Words

Main blog of @prompts-in-a-barrel. I write

[thatdisasterauthor]

I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?

[thatdisasterauthor]

"Use Libre Office."

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

Industry standards are industry standards FOR A REASON. Having everyone on the same workflow can be crucial to getting things done effectively and correctly without creating a lot of extra work. And those things are not going to change overnight, as much as we might want them to.

[thatdisasterauthor]

:| :| :|

Yeah, Word, let me just leave this whole chunk of dialogue without the closing quotation marks. That's the thing to do. How dare I have two punctuation marks in a row. It's not like that's how closing quotation marks fucking work.

[thatdisasterauthor]

I am going to light something on fire.

[thatdisasterauthor]

And you know, for young writers, this has got to be so detrimental just from the perspective of opening your document and seeing a million corrections that, frankly, don't need to be there. If you're a young writer you're likely not going to have the background knowledge to know what is and isn't a good suggestion, you're just going to see a document that makes it look like you made every mistake possible so clearly you must be a terrible, stupid writer and should just give up.

[beemovieerotica]

please say sike

[hydrachea]

> turns on my computer

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> opens my email

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> launches a software

> disables a new AI fea

[redjennies]

it feels like there's a direct line from the question that kicked off the Shapers War being "why can't I keep my family safe?" and the reveal that Sylandri directly controlled which elves were allowed to have children. between "we were the only people that knew we were doing it without a reward. the land that was promised to us after death was the same as life, just more suffering. endless wasteland, choked by ash and fire." and "an eternity, to have all of your complexity, all of your possibility, all of your dreams folded into an idyllic paradise where you would be punished for the most minor infraction?" no wonder the orcs were the first to kill their god and the elves were the last. whether it was a certainty or not at the time of the Shapers' War, the elves had to know there was at least a chance this rebellion would end in a slow extinction event for their people, and I'm inclined to believe this might be in part the reason they named their god-slaying weapon The Last Arrow. therefore, Vaelus and those who fought for Sylandri were likely asking themselves the same question that motivated the Lloys to build the Pariah Blades.

it's also interesting in the difference between the elves of the Old Path and the practitioners of other races. if the ability to have children was decided to only be granted to the most faithful then elves like Hannan and his wife were foregoing the possibility of ever passing on their traditions to their biological children as the other races of the Old Path could. of course, biological family isn't the only type of family, but it does mean the elven druids had to put themselves in more danger in order to find others who shared their beliefs. there were no generations of secret worship. they had to intentionally seek each other out just to learn about the Path, let alone find community with each other, and if they were discovered, if they confided in the wrong person, they were persecuted the most harshly by their goddess of life and nature.

in the blessing of Azgra, the orcish druid Agari Shadow blesses him most of all for "his honesty, because of all the gods of Aramán, ours was the only one who never lied about what he truly was." Sylandri is initially set up to be seen as the kindest of the Shapers, the Green Mother who allowed her people to live in an eternal paradise even after death, and slowly, that portrayal has been peeled back as we learn more about Vaelus and Hannan to something just as malicious as Azgra. for all his cruelty—and make no mistake, he was cruel and the orcs suffered greatly under him—Azgra did not leave a blight on Kahad as he died, as far as we know. his Barrowdell is deemed the only positive Barrowdell in Aramán. in her final moments, Sylandri was so spiteful thst she damned her people, both those who were faithful to her and those who weren't, to genocide rather than see them flourish without her.

[ierosylia]

shirt that says 'i ♡ writing 300 words of the worst prose known to mankind'

[brontidetales]

no i can't today i'm in the middle of taking life too seriously. yeah encountering someone who enjoys things i don't fills me with inexplicable shame and i lash out by crushing all their joy beneath my heel with mockery. no it's fine i'm not a killjoy i'm a ~hater~ so it's cool.

[brontidetales]

occtis losing all his anxiety (via being undead) and then hitting on his school's financial advisor (who undeaded him) is definitely a move

[pocketss]

Ummm she's literally sensitive :/

[which-ocs]

Which OC is weird and unfixable (and has been from a young age)?

[beefandcorn]

are you worried

About what? But yeah

[aristocrating]

its 2026 i cannot handle any more fucking "author A obviously ripped off author B" discourse by people Who Have Only Seen the work of author B and admit themselves that they have no further knowledge of the literary landscape they are moving in. like.

[insomaniackills]

Folks really need to reacquaint themselves with this concept

[brontidetales]

i tan dark and fast. i also work outside. i also wear gloves for my work outside. you see the problem here

[higgsbison]

happy glorious 25th of may

[brontidetales]

gifted kid burnout this gifted kid burnout that. where are all my mediocre kids who are burned out from not even trying that hard

[human-pet-they]

when the author describes someone dying and you can just tell they’ve never actually died by the way it’s written

[brontidetales]

being employed does get me money. but god at what cost

[melthedestroyer]

there’s a big difference between “i’m sad because a character i was emotionally invested in was killed off” and “this character’s death served no purpose, was used for shock value, and is the product of bad writing and i’m upset about that”

[melthedestroyer]