Arctic Light

A Sorceress’ Kit Was Discovered in the Ashes of Pompeii
The box of small trinkets was likely used to perform fertility and love rituals and to look for omens about birth and pregnancy. [...] Since there were no gold or precious objects in the trove, which wealthy citizens of Pompeii liked to flaunt, the cache of charms was likely not owned by the mistress of the house or a member of the family. Instead, the owner of the sorceress’ kit was likely a slave or servant.

I'm so fascinated by this. There has got to be a story here. Roman-era urban fantasy, anyone?

The Last Human (in a Crowded Galaxy)
Absolutely adorable webcomic about a vicious alien spider predator adopting a human baby and then having to figure out how to deal with things like, say ... are their mouth bones supposed to fall out?! Eventually it grows a plot involving other alien parents/kids and becomes, if possible, even cuter. There is also a book, which the comic is apparently adapted from, and while I feel as if prose can't possibly capture the utter charm of the illustrations, I went ahead and bought it because the comic is in mid-storyline and I'm desperate to know what happens next!

Sparkle Text
How to make text sparkle in DW posts. Use wisely.

The Order of the Avengers Part 1 and Part 2
Fanart of the Avengers in medieval fantasy style. These are amazing. I can't get over the detail.

AO3 Everything App
Scrapes data from all recent exchanges to find all requests for a given fandom or character. (I did notice that it currently default-sorts by due date, so if for whatever reason an exchange doesn't have a due date, it comes up on top even if it's over. That's pretty minor though.)

Kindletrends
Putting here for my information mostly, so I can find it later - a Kindle genre analysis service for authors, similar to K-lytics, that I'm thinking I might look into possibly using. Or at least look through their free data to see if any of it is relevant to my own market research.

I'm still browsing posts on the Magicians finale, but I've had one open in a tab for awhile: this post by seperis. And the reason is because of this:

But there's also this: any hack on earth can write tragedy. Devastating your audience is the easiest thing in the world.

You know what's hard? Blowing their minds with sheer joy. Shock them by giving them what they didn't even know they could want. I think I can count the times on one hand where a show managed that. To get it, you have to work for it.

I just kind of feel like something clicked into place for me, reading that. As a writer, I want to do that; I want to do it so badly. It's true, I think: it's so much harder to surprise!delight your audience than shocking people with a sudden tragedy as so many books, shows, and movies do. Some of the most burned-into-my-brain moments from various things I've loved have been the times it managed to do that to me. The Ben January books did it on several different occasions. I actually squealed out loud with joy at two different points during the Iron Fist season 2 (accidentally turned out to be the series) finale, in both cases because I really didn't expect to get what I wanted and the show delivered it to me EXACTLY. And certain things that Agent Carter did, as a show, that will make me love it forever. And Stranger Things. And others, of course -- more books than TV, I think.

I have always had a profound love for things that convinced me they were going not-my-way and then went exactly my way.

I think it's much rarer in part because it's a much more personal thing than surprising people with tragedy. It's so indelibly tied up with what a reader/viewer actually wants. A shockingly beautiful twist for one person might not work at all for another. So I'm not even entirely sure you can set out to do this. You might just end up doing it by accident.

But it's such a moment of transcendental joy when it happens.

#writergoals

Seen at snickfic! You can sort yourself here.

The incredibly (well, mostly) unsurprising results:

1 Found Families
2 Amnesia Fic
2 Hurt/Comfort
4 And They Were Roommates!
5 Vampires/Werewolves AU
6 Daemons
6 Polyamory
6 'Groundhog Day'/Karmic Time Loop
6 Snowed-In Cabin/Isolated Together For Extended Period of Time
10 Body Swapping

( Continues under the cut )