Brownian Notions

A semi random walk through things that interest me.

[unhappytogekiss]

a new reality tv show called So you think you can write Doctor Who

twelve episodes, twelve contestants - a mix of annoying middle aged sci fi authors, fan fic authors and random people off the street

a variety of against the clock writing tasks, big finish scripts, ability to interact with actors without shouting at them and challenges where you have no budget or doctor for an episode

judged by solely by christopher eccleston

this is how you find the new doctor who showrunner

[brownian-notions]

You sold me with the second to last sentence

[ao3commentoftheday]

Fandom old here, been in fandom since I was 13 and I'm not in my early thirties. In regards to the Beta and Writer conversation I have been seeing on your dashboard as of late, I wanted to say that Fanfiction.Net actually had the ingenious idea a long time ago to make a list of beta readers. What you did was you filled out a beta-editor profile and your fandoms that you were willing to do. They still have it up. The issue is that Archive of Our Own Does *not* have this. There's no official list of active beta readers or what fandoms they will do publically. Instead, most beta readers that I have found are in fandom discord servers. Tumblr doesn't give enough traction to do a beta reader call because everyone posts and can get lost in the feed. That helps no one, not the writer and certainly not the beta whose looking for someone to help. The other issue that I am seeing is that there was a unspoken yet quite loud rule that betas were people who wished to be editors one day and just like many of us on fanfiction were hoping to become writers or were going to go into English Degrees, understood that we had to practice for our own rejection. So basically, rejective sensitivity didn't exist for us because the betas were in as much practice as we were. This is their craft as much as writing was ours. Now there were bad betas, don't get me wrong. But you knew a bad beta from a good one. Now, I don't know about everyone else's school. But in my high school we were taught how to give criticism. Art and English teachers used to make us grade each other's art and grade each other's essays long before the teacher ever got a hold of them. We had a rubic to follow in English to help us, and for art...that could get brutal. Big time. You didn't get a I'm afraid. We got "oh god, she's going to hate it and I'm going to be re-writing this again" because English teachers back in my day gave back essays and told you to re-write it. You had four drafts before you could turn in a "final". I don't know how classes are run now, but this is another huge problem that I am seeing. So, how does this work in fandom etiquette today? I don't think anyone really wants a "beta", they want assurance. Every time I see "it's my writing style" I leave because I already know they didn't want me to edit and it wasn't a writing style they just don't know how to break the rules properly. Betas can help you break grammar rules *properly*, because that's their craft. They know the rules therefore they know how to bend them, break them, and make them theirs. Writers, we should know how to do that too, but they know it better. Let them have it. Let them know what really is a writing style because if it's just insecurity, guess what? Here's the tough truth: you either get a beta and you enhance your writing and you learn how to hone your craft to be a better writer or you don't. And the problem is that you can get better if you don't. A beta isn't a have to...but a beta can make you get better faster. You'll be getting better slower especially with lack of engagement on fics on AO3 if you don't. Which is a valid way to go. And a whole other ask/blog entirely. Editors and writers go hand in hand, betas aren't an enemy you fight. People who are afraid of the red pen weren't afraid because of the mistakes they made, it was once more going to the typewriter and figuring out how to make it *better*.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, anon.

[brownian-notions]

I don't presume to know what sort of constructive criticism Anon provides, but I disagree with the general presumption that a thin skin is the only reason for pushing back on or rejecting criticism.

Providing constructive criticism is its own skill, one that being a good writer does not immediately bestow. Good beta readers approach their job with a degree of humility and with the conscious knowledge that their job is to help the writer tell the story they want to tell. If you don't keep this in mind as your goal, it is easy to let your ego as a writer or your preferences as a reader slip in. You try to change the story to one you would want to tell or one you would choose to read for pleasure. Even when done politely and with all good will, this is unhelpful at best and harmful at worst.

It's even worse if manners, much less good will, are absent, and sadly this really happens. I've known of people who view it as their job to "toughen up" the people they critique for. I've heard people say that they view providing any positive feedback as "coddling." I've even seen one person (part of the Fanfiction.Net beta community) go so far as to say their goal was to reduce the number of "bad" stories on the site, and it was quite clear that they viewed demoralizing someone to the point that they deleted their account an acceptable way of achieving this goal.

