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@indigocotton
a bollywood fancast for the imperial raadch series, apropos of nothing at all
(queer and trans rep in this cast is going to be thin on the fucking ground, i'm afraid)
Breq - Nandita Das
Seivarden - Shah Rukh Khan (don't fucking at me)
Awn - Vikrant Massey
Tisarwat - Priya Prakash Varrier
Translator Dlique - Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Translator Zeiat - Alia Bhatt
Anaander Mianaai - Swara Bhasker
really losing my patience for any 'feminist' statement to the tune of 'we need feminism because women fill a fundamentally different and necessary role than men and will be better at doing x y or z'. like actually i think we need feminism because it is an unbearable death of the spirit by inches to exist in a world where you are not seen as a fully realized human being because of a single cultural determination, and because a world that enshrines such things creates systems that are fundamentally sick to the core
yelling "I WANT YOU TO LIKE ME" at cool internet strangers so that i can validate my likes, interests, and opinions
sokka nation rise up
people are so weird about cnc and I always just want to look them in the eyes and say “you are getting mad at people for playing pretend. you are getting mad at people for saying ‘raaar! I’m gonna getcha!’ you are not a serious person.”
so much ink and tears have been spilled theorizing that rape kink is about trauma and social anxieties and power fantasies and sure maybe. but I think we’re just mammals who like pretend danger in our play just like every other mammal ever. because we have evolved to find that fun. and the only difference between play-wrestling in bed and pulling out the fuzzy handcuffs is commitment to the bit
showing up to the orgy and someone yells NOSE GOES
#op I hope we can agree that the person yelling 'nose goes' would be translator zeiat#they mean it literally
@criminalflower these tags are the only thing that could get me to come back to this post ngl. I admit I would NOT volunteer to find out if Translators can understand consensual nonconsent but I'm sure Sphene will be happy to
Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann and Orlando Bloom as Will Turner PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END 2007 | dir. Gore Verbinski
Rome wasn’t built in a day. It was built much quicker than that. It only took a quarter of an hour. Which made it the world’s first 15 minute city
when they say all roads lead to rome they actually mean that there's a rome every fifteen minutes
I absolutely 100% without question believe in the power of betas, and I advocate for getting one as much as possible, and I think they are amazing. The only problem is dealing with beta feedback without crushing despair and endless self-doubt. How the heck do I take critique gracefully and build something better without lying face down on the floor for three days first? (PS you are amazing, thank you!)
If this is your actual reaction to critique and not hyperbole to get your point across, you might want to read up on Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and see if that’s something you’d like to talk about with your doctor. This level of a reaction to beta comments feels extreme and might be a sign of something else going on, whether that’s RSD or something else.
If that’s just hyperbole and you feel a sense of disappointment or dejection as a result of hearing critique then you might just need to talk to your beta reader about how you want that critique to come at you. Do you want a negative to be balanced out with a positive? Do you want a critique to come with a plan for how to fix the problem? Do you want it phrased as a question rather than as a statement?
We all have preferences when it comes to receiving feedback, and we all respond differently to different styles. If you’re receiving feedback in a form that doesn’t work for you, then try a different form and see if that works better.
Another thing that’s important to remember is that these comments are not about you as a person, they’re about your writing. The person who is giving you this feedback is invested in making your writing better. They want you to succeed and they want you to tell the best version of your story possible, and their focus is on helping you do that.
Nothing that we write is ever going to be perfect, and a first draft is even rougher. There’s no shame at all in needing to improve. If there’s nothing to work on, then there’s nothing to learn. Accepting critique means accepting an opportunity to do better next time, to learn a new technique or concept. Doing something badly means that you’re doing something that’s hard for you, and it’s only by working beyond our capabilities that we can improve.
Be proud of your mistakes. They prove that you’re willing to take a risk. You’re striving and reaching and pushing yourself to do more. Keep reaching, anon. You’ll get there. 💕
Another perspective:
It sounds like someone has convinced you that the only way to improve is having a beta, or that the only way to write ‘good’ fanfic is to have a beta.
But the thing is - if having a beta is not something you enjoy, don’t.
You don’t owe anyone any particular way of doing things. I think it is very important to keep in mind that fanfic is a hobby - something you should enjoy doing. Don’t do it in a way you don’t enjoy.
No matter if you have a beta or not, if you get comments or not - just the act of writing does make your writing better.
