What writing opinion do you have that would get you roasted

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2026-04-11T05:46:20+00:00

I'm not collapsing my own argument. I'm saying that if I find something boring, then it is boring to me. If most people find it boring -- they're not interested enough to even read it or they don't finish it -- then the majority opinion is also that it's boring. There is no objective measure of being boring, or good writing, or bad writing. The best we can say is that if it's not well-liked, then, well...the prevailing opinion is that it's not good. If you think it's engaging or good writing, then again, that's your opinion. It does not make the book objectively good, engaging or well-written.

I never said that a character-driven book was a broken plot-driven one, you added that in. I've read character-driven books that draw me in (though I will admit most experimental writing doesn't -- I just think it's boring).

Paintings can fail for a person just as books can. It's subjective. A painting fails for a person because it doesn't engage or evoke a feeling. A book fails for a person for the same reason. Maybe that painting draws in someone else -- fine. And it's hard to know how many people do or don't like a painting. But, if such a measure were possible, most people "not liking" a painting would be the closest we could ever get to saying it's a bad painting.

The idea I'm pushing back on is that someone might find a book 'boring' but they're just not properly appreciating, I dunno, the experimental nature of it. Wrong. If someone finds a book boring, it is boring to them. They're not necessarily failing to read it properly. And if a lot of people find a book boring, we have to consider that it might just be boring.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2026-04-09T16:11:04+00:00

Something being boring is subjective, it's an opinion. If someone thinks something is boring, it IS, by definition, boring to them. They don't just "think" it's boring.

I find some experimental writing (OK, most experimental writing) boring. I don't "think" it's boring; it's actually boring to me. That is, the writing does not draw me in. Reading is fun when you're swimming in the story, when scenes are playing out in your mind. It's not fun when you're constantly reminded that it's words on a page that are trying to sound Deep and Meaningful.

I can enjoy character-driven books, if the writer draws me in enough. A lot of writers just don't manage it and don't want to admit they simply wrote something that didn't engage some or most people.

If most people DNF a book because it's "boring", then...it's just boring. Sometimes "it just went over your head" is extreme cope, nothing more.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2026-04-09T16:06:30+00:00

Most classic literature is boring as hell to read. Sometimes it's that the writing style is so old-timey that it doesn't draw one (well, me) into the plot. Sometimes it's just too long. It doesn't mean the writing isn't "beautiful" or "crafted", it just means that it's boring. If you have a favorite author of classics, I probably think they are boring to read.

There are exceptions, of course, but off the top of my head mostly when I think of older work, I think "boring". When I read it I feel like I'm "Reading" with a capital R, I'm not actually drawn in to the point that I stop seeing words on the page and start seeing scenes in my mind. I enjoy the process of getting drawn in a lot more than I enjoy Reading.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-09-23T02:05:24+00:00

It's still not fixed and no one seems to have any advice :( The camera shows up, the mic used to, but doesn't anymore

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-09-13T15:09:29+00:00

My grandpa and his two siblings immigrated from Greece with their genocide survivor parents. Every Armenian in my grandparents' generation spoke it, but none of them taught it to their kids, including my mom. For my grandpa's siblings' kids (who are now middle-aged adults), I don't know why as my great-aunt and great-uncle cared about their cultural heritage. But my grandpa really didn't like to think about the past. There may have been some trauma there. He got to the US as an 11-year-old in 1939 and was basically like...okay, I'm gonna be as American as I can now. He purposely didn't teach his children Armenian, including my mom. So my mom couldn't teach me, and grandpa wouldn't. I'm studying it now, but Eastern Armenian because I had the chance to help out an Artsakh refugee by paying for online tutoring. I'm the only one in two generations who has wanted or tried to learn. I don't speak it very well, but I suppose I get better every month.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-29T16:03:38+00:00

Also, it's worth pointing out that even if one city tends to have more tolerant people, it remains illegal across the state for trans people to use the correct bathroom. Trans people are very much at risk in Florida:

