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VLD Visuals Detective and Imperialist Apologist™

@leakinghate / leakinghate.tumblr.com

Team Purple Lion
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luulapants

One of the surest signs that business executives are failing their way to the top is that every company you so much as order a toothbrush from thinks it's a sound marketing decision to email their customers multiple times per week, and then when people inevitably "update their email preferences" to tell the company never to email them again, they add more and more checkboxes to the email preferences page and say, oh well you never explicitly told us not to email you about toothpaste, because they only just added the toothpaste checkbox, so now you have to go uncheck the toothpaste box or just start marking all their emails as spam.

And it's not just retailers that do this! If I donate to your nonprofit, why are you punishing my donation with a constant barrage of spam? A few times a year, sure, send out a newsletter that actually has something to say. Anything more than that indicates to me that your nonprofit is dumping my donation into the bloated salary of some C-suite executive that spends half their day watching TED-X videos and the other half driving competent staff crazy by demanding they do stupid marketing schemes that will drive away donors.

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I don't know what happened. It seems I crossed some threshold for engagement or something? Maybe I reblogged the wrong post and got my name scraped for some list?? But all of a sudden, I'm getting multiple messages a day full of gofundmes and "please share my post", "save my family", "without your support we'll all die", and etc. Does this shit happen on other social media, or is it just tumblr? I don't know. I follow a huge array of people, and like. Half of them are reblogging similar posts, begging for help for people in this conflict. And the other half are talking about how this is all scams, and and and. And the half of them are screaming things that the other half are claiming are bigoted and antisemitic, and I just. I just don't fucking know. I don't know. Please stop screaming at me I don't know. You all seem to make sense when I read what you're saying, but what your saying is contradictory, so I just don't fucking know. Please stop sending me begging messages. I don't have any money, and I'm not going to inflict you on my poor followers.

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Well put. (Source: Writing About Writing Facebook page)

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12b6

as a lawyer who’s been practicing for six years now I can say with certainty that this 100% applies to lawyers

Me: My writing is so bad. :(
Meanwhile at Disney: Somehow, Palpatine has returned.
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WTF this is masterful, 10/10.

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marjorierose

Other people have said this in notes, but the Bulwer-Lytton contest involves writing the most absurd opener you can think of and submitting it to the contest. It's not a judgment like the Razzies or the bad sex in books award or something; it's a game. Diana Murtaugh of Baltimore is to be congratulated for this win.

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reblogged

happy new year! reminder that as of January 1st, 2025, the 1929 animated Disney short "The Skeleton Dance" is now public domain!

I'd like to say "this will find its audience" but the truth is I just didn't know how to tag this

so either it'll find its audience or it'll get like 0 notes

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reblogged

Church steeple struck by lightning in Baltimore, MD on the morning of March 28th

Photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor of The Baltimore Sun

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When I was young I had this book called people who work at night and as a little kid it was really comforting to know that there were people awake while I was asleep (especially bakers for some reason).

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reblogged

told my mom my feet are cold & all my wool socks are dirty & she said “how about THESE” and pulled out of her pocket a pair of wool socks that apparently took 3rd place in the Delaware State Fair, which I know because the ribbon is still attached

reading the tags I realize it wasn’t clear:

  1. my mom doesn’t knit. she didn’t make these socks
  2. she’s never been to Delaware

Fantastic story thank you

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reblogged

something I think we all know about fanfic, but don’t talk about because it would hurt writers feelings is that some fics are like fast food. I mean this as a compliment. I don’t always want to sit down for a six course meal that will be a flavor experience. Sometimes I just wanna dip some fries in a frosty. Sometimes I want something homecooked and delicious and super niche, but super comforting. Sometimes I want to eat an entire dark chocolate cheesecake in one sitting even though I know Its gonna make me sick. Just. holy crap, y’all. Sometimes I don’t even want fast food, I just want to eat an entire bag of chips. and yeah, I’m ashamed of myself afterwards, but at the time it was exactly what I wanted. So, no, we’re never going to say to our fanfic writers that we consider their writing to be the equivalent of a midnight run to taco bell - and we shouldn’t, feelings would be hurt by that. But writers, please, please, please, remember this. You don’t need to create a six course meal if you don’t want to. You don’t have to make something complex and homemade if you don’t want to. You don’t even have to finish cooking it - because someone will be thrilled that you brought a bowl of cookie dough and a spoon, because they cannot even consider sitting down and having a proper meal right now. It’s okay writers, whatever you decided to make. Someone was happy to have it. You gave them what they needed. You made them happy. You did good.

I don’t know why being fast food would be considered insulting!

A few years ago, I read an essay by a romance writer who openly admitted that her books were trashy, formulaic, and not Great Art. But what she said is that she gets fan letters all the time. From women with six kids whose only time for themselves is reading her books. From women in abusive relationships who read her books to give them hope that loving relationships exist. From women with depression who manage to eke out some pleasure reading her books. From women whose lives are awful and who read her books to give them the strength to live another day.

And– she points out– the writers of Great Art have many virtues, but they do not generally get fan letters from people whose lives are miserable and who seek out comfort and joy from the books. Because most of the time when our lives are awful, we don’t seek out Great Art. We seek out, well, literary fast food. We seek out emotionally manipulative hurt/comfort or fluffy coffeeshop AUs or Mutual Pining where there is Only One Bed.

Be proud of your work! Be proud of making literary fast food. Try to make the best damn literary fast food you can. Because somewhere out there– you might not know who, you might not know when– there might be someone who has just finished their last final, or who got fired from their job, or who is up all night with a newborn, and your fast food fanfic made their lives better. And that is no small thing.

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leakinghate

This makes me wanna write fanfic. I have never before written fanfic. But I want to now.

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