I don’t generally use a beta, because I know it would be stressful and un-empowering for me. I write the way I enjoy writing, and I think you need to step back and consider what are the reasons you enjoy writing? What do you get out of it?
Of course - if you write with a goal of commercial success for your Original Novel, and you write fanfic to prepare for that, then it might be different. Maybe you do need to face your growing pains. But do reflect over the purpose of your writing.
YES. I love having a beta reader and there are still fics where I do not get a beta. Either because it’s not the style or fandom of anyone I’d usually ask to beta, or because it’s good enough and I just want to post it, or because the content is personal enough that I know I couldn’t take any critique, or because I just plain don’t feel like it. Having a beta reader is the most useful to me when there’s something very specific I want them to do. Maybe it’s spelling and grammar - frequently I get to the point with writing where I KNOW that one sentence just isn’t sounding right but I have no clue how to tweak it and someone else’s eyes will see what mine won’t. Maybe I’m stuck on plot and need someone to tell me where they think it’s going, or help me brainstorm. It just works a lot better for me when I can say “I’m not sure this character’s voice is right, and also I’m not sure whether I need a clearer explanation of this particular plot point, and if you see any typos let me know” instead of just an open ended “go forth and edit”. I’m most likely to get that “I need to go throw myself into the ocean now” feeling when I get feedback I’m not expecting. And also - sometimes you need to take some time with edits. There have absolutely been times when I’ve needed to read through suggestions and then shove it in a metaphorical drawer for a week. Usually with bigger edits like plot or pacing edits, but frequently even with tiny ones. Crushing despair and endless self-doubt sucks and is definitely no fun to feel, but there’s also no need to beat yourself up over not feeling enthusiastic about feedback. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer or a bad person if it takes you a while to be ready to act on critique. Sometimes you just have to take your time.
Can I make a suggestion as someone who loves betas? Flip the beta process: ask your beta to read the story or WIP or scene cold, don’t tell them anything about it and don’t ask for any initial/overall/global response from them. Then, once they’ve read it, ask them questions.
Start with reading comprehension questions--and there is no such thing as a too dumb question! What happened in that scene you just read? Can you summarize the story or scene back to me? Then, if there are any tricky points to your story, ask about those: what did character Y do there? Did you get what was happening between Y and Z--can you narrate back to me what you read? The next level up is motivation and feelings/interpretations: Why did character Y do that, do you think? How does he feel? How did scene V make you feel about this person place or thing? When did you think X and Y first had sparks?
Do not give your poor betas any answers to these questions, or give hints as to the “right” answers--because they’re not wrong or right. YOU are either coming across or you are not coming across: if the beta isn’t picking up what you are putting down, you have to go back and fix the story so that the words in that particular order create the feeling you want in the reader. If the scene is supposed to make you cry, and the beta thinks its funny, you gotta redo it. If your brilliant plot point got missed, you were TOO SUBTLE and you have to add pointers and cues. I have been surprised btw that sometimes I have not gotten my straightforward plot points across--literally my reader doesn’t know what the hell happened, let alone why it happened or have feelings about why it happened. If they don’t know that Fred is dead, they sure won’t know who killed Fred or be sad that Fred’s dead or feel John’s pain at Fred’s untimely and tragic death!
Then here’s the thing--once you’ve done all this, then you CAN tell Beta A what you were on about and ask Beta A, like, okay, how could I have better clued you in to the fact that Fred is dead? Why didn’t you think Fred was dead? Work your way with them through Fred’s death to who did it and how you feel and all that. This beta can now be your collaborator/partner in crime. But THEN, like, sadly, you really can’t believe them really when they say the story is fixed, because now, like you, they know what they were supposed to be getting from the story. You can’t know that the words on the page alone are what’s doing the work, and that’s what writing is. So ideally you need to find someone ELSE, Beta B, and say, again, “Hey, can you read this and can I ask you some questions?” Then ask Beta B--what happened? why did it happen? Can you tell me how that scene makes you feel? Who’s right in that argument, X or Y?--and when they’re like, *sobbing,* Fred he’s dead, he deserved better, I am keysmashing my way through John’s grief, you bastard--then: post! :D
For me, this helps, because I’m not asking the beta to solve my problems and I’m also not asking for their evaluation. I can thank them totally sincerely regardless of what they say (and you should--and also make them feel comfortable summarizing back to you, cause whatever they say is good data.) I also hate this thing where you feel like a beta wants you to write a different story than the one you’re writing, or when you get contradictory advice. I’m not asking them “what they’d do.” I’m asking them to literally say back to me what they think the words are saying, and adjusting my story based on it.
