Kind Of Obsessed With The Tumblr Twitter Account

Art

•please like or reblog if you use

In a visual medium especially, a large part of a character is how they look. Like, looks can be deceiving and aren’t everything about a character, obviously, but ALSO: by making a character look a certain way (especially in the character’s daily life) the creator is (whether they know it or not) saying that that character is (usually) choosing to look a certain way. 

Clothes, accessories, make-up, and hair can suggest any number of things about a person’s character. It can be a very useful tool in any story. Personal presentation can suggest things about a character’s gender, profession, religion, sexuality, personal wealth, native culture, and personality (and more). 

Which is, I think, why a lot of female characters are sort of… I don’t want to say “broken”… but their execution has ruined their concept? (This isn’t exclusive to female characters, male characters can also suffer from unsupported unrealistic appearances, but female characters definitely suffer more.) 

You have these female characters who are supposed to be relatable, realistic women, right? But you look at their perfectly curled-and-styled, super long hair and you see hours of hair-care. And you look at their perfectly made-up faces and you see at least a dozen different make-up products and at least a half-hour in the bathroom every morning. And you look at their figures and you see a strict diet and hours in the gym every week, and you see shaving or waxing, and you see well-maintained mani-pedis. And you look at their outfits and you see designer names and special tailoring, and an enormous closet somewhere in their apartment to store all this, and someone who has the time and energy for perfectly done, sorted, and ironed laundry (and is obviously not doing anything remotely physical or dangerous in those heels). 

Which would be fine if that was an intentional visual statement about the character! There are women who put that sort of time/energy/money into their appearance! There are magical and non-human characters (male and female and neither) who can just snap their fingers to look perfect, and I buy it no problem! I get that! 

But this gets done even with female characters who are supposed to be absent-minded workaholics, poor working single mothers, nerdy shut-ins, take-no-shit tomboys, post-apocalyptic survivors, and even faux-medieval warriors who shouldn’t have the time or resources for that level of personal grooming! And even with aliens and non-humans who shouldn’t know to decide to care! 

So you have these “everyday” women with busy lives, but who somehow manage to keep an unrealistic level of personal grooming in absurd situations, and they… become visually unreal. Especially when (even if they are canonically said to care about maintaining a certain appearance) they’re often never shown putting in ANY of the time or effort it would take to manage their appearance (show me their skincare routine, show me them at the gym, show me them doing laundry)! They look like they stepped out of a magazine (often so “perfect” that they’re frankly bland, actually), but it’s not factored into their personality or background or their lives? 

“I don’t wear make-up,” says the female character who is played by an actress very obviously done-up with eyeliner. “I don’t wear make-up,” says the female character who is drawn as though she is permanently wearing lipstick. There are no bad hair days and no laundry days and no moments of imperfection. What the character might be saying is immediately invalidated by the visuals. 

These female characters don’t feel like women so much as they feel like impossible creatures the creator has pretending to be pretty women. They feel fake. They feel like their purpose by the creator is to pander to pervs and unrealistic beauty standards. Especially when they’re sent into combat situations with skintight/revealing outfits with no support and loose hair that’s a blatant liability (and the creators even make them bleed prettily sometimes which is related but different conversation). It’s a stark announcement (intentional or not, knowingly done or not) of the creator’s ignorance and apathy towards women and the choices involved in female self-presentation.

And it makes it… difficult… for me personally to relate to certain female characters sometimes, even when I care about these female characters and WANT to care about these female characters. Their character design is, by their visual appearance and lack of narrative support for that appearance, broken. They’re not grounded in any reality. The suspension of disbelief required can be… a lot. 

It hurt, but I don’t regret it. 

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Depression Hotline: 1-630-482-9696

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UK Helplines:

Samaritans (for any problem): 08457909090 e-mail jo@samaritans.org

Childline (for anyone under 18 with any problem): 08001111

Mind infoline (mental health information): 0300 123 3393 e-mail: info@mind.org.uk

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b-eat eating disorder support: 0845 634 14 14 (only open Mon-Fri 10.30am-8.30pm and Saturday 1pm-4.30pm) e-mail: help@b-eat.co.uk

b-eat youthline (for under 25’s with eating disorders): 08456347650 (open Mon-Fri 4.30pm - 8.30pm, Saturday 1pm-4.30pm)

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(Source)

Imagine if every major character in SV was a transmigrator - except no one knows what the others are bc system and ooc rules lol. and literally everyone is like wtf's going on most of the time.

OH

OHHHH

THIS WOULD BE SO FUN WOW HAHAHAHAHA

Yue QingYuan: Fukk I’m the tragic childhood friend why can’t I be someone else instead? Couldn’t I just be Mu QingFang, at least he doesn’t need to juggle the responsibilities of being the Sect Leader and trying to care for a troublesome childhood friend??

Liu QingGe: Check the reader!LQG tag lmao

Mu QingFang: Oh no. I’m not good with all these medical stuff, these people are so gonna die. Oh no. Is that blood? God please no I’m gonna faint —

Qi QingQi: Oooooh nice I’m a beautiful lady!! A badass queen too!!! But how am I supposed to act as a Peak Lord? Wow everyone’s so pretty. Heck Liu QingGe’s about as pretty as the ladies here why oh god. I am intimidated by their beauty. But all the eye candy’s pretty nice.

