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radley-writes · 4 years

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Since I’ve finished the second draft of His Majesty’s Starship, and have scribbled a few more chapters on my perennial projects Dressage Dragons and No Man’s Sky… Time for a shiny new novel!

A four-armed giant with anger issues, an anxiety-ridden cat burglar, a manipulative mastermind, a ditz of a mod-addict and a mostly person-shaped cloud of nanites walk into a bar. They’re the Vultures, a gang of all-lady con artists-come-thieves, and they have a plot to steal the most powerful AI in the galaxy out from under its own (figurative) nose.

With big guns (i.e., each of Buck’s arms), big dreams (only slightly drug-addled), and three brain-cells for the entire team (all of which are stored in Vash’s head) some of these idiots might even make it out alive.

A space heist with a 100% WLW main cast, VOLT features:

Gross creepy biotech surveillance! By which I mean space stations are literally giant floating brains in space! Ick!

Fun neuroscience-meets-scifi-meets-compsci jargon!

Team as family!

Friends to lovers! (no, seriously, the will-they-won’t-they is gonna slay you)

Queer women everywhere! Queer ladies as far as the eye can see! Butches! Femmes! Trans women! Enbie women! Women who are hella sexual but still chug that Respect Other Women juice! Women who aren’t sexual at all! Fuck! Yes!

High stakes!

High tension!

Dramatic betrayal!

…

…wait who said that

Oh yeah and did I mention the huge cyborg space-brains that are watching your every move

Please ask to be added to the tag list!

Image descriptions under cut.

First image: moodboard comprised of five panels.

Top left: dark starscape, ‘VOLT’ written in a white sci-fi font. Top right: a stylised picture of the brain, drawn to resemble electrical circuits, on a neon pink/blue background. Middle left: close up of a blue-painted spaceship engine, with a pseudo-alien script on the side. Bottom left: four women walking along a street, faces not shown. Middle/bottom right: a NASA photo of the Earth from space at night, cities glowing like synapses in a giant brain. Text reads: ‘1) noun: SI unit of electromotive force // 2) verb: to dodge an attack // 3) noun: a group of vultures’

Second image: white text against a textured background, using a variety of calligraphy and sci-fi fonts.

Text reads: ‘buckle the fuckle up, my bitches! We’re gonna steal a giant brain.”

Third image: five cartoon figures posing against a white background.

From the front left: Zeebe! A short, dark-skinned young black girl with her natural hair in two bunches. She wears a pink croptop over a pinker bodysuit. She stands with her arms crossed, blowing bubblegum, looking a little unimpressed. Vash! A short butch Asian woman with floppy black hair, a fur-lined bomber jacket, fingerless gloves, and a gunbelt. She’s smirking at the ‘camera’, a lit cigarette held to her lips. Felicita! A brown-skinned woman whose long, wavy black hair falls to her waist. Two pink horns sprout from her forehead, and she’s looking upwards with a big smile. Neon pink hexagons appear to sprout from the tips of her upraised fingers - holographic keypads, perhaps? Chel! A tall, bald cyborg-esque olive-skinned woman in a bright green dress that matches her eyes. She looks straight towards the ‘camera’ with a level expression. Buck! A giant four-armed white woman ducks to fit in the frame, one hand pressed against the ceiling, elbows clonking the edges of the shot. She’s frowning at the ceiling as if it’s personally offended her. She has a long blonde braided mohawk, and bands of black runic tattoos around each bicep.

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surroundedbypearls · 4 years

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On Writing: Dialogue Tips

It’s only natural that novels and short stories are usually dialogue heavy - it’s a written medium. We need the characters to talk. However, a lot of the time we have difficulty writing dialogue.

Hopefully these tips will help some people!

How to Make Your Dialogue Better:

Relationships and voices matter. Unique voices matter, and character relationships will affect how they speak. Think of how strangers or friends or siblings would interact. Even friendly strangers will hold themselves back a little. Think of how Iroh and Zuko from ATLA talk, for example. Their relationship is clear from how they speak, and they have unique voices. Iroh frequently spouts wise idioms and is generally calm and serene, while Zuko is all anger and urgency. Think about how your characters feel about each other and how they might interact.

