Beshel

Three conspiracy theorists walk into a bar… You can’t tell me that’s just a coincidence!

[kaylmao]

work like a red onion

play like a white onion

fuck like a green onion

[blairwitchdiaries-deactivated20]

turns out my life purpose isn’t supposed to be as small and silent and accommodating and convenient as possible

[kosmogrl]

oooh I get it it’s always gonna be because of the environment I grew up in

[aceofpans]

it’s because of the curse

[desinteresse]

Men who talk shit about gold diggers underestimate the grit it takes to put up with an insufferable man, even when money is involved. We should be thanking them for their service like they are veterans.

[little-trash-ghost]

Can't leave this in the tags..

[demilypyro]

Sometimes as a European you play an American game and even though you speak fluent English and culturally there's not too much different you can Tell you're missing some kind of cultural context

I had no fucking clue what a mormon was when I played the New Vegas DLCs

[demilypyro]

This post is not an invitation for you all to explain mormonism to me I am fine not knowing about this

[propalahramota]

I can't put this in tags like a normal person because apparently Tumblr no longer lets you do long tags which is dumb and I hate it but ok. Long time ago when I was but a wee 14 years old kid living in a sleepy town in Northern Ukraine, one day my bestie told me: hey, have you heard about this new English speaking club at the city library? They say it's run by two guys that came here on a mission all the way from America. And I was like: what mission? And she told me they were supposed to be Mormons. I didn't believe her. I was convinced she was fucking with me because at the time I didn't think that Mormons were real. I honestly thought they were fictional and only existed as a gag in South Park. And then a couple of days later those two missioners actually showed up to our English class to promote their little conversion club. Those poor men stood in front of a bunch of 14 years old and told us they were Mormon and several of my classmates said: wait, Mormon? Like in South Park?, and from their pained expressions you could clearly tell that it wasn't the first time they had been asked that here.

[darlingofdots]

ten years ago as part of my creative writing degree we had a class on professional development where we learned how the publishing process works for different mediums and how to choose an agent and what the role of a publishing house is and back then, the advice was "self-publishing has its advantages but a traditional publisher will provide editorial support and market your book and if your book sells well enough they want to invest in your future" and now basically none of that is true anymore. books make it to shelves with noticeable errors and structural issues that could be addressed with one or two more rounds of developmental editing, authors are expected to do more and more of the marketing themselves to the point that they are expected to be social media influencers in their own right, and publishers appear to be prioritising flashy debut novels with huge advances they don't outsell, which means the author is less likely to get a follow-up deal.

Obviously a publisher is a business and a business needs to make money, but the idea used to be that you'd have a couple of very successful authors who bring in so much cash that they subsidise the new kid who is building a back catalogue of books that sell okay until they get name recognition and pay for themselves. I was told back then that a couple thousand pounds was very reasonable for a debut novel because you want to get royalties for the sales exceeding your advance and that way the publisher sees you as a profitable investment. The last couple of years I keep hearing about six figure book deals for debut (!) literary fiction (!) novels, what on earth?

I'm not saying that the publishing industry is uniquely awful or that it's worse than it's ever been or whatever, but especially in a time when reading and talking about books is trendy and there is so much money in books, it feels very, I don't know, symbolic? Prioritising flashy one-time projects over sustained and sustainable growth. Investing only enough resources to make your product fit for sale but not enough to make it good because people will buy it anyway. It's frustrating to me as a reader and as an aspiring writer and as a person existing in a capitalist system.

[poorshadowspaintedqueens]

One of the tags referred to people thanking their editorial teams in acknowledgments, and I want to point out the growing prevalence of people thanking beta-readers and writing groups, both of which usually rely on a pre-existing community or relationship and, just as importantly, are unpaid.

My day job is as a freelance editor for nonfiction books, and I can safely say that if the publishing industry were operating as intended, I would either not have a job at all or be working for a specific press. Authors pay me directly to do the work that a press editor used to do as part of publication contracts. This is because so many presses have started outsourcing all their editorial work to either third-party contractors or, even worse, to genAI.

In short, venture capital has broken the publication industry the same way it's broken the retail, restaurant, and travel industries.

[darlingofdots]

I didn't go into this side of it in my original post but YES! Fuck! I know this is a huge issue for translators too because they're being asked to do more work in less time for less money and I've heard rumblings about human translators being brought in only to essentially proofread work done by AI, which is so disrespectful to the sheer skill and artistic abilities of (literary) translation...

Anyway, I love editing. I think I love editing almost more than writing, and I'm pretty sure that I'm better at it. Last year I edited an academic article from 11k to 9k words for my supervisor and I felt like a god when I finished it, but when my supervisor asked if I'd thought about doing this professionally, I had to tell her that there's just not a viable career in editing anymore. Publishers used to employ! editors! Several different kinds of editors for different stages of the process! That used to be my dream job!

Editing is so essential to making a text good. It doesn't matter how talented or dedicated you are as a writer, you cannot achieve the level of quality by yourself that you could achieve by working with a skilled editor. That's normal! The lone genius who comes out of the cave with the perfect novel does not exist! The manuscript that gets sold to a publisher is supposed to be handed off to an editor who tells you to tighten up that plotline and reminds you that every day can't be Tuesday and sharpens your prose so your voice really shines. Skimping out on that part of the publication process takes money out of the hands of skilled professionals, leads to consumers (ew) receiving subpar products (ew!), and is such an injustice to the writers whose work can't reach its full potential (and the writers who won't get published because they can't afford to pay an editor out of pocket!).

It drives me up the wall. I hate reading a mediocre book and knowing that a skilled editor could have easily raised it from 3 stars to 4. We should all be way angrier about it, frankly.

[dogpuppy]

[nineteenyearoldmeblog]

im fucking crying

[shirecorn]

Fascinating categorization is happening here

[velvetys]

Everything used to be 20 dollars and now that I finally have 20 dollars everything is now 200 dollars

[escuerzoresucitado]

shooo

[mistbjorn]

[doyouknowwhatimeme]

[serenity-bitty]

reminds me of

the shellfish allergy NO NO FUCKING S HRIMP OR HE D IE post

[p1netre3s]

reminded me of this

[asmrgaret]

it’s weird that professional letters are supposed to start with “dear.” i don’t even call my mom that

[asmrgaret]

my darling hiring manager. my springtime rose. if hired i will bring a strong work ethic to this position

[shamebats]

Tiktok post by @ wynunlimited.

[bogleech]

The christian family in these memes (which are absolutely all over facebook these days) genuinely do always look miserable. Who the fuck is relating to these stock mormon farm cultists. That is a couple who made love only once in pitch darkness with bags on their heads then celebrated the pregnancy with a feast of uncooked potatoes and warm tapwater. The baby seems intrigued though. Maybe only by the bottle of pills??

[sunshine-tattoo]

Could not leave this in the tags <3

[cookiethebirddoll]

bus is my friend. shes no train but shes trying her hardest in a world that hates her

[ttnn77]

I HATTTE ACCIDENTALLY SAYING SOMETHING ONLY THE KILLER WOULD KNOW

[pointless-letters]

One of the best letters I’ve ever seen just popped up on my Facebook memories. Still makes me laugh.

[pointless-letters]

As today is the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, it’s a great time to revisit Dinah from Devon’s memory of this historic event. And yes, still makes me laugh.

[pointless-letters]

Today is the 54th anniversary of the moon landing, but Dinah’s diary entry is still absolutely magnificent.

[pointless-letters]

57th anniversary of the moon landing and the best diary entry in the history of diary entries. Sit down Samuel Pepys, it’s over. UGH.

[depsidase]