Your worst nightmare, except in countless reblogs

I know y’all love talking about your books and your WIPs and stuff, but some things to keep in mind:

Tumblr is a public space. Your conversations and idea sharing is public.

If you want to be published, you can’t share too much of your WIP online. That’s called seizing your First Publishing Rights, which you’re allowed to do, but it’s what most publishers will pay for. Seriously.

People do steal ideas. It happens. If you don’t want yours taken, be circumspect with sharing. Just because someone says they want you to give them a summary of it so “they can remember” doesn’t mean that’s why they want it.

2. Traditional publishing and self publishing are equally lucritic and traditional publishers will happily take stories previously published online if they know they’ll sell. (I don’t promote doing this because its rare. But a writer who’s talked about their writing online and gained fans is much more promising than one who’s a shot in the dark.)

3. Your ideas have been done before. They’re not as unique or special as you think, and if they are, then they’re not marketable and no business minded publisher will take them.

“First Rights” refers to original publication rights. This means, typically, that you are selling your books for profit, with an ISBN, registered with the library of congress. Publishing on Tumblr, Wattpad, or any other blog, or personal space does not interfere with this. Besides the fact that many publishers will still pick up books with followings (especially if you’re looking into small presses! If your book has done well in the self-publishing sphere, consider publishing with a small house, since that benefits everyone.)  For example, I’ve seen a dozen books on wattpad that gained a following, or… The Martian? May have heard of that one? Yeah that was published IN FULL on his blog.

People do “steal” ideas. You may have heard of something called Eragon, or Fifty Shades of Gray. Or a dozen other things that have sold well. The people who quote unquote steal your ideas still have to write the damn book which is HARD. If they are directly taking your words, you are protected by intellectual copyright laws. If you have published them in a public sphere, that makes you even safer, because there is proof that these words were yours.

Finally, as a marketing person for my house, let me tell you: KEEP PUBLISHING YOUR SNIPPETS OH MY GOD. There are authors who have twitter accounts solely dedicated to this, fans who follow you for that and who will love your work enough to buy it later. In publishing, we don’t refer to this a roadblock, we refer to it as building your audience. If a publisher is between you and an equally good story, and in your query you’ve thrown in “Oh yeah, and I have a writing blog with 5000 followers,” they’re going to choose you.

That stupid robot destroyed the cake

“Hi. I’m new. I’m supposed to sit here.”

“Cool. Can I—ooh, I like your backpack!”

“It’s a Rayquaza!”

This particular NPC was startlingly overpowered at first, right a long the levels of 6 while everyone else was just starting out, and he helped them along in the most dire situations, healing, defeating, and even resurrecting for them. There would be periods where he would be gone, and the party would have to face a crypt full of mummies together, or dive into the deepest parts of the ocean and retrieve these milky white pearls that would give them the ability to help their friend and defeat the wicked king. Slowly, their memories came back to them, and that was a stark comfort for them, but the entire time, there seemed to be a piece missing. 

After they retrieved 5 pearls (they broke the 6th one), they journied with the man to the wicked king’s castle, and fought their way through endless ranks of guards, undead, demons, and even a lich, until they made their way to the sacred bed chamber of the king, that they all remembered the story of from before they had awoken in that garbage pile. They opened the doors, only to find it empty, save the usual furniture, marred by scratches and the ancient scrawl of demons. The man in the white armor sighed and walked into the bedroom. 

And his armor changed from white to pitch black, and the whole party remembered suddenly. That was the face of the wicked king, the face that smiled at them whenever he healed them, the face that looked stern as they suggested stupids things to find the pearls. Apparently, in lapses of the demon’s control, the king had found a way to set him self up for defeat, by bringing his wive’s pearls along with brave, powerful warriors. Every absence he felt was where he had to return to the demon’s control and become the wicked king again, but he was determined to fight himself, to rid his own evil from the world, to end this curse of immortality and see his loved one again. 

I made the party fight the final boss, and they saw the eyes of a friend. 