Summarise the boring parts. A common mistake in bad writing can be to repeat in the dialogue what was just described in the inner monologue...exactly how it was just described. You don’t need to do this; summarise it. Reword it. And you don’t need the characters to go through the usual motions of small talk every time they meet. It’s boring and a waste of words.

Avoid name drops and dialogue tags. At least, don’t use them too much. People don’t say each other’s name constantly in dialogue without a reason (see Captain Holt repeatedly saying “Rosa” in B99 because he didn’t want her to feel dehumanised. This was for comedy but the point stands). Dialogue tags are fine, but they should feel invisible. Try to use verbs more extravagant than “said” or “asked” sparingly, and don’t end every piece of dialogue with a dialogue tag. As long as every new piece of dialogue is on a new line, it should be clear who’s speaking, and it won’t bore the reader. This will also help vary your prose/sentence structure.

Create pauses through narrative. By breaking the dialogue up with narrative, the characters will pause in the reader’s mind without you having to specify that they’ve paused. This is a handy way to avoid using dialogue tags too much. It can also make the dialogue easier to read if it’s not all smushed together with no breaks. Especially if you have a long passage of one person speaking; long, rambling speeches aren’t that popular anymore (not that they have no place, but that’s another story).

Dialogue isn’t perfect. People make mistakes; they forget words and lose their train of thought when they speak. They change topics and get lost in the moment. This can add realism to your dialogue, and can be a fun way to show character. But don’t do it too much or the scene will go on too long without getting to the point. And try to avoid too many ‘um’s and ‘er’s - they may be common in real life but they can drag the prose down if used too much.

An example I have is from Big Hero 6 (a movie I love by the way, but this was bad): Tadashi: What would mom and dad say? Hiro: I don't know. They're gone. (this is good, this is fine) Hiro: ... They died when I was three, remember? (NOOO)

Dialogue should show something important. There's a common idea that dialogue has to move the story forward or get cut out. This isn’t necessarily true. However, dialogue should tell the reader something about the characters or the world they live in. This comes back to cutting out the usual mundane small talk. Dialogue doesn’t have to move the plot, but it should be there for a reason, even if it’s to show the relationship between two characters, or how they feel about something that isn’t central to the plot. It doesn’t have to move the plot forward, but there has to be some reason for the reader to see it.

Fantasy/Sci-Fi Writers: use apostrophes! “I am not”, “I did not”, “I do not” - this can feel unnatural if all your dialogue is like this. You don’t need to write all your dialogue like this. Don’t be afraid of the apostrophe! Apostrophes are great! It won’t make your characters seem too modern, I promise. Don’t make the dialogue too awkward or stiff. After a while, they’ll stop sounding human.

How to Make Writing Dialogue Easier:

Write your dialogue like a script. If you’re struggling with the dialogue in a scene, try writing it like a script and omit the narrative (aside from very basic actions). I’ve done this once or twice; sometimes it’s easier to figure out what you want your characters to say when you’re not bogged down by writing the narrative, especially in a scene where the dialogue is especially important. You can incorporate the narrative later.

Read your dialogue out loud. Reading out loud can help you see how your dialogue will sound to the reader. It can help you spot weird sentence structures, or if something sounds out of character or inhuman. You can also get an idea of the characters’ voices. If you have a willing friend (and you’re not too embarrassed), try to get them to read with you!

Colour-code your dialogue. This is a trick you can use for scenes with more than two characters. By colour-coding the dialogue, you can clearly get a sense of each character's voice, see who's speaking the most or the least, etc. You can use this to redistribute roles and dialogue in the scene, or maybe experiment with adding or subtracting characters depending on their contribution to the scene. It can also help you keep track of all the characters, which is generally harder in written medium when you can’t see the group in front of you.

Like these posts? See more Writing Wednesday tips Request Writing Wednesday topics here

Leave a comment if you want to be tagged in these posts!

