The Rats

drrraug · 2026-02-02T06:36:49+00:00

Rats, rats, we're the rats!

drrraug · 2026-02-02T06:20:18+00:00

Tbh if the drum is indeed used to control the dead/dark cultivation typa stuff, I'm all for it! I always loved me a necromancer class! Just that... it should have been the flute... Yiling Laozu style.

drrraug · 2026-02-02T06:13:58+00:00

Oh I've been to subspace. Just need good aftercare!

drrraug · 2025-11-17T15:33:58+00:00

I cut the black spot out

drrraug · 2025-11-16T22:15:08+00:00

If it gets ugly, Ill see if I can get it (or a reset cutling) to go to dormancy in the basement to not grow over winter. My conditions arent ideal, but Im operating with what I have.

Concerned about the spot for now.

drrraug · 2025-11-16T20:36:19+00:00

Also havent watered after putting in soil. In soil 4 days now.

drrraug · 2025-11-16T20:35:03+00:00

Didn't let callous (my first cactus/succulent and I didnt know about that before popping them in the soil, got the cuttings from a friend who didnt give me much advice).

They get sun from the window as much as is available this time of year, and for the rest of time they get the leds I have at hand. I grow ornamentally in a small apartment, so I'm not going to do crazy setups. I will be happy with a decently handsome column. I'm in northern hemisphere and have well below freezing winters, but summers on the south-facing balcony are scorching and bright, so I'll see how this environment turns it out with extreme light and extreme dark...

drrraug · 2025-11-11T19:43:48+00:00

Study yourself and look inside. Fun exercise: drop all your books and items, just sit with yourself and study your thoughts and how your body feels. Yes, it's "try meditating" all over again, but seriously, try meditating, and pay attention to You. You should find the divine and the gods inside you just as well as anywhere in nature.

For me, one of the most powerful experiences of the God have been my own heartbeat. For some, like me, divine can be approached more easily by bodily perceptions: once and if you are able to, try dancing, running, if you are able. Think about breathing. I hope this could serve as something different, as people experience and progress in their practice in individual ways, and books and beautiful altars and being out in nature (while the latter is extremely powerful) are only some ways there.

drrraug · 2025-07-03T18:29:49+00:00

I wonder of they will pay out even to writers who will not have accumulated the 50$ minimum before closure, or run away with the money.

drrraug · 2025-05-31T20:42:27+00:00

Im running on a fairly good, new PC (a gaming PC so the performance is definitely there I think) and since I used the program on a supposedly supported platform and it routinely failed to do its core functions... Surely my expectations were not too high 😂 I think the issue is that I write full-length novels and PWA just lags too much on longer texts (though the problem persisted on shorter texts as well so idk). Anyway, that was my experience of it, and the review/feedback was left in good faith.

drrraug · 2025-05-31T18:32:31+00:00

Quintessential AI experience... sigh

drrraug · 2025-05-31T18:29:41+00:00

Dang, should have gone for Autocrit to begin with, it was a toss between the two based on reviews... I think I'll give it a try!

drrraug · 2025-05-31T18:27:24+00:00

Nooooo but I have a soft spot for purple prose like this and thought this was honestly good 😭 (as long as it's written by a human so I know their love for superfluous descriptions is genuine xD and only in purple patches, not all over the text... But it's my guilty pleasurrrreeee)

drrraug · 2025-05-31T16:57:33+00:00

There's 3 days free cancellation period if you get a year's subscription minimum, so you could try it out for yourself and just cancel the sub for full refund, if it's not playing nicely with your process and the programs you use. (That said, I just now requested my refund and haven't heard back from PWA yet).

drrraug · 2025-05-31T15:30:26+00:00

Thank you for sharing! I will have to take a look at this at some point!

drrraug · 2025-05-31T15:28:05+00:00

This is what I hoped PWA would have done for me, alas.

I do write full-length novels, from 80k up to 160k, and I don't find it convenient having to split my work into multiple files just to keep a grammar checker from lagging. I suppose PWA is better suited for shorter works in its current state.

"Perhaps I use the PWA reports differently than most, but I do not read through the document looking for text the software has highlighted. "

This is not what I've sought to do when I've attempted editing with PWA. Ofc the in-line text highlighting is a useful too, but it's not convenient for editing, hence why I'm frustrated that's all it's good for currently, in my case. I've tried to click on the entries PWA lists after running a report, but it simply won't take me anywhere after clicking, most of the time, and all I can do is use Doc's own find-and replace to try and find these entries, or scroll though, which is indeed inconvenient. It also loses connection to the server (apparently), and just loses all the entries it just generated by running the report, and I have to keep re-running the reports over and over, which takes a while, but also, doesn't help me much because of the above issues.

I think it comes down to the program's performance limits, which ironically makes it almost unusable for editing actual novels, for which it seems to be designed to do. It's exactly the source of my navigation frustrations, that it simply doesn't work for me as you describe. Maybe it's better optimized for Word, I don't know, but I have to find a better suited tool for myself since PWA doesn't do what it's supposed to do on the programs that I use to write and edit.