ZhuZhi Lang: … Nooo I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die to protect my lord! But… TianLang Jun… is so good… yeah I think I’d gladly die for him after all lmao. Oh I’d totally die for Shen QingQiu too. … Do I really have to die?

TianLang Jun: Lololol this is so fun. Eyyy ZhuZhi Lang wanna read porn with me? Oh wow, look, my arm just came off! Lololololol. Wait I’m supposed to merge the two worlds? Naw that sounds so troublesome… Wait system no what are you doing don’t take my — Fine, fine, I’ll do it!

MoBei Jun: Whoa sick I’m the ice demon. Look! Ice powers!! Ain’t I awesome!!! *clears throat* I mean… Ahem. You never saw anything. Now get me some ice cream.

Hmm I don’t know who else to add lmao. Feel free to add to this in the reblogs!

Saviour

“but what if my friend gets offended and hates me and refuses to speak to me after i set a boundary” easy peasy! that is not your friend. hope this helps

Tumblr is Tracking Shared Links

It looks like Tumblr @staff have finally implemented tracking garbage into shared links in the Tumblr mobile app. It took them years and years, but Tumblr is finally making an attempt to track shared links you click or links you share with friends.

When you share a post and choose to “copy” a link to your clipboard, you can see that they use their (new?) url shortener, at.tumblr.com.  The shortened URL appears to contain: your blog name; either the ID of the destination post, or the short string associated with the post; and an alphanumeric string.  Eg:

https://at.tumblr.com/pizza-and-ramen/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious/uqndb20nkyob

The shortened URL redirects you to the destination link, but with 2 URL parameters: _branch_referrer and _branch_match_id.  Both are associated with a third-party analytics tool, branch.io.  Eg:

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/post/118684413624/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious?_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86%2BeK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v%2FAuVQAAAA%3D%3D&_branch_match_id=1104914739086906151

_branch_referrer appears to be another shortened at.tumblr.com URL, except it’s been gzipped, base64 encoded, then URL encoded.  Eg:

H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86%2BeK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v%2FAuVQAAAA%3D%3D

URL decode to:

H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86+eK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v/AuVQAAAA==

base64 decode to (in hex for legibility):

1F8B0800 00000000 000315C4 C10D8020 0C00C089 4A1FC68F DB545069 A4805082 32BD9A5C CEABE6BA 20921A6D B286626C 12CC3C06 01450785 648BC802 7BB327C7 03DCF3AF 9E2B7C3C 072A9C5A C53B8C79 EA974BBD F71774BF F02E5500 0000

and unzipped with gunzip:

https://at.tumblr.com/pizza-and-ramen/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious/xlz53wqdowww

which directs to the post with the same _branch_referrer but a new _branch_match_id:

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/post/118684413624/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious?_branch_match_id=1104899685865808870&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86%2BeK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v%2FAuVQAAAA%3D%3D

_branch_match_id, according to this stackoverflow answer, is an identifier unique to you, used to track users.  It could be based on browser fingerprinting, as branch.io’s branch_match_id is.

Anyway, there’s not a terribly easy way to avoid this tracking from the Tumblr mobile app, but if you get a link that has the id, not the string, you can modify it to the format of blog.tumblr.com/ID, like so before sending it to a friend:

https://at.tumblr.com/pizza-and-ramen/118684413624/uqndb20nkyob

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/118684413624

Alternately, you could paste the link in your browser, allow it to redirect, then remove everything past the ? at the end, eg:

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/post/118684413624/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious?_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAxXEwQ2AIAwAwIlKH8aP21RQaaSAUIIyvZpczqvmuiCSGm2yhmJsEsw8BgFFB4Vki8gCe7MnxwPc86%2BeK3w8ByqcWsU7jHnql0u99xd0v%2FAuVQAAAA%3D%3D&_branch_match_id=1104914739086906151

https://pizza-and-ramen.tumblr.com/post/118684413624/im-fucking-dying-this-is-hilarious

Anyway, this has been my privacy rant of the day.  Thanks for reading, and let me know if you know more about this than I do!

The missing perspective

hey do you have any tips on plot development? how to do come up with relevant but dramatic things to keep the plot going? i also don’t want to make it too intense?

I actually have quite a lot of resources that I’ve created over the years surrounding plot development. I’ve linked as many as I could find for you:

Resources For Plot Development

Useful Writing Resources

Useful Writing Resources II

31 Days of Plot Development

Novel Planning 101

How To Write A Good Plot Twist

How To Foreshadow

What To Cut Out Of Your Story

Tackling Subplots

Things A Reader Needs From A Story

A Guide To Tension & Suspense In Your Writing

How To Turn A Good Idea Into A Good Story

Planning A Scene In A Story

21 Plot Shapes and the Pros and Cons Of Each

How To Outline Effectively

Tips On Writing Intense Scenes

Writing The First Chapter

Tips On Starting A Scene

Plot Structures

Finding & Fixing Plot Holes