*making up stories* maybe the real poob was inside us all along. brain has it for you!
How to Write a Good Comment:
Tell the author whether you liked the fic or not.
That’s it. Literally that is it. You don’t even have to use words. Positive emojis like hearts/smileys or “I really liked this!” or “This fic made me so happy” – all good comments. (To me, “I didn’t like this fic” is actually also a good comment, although I know opinions vary on critical comments.)
You might be thinking, “Okay but… every comment does this?” Not so! You’d be surprised how many comments are ambiguous or cryptic, e.g., “I hate you for making me cry” or “BRUTAL” or just “oouuugggghhhh” with no indication of whether that’s a positive or negative. As an author, I don’t know how to respond to these, so I don’t, but then I feel guilty. Help the author out by being clear! If you want to keysmash, absolutely go ahead – I’d just suggest you add “this is awesome!” to your “kjfldsjlfkjkjanmv.”
How to Write a GREAT Comment:
Tell the author why you liked the fic, or what you liked about it (which is the same thing).
This can take an infinite number of forms, but some of the most common are:
- This fic made me feel [feeling].
- My favorite part was when [thing happens].
- Here are some of my favorite lines: [copy and paste].
- This fic really made me think about [thing/character] in a new way.
- The ending was so satisfying!
- This fic made me want to [hug/slap/murder/get naked with] the main character.
- This fic resonated with my personal experiences [in this way].
These comments are GREAT comments because they give the author a little spark of “oh hey, this person was paying attention to my story specifically, not just saying they liked it because of the ship/tag! The thing they liked has to do with the me-ness of this story!” Which is a feeling like a warm hug combined with a fizzy drink. It is delightful delightful delightful.
There you have it! Now go leave a great comment of your own—and have fun!
Folks, backup your Tumblrs, for real this time
To be clear, I don't have any news about any impending doom. But I've heard a bit more about what's going on with staff after the layoff of last week, and there are even less people than I thought still working here.
I don't think even the current staff know what's going to happen, but honestly, I don't see how the high ups could even pretend to intend to keep this place open while virtually unstaffed.
And of course, if the most despicable thing happens, you can find me at @javi@goblin.band from any fediverse platform 🤷
for reference, OP is a former employee of Tumblr who tries to keep up to date with tumblr’s inner workings. please back your blogs up.
In your blog settings you have the ability to initiate a blog export, and this will generate a backup for your blog.
Fair warning though, if you've been on the platform for a long time this archive is likely to be quite hefty in file size. This blog I have had for 5 years with 22k posts, and the export from tumblr came to be 48GB. My previous blog I made in 2011 and has 95k posts, so needless to say I did not use tumblr's built in export to back that one up.
If you want more control over exactly what you back up from your blog, I recommend that you use tumblr-utils instead. It allows you to backup specific tags, post types, and to ignore posts that you did not create (reblogs where you've added a comment count as a post you created, to be clear).
To use it:
- download and install python 2.7
- download tumblr-utils
- create an application on tumblr to get an api key
- extract the tumblr-utils zip and open the tumblr_backup.py file in notepad
- search for "API" and paste in your OAuth consumer key
- then go back to the folder where you extracted tumblr-utils and choose open folder in terminal / command prompt, or type cmd.exe in the address bar while inside the folder
now in the window that opens it should show the current path, and you can type "py -2 .\tumblr_backup.py [your options] [your blog name]" and hit enter. Example:
Backing up just my original posts from this blog with this command came to 632MB rather than 48GB, and also gave me the option to save my posts in JSON format which will be useful for converting my posts to a new format for self hosting.
On that note I'm currently looking into figuring out a simple (and ideally free) way of self hosting a static site blog that utilises activitypub, and also converting my old posts to re-host on said blog.
This post series by maho.dev on implementing activitypub with any static site is my primary source of guidance atm if you also want to try figure that out yourself, as well as having an explanation for why you'd even want to do this if you don't already know
but if tumblr goes down before I get things sorted and write up a post about it then i'll be reporting back on it via my bsky, mastodon, and toyhouse accounts
if you dont have an account on any of these I'll also be sharing an update via my personal site's RSS feed, link of which includes an explanation of what RSS is and some feed readers you can use, I highly recommend checking it out as getting a feed reader is going to be the best way you can stay connected with people if they scatter across the internet!
tldr: download tumblr-utils to backup your blog more efficiently, introduce yourself to RSS and get a feed reader to stay connected with people, consider saving mine so you can find out how to self host your blog later if tumblr goes down
last year vs this year !!
some improvement for sure. im quite happy wiht how my art has developed ^_^
ghostrally asked:
any art tips about writing funny scenarios? i feel like i understand drawing but ive been in a total writing rut, especially when it comes to comedy :/
sabertoothwalrus answered:
I think the main thing to consider is What Is The Punchline.
