m a freak and I’m into really weird stuff, people get grossed out by me.” “I’m kind of insane, don’t talk to me unless you want to damage your brain.” “I’m actually kind of into some violent things.”

The best part of doing that was treating them like totally ordinary people–”You’re into weird stuff? That’s a Ranma t-shirt, do you mean anime?” ”Oh, you’re insane? I’m mentally ill myself. I take meds for depression and anxiety, and it’s why I’m studying to be a psychologist.” “Yeah, it’s pretty normal around here to collect replica weapons. They’re really pretty, but I prefer to spend my money on less-showy sport versions that I can use in actual combat.”

You could see the defensive awkward grins melt off them, the anxious self-conscious fidgeting flow out of their bodies and onto the floor, as they suddenly started standing straighter, planting their feet firmer, meeting my eyes more, flinching less when they landed their swords on me. They stopped self-deprecating around me, started more confidently stating their preferences and sharing their personalities as something more nuanced than “you’ll probably dislike it.”

So sometimes I cringe a little when I meet a lol!edgy person, but mostly I feel bad because it means they probably haven’t found a safe group of people to shelter in.

Also a lot of these kids are probably in environments where they’re being actively told by authority figures that the thing they like is evil and abnormal, whether for religious reasons or “girls are supposed to be wholesome and pure” reasons or something else entirely.

I probably did this as a kid and I think the only remainder is my “haha I have violent hobbies”, but that’s more a coded political discomfort than a social one (my gunsbad! instinct vs TAKE THAT YOU STUPID PIECE OF ORANGE CLAY okay maybe this is satisfying)

I think my husband might have been the first to make that “violent hobbies” joke, actually, and we still tease each other about it because in the event of a zombie apocalypse we’re 100% embracing our reversed gender roles and I’mma go defend the house while he stays inside and does first aid.

a love letter to the Constellation

 This one’s for @marrinikari and @throne3d.

I don’t think I mention enough how much I love the Constellation.

I started glowficcing at the very end of its being on Dreamwidth, a little while before the Constellation sprang into being from Marri’s head, like Athena from the head of Zeus. So I only had a little taste of glowficcing not on the Constellation, and that was quite enough.

I am genuinely unsure whether I’d have ended up getting into glowfic if it weren’t for the Constellation – doing it on Dreamwidth was that unwieldy. I know I’m not the only one to have expressed this sentiment. If we’re counting up our Very Large Numbers of glowfic, T’Mir style, I think Marri should get a significant cut of every new thread made.

Keep reading

So, I’ve tried responding to this a few times now, but every time I go back to read it and respond properly my brain gets distracted by being full of delighted exclamation marks. @shedoesnotcomprehend is a beautiful cinnamon bun and everything about this post is delightful.

I made the Constellation mostly for fun because I don’t get to code at work any more, and picked up the pace around when Firefox starting threatening to turn off LJLogin completely (I think we’d gotten to the point where you had to start editing config variables in the .env file to get it to stay? No idea if it still functions on up to date Firefox browsers any more, and it certainly never worked on anything like Chrome or IE or Safari.). Sometimes it’s an interesting intellectual puzzle, and sometimes it’s a way to learn new things, but mostly it was just “I need a thing, it doesn’t exist, I’ll make the thing.”

And people like it. This is always slightly mind-boggling to me. I built this thing for lulz in my free time and people use it and enjoy it and write me essay length letters. (Mori <333333) And this is amazing and motivating and man I know I do not have free time for half the things I’m doing on this site but getting reactions like this is what makes everything so very, very worth it.

And some of it I feel a little silly taking credit for! (Even putting aside @throne3d’s fantastic hard work, which I always try to give appropriate credit for.) Like, I love the search feature, but so much of that from a technical perspective is just “the database supports text search.” If our host happened to require that we use the MySQL database instead of the PostgreSQL database? Not a thing I could’ve done without a ton of work and possibly buying an additional server. But then some of the things that seem Super Obvious to people are probably weirdly complex on my side, so it probably evens out eventually xD

Your list of glorious edge cases is in fact glorious. It’s actually really helpful! Things like this are why I’m still too nervous to take the site out of beta (...okay they’re like 10%, and 10% fear of prices going up and the remaining 80% is Nebulous Legal Fear) but then you guys find them and I can fix them and you just. Report them, with helpful details, instead of bitching at me. I have worked with customers before, guys, this is so important in a way I’m not sure people understand? This is the actual best way to bribe me to fix things.

Even the AWS outage! Like. We run on Heroku, which is hosted on AWS, which went down for like five hours, and this is at least two removes of anything I can personally fix, and was a large enough outage that I couldn’t have done anything anyway because it affected my actual job and I had to respond to panicked messages “I’m sorry but I have to ignore this.” And no one yelled, or ragequit the site, or anything! Literally the worst that has ever happened to me is that someone might make passive aggressive comments about proper staging environments! Which I ignore since I’m not the one who causes the problem. (Like Throne said, we do have fairly extensive tests, but actual test environments are supposed to mimic production, which means I’d have to spend the same amount of money on them, and, no thanks.) This is ridiculous in all the best ways.

And that tip jar works way better than I expected it to! I know it’s not feasible for everyone, I totally get that, no one should feel bad if they aren’t contributing. But I don’t think I’ve spent more than $10 a month on the Constellation at any point in its life, and for a month it actually went over by $1 (and then my free Amazon credits expired and that put paid to that xD) but like... I’ve had donation buttons on things before, and this is the first time people reliably use them, much less actually covered my costs however briefly, and I cannot say enough times how amazing that makes this group.

I love you guys too, into all the tiny tiny pieces <3

plot hole?: if taking apart TVs is dangerous, who are the balls-of-steel dudes who assemble them???

plot filler?: they grow on trees? someone stumbled upon schematics and used magic to build it? they are imported from other planes (TreeV plane?)?

@wrapscallion said: I am going to go on a guess and say that they are not as dangerous in their preassembled state

the universe in this story is opposed to scientific reasoning, and attempts to figure out underlying principles are met with a huge middle finger on physic’s part

but! I have more ideas!

I believe the canonical explanation is along the lines of “don’t stare at it too closely”. So like. If they try to figure out why each piece works, it blows up? I picture this in my head as people making the same dinner but without a recipe. You’ll probably figure out roughly the same thing each time basically by force of habit, and that’s totally fine. Everyone can have matching entrees. But trying to measure out exact quantities and figure out the specific temperature at which to bake it and testing out substitutions? Your oven is about to be super, super melted. And your kitchen. And probably your face.