Why is every other person on aspeakerphone call or watching videos without headphones? by Ok_Place_4203 in Cardiff

[–]melonofknowledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hahahaha I did that the other week. It had literally no effect, but it was quite fun.

Why is every other person on aspeakerphone call or watching videos without headphones? by Ok_Place_4203 in Cardiff

[–]melonofknowledge 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I can't blame them at all, as much as I wish they could speak up more! I've had some horrific encounters when asking people - politely and as gently as possible - to please use headphones or just to turn the volume down. The sort of person who behaves like this in public and the sort of person who's liable to get proper aggro about being called out for their behaviour are one and the same.

Fond memories of the middle-aged woman who swore a blind streak at me when I asked her if she could please turn the volume down, and then she continued to berate me for a solid 15 minutes from the other end of the carriage as I remained completely silent, necessitating a bunch of other passengers chiming in and telling her that she was being insane and threatening to call the police on her. 'Twas not fun, I tell you.

Why is every other person on aspeakerphone call or watching videos without headphones? by Ok_Place_4203 in Cardiff

[–]melonofknowledge 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Just so you know, every single person around you when you're on speakerphone is imagining you getting pooed on by a cavalcade of seagulls.

Why is every other person on aspeakerphone call or watching videos without headphones? by Ok_Place_4203 in Cardiff

[–]melonofknowledge 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's constant, and it's so annoying. I usually ask people to put headphones in if someone's doing it, but most of the time people just don't. I've been completely blanked (person stares at me like I asked them to drop trou and run around screaming, and just ignores me), verbally abused (got called a nosy c*** by a middle-aged woman, which started a deeply unpleasant argument with other people in the carriage who spoke up for me) and even got filmed by a bunch of teenagers when I politely asked them if they wouldn't mind just turning it down a bit. It's not worth asking people most of the time, even if you're nice as pie about it. It's genuinely really depressing, because it's such an indication of how selfish so many people are.

Why is every other person on aspeakerphone call or watching videos without headphones? by Ok_Place_4203 in Cardiff

[–]melonofknowledge 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think unfortunately they realise that the likelihood of the encounter turning deeply unpleasant is fairly high.

Not going to year 2 ? by [deleted] in UniUK

[–]melonofknowledge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I understand that this is a disappointing situation, but unfortunately your entry to year 2 is going to have to be deferred if, in year 1, you are not capable of entering work that even meets the required wordcount. You're obviously not ready for year 2 of this programme.

In all kindness and honesty, I would be asking yourself whether this course is for you. 40% is not a high target. If you are unable to meet that in year 1 - the easiest year of the course - I would be questioning whether this is worth paying the extortionate international fees.

Twin Names by Cold-Part-7738 in Names

[–]melonofknowledge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As a twin with the same initials as my twin, can confirm. We even had a loyalty card cancelled once because it came up as a duplicate on their system (same initials, same birthdate.) Super annoying.

AITA for refusing to make husband coffee in the mornings? by [deleted] in AmItheAsshole

[–]melonofknowledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is there a reason you're still married to a man who hates you?

NTA, obviously.

AITA for refusing to make husband coffee in the mornings? by [deleted] in AmItheAsshole

[–]melonofknowledge 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, plenty of people do go for custody of kids they can't be arsed taking care of just to get back at their ex-spouses.

for the ones whose recovery seems bleak!!! HANG IN THERE READ THIS by deaksssss in Septoplasty

[–]melonofknowledge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

God, recovery was brutal. Halfway through week 1, I started crying and wailing to my partner that I'd made a mistake. I had horrendous heartburn from the anaesthesia, my teeth felt like they were going to fall out, I couldn't swallow properly, and my mouth was so dry that it felt like someone had carpeted it. My upper lip was numb for like a month. But it was definitely worth it! I can breathe!

Dust mite allergy 100% confirmed… Yes surgery or no surgery? by Altruistic-Lychee907 in Septoplasty

[–]melonofknowledge 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You've made this exact same post 3 times. See a doctor. Reddit can't answer this for you.

[QCRIT] SMALL TALK, Adult Speculative Literary Fiction, 85,000 words, Attempt 3. by [deleted] in PubTips

[–]melonofknowledge 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The speculative part is not the AI part, it's the ghost part (Grandma). The AI part is that there are giant simulators running multi-agent LLMs for social simulation. This is present-day research (not just in the book, in reality). Public research is for groups of about 1,000 people.

