#if you write bad you will be told lol

[genericpuff]

vent post

[pendraegon]

thesis updates: sent the draft to my advisor -> she said it was "incoherent" and that she was "shocked" at my work and instead of telling me anything in detail as to what's wrong directs me to the writing center then proceeds to cc my committee members saying that she's at a loss with what to do with me -> was confused because... did i send her the wrong draft?? it seemed pretty solid to me?? like i was genuinely proud of it??? -> next day she sends me another email saying that actually my draft isn't bad at all and it just needs some reworking ???????

[quaranmine]

On Wednesday before I gave my presentation I confessed to a new employee that I was worried it would be too long and she brightly told me her life hack was to just let AI rewrite things for her. She said I should put in all my talking points and ask ChatGPT to give me a five minute exactly presentation. I was like....how is the most polite possible way (since this is a new colleague I shouldn't get off on the wrong foot with) that I can express that I will Not be taking this advice. Ever. I told her that I didn't think we were allowed to use ChatGPT at this job (we most certainly are not, it is a nightmare for any type of protected information) and also that I prefer to write all of my own work. Despite my best efforts the last part of that was still passive aggressive, lol.

Something about being a writer makes it so that it's almost offensive to me for someone to suggest I use AI to do my work instead? Like, the day I reach the point where I let AI write something for me is the day y'all need to be checking me for brain damage because clearly I'm losing it

[whiskey-tango-matcha]

not to brag, but my therapist told me today that i did incredible during our emdr session, which means i get an A for the day in therapy, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve 🙂‍↕️😌

[n0bluev]

@fushiglow hmm….wonder who i’d draw this for all of a sudden and why… 🤔🤔

[tio-trile]

Okay, I just got my mind blown away by this GO s2 theory/analysis:

https://www.tumblr.com/ariaste/724311712381222912/the-magic-trick-you-didnt-see-being-an-analysis?source=share

It's by @ariaste who is also a famous author, and if she's right, even a little bit, it explains SO MUCH about the inconsistency and 'bad writing' and backsliding of s2. This is me after reading it, absolutely mindblown

I think you might be interested in it? Maybe?

So, I read it (across like 3 days time) because I love and care about you all, and I would never make an opinion about something if I hadn't known about it in great detail, and the entire time I was reading it, I thought:

MAN it would be SO embarrassing if this is NOT the case. And the author of the essay had just insulted Neil Gaiman and his writing for a grand total of 36 pages. They are even meaner to the season than I am 😂 and posting this on main (when they are apparently a published author?), what a power move. Through the middle I keep questioning myself that maybe THIS ESSAY is an elaborate scheme, and OP just purely HATED the season but didn't want to insult Neil Gaiman to his face, so they came up with the world's most convoluted way to insult Neil Gaiman's writing without him noticing. 🤣🤣🤣

IF OP is 100% correct about everything (I personally think very unlikely) then...kudos to them. I tip my hat to them. Still not to season 2 tho because like OP themselves kinda explained in their essay, showing me a bunch of random things isn't the full magic trick, so you can't expect me to clap after it. (The only thing I'm upset about reading in the essay is actually that -- I'm a little annoyed that OP compared one of my favorite Penn and Teller routines to this dumpster fire that is season 2 🤣 THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. The Penn and Teller routine is incredible and entertaining and well-structured here it is)

If OP is wrong and Neil Gaiman actually wrote this season genuinely (which I think he did)......OP would have called Neil Gaiman a "Hack" and a "Clumsy Apprentice Writer" (both of these are OP's words, not mine) for 36 pages in 16k words, and I can't wait to see their metaphorical face when season 3 comes out. Actually, in a way, adaed5, you did change my mind; I now want season 3 to be greenlit and made just for that to play out.

[chicago-geniza]

Happy 140th birthday Zofia NAŁKOWSKA💜

[not-poignant]

I didn't understand how it was possible to be doing so much work, and I'm glad you're finally taking a break ❤️

To be fair, I am lucky that I type very fast! I've had an awful lot of practice writing and so I'm faster at it than someone who is starting out or even someone who is 5 years into a writing career.

That being said, I have no idea how I was doing so much work as well. Prior to 2023 it was normal for me to only be working on 2-3 stories at a time (with around 5-8 chapters a week max, and my main story updated only once every 2 weeks). Not the amount I'm doing now. Things exploded with Underline the Black and my lack of impulse control (as well as the appeal of offering side stories) meant I started up two more stories alongside it. Then calm Palmarosa and Constellations and suddenly I had a lot on my plate that I felt like I had to be regularly committed to.

I was pretty burnt out prior to getting Toby (our puppy), so on that side of things, I was a little too ambitious in thinking I'd be able to juggle everything.

I have known that like, once certain side stories finish, my schedule quietens down and I think what I've been hoping for is like 'just hold out until this finishes, and then this finishes, and then this finishes. Just hold out.' But my stories take some time to complete, and 'just holding out' means sometimes waiting 1-2 years.

So yeah instead of doing that I'm going to try something sooner. I was doing the week break from Underline the Black in 2024 but it just hasn't been enough.

So like, I am very lucky I type fast! When I'm comfortable, I'll always be prolific to the point that at least some people will be like 'I don't know how you do that' - a lot of that is just experience. My typing speed is around 120-140 words per minute and I can comfortably finish a 3,000 word chapter in about 2 hours (with room to think / imagine what is coming next etc. and pausing to reread sections for clarity). Sometimes faster. Sometimes slower if the chapter is challenging. On very good days, I can write 2 chapters in a day. The last time I had a day like that was March 11th.

