I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

Are there any other particularly egregious examples?

This book already exists, sort of! Or at least, it’s a biology textbook but I bought it for writing purposes:

It starts with a chapter about freezing to death, and it is without a doubt the scariest thing I’ve read in years (and I read a lot of horror fiction).

This book can be downloaded for free on Researchgate, posted there by the author himself:

The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments

Repeat after me:

It is OKAY to have content preferences and to be uncomfortable with certain ships or topics, controversial or not. It is OKAY to distance yourself from such content and block certain tags or creators.

It is NOT OKAY to actively hate and harass real people for creating content of fictional characters that features things that make you uncomfortable.

Are you Australian? Are you worried about Australia's zero-consequence attitude towards Israel's treatment of Palestinians? Sign this officially registered petition which calls for Australia to cut diplomatic ties with Israel specifically over their treatment of Palestinians.

Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.

K it's bs that you have to Toggle this as it should be OFF by default. But signal boosting nonetheless.

Go to settings then scroll down to visibility. It'll be the last option in there

There are currently ~2300 works in AO3 tagged with "Created Using Generative AI"

I'll be upfront with my opinion, which mirrors my opinion in regards to my field: using AI will only hasten your own obsolescence. The point of fanfiction is not to crank out fics, but rather to enjoy the hobby and communities of writing and fandom.

If you can't be bothered to write it, then I can't be bothered to read it.

listen 1.7% of you are FUCKING SCABS

Fucking scabs.

Ok, question. Why not use the For You page at that point?

Because it sucks

*THIS WAS SENT TO A FRIEND. NOT ME*

the friend who received this is too nice to say something about it but i have reached a point now where i have seen them receive so many messages like this that i just can't keep my mouth shut anymore

this is straight up evil behaviour. whatever lighthearted tone this anon thought they were sending this with, i don't care. it's gross in every sense.

i'm speaking directly to whoever sent this now and frankly, if you follow me, non, unfollow me right fucking now because i don't want this energy anywhere near my blog. it hurts enough that you've targeted my friends with it.

listen up because apparently it bears repeating for the millionth fucking time -

FANFICTION AUTHORS ARE HUMAN BEINGS. they have lives and jobs and school and things they struggle with. maybe they've even spoken publicly about their struggles in the hopes their readers would understand them a bit better because at the end of the day this is a community and they have every right to use this space however they fucking want to.

"don't start a fic you can't finish" - literally shut up. shut up! we are not paid to do this, i will start and not finish whatever the fuck i want.

and holy shit, anon. as if this message wasn't disgusting enough, please let me state plainly something you "desperately" need to hear: no robot can give you what a human writer can. and the fact that you even threatened to just go to AI at this point shows how little you care about storytellers and all they provide for you.

again, i don't care if every word of this message was sent in jest or meant to be read playfully. it's not fucking cute. this shit hurts writers and ya'll need to realize that.

if you take time out of your life to send messages like this, you're a bad person. period. this is not how fanfic works, it's not how the world works. if you can wait two-three years for a movie or a new season of your favourite tv show, you can wait a few months for a fanfic to update. or you can wait forever. we literally owe you nothing.

i'm done sugarcoating it, ya'll. disrespectfully, grow up. grow up! enough is enough.

anyway

Hey anon if you've got that big a bug up your ass about works taking too long to get finished here's a handy goddamn tool for you:

You're welcome you ungrateful fuck.

Anon and others like them need to learn to stop dehumanizing others. Unfortunately, that extremely important lesson isn't taught in school because it's assumed "everyone knows" not to do that. I could fill entire books with stuff "everyone knows" that everyone doesn't.

All the Regurgitation Algorithms out there today adds another tool to their arsenal. The end goal is getting whatever they want. At any cost. Dehumanizing someone? Insulting their abilities? Doesn't matter as long as they're happy. And if they can't be happy (because, in this case, we all know RAs fucking suck at writing) they can at least make someone else as miserable as they are.

You know what's even worse than someone using a program to try and get an ending to a fic? Someone going to an author and threatening to do just that. The first is a combination of arrogance, entitlement, and ignorance, but the latter adds maliciousness into the mix. Especially if they aren't actually planning to feed the fic into a program: they just want the author to know they could. That's hatred right there. That's wanting to hurt someone else. And most often that's because they don't see their target as a real person. Why bother with basic levels of respect and understanding when it's just some thing on the internet?

A wise woman once warned us where the "people as things" mentality leads. That still applies here, even though I'm sure Anon would disagree. The "little" things are just the start to the path, and it's all downhill from there.

ATTENTION ARTISTS OF TUMBLR

since tumblr is going to start scraping blogs to train ai be sure to glaze and nightshade your art!! Not only will both of these programs protect your art from being copied but nightshade also poisons any ai that tries to steal it

here is some more info on these tools and where you can download them:

Nightshade: Protecting Copyright (uchicago.edu)

Nightshade: Downloads (uchicago.edu)

Glaze - What is Glaze (uchicago.edu)

Glaze - Downloads (uchicago.edu)

good riddance live

if you’re white and wanna write a poc character and feel awkward about it i implore you to ignore any twitblr stuff treating it as a massive ethical burden and instead come in more with the same mindset you’d have if you wanted to write about idk firefighters but didn’t know anything about firefighters so you do... research. Like fuck off with the weird kinda creepy calls for spiritual introspection you’re not writing about god damn space aliens you’re writing about humans and if you think you need more perspective of different life experiences just read?

If I were writing about firefighters I'd also, in addition to just reading about them, take advantage of Our Blessed Internet to ask actual firefighters about how shit works. I'd do the same for a minority I'm not a part of.

I remember when there was this LiveJournal community where you could just ask about anything you needed for your novel - medicine, professions, vehicles, how things function in country X - and people who knew something about that would answer.

We need to bring this back.

And apparently just this summer they DID bring it back - it's called Little Details and it's on Dreamwidth!!!!

BISAN HAS CALLED FOR A GLOBAL STRIKE

January 21-28th

In accordance with the global strike for Palestine, we will not be posting our usual content this week. Do what you can, and let's make a difference.

I hate the way yanks talk about people's teeth

yeah im not done actually. perfectly white straight teeth are deeply weird and should not be considered some kind of ideal in any way. braces arent useless but they’re for cases where genuine harm or pain is being caused not just aesthetics. teeth whitening is fucking evil. crooked teeth, yellow teeth, chipped teeth, they’re all literally fine. your row of porcelain fucking tombstones make you look like a goddamn mannequin. if you’ve ever made fun of someone’s else’s teeth i hope reality fucking rejects your existence