For those who are curious, this is how I write stuff:
In case you didn't know, I don't always announce when I write new things. You can find my writing on AO3 in case you're interested.
I'm trying a new technique called "doing stuff when the obsession takes me" as to not burn out. So far it's been quite good for getting ideas out and into my documents, and so far I've been working on enjoying the process of writing more.
CJ the X does wonders for this kind of thing. "Do it for the process, not the result" is something I've been doing more and more lately, and it's been a massive boost to my productivity.
Another good saying is "write like no one will see it", which is also good for me, because it helps dampen that fear of being an amateur.
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Actually, my therapist has told me this is a healthy way of processing things. Because you can get the trauma out of your head And you can write the ending you wish it had. The trusted person rescue, the catharsis of getting to kill the one who hurt you.
It's good for your brain. It's healthier than bottling it up. Fiction is where we go for emotional release. That can be true with trauma too.
Adding @dear-massacre's tags because they are so true:
#this is why it's important to remember that fictional characters are fake #they have no agency. they're made up #it hurts no one to make any character go through the horrors #it is healthy and cathartic
Dear Danny Phantom fandom, it has come to my attention that you have all been failing for 21 years straight by never establishing silly names for these dynamics.
So I have come to Tumblr today with some grandiosely stupid propositions.
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I don't want my works to be on sketchy AI training websites, but I also don't want sketchy AI training websites to have my real human name and contact information, which is generally required for DMCA notices. You see my problem.
I'm honestly still trying to wrap my head around the sheer scale of this.
Like, on a personal level, I have nearly 2.5 million words on AO3, but let's round down, since this scraper only took works numbered up to 63,000,000, right? So, 2.4 million words. Let's say that it takes me 1 hour to write 400 words (honestly, a massive overestimation of my abilities, I think my average is close to 200 or 300 per hour, except during NaNoWriMo). That's 6,000 hours worth of work. Work that I provided for free, for people to enjoy, that is now going to be used to make AI bros money.
At least a human plagiarist would have to copy and paste my work themselves. At least they'd know what they'd done.
Expanding this. There are 14.9 million works on AO3, but, again, let's be conservative and round down. 14 million works. Let's say half of them are archive locked (only visible to members), and that the scrapers only got 7 million. Let's say that the average fic has 2,000 words in it (playing around with filters on AO3 shows that the median fic length is between 2,300 and 2,400 words - that is, about half of the fics on the site are shorter than that, and half are longer - but I'm trying to make the numbers simple and I'm not going to try to calculate the actual average). Let's further assume that the average fic writer is faster than my estimated speed by about a quarter, so they write 500 words an hour. That means that each fic takes about 4 hours to be written. That's 28 million hours of labor stolen. Fed into the plagiarism machine. $203 million dollars worth, if you're going by American federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. And, yeah, it feels gross to put a dollar value on fanfiction like this, but these AI people obviously expect to make money off of it, despite it being illegal for us to do so. It's an absurd amount of theft.
Oooookayyy. This was so not how I expected to find out my stuff has been scraped.
This is a first for me, and I can confidently say this: it sucks. But, somehow, it's also a little flattering?
I consider my work to be amateur, and the impact it's left on people/the internet to be minimal. And yet, it was apparently deemed good enough for training an ai. That has to mean I've done at least somewhat of a good job, no?
At least it's not so terrible it has to be manually excluded from the dataset 🤣
I'm rambling. I just woke up. Fun stuff to wake up to
I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!
➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.
➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”
➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”
➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”
➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”
➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.
“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.
“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”
➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”
➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”
However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!
➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.
If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)
➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“
“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.
➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.
➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”
➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.
“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”
➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.
“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”
Okay, these are very helpful. But that last one... oh that last one... That is a major pet peeve of mine.
"If it's the same speaker, but a different paragraph, definitely keep the closing quotation off if you'd like, but please, just don't add the beginning quotation to the paragraph(s) following it.
