It was being trans.

In my last journal, I complained about a story with poorly written politics. It was a story, set in the future, about a trans woman character. The universehas nano machines and she wanted to nano-transition, but she couldn't, because the church had banned it. For reasons I can't remember, if they were even given.

So, an extremely generic parody of the Christian church and conservatism, that somehow manages to be more shallow than your average anime or webtoon evil church.

And that was the church's entire involvement in the story.

They're just a hand wave, a plot device. To quote Filmento, "they're not real".

I know I said I could write a better story by turning down the volume on the political parts, but that wasn't quite right. I think I could write a better story by turning up or turning down the volume.

Either make it so transforming nanotechnology is banned by the government and stigmatized because of some disaster in the past that most people blindly blame on nanotechnology (which could still be a political analogy), or make the church side much more important.

Maybe the glitch that turns the protagonist into an evil nanomachine Queen comes out because of some the banned, including the reason that people shouldn't use it. That way, the generic evil church actually did something to contribute to the TF, directly.

(In the original story, the protagonist just…decides to become an evil brainwashing nanomachine queen (with extra plumbing). Which, um, seems like a bad idea, given the analogy the writer was going for.)

Or maybe the protagonist was bullied or impeded by some people following the teachings and dogma of this church. Maybe the bullying or bureaucrat somehow damaged some important piece of stabilizing technology, that the protagonist needed to use for the nanomachines.

Or the protagonist accidentally programs the machines to make themselves evil, because they happen to think about getting revenge at dinner point during the process. Heck, I did something a lot like this in #Collar And Crown.

Or the conversion powers are just intended for self-defense, but she increasingly uses them offensively.

And after the transformation, when the protagonist goes around to start converting her family and acquaintances (and the hypothetical
bully), some of them actually try to hide behind the teachings of this church, so they can resist.

Maybe the bully tries to convert their devout family, who hold the bully off long enough to let the authorities know. Which also lets the protag know the church now knows.

And, of course, some of the "corruptions" are actually just talking people out of the closet.

What if the church sends some kind of investigator that can effectively oppose the protagonist's actions and special powers? Like the mask dudes in Dishonored? This gives the protagonist a motive to be on the down low, and forces interesting choices.

Especially when the wanted posters start going up. With both the protagonist's old and new appearances.

What happens in the actual story; she waltzes in, talks to a paper-thin "character" for a few minutes, and basically goes "well, that's enough time for the pheromones to kick in. You're evil now."

(And then the target gets transformed offscreen. She doesn't even have to put in effort to get them alone.)

In my hypothetical, maybe protagonist starts off trying to just make small changes to people (and vermin), to improve her community a little, but things keep going wrong and spinning out of control, and she's forced to make larger and larger changes.

(Any similarity to "Worm" is entirely coincidental.)

The protagonist has to figure out how she can escape, convert, or disable the opposition. And in the process she discovers they are hypocrites somehow.

Maybe the investigators all have nanomachine corruption, barely kept in check by horrific "treatments", with an "aide" who will Suicide Squad the Investigator if they get out of line. Maybe the church deliberately lets dangerous nano machine technology get out, in order to justify their own existence in the eyes of the public.

Maybe they secretly use nanos and other banned technology in themselves. Because they think they're the only ones pure and good enough to handle it.

Something ironic.

Also, I think it will be funny if the investigator's badge and/or the church's symbol was a hammer. As in, "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

So at the climax of the story, the protagonist has to embrace, truly embrace her evil villainess destiny, in order to stop the bad good guys. And, ironically, become exactly what they feared she would, because of their actions.

Maybe the bad guys bait the trap by threatening a best friend or crush, who turned down conversion earlier because they were afraid, even though they wanted it. ("Whoa, this is too heavy for me. But I won't snitch on you. Bye.") Maybe they were one of the closeted people who accidentally got protagonist into nanomachine transhumanism in the first place.

You could even have the protagonist's cool, "I'm not holding back anymore" speech. Maybe she mass-converted a local gang seen earlier, when she swore she'd make every change of hers personal, artisan, organic, and hand-crafted, so to speak.

She only showed up to stall, so her squad could do the work for her. The Investigator assumed she's cut off from her power, and she can't command the minions, but the Investigator never expected them to be independent, because all the previous nano villains ASSUMED DIRECT CONTROL of their forces.

