How i read fics

Love a band that loves each other

Its funny if I think about shipping as in the beginning of me getting into ATL years back I found a random video YouTube recommended me of Jack/Zack (sorry I forget ship names) stuff and I just kind of rolled with it casually, but then I took a sharp turn into Jalex, and it made more sense as I was already doing more with them together in art and stuff and their chemistry is just off the charts and makes it a breeze.

Jalex was always so big that I feel like even if you just barely listened to atl, you shipped it. I was a casual fan for a couple years and even I was like, yeah I like Jalex. I also fully believed that they were actually a couple. I was actually shocked to learn that Alex and Lisa were a thing. For context, I started listening to atl in 2012 (which is way too late for someone my age dumbass me listening to my dumbass friend at the time who said they sucked). I was a casual fan (as in I loved don’t panic but didn’t branch out a ton beyond the other albums’ singles). Then, my aunt paid for me to go see them on the back to the future hearts tour with sleeping with sirens bc my little cousin really wanted to go, but my aunt didn’t want to and didn’t want my cousin going alone. Seeing them onstage for two seconds was enough to get me where I am today. So anyway, long story short, I shipped Jalex before I even cared a ton about atl.

source.

“I thought you were dying.”

“Spiders can be murderous.”

guys we’ve got a problem i can’t find the fucking cornelia street lab boys doc

Oh man, as a horror fan? I am enjoying the evolving discussion about "cozy horror" on my dash here today, tee hee. I agree with everyone that it's a terrible idea but I'm still like "Is it possible?" So:

Cozy mysteries, also referred to as "cozies", are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur off stage, the detective is an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community. Cozies thus stand in contrast to hardboiled fiction, in which more violence and explicit sexuality are central to the plot. The term "cozy" was first coined in the late 20th century when various writers produced work in an attempt to re-create the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. (Wikipedia)

So, to summarize:

Violence is off-stage

Amateur sleuth

Small community

Usually a female protag/sleuth

The problem is that for a lot of horror to work, some measure of it has to take place on-stage. The other question is "How do you define 'horror'?" As a librarian (emerita), we rolled with the genres publishers identified, but we sometimes disagreed with a book being placed in Speculative Fiction or in General Fiction. "The Shining Girls" was originally shelved in general fiction and then got moved to the speculative fiction section and was stickered as "horror."

Most people agree that Stephen King is a horror writer (though he's written in other genres), so unless a book is obviously Not Horror, his books go straight to the horror section. One could argue that at least some of his books verge on the definition of "cozy horror": small towns in Maine, someone dragged into the horror unexpectedly (amateur sleuth parallel), but not usually a female protagonist, and there's usually at least some violence on-stage.

See, that's the thing: you gotta hear about what's horrifying or it's kind of dull (but if you over-tell the horror, then it gets boring--that's my feeling on it). It's a lot harder to leave the horror unknown, though it's possible in some genres. The Backrooms lacked a lot of explanation at first, which made the concept of boring offices that go on forever more horrific.

Ironically, some old Southern Gothic works could count as "cozy horror," which isn't fair to the Southern Gothic genre. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" might work because there's no viscera on-stage. It's all implied and has a maybe/maybe not ending. But the implications of viscera and violence are writ large. Quite a bit of Faulkner meets the requirements, but, again, the blood and guts are sometimes on-stage.

"We Have Always Lived in the Castle" might also work, though I think there's some violence/horror on-stage; certainly it's described by Merrikat (full disclosure: it's been a while since I last read it).

Certain parts of the definition transfer over easily: small community, female protagonist, even an element of being an "amateur" or someone dragged into the horror unexpectedly all transfer.

But, no, I don't think "cozy horror" is really possible in the same way that "cozy mystery" is possible. There's so much of horror that must be on-stage as a convention of the genre that trying to cozy it up by moving it off-stage is impossible.

I may have more thoughts on this. This is just off-the-cuff lunchbreak posting.

Hello, yes, I'd like to order Bartender AU with a hint of demonic elements, thanks

As a lifelong Margaret Atwood fan I am now discovering the wonder that is Shirley Jackson! I’m reading We Have Always Live in the Castle and learning that I really am that simple. Give me an unreliable female narrator written by a woman and I am immediately ready to support violent murder.

Anyway Cousin Charles definitely needs to die, get his ass, Merrikat.

im not like other girls im hashtag oldschool (think jalex is better than merrikat or rilex)

Funny story that I'm sure jalex confessions would appreciate too. I actually never shipped jalex because when I first saw a picture of the band I thought Jack and Alex were brothers. When I realized they weren't I still couldn't ship them and to this day I still don't. Though I'm not opposed to zalex or merrikat c:

I also thought they looked kind of similar when I first got into them. It’s the eyebrows. But I definitely didn’t think they were brothers lol. I’ll be sure to tell Torri this lmfao, but she loves merrikat and Jalex pretty equally.

source.