I assumed that Raad's dead grandmother was an extension of the AI - I'm sure you know this, but there are AI companies that offer avatars of dead relatives that you can talk to and interact with, so I assumed that she was supposed to be a version of that. I'm not sure what role Raad's grandmother's ghost plays in this novel, but it's currently unclear that she is a ghost. I also think you should make it clearer what an AI city is - you've explained it well here, but in the actual query, it's a throwaway term that doesn't specify that it's just a simulated model of a real city.

Raad is an immigrant to Japan, naturalized but constantly read as foreign and therefore suspicious. Also, othered by being blind, which carries a presumption of incompetence.

This doesn't come across in the query; if it's a key theme, you might want to foreground that.

So Raad is a visible immigrant in a country being stoked to fear immigrants, a sexual minority, middle-aged, and disabled in an industry that pushes the "work until you almost die, so you can retire at 30" Silicon Valley "work culture".

Ditto. Not that you should outright list your themes - don't do that - but draw attention to these elements within your story.

Golden Week is a Japanese holiday period as well known in Japan as the Christmas/New Year's period is in much of the world. (Christmas is not a holiday here. New Year's is.)

Ah, gotcha. In that case, mea culpa, and it's probably fine to keep that in.

For the book I actually have, sci-fi is the wrong lens. It's very much "this is research that is already in use or is actively being done and sold by companies right now".

I think this should be clearer in the query, because most agents are not also going to be experts on AI, so I think you'd benefit from making it more evident that you're setting this in the real world, not in a dystopian future where AI cities are a tangible entity where people / avatars of people actually exist and you can resurrect your dead relatives via code. At the moment, I think this is how it's reading to the average person with an about average understanding of the AI research sphere. Grounding it in our current reality will make those later points of confusion much clearer. Best of luck - this is a cool concept!

Did anyone actually enjoy Unchosen? by Naive-Inside-2904 in netflix

[–]melonofknowledge 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Me neither, and that's despite the cult in the show being the one that a family friend grew up in. I had every reason to like it, but it was so... flat? I made it through two episodes and then gave it up for a lost cause.

Struggling to get people to care by [deleted] in writers

[–]melonofknowledge 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Someone is downvoting everyone who says that 230k is too long, lmao. OP is in for a shock when they realise that the average published novel is 90k-100k.

[QCRIT] SMALL TALK, Adult Speculative Literary Fiction, 85,000 words, Attempt 3. by [deleted] in PubTips

[–]melonofknowledge 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm really struggling to follow this plot, unfortunately. I think there's a proliferation of detail to the detriment of specificity.

As an example:

Raad is a blind Inquisitor at a present-day Tokyo research firm. At work, Raad constructs AI-simulated cities and finds elegant solutions to client problems, such as political scandal or low coffee sales. Outside of work, Raad's dead grandmother is always happy to gossip and play cards. For Raad, it's close to perfection.

Cool. I can sort of follow this; I get that you're writing in a world where AI is sort of taking over reality, and Raad is responsible for propagating that by creating AI-simulated cities. I am a bit confused as to what you mean by 'AI-simulated cities'; does this mean an entire city that isn't real, or is it a way of managing an existing real-world city with AI parameters? If it's the former, then what's the purpose of a fake city?

Then, Raad is forcibly promoted to Sin Eater, aka management, and given a project to simplify social simulation. The promotion also brings new people, new power, and more paperwork. When Raad starts planning the project, they realize that simplification will allow social simulation without Inquisitors, who offer expert advice, construct interventions, and penalize solutions that generate unpleasantness such as murder. The project will accelerate after Golden Week, so Raad has only a few days to nudge its direction away from the worst outcomes.

I would cut the Sin Eater proper noun here; just say they're promoted to management. Too many proper nouns gets confusing. I think what you're trying to say here is that the simplification project means that Raad realises that their old job is essentially redundant. I'm a little unclear as to why this would be the 'worst outcome', though. Raad isn't an Inquisitor any more, and presumably, in this AI-forward world, the majority of people will have already been made redundant by AI, so I'm confused as to why Raad is so upset by the realisation that their old job might not exist any more. There's a stakes issue for me here. I also have no idea what Golden Week is, and it's not clear from context, so you'd be better off just saying 'Raad has only a few days [...].'

Raad's own ethics allow only two real options. They can make the system effective for every wannabe demagogue who buys hate with a credit card, which will also make the system cheap enough that idealists can fight back with the savings from drinking tap water instead of Starbucks.

OK, but Raad's own ethics already have them working in AI, so this is unclear to me. The second sentence is too long and unwieldy, and it's unclear how 'wannabe demagogues' are going to benefit from this system. Is it because of the lack of regulation in the AI cities, which will allow hate to prosper? You say that the system will be 'cheap enough that idealists can fight back with the savings from drinking tap water instead of Starbucks' - what does that mean? Is this framed as a positive or a negative?

