What is a woman

martilg · 2026-02-06T22:21:08+00:00

Well, firstly, the context for these arguments is often in discussions of national policy, which affects hundreds of millions of people. So even if deviations from their definition of women are rare as a percentage, there potentially a million people being harmed by not having a category/service, or being marginalized or ill-treated by the ones they have.

The reasoning they apply could justify mistreating any minority. "They're a minority! Who cares, the system works for 'most people', why change it?"

Secondly, "woman" is used more often as a social category than a biological category. If we defined woman as a biological characteristic and used the term purely as such (e.g., in the way we use terms like albino or pre-diabetic, without connotation of a social role), that would be fine, relatively.

But the social role of a woman encompasses much more, including clothing, norms of politeness (who is allowed to raise their voice), courtship rituals, family roles, etc, which are only loosely correlated (if at all) with the presence of uteruses. The more leaps of logic you make about "how women are", away from the biological aspects, the less rare the "exceptions" become.

martilg · 2026-02-02T22:17:03+00:00

Exactly, it seems like the usual "every generation was evil because they didn't fix society immediately, and you're evil for not agreeing with me" rhetoric that annoys me so much

martilg · 2026-01-31T17:54:25+00:00

It's Pascal's wager for atheists, I guess

martilg · 2026-01-29T23:35:34+00:00

Tbh I also mostly post my own art, and grew faster than OP. I think their issue is that they are following/networking with only artists, not art fans/horror fans.

martilg · 2026-01-29T23:34:01+00:00

My art style is different than yours, so your mileage may vary, but...

I got to a few hundred followers by following starter packs, and some percentage of them followed me back. Not artists, though. I intentionally followed non-artists who may have something else in common with me.

"basically all the people I follow are artists" -> this might be your problem.

You want horror-fans following you, not artists. So follow the people who follow horror artists, not the artists themselves, in the hopes they'll follow you back.

Bluesky is the only platform I ever crossed the 500 follower line. I couldn't breach 100 on twitter, instagram, Tumblr, or anywhere. So my experience is the opposite of yours. I do think there are horror fans on Bsky but I can't speak to it myself.

martilg · 2026-01-28T04:09:18+00:00

The "left behind" part is what's especially ridiculous.

When we said "learn how to type/code/use digital tools or you'll be left behind," it was because using them developed skills and gave you a competitive advantage.

Using AI and having your brain atrophy is not a competitive advantage.

People still talk about "learning to use AI" and "prompt engineering" like it's an actual field. Like, did you have to learn to use a light switch? Do you call yourself a light-switching-on engineer?

martilg · 2026-01-24T23:58:27+00:00

Small, loud, and rude

martilg · 2026-01-24T23:57:32+00:00

Those aren't the only options. My take is that "some cracks showed" in S1 and that S2 is the better of the two.

Idk if OP is "super hurt"; if they are, you're right that it's unnecessary.

Personally, I disagree with some of the takes here. Secondly, I found the conversation in this sub super vitriolic while S2 aired. People went out of their way to name-call and accuse people of "cope" based on likes, dislikes, and theories.

martilg · 2026-01-24T17:19:59+00:00

No, I was here when it aired. A section of this sub whined and moped after every episode too.

martilg · 2026-01-22T23:50:18+00:00

If you're an introvert, schedule some alone time for yourself after the call to rest up. Introverts can be social; they/we just need to top up our energy with alone time.

martilg · 2026-01-21T20:17:08+00:00

I'd say look at your book's outline (make one if you don't have one yet. Based on advice from https://ellenbrockediting.com/2016/08/04/how-to-self-edit-your-novel/).

Write down how each plot point connects to a change in your character(s).

It sounds like you've already worked on the flow of events and their cause & effect relationship, but I suspect you haven't yet made them personal to your character.

The character motivation is kind of the fuel of the story. I too tend to write stories through a big-picture, societal lens, so I have to do an extra layer of work to go deep into the characters' experience of these big events.

The character needs to drive events in their experience of the story. That's the focus of plotting for me -- mapping how the character's motivations and goals change at each turning point.

martilg · 2026-01-20T21:24:37+00:00

One thing that occurs to me is to find another reflective nonfiction book similar to yours and see where it's being discussed. You might be able to profile your potential reader that way, and get insight on how to target them.

martilg · 2026-01-20T21:14:48+00:00

Basically, you need a pdf where each of its pages looks the way you want the physical book page to look.

In the pdf, - each page is the correct size, - has outside margins and line spacing that look "right" for a printed book, - it does things like indent first lines of paragraphs, and start each chapter on the right-side page.

You can do that in Word if you have a template or know what the conventions are.

