#Gaurav More | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

metamatar · 2 months

Text

October 10, 2022

Amit Kumar had everything going for him. After graduating in engineering and landing a decent job, Amit wanted to settle down with his childhood sweetheart Renu. The couple had known each other since Class IX and dreamt of a life together. The only difficulty was that Renu belonged to a Brahmin family and Amit was a Dalit.

With their homes barely a kilometre apart in Garhwa district of Jharkhand, Renu knew her family would never approve of the match. The couple decided to run away and tie the knot in another State. And thus began their tale of unending harassment and tragedy.

The couple married at a temple in Dehradun and got their marriage registered there. They had just about settled down at Paonta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh when, in a midnight raid, the Uttar Pradesh police took away Renu, claiming that she had been abducted. Amit and Renu have not seen or spoken to each other since that fateful night of August 13, 2021.

Amit’s life has been a quagmire of legal battles and dismissed habeas corpus petitions since then. “I fear my wife is no more,” he told The Hindu.

Activists say such tragic situations can be avoided if couples like Amit and Renu are provided safe houses and special protection by the State governments as mandated by the Supreme Court.

According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the number of “honour killings” in the country was 24, 25 and 33 in 2019, 2020 and 2021, respectively. Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand topped the list in 2021 and 2020, while Manipur was on top in 2019.

The government in 2021 informed Parliament that there were 145 “honour killing” incidents in the country between 2017 and 2019.

Interestingly, though the NCRB report attributed only 25 deaths to “honour killings” in 2020, it said there were 27 deaths due to casteism and 1,558 due to “illicit relationship”. Similarly, in 2021, 33 deaths were listed under “honour killings”, but 1,544 and 1,532 under “illicit relationship” and “love affairs”, respectively.

So far, only Delhi, Haryana and Punjab have safe houses for inter-faith and inter-religious couples. Kerala has only announced the setting up of a safe house.

In fact, only 21 States have said that they have complied with the Supreme Court directives, which means that they have asked the police officers concerned of a State for strict compliance, according to Dhanak for Humanity, a non-governmental organisation which works with such couples, helping them solemnise their marriages and providing legal support.

The Supreme Court had in 2018 directed that safe houses be set up in every district as well as a special cell in States for couples facing opposition from families and community.

Gaurav Yadav, an engineer from IIT Chennai, said he was working with survivors of “honour crimes” and couples who are in hiding to petition the government for more safe houses across the country.

“Soon we will form an official grouping and petition the government to follow the Supreme Court directives on safe houses and special cells,” Mr. Yadav said, adding that he had organised a convention regarding the same in Delhi recently.

He said though couples had been demanding that safe houses be set up, the State administrations had looked the other way.

An example is of Ravikant Chandrawanshi and Alisha, who had a harrowing time getting married under the Special Marriage Act in Chhattisgarh.

The inter-faith couple at first decided to elope and marry in Bilaspur. However, a lack of support system and security, including finances, saw them return home in Kawardha within four days.

“As my wife’s family were well to do and politically connected, they kept up the pressure on us. Finally, we had to take legal recourse and approached the High Court asking them to direct the State administration to provide the mandated safe house and police protection.

“However, we were informed that there was no safe house and Alisha had to go to a sakhi centre or a women’s safe house,” Mr. Chandravanshi said.

Though the couple approached the highest of authorities, they were not given any police protection either and had to go into hiding for around six months after their marriage.

According to Asif Iqbal of Dhanak for Humanity, most States send the girl to a Nari Niketan after couples approach them. “It is here that the girl is the most insecure as her family mostly approaches her and puts pressure to go back. Many a time, this also leads to what is known as honour killing of the girl”.

Sanjay Sachadev of Love Commandoes, an organisation which rescues and shelters such couples, said, “The need of the hour is safe houses across the country. In almost every case, the police try and send the girl to a women’s shelter and the boy is left to fend for himself.”

A couple who are staying in a Delhi safe house and did not wish to be identified said that they could not have thought of living together had it not been for the security of the safe house.

