#(it also doesn't help that a lot of Groups™/communities/etc. have like. one or a few people who are kind of The Head Of The Group

[musical-chick-13]

The thing is, like...yeah, a lot of times, the Social Exclusion I've experienced has been from people I probably wouldn't have wanted to be friends with anyway. At the very least, if someone is willing to do that, if someone is going to be that judgmental over things that don't actually matter, then any actual friendship with them probably wouldn't last very long.

But...it still hurts. Because regardless of how you actually feel about these people, it's still another instance of somebody telling you that you're too annoying or too much or too emotional or too whatever. It's still one more thing that people don't even give you the choice to have? And if you hear this over and over again, if it happens everywhere you go, then after a certain point it gets difficult to not internalize it at least a little bit.

It's been 30 years of this and it never gets any easier.

#and obviously I DO have friends who mean a great deal to me. I'm not discounting that at ALL. #the sad unfortunate fact is that the vast majority of those people live far away from me #so if I want to find any kind of community that I can actually access on a regular basis...if I want to be part of like. an actual Group. #(as opposed to having a few distinct individual people I hang out with occasionally or speak to sometimes) then...that kind of. #depends on people in my general immediate sphere like. accepting me. on having several to a bunch of them accepting me. #I cannot control that! and I can try to be a kind person and live out my values and be genuine and patient and authentic and understanding #and all of the things that are important to me but I CANNOT CONTROL WHAT OTHER PEOPLE DO. THIS IS NOT UP TO ME. #it's so incredibly frustrating whenever people go 'just love yourself' because yeah we SHOULD all work toward being okay with #ourselves but humans crave community. most of us need emotional support! me loving myself isn't going to guarantee those #things because OTHER PEOPLE need to be involved and view me positively for that!!!!! and generally they just don't!!!!!!!!!!!!! #(it also doesn't help that a lot of Groups™/communities/etc. have like. one or a few people who are kind of The Head Of The Group #and either explicitly or implicitly run everything. so even if the GROUP MEMBERS are okay with you. if that one or two people aren't then #tough luck you STILL are prevented from entering that particular social space) #sorry something like. happened recently. in this vein. and it REALLY shouldn't have upset me but. you know. it still did. #my entire life has been this battle of trying to figure out how to be 'good enough' and my fucking GOD I am so tired #WHAT ARE THE RULES!!! WHAT IS THE KEY!!!!!! #like do I just have to put out an ad on craigslist?? TELL ME THE SECRET HERE #In the Vents

[festiveferret]

Same anon as discussion about "getting to know the beta first before letting them beta" (and vice-versa). My concluding point is: if you're struggling and just need to get by for a fic, you're on a deadline etc, yes you can use an anon person for beta. It might even be the best experience ever! A surprising number of people are actually decent betas because it's a purely volunteer thing that people don't get into unless they want to help. But...

If you need a beta relationship, or if you have severe problems with your story, an anon beta isn't going to help there, and will leave you frustrated a high percentage of the time. So, for people who are in that boat, I would strongly suggest to try to build relationships with people in fandom who have a similar outlook on character/canon that you do, and form beta relationships out of that instead of trying to "hire" someone on for a fic with a list of job requirements.

(p3 of 3) The only reason I wrote to you on anon is that you make a lot of posts about betas (I am familiar with the ones you've linked) and I think that the nuance of "I got someone to tell me things about my fic!" vs "a relationship" gets a little lost when people start thinking you can just pick up a beta by being clear enough about what you want. The writer doesn't know what they wanted until the story is done. Once you wrote it you know what it's about. ..Anyway pleasure chatting with you!

Hello again! Once again, I see your point, and I think I just fundamentally disagree with this perspective. Betaing is a skill, processing beta comments is a skill, and compatibility is important, but I also believe in variety and crowdsourcing.

If I had the time, patience, and resources, I’d probably have 6-7 people read each thing before I posted it, and I’d want them all to be wildly different people. My Beta™ is my soulmate, my co-writer, and the love of my life which means that working with her is really, really easy. We think and write the same way, we've internalized each other’s goals, we have the same values and morals, and we can communicate big concepts with only a few words. I love her dearly, wouldn’t trade her for the world, and I know I’m really, really lucky to have that kind of relationship. 

But I also know that when she reads my stuff, she’s essentially reading it with my eyes again, and my readers are not all just like me. Sometimes, when I have someone new beta read for me, I have these moments where I “oh” and feel kind of affronted because they commented on something I know ashy wouldn’t have commented on. But I also think those moments are valuable, whether I take their advice or not, because it lets me see some of the range of how my stuff can be interpreted. I have to work through the brief flash of offense and really dig into to seeing my work from another angle. It’s hard and it’s confronting, and not everyone wants that, but I find it valuable. Ashy and I have been together for four years and I still use other betas at times and I almost always crowdsource those people from Discord.

When I was studying creative writing academically, I was part of a workshop class where each week we wrote pieces, read them to the class, and concrited each other’s work. It was scary and uncomfortable being the reader, but I put my hand up every single time. The group was maybe 7-10 people, and they were all wildly different and some of the feedback I got was from a perspective I never would have considered. They tore apart a story I had an emotional connection to but which was poorly constructed. They did it kindly and academically and they were right and it was hard and I’m still sad about that story, but that was a really valuable learning experience for me (and obviously I was there in the class to learn and be confronted and this was the feedback I was seeking). And they were all essentially strangers who hadn’t even had a description or outline to go off of.

I feel like there’s a risk in your argument (and I know this is taking it to the extreme, but the potential is there) to hold up this platonic ideal of what a beta is and discount the other experiences as not worth it at all, but I think they are worth it. I think beta gone wrong is interesting as fuck. I have close friends that I love dearly and will rubber duck with all the live long day, but they betaed for me once and I’ll never, ever ask them to again. And I have people I’ve spoken five words to who climbed into my doc and gave me mindblowing feedback that changed how I approach things in all my work from then on.

I’m in fandom for connection, and I think early readers are some of the coolest and most challenging connections you can form. I value the times it’s weird and the times it sort of goes wrong and the times some random person comes in and makes me completely change my outlook. I think the capacity for crowdsourcing creativity is one of the coolest things about fandom and our access to each other, and that we should do it as much as we can. If I were willing to demand that time of people, I’d want all my work to be community projects.

It’s a whole other thing to dig into how to process that information and how to stay steady in your own creative self so that other people’s opinions don’t tip the boat right over, but fundamentally, at the end of the day, I like people’s noses in my stuff and I like those people to be different, interesting, challenging, and not always compatible with me. We learn from doing and I think we should do more betaing, get more betas on our work, connect with more people and see more viewpoints on our art while it’s still in an open, development stage and has that exciting, terrifying malleability.

#Anonymous #beta readers #ask ferret #thanks for the chat!