It's cool that Stay Out of the House are celebrating a console release, as I was working on this piece around the same time! Congrats to Puppet Combo and their hard work, I loved this game!
you can pry happy endings from my cold-dead hands. It can be the most heart stopping, gut wrenching fic that has every existed and I will read every drop of it if I get my happy ending. I have had enough painful endings in real life, give me happy in my fantasy world. It can be at the last second, it can be a single sentence, even a single word. Give me all the angst and hurt in the world for 500,000 words, but please give me the comfort I need in the ending. please and thank you.
don't stress about that opportunity that fell through or that friend you lost or that thing you really want to happen but isn't. as long as you keep your chin up and try try try again, better things will replace your losses. i'm looking at my life rn and actually marveling at how every single thing i stressed about, whether it be an opportunity or a person, got supplanted w another thing that is so much better. it really is true that loss makes space for better things. these days i don't get sad when something doesn't work out. i get excited that i'm now open to so many other possibilities out there, so long as i actively seek them. you never lack. you just transition.
I'm a big fan of hurt/comfort tropes where the hurt is ongoing and escalating. Characters trying to cope with their situation and insisting that it's fine, they're fine, even as things get worse and worse and worse - especially if no one around them knows what they're going through.
Characters hiding their illness, even as they grow sicker and sicker. Characters trying to cope as their homelife becomes increasingly abusive or neglectful. Characters ignoring their injuries, only for them to become infected. Characters being stalked/ tormented by a villain and pretending that everything is fine, even as the villain continues escalating. Characters left homeless as winter approaches and their money dwindles.
I could go on. There's something very satisfying about seeing a character frantically trying to pretend like everything is okay until eventually they can't hide it anymore and get caught (and helped) by the people around them.
I have been a reader my entire life. Even before I was old enough to read on my own, I enjoyed it when someone read a book to me. Now reading is a par of my life. I don’t know that there has ever been a time in my life that I haven’t been reading. There is normally not a day that goes by that I am not reading (not unless I’m really sick or something like that). Reading is not only a hobby that…