Mr. Iqbal, whose organisation has helped many couples seek legal recourse to stay together and get married, said that of the distress calls he receives, the most were from Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.

#special marriage act #caste

260 notes · View notes

srbachchan · 5 months

Text

DAY 5837

Jalsa, Mumbai Feb 10/11, 2024 Sat/Sun 2:23 am

Birthday - EF - Gaurav Kumar Kulshreshtha , Mario Andrew Rodrigues/Rishi Vij Sunday, 11 February

🪔 ,

February 11 .. birthday greetings to Ef Gaurav Kumar Kulshreshta .. Ef Rishi Vij from Nagpur .. and Ef Mario Andrew Rodrigues from UAE 🇦🇪 ..

Wedding anniversary greetings to Ef Debasis Chakrabarti .. completing their silver jubilee .. on February 11 .. love and more .. 🙏🏼💐❤️

and may the special days be of immense welcome and joy .. ❤️

And the wise .. and the wisdom of the pundits of learning and litteratti ..

यह श्लोक बहुत सुंदर है ..

अमंत्रं अक्षरं नास्तिनास्ति मूलम् अनौषधम्।अयोग्य: पुरुषो नास्तियोजकः तत्र दुर्लभ :।।

amantram aksharam naasti

naasti moolam anaushadham ..

ayogyaha purusho naasti

yojakaha tatr dulabha

अर्थात्- ऐसा कोई अक्षर नहीं जिससे कोई मन्त्र का प्रारम्भ न होता हो,ऎसी कोई जड़ नहीं जिससे औषधि का निर्माण न होता हो और ऐसा कोई मनुष्य नहीं जो योग्य न हो, बस ! उससे काम लेने वाले लोग ही तो दुर्लभ हैं।

there is no such alphabet, which is not used for the beginning of a divinity chant ; there is no such root which does not grow the making of a medicinal herb ; and there is no such human that is incompetent or incapable .. it's just that, those people are rare to find, that can extract some work from them ..

and so I work in anticipation of the thought, that can deluge my personna with incompetence ..

.. the absence of such work or any work, is a breathless asthmatic, desperate in the finding of that saviour 'pump' who's vaporous pushes inside the lungs, give collective freedom to soften the passages of air and allow the source of life to exist ..

they say .. wait .. the time will come .. as is the oft repeated whisper of limited confidence, given in the earnest need for the wanting of the 'other' within the parameters of our nature hearing aids ..

and we wait ..

my care and love .. 🌹

Amitabh Bachchan

113 notes · View notes

mylittlepond · 3 months

Text

More Harkonnen fashion ideas:

Robert Wun ss 23 and ss 24

Rodarte fw 2023

Schiaparelli ss 24

Ralph Lauren fw 2006

Gaurav Gupta 2024

Andrea Brocca ss24

George Chakra fw 2014

Alaïa and Zang Toi fw 2017

Elie Saab fw 2024 and Valentino fw 2015

#dune fashion #dune #dune aesthetic #dune moodboard #dune 2024 #dune part two #house harkonnen #dune edit #harkonnen aesthetics #fashion on giedi prime

61 notes · View notes

youremyheaven · 1 year

Text

Vedic Astrology Observations

in my previous post, i had mentioned how Uttarashada natives love grandness and glamour. the more i look into it, the more i see these natives indulge in that old world, royaltycore aesthetic. its always go big or go home for them

Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who is known for his splashy period dramas with elaborate costumes and grand set designs has Ketu in Uttarashada

Fan Bingbing who is known for her glamorous and eclectic style has Ketu in Uttarashada (she also has her moon in Revati, another nakshatra that really loves glamour)

Kim Taehyung, who is also known for his preference for vintage glamour has Mercury & Mars in Uttarashada (he also has his moon and ketu in Revati)

Dilraba Dilmurat is another celebrity who is known for her extravagant style (chinese actresses in general have a very regal, extravagant style) and she has Revati Mars as her atmakaraka (her moon is in Punarvasu, a nak known for its girly style)

2. someone previously made a post about how mrigashira natives often play the "bimbo" in movies and ive observed that this also corresponds to real life, where a lot of mrig natives are perceived to be ditzy airheads or for saying crazy insane stuff. i believe its the mars influence that makes these natives speak hastily without much thought.

