bankholdup - Tumblr blog

[bankholdup]

some of the best writing advice I’ve ever received: always put the punch line at the end of the sentence.

it doesn’t have to be a “punch line” as in the end of a joke. It could be the part that punches you in the gut. The most exciting, juicy, shocking info goes at the end of the sentence. Two different examples that show the difference it makes:

doing it wrong:

She saw her brother’s dead body when she caught the smell of something rotting, thought it was coming from the fridge, and followed it into the kitchen.

doing it right:

Catching the smell of something rotten wafting from the kitchen—probably from the fridge, she thought—she followed the smell into the kitchen, and saw her brother’s dead body.

Periods are where you stop to process the sentence. Put the dead body at the start of the sentence and by the time you reach the end of the sentence, you’ve piled a whole kitchen and a weird fridge smell on top of it, and THEN you have to process the body, and it’s buried so much it barely has an impact. Put the dead body at the end, and it’s like an emotional exclamation point. Everything’s normal and then BAM, her brother’s dead.

This rule doesn’t just apply to sentences: structuring lists or paragraphs like this, by putting the important info at the end, increases their punch too. It’s why in tropes like Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking or Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick, the odd item out comes at the end of the list.

Subverting this rule can also be used to manipulate reader’s emotional reactions or tell them how shocking they SHOULD find a piece of information in the context of a story. For example, a more conventional sentence that follows this rule:

She opened the pantry door, looking for a jar of grape jelly, but the view of the shelves was blocked by a ghost.

Oh! There’s a ghost! That’s shocking! Probably the character in our sentence doesn’t even care about the jelly anymore because the spirit of a dead person has suddenly appeared inside her pantry, and that’s obviously a much higher priority. But, subvert the rule:

She opened the pantry door, found a ghost blocking her view of the shelves, and couldn’t see past it to where the grape jelly was supposed to be.

Because the ghost is in the middle of the sentence, it’s presented like it’s a mere shelf-blocking pest, and thus less important than the REAL goal of this sentence: the grape jelly. The ghost is diminished, and now you get the impression that the character is probably not too surprised by ghosts in her pantry. Maybe it lives there. Maybe she sees a dozen ghosts a day. In any case, it’s not a big deal. Even though both sentences convey the exact same information, they set up the reader to regard the presence of ghosts very differently in this story.

[bankholdup]

on that whole ao3 filtering post, as a fic writer, it kinda sucks to think people might not read what i write just because it doesn’t have enough kudos or views. if you don’t read it because it simply isn’t your jam or you don’t like my style, that’s totally cool and understandable but not reading something because it isn’t popular enough?? insane to me

[bankholdup]

Another AO3 thing I’m curious about, how do yall decide if something is good enough to read? Usually I follow a rule of 1 kudos for every 10 hits. One because it’s easy math and two it’s yet to fail me. Thoughts? Do you just go for it and pray it’s good?

[bankholdup]

⚠️ Fandom is Moving Forward with Generative AI ⚠️

As of December 15, Fandom has announced their plans to continue using AI to "enhance" their articles.

In short, they claim to have primarily used AI to

Scan images for "appropriateness" (be that NSFW content or just fitting in with the theme of the show), which still involves scraping tons of images and comparing them to a potentially unethically sourced database. As with all machine learning using images, it is still wildly inaccurate.

Optimizing edits - something they admit is still severely lacking because it can't read tables or variants on simple things like "birthday"

Optimizing SEO - this is clearly what they care most about, since Google likes the "Quick Answers" - as shitty as they were - this means they can continue to dominate the search results and gain more ad revenue.

This is a good time to remember that Fandom is a for-profit company with inverstors, which means their end goal is always to make the most money possible. They don't care about "The Fans" (despite the lip service), and they don't care about the authenticity of user-generated content if they can figure out how to automate the process.

STOP USING FANDOM.

Alternatives/Workarounds:

Indie Wiki Buddy is an extension that will redirect you to non-Fandom versions of wikis if it's in their database.

BreezeWiki displays all Fandom wikis in a clean, ad-free format with just the article content (no links to their forums, autoplay videos, etc)

If you must use Fandom, install UBlock Origin. It's available on all desktop browsers and Firefox Mobile. Hit them where it hurts. And encourage the wiki teams to leave Fandom if they can.