What better day to end the year then with a basic guide to colouring- This is for beginners or intermediate artists. Colouring is a big part to an art piece, whether you decide to use colours or not, that’s up to you, but for the most part, having some knowledge on appliance of colour will really help you out!

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ARTISTS WITH AN INSPIRING KNOWLEDGE OF COLOUR APPLICATION! Please take the time to have a look at other artists work so that you ca research and get inspired!

Gullacass: Uses brights, dulls and pastels to create brilliant guro, pop and macabre pieces| DA + TUMBLR

TinyCalcium: Old friend of mine who explores brights and mustard colours and places them as a foundation for their work | TUMBLR

BeastPop: Talented with opposing and Triwheel colours. Outstanding cell-shading, and knows how to flexibly bend colour form to their will in popart. | DA

H0stel: Fantastic composition of light direction and applies colour to bodies based on ambient occlusion. | TUMBLR

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COLOUR SLANG: I use some strange slang to express colour types and shades as well as groups. Although they may not be canonically correct, I will use these terms to describe colour palates to the best of my ability! Analogous: Colours that are near or adjacent to each other on the colour wheel, EG: Red and Orange

Oppositional/complimentary: Colours that are opposed or opposite from each other on the colour wheel, EG: Cherry and Green

Triadic: Colours that form a triangle on the Colour wheel, EG: Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. These three colours when mixed together will make black.

Arrowtype/Quadcolour: Four colours, that generally form an arrow shape on the colour wheel.

Tetradic: Colours that form a rectangle or square in the colour wheel

Neons: The very brightest you can get a colour, be careful where you use them as they can look ugly together at the most. Try to use neons when you are adding bright glowing objects to your piece. Neons are great for highlights.

Brights: Slightly washed Neons. Appropriate if you have characters that are colourful.

Washed: Very washed brights with a hint of grey. These are also useful for colourful characters.

Pastels: Colour with white in them to make them seem light.

Baby Pastel: Pastel with even more white in them, good for subtle highlights.

Darks: Colour with black added to them. Used mostly for lineart.

Mustards: Colours with dark grey added to them

Earthen: Colours with brown added to them

Warm and Cool colours: Warm colours are colours that range fromMagenta to Yellow. Cool ones range from Lime to Fuchsia.

Straight tones: A greyscale palate. or a straight scale of one colour from black to it’s neon form.

Warm and cool tones: Warm tones are a greyscale mixed with warm colours and cool tones are greyscale mixed with cool colours.

Skintones: Warm washed or pastel colours generally used to colour in skin, but they don’t have to be warm at all! ( I will not show you a palate for this however)

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WHAT TO AVOID WHEN COLOURING: beginner artists, tend to go ahead and start by colouring their line art with neon and mustard colours. Neons are not necessarily good for base colours unless the character has a glow.

I often see lazy attempts to shade, often a beginner artist with use an airbrush and use black and white to shade and highlight their piece. This is not very effective, and I’m sorry to say… It’s kind of gross as well. Try to avoid being lazy. If you have a piece that has bold black lines, avoid using soft shading and airbrushing at this point of time.

Black and white isn’t always the best option when colouring in your piece, but it also depends on the style you are trying to convey. If you plan on only using straight tones to colour in a piece, black and white is good.

A GOOD BASIC WAY TO COLOUR For this basic tutorial I will show you a nice way to colour in a piece with bold lines. I will be using Minty’s Classic character as an example.

Begin with using brights that have been washed down a little and washed skin tones if your character is human based. Avoid using neons or mustards if you are able. If there is white on the character, such as the white on an eyeball or the teeth, consider using baby pastels. For Minty’s eyeballs I have used a baby pastel blue. I have chosen to use a darker and more washed version for her Irises.

With you foundation colours placed down, use a washed warm colour for the skin tone, such as a salmon. If the character’s hair or fur is warm coloured, use a pink or red orange to shade that as well. Use the cell shading technique. This may mean you will have to erase some of your shading so be sure to do this on another layer. For your baby pastels, you can use a regular pastel to shade it. For Minty’s eyes I have used pastel blue and lowered the opacity by a little.