(Mrigashira moon Rachel McAdams playing Regina George in Mean Girls)

Sonam Kapoor, the bollywood actress is known in the Indian media for being a ditzy airhead 🤣and she has a Mrigashira stellium

Jordan Peterson and Kanye West are both Mrigashira moon natives and they're known for saying the most batshit crazy stuff.

3. ive noticed that many filmmakers who have prominent Uttarashada placements often explore loneliness and isolation or a lack of belonging in their movies. UA being the only nakshatra to possess a mongoose yoni which means its the only nakshatra without a yoni consort could be why these natives are so desperate for connection yet lacking it.

Shunji Iwai, has UA sun, mercury and ketu (a still from his movie Love Letter)

Jim Jarmusch has UA sun and mercury. All his movies are about loneliness and being an "outsider" in one way or another.

Philip Kaufman has Uttarashada moon. Intensely sexual but unbearably lonely.

Murakami who is known for how melancholic and lonely his books are (albeit strange and wonderfully weird) has Uttarashada sun

Another very common theme is how many Uttarashada natives have strange sexual desires, weird kinks and a perverse or odd sexual life/appetite. If you're familiar with Murakami, I need not explain further xD

4. Venusian natives often allude to Venusian imagery, specifically the Birth of Venus by Botticelli in their works.

Cardi B has Revati moon (venus is exalted in pisces) and here she is wearing Thierry Mugler's Birth of Venus dress to the Grammys.

Uma Thurman (from "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen") has Bharani Sun & Saturn and Purvaphalguni Ketu and here she is playing the Goddess herself!

Aishwarya Rai has Purvaashada moon and she is wearing a dress by Gaurav Gupta that references Venus.

Lady Gaga (from her Applause mv) she has Revati Venus Atmakaraka, as we know Venus is exalted in Pisces and Venus in Revati is considered it's best position. I suggest watching the MV since its rife with pisces imagery :-)

Beyonce has Purvaphalguni sun and the deity of Purvaphalguni is Bhaga, the god of marital bliss. Beyonce's interpretation of the Birth of Venus features her with her twin babies and babies signify the consummation of a marriage, thereby making this a uniquely Purvaphalgunian take on the original.

5. This is a no-brainer but mermaids in cinema are often played by Pisces rashi natives.

Halle Bailey is a UBP sun. Lin Yun is UBP moon and saturn with Revati Ketu. Esther Williams who did a string of aquamusicals in the 1950s has Ketu in Revati.

Sade has Revati Moon & Ketu and plays a mermaid in her most popular song's mv.

Samantha Morton has UBP moon, Venus/Mars/Ketu in Revati and she plays a mermaid in U2's Electrical Storm MV.

7. (TW: sexual assault, incest)

The nakshatra most often associated with incest is Rohini and Mrigashira but I would say Ashlesha also features these themes. Growing up in a very controlling household with a cold/controlling mother figure is a huge theme in the lives of Ashlesha natives.

in Donkey Skin (1970) Catherine Deneuve plays a princess who takes the form of a donkey in order to escape from her father, the king who wishes to marry her because she looks just like her mother. This is quite literally the story of Rohini, who was Lord Brahma's favourite daughter, and he was attracted to her. Rohini sensed this and took the form of a deer and ran away. Lord Brahma subsequently assumed the form of a stag and chased her across the heavens. When Rudra found out what was happening he cut off the head of the stag. The stag’s head became the symbol of the nakshatra of Mrigashira. As we can see Rohini & Mrigashira's mythology is deeply intertwined.

Catherine Deneuve has Ashlesha moon and Mars in Mrigashira as her atmakaraka (her Saturn is also placed in Mrigashira and is her darakaraka).