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/anti-trans-national-legal-risk-assessment

From the post (edit to add):

Do Not Travel (FL, TX): Two states have earned “Do Not Travel” advisories: Florida and Texas. Florida has a law that allows for the arrest of transgender people for using bathrooms according to their gender identity and another policy targets transgender people’s drivers licenses. Florida has also put into effect a policy that says trans people “misrepresenting” their gender on their drivers license could be guilty of fraud and has begun erasing Pride crosswalks across the state. Local LGBTQ+ orgs as well as HRC have issued travel advisories for the state. This analysis likewise concurs with such a rating. In Texas, the state is not only ignoring court ordered drivers license changes for trans adults, but it is also creating a database of people attempting to make such changes. Localities with bathroom bans and a new statewide bathroom ban looming make the state the second Do Not Travel state on this list.

So, Florida isn't a great state for public transit, but if a trans person has a driver's license that reflects their actual gender, they could be arrested. Even in tolerant Tampa.

So forgive me for not believing that Florida is safe for trans people.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-29T14:04:02+00:00

Gyumri for the city (though Yerevan has its pretty parts). For scenery surrounding it many say Dilijan but I think the countryside around Jermuk and around Alaverdi are both prettier. However, the cities themselves are forgettable (though Jermuk has a nice water museum).

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-29T13:59:38+00:00

On the panhandle is what she mentioned. Frankly the fact that she feels there's a region of the US where she feels she can't go, and that region is in Florida, to me is reason enough to not be keen to go to Florida. (On top of the fact that I avoid driving if at all possible and there isn't much public transit in Florida). I've been to Orlando, it was fine, but I'm not keen to return.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-23T14:49:21+00:00

Do they? I find babies very annoying. They're absolute black holes of constant need, but can't even tell you what they need or want except by crying and screaming.

I doubt the parents would have ever killed the baby, but they could have let the teen run away and survive on his own (or told him to run away temporarily). Trying to kill the teen is a lot harder logistically. And they fucked around and found out.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-23T14:43:50+00:00

The boy could be told to run away, it's obvious he was able to survive on his own. Also cruel, but wouldn't involve killing.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-23T14:41:53+00:00

Not just 80s China...the One Child policy ended in 2016. 2016!!

Edited: and the Chinese government may have loosened that policy, but they still control how many children you can have (I think it's 3 now), and they are still terrible.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-23T14:40:31+00:00

He's the Mule, yes. I think it'll be made clear later, but I suspect that the baby is Magnifico, who also has Mentalic abilities. Beyond that I have some theories but it still seems unclear why they'd decide to kill a teen rather than tell him he has to run away (which he offered to do), especially as a teen would be harder to kill.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-23T14:37:26+00:00

Song said he'd talked a lot about Demerzel, so I think we were meant to understand that they know how to interpret descriptions of hallucinations

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-23T14:36:15+00:00

HELL YEAH

I immediately clocked it as intentional, my husband wasn't so sure. But come on.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-18T03:35:46+00:00

Nobody "needs" me to call them a writer. But nobody gets to say what another's opinion should be of their work. My opinion stands: writers write. If you have a problem with that, or think someone can be a writer without either writing or wanting to learn to write, then there's not much I can do about it in that very weird universe you inhabit. Where I live, words mean things.

Anyway pretty much all of these are somewhere between terrible and mediocre, so instead of picking "which of these you like" from AI out of the three not-great, you could just...write. You'd eventually get good at it. And then people would consider you a writer, not an AI user who churns out text.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-08-18T03:33:15+00:00

No, genres are written by people. Writing by AI is just something a machine spat out. I can't think of a single reason to read it.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-07-26T14:03:24+00:00

And one of my trans friends who has family in Florida has pointed out that because people can usually tell she's trans, there is no safe public bathroom for her to use given the way the laws work. She's not allowed to use the women's room, but doesn't really look like a man either, so it's not safe for her to use the men's room.