So, yes, if you are going to seek out constructive criticism (and you have no obligation to do so), you do need to develop the skill to receive feedback without becoming defensive. But that doesn't mean that all the feedback you receive will be good. You deserve a beta reader that prioritizes your goals as a storyteller.

[yesornopolls]

The last character you wrote about is put in the last video game you played for a week. Can they survive?

The last character you wrote about is put in the last video game you played for a week. Can they survive?

Yes

No

See results

Voting ended onMay 29

[ode-on-a-grecian-butt]

art by Curtis Lanaghan

[ao3commentoftheday]

With all the anti AI stuff, which I do support, are writers really not doing any spell check through whatever they use to write?

Is using spell check okay , or will people cancel you if you use it , like several writing groups tell me?

Is there any spell/grammar check that's not AI or will not get you canceled or harassed about it?

Are writers now doing it all by hand with dicunary and beta readers

Maybe I'm just old but... spell check is Ai???

I mean, I've heard that services like Grammerly are incorporating AI features, but Word has had spellcheck incorporated since the 90s and Google Docs has had it since its inception.

I tend to turn off spell check just because I'm Canadian and it always insists I adopt US spelling for things that Canadians use the British English spelling for. But then, I really *am* ancient. I memorized spelling in school because we hand wrote assignments, and there is no spell check when you're handwriting - except looking things up in the dictionary. I didn't start typing assignments until university, but we got marks off for spelling errors in elementary and high school.

Anyone who is harassing someone for using fucking spellcheck needs to take several seats and touch an entire field of grass. There are stands to take against AI, but that just seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of what AI even is.

I got a little hot under the collar on this one folks, so forgive my temper here. If I'm wrong, I'm open to being corrected! This is just such a foreign concept to me that I'm completely gobsmacked by the whole idea.

[brownian-notions]

Several vaguely connected observations:

People have been not using spellcheck and not proofreading for longer than generative AI has been a thing. If any of the questions about it not being used anymore is based on a perception of more spelling errors appearing in recent years, keep in mind that humans are bad at using intuition to replace formal statistics. There may or may not be an actual change, and if there is, it may or may not be correlated with attitudes towards AI.

A gentle reminder that AI is a general term for anything that a computer does that mimics what an intelligent person could do. Arguably traditional spellcheck is AI, but it isn't generative AI. I have noticed both proponents and opponents of generative AI speaking as if that was the only type of AI there was, sometimes out of carelessness, sometimes in deliberate bad faith. Anyone whose gripe is with all AI, and not just the IP disrespecting, resource gobbling kind, should probably not be online or using a computer at all.

That said, many companies have been making spellcheck worse by replacing the straightforward dictionary lookup with generative AI shenanigans. If you've seen a correctly spelled non-obscure word flagged as an error with a suggested replacement that makes no sense, you're probably seeing a gen-AI style word probability calculation in action. Purely for your own benefit, I suggest using a word processor with old fashioned spellcheck, or at least one that lets you turn off the AI version.

I'm a big AI skeptic, but I have no patience for the people who treat AI as the new scarlet letters. Avoid people who are that keen on shaming others. And recognize that the modern tech industry is determined to reduce our ability to opt-out from generative AI usage. Even if I supported harassing people who use AI by choice, I'd have huge objections to doing it to people who have AI foisted upon them.

[brownian-notions]

Filoneus Halovar yelling out "Mother!" immediately reminded me of Sylvester in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World."

Which of course means that this is now and forever my image of Yanessa Halovar:

You're welcome.

[varanusniloticus]

Pet dragon 🐲 [by Ryoko Kui]

[plain-flavoured-english]

As a Greek, in response to the current controversy about Matt Damon being cast as Odysseus, I'd just like to share that one of the moments that changed my brain chemistry as a kid was reading a novelized version of the Odyssey and coming across the following description of Odysseus when Circe sees him for the first time and thinks he's hot: "his hair curled like a clematis and his eyes were very brown".

So may I present my own casting choice for Odysseus:

[plain-flavoured-english]

Excuse me???

[ruffboi-mags]

you are right and you should say it.

[brownian-notions]

This is the face of a man who would persuade his friends to climb inside a giant wooden horse. Sold!