If you watch the movie, you can see how its overloaded with astrological symbolism (its based on a fairytale, so thats not surprising)

the color blue is used throughout the first half of the film when the princess is in her own kingdom, traditionally blue is associated with Saturn. Shani/saturn is our karma, which teaches us things the hard way. The princess (unwillingly) has to leave the comfort of her palace and kingdom, assume the form of a donkey and go work as a pig-keeper. She loses everything she has ever known and has to work her way up from scratch, this is a typical Saturnian journey and most people experience this during their Saturn return (Saturnian folks experience this all their lives).

the color red is used throughout the second half of the movie, in association with the Prince's kingdom. Red is typically associated with Sun and Mars in vedic astrology. as the princess works out her karma and integrates her shadow, she blossoms into a fully integrated individual, this means she has cultivated her identity and the strength to act upon it. from a passive, weak willed princess in her father's castle, who was willing to marry her father due to her fear of hurting him by refusing to do so, she transforms into someone who moulds her own fate through her own actions. (Sun + Mars)

The fact that she assumes the form of a Donkey, itself is very symbolic. Donkeys, in vedic astrology is often the vehicle of Gods. Therefore, it serves as the door that governs her transition from passivity to individuation.

the Prince saw her for her true nature, although everyone around was convinced that she's just a filthy, hideous Donkey Skin clad servant. When the Prince slips her ring back on to her finger, she transforms back into her original self (true love is a mirror that reminds us of who we really are and gives us the courage to shed our worldly personas). The dress she wears then, is a golden one, originally given to her by her father when she said she wanted a dress "like the sun". Yellow is associated with Jupiter. After enduring the trials of Saturn, the Princess who became Donkey Skin, once again becomes a Princess, except now she has freedom. Saturn's teachings guide us to Jupiter's blessings. The movie's ending showing us that once the Princess had successfully overcome her trials and now embraced her true nature.

#sidereal astrology #vedic astro notes #vedic astrology #astrology notes #astro notes #astro observations #astrology observations #nakshatras #uttarashada #revati #mermaids

361 notes · View notes

hum-suffer · 6 months

Text

I'm Yours 3

Welcoming Shubhman into his house is an awkward affair.

They were just harmonising, badly, to Rim Jhim Gire Sawan, and the parking area of Ishan's house doesn't have a shed or something, so they're left carefully sprinting across the garden to the house. Ishan had been in dilemma the whole ride, knowing that there was no shed and if Shubhman got out, he'd be drenched too, but not inviting him felt like Ishan was the world's biggest asshole.

However, Indradev made the decision for him. The rain slowed a bit, not completely stopping, but just enough to not develop pneumonia or something. And Shubhman helps as well— his voice, his beautiful fucking voice, turns deeper in the car ride. It's a sign of an incoming cold, Shubhman says, he gets cold easily.

Shubhman hovers awkwardly at the threshold.

"Are you a vampire, man? You won't come in until I invite you? Come on in!" Ishan will end up hitting himself in the wall. What is he saying. Yes, why doesn't he embarrass himself further and admit that his fictional crush is Elijah Mikaelson—

Shubhman grins,"Nope, but I must respect your privacy." He makes jazz hands at the comment as he walks in. "Lying, I respect your furniture more."

Ishan chuckles. "Wait here, I'll get you a towel."

Shubhman hasn't moved an inch in the two minutes that Ishan precariously ran to get him a towel and. And. Okay.

He shakes off the power rush with a shake of his head and smiles lightly at Shubhman, who shakes his head as he dries his hair, not unlike a puppy.

"Come, I'll make us some tea. You can go home after the rain stops."

"Thank you, Ishan, but I don't think i ven impose on you like that," he says, eyes impossibly shy. He's adorable, Ishan thinks.

Ishan shakes his head,"It's not an imposition if I'm asking you to do it, Shubhman. Come, and I'll have some company too."

____________________________________________________

They sit at the dining table after Ishan hastily slides the gajras to the other end.

Shubhman raises an eyebrow. "Girlfriend?"