(And the investigator is a minion for a centralized authority that discourages independence. They were tracking protag, but ONLY protag. It's like poetry, it rhymes.- George Lucas)

Want to add some Resident Evil to the mix? The investigator uses nano machines to transform themselves, to stop the protagonist. It doesn't work because the protagonist has more skill at converting and controlling people. Maybe using nanos in some subtle way the investigator can't.

Like the local vermin.

What if the investigator keeps eating their own minions to heal? You could have an everyman local cop assigned to help the investigator, whose faith is finally shattered by that. Or the big RE transformation, period.

During the final battle, the friend/crush gets critically wounded, and when the battle is lost and won, they admit they were afraid and accept the conversion (with a Big Dramatic Kiss?). Also, the church gets publicly exposed, on the news cameras the Investigator ordered to publicize the expected victory, which severely weakens them.

Oh look, poetic justice.

Riots kick off, the center cannot hold.

Ending is protagonist and team standing on a rooftop at night, looking down at chaos below, with her new consort at her side, and vowing to restore order. Her order.

(Money shot description of team.)

…The hard way.

ENDFILE, COUT

Yes, I know writing a 900 word book outline is a lot of work over a random mediocre wish fulfillment self-insert hypnosis story. But these are writing exercises for me. I've read stories like this (EG CHYOA's Contagion 63x, and Growth-XX) that actually had interesting stakes and challenges.

And as you may have noticed in my stories, I prefer it when the bad guys have to actually struggle to transform people. Or the transformee struggles. Someone needs to really struggle, here.

Heck, even if you don't want the protagonist to struggle directly, maybe her less capable squad could actually make things worse while they're trying to make people better. Accidentally do things that let the Investigator or authorities know something's up.

Maybe certain people need more effort, so she has to focus on corrupting them and stop controlling her squad.

Cone to think, this story would have been better if it just went straight up leftist. Break the needle. The authorities are a combination of a fascist state, an authoritarian church, and an evil corporation.

I'm not sure how that works, exactly, but it would at least be more interesting.

As in, actually interesting.

Anyway, this idea is Creative Commons, if an idea can even be CC'd. Feel free to write your own story or draw your own art or order commissions or even write your own book, as long as you give credit.

…I'm not promising I won't start posting my own 25-part epic on AO3.

AO3 Story Tags: Transformation, techno-corruption, [girls with extra plumbing].
Me: Neat!
Actual Story: The transformations are completely offscreen, and the "corruption" is "the protagonist shows up and uses pheromones and hypno to instantly brainwash everyone". Super easy, not even an inconvenience.
Actual Story: Literally one person offers any significant bit of resistance to her corruption. Offscreen. You just get the highlights.
Actual Story: Also, there's ain't any [girls with extra plumbing].
Actual Story: Not one.
Me: Hello, Ministry of Business? I'd like to report false advertising.

Also, there's some awkward topical issue™ references, and very awkward quotes from a popular anime that was 15 years old when the story was posted. Heck, even the sequel OVA was a decade old.*

And the story is set centuries from now.

Classic online fiction issue. Someone gets a little too-self indulgent with their, um, self-indulgence. You see it in fanfics all the time. References are the same as actual good writing, no matter what Tarantino does.

This isn't even the first time I've found a wasted potential TF story, and thought "...I could do it better."**

I bet I could even leave the topical™ stuff, references and power fantasy in. Just...turn down the volume.

"Didn't you write a story about NFTs?"

Yes, and that was extremely tongue in cheek. Not po-faced.

*There was a tie-in promotional animation that came out about the same time as this story, but the story only references the original anime.

Plus some other self-contradiction.
** I actually have two stories with very similar themes outlined in my head. And at least two already written.

There's this artist I like. This artist has strong, openly expressed opinions on a certain political issue, on a site highly friendly to those views.

I do not agree with them on this issue, but I like their work.

And when I tried to fave their recent work, I found that I was blocked.

There's three ways this could've happened.

1. They saw my latest fave, and checked my gallery, and happened to see that I had opposing views.
2. They saw my latest fave, and manually searched to see if I had those opposing views. Which just seems...tiresome. I'll get back to this in a second.
3. Someone else did 1 or 2, then snitched on me, and the artist believed them (possibly after checking).

And frankly, I can't imagine being any of the people in 2 or 3. I rarely block anyone on any site, and even if it has a non-block Ignore function, I prefer to just ignore them the old-fashioned way. I wouldn't go out of my way to be Thought Police.