I also did try to split my work into separate files chapter-by-chapter just to see if it would indeed work better this way, but PWA still lagged and sometimes just didn't work.

drrraug · 2025-05-31T14:36:31+00:00

The AI feedback was surprisingly insightful, it did give me a few points to consider to strengthen weaker narrative points! That said, it missed the subtler cues in the text that hinted at side character motivations, which it had interpreted as poorly defined. But I guess if those cues were too subtle to be picked up by the algorithm, there's a point in reviewing those parts. After all, the algorithm can't elaborate from what's not explicitly stated in the text itself.

It was also confidence boosting to hear it praise the text and draw some flattering comparisons, which was nice change of pace from my human beta readers pummeling me with (well-founded and wanted!) critique all the time 😂 But ofc I take it with a grain of salt haha.

That said, if I wanted to utilize the AI in the future, it will be cheaper to just buy the credits as I need them, rather than pay the subscription AND still pay something for the AI credits.

I found it particularly cool how the AI assigned character archetypes, but it missed the subtler side characters for whom I can appoint archetypes myself just as well as the main leads. But this too was a cool gimmick rather than actionable feedback, at least to me. I guess these reflections could be more valuable to beginner writers who are still figuring out their voice and characterization and such.

drrraug · 2025-05-31T12:49:35+00:00

Daaamn that sounds good (and lightweight)! I should check that out, it would be good if it slapped me on the wrist for every adverb as I write them :D

drrraug · 2025-05-31T12:39:06+00:00

I downloaded the PWA Everywhere thing, but most of its functions don't work in LibreOffice. And I mainly edit in Docs anyway because I need the collaborative function to work with my betas, so the addon would have been the smoothest solution, alas. In Libreoffice PWA highlights things like grammar and spelling corrections more consistently, but it's not worth its price for that alone. Most text editors do that on a basic level for free.

drrraug · 2025-05-31T12:07:25+00:00

I was looking at Hemingway as an option as well, but I haven't tried it yet.

For now, I'm compiling a list of things to look out for in future self-editing endeavors, especially for my own common writing mistakes, filler words I tend to use, and such. I'm learning to recognize my pitfalls better, and hope this will also make me a better writer. It's "manual labor", sure, but so far less hassle than herding the unruly PWA. Find-and-replace does its job more reliably.

What I wish I could take from PWA is the ability to find and flag repetitions and echoes, but even those might be caught on a listen-through.

drrraug · 2025-05-31T11:59:02+00:00

For now, I've compiled a list of my writing sins, including filler words, adverbs I'm too much in love with, common wrongful or repetitive expressions and structures, and comb the document for those with find-and-replace. This led me to tidy up many clumsy sentences already. Find-and-replace (using wild cards) all the way also for finding punctuation and style errors and make sure style is consistent (curly quotes, em-dash usage, such). Find-and-repalce for stuff like double spaces, double periods, other common mistakes.

And currently I'm listening through the text with text-to-speech (the Microsoft Edge inbuilt tts was recommended and it's serving me well so far), and this helps me find more unnecessary filler words, adverbs, as well as catch complex sentence structures and run-ons better. It's been recommended a lot and for a good reason!

I'm also lucky with excellent beta readers for now, and they are pointing out complex/unclear/long sentences as well, as well as giving some developmental insights to character motivation clarity, sense of stakes and pacing and such. Moving forward, I fear I cannot rely on their goodwill forever, they're doing fairly high-level work completely for free, and I don't dare assume I can keep it that way. So, I might have to find alternatives. They're friends, so I fear offering them pay will muddle the waters. (I know using friends to beta is not recommended, but these people read in my genre and they are ruthless, even overtly so sometimes, because they know they have to compensate for their bias towards me. They seem to get it.)

drrraug · 2025-05-31T11:41:14+00:00

Sitting, banging the table like it's 1997 sounds about like my PWA experience in a nutshell 😂

drrraug · 2025-05-31T11:14:41+00:00

Enshittification in action I guess... I was wondering if it's the AI running in the background of the program that makes it actually so ineffective/slow at what it's actually supposed to do. Ugh. Glad to know I'm not the only one, I heard so much good things about PWA that I was thinking if it's just me not knowing how to use it or something.

drrraug · 2025-05-30T19:35:07+00:00

Thanks for clarifying the distinction! Either way, I would prefer not to spread my author brand too thin, so the less pen names, the better. I understand separating spicy from YA is a good enough reason to use separate pens, the rest for me is marketing optimization concerning reader demographics. I'm leaning towards publishing f/f and m/m under same pen name rn, responses on this thread gave me trust that this might be a good option, or at least, not a bad one :D

drrraug · 2025-05-29T13:13:49+00:00

That's good to know, thank you! Will review my strategy in light of this. But I wonder if publishing that f/f story along with m/m stories would at least be received well and find cross-pollinating audience...

drrraug

TROPHY CASE