B10) What’s the best plot twist you’ve ever seen?
I have a few that probably don’t actually count as plot twists, but they made my brain buzz in the same way a plot twist does. None of them were this huge dramatic reveal that painted everything that happened before in a new light, but in every instance, the story went a completely different direction from what I was expecting when I started reading.
- Chapter 15 of Keysie’s The Missing Link. I’m not going to say what happens because the experience is part of the fun, but I’m pretty sure this chapter got me high. Genuinely. I was dizzy and giddy and grinning, and every time something new happened that was different from my expectation, it brought me up a little further. I can’t remember ever having a reading experience like it.
- The first chapter of Chance. “Reese, it’s the first chapter? How is there a twist; there isn’t any plot yet?” you ask. Well, my friend, as we’ve established—I don’t read tags. I operate on summaries, writing style, and vibes, so I often go into stories with certain expectations based on the tropes I think I’ll find. I’m right pretty often. But in this case, you immediately did the opposite of what I expected. I remember reading it and my eyes getting big and taking a big, deep breath as I felt everything shift. It actually felt physical to me as I adjusted to the much more interesting story I was going to get than what I had already laid out in my own head. It’s so good. I love it so much.
- The last couple chapters of @euripidestrousers The Fall rewired my brain. This is going to sound stupid, but this fic made me so sad I’d never come up with anything so brilliantly unexpected in all my life. (Look, I know, I know, I understand the scoff I can hear two states away, I swear I’m not fishing, but broad swathes of that fic were crowd sourced, ok? It feels dishonest to say the twists were me. This one is all Cat.)
- Literally anything @emeryhall writes. I read the summaries to heighten the anticipation and that’s where I learn which fandom I’m joining today, that’s all the information I have, I just put my soul in their hands and know I’m in for a wild ride. The Intern is my baby and I will someday post my doctoral thesis on its brilliance. Maybe for Halloween this year.
C8) What is one plot twist you wish people would stop using?
This is a hard one for me to answer because I’ll buy just about anything if it’s sold to me correctly. I lean toward the types of plot twists that, for lack of better phrasing, make the rest of the story feel like it doesn’t matter? Like “they were dead all along” or “it was all a dream;” the type of thing where the twist makes everything before basically not-real. I don’t like to say “doesn’t matter” because I think that moment of the main character’s perspective drastically shifting can be really brilliant, but those types of things need to actually be a surprise for it to work, and unfortunately, after something becomes a cultural touch point (i.e. The Sixth Sense; Empire), it makes it much harder to repeat.
I don’t see a ton of this in my part of fandom, and one thing I love about fanfic is that it’s where people come to be little weirdos and make commercially unviable shit. I feel like creativity in fandom is off the charts, actually, so in my experience, I’m more likely to get something completely off the wall and unexpected in fanfic than I am in a published work/film. Obviously that’s not universal in either direction, but how often are you seeing mpreg in a theater?
Dealer’s choice—D7) Why did you leave your most recent comment? Will you share it with us?
I’ve started working my way through @leavesthatarebrown’s fics, so she got my last one on the first story she ever posted yesterday. Unfortunately, I wrote it write before I took a nap so it’s completely unintelligible, but that’s where it was. For better or worse, this is what I had to say:
This is really, really lovely. It really captures the thing I think works about wolfstar in ways it doesnt necessarily work with others—they understand the worst parts of each other in ways other people don’t, even if they respond to their own darkness in opposite ways. They can feel the support the other needs in ways other people don’t get, even when just a little messy or mean or loud. I love them, and I love the forgiveness, and I felt so, so many things in such a few number of words. This is just so good.
(I swear my comments are usually much more insightful than this, though they’re almost always typo-ridden for some reason. I just couldn’t put together a coherent thought for some god-forsaken reason)