If anything, I want people I disagree with to keep seeing what I think. Maybe I can change their mind. And isn't that, y'know, the whole point of activism?

I simply don't want to live in an ideological hugbox.

There are very few people I will block for anything less than outright harassment. Maybe if I see evidence they're harassing others. And I block folks for that even if I'm on the same political "team" as me. Probably report them too.

Other people: I'm going to write, draw, and/or commission the same characters doing the same things, over and over again, for years. Maybe decades.
Me: Hmm. I used an element in this story that's vaguely similar to another element I used in a story I wrote seven years, six months, and five days ago.
Me: Clearly, I'm a complete hack.

Person on Twitter: Boy, I sure do like writing MtF TG caps.
Me: Cool, cool. So...I noticed you retweet a lot of tgirl gifs. Clearly, you think they're hot.
Me: How about writing a male to tgirl caption? Literally just one? Ever?
Person: ???

No, I didn't actually ask them. I just kept scrolling and hoping I'd find something Relevant to My Interests, if you'll pardon the old meme.

For the record, I'd start doing captions myself in a hot second, if I didn't have ethical issues with stealing the content of porn sites.

Me: Oh, I guess I'm having a TF dream. Been a while.
Me: I guess I'm turning into some kind of gooey yellow squishdragon.
Me: I really like the feeling of my wings bursting out of my back in a spray of golden goop.
Me: And the hot, squishy feeling of my-
Me: ...my...
Me: ...I need to wake up. I need to wake up RIGHT N-

My Brain: Hmmm. What I-
Me: Don't.
My Brain: - just kind of -
Me: DON'T.
My Brain: - write a transformation story ab
Me: StOp-

Just to be clear, this isn't an announcement. Besides, I already wrote that story.

SECONDARY FREE IDEA: Woman calls a rideshare. It arrives, it's a clown car. Don't worry, they'll cram her in and get her there on time, though she might come out more...colorful. Make sure you give them five stars.

Yes, this is my thing for TFs in confined spaces again. I don't even particularly like clowns, Bonk, Bonk notwithstanding

DISCLAIMER: I do not endorse drug use, or using biological materials to get back at your jerk roommate for stealing food. In fact, it's almost certainly illegal, and a dick move anyway. Don't do it. Ever.

----

I found a story in a deleted post on /r/ProRevenge, so take it with a grain of salt. Well, more like an entire salt pan.

Bunch of guys share a suite in college. They have their own fridges, and a common area fridge. One of them, P, keeps stealing everyone's stuff and blaming it on a certain controlled substance, including food, even if it's clearly labelled in the common fridge. The last straw was when he ate all of the home cooking they had, and left the containers in his room. So they took some frosted corn flakes and, ahem, frosted them.

Two days later, they see him walk out of the room, and the empty cereal box on the floor. He found out later that year and was "completely traumatized". And, presumably, switched to less potent happy tobaccy, because he never stole from them again.

So, I instantly had an idea how to make this into a TF scenario, as I often do*. Reduce it to four guys. Unbeknownst to them, one of them is infected by a werewolf, or were-hermaphrodite, or were-bimbo, or something, but they don't know it yet. So the thief eats the food and gets infected. They start to transform, and so does the infected person. And they, in turn, transform the rest of the roommates.

The logical extreme of this idea, and the one I'd probably write? All three dudes who frosted the flakes were infected, and the thief turns into some kind of combined creature. Some kind of werewolf hermaphrodite bimbo or something. The three infections mixed are all more potent, so he changes before the full moon is even up. And his powerful pheremones make each of them start changing too, and then they infect each other.

Maybe in different ways; the hermaphrodite person can infect the bimbo, but the bimbo can somehow only infect the werewolf, who affects the intersex person. Or something else needlessly complicated but more intersting than usual. If you don't like, ah, frosting, they can use dandruff or ground hair or bundle the cereal in sweaty socks or something else disgusting before putting it back.

Hang on, I need to retch. I'd like to remind you this sort of thing is wrong, probably illegal in real life, and might get you kicked out of your dorm or apartment. It would be much better to get evidence of the thief and his excuses and drug use, report him, and get him kicked out. I am not a lawyer.

Or you could write it with five dudes. Three infected, one thief, and one normal guy (or gal) who didn't participate and shows up as the POV character just as they're putting the bait back in the fridge. (Maybe it's even his first day there.) He sees them transform, then all four go for him.