For Highlights, I have chosen to use baby pastel yellow. I wanted the piece to be warm.

Applying a light airbrush over the top of the piece makes it feel a little softer. I have also applied the airbrush over the initial borders to create colour bleed, giving a very subtle reflective approach.

Colouring your line art layer, particularly if you have bold lines, can really make a piece look more interesting! I like to leave the overall outline black. You can gradient and bleed colour in your line art as well

Light tracing is a technique lots of artist’s use, where they run a sharp line of highlight next to line art to divide borders.

This looks a lot nicer than the black and white shading, doesn’t it!? __________________________________________

This is a very very simple guide to applying colour to your piece! If This helped, please reblog and share this guide around!

lazy

crazy

not trying hard enough

r*tarded

doesn’t want to do the work 

weird

freak

And eventually the child may learn to believe these labels.

Because, whether they know about their diagnosis or not, the child still has a disability. The disability still creates certain specific challenges in things that seem easy for everyone else. Without accurate information about what’s really going on with them, they will come up with other explanations for these difficulties. And often the other explanations they come up with will be a lot worse than just learning the truth in a calm, factual way. 

corporation: but first i gotta pour bleach all over this food i cannot legally use anyway

me: how is that efficient or helpful in anyway????

corporation:

Aaaand?

“If they eat the discard they won’t buy the fresh stuff! It’s bad for business!”

…. You know homeless people can’t afford to buy your fresh stuff though, right? If anything you’re just encouraging them to shoplift your fresh stuff because the free alternative is covered in chemicals. That’ll cost you more in lost product as well as the money spent on bleach. You know, basic math.

Ah yes the homeless

Famous for having the funds needed to hire a lawyer and bring a class action suit against chain stores ._.

If the food hasn’t been sold

Then why not let it go to people who can’t afford to buy it for free?

No one deserves to starve

Now, I want to start by saying I think the peanut panic is actually, ultimately, a good thing.  Because suddenly you had this previously unheard of awareness and caution about deadly food allergies springing up in elementary and middle schools.  

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Suddenly it became seriously not ok to bring in class goodies with nuts of any kind ESPECIALLY peanuts, and those who chose to ignore those warnings were appropriately educated.  One of the kids I went to school with (whose mom was actually my mom’s best friend) went to the ER one day because some kid’s mom decided it wasn’t important enough to keep nuts out of the brownies she sent for the class.  And they were chopped small enough that he didn’t notice and had to be treated for anaphylaxis. (He was ok in the end, but it was pretty terrifying for all involved).

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But the downside of the peanut panic is that even now, there’s this assumption that food allergies always equal death.  So if you have a mild or even moderate food allergy and you try to avoid it- you can often end up in an endless loop of not being allergic enough to be considered allergic.

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Celiacs deal with this A TON.  Aside from the obvious battle to just be taken seriously at all (which is bullshit), there is a lot of- “but it’s not like gluten will KILL YOU so it’s not an allergy.”  

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Except it is.  I have a similar problem with nightshades, so does my sister.  We’re both allergic, in varying degrees, to nightshades. I got lucky and mine is what you might call relapsing/remitting.  (which is a pain in the ass).  Hers though, is not.  For me, when my allergy is active and I eat nightshades (which in case you don’t know is all the delicious veggies like potatoes and tomatoes and peppers and chilis … oh, and eggplant), I end up spending anywhere from  hours to DAYS in the bathroom.  In extreme cases I will not only have… digestive issues? But I’ll also end up throwing up everything I’ve eaten in the last month.  It can get BAD.

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Odds are though, it won’t ever actually kill me. 

But that doesn’t mean I’m not allergic.  My sister experiences her allergy expression in pain.  Body aches and pains all over, constantly, for days.  She didn’t even figure out what was causing it until I mentioned my allergy and she did an elimination diet to test it.