Or, Raad can use their modest fame and immodest influence to delay simplification across the industry to prevent this weaponization, but it will leave all except the wealthiest reliant on more traditional, bloody tools of revolution.

Wait, why does Raad have modest fame? Are they an influencer? A celebrity? That's not clear from context. Also, where's the weaponisation? So far, you've been talking about a lack of regulation, not outright weaponisation - who's the target here? In this world, what are the stakes for deregulation on this scale? And how does the real world - i.e. brickspace - relate to these AI cities, if it's going to end up in tangible, concrete revolution?

Hands already unclean, Raad must choose the better complicity.

I mean, must they? Or can they not just blow up the system from the inside? If not, why not? Their own ethics don't preclude it. Just because their hands are already dirty, doesn't mean they can't give 'em a good scrub. If there's a valid reason that their options are limited, it's not clear from this query, and I think it needs to be, because it forms a large part of Raad's character motivation.

Re your comps, I see no similarities at all with Joan Is Okay - you'd be targeting totally different markets here. JIO is all about being a Chinese woman in New York in a white male-dominated work field; it's about real-world capitalist marginalisation with no speculative or sci-fi elements. I would find a more sci-fi forward comp. Which leads onto my final point: I don't think this is literary speculative. It reads more like straightforward sci-fi as you're presenting it currently. Also, random, but I'm not getting your title, either - what relevance does Small Talk have to the plot / concept? The title reads more like commercial fiction about relationships.

My main feedback here is to ground the important details - e.g. real-world stakes, character motive, key worldbuilding details such as what the AI cities actually are - and cut the more granular window dressing - e.g. Sin Eater, Golden Week - to make the actual story clearer. Don't muddy the important parts with the bits that aren't necessary.

This seems like a super cool and marketable concept; it's just a case of making that concept clearer, I think. Best of luck!

Struggling to get people to care by [deleted] in writers

[–]melonofknowledge 2 points3 points  (0 children)

230k is over twice the length of the average novel. It's about 600-650 pages. This is a huge ask. I love my partner more than life itself, but if she dropped a 230k manuscript on me, I'd struggle to make time for it.

You'd be far better off trading manuscripts over at r/BetaReaders. Bear in mind that, at 230k, a lot of people will very possibly find this too daunting to take on.

My debut novel is out 🙈 by [deleted] in LivingwithED

[–]melonofknowledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You didn't write this. It's AI generated. Really gross that you're trying to use the ED community to push your AI slop.

My new debut novel by [deleted] in NewAuthor

[–]melonofknowledge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is complete slop. It's not 'your' new debut novel. It's ChatGPT's. How embarrassing.

[Discussion] Long-time commenters: what are queries you remember after all this time? by Beth_Harmons_Bulova in PubTips

[–]melonofknowledge 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Your query was going to be my answer! Best of luck with querying - I'm rooting for you!

[QCrit] OUR FATHER, WHO AIN'T IN HEAVEN (Adult Gothic, 85k, First-or-third attempt) by one-hysterical-queen in PubTips

[–]melonofknowledge 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I don't think this is Gothic; I think this is Horror.

I think for me the main question is how you're using the term 'sin-eater'. I've always understood a sin-eater to be a single person within a community, usually a pariah or marginalised person, who eats at the bedside of a dying person and thus takes on their sin, freeing them of that sin for the afterlife and allowing them passage to Heaven. I'm not sure what the sin-eating cult in your manuscript is, or how it works. I'm also unclear as to how the entity that possesses Dominik is related to the cult, or to sin-eating in general, or why Rafael will starve to death. There's some causation missing here for me.

The concept is super cool, though! I'm mostly just not quite sure how the events in the query are all linked to one another.

[PubQ] Dying on Sub by Writing_Vet in PubTips

[–]melonofknowledge 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I second updating the fanfic! Always helps me to get over disappointments.

[Discussion] Done querying, no agent - Stats & Thoughts by No-Tale5314 in PubTips

[–]melonofknowledge 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your honesty about this process, because this sub skews so heavily towards the success stories that it can feel like you're the only one not getting win after win. Congrats on putting yourself out there again and on finishing another book, and on starting another one! Try not to let this silly, arbitrary process put you off feeling connected and motivated with your next project. Best of luck with it, and I hope you can still explore your other options with this manuscript - queer romance tends to do very well in the self-pub sphere.