#writing tips #writing advice #writing resource #dialogue #violetvineyard #dialogue tips #writeblr #writers of tumblr #writing wednesday

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chaos-writing · 4 years

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Writeblr Red Flags

The posts coming out about VioletVineyard really shows how quickly a good thing can turn sour. I joined it in January of this year because of all the good things I heard about it. It was suppose to be a small community that made it easier to give and receive feedback. Unfortunately, the behavior coming from Mina and many of her mods/friends quickly made it a toxic environment that people were too afraid to talk about and/or leave.

While there’s nothing that can be done about how VV was dealt with, I want to list some red flags that were noticed. If another server begins to act in a similar manner, especially if you are a minor, please for your safety and health leave.

Focus on Experience

Mina was constantly using her age and position in life to put herself on a pedestal. She is a thirty year-old woman well into her career at an Ivy League school, and she made that clear on countless occasions. She had strict expectations on what people should do, even when those opinions were well outside her actual knowledge.

(I was going to link a post here, but unfortunately they had to delete their account. Apparently Mina and her friends are now going around threatening people, including minors, if they talk about what happened.)

Hero Worship

There was also a tendency to make the group seem more close-knit, in a way that put the members below Mina and the mods. We were the VV family. Mina was the Vodka Aunt. Mods called themselves Auntie [Name] and Mafia Mom (please note this is from memory, and I am not one hundred percent sure I am remembering the last name right). They were supposed to be looked up to, and for a server where the majority of members were minors or young adults, it was very easy for it to seem like Mina could do no wrong.

This attitude, as well as the way she acted, made it very easy for people to start defending her every action. While there are certainly better ways of describing it, there is a reason why people called VV a cult. You were not allowed to disagree with Mina, unless you wanted a dozen people to bombard you. Even when what she was doing was inappropriate.

Them/Us Attitude

This leads to the third flag. There were multiple times when Mina would complain about a person outside VV for what were usually very minor offenses. I saw her get mad at people for tagging one of her posts the “wrong” way. At times it would even extend into her personal life. She once said that a coworker who had been rude to her had to have her hand amputated. Mina and multiple of the mods claimed it was karma. It was easy for her to encourage others to attack along with her and see nothing wrong with it. It was to the point that there was at least one conversation about why people didn’t like VV that basically concluded with them deciding they were just bad people and that the server was fine.

But if someone didn’t follow her rules, they were attacked. It was either always agree with Mina, or have to deal with the gang. Gingerly and Radley gave some examples of this here. And for anyone hearing about the art tracing/transphobia that occurred recently, you can go here to see a screenshot of the post. (Unfortunately, this account was also deleted due to threats.)

It isn’t surprising why so many remained silent. There was one incident where I tried to speak out. Mina had a tendency to post longer posts, with a short paragraph at the end saying to like or interact with the post to join the tag list. It was not unusual for people to not see the notice, and then get confused about why they were being tagged. She mocked one such person’s reading comprehension for not understanding. And a few weeks later, she was mad at them again for changing their mind and wanting to be on the list after all. All of this happened without the person knowing they were being attacked on a server they weren’t even a part of.

Within a half hour of saying that wasn’t right, there were at least half a dozen mods pinging me. One just straight out starting swearing at me. I have a severe anxiety disorder so I quickly backed up after that, but was told that I was policing the chat and to message Mina if I wanted to talk more. Another server member noticed, and told me that this type of reaction was common, and that it would be a bad idea to try to continue the conversation. (I doubt that was the first warning she gave either.)

Hiding Information

Even when considering how poorly Mina and her friends would react to people speaking out about their actions, I feel like this is the strongest reason why they were able to pretend for as long as they did. Mina never would have dared to badmouth people on her Tumblr account the way she did in the server.

We were not allowed to screenshot anything, unless we were okay with being banned. The channel where most of these issues came up was regularly deleted, often after something controversial occurred. Anyone who tried to speak up was either pushed down quickly or forced to leave. And if they were no longer in the server, they were regularly belittled. They ridiculed a person named Sophia multiple times, but I still don’t know who she is or what she did.

Despite no longer having a Tumblr presence, they are still trying to threaten people into remaining silent. People shouldn’t have to be afraid of a grown woman threatening them over a post, especially when they are a minor. But if everyone has only a fraction of the information, it is easier for them to control how they are viewed.

