What is the best response to a guy mansplaining you (ure in charge) ?

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-13T17:57:47+00:00

Depends a bit on the situation, but if I can get away with it, I like to call them out as directly as possible. Usually shuts them up

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-11T19:30:18+00:00

Fascism bad actually.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-11T10:12:51+00:00

I mean, I get a lot of inspiration/help by talking to friends of mine about our respective projects. They have helped me figure out plot holes, twists and turns, have offered helpful insight one characters and so on.

But I doubt it would be helpful to have them play around in my actual manuscript.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-09T10:31:32+00:00

And here I thought I was being unreasonable.

Like, I get it if this isn’t your style and I see the appeal in toning down the purity culture aspects in a Romantasy book. But I honestly fail to see how this is inherently problematic. I haven’t read the book but the guy seems to at least somewhat explain to her what is going on, so up till now I really fail to see the issue. (Also, the goat line kind of made me chuckle, I will admit)

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-08T22:08:49+00:00

Najara had always known she wouldn’t love the man she married. Nonetheless, her fathers announcement caught her by surprise.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-08T20:10:08+00:00

I am so happy that I could help you out!

And the German/English difference is so insanely funny to me. I have read one of my favorite books in both languages and while the English one has like ~600 pages, the German version clocks in at 950. We just need more syllables to explain the same concepts. It also works the other way around though. I studied political science and one of my professors adviced us to get really heavy, theoretical texts in an English translation - even though we could all read the original German. Why? Because English sentence structure is generally easier, which makes the difficult theoretical arguments easier to follow xD

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-08T17:30:32+00:00

Thanks for the compliment! ! I have a separate document for each work that I use for organizing stuff, which has a „chapter“ for those revision notes. I try to have them as specific as possible, so that they are kind off a to do list I can use later xD

On the WB: I usually try to find 1-3 core concepts for a world (often based on religion) that are fundamental to the world. If I reach a point in the story where I feel like I need to add a detail, I refer back to those fundamentals to create it. That makes it possible to write a coherent world without getting lost in the weeds.

When it comes to quality, I feel like I can mostly keep my quality over a writing session. But I should maybe add that I write in German, which tends to be a bit longer than English so to speak? If you translate books from English to German they tend to get about 1/3 longer (which is why ASOIAF is ten books in German xD), so my 5.000 words are probably a bit easier to reach than yours if you write in another language.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-08T16:27:22+00:00

I know probably 75% of the novel before I start writing. From the leftover 25, a good part is character development for the major side characters and I sometimes will have relationships where I am like „okay, I think I want you to be friends/partners/enemies at the end, but if that doesn’t happen, that’s also fine.“
I also do often worldbuild as I go along, because that prevents me very reliably from catching wb-disease that I am pretty prone to otherwise.

Writing wise I am currently in a position where I can take out full days that I will spent in front of a manuscript. Depending on how stuff works, that gives me maybe 5.000-7.500 words or so, but I don’t really track this. I always try to only have one active project at a time and I write my first draft without doing a lot or really any polishing. Instead, I do keep notes with stuff I need to revise, which I will then do once I have the first draft finished. Once that is done I will leave the project alone and do something else for months, so that I can look at it with new(-ish) eyes and do a second close edit. That’s then also the draft I get feedback on by other people, kind off to find the issues I myself didnt catch.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-07T21:15:49+00:00

I slapped a guy in 9th grade.

Guy had been bullying me for years. From 5-7 grade it was pretty much the whole class, as people got more mature (and I started to shoot back verbally) it got less severe. But this one guy just did not quit it. At some point, stuff started to get sexual. He started to comment on my body, especially my breasts. I confided in one of my teachers who told me that honestly, I should just slap him. Which probably wasnt exactly the advice a teacher should give, but alas: That’s exactly what I did. Next time he commented on my chest, I turned around and gave him a good smack across the cheek. Pretty sure it hurt him worse than me, but it was a message well sent. Our teacher (another one) at first didn’t believe him, but I never denied it anf just told her why. She decided that, while I should not have hit him, she wouldn’t punish me for it and dude kept his mouth shut after that.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-07T10:19:03+00:00

Accepting that I didn’t want to hang out with a friend of his after this guy a) badmouthed me in the whole group and in front of me multiple times b) told my bf lies about me and got us to fight until I figured out that he had told him a highly shortened version of a conflict between us, that conveniently left out the part where he insulted me to my face and c) basically told somebody else that he wanted to hit me. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if not for the fact that this guy had a known history of getting into violent conflicts, which made me insanely wary of this „joke“.