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We are both allergic.  We’re not going to die if we eat a tomato, or have french fries.  But you better believe we make sure it’s worth the pain first.

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The point is- we really need non-allergic people to stop equating all food allergies with death.  Because it’s just not that simple.  And having a non-lethal food allergy is no less valid than having a lethal one.  So when your friend or loved one says, I can’t eat this I’m allergic- don’t flip out and invalidate it just because you know it won’t flat out kill them.  BELIEVE people with food allergies- no matter how severe or uncommon.  And RESPECT those allergies.  Don’t try to be sneaky and slip in things they’ve said they’re allergic to.  Just because it won’t kill them doesn’t make it ok to fuck with someone’s system and you have no idea what kind of misery you’re handing out just because you want to roll your eyes and stay ignorant.

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So those times people screw with you add up.

And things can start having increasingly dangerous consequences.

Then there are things like celiac disease where apparently, not ONLY do you become miserably sick for days, but ALSO the allergen actually destroys the lining in your intestines that you NEED to keep intact and healthy because that lining is important for being able to absorb all kinds of important vitamins, minerals, etc., like vitamin D or whatever. So in addition to becoming sick in the short term, you ALSO will end up with serious deficiencies in many nutrients over the long term that can take months or years of treatment to reverse. So, congrats, your sneaking “just a bit” of wheat flour into the thing your friend is eating can have a serious impact on their health for a pretty long time. Just because you don’t see them keeling over dead as soon as they take a bite doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt them, it just means the damage is more subtle and slow acting.

Especially anger! Don’t be afraid to program “fuck you” into an autistic person’s iPad, don’t be afraid to teach sign language swear words and don’t be afraid to make up PECS cards with a little shit pile emoji.

Teaching an autistic person to tap “fuck you”, sign “asshole”, or hand you the “shit” card to tell you they’re pissed off may be one thing that stops them before they start punching or biting. Because if they can strongly indicate they’re pissed off, you can say “okay, let’s talk about this” and ask them questions (even if they have to be simplified to yes / no) get to the root of what’s making them angry. 

And that means you stop and discuss it if they start using swear words, because swearing will mean they’re having a strong reaction to something.

I think it’s worth the risk of them tapping “fuck you” in church, signing “asshole” at the grocery checkout person or showing their grandma the “shit” card because at least they’ll have an outlet for their feelings that don’t include drawing blood or leaving bruises.

Lupe would be the one chasing the bus.

So, hey, as you may or may not know, I am currently doing my MA dissertation on how expertise is incorporated into the autism discourse in the UK.

I have collected data on whose voices are currently being listened to, but now I would like the views of autistic adults to compare what we want with what the designated experts are pushing for.

So, for the next two weeks (until the end of July 2018), I’m running a Discord server for autistic adults from the UK* to discuss what we want, in terms of legislation and services, from the government and charities.

*So, basically, you have to be 16+ and have spent a significant of time living in the UK as an adult in the past decade.

If you meet these criteria and want a link to the Discord, send me a message. It can just say “Discord?” and I will send the link. Obvs, it can’t be an anon message, though.

Here is more detailed info on the server:

This server is for discussions of what UK autistic people would like to see in terms of legislation and services provided by the government and charities for autistic people. This discussion is part of a study on lay expertise and autism in the UK as part of an MA in Sociology and Social Research at Newcastle University being undertaken by L.C. Mawson, the creator of myautisticpov.com.

The server will run for two weeks and participants are free to join and leave the server as they please. If you would like to withdraw from the study completely, including removing your contributions to the discussion, you can contact Mawson at [email protected] to do so.

Your data will be anonymised, with only your nickname on this server being associated with your messages (right-click on your name on the user list on the right-hand side to change your nickname), not your real name.

This study is only looking at the experiences of autistic adults in the UK - this includes adults anywhere within the diagnostic process including those who are self-diagnosed and UK citizens who are currently living abroad - so please do not enter this server if you are not living in the UK, or are not an autistic adult (16+).