Something I see often in beginner joke-writing is having too much after the punchline. You don’t need to have character A dunk on character B, and then have characters C, D, & E all reacting to it. UNLESS the reaction is the punchline. Remember how funny vines were? A lot of that came from them being only 6 seconds, and often cut off at the end. The Abruptness can absolutely add to the timing.
The other main thing is that comedy = contrast. Yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and something I was seeing a lot of people do (myself included) was make some kind of “announcement”, and then say some variation of “haha sike!” The thing is, this only works if your audience could have realistically expected you to make that kind of announcement in the first place. If an artist who has been staunchly and vocally against AI art posts an AI image, then… that’s not really a joke? Your followers will be confused, not only because you’re acting out-of-character about an issue that’s politically charged, but also because you’re still using AI art.
My own version of this joke was to redraw an old comic, which is something I love doing! I love revisiting old media I used to like, and I love redrawing art to track my improvement. My followers (hopefully) know this about me. The twist was that the comic I redrew was voltron, specifically klance, because I have the experience to know this would give a lot of people a lot of whiplash. Even after almost 9 years, just simply seeing the characters was enough to send people careening into a weird spiral of nostalgia and fear for my sanity, because of how controversial the show and its fanbase had become. But since most of the controversy was because of extremely-online drama, it was ultimately harmless (and people that are genuinely still into the show got some new art for it teehee!)
I’m going to use a recent comic I did as a another example.
^ this is a comic about Ace Attorney, but honestly you don’t really need to know anything about Ace Attorney except that “7yg” is a shorthand the fandom used for “7 year gap”.
- Panel 1: Setting the expectation. it’s during the pandemic, so it’s normal for people to have hand sanitizer on them. A precedence has been established.
- Panel 2: Additional Context. Phoenix rummages through his pockets, which tells the audience he has a lot of stuff in them, and that he’s identifying objects more by touch than by sight.
- Panel 3: Anticipation
- Panel 4: The punchline! Oops, it was lube! Small bottles of lube DO look & feel very similar to bottles of hand sanitizer, but people– especially during a global pandemic– do not typically carry small bottles of lube on them. Personally, I think Phoenix Wright could be the kind of person to have lube on him (for any number of sexual or non-sexual reasons), but the audience doesn’t necessarily need to know that about him. Part of the joke is the nonchalance in his reaction; all you need to know is that Phoenix himself is not that surprised or embarrassed about having lube with him, or about having just dispensed some of it into his friend’s hands.
Comedy is hard to explain!! It’s also not very funny to explain. It really takes a lot of practice, and everyone has different tastes in humor/context/expectations anyway, so you’re never going to make everyone laugh. Knowing your audience will definitely help.
So, tattoo shop AUs are really popping off lately and personally I love it. What’s more romantic than bleeding for art? Nothing!
But as someone married to a tattoo artist, I have been experiencing some mild She Wouldn’t Say That regarding tattoo culture. So here’s a few quick tips that may help inform your AU. With a grain of salt for my mostly-second-hand knowledge:
- NO ONE REPUTABLE SHOP WILL TATTOO A DRUNK PERSON. EVER. or even a person they suspect of any kind of inebriation. This is not just for Regret reasons, but also because alcohol is a blood thinner. If someone is on an acute dose of blood thinners, you generally do not want to stab them dozens of times per second.
- Maybe this is regional, but in my experience most tattoo places don’t call themselves parlors anymore. It has a kind of seedy vibe. I see shop or studio a lot but rarely parlor.
- Most tattoo artists are hot, yes, but none are as hot at my wife
- Tattooing janks up your hands. Sometimes in a RSI way but definitely in a changing-gloves-every-five-minutes-fucks-up-your-skin way.
- Artists themselves are rarely if ever employees of the shop. They will be independent contractors who pay the shop either a cut of their sales or rent on their station like a hair dresser. They are also (usually) responsible for taking care of their own supplies, tools, etc. except for the stencil printer. What kind of dweeb would have their own stencil printer?
- There is always a line for the stencil printer. Always.
- Artists generally spend orders of magnitude more time working on art, replying to emails, doing consults, etc compared to time with their needles in skin.
- A typical schedule for an artist might be: wake up at noon and guzzle half her body weight in coffee, one appointment from 1-4, and another from 6-9. Home to eat one (1) real meal at 10 pm. Drawing until 5 am. This is good for her actually and good for our marriage and she’s so healthy all the time.
- An ideal shop receptionist needs to be friendly, knowledgeable, and encouraging. They also need to be willing to get out the baseball bat that is kept behind the counter.
- If a shop has to choose between “good people skills” and “will promptly rebuff Nazis and the obviously inebriated” the later is often a more important consideration.
- At any given moment in any given shop there’s going to be at least one apprentice or someone bumming around hoping to be taken on as an apprentice. They spawn on tic and this feature cannot be disabled.
- Again I can not overstate how hot my wife is
Do you block people in the same fandom as you just because you don't like their takes?
