And if you can stay in your seat but are constantly bouncing a leg, clicking a pen, tapping out a rhythm on your thigh, or otherwise fidgeting, the answer is, yes, you do have trouble staying in your seat.

happy valentine's day <3

There’s this idea that we see where creators think thar material about them/their characters is FOR them, and so they lay down rules about how things should be depicted (like you would on a gift for you) and they go into the comments to fight with people who put their tag on things they don’t like, etc. All these things that we see happening.

But they’re missing the point that— and I am not the first person to say this— things tagged with their character name are not there for them to see it, they’re there for other fans of the character to see it. I don’t post into the murderbot tag for the edification of Martha Wells, I post it for other murderbot fans. If Martha Wells showed up in my comments on an established fandom space I’m liable to panic-block and scramble for the exit.

And so these creators come in and say “this isn’t a good gift for me, don’t do this”, but that’s an essential misreading of the situation, and the thing is it’s kind of a presumptuous misreading of the situation when you’re monetizing your character. As my friend TD pointed out today, “don’t draw nsfw of my OC” is a perfectly normal thing to do within a peer to peer fandom context, but you are no longer interacting peer to peer when you have monetized your OC and are distributing them to as broad an audience as possible. You are the creator of a marketed figure. If you try to keep dictating people’s behaviour, that is how you become Anne Rice, which is never something you want to be.

But these creators are walking into spaces and saying that *everything tagged with their character name* is a gift for them and just like, no. If you keyword search your name on the entire internet you’re gonna overhear a lot of conversations that were not meant for you, and acting like it is even possible to make The Entire Internet safe for a public figure to look at is not a workable exercise.

Creators should not be walking into spaces where people are talking about their characters unless they’re ready to see a lot of things that were never made with them as the target audience. Make a fan art channel im your discord and let people bring things to you, but don’t walk onto the site where people’s favourite holidays to celebrate with characters include kinktober and whumptober and goreuary, where people explore their trauma through the lens of their favourite characters, where people experiment with different art styles and body type depictions of characters, where things that fall under the “fluff” umbrella include making characters into toddlers and making them so sad so they can have a hug, and expect that everything is going to be made with your comfort in mind. That’s just not how the fandom emotion works.

og:

-A fun story shared at every family reunion is about how her great great grandmother escaped slavery and got the family the land they live on. That their ancestor, how couldn’t read or write but was smart as a whip used to kill her master’s children, not all of them of course just one for every child she lost b/c it was only fair, who organized a revolt when they Union army was getting close that kept the whites distracted with folks trying to runaway that let them to be drugged, cut and fed to the hogs and how she headed out west as soon as she was sure the master’s family was dead. 

A fun story that got her in trouble at school when she shared it during Black History month.

And one of many reason why she believes that anyone (human or alien) who owns slaves does not deserve to live.

I’ve seen a lot of people asking how us tumblr writers make banners for our writing/series, so I thought I’d share how I make mine. 

For extra context: I do not know how to use photoshop (or even have photoshop) + had no background in web design/graphic design when i first started making banners for my blog. Everything in this tutorial is FREE to access and can be used in a web browser so you don’t need to download any extra software/programs to make banners!

link to the divider tutorial is here

Banners: Canva

1) Go to Canva (canva.com) You DO NOT need a Canva Pro subscription - I have never paid for Canva (and don’t plan to) and all my banners have been made using the free version of Canva. You can link your gmail, social media to an account for ease of access, or create a new account using your email of choice. 

2) Choose a template, or create your own

You can choose from Canva’s existing templates, but I usually prefer to create my own template to get a nice size for my banners. Click “Create New Design” (in the upper right corner). From there you can choose an existing template, or you can click “Custom Size” 

For my banners, I usually do a 3000 px (horizontal) x 625 px banner (vertical). This size has had the best resolution on tumblr while still being the size ratio/dimensions that looks good to me on both mobile and desktop layouts.

3) Canva Presets/Templates in the editor // CREATE!

Once you enter the banner editing page you can choose from a lot of different things. Canva will generate existing templates for you that you can choose from. It also has a bunch of presets/images to choose from to help with creating a graphic. Since there really isn’t a set process/steps for making a banner beyond setting up the initial dimensions of your banner, here are a collection of tips/tricks I’ve learned while using Canva.

Some tips/tricks for using Canva:

1) Adding/using images

Canva Photo Library - Canva has TONS of free graphics available for you to use in graphics. You will see that some have watermarks + a crown logo - you can still use that image but the watermark will appear. However, there are still millions of images that are free to use with no watermark. I always look in the canva library first, since the images have a license that allows anyone to use them for free regardless of purpose.

AVOID using fanart/licensed images - Unless you have clear + direct permission from artists, I strongly encourage you to avoid using other people’s digital art! I know it may seem really beautiful/aesthetic, but fanartists have put a lot of time in to creating art for us to see. If you really want to use something for your banner, please check the artist’s blog/website/social media for their policy on using their artwork. 

Other sources of free images: The two image libraries I use the most are Pixabay and Unsplash. Both libraries allow you to download photos under their license that makes their photos free for use without credit. Many of the photos in my smau + banners have come from these sites. 

How to add images to your banner from your computer: if you are using images outside of Canva’s photo library, you will need to go to the ‘Uploads’ tab and upload your image from your device. From there you’ll be able to insert the image into your banner workspace.

2) Changing Background Color - Use the background tab! You can click on the “New Color” button (the paint palette) to create a custom color. 

Background tab + custom color: 

You can also select from background image library - double click the image you want to make it the background. You can toggle which part of the image ends up as a the background by double clicking on it.

Selecting Image: 

Image position toggle (double click on background): 

3) Grouping - This a really helpful function that groups different objects together to help you align them. I usually end up grouping all my banner text into one object so that it’s easy to move around and align with other images/graphics in the banner. All you do is select all the objects you’d like to group and click the “group” button in the upper right corner. (Drag your mouse across the graphic. you should see a blue square form - make sure the blue square is touching all the things you want to group together.)

4) Text/fonts -

Searching for fonts: Once again, there are going to be some fonts that you will not be able to access without Canva Pro, but there are so many that it doesn’t really matter (all my fonts are from the free font selection offered on Canva). You can also search for font style: some of the keywords I use are cursive (for loopy/pretty fonts), handwriting (for handwritten aesthetic), and corporate (for minimalist/clean fonts) and typewriter (for typed/typewriter aesthetic).