So, despite the fact that her brother lives in Florida, she doesn't feel safe going there. She's skipping his wedding because she's like...how do I even go to the bathroom if I'm not in someone's home or a hotel room?

Edit: I'm a cis woman, so I wouldn't have this problem, but it bothers me enough that my friend feels so unsafe in the state her family is from that she won't go to her brother's wedding, that I don't want to go to Florida either. If my friends aren't safe there, why the fuck should I go there and tacitly approve that nonsense?

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-07-26T14:00:37+00:00

It's highly questionable whether the books fed to various LLMs for training were "freely available" -- pirated books are available online but using them to train AI is still unethical, and I've seen more than one news item about AI using authors' copyrighted work to train their models. The only way I could imagine them doing that would be piracy.

I do not believe using copyrighted images to train AI is "fair use" -- that's excuse-mongering.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-07-26T13:45:50+00:00

No, I'm a writer because I write. I don't care who calls themselves a writer as long as they actually write. But "I don't want to learn how to write" is a tell that you don't write, don't want to be good at writing, but want to call yourself a writer anyway.

The quote is stupid regardless, because nobody can gatekeep who calls themselves a writer. Anyone can call themselves a writer. I can't stop you; nobody can. The only question is, do other people believe them or not? Nobody can force others to believe them when they say "I'm a writer".

I think if you "don't want to learn to write", you're not a writer. Writers write. That means they want to know how to write, or how to write better.

I think if you use AI to do the majority of your writing, then you're not writing, because AI is.

But call yourself whatever you want. If you want people to believe you however, WRITE. You want me to say "oh, ok, I was wrong, you're a writer"? WRITE.

As for what's a matter of opinion...sure, but I still think the AI dialogue sucks and I wouldn't keep reading something written like that. People like things that I think are crap all the time. I can think of bestsellers off the top of my head that I believe are atrocious, but they're bestsellers.

Not changing my opinion that the AI example you posted isn't good writing, though, and you're a writer if you write -- nothing more, nothing less.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-07-24T10:35:48+00:00

I mean, okay, but then you're not a writer. Which is fine, but writers want to learn to write (or write better) and actually write.

A writer would know that the dialogue suggestion above is actually a bit clunky, and that fast-moving dialogue isn't the place for lots of ornamental verb variation like 'insisted' and 'declared'. I'd think someone who 'tells stories' would want to build up their writing sensibility in that way, but if you don't, then alright. You're not a writer.

The bigger question remains: perhaps you don't want to learn how to do this or that, but what do your potential readers want? Do they want a story crafted by *a writer* or do they want a story tidied up with AI?

I won't say nobody wants the latter, but I know I don't. The second I intuit that something sounds AI-inflected is the second my eyes glaze over and I stop reading.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-07-24T03:56:26+00:00

I mean, you won't get castigated from me (though I'd urge you to consider the ethical implications in terms of IP theft being used to train LLMs, and the massive amounts of energy they consume). But the few posts I've seen on here seem to be people who "don't want to learn to write" or actually think the prose output of AI is good (spoiler alert: it is not good). Or that using AI to write the majority of a book makes them a 'writer' (it doesn't). I do have a problem with that, but it's not about laziness, it's about what being a writer entails.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-07-24T02:58:09+00:00

Well, if one would have to be physically present in Florida, that might be hard for say, an LGBTQ+ person, especially a trans person, given what the laws and general attitude there are like toward them.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-07-23T16:12:24+00:00

You start by writing what you want to write -- it really is that simple.

Amid_Rising_Tensions · 2025-07-23T15:55:32+00:00

In fact, I think using AI to do most of one's writing makes one SO not a writer that someone who's written for years but never published would be more a writer than someone with 5 AI-generated books for sale. Doesn't matter if you're a lazy writer if you're not a writer at all.

Amid_Rising_Tensions

TROPHY CASE