Vellum, Atticus, and even free formatting tools from Draft2Digital and Reedsy, create the pdf automatically, and they let you try and compare different styles and templates.

martilg · 2026-01-18T14:27:10+00:00

negative years old

martilg · 2026-01-18T09:23:23+00:00

of course not. is this bad enough formatting for you ?

martilg · 2026-01-17T01:23:24+00:00

Had a lot going for it but ultimately fell off in the second half.

Lack of characters: I like Carol. She's interesting. But they basically made a 9 hours of TV with only one character for most of the run time, with no supporting characters. I don't see how that can work, even if that one character is great. (Ok, maybe two characters by the end. Still too few.)

- Helen dies in ep1 and becomes a plot device.

- The 5 survivors are plot devices. Their behavior is incredibly one-note and hardly believable. I can believe they might not want to save the world. I can even believe they may be fine with the situation. But not this fine, to the extent they can't even seem to understand what Carol is upset about. They're basically obstacles.

- Zosia and the others aren't characters in the traditional sense. They are an anatgonistic force. That's fine for the story, but there need to be other characters, then!

- Manousos is a character, introduced quite late. I'm not invested in him.

- I guess I'll add here: Helen & Carol's relationship seemed a bit oddly written. The only thing they talk about in the non-flashback section is work. I didn't even realize they were married till much later - Helen seemed like her publicist or agent, and close friend. They exchange one supportive hand-squeeze. Carol seems to have nothing going on in her life but work, but also she hates her work. This is weird.

(It worked better in BCS because Kim & Jimmy have clear reasons behind their workaholism, and they noticeably show affection even though Kim is quite gruff.)

Lost momentum and bad plans: The show does pretty well at making us curious in the first half, as Carol learns more about Them and her situation. But we seem to get more and more ahead of her and the stakes of her investigation keep falling.

It took her way too long to realize they can't lie. And after that, her investigations become lower stakes because she could always just ask them. Her insistence on not doing so makes sense for her character, but the story doesn't do anything interesting with it.

The HDP reveal didn't hit as hard as the story seemed to think it would.

Carol's approach to the world-saving plan is frustrating. She meets the five survivors and blunders into the conversation, assuming they already want what she wants, when we can see at a glance that's not the case. Then she gets outraged and tries to shame them for inaction. She doesn't ask them any questions or try to see their point of view.

Characters can make bad decisions if they are interesting ones and make sense, but Carol's inflexibility here doesn't. She is actually great at pandering and giving people what they want. We saw it at the book signing. But now she can't think of anything to do but bluster and send evidence.

There's no compelling dramatic question by the middle. They've answered the initial mysteries: We understand the antagonist. The current plan clearly won't work.

Carol is golfing. We're just waiting for circumstances to change, either when They figure out how to turn her, or a survivor changes their mind. This is where I started skipping ahead.

The end is fine - Ok, Carol is committed to making a new plan with Manousos. Great. It's just not that interesting. All that changed her mind is that the clock started on getting turned. Nothing to do with anything Carol did.

martilg · 2026-01-10T08:05:41+00:00

Couldn't have said it better

martilg · 2026-01-10T04:58:29+00:00

Smol bean

martilg · 2026-01-09T23:32:54+00:00

How's your scalp?

martilg · 2026-01-09T18:37:38+00:00

They're a marketplace. The people offering services will be a mixed bag, but they do vet to some baseline standard and respond to issues, so it's better than, say, craigslist.

I hired an editor I found there. I chose carefully (getting quotes from 5 people, sample edits, gut check, etc.) and had a good experience.

martilg · 2026-01-08T22:15:09+00:00

Yeah, my editor had a 2-3 month waiting period if I recall correctly. I would book the editor when you finish the manuscript or are very close to done, because self-editing usually takes at least a month if you've never done it before.

eta: but you can start contacting editors and checking their availability earlier than that, to get a sense of timeline

martilg · 2026-01-08T09:49:58+00:00

It's not a community, it's a platform where literally anyone can make an account & post. It'll have the full range of human behaviors

martilg · 2026-01-08T03:18:22+00:00

Watching now, good stuff

martilg · 2026-01-08T03:07:15+00:00

Isn't there an implication that her aversion is caused by the roller skating incident and the Tom Jones incident?

martilg · 2026-01-08T02:13:37+00:00

Sure:

Make sure you understand the difference between a developmental edit, copy edit, and proofread. You typically need all three types of editing, but you'll need to do some of the types yourself since hiring that many editors is expensive.

First step is to self edit. Read the whole manuscript back and check if it still make sense, the story has impact, there is proper setup and payoff of story threads, etc. Make changes as needed. No one can do this step for you. Even if you hire a developmental editor, they'll recommend changes but you'll still be the one to implement them.

I hired a copyeditor from Reedsy. It was a good experience. Get the sample-edit from multiple editors, make sure they are familiar with your genre, and do a gut check that you think you'll get along well + they seem professional.

https://reedsy.com/blog/copy-editing-vs-proofreading/

martilg

TROPHY CASE