iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

and it's really just hitting me now that the reason people were giving me crit, and feedback, and pointing out their sticking spots / what they thought could improve, was because i'm not good enough to write a publish-ready book on my own and i've been that bitch implying "you should edit this"

000

and it's worse, because while part of this is me being more used to workshops & crit swaps it's also because i thought beta readers could give feedback, that their role was "basically giving the author stuff to think about on their next draft" BECAUSE that's how people have beta'd my stuff

100

thinking about it lately and read some people's thoughts on what beta readers are for & i feel like an asshole. i've been acting like an alpha reader of course everyone fired me as a reader, i wasn't supposed to be doing anything more than emotional impressions on a book that won't be edited anyway

100

Beanie @meanbeanie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

i'm sure she won't send it to me, but if she does, i'm absolutely terrified to beta my crit partner's book every time i've been a beta reader i got told to stop reading if i gave critical feedback because "i wouldn't have sent it to you if i thought it needed edits, it's done" and i've been

200

it has been nearly 2 weeks since my crit partner and i last spoke, so... not my preferred resolution but i dont think there was any way i could ever stop feeling crummy and inferior and now i dont have to finish my wips because i lost my only reader. whos made it clear she wouldnt like it anyway

010

(final note—the thing that pisses me off is she keeps saying this shit and i KNOW she doesnt believe it. she cant hate immaturity when she travelled internationally for a concert on impulse. she cant hate personality when her favorite author is terry prachett. so. why the fuck do you keep saying it)

030

characters arent okay either, and obviously "no they get a pass bc theyre just 25" was a crock of shit, ive lost the one thing that made me feel like she didnt have to make exceptions for EVERYTHING, AND ive lost all belief she actually tolerates me as a person i kinda hope she never DMs me again

120

so if every thought she has about maturity and how that dial needs to be set at 100 the second you hit 18 or else you're failing as an adult (except when she walks it back to reassure me she doesnt believe what she JUST said🙄) and if thats her thoughts on how people should behave, then obviously my

it grating when people have visible personalities or express emotions. and im gonna go out on a limb and guess thats why shes stopped letting me be silly and tease her main character because thats too childish for her and i need to grow up and be serious. even though im apparently "only" 30

or how she quits books all the time when characters start showing a personality and their age is never an excuse so. if she cant stand my setting or genre or plot, i had to believe she likes the characters. but she cant. she cant even like me. shes made it clear time and time again that she finds

expects them to be mature grown up adults, expresses frustration when they show any sort of personality in class because there's no place for that at school or work and they should have a personality on their own time. demands pure competence and reservation. dont make mistakes, thats childish.

but her characters? all younger. all super reserved. super serious. proper adults who feel like it. who have their shit together. and no personality flaws because they're 22-24 and having those still would be immature which is also how she talks about her ~20 year old students. that she fully

and secondary-kinda-related for how this is how she talks about maturity too. my characters? "theyre 25 ofc theyre going to make bad decisions." me? "youre 30 youre still young you dont need to have everything figured out." and apparently she has no issues with my or my characters' big personalities

two years spent telling me she likes my characters, likes my plot, defending my setting from everyone who told me secondary world fantasy couldn't be slightly modern. whether or not i believe her isnt the point, the point is "if you like my book, please stop saying you hate everything about it"

120

everyone has me muted but idc i need to vent because im crying, because yes my crit partner makes me feel so insecure. she says she hates everything my book is and still expects me to believe she likes it when at best it feels fucking shitty to have constant reminders that i'm an exception

140

to make bad decisions because HER main character is 24 so ofc he's perfect. me and my characters are still young and can have fun. her characters? her students? "you're 18, the only thing you can care about now is being an adult" i just feel so SHITTY being repeatedly told all this. and i wanna cry

000

why she's stopped letting me joke about her main character. because he's Serious Person Grown Up Super Adult and of course it pisses her off if ever tease because how dare i suggest he has emotions and flaws, how dare i assume she's telling the truth that my characters are 25 and still young enough

100

feel shitty for even contemplating never talking to her again, because she's not just a writing partner but like kinda a good friend? but i'm increasingly self conscious. how everything she says she hates is consistent with with everything she reads. and her thoughts on maturity also kinda explain

100

she says my characters can make bad decisions because their flaws are the point and she only finds it annoying when the author doesn't treat them like flaws that come with consequences. again, no matter how those flaws are framed, she finds it annoying enough to quit in every. other. book. like i

100

and my characters, she says get a pass to make bad decisions and be emotional because they're only 25, and still young, so it's not annoying, it's annoying when the character is much older. but she DNFs books all the time when characters are annoying and their age never makes it less annoying. or

100

she's historically told me all the time that my setting is totally fine in fantasy and encouraged me not to change it, and to keep my intentional anachronisms, told me that 1920s isn't contemporary, but if contemporary is "cars & later" then it makes it impossible to believe everything else she says

100

but it doesn't mean i want to hear it? because yeah, i want to believe she likes my book, that she doesn't think i'm an annoying child, but if she thinks people a decade younger than me should be reserved and perfect, that implies something about me that i'm still silly and enthusiastic and bold

100

settings (defined as cars and later), hate when fantasy isn't perfectly "historically accurate" to the setting it's emulating, hate characters with big personalities, hate when early 20 somethings irl don't act perfectly mature all the time, hate when characters make bad emotionally-driven decisions

100

its like if someone repeatedly kept telling me how much they hate redheads, like even if they like me yeah it's not going to feel great hearing that. after so many times i kinda stop believing anything nice they say, yknow? like my crit partner is allowed to hate guns in fantasy, hate contemporary

100

where on the "reasonable/unreasonable" scale does it fall if i say i kinda want to stop talking to my writing buddy because i'm getting incredibly self conscious with how she keeps reminding me my book is everything she hates but i'm "an exception" "i hate this. not when its you though" it hurts?

