Beta Reading

Subject: Beta Reading
Author: Hieronymus Graubart
Posted on: 2014-08-13 15:03:00 UTC

I found a glitch in Cheesy’s Bio:
"In there he has found that"
The rest of the sentence is missing or this fragment was left when the rest was deleted.

Concerning your question, I cannot help, because I don’t write in Google Docs, and I see the interface in German, so it looks different to you anyway. But I can try to give some hints:

If I can access a Google Doc for beta reading, I see two buttons at top right, labeled:
"Kommentare" (probably translates to "Comments")
"Freigeben" (probably translates to "Share")

The second Button is disabled (obviously because this isn’t my document) and its tooltip says something like "accessible to everybody who has the link available, no login required".
Note: I’m never logged in because I don’t have a Google account.

At his stage of your writing process, access and commenting to your document should not be restricted. But you may want to hide the document and the comments from public view by not publishing a link on the board.

HG

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Beta Bioses and Plotbunny by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 01:10:00 UTC Reply

Welp, finally put both on my Tumblr page.
Mental Haze
Cheesy.exe
My tentative room number for them is RC-DD13, the letter D being 13 in hexadecimal and 13 being "my number".

Also, I've currently got a plotbunny telling me to write something as a prologue to my first mission about how the Sue corrupts the word world to its own image. Ideas:

>I'm doing Cheerilee's Garden. The main Sue is a replacement according to my read-throughs of it, and I was thinking of showing how the Sue shoves Cheerilee into a plothole and takes her identity. I was thinking something along the lines of either the Spy's Your Eternal Reward knife or just disguise mechanics from TF2, Ditto's Transform move mechanics and general "slime ball" appearance when non-transformed, or a combo of the two.

>According to my read-through the theatre is much bigger than the one from the episode "Show Stoppers", so I'm labeling it a geographical aberration- either uncanon location or a morphed version of that theatre, I can't tell which at the moment. Anyway, I was planning on showing how Replacement!Cheerilee would do that. I was thinking some combo of Earthbending mechanics and plothole generation.

First writing sample ready for a betareader! by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 11:54:00 UTC Reply

Any betareaders available? It's right here.

Love it so far, both the agents and the writing sample! (nm) by SkarmorySilver on 2014-08-15 02:06:00 UTC Reply
I can do betaing. by Desdendelle on 2014-08-14 22:12:00 UTC Reply

Give me comment permissions on that GDerp and I'll take a look. It might or might not take me an absurd amount of time.

Since you neglected to give me a Gmail name or whatever... by Anonymouse on 2014-08-17 21:23:00 UTC Reply

Everyone with the link (in other words, because of my screw-up, the entire PPC) has the ability to comment.

Oh, whoopsie. by Desdendelle on 2014-08-17 23:00:00 UTC Reply

Mine's sur DOT nhm AT gmail DOT com. Though you seem to have given edit permissions... which is probably not a good idea.

As far as I can see... by zdimensia on 2014-08-17 23:45:00 UTC Reply

Someone who doesn't own the document, but makes changes, their edits show up as revisions that can easily be reverted.

Re: As far as I can see... by Anonymouse on 2014-08-17 23:47:00 UTC Reply

The point is, your first glance of a document is the newest revision, unless it was reverted. This happens no matter who revises it.

Fixed. Thanks. Here, have some NM&NMs. (nm) (nm) by Anonymouse on 2014-08-17 23:45:00 UTC Reply
ACK! by Anonymouse on 2014-08-17 23:41:00 UTC Reply

Let me fix that.

Ahm... how do I give comment permissions, exactly? (nm) by Anonymouse on 2014-08-17 17:34:00 UTC Reply

Instructions inside! by Desdendelle on 2014-08-17 22:56:00 UTC Reply

Here's a helpful guide. Not gonna mess around with edit permissions in your doc; I'll wait for you to change it.

FYI... by Neshomeh on 2014-08-13 17:25:00 UTC Reply

HG mentioned this below with a link to the "Beta-reader" article, but just to be clear, best practice when seeking betas is to post a request without links on the Board, get a couple volunteers' e-mail addresses, then privately send the link to your unfinished document to them.