The story ends when they wake up the next morning, in what's left of their clothes. And common area. (They are NOT going to get the deposit back.) One of them missed a date, another says they were supposed to finish a paper and darts for their room, and the third turns to the thief and says something like "are you going to stop stealing food now?"

"Are you kidding? That was the best night of my life?"

The third guy groans, and let his head flop back to the ground.

ENDF

* You should see the inside of my head when I pop into the local tool store.

Yes, it is a good movie.

Yes, that One Scene was extremely Relevant To My Interests.

No, not the scene with the lobsters. I hate seafood.

PS: Watch the credits. All the way through.

Some anonymous client hires Catwoman to break into an old, expensive-looking house, someone's summer home. They even lay out a route for her to follow. Which she ignores in favor of exploring. She encounters things that make no sense. Like food in the fridge, even stuff the owner is supposedly allergic to. (She wonders if the owner had a guest over.) Or the stalker photo wall of her in the basement, both on and off work. Or the owner, dead, in an armchair, which someone wrapped in plastic to keep out the smell.

She tries to run. The room locks down; doors locked, shutters over the windows. The client appears. Says s/he's Selina's number 1 fan. Selina tries to turn them down diplomatically, but the client is disappointed and angry anyway. Starts to change into...something. Selina manages to lockpick the door behind her back, but doesn't escape before client scrapes her.

As she exits the house and escapes across the rooftops, she catches glimpses of the client as they continue to change, it talks about being an alpha. Is it another one of Dorian's hybrids (a reference to the BTAS episode "Tyger, Tyger")? Maybe Langstrom's? Or, heck, it could be a plain ol' werewolf; this was the same city that had an alligator-man living in the sewers and a zombie in Slaughter Swamp.

Selina realizes she's starting to change too. Eventually, the, ahem, "heat" overcomes her, and she can't run anymore. The client, who's finished, catches up to her, and she draws her whip. She can't even defend herself properly, and the client takes her whip, ties her up with it, and makes, ahem, "creative" use of the handle on Selina and/or self.

Selina notes that the client is some kind of were-dog. Figures she's going to turn into one too. Notes irony. Tries to tell herself she doesn't like it. Admits she does just before they finish.

Client lets Selina loose, turns back, says s/he's glad Selina sees things "my way". She promptly wraps the whip around his neck, the other end around a nearby chimney, and pushes them off the roof. As they're choking, she climbs down the line, looks them in the eye, and starts to leave.

"Catwoman...doesn't...kill..." they choke out.

"Catwoman isn't a weredog either," Selina snaps back. "But I changed a lot tonight." And then she bats the client back and forth, waiting for them to die.

...Unless, of course, the client wants to submit to her.

The client thinks for a second, as things go dim. "Yes."

Selina lets them go. "Good boy/girl."

End story.

(Needless to say, I'm partial to herms. Partial, but not wedded to the idea.)

howstuffworks.com: Did you know that the English village of Stacksteads has an annual World Gravy Wrestling Championship?
howstuffworks.com: People literally wrestle in gravy.
Nequ: Hmm...
Nequ: I wonder if I could write a porn story out of that?

"...isn't catering to hardcore gay dud-"

>shota

"Every time."

If it's not shota, it's a short femboi. Not much better, for my purposes.

... and he acts and thinks like he fell out of What Tumblr Thinks Sexual Harassers Are Actually Like tree and hit every branch on the way down.

There is no way this guy should be able to function as an employee, much less a former "successful manager". If he has a guardian angel keeping him out of trouble, he doesn't think about or mention them even once.

I've seen three-paragraph Deviantart TG stories that are more subtle and realistic. Caption stories.

Pet peeve; when someone cares more about having fun writing the story than whether their readers have fun reading it.

But Nequ, don't you experiment all the time?

Yes, I do. With a)new things that happen in TFs, and b) new ways to tell the story. I try to avoid self-indulgent wankery. In fact, I've never had any, ahem, self-indulgence for any of my own stories. I just like writing them.

So what's the deal?

You know those stories where the writer wants to be clever more than they want to let readers actually know what's going on?

Oh.

Yeah, one of those. The type of story that uses a bunch of big words for no reason. And that's before the writer's alliteration fetish.

A smutty sequence is literally an action scene. And like any action scene, on the page or onscreen, clarity is important. Especially for smut, when the reader's brain cares more about, ahem, their own self-indulgence than trying to decipher what you're saying.