No, a stalker, actually. Someone who's actually broken into my house and hasn't stolen anything, hasn't hurt me but brought me gajras. Someone who somehow managed to enter the house even after Ishan added the age old heavy, traditional lock.

Someone who was his, wholly.

The possession ignites like lava in his chest.

Since the days he was a child, Ishan has been mindlessly possessive. He did not share, not willingly. What was his, remained his in entirety. Him sharing anything he owned was a privilege equal to a gods gift, he'd been teased. But it was nothing less, either. Ishan would bleed for someone he loved, yes, but his possessions? He would wage war for them.

Now, for the first time in his life, he had something that was wholly his. Not like the house, which had been his grandfather's. Not like the bike, which his dad gifted him. Not like anything else. His admirer, he was the only person who wanted Ishan so madly, and Ishan craved the attention. He'd been checking his phone in between the seminar too, for any new messages, and the disappointment at the lack of any messages was sour and bitter.

Ishan steals a glance at the gajras and another at Shubhman. Shubhman patiently raised his eyebrows with an amused and interested smile.

"Something like that, yes."

____________________________________________________

Shubhman leaves after they get way too involved in an Anupama rerun and both of them begin to simp on Gaurav Khanna whilst wishing him a divorce.

Ishan is still on the serotonin high, the cups of tea feeling like some sort of achivement. Was it a date? He doesn't know. But he definitely adored each second.

He sinks down in the bathtub with a satisfied hiss, the warm water making him feel the best he's been. Maybe he needed this evening, he thinks, closing his eyes. He needed the relaxation, the chance to just calm down. The seminar preparation had him bouncing around the college and now that it's done, he could just sleep for the next three days.

He hums under his breath, his mind wandering to the admirer he has.

What is his name? What does he do? Is it a he? When did he become obsessed with Ishan? Why?

The warm feeling stays and before long, Ishan delved into the memories he has of movies and series he's seen, wishing that he'd be loved so. What would Ishan do, he wonders, if he got asked on a date?

He'd bring flowers, for sure. And maybe dance on Kishore Kumar songs.

Absolutely dance on Kishore Kumar songs, actually.

The water is turning colder and he opens his eyes with a groan.

He streches to reach his towel and. And.

There's a bunch of jasmines over his towel, which weren't there before.

His breath hitches and he looks around. He doesn't know if it's anticipation or panic or hysteria.

Ishan takes a deep breath. At least he was wearing his boxers.

He grabs his phone as soon as he's out of the fucking unlocked bathroom.

'Don't be so careless, love,'

'Not everyone has intentions as pure as I do.'

For some reason, Ishan shivers at that. The messages aren't even a minute old and he runs out to the porch in his sweats and the ratty tshirt that's inside out.

"Where the fuck are you?" He says out loud in frustration when he finds no one around him and he immediately feels like an idiot for saying things aloud to air. It's one thing to talk to himself and other to speak so loudly.

His heart thuds uselessly in his chest and Ishan gulps, listening to air.

His phone vibrates in his hand.

'Are you sure you want me to come to you, love? No more fake courage?'

Ishan doesn't answer the message.

"What should I call you? A creep? That was ridiculous and rude!"

'Ah, there he is'

'Call me yours, Ishan. Already told you this, haven't I?'

And Ishan.

Ishan is tired.

He's been yawning for a while and he'd almost fell asleep in the bathtub. He's too tired to shout at an empty space and receive more messages.

He sends a message that he knows he will regret as he closes and locks the door.

'Whatever is mine, works in any way I want it to. Be careful what you wish for.'

____________________________________________________

The gajra on his wrist isn't even a surprise.

The surprise, is the rose on his bedside.

'I don't even like roses,' he writes.

'Your way of thanking me is always weird.' his admirer writes back. Ishan gets up from the bed with a smile on his face.

Ishan did indeed take a leave on Tuesday, a late night message to Rohit bhaiya and another one to the group of his students was all it took to arrange his leave for the day. He never has more then three lectures on Tuesdays, and he knows he deserves a day to laze around after all the hellish work he's done.