#violetvineyard #vv drama #writeblr drama #tw transphobia #tw body injury

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elusiveink · 4 years

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i'd love to follow more int'l writeblrs that arent based in the US! i'd love to hear about more wips set in different countries! rb this if you're a non-US writeblr and tell me about ur wips!

#i read mostly any kind of sci fi/fantasy but i generally like anything with lgbt characters in it #writeblr #vv #tql #violetvineyard #thequeerlibrary

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ardaaman · 4 years

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Does anyone know what happened to mvcreates? Her blog says it was deactivated, and I still needed to reply to her about my violetvineyard application.

#writeblr #i'm gonna tag this with violetvineyards since y'all probably know her best #violetvineyard

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sybil-writes · 4 years

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Feedback Culture Values in Creative Communities

CREATORS: Exposure / Motivating Feedback / Craft

REVIEWERS: Aesthetic / Community / Style Integrity / (Timing)

Hey all,

As there often is, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about the “right” way to do feedback in communities here, and expectations thereof. A lot of the posts have a bit of a lack of specificity as to what the feedback is, and what it targets. So this is a long post on the gains that creators hope to get from feedback, and the gains that reviewers hope to get from feedback -- these can be different things.

In this post I am not aiming to say one type of feedback is better than another, but to get community members to think about the feedback they want and the feedback they offer in more specific ways :) I may do another post on my own best practices later on, but for now this is just about categorizing feedback values. Thoughts welcome!

CREATORS

So in this section I’m going to talk about three reasons that creators request feedback from their work, and give examples of each of them. Hopefully this will make it clear why creators value each facet of feedback. If you’re a creator, I encourage you to reflect on which categories most apply to the feedback you best respond to!

Exposure - Reblogging, sharing, or otherwise boosting posts from a creator. Exposure in its easiest form just involves hitting that reblog button! Creators that value exposure are often trying to grow their audience, whether it be because having more engagement helps motivate them, or because they are trying to get a foot-hold in selling their work. Creators trying to make a living out of their creative work will value exposure more highly, though there are all kinds of reasons why creators want exposure.

Motivating Feedback - Positive comments, cheerleading in the tags, replies to posts expressing appreciation for the post, kudos, likes all tend to add to the motivation pool. Motivation can skew over into craft if the positive comments are specific enough. Here I generally think of motivation as short-form positive engagement in other creator’s works. Creators trying create more, soon, value motivating feedback, especially if external engagement works well on them. I would venture to say most creators value motivating feedback, however a subset of creators do strongly prefer craft to a more surface-level engagement.

Craft - Specific engagement in the work, long form comments, critique when requested, attention given to details and possibly with reference to the creator’s prior work. Craft feedback takes the most effort out of all the feedback. Many creators value craft feedback above all because of that. The form of craft feedback that a creator loves may vary (for instance, commenting on technical aspects like metaphor and POV vs. commenting on the emotional response elicited by a piece of art or writing -- both craft engagement).

Examples:

Reblogging a post without tags -- Exposure

Reblogging a post with positive remarks in the tags -- Exposure, Motivating Feedback

Making a nice tumblr comment on a post -- Motivating Feedback

Leaving a long comment about a work in a reblog -- Exposure, Motivating Feedback, Craft

Bookmarking a Fic on Ao3 with Rec -- Exposure, Motivating Feedback

Putting a creator’s work on a reclist with a short review - Exposure, Motivating Feedback, (Craft)

Commentary:

I think most creators would agree the best feedback experiences encompass all three of these categories! But part of laying this out also indicates to creators which engagement styles are more high effort than others! More on that in the section about reviewers.

REVIEWERS

In this section I will chat about different reasons people are compelled to engage in feedback-giving (or reviews!) for creative work. This will hopefully lay out why reviewers end up more compelled to engage in one work or another, and how that style can be different for different people!

Aesthetic - A reviewer compelled to engage in feedback for aesthetic reasons feels that the creative work ‘fits’ on their blog. Aesthetic engagement can include those who prefer to reblog eye-catching graphics over just writing. This can also include people who try to keep more serious or heavy content off their blogs. Those who have an aesthetic component to how they engage in offering feedback may have different criteria for reblogging, and may prefer to leave reply comments.

