(no subject)

[iniquiticity]

Anonymous asked
Hi! I'm the "you're so lovely and deserve the absolute best" anon from a few days ago! Just wanted to confirm that the latest chapter of Greenhouses is extraordinary & I adore you. I love the way your mind works & I LOVE these two characters monologuing at each other. Disregard anyone who complains re: slow burn. I totally get what you mean about thinking other stories are better than what you've written, but you're delightful and your writing is SO worth any wait. You're incredible, Pickle. <3

hi anon! thank you for being so kind and thoughtful! i really appreciate your compliments and thoughts! i know it’s silly to say but i really want you (and everyone else) to know that it 100% helps and is seriously excellent and motivating and empowering to receive positive feedback.

i’m actually going to reward you for this ask by hijacking this ask to ramble on about “slow burn” and writing greenhouses and greenhouses!alex, who in a lot of ways makes the story go, especially after washington throws a plant through a glass window.

here’s the thing. i’ve gotten a couple of comments, asks, and other random feedback which say “hey, can you speed up the slow burn a little bit?” and i’m pretty sure most of these don’t actually WANT to speed up the slow burn - what they want is all the pay-off that makes slow burn worth it but they don’t actually want the effort of reading the slow burn. i can assure you that many people have heard me scream “WHY DON’T THESE FUCKING IDIOTS KISS ALREADY????” into the internet. trust me, i also suffer from this story being slow burn, in this way. but here are two things:

a) please do not request or demand, even as a joke, a story to be a certain way. if what you mean is ‘god i’m dying becuase of this incredible build-up but i want the reward NOW,” that’s actually what you should say (”WHY WOULDN’T THESE IDIOTS KISS?” “YOU ARE KILLING ME WITH THIS SLOW BURN” “OH MY GOD LOWER ME INTO A HEDGE” are all also extremely adequate). if what you really mean is “i wish you would write this story a specific way which isn’t the way you’ve written it,” then what you should actually do is write the story you want to read, rather than suggest, 81,000 words later, for a story to be a specific way to suit your interests. be the fic you want to see in the world. i understand that fic is designed for mostly quick immediately-now gratification. however, i think if you’ve read (or written) 81000 words of a story, you should probably realize that is the way the story is going to be written.

b) look, this is not high literature, and it’s certainly slow burn, for the definition of slow burn. but here’s the thing: this story is impossible to write in any other way. i am not constantly thinking “should i stop being slow burn now?” and then going “naaaah.” i am usually going “what would alex do next? what is the most in-character way to respond to this particular action? what happens here? what is washington’s response?” etc. there are MANY OTHER STORIES, which are not slow burn, which are written in ways which designate them as able to be written as not slow burn. this story didn’t start out as slow burn. in the beginning, i actually only thought it was gonna be around 30-40k: they fight, they fall in love, they conquer some obstacle, about 10k each. but that isn’t how the story worked out. because it just takes a long time to warm up to someone who forced you to marry them, especially when you are deeply suspicious, and that guy keeps digging his own hole. if i told you “hey, dude married guy against his will, and then they fell in love,” you might be like “wow, they fell in love with a dude who forced you to marry them? well, that was quick.” and … well, does that sound like a-dot-ham to you? he tried to fight every democractic-republican at once.

so what i’m saying is that while this story is slow burn, it was not conceived as “i’m going to write a slow-burn story.” the main element of the story is not that it is slow burn. the main element of the story is that one character is hesitant and confused about his feelings, and the other is deeply suspicious and untrusting, and that’s just a slow way to unfold a relationship, and this is what you got.

c) don’t you think the story would seem really weird and unusual and out of place if, 81,000 words later, it adapted a different pace? it would be like the equivalent of someone in your office who usually has wild hair shaving their head or something. the story would be kind of different and badly-paced and disturbing. it would be off. really weird and creepy and bad-vibe tastic. trust me, you don’t actually want me to change the pace of the story at this point.


thanks for letting me hijack your ask, anon. you are great and i appreciate you a lot and i’m so glad you like the story.