He ends up watching a Marathi movie that makes him sob like a child. And then going to sleep again.

____________________________________________________

It's Aditi that drags him out of the house.

"Enjoy your life, at least!" She yells at him through the phone. "If I hear one more complaint about your students, I will burn your college!"

Just to be cheeky, Ishan complaints about the schedule he keeps and ends up getting cussed. He cackles all the way to his closest, ruffling around for clothes to change into, because he knows his friend. If she's determined, she will definitely drag him out of the house.

He doesn't think it's a very bright idea, if he's honest. What could be better than drinking tea while watching cooking dinner and watching YouTube roasts?

But, he digresses.

He changes into a plane white shirt and folds the sleeves to the elbow and changes into a pair of black dress pants he favours particularly well. He would have worn the bloody blue silk shirt had it not been swiped from him.

The thought of his admirer makes him check his phone again.

The last message reads,'Go and get some fresh air, love. Give me a challenge.'

He wanted a challenge, Ishan thinks with a smirk. He's going to get one.

____________________________________________________

Tagging: @onthecloudseven @mayakimayahai @kyayaarkiraa @ispeakmorelanguagesthanyou @ms-potato @khwxbeeda @ek-ladki-bheegi-bhagi-si @fortunatelycrazyyouth @k-h-watari (aur koi reh Gaya hai toh pls tell me!)

#suffer ye suhana nahi #desi tumblr #desiblr #ishman #shubhish #shubhman gill #ishan kishan #cricket

69 notes · View notes

hesperaaa · 2 months

Text

gaurav gupta spring24 couture

incredibly beautiful balance between structure and flow in all these garments, and the mirrors and crystal work is so gorgeously detailed !

putting a spotlight on the indian technique of “zari work” and elevating it to red carpet perfection ✨ can’t wait to see more from gaurav gupta !!

26 notes · View notes

fancyschmancyopinions · 2 months

Text

ANGELA BASSETT at the premiere of “The Color Purple” on December 6th 2023 in Los Angeles wearing GAURAV GUPTA

Of course, Angela looks amazing at the premiere of “The Color Purple”. I liked that her dress was a bit more understated, but still beautiful. The dark purple color was a great homage to the film. The sleeve detail was so interesting, and I loved the subtle sequins in the fabric. As always, Angela dressed to impress.

20 notes · View notes

materialsscienceandengineering · 11 days

Text

Shear genius: Researchers find way to scale up wonder material, which could do wonders for the Earth

Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science have figured out how to take a miracle material, one capable of extracting value from captured carbon dioxide, and do what no one else has: make it practical to fabricate for large-scale application. The breakthrough from chemical engineering assistant professor Gaurav "Gino" Giri's lab group has implications for the cleanup of the greenhouse gas, a major contributor to the climate change dilemma. It could also help solve the world's energy needs. The substance, called MOF-525, is in a class of materials called metal-organic frameworks. "If you can make these MOFs cover large areas, then new applications become possible, like making a membrane for carbon capture and electrocatalytic conversion all in one system," Giri said.

12 notes · View notes

maxmuscle022 · 6 months

Text

Kai Greene & Phil Heath Created by Gaurav Kumar Hulk & Ronnie Coleman & Dorian Yate & Arnold Schwarzenegger Created by Carlos Jacinto Edit more muscles by me.

#muscle #muscles #bodybuilder #bodybuilding #zbrush #3d sculpting #3d model

15 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 11 months

Text

In the early weeks of 2023, as worry about ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools was ratcheting up dramatically in the public conversation, a tweet passed through the many interlocking corners of Book Twitter. “Imagine if every Book is converted into an Animated Book and made 10x more engaging,” it read. “AI will do this. Huge opportunity here to disrupt Kindle and Audible.”