Basically, linking = publishing, and you don't want to publish until you're satisfied that you're done writing and editing (though of course any mistakes caught by your readers should still be fixed).

I should have mentioned this with regards to the agent bios last night, but I was up late trying to finish some editing before bed, and my brain was a bit fried. >.
~Neshomeh

...Well, horseapples. by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 17:44:00 UTC Reply

Eheheh... so, ahm... what now...?

Re: ...Well, horseapples. by zdimensia on 2014-08-13 17:57:00 UTC Reply

You can put me on your list for the doc, though I'm not much of a beta. I saw a weird word, (aparrently) some things that stuck out as questionable, and a huge confusion.

*blink* by Anonymouse on 2014-08-14 03:41:00 UTC Reply

A huge... confusion? What?

You're fine for now. by Neshomeh on 2014-08-13 17:52:00 UTC Reply

Just remember for the future. {= )

~Neshomeh

Re: First writing sample ready for a betareader! by zdimensia on 2014-08-13 12:40:00 UTC Reply

Would have given a look if I could access.

Eheheh... help...? by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 13:01:00 UTC Reply

How do you give access in Google Docs?

Beta Reading by Hieronymus Graubart on 2014-08-13 15:03:00 UTC Reply

I found a glitch in Cheesy’s Bio:
"In there he has found that"
The rest of the sentence is missing or this fragment was left when the rest was deleted.

Concerning your question, I cannot help, because I don’t write in Google Docs, and I see the interface in German, so it looks different to you anyway. But I can try to give some hints:

If I can access a Google Doc for beta reading, I see two buttons at top right, labeled:
"Kommentare" (probably translates to "Comments")
"Freigeben" (probably translates to "Share")

The second Button is disabled (obviously because this isn’t my document) and its tooltip says something like "accessible to everybody who has the link available, no login required".
Note: I’m never logged in because I don’t have a Google account.

At his stage of your writing process, access and commenting to your document should not be restricted. But you may want to hide the document and the comments from public view by not publishing a link on the board.

HG

XD, nice one. I'll try to fix when I get home. (nm) by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 17:20:00 UTC Reply

Re: Eheheh... help...? by zdimensia on 2014-08-13 14:21:00 UTC Reply

From within the document...
File > Share

Who has access:

Anyone who has the link can comment.

Fixed. Beta away! (nm) (nm) by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 15:04:00 UTC Reply

Re: Fixed. Beta away! (nm) by zdimensia on 2014-08-13 15:14:00 UTC Reply

There's a blue box at the bottom of the sharing menu that will allow people to comment instead of just view.

RC number and badfic. by Neshomeh on 2014-08-13 05:39:00 UTC Reply

I'm not sure about the RC number, since letters aren't used except for mathematical signifiers like i and e. I don't know if we have an official statement about RC numbers that begin with letters, but just to be safe, what about 13DD? Or do the Ds have to be in the first position for the hexadecimal thing to make sense?

Also, I'm afraid "Cheerilee's Garden" is already taken. I know it's not on the Claimed Badfic list (yet; I'll go fix it when I'm done here), but here's where Tawaki stated his and Tungsten Monk's claim, and I hear they're getting close to the beta stage. Sorry about that.

I like the idea of seeing the exact moment when a Sue replaces a canon character, though. I hope you find another way to do it, when you get Permission.

BTW, I think zdimensia might've been referring to one of my missions below: "Family Ties" actually features Severus Snape and Snape's niece (confusingly referred to as his daughter in the fic's summary), not Dumbledore's daughter, but it does feature a scene where canon!Snape walks into a potions supply closet and doppelgänger!Snape walks out.

~Neshomeh

Cheerilee's Garden claimed by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 10:02:00 UTC Reply

......ing gahd dammit. I was looking forward to that.

...

Ehh, I guess I could find a TF2 badfic for the first mission...

Hoooo boyo. Found a doozy. by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 10:29:00 UTC Reply

"TF2 Trench Warfare." It's got slaughtered grammar, a Sue named Joseph that claims to be Heavy's nephew, replaces Heavy when he dies, and becomes RED's new leader, and various Minis (Mini-sentries?) like "ddemoman" (the Demoman, with an uncanonical wife), "the bl ue annoyncer" (the Announcer, who shouldn't be on the battlefield), and the enginer (the Engineer).

Oh, and I see "blu" and "grean" as colors. BLU in TF2 stands for Builder's League United, NOT simply a shortening of the color blue, and it should never be used as a color- especially when you continually refer to BLU as the "blue team." And I don't think I've heard of "grean."

I proactively claim it as my first mission.

We sort of have a statement. by Huinesoron on 2014-08-13 09:28:00 UTC Reply

As I recall, back when the list was on LJ and run by Araeph, she was vehemently against non-numeral RCs - because they were too difficult to file. They all had to equate to numbers, so RC #Molybdenum was filed under 95.94, the atomic mass of Mo.

In this case, of course, DD13 does translate to a number - it's either 13-13-13 (which I think is the intent), or 56595 if read as a single hex number. So it shouldn't be a problem. (In in-universe terms, I've always imagined that RCs have a real, decimal number, which agents freely reinterpret for the sign on their doors. So #Molybdenum would be simply RC 95, and DD13 would be 56595, which the agents realised just happened to be readable as a hex number D-D-13. But that's just my interpretation)

And, uh, don't make it 13DD. That's clearly a Mary-Sue's bra size.

hS

Well... by AdmiralSakai on 2014-08-13 17:20:00 UTC Reply

Any sequence of letters (and some other symbols besides) can be converted into numbers though ASCII or Unicode encoding. It gets weird when you realize that the ASCII encoding of digits themselves are not the same as the numbers. '0' is 48, '1' is 49, etc.
Mary Sue's bra size?! by Iximaz on 2014-08-13 11:49:00 UTC Reply

I fell out of my seat at breakfast this morning when I read that.

But, uh, what about RCs whose numbers don't make any sense when you try to relate them to a decimal? Like F, or 3-Apple-14...

Re: Mary Sue's bra size?! by zdimensia on 2014-08-13 12:28:00 UTC Reply

F is the only strictly letter RC allowed, IIRC. but others can have letters in them.

Not sure what number i is.

The number i is imaginary. by SeaTurtle on 2014-08-13 13:33:00 UTC Reply

It represents the square root of -1.

Now, this might not seem like something we need, but it's actually critical when doing certain calculations. Consider Euler's equation:

e^ix = cos(x) + i*sin(x)

notice that you obtain an imaginary component when sin(x) =/= 0.

Interestingly, adding 1 to both sides of the equation and setting x = pi gives us this result:

e^i*pi+ 1 = cos(pi) + i*sin(pi) + 1

= -1 + 0 + 1

= 0

And the remarkable equation

e^i*pi+ 1 = 0

Beautiful, isn't it?

Hex still works there. by Huinesoron on 2014-08-13 12:22:00 UTC Reply

F is just 15; 3A14 is, uh, 14868.

And the sad thing is, I can see something like 13DD happening if you have a male writer. Women's clothes come in sizes from 8-24 (plus or minus a few), bras come in letters... 13DD!

hS

Cheesy by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 10:04:00 UTC Reply

Yeah, Cheesy would be the one to translate his room number to hexadecimal.

>Mary Sue's bra size

Welp. Has anybody seen my sides? I can't find them anywhere.

Re: Beta Bioses and Plotbunny by zdimensia on 2014-08-13 01:43:00 UTC Reply

There's a list of claimed RC's but it looks good if it's available.

Hmmm, I can't remember where I saw it... replacement!Snape and Dumbledore's daughter. It showed that the real Snape walked into an ingredient cupboard and the replacement came out. That's the only time I've seen the switch happen.

I think I've mostly seen that geographical aberrations just happen because the writing said so.

Re: Beta Bioses and Plotbunny by Anonymouse on 2014-08-13 01:56:00 UTC Reply

That still us not seeing the actual event. If it weren't for the actions of the Sue, real!Snape would've come out. It speaks for the TF2 Your Eternal Reward mechanics though.

Also, "because the writing says so" isn't cutting it for me. I want explanation of how it makes it so! Even if I have to write it myself!