100

like jesus christ. i don't care if she thinks guns & cars don't belong in fantasy/historic fic and that's where she draws the line all i ask is for her to stop fucking backpeddling when i talk about my wip. dont say you hate something and pretend you didn't say that? be honest you hate my wip jfc

100

AND on top of me not only being too Not Fantasy AND too Not Historical she also said that IF she HAS to read a book with one of her Absolutely Not Points, she demands historical accuracy and given my ~1920s ish world ha guns, cars, telephones, but no movies? she has THREE reasons to hate it

100

also i'm still pretty hurt by the other day, crit partner saying that in fantasy, guns are too modern for her to read, and in historical fiction, cars are too contemporary so fuck my life for having cars in fantasy and she's so transparently bullshitting me when she says she likes my wip anyway

thing it's clearly manufactured for the sake of drama. or it's a boring obvious question with a boring obvious answer" nobody wants a detective story where the only question is "who did it" because thats a fake choice for the mc. it needs SOMETHING so now i have no story bc i probably did that

000

and claiming that there's toootttally stakes and tootttaallly consequences "omg if they eat the rat poison they'll die!" like okay nobody believes that for a second that kind of fake vs real choices where the author pretends something is a big deal when really "if the character does the wrong

100

it's about making the story not obvious by adding gravity. something can be in character but it's p bullshit and fake if the choices have no stakes and only one real outcome if an author presents a choice as "they can eat food or they can eat rat poison" it's p transparently an illusion of choice

100

no it's not that. it's not "it's literally fiction ofc it's fake" and not about in character it's about stakes, a dilemma, multiple options and none of them are bad, "the character is doing this for a reason." instead of manufacturing tension by pretending there's a choice when there isn't

100

no she wasn't critiquing anything she was telling me about a breakthrough in her own wip and changed something so her character has an actual real choice to make and i thought her old way was fine so it stands to reason it's because "right, my stakes are fake and everything is manufactured"

every conversation with my crit partner makes me want to quit writing more and more and tbh i think im already at the point of "i'd rather skin my entire body with sandpaper than write one more word" this mornings conversation? well my characters choices are probably fake and now i have no story

** nothing i can do can salvage sigh if there's any other typo don't tell me

000

(And yeah the fact that I got almost done draft 3 and there are still continuity and plot errors that keep it from being something someone could read is tbh somehow the least of its problems) I'm just curious. Let it die give up probably never write again or "fuck it" edit the last 1/3?

200

Genuine question for... whoever So after 2.67 drafts I'm callin' it that the novella is done and nothing I can salvage on... every level tbh Nobody is going to read it But in any case... if you were me, would you at least "lazy edit" it just so it's at minimum readable? Or let it die

100

(to be absolutely clear. if you see a straight guy being a creep and your reaction is to use incel language to call for the mass SA of bi folks, or support said person using incel language to call for the mass SA of bi folks in response to a straight dude being a creep.... you're on the losing side)

030

Beanie @meanbeanie.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

so twitter has been a rotten cesspool of biphobia for the last week as of yesterday, the biphobes have also upgraded to transphobia and insisting that it's woke somehow to enforce a gender binary out fucking standing

140

well i told myself id consider the novella done at the end of august no matter what stage it was in so the novellas done, i guess

020

Lmao someone once followed me who had "anti ai" in their bio but their pfp was so obviously generated in midjourney its so hypocritical lmao "ai generated writing ruins writing ! ... but im too cheap to hire an artist so its different only writers deserve to get paid not artists" like ???

010

"You just wanna hear "write what you love" and throw a book on KU." ^You were so real for saying that. I'm in a rut right now, but my goal's always been to take a crack at trad pub and if I had a buck for every time someone said "forget about readers, just self publish" like what are we doing here

010

🙋‍♀️I want to hear it i'm so over "crit is just haters! only you have to like it!" it's about time my feed starts picking up some "it's okay if your goal is to have readers which does mean edits and compromise" nobody says "write for you" to published authors. "good vibes only" helps nobody grow

also lmao because all month i've been working through that with my therapist, that "she says she hates my genre but then tells me she doesn't" and my therapist would say "she wouldn't be talking to you if she hated your book" jokes on me i guess because she's not even talking to me now lmao

000

i got curious my crit partner and i have only talked 7 times all month. and like. we used to talk way, way more than that. like we were friends, talking constantly and now i get 7 conversations that are mostly just "brief pop-ins to say hi" yeah wow she really doesn't want to talk to me

100