ＧｈｏｓｔＢｏｉＭｏｏｎ @ghost-moon-child - Tumblr Blog

ironslung

Bang Chan for Men’s Folio

gutik7

god damn !!!

myartisdangerous

Who is K-Pop’s Jordan Catalano?

I think it’s gotta be Monsta X’s I.M. Same energy

ralhiel

rotblut

PARK YOO NA as Kang Soo Jin & HWANG IN YEOP as Han Seo Jun TRUE BEAUTY (2020, tvN)

remanence-of-love

whitepeopletwitter

bogleech

Some notes don’t get it… Yes that is literally what it is, the idea that working less is just morally wrong.

cursed-and-haunted

Whenever I see an Ivan Aivazovski painting the sea monster in me goes absolutely feral

cursed-and-haunted

I see this and I've never wanted to sink a ship so much in my life I'm biting through wood as we speak

cursed-and-haunted

God if I saw this in person I'd straight up start slithering. Start writhing

uaena03

HELP

cxndy-hearts

the angel and the demon~

qiornono

“et lux in tenebris lucet - and light shines in the darkness.”

greek/roman mythology au for bruabbaweek on twitter!!

hyunjins

snackhobi

I don’t know who needs to hear this but fantastic fantastic fantastic fantastic elastic elastic elastic elastic ring ding dong ring ding dong ring diggy ding diggy ding ding ding

hayleywiiliams

Steve Harrington in 1x01

veeaziel

every day i am percieved™️

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

There is a reason for this though!

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply.

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start “rewarding” the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail.

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist