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48hr tumblr blackout proposal

tumblr mobile has seadily become near unusable these past few updates. not just from a user experience perspective (which is important enough in itself) but also from an accessibility perspective.

examples include the new way the image viewer works (if you can call it "working"), the tumblr live button replacing the profile button, and that newly created blogs will be forced to have their main dashboard tab be the 'for you' page.

the demands of the protest would be along the lines of:

reverse the recent image viewer update

scrap the new users 'for you' page default setting

let us turn off tumblr live indefinitely

increase efforts against spam / porn bots

make reporting abuse and hate speech as easy as reporting as reporting spam

let us go nuts show nuts again... for real this time

commit to improving usability and accessibility, and listening to users!

(suggestions welcome!)

to protest against these usability issues, and inspired by the recent reddit blackout, i propose a 48 hour blackout (where you don't use tumblr at all). preferably of both mobile and web (since web has problems too) but mobile is the focus here.

I suggest the 48 hours between the 30th of June to the end of the 1st of July.

this marks the end of pride month (for the "queerest place on the internet") and the start of disability month (since accessibility is a massive issue here).

tumblr office is in San Francisco, USA, so the times and dates will be calculated using their time zone (PDT).

you can find out the times and dates for your timezone here.

i can't afford to blaze this post so please spread it around as much as possible! protests only work if significant numbers show up!

Commission for @sihakadan! I had a lot of fun working on this 💖🐄thank you for commissioning me c: Close up under the cut

🥩🥩🥩

That random person you met online and now is a big part of your life

@sinedra

Writing Tip 3

Take criticism like an adult. You won't always hear what you what to, the writing that you put so much time and effort into may be torn apart, but you have to roll with it. There's always some truth to complaints, some people just love tearing writing apart, most are honestly trying to give you feed back. If you get mad or cry how will you handle the publishing process? Most people get told no many times over, it's life.

So, don't be rude or outright ignore it. Take it to heart and if you get a complaint more than once it probably does need to be changed or fixed. If you handle this with a good attitude and act respectful, people will be less likely to rudely rip your stories apart. Besides, the compliments are worth it in the end.

WHAT TO DO AFTER FINISHING A FIRST DRAFT.

Revise a different draft.

Write a new piece.

Read a craft article. (LitReactor.com is pretty good!)

Read a short story or book.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN’T DO AFTER FINISHING A FIRST DRAFT.

Revise it.

WHY NOT?

You have to be as detached from a draft as you possibly can when you polish it. You have to be able to trim the fat from your baby and take out all those words, sentences and fragments that are stopping it from being a great story. I’m sure those words you used are beautiful and they sound amazing, but if they’re stalling the plot they have to go.

HOW DO I KNOW WHAT TO KEEP AND WHAT TO THROW AWAY?

Read! The best way to know what a perfectly paced story is like is to read one. There’s no black-and-white, two-plus-two way to answer this, but this is what works for me:

Avoid adverbs, those words that tend to end in -ly.

Keep descriptions to a minimum. People are interested in your story. If they want to see what a place or person is like they go to Google images. If they come to you it’s because they want to be entertained.

Change passive voice sentences to subject-verb-complement sentences. You will get the same idea across in less words.

FINAL TIP

Try not to make changes on your first pass! If your word processor has a comment function use that to write the changes you need to make. If you read and edit at the same time you’ll be doing two things at once and you’ll get tired much quicker.

FINAL FINAL TIP

Enjoy yourself! You’re an artist. Write and revise for yourself. Love it.

I don't want to earn my living; I want to live.

Oscar Wilde

You know what I don’t get?  When fanfic authors apologize for long chapters.  It’s like?  You gave me bonus content, for free, and you’re sorry about it?  Bruh.  I have already named my firstborn after you.  Dude.

Any form of response is great feedback. Writing takes time, dedication, some tears, lots of frustration, research, but mostly passion. We write because it's what we love and it can take years to even finish one piece. It's a part of us that we lay bare for thousands of people to read.

If you like something, tell the author; anonymously or not. You really might just be making someone's day, or month. Writers feed off comments for years.

So, take time to tell a writer if they wrote something that impressed you. If something made you laugh or cry. If you remember even one line. I promise you'll make them smile and help encourage them.

okay just got done typing up a Long Ass Comment for a fic that i love and bc writers Live™ for comments but a lot of ppl seem to find it difficult/scary to write them, here are some tips from me, who has been on both sides of the fence:

we will nut over literally any context for how u read our fics, nothing is too specific or embarrassing

i once received a long ass essay about the exact circumstances under which someone read the new chapter including action and dialogue and i still treasure that comment to this day

if u read the fic a few days ago and are still thinking about it, open that bitch up and tell the author “i read this fic a few days ago and i’m still thinking about it”

THAT SHIT KILLS US I SWEAR

do not worry about being annoying!!!!! oh my god i can’t overstate this enough you are NEVER being annoying by leaving comments. examples of situations in which comments are Not Annoying:

commenting on every chapter

this is honestly our fav thing, those regular commenters are the real MVPs and i’d die for them. it doesn’t seem thirsty or obnoxious to us it’s our lifeblood i pr omi s e u

also this is guaranteed the #1 best way to get senpai to notice u, if that’s what ur after

adding an extra comment w a thought/detail u missed

adding an extra comment w a thought/detail u remembered from 4 chapters ago

commenting during a reread (this is only ever flattering!!!)

commenting an 800-word essay that takes several solid minutes to read

this seriously never comes across as irritating, time-consuming, or trying too hard; the author is the one who wrote thousands upon thousands of words in the first place and we eat that shit up

(ok i lied, there is one exception to this. the one thing that is annoying is demanding updates, especially if u do it on the same day as an update was published. this makes us sad, avoid this :c)

but aside from that: comments, great, always!!!

acknowledge how hard writers work. every time someone tips their hat to me for the effort i put in, it’s like the 12 hour binges, inability to think about anything else even while sleeping, longggg inspiration walks, and constant self doubt become worth it!!!!

let us know u talk about our fics w ur friends…. this is like, the ultimate compliment……… i’m still lowkey waiting for the day someone pastes an excerpt from a chat log they’ve had about one of my fics because i Know it has happened and i wanna see it……………i wanna know what has been yelled……………..

just say thank u!!! a simple thank you means so much more bc it shows us we have actual readers and not just numbers on a screen sfjdgslksg

I barely go here, but the love story between Veilguard's two Grey Warden contacts is NUTS. What do you mean Evka found Antoine dying in a pool of Darkspawn blood and administered an emergency Joining in hopes of maybe saving his life, and it worked, and then they fell in love, and by the time of the game they're very happily married? What do you mean they each wrote the other a letter to be read in the case of the writer being Called, and in Antoine's he admits life as a Grey Warden has been worth it because it gave him Evka? And he ends the letter with "Je t'aimerai toujours" (I will always love you) making that the last thing she'd ever hear from him? While Evka's letter is in a cypher and thusly only for Antoine? Couple of all time I swear.