The tweet’s author, Gaurav Munjal, cofounded Unacademy, which bills itself as “India’s largest learning platform”—and within the edtech context, where digitally animated books can be effective teaching tools, his suggestion might read a certain way. But to a broader audience, the sweeping proclamation that AI will make “every” book “10x more engaging” seemed absurd, a solution in search of a problem, and one predicated on the idea that people who choose to read narrative prose (instead of, say, watching a film or playing a game) were somehow bored or not engaged with their unanimated tomes. As those who shared the tweet observed, it seems like a lot of book industry “disruptors” just don’t like reading.

Munjal is one of many tech entrepreneurs to ping the book world’s radar—and raise its collective hackles—in recent months. Many were hawking AI “solutions” they promised would transform the act of writing, the most derided among them Sudowrite’s Story Engine (dubbed in a relatively ambivalent review by The Verge’s Adi Robertson as “the AI novel-writing tool everyone hates”). Story Engine raised frustrations by treating writers as an afterthought and, by its very existence, suggesting that the problems it was trying to bypass weren’t integral to the act of writing itself.

Last month, Justine Moore, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, provided a sort of bookend to Munjal’s “AI-animated books” proposal. “The three largest fanfic sites—[Archive of Our Own], Fanfiction.net, and Wattpad—get 3 billion-plus annual visits in the US alone,” she wrote. “Imagine how much bigger this market could be if you could chat with characters vs. reading static stories?” The thread was likely a reference to Character.ai, a startup that lets users chat with fictional heroes and villains; Andreessen Horowitz led a $150 million funding round for the company in March. The comment also came after the revelation that large language models (LLMs) may have scraped fanfiction writers’ work—which is largely written and shared for free—causing an (understandable) uproar in many fan communities.

Setting aside the fact that fandom role-playing has been a popular practice for decades, Moore’s statements felt like a distillation of tech’s tortured relationship with narrative prose. There are many kinds of fanfiction—including an entire subgenre in which “you” are a character in the story. But those are still stories, sentences deliberately written and arranged in a way that lets you lose yourself in an authored narrative. “Imagine having such a fundamental misunderstanding of the appeal of reading fanfiction—let alone reading fiction more broadly,” I wrote in response to her thread. What’s so wrong with people enjoying reading plain old words on a page?

The tech world has long been convinced that it understands the desires of readers better than they do themselves. For years, VCs have promised to upend books and the structures around their creation and consumption. Some came from within the publishing industry, but like their counterparts “disrupting” other sectors, including film and TV, many more did not. And for the most part, despite tech’s sometimes drastic (and often negative) effects on other industries, book- and reading-related startups failed to alter much at all. People are still buying books—in fact, they’re buying more than ever. Pandemic lockdowns brought a perhaps unsurprising boom in sales, and even though numbers slipped as restrictions lifted, print sales were still nearly 12 percent higher in 2022 than they were in 2019, and sales of audio books continue to increase dramatically year over year.

One reason books haven’t been particularly disruptable might be that many of the people looking to “fix” things couldn’t actually articulate what was broken—whether through their failure to see the real problems facing the industry (namely, Amazon’s stranglehold), or their insistence that books are not particularly enjoyable as a medium. “It’s that arrogance, to come into a community you know nothing about, that you might have studied as you study for an MBA, and think that you can revolutionize anything,” says writer and longtime book-industry observer Maris Kreizman. “There were so many false problems that tech guys created that we didn’t actually have.”

Take, for example, the long string of pitches for a “Netflix for books”—ideas that retrofitted Netflix’s original DVDs-by-mail model for a different medium under the presumption that readers would pay to borrow books when the public library was right there. Publisher’s Weekly keeps a database of book startups that now numbers more than 1,300; many of them are marked “Closed,” alongside a graveyard of broken URLs. There were plenty of practical ideas—targeting specific demographics or genres or pegged to more technical aspects, like metadata or production workflows. But many more proposed ways to alter books themselves—most of which made zero sense to people who actually enjoy reading.

“I don’t think they’re coming to that with a love of fiction or an understanding of why people read fiction,” Kreizman says. “If they were, they wouldn’t make these suggestions that nobody wants.”