I have worked with a lot of betas over the years, and in many different ways. It's always a negotiation, working with someone new, and you as the author have to let them know what you want out of them as a beta.
Generally, for example, I am not looking for spelling-and-grammar. It's great if someone can catch typos, but I am a good speller and I make stylistic choices that I am absolutely not going to change no matter how a beta feels about it.
On the other hand, I like working with betas who are willing to function as developmental editors; they're not interested in changing my style and they barely ever touch the sentences themselves. Instead they are looking for plot holes, continuity errors, character motivations, the clarity of events, timelining, flow. Often these types of betas also cheer me on and help me untangle occasional thorny rat's-nest sentences that I just can't make work; I've usually called this type of overall beta work "midwifing". (There are a lot of things I write, particularly short things, that really don't need that at all. There's a fair amount of unbeta'd fanfic in my ao3, and for the first few years I wrote, I didn't use a beta at all. And then there's stories that absolutely needed it, that never would have seen the light of day without betas.) This isn't an easy kind of author-beta relationship with the wrong person! I do not recommend this with a new beta; it should be someone with whom you are familiar and who you know you can work with, AND who you know is likely to be good at this. Sometimes you don't have that person, though, and need to find them. (I was once told by a previous beta that she couldn't work on a particular story, but that I should try a rather well-known reccer in the fandom, to whom I had never spoken. That worked out fantastically, but boy was I nervous about it.)
I have found it cannot be a passive relationship, working with a beta. You have to talk to them. You have to ask for what you think the story needs and what you need as an author, however that looks. Maybe it looks like the open-ended questions that @cesperanza suggests. Maybe it's intense developmental work. Maybe you really want a spelling-and-grammar edit and nothing else. But it won't happen by magic. It's working with someone to make your story better, without making it any less yours, and it is work. It can be amazing work -- it can be generative and fun and a wonderful part of being a fannish writer -- but it's work.
stop! it's drama time.
फिरे ज़माना में चार जानिब निगार-ए-यकता तुम ही को देखा हसीन देखे जमील देखे व-लेक तुम सा तुम ही को देखा
this world i've travelled in all four directions yet none have i seen like you i've seen beauty and i've seen grace yet like you, i've only seen you
the way you know that large-language models cannot, fundamentally, replicate humanity is this - an LLM may produce a melody akin to jon batiste's. it cannot produce joy akin to jon batiste's, because it is a machine and cannot feel emotions.
look at his face. look at how much he enjoys the process. what else could you want from someone making art? how could you imagine that anything that is not a human person could replicate it?
Or consider this rendition of Amir Khusro's Chaap Tilak, by Fareed Ayaz, Abu Mohammed, and their qawwali party. Watch them summon ecstasy with nothing but voice and harmonium. At around 14:50, for thirty seconds, Abu Mohammed's son sings an improvisation that stopped me in my tracks when i first heard it. it ended me.
watching his face while he's singing is instructive of why we listen to live music. it's not because the music is different. it's because we listen to people who make music.
the way you know that large-language models cannot, fundamentally, replicate humanity is this - an LLM may produce a melody akin to jon batiste's. it cannot produce joy akin to jon batiste's, because it is a machine and cannot feel emotions.
look at his face. look at how much he enjoys the process. what else could you want from someone making art? how could you imagine that anything that is not a human person could replicate it?
i started having thoughts about something i saw on the dash - always a risky endeavour, never do this if you can help it - and instead of keeping them to myself i am typing them out. i use queer below even though the inciting material was about trans people, the reason for this comes up later, but fundamentally it is that nothing human is alien to me.
i think it's so interesting to see how care and community look in western european/north american (henceforth WENA) societies. obviously the rely on their antecedents to form new ways of thinking. so obviously, caring for a fellow trans person is in some form going to be reacting to the care one has received and seen others receive.
reading about the difficulties and joys of caring for someone who cannot care for themselves reveals an awful truth - a truth that, upon being understood, insists on its own destruction. each and every one of us operates ourselves. the ability or inability to do so, the reality and complicated illusion of our bodies - these are truths that come after this truth. we have not yet found a way for another to operate us, except by the threat and act of myriad violence and the use and abuse of power.