If a paragraph is in the middle, simply don't add any quotations. If you think about it, it's surrounded by quotations already anyway.
When the reader sees a quotation at the end, they'll know that they've exited the quotations."
This is just my own personal preference, but I've seen this in wayyy too many fanfics and even in actual, physical books. I understand that doing it this way could cause confusion, but that also happens when you chop off quotations seemingly randomly.
Everything has pros and cons. I just prefer this arrangement above the alternative.
PLUS! you can do the same thing with parentheses! Isn't that neat?
You once saved a Crow from dying as a child. Even now that you are an adult, you still remember the Crow's words after you set it free back to its murder, "We… wiLL… RETurN… ThE… FAVor…"
Probably not what was intended, but I just took a moment and wrote something. For funsies! Because why not?
He stared as it struggled, screaming frantically as claws dug into its wings. He stared, watching as scarlet red seeped into midnight black, as fangs revealed slivers of torn tissue, as claws clashed, and paws thrashed. He could not look away.
It felt like there was voice in his head, frantically yelling 'wrong... something's wrong...'
A tear made its way down his cheek. He wanted it to stop.
No. He needed it to stop.
It felt like a pain - no, a tearing - ripping him open from the inside out.
His eyes burned as wave after wave of wet and twisted cries filled his ears.
It kept going. He didn't want it to.
He closed his eyes.
...
There was a shriek. Something happened. He didn't know what, but it stopped.
It stopped.
Something had happened, he didn't know, but what he did know was that he felt something.
His arm, warm and sticky, was heavy, his hands full of... something. Something big and furry.
He dared a peak.
The cat, held at arm's length, gave a hiss, then a low, dreadful growl. It was not a threat, its eyes made that crystal clear. It was a promise.
Pain. He let go.
He looked down at his arm; three thread-thin slashes, slashed into his arm, and soaking his shirt in soggy, sanguine red.
He looked up. The cat was gone, but the crow was perched atop a nearby branch.
It eyed him, curiosity gleaming across two abyssal beads.
He could hear it.
Well, he heard it caw, it was loud and jarring in his ears. That was impossible not to hear.
But he also heard it, grave and hoarse, rumbling deep inside his head. "We… We wiLL… RETurN… ThE… FAVoUr…"
"Jamie!"
He glanced back, over his shoulder. It was his mum; she coming to get him. He looked back, up to the branch. The crow was gone.
"Jamie!" He turned to face her this time. "There you a-"
She saw.
"Jamie!" She knelt down in front of him, taking his arm into her hands. "Goodness... What on earth happened?"
He looked at her, then down at his arm, then the ground.
"There... a cat..." he tried. "A crow..."
"Jamie..." she said, with a sigh.
She set his arm down, and stood up, stepping to his other side, and taking his hand. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up."
He nodded, and followed. He looked back, though, at the tree where he found the crow, at the branch, and at the pool of blood. Despite having the marks to prove it, there was no trace of what happened just a minute ago. Only his footsteps remained, the only proof he was ever here.
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I am BEGGING society to start using the oxford comma again. I have misunderstood too many sentences in recent memory all because someone couldn't put ONE extra comma in.
The simplest explanation is that it's the last comma used between items in a list of at least three. And in practice, here's everyone's favorite example:
With Oxford Comma:
Let's invite the strippers, Hitler, and Stalin.
The comma clarifies that the strippers, Hitler, and Stalin are three separate entities being invited.
Without Oxford Comma:
Let's invite the strippers, Hitler and Stalin.
The context changes! Hitler and Stalin are the strippers. At least, that's how I'm going to read this without that extra comma!
But that's why it's so frustrating when people drop that comma. I no longer read those last two items as part of a list, which can cause some pretty big misunderstandings. The example I saw today was a coworker saying "Person A, Person B and Person C discussed this topic." I read that as them addressing Person A about a conversation B and C had, rather than stating a conversation happened between A, B, and C. It's a minor change that makes a big difference.
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