Editing takes me a lot longer though, and weirdly so do things like the Birthday Spotlights. I think I really underestimated how much time each one would take to do in terms of the graphics + hyperlinks + finding quotes etc.

I'm still going to be writing here and there over the next two months. But even just an update/posting hiatus and a slow down will help an indescribably amount. The reality is I haven't actually done very much at all this April and I still feel very overwhelmed (even more so because I knew I was running down my buffer of chapters for May/June), so taking the next step, and hope that's enough!

The good news is I've taken hiatuses before and I've always come back afterwards raring to go, and I'm hoping that's the case now too. :)

[carcarrot]

you'll be pleased to know that on my first day back at my job after my two week vacation i am already in one of my semi-regular Job Crises where i feel like if i dont find a new, better job soon im going to explode into 5 billion pieces

[telesodalite]

With Krok now on my mind, it's reminded me of like, the whole deal of him coping with the loss of his squad by believing they'd just become separated? Because that bit is such a fascinating aspect of his character to me.

It's vague in a way that doesn't totally confirm whether he truly 100% deluded himself, or if he just kept telling himself that to try and distract from the truth and memories he didn't want to face.

(Which, for some reason this pisses Misfire off? Which implies something really interesting there about Misfire and his own coping mechanisms and issues that we don't get much of a peer into unfortunately.)

Anyway, I spent way too long thinking about it when I was reading through the comics. And it's like, did studying battles and strategy play a part in this delusion/lie?

Like, you're a being that lives for millions of years, in the middle of a war spanning those millions of years. So, at some point, surely those battles are going to start to blur together. So you've got that, and then you go and face a frankly horrifically traumatic fight that quite literally rips the people you cared about most, and felt responsible for, apart.

Presumably, Decepticons aren't the greatest at handling shell shock and other such side effects of war. So they just take this freshly traumatized mess of a dude, take him off the front lines and plant him on a warworld to aid the fight from a more comfortable distance.

With all this, the mind is bound to be fickle when faced with such sudden loss and change. But Krok obviously did his job there, or at least he was very knowledgeable on history and tactics beforehand.

Either way, he studied battle after battle, went through records of fight after fight, planned for what's next and reconsidered what had already happened. Hundreds of wins and losses.

So did it get jumbled there? In having a head full of battles, did some of them blur and mix with the one that took everything away from him? In trying to solve the failures of past battles, did he try and find where a victory could've been had against the wreckers that day? Did he find a solution that would've had his squad still whole and alive?

From there, did it slip into delusion, or a desperate lie to keep himself going?

I feel like his "mental health matters" moment was an interesting insight into it and possibly the average soldier's rough outlook on trauma. But it was still very surface level I think, but I guess going too deep into the why's and how's wouldn't have been important until maybe the Scavenger centric comics that uh, never happened :/

[bambiraptorx]

ngl one of my biggest pet peeves in media is when they acknowledge in universe that a character should logically have a concussion, and yet they don't.

Knocking someone out, having them wake up four hours later, and then having them be perfectly fine? Horrendously inaccurate to how head injuries work, but fine whatever it's a trope and if it's used in a genre that isn't trying to hold to realism anyway (like an action movie, fantasy story, etc), I am willing to suspend my disbelief. I don't like it, but I can accept it as a narrative tool.

Knocking someone out, having them wake up four hours later, having someone say that that character has a concussion, and then having the audacity as the writer to have said character be completely unaffected by the head trauma? Do not pass Go do not collect 200 dollars go directly to jail.

[aethersea]

Hello! I am really enjoying your Thistle the Show analysis posts, there are some really interesting ideas in that show! (and also from a goncharov-ing a story perspective they are so much fun to read)

eyy I'm so glad! I love that show, I love the heavy atmosphere and the overwrought symbolism and the 'power of the land' magic that's never fully explained and the tragedy of it all, god this show is so good at tragedy for something that does technically earn a happy ending. if KILLING OFF YOUR EPONYMOUS PROTAGONIST can count as a happy ending, god, I never recovered, even if he did come back to life afterward that still just MURDERED me.

it's so thematically satisfying is the thing T.T he dies and I'm just sitting there like....the themes......we're breaking the cycles of trauma and vengeance.......

[httpiastri]

Oscar is so bad LOL What even is he doing?

go off, anon 😚 you seem to know a lot

idk if i would say p9 in the championship, two podiums and being one of the four people to win a race this year is “so bad��, but you do you i guess

[lunar-years]

I have about a million wips percolating around in my head right now but I’m finally going to finish writing the jamie/keeley early relationship > breakup > friendship > roy/jamie/keeley future relationship study that I’ve been sitting on for like a year and a half and it’s solely out of my (maybe unjustified) level of spite over the “why would Jamie even think he stood a chance” “Jamie was never a real option and hasn’t been since season 1!!” “Since when is Jamie still hung up on Keeley didn’t he give up on that” “this came out of no where this triangle has never been a thing!!” crowd

[fallowtail]

damn remember when i thought i could like...be a writer...truly embarrassing 😬

[v-arbellanaris]

i think some of u need to calm down and remember this is a game. i did not pay [redacted amount of money] for a game to not explore all the options, and if you did, i think you're stupid and should have just watched a playthrough on youtube.