For example, a character is physically hot, and the narration says he's "putting out lots of infrared energy". Because apparently saying "he's hot" again would get the writer dragged off to the Hague.

Now, I don't mind a bit of circumlocution, a bit of indirectness. But it shouldn't be almost every line.

Correction; almost every line that isn't applying arbitrary, annoying alliteration.

Needless to say, the story that sparked this rant is pretty much a bog-standard TF sequence, except for the over-written purple prose. And you know the worst part?

I knew the writer was like this. I've known for years. But the writer's name didn't register until I was reading the story and it was too late.

Far too late.

TL;DR: Using more words doesn't make your story better. Using more words and alliteration makes me want to metaphorically waylay you with a balloon animal until you become a better writer.

The character has a "dominant presence". Okay, what does that entail? Is it in the way they walk? What does that look like? The way they talk? What does that sound like? Do they take control of the space? How? The Johnson treatment?

And most importantly, how could they be 'dominant' if they're all alone and there's no one there to dominate?

There's a difference between using a term as shorthand for something you actually understand, and using a term because it's a lazy cliche.

Top Tip: If you're writing a corruption story, you don't actually have to tell the reader someone or something is "corrupted" or "corruptive" in the narration.

We're reading the story. Show, don't tell. If someone gets hit with a water balloon full of weird goop and turns into a shemale succubus pooltoy or whatever, I think we can figure out that there's some corruption going on.

PS: And for that matter, "transformative".

TF stories that spend a lot of time on boring setup, and about five seconds on the actual transformation.

Seriously, I found a 8000-word story that had a whopping 800 words of TF. The other smutty bits bring it up to 1000 or so. It's almost 3000 words before we even *see* a furry. Half of that 3K is just the protagonist in his apartment. And half of that is just backstory and angst. There's even a "this character will show up later" flag that turns out to be a false alarm.

I'm pretty sure I could've cut the story - if not the word count - by at least 50%. And I like to think that I wouldn't play the ol' "generic wish-fulfillment protagonist who hates his crappy life" cliche completely straight. He's so generic that we never get a description of what he looks like before he TFs.

Nothing about hair, eyes, age, build, beard... He could be black, white, green, or polka-dotted for all we know. That's how few craps the writer gave. In fact, I don't think there's a single distinctive character trait in the whole cast.

I don't mind setup time if it's good. If it's advancing the plot or revealing character, like Vonnegut said. But the last of "Pixar's 22 Rules for Writing" (Google it!) is "what's the most basic, economical way to tell your story?" And then you build on that. (Also Google "snowflake writing method")

This story...didn't do that.

And like the characters, it's not very original. Once you recognize the protagonist and setup, you know exactly where it's going. The writer could've started halfway through the plot, gave us a quick summary, and gone straight to the action. It's not like you can build up suspense.

/rant

I'm pretty sure that my increasing pickiness is because I'm becoming a more and more experienced writer myself. Which means I notice flaws that most people won't even consider flaws. Or maybe my tastes are just changing. If you showed me this story when I started doing all this, I might've liked it. Heck, I probably wrote something like it once or twice.

Maybe I'm just a nitpicking dick who's taking out his insecurities on others, that's always a possibility.

Details have been changed to protect the guilty.

Tim Schafer once said that he could get away with having Guybrush and Elaine fall in love in a few minutes because Monkey Island is all about comedy. A more serious game series, like Gears of War or even Uncharted, probably wouldn't be able to pull it off.

Now, despite my complaints about plausibility and tone in smut, I'm not strictly wedded to the idea. Sometimes stuff just happens because porn, especially if you like to use humour. And I do.

But even in this biz, it's kinda silly for your narration to proudly point out at the start of the story that our main character just happens to have two parts of her name mean "fish lover" (and then we see her turned into a very horny fish hybrid), or (in another story) that one of the the narrator's hot friends is named "Woman orgasms strongly" in Serbian.

I am not making this up.

By contrast, the ol' "best friend who conveniently reveals they like the protagonist right after the plot starts" bit seems gritty and realistic. Downright Nolanesque.

I remember Furry Art Pile. I still crosspost my work to Weasyl.

All of this has happened before and will happen again.

I can understand your desire to make your novel-length TF story have a lot of character-building and bonding scenes. Presumably you want to retain a serious, dramatic tone. But that requires two things.