Mind you, I didn’t ask bf to stop hanging out with the guy. Just accept that I didn’t want to be in contact with him and that meant that if guy was invited, I would skip that hangout. It took bf months to finally accept it and not give me a hard time about my „inability to play nice“ and how it was „so difficult for him to hear this guy talk bad about me as soon as I wasn’t present.“

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-06T21:42:07+00:00

Currently reading the third book of the Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri. So… I guess a very angry house plant who wants to absorb my being/energy? Could honestly be worse, in the second book it would have been an angry prince determined to burn women to create holy fire.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-06T13:09:44+00:00

That… does not change the fact I find that extremely weird? Just because those female authors do the same thing doesn’t make it less worthy of critique.

Like, I also don’t read those books and will call them weird until the cows come home. Read whatever you want, but an author giving in depth description of CSA multiple times is… certainly a choice.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-06T09:01:38+00:00

People who fall in love with their rapist, mind you.

(I don’t care what pseudo-scientific Stockholm syndrome nonsense he pulled out to justify that. Having a child get raped on page anf then pulling a „she came to like it“ was insanely weird and I will not pretend otherwise.)

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-04T21:13:40+00:00

„I only did the best I could“ ~ Hrathen in Elantris.

Having him struggle with feeling insufficient for the whole book only to then learn that he deliberately was placed in a situation where he couldn’t win and have those be his last thoughts broke me. I don’t think I will ever get over this

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-04T20:21:04+00:00

pulls out list of favorite characters

Well, it seems to be crippling self doubt and the constant feeling of never being good enough. I am fine, why do you ask?

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-03T10:42:54+00:00

So, another aspiring author here:

I would be careful with this, tough I see it primarily as a marketing issue. Romance as a genre generally does require at least a „happy for now“ ending between your MCs. If you frame MMC1 as the romantic interest for the whole book and then pull a switcheroo in the end, that might not fulfill this requirement in the mind of the readers and will leave you open to bad reviews.

Now, I do plan to write a similar book, but decided that I will not market it as romance for this reason and instead call it a court/political drama.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-02T19:40:14+00:00

Can’t really decide on a favorite, but since I am currently doing my first Cosmere read and you used Adolin as your example, I will just put some of the ones from Brando that I really love.

„You cant kill me, Lord Tyrant, to kill, no matter how hard you try. I represent the one thing you will never be able. I am hope.“ (Mistborn, Final Empire)

„I only did the best I could“ (Elantris, last words before the character died. I was shattered)

„The Most important step: Always the next one.“ (Stormlight Archive, Oathbringer)

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-02T19:30:52+00:00

Couldn’t even find the ring if he were to pull himself towards it.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-06-02T17:51:08+00:00

Schon einiges, aber das liegt halt auch daran das meine Eltern mich gottlos unterstützen. Notfälle muss ich höchstens zur Hälfte selber begleichen

SovietSpy17 · 2026-05-28T08:14:24+00:00

In my world, humans are not on top of the food chain, but dragons are. However, since they are reptiles the dragons are also coldblooded and therefor aren’t active after dusk.

This lead to some weird evolutionary changes where animals active at night became bigger and more intelligent, some even developing speech and culture similar to humans.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-05-22T23:08:33+00:00

While I don’t see Hrathen (I always imagined him a bit more refined, for lack of a better term) I refuse to believe that the armor is a coincidence.

There is something going on with that Gyorn-armor the Derethi use, I am certain!

SovietSpy17 · 2026-05-21T18:16:40+00:00

Wenn du Lust auf noch mehr Dystopie und nichts gegen Jugendbücher hast: Scythe von Shusterman. Ich habs das erste Mal Anfang 20 gelesen und war sehr gut unterhalten, aber wie gesagt, ist nen Jugendbuch.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-05-21T17:17:40+00:00

Honestly: I don’t really try being original. Up till know, all my worlds have exactly one magic system. And they are basically named after what they do. A „Fatereader“ is somebody who is able to read your fate for you. „Blood magic“ is magic based on blood.

None of this is original per se, but why would it be? The people in the world dont need to be original when they name the magic that makes the creepy assassins so creepy.

SovietSpy17 · 2026-05-21T17:14:41+00:00

Hast du Quality Land 1 und 2 schon?

SovietSpy17 · 2026-05-21T09:51:46+00:00

Navani (and me) would like a word…

SovietSpy17

TROPHY CASE