Also, be sure to support independent wikis! You can disable adblockers while on their sites, as they usually have much less obtrusive ads which directly fund server maintenance rather than CEO salaries. Change links on your posts/pages to direct to non-Fandom Wikis (even wiki.gg is better).

Keep information free from corporatization.

[bankholdup]

ARCHIVE YOUR FIC ON AO3 FOR ETERNAL GLORY

It physically pains me to see people post awesome fanfiction to tumblr and nowhere else. Tumblr moves so fast! By tomorrow people who didn’t look in a tag at the right moment won’t know it existed. By next week even people who did read it won’t be able to find it back to reread. Finding anything on tumblr via search function is practically a fluke. For all intents and purposes, your hard work has a halflife of about a week at most.

PUT YOUR WORK ON AO3 WHERE IT CAN LIVE ETERNALLY, I BEG YOU

People who come into that fandom in a month, a year, even a decade will be able to find your work!

People can bookmark it!

People can rec it to others!

People can reread it into infinity! (and people like me can do that and comment every time!)

You can get comments & kudos until the endtimes because people will keep finding your work! (seriously I still sometimes get new people finding and loving my work from ~2013)

And best of all, people can SUBSCRIBE to your work so they will get email about new chapters and stories! (I’m seeing people do manual ‘Tag you in the next chapter’ lists and seriously, physical pain, this wheel has already been invented and it is rolling beautifully)

PLEASE LET ME BOOKMARK YOUR FIC I BEG YOU

“But I need an invite for AO3!”

Yes, and the waiting list is currently 2-3 days. That’s hardly worth not doing this for, right?

“But I only read fic, I don’t post it”

here is a post on why having an account just to read fic is also very worth it!

Lately I’ve been the tumblr person who jumps onto people who post cool fic to tumblr and going HEY HAVE YOU POSTED THIS TO AO3, YOU REALLY SHOULD, HIT ME UP FOR AN INVITE CODE and I hereby invite all you fellow fic readers and posters to join me into spreading the good word.

Please reblog this and tag your favourite fandoms and pairings! Spread this post to the people who need to see it! Save great fic from the tumblr void!

[bankholdup]

[bankholdup]

the "canon isn't real we make our own rules" to "i am begging you people to revisit the source material" pipeline

[bankholdup]

Stonathan for the soul! because they deserve to have some cuddles

separate images are under cut

Keep reading

[bankholdup]

Story of my life

[bankholdup]

"Let's run away. Let me take you to the beach. Let me give you the summer as a birthday present. I swear, you won't ever forget it."

☀️

Thank you so much for trusting the process with me again today.

I am honestly so proud of this piece. It took me a thousand hours omg, but... but the fabric, and the skin, and the tattoos, and... and his aura, god. I'm turning this shady, metalhead all time dressed in black, lover of the night and dark things sweetheart into a sun lover. A happy little thing.

[bankholdup]

Dutch Punks, photographed by Dominique van Rossum in Haarlem, Netherlands, 1982

[bankholdup]

No one reblogs on tumblr anymore.

No one leaves comments on Ao3 anymore.

Seriously people the lack of fandom interaction these days makes me genuinely depressed, it never used to be like this, makes me wonder what's the point of coming online to do anything anymore.

Reblog a post so other people can see it.

Leave a comment so the author doesn't feel like giving up.

Fandom cannot live on Likes or Kudos alone.

[bankholdup]

[bankholdup]

some of y'all have seriously forgotten that Eddie is an absolute loser who doodles dragons on every single piece of paper he can get his hands on

[bankholdup]

yeah bro it's a character study. the 2 thousand words of blowjob is vital to the study of the character

[bankholdup]

some of y'all have seriously forgotten that Eddie is an absolute loser who doodles dragons on every single piece of paper he can get his hands on

[bankholdup]

Absolutely amazing how AO3 is a part of the internet that doesn't sneak in any ads and doesn't have an algorithm and doesn't watch you or record how much time you spend looking at each fic or whatever. It's just right there to use for free. Legend