1. Being able to write characters well.
2. Not having almost every single person who gets TFed just happen to be a furry.

I know there's a literal deity involved in the plot manipulating events, but this still seems a tad odd for a story that seems to want to be serious.

Speaking of which, there's a reason Vonnegut wrote that every sentence should advance the plot or build character. Faffing about in a convenience store does none of that. As someone who favors a certain niggardliness and efficiency of prose, as my readers may have noticed*, I would've cut out or cut down half the sequence. Maybe more.

Unless this turns out to be a plot-significant convenience store, almost nothing important to the plot happens. And I strongly doubt that's the case, because you regularly describe a bunch of random minutiae.

Another common piece of advice is "read your story out loud". If you had, you might've noticed that you're spending a lot of time talking about stuff that most people probably won't give a crap about.

* Unless I'm being fancy, in which case all bets are off.

I can understand your desire to make your novel-length TF story have a lot of character-building and bonding scenes. Presumably you want to retain a serious, dramatic tone. But that requires two things.

1. Being able to write characters well.
2. Not having almost every single person who gets TFed just happen to be a furry.

I know there's a literal deity involved in the plot manipulating events, but this still seems a tad odd for a story that seems to want to be serious.

Speaking of which, there's a reason Vonnegut wrote that every sentence should advance the plot or build character. Faffing about in a convenience store does none of that. As someone who favors a certain niggardliness and efficiency of prose, as my readers may have noticed*, I would've cut out or cut down half the sequence. Maybe more.

Unless this turns out to be a plot-significant convenience store, almost nothing important to the plot happens. And I strongly doubt that's the case, because you regularly describe a bunch of random minutiae.

Another common piece of advice is "read your story out loud". If you had, you might've noticed that you're spending a lot of time talking about stuff that most people probably won't give a crap about.

* Unless I'm being fancy, in which case all bets are off.

...you're reading popular TF stories by a certain writer and you can't really get into them because of the silly sound effects.

Okay, popular corruption story. You've got 21 parts, come out to something like 175 pages, and I've saved every part to my hard drive. I've been seeing you in the Transformation category for months now, but I've never had time to read more than a few parts. So...let's get started.

Let's see; the main character is accidentally possessed by something that wants to escape and wreak havoc, and...

Okay, story, what's the main way you show the lead's corruption?

She has thoughts! Dark, nasty, corrupted thoughts!

What else?

She has fantasies too!

About what?

Corruption!

Can you be more specific?

Thoughts! And fantasies! And fantasies and thoughts!

In other words, you're telling me that in the entire story, you don't actually describe these lewd ideas in any detail?

Basically!

You just keep going "dark, nasty thoughts and fantasies went through her mind"?

Basically!

Have you ever heard of the writing advice "show, don't tell?"

Nope!

Are there any transformations at all?

Oh yeah! Thousands of 'em!

Do tell!

In the backstory!

...How many do we see?

One! In a side story flashback!

Uh...huh. Are there...any transformations...taking place...in the story's present?

Yes!

Good.

They're all offscre-hey, wait, where are you going?

Heck, towards the latter parts of the story, we're told that hundreds if not thousands of people are being corrupted, but we never see how. The main character was already being corrupted in a less magical way by her friend before the demon lady got to her, but, again, we're just told that and shown the results. Not even a flashback to the moment he first made her think "hey, maybe I like girls too!". We're also told that he likes to be the center of attention, but that isn't really shown until after his transformation, and not even much then.

If you're familiar with The Process forum, one cardinal rule is that the actual process of transformation has to be shown, not just a before and after. This story keeps glossing over both the physical and mental TF, and it's such a waste of potential, especially since someone clearly spent a lot of money on it and the writer does perfectly well with other stories. Even the smutty bits feel flat, though that might just be my tastes.

Still, the story seems to be well liked by folks who aren't me, which once again makes me wonder how much I write what I write because I'm basically going "gimme me the controller, I'll show you how to do this properly."

I'd like to complain about one Halloween story from last year. Specifically, it took 4/5th of the story to get to the actual transformation, and it lasted about two pages. But it's contagious, and they're going to a party, so there should be more coming, right? Well, those were even more skimpy, basically a sentence or two. The story could've been a lot shorter, and a lot better for it.

And yes, I know this is hypocritical for someone who likes character development, but there's a difference between that and wasting the reader's time.