The “10x more engaging” crowd has come in waves over the past two decades, washed ashore via broader tech trends, like social media, tablets, virtual reality, NFTs, and AI. These tech enthusiasts promised a vast, untapped market full of people just waiting for technology to make books more “fun” and delivered pronouncements with a grifting sort of energy that urged you to seize on the newest trend while it was hot—even as everyone could see that previous hyped ventures had not, in fact, utterly transformed the way people read. Interactive books could have sound effects or music that hits at certain story beats. NFTs could let readers “own” a character. AI could allow readers to endlessly generate their own books, or to eschew—to borrow one particular framing—“static stories” entirely and put themselves directly into a fictional world.

AI isn’t remotely a new player in the book world. Electronic literature artists and scholars have worked with various forms of virtual and artificial intelligence for decades, and National Novel Generation Month, a collaborative challenge modeled after NaNoWriMo, has been around since 2013. Even now, as much of the book world loudly rejects AI-powered writing tools, some authors are still experimenting, with a wide range of results. But these bespoke, usually one-off projects are a far cry from the tech industry’s proposals to revolutionize reading at scale—not least because the projects were never intended to replace traditional books.

“A lot of interactive storytelling has gone on for a very long time,” says Jeremy Douglass, an assistant professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, citing everything from his early career work on hypertext fiction to the class he’ll teach next year on the long history of the pop-up book to centuries-old marginalia like the footnote and the concordance. “These fields are almost always very old, they’re almost always talked about as if they’re brand-new, and there haven’t really been a lot of moments of inventing a new modality.”

To VC claims that AI will totally alter books, Douglass takes what he calls a “yes, and” stance. “What people are actually doing is creating a new medium. They’re not actually replacing the novel; they created a new thing that was like the novel but different, and the old forms carried on. I’m still listening to the radio, despite the film and game industries’ efforts.”

Tech entrepreneurs rarely pitch “yes, and” ideas. In their view, new technologies will improve on—and eventually supplant—what exists now. For all of his interest in the many forms of interactive fiction, Douglass doubts that most books would benefit from an AI treatment.

“There are extremely pleasurable aesthetic systems that aren’t intentional,” he says. “But how often when I’m reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X or The Joy of Cooking do I think, ‘If only a chatbot could augment this on the fly’? And it’s partly the fact that some communication is deeply intentional, and that’s part of the pleasure. It’s handcrafted, it’s specific, there’s a vision.”

That isn’t to say that Douglass thinks there’s zero appetite for AI in literature—but it’s “probably a very small slice of the pie. So when you say ‘all books’? Almost certainly not. For the same reason that we’re not reading 100 percent pop-up books, or watching all of our books on YouTube, or anything else you can imagine. People are doing that too, but it’s extra.”

The exact size of that small pie slice remains to be seen, as does the general public’s appetite for instant novels, or chatting with characters, or hitting a button that will animate any book in your digital library. But those desires will likely need to come from readers themselves—not from the top down. “If you just give the tools to everybody, which is happening in spite of venture capital, as well as because of it, people will figure out what they want it for—and it’s usually not what the inventors and the investors think,” Douglass says. “It’s not even in their top-10 list of guesses, most of the time. It’s incredibly specific to the person and genre.”

The recent history of publishing has plenty of examples in which digital tools let people create things we couldn’t have predicted in the analog days: the massive range of extremely niche self-published romance, for example, or the structural variation and formal innovation within the almost entirely online world of fanfiction.

But when the tech industry approaches readers with ways to “fix” what isn’t broken, their proposals will always ring hollow—and right now, plain old reading still works for huge numbers of people, many of whom pick up books because they want to escape and not be the main character for a while. “That’s a good thing,” Kreizman says. And as AI true believers sweep through with promises that this technology will change everything, it helps to remember just how many disruptors have come and gone. “In the meantime, tech bros will still find VCs to wine and dine and spend more money on bullshit,” Kreizman predicts. But for the rest of us? We’ll just keep on reading.

13 notes · View notes