So, thumblerapocalypse survivors, I’m still here too. Let me show you my 2018 art summary. The great secret is I started to draw digitaly at the beginning of 2018 and look how it turns now! My style and technique was changing a lot from pic to pic, therefore it was hard to chose one painting a month, but those I picked here are the most familiar or significant for skill growing. Huh, I even changed my nickname during the year thoughI I feel like it was thousand years ago. In sum this year was great for me as an artist, and in spite of anything
I wish this succes to grow on in 2019.
Аноним asked: "Is there anything you do to make sure your protagonist is active enough? I'm outlining my novel and I'm afraid that too much of the plot is about what happens to her as opposed to what she does. How can I change it without changing the basics of my book, if that's even possible?"
Great question, I’m surprised I’ve never talked about this before actually since it’s so important. Having an active protagonist is, in most cases, very important, so that they feel like a worthy protagonist and the story is interesting. Here are some things to consider:
1. If you removed your character or replaced them with another, would the plot be essentially the same? Ask yourself this to see if your character is deeply rooted in the action rather than just being on the sidelines.
2. Does your character have goals and desires, and try to achieve them? Goals are very important, but a character who has goals and doesn’t do anything to achieve them isn’t pulling much weight in the plot.
3. Are other characters primarily making choices for your character? Are other characters usually the ones to suggest plans and implement them? Is your protagonist just along for the ride?
4. Does your character react actively rather than passively? Reaction can still be action–if it really is active. A character who acts in reaction to something is still an active character, because they are implementing change.
Here are a few ways to make your character more active:
1. Make them work for it. If a solution falls easily into your character’s hands, you could give them a chance to work for it more and make them more active. For example: your character is in an unfamiliar place and has to leave a note. Rather than have them carrying a pen and scrap of paper, make them search the room to find something they can write with. Bonus points if it’s unconventional (ex. writes the note with eyeliner on a box on a dinner plate).
2. Make them suggest the solution, rather than someone else. This is such an easy switch in some cases. If you always have other characters offering solutions, give your protagonist the chance to do that. This could even be the difference between a question and a statement. The character could say: “Should we try to rescue Pete?” and let other characters make that choice, or they could just affirm it. “We have to rescue Pete.” Just like that, more active.
3. Give them opinions and beliefs. Allow your character to have opinions and a belief system, and make judgements on the world around them. A passive character can be rendered even more passive if they don’t have their own opinions on the world, people, and situation around them.
4. Don’t let them accept their fate too quickly. Ex: a character is captured and is going to die, and they just accept it immediately. Don’t let your characters just accept bad things right away without trying to fight back and save themselves or their loved ones.
5. Avoid deus ex machina. Deus ex machina is a solution that conveniently comes out of nowhere, and it can cause really weak characterization. Make sure your character is solving problems.
A messy little comic for the @yuletide-trylogia about a disaster boy who doesn’t know his letters so he sends his bf some cool stuff he finds in the woods instead
Recently, Tumblr was removed from the Apple app store due to an incident involving child pornography. This incident is incredibly unfortunate, but it doesn’t stand alone. Tumblr was also removed from the app store due to the large influx of porn bots and pornographic spam, users claiming to be proud to be pedophiles, blatant Nazism, racists who are not deleted for sending hate and harassing users, and more. I myself reported someone for harassing me, but because I had blocked the person and couldn’t access the messages where they harassed me, they were still able to send me anonymous asks. Your support staff, with back doors to the website (presumably), claimed they could not access the messages, and I was left SOL. Many features on this website do nothing to actually protect your users from harassment, racism, homophobia, transphobia, Nazis, pedophiles, predators, porn bots, and more.
You claim in your statement to us that you “have been working on these problems for a long time”. This is blatantly untrue. Please do not lie to us and patronize us. We’ve been here. We’ve seen you do nothing over, and over, and over again.
We complained to you for months and months about the rampant porn bots, and you did nothing except add a report button on mobile which only reported sensitive content or spam at best. You could have addressed this problem with an effective algorithm, but you did not. We complained to you about being harassed and sent hate speech for being LGBT+, and you did nothing. We complained to you about blogs being randomly deleted, and sometimes you’ve restored them, other times you have not. We complained to you that there were people proudly claiming to be “Minor Attracted Persons”, or pedophiles, and you did nothing. We complained to you about people proudly claiming to be white supremacists, and you did nothing. All of these things are “against the community guidelines”, and yet over and over, you have not found effective ways to handle these problems or suppress the feeling of welcome that these users claim to get here. You have had a long time to work on these problems, but you haven’t addressed them. To say you have is untrue.
Multiple other social networking websites, such as Wordpress, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others have effectively dealt with rampant pornography, racism, pedophilia, and other problems without causing massive issues for their users who are not misusing the platform. They are continuing to find new, effective ways to deal with these issues without causing problems for their userbase as a whole. There is no reason that you are unable to do this effectively other than that you wanted to do it quickly. You have once again chosen your stock holders over your users. And we have had enough.
You have already started to ban “Adult” content with a new algorithm. Here are screenshots of just a fraction of the posts you have flagged as containing adult content:
Your new system of simply tackling everything at once is not working. At all. And each of these screenshots is proof of your utter incompetence. None of these posts contain pornographic acts, “female nipples”, or any community violation of any kind.
We, the users, have been asking you for months to deal with these problems - particularly, the porn bots and bots that spam. In order to block a bot from a side blog, I have to do it manually, even though they are in my side blog’s feed. This is a huge issue for mobile - only users. They keep cropping up in droves, taking over our posts and tricking google into making it look like a legitimate blog linked to a pornographic website. We have complained to you for months and months now, and your solution to simply “ban all adult content” is ineffective. I agree that children should not be able to access pornography - but this is not how you tackle a porn bot problem. Your system is utterly useless, allows for racists, pedophiles, porn bots, and Nazis to remain untouched. It also harms sex workers and real people who may use this website for some forms of adult content responsibly. Moreover, as seen above, it harms plenty of users who have in no way violated your terms of service.
If you keep this up, you threaten your website and company as a whole. Many of us are backing up our blogs and planning places to go to.
You already have a content filter for “sensitive” content (content inappropriate for younger viewers). You could have improved this, instead of attacking your entire user base. It seems to be a very lazy “solution”, if you could call it one at all, and one that harms your entire userbase.
If you are going to keep this filter in place and make Tumblr, a website that has never been known for being family friendly and has never claimed to be, you are going to lose millions of your users. We are already planning our exodus. It isn’t hard to follow. Censor us, and we will go somewhere else. That is not a threat. It is a promise.