my personal experiences of care and community in queer spaces in india is so wildly different from this. for one thing, it is so clear that caste, class, and familial history massively heterogenise these experiences. there are millions of queer people in this country who have pretty much the same experience of it as me. there are tens of millions who have such different experiences of it that we may need to consider subcategories, queerness' opposition to boundaries notwithstanding.
so when i speak to a queer person in india about the ways that another person makes them feel as if they have no choice but to keep caring, keep working, we know that this is not a problem of queerness specifically. i've had family members, queer, non-queer, aqueer who have put me in this position. so have many others. similarly, i have been the person in this position for others in my life. they have extended to me grace and sympathy when i needed it most. queer people's unique experiences with shame, violence, and deprivation do not making caring for queer people a unique challenge unlike all other challenges.
the choice to care, or not to care, is compelled by structures greater than us as much as it is demanded by our personal circumstances. the decision to look to or look away from something is ultimately one the body makes for ourselves. but you do not need to believe me. le guin said it better in the tombs of atuan anyway -
Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.
the problem, it seems to me, is that in a world in which community means 'togetherness' and not, say, 'being a part even when apart' is that the choice to care is framed purely as work for the carer and rest for the cared. but community means we are picked up when we fall as much as we pick up others when they fall - or even that we break their fall so they don't hurt themselves.
Recipe for a Traveler
Now, if you've never been to the city of Ooiooaa on the rogue planet of Aaa, what can I tell you? How can I convey the taste of the food there?
I can't. It's far too long a trip for native foods--the worms, the ever-popular peas (not peas at all but some sort of creature that colonizes the sea floor)...the very flavor of the water there is indescribably different, how can I convey that, let alone the taste of every Ooiooiaan's comfort food, peas and pucks?
And if I spend too much time thinking of it, I develop an irresistible craving for a nice warm bowl of peas and a soft, dense puck or two. What to do then? If I set out now it would still be months, if not years, before I set foot in that holy city.
There's nothing for it but to throw something together that at least approaches the food I'm missing. So!
My Recipe for Ooiooiaan Peas & Pucks
Well, already we're in for an argument. "Everyone" knows that peas and pucks is served with skel and a garnish of pickled onions. Except everyone doesn't know that--I met people in Ooiooiaa who were convinced that no real Ooiooiaan puts skel--the basic food of the much-hated Radchaai--on a good Ooiooiaan food like peas and pucks. And even the onions--I can't even describe to you how prevalent onions are in that city, how they are on the table at every meal, and nine times out of ten are in your drink. (I never did get used to hot onion water, but it's absolutely everywhere. Sit down in a restaurant and you'll be served a pot of hot onion water whether you want it or not.) But I was told several times that peas and pucks was never served with onions "in the old days."
I am not here to make any sort of declarations about the authenticity of one recipe or another. I am only trying to make a version of what I got from the food carts outside the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star. So, there will be skel--or "skel" --and onions.
You will need:
1 cup of water 1 teaspoon dashi powder 1 teaspoon miso As many fish balls as you're hungry for/fit in the pan 1 to 2 teaspoons cornstarch 1 tsp wakame pickled onions 1 package refrigerator biscuits
First, put the wakame in a bowl of water to reconstitute. Bake the biscuits according to package directions.
Combine water and dashi powder, bring to a boil. Add the fish balls. Boil for about five minutes (or longer if they're still frozen). Add the teaspoon of miso and stir till it's dissolved.
Add just enough water to the cornstarch to make a slurry. Pour this into the simmering broth and stir constantly until thickened. Use more or less cornstarch depending on how thick you like it.
Drain the excess water from the wakame, add as much as you like to the pan, stir, and remove from heat. Serve over a biscuit, garnish with pickled onions.
Does it taste exactly like the peas and pucks of Ooiooiaa? It does not. But it's as close as we're going to get, from here.
"Ten most popular mango dishes from around the world"
"Five mango desserts to beat the summer heat"
IT'S MANGO WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE IT BETTER IT'S ALREADY PERFECT
in terrible grief for my wife readcomiconline. i don't think i'll ever get over it. curse all the corporations and their sickening endless greed, they have burned another library.
Oh youre "nonbinary"? Can i put you in a box please. Can i pleaseeeee put you in a box. We have two boxes and i really wanna put you in one. But dont worry. My boxes are very Woke and Nuanced. So its fine to put you in one. Pleaseeeee. Wow... youre such a bitch... not letting me put into one of two nuanced and essential necessary boxes... you obviously go into the box all those evil bitches end up in