[daily-weasel]

[mammalidentifier]

Mountain weasel (Mustela altaica)

[professorsparklepants]

#it fucken sumny (via @mindfulwrath)

[feminist-space]

[official-lucifers-child]

the wemther brothers

[transformativeworks]

Spambot Comments on AO3

As spam continues to be a problem on AO3, here's an update on the types of spambot comments you may see, what we're doing to combat them, and how you can help! Read more at https://otw-news.org/mr42w8j9

[anonajn]

relentlessly funny to me when people treat a relationship between someone in their 30s and someone in their 40s as "age difference". bro i cannot tell you which of my friends are 34 and which are 44. i can probably tell you which ones aren't 30 yet, but it's probable some of them are 50 now and i didn't notice. if you're over 30 and don't have kids, it's kinda all one age until you can collect social security.

[brownian-notions]

My spouse is 10 years my senior. As such I get more than a little miffed by this sort of age gap discourse. I am not a victim and they are not a predator. I was in my mid-twenties when we started dating and perfectly capable of making my own decisions, thank you very much.

I also asked them out on our first date, so how does that fit into the whole thing? Was I supposed to card them before doing so? Were they supposed to card me before accepting?

[mernolan]

HELP. THERE'S A WEIRD LITTLE GUY IN HERE.

my first ever short for Titmouse's 5 Second Day event about... well, a weird little guy!

[lestatslestits]

Why is it always Blorbo from MY shows? Reblog and tell me who your parents’ Blorbos are. I’ll go first: the entire cast of Downton Abbey.

[tumblr]

Reblogs in a chain now get their own notes

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

This is just the beginning. More changes are coming as we keep building this out – stay tuned!

[changes]

It’s very clear that you all have strong feelings about Tumblr and about this change. We hear you. The passion people have for how Tumblr works is one of the things that makes this place special.

As this rolls out over the next few days and you explore it, we’ll keep reading your replies and reblogs, so please keep sharing your questions, concerns, and ideas.

Your creativity has always been the heart of Tumblr, whether you’re the original poster or adding something brilliant in the reblogs, and nothing about this change is meant to limit that.

If you’d like to talk directly beyond the comments, leave a reply and we’ll follow up with as many of you as we can. We want to work with you to make Tumblr better.

[icannotgetoverbirds]

hey folks do we like this. reblog without commentary for reach

do we want this?

yes

no

Voting ended onMar 23

[polls-for-fandom-deactivated202]

Where did you first READ fanfiction?

Archive of Our Own

Wattpad

Fanfiction.net

Livejournal

Quotev

DeviantArt

Fandom specific sites (i.e fimfiction, fandom wikis)

Other

Voting ended onFeb 11

[brownian-notions]

My personal analogy for distinguishing between badly executed fiction and fiction that is trying to do something I don't like is "Is this a tres leches cake recipe?" Years ago, we wanted to make a tres leches cake for dessert, and looked for a recipe online (the way you do). And because we wanted to know if the recipes we found were any good, we looked at the comments.

One food blog recipe had the comment along the lines of "This is a bad recipe. It came out wet." If you know what a tres leches cake is, you know the point is to saturate the cake with the three milks. Hence the name.

This person seemed not to know that. The tone of their comment wasn't "I just learned tres leches isn't for me," or "I normally like it, but this was too wet." It was quite clearly "No one would ever deliberately do something I don't like, so it's clearly a bad recipe. The People Must Be Warned."

I knew before reading that comment that not everything is for me, and something that I don't like might just be doing something deliberately and well that isn't for me. But ever since that day, I had a clear descriptor for people who can't comprehend that simple truth. They're looking for a dry tres leches cake.

[veryberryskye]

yeah i like to give my blessing to the most pathetic looking weak little knight at the tournament. she can’t even look me in the eye when i give her my flower and she stutters out that she’ll do her best or something of the like. i think its funny when she has to cry and beg my forgiveness and i get to say “such a shame, i suppose my hand in marriage will have to go to someone else…” and then i get to hear her whimper like a dog. ive done this like 6 times alrea-

did she just win.

[the-stew-goblin]

I shall prepare a stew for the wedding! Extra salt!

[veryberryskye]

wait wait wait stew goblin wait

[peachdelta]

get ready for the wedding