I’m still thinking about the time I mentioned to my dad that I was thinking about writing fanfic, because I liked the idea of setting achievable writing goals and being able to immediately publish it and get feedback, but I didn’t really have any ideas for plots. And he (immediately intuiting that when I said “I’m thinking of writing fanfic,” what I meant was, “I’m thinking of writing Magnus Archives fanfic”) said, “Well, you’ve got to come up with two parts: there’s the statement, where something spooky happens, and then there’s the outer layer of the story, where you’ve got the recurring characters - and, like, Martin’s your favorite character, so he’d obviously show up…” and I had to stop him and ask, “Wait, do you think all Magnus Archives fanfiction takes the form of statements?”

When I explained that it didn’t, he went, “So, what, it’s just anything? Just, like, ‘Martin goes to the bank?’”