In a story of how cruel and relentless the passage of time can be, 27-year-old Ali Hasel’s recent claim that there’s not enough time in the day to get anything done has been slightly undermined by the fact that she just spent the last three hours reading Trolls fanfiction on her phone.
“Every single day I wake up, blink, and then it’s somehow already 5 p.m.!” Ali told reporters, conveniently leaving out the block of time after “blink” and before “5 p.m.” when she reads Trolls fanfiction until her eyes bleed.
She continued, saying, “After getting married and leaving Troll Village for a quieter life in the suburbs, Poppy and Branch find themselves getting restless with their simple little life and wanting more. However, when one of them gets sent to prison, the other must break them out and discover what they truly value in the process.”
When reporters were visibly confused as to what they were supposed to gather from that, Ali admitted that it was just the synopsis of the latest Trolls fanfiction she was reading, but that she “never gets to talk about it.”
Sources close to Ali say her fanfiction obsession is the main reason she never gets anything done, not the amount of hours in the day which have, famously, always stayed the same.
“She spends the first 45% of her day reading some weird fanfiction about the Trolls characters growing up, getting married, and working regular jobs, then she gets out of bed and grabs a coffee,” said Ali’s roommate, Cameron. “The craziest part of that is that she’s never actually seen the Trolls movies. She reads these fanfictions as standalone pieces of work.”
In spite of her roommate’s comments, Ali defends her fanfiction habit, and maintains the lack of sufficient daylight hours are to blame for her lack of productivity.
“How am I expected to get anything done once the sun sets?” she said. “It’s so cold and it’s so dark.”
Reporters had to admit she kind of had a point.
As of press time, Ali hadn’t changed anything about how much time she spends reading fanfiction (or, as she calls it, “regular fiction”), but says she’s going to try waking up earlier and writing an hourly to do list and see if that helps her productivity.
“So far, my schedule is ‘6 a.m. to 4 p.m. – read a Trolls short story written by a 15-year-old on AO3,’ so nothing’s really changed except that I’m consuming more Trolls content than ever before. I might even get around to watching the movies!”
Sources say that while that’s not quite a step in the right direction, it’s a step in a direction, which is something, at least.