Community - A reviewer compelled to engage in feedback for community reasons wants to offer their support to creators. Giving feedback for community reasons is often cherished by creators, with the understanding that feedback takes work, and so we all have a part to engage in that culture. Highly community-oriented reviewers may offer feedback to anyone who offers them feedback, or to anyone in their immediate social circles.

Style Integrity - A reviewer who is dedicated to style integrity only engages in work they feel personally strongly about liking. Style Integrity is often framed in opposition to community oriented feedback styles, since reviewers who are very dedicated to style integrity will only give feedback to creations that really resonate with them. Being choosier with respect to style integrity can also leave more mental energy to craft-related reviews, but at the cost of engaging with fewer works.

(Timing) - It would be foolish not to acknowledge that when a reviewer sees a post plays a big role in their decision to review. Some reviewers are more so timing-independent, and will check tags and creators whose works they value on the regular, but many remember to review only if they see a post at the right time, and with the right amount of mental energy.

Examples:

A reviewer who makes most of the decisions to reblog based on their blog, but leaves written comments on friends’ works -- Aesthetics, Community

A reviewer who will review the works of creators on their taglists, plus additional creators who they like based on the writing -- Community, Style Integrity

A reviewer who does their reviews based on the Writeblr Discord they are part of, and gets reminders from when they are on that server -- Community, (Timing)

Commentary:

It’s important to note that reasons people reblog/engage in the way they do can be in conflict with the way they want their work engaged with (or not so much!). With these in mind there are ways for creators to try and shift efforts in their work to gain more feedback -- but that’s a discussion for another post, and maybe not one of mine :)

If you’ve read this far, wow, thanks, nice ;) . Here are some questions for your consideration or reflection. Replies with comments/further thoughts very welcome!

What are the two elements of feedback you most value as a creator?

How do you request feedback that aligns with what you value?

What categories best reflect your reviewer style?

How often do you put in additional effort to your creations in order to attract more feedback? Is this a growth process for you, or a chore?

Are there any elements of this breakdown of feedback / reviewing that you hadn’t thought of? Will those change the way you engage with feedback?

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #feedback culture #violetvineyard #writeblr family #feedback #reviewing #reblogging #long post #discussion

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rrrawrf-writes · 4 years

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lordy lordy loo it’s been a hot minute since i’ve made an original post, i forgot where the button was

so. some of you may have seen the stuff running around about violetvineyard and mvcreates, some of you may not have. i’m just gonna lay out my experiences here, now that other people are talking about it and now that the server has been deleted. i’m gonna try to present a fair and nuanced version; i’m not gonna include screenshots (right now) bc i’m lazy, mostly.

there are several other people who are putting up way better breakdowns than i am. i just figured i might as well toss mine onto the pile bc why not? but if you’re hoping to hear from me a story about how i’ve been wronged, per se, you won’t find much of one, because i played mainly a spectator role, and never had much trouble there. i will have a vague, lukewarm defense of some of the people involved that other people may not agree with, but again, this is all just the whole VV deal from my point of view.

@nuwuhorizons (i haven’t said how dang much i lOVE your url) and @sapiencenotes have very good receipts and breakdowns. if you want a more in-depth (and dramatic, forgive me for using the word, i’m not trying to downplay this), check them out. @time-to-write-and-suffer also has some great stuff on their blog about all of this.

all righty. so. i joined VV not right at the beginning, but soon after it was started. there was an application process, i got accepted, i was looking for a community to help me start writing more. (it didn’t help, but that’s not their fault, that’s mine.) the person who owned the server was called mina, and on tumblr, mina’s url was mvcreates. mina is a nonbinary Muslim woman of color, a professional who i believe works at harvad and deals a lot with things like infectious diseases, iirc. she was doing a whole lot of work when the pandemic came around, and so the past few months wasn’t quite as active as she had been at the start, both on the server and tumblr.

the very first time mina came on my radar, before i joined vv, was because she had corrected someone’s typo on a post, and it stirred up a minor drama about “don’t give unsolicited criticism” and “is pointing out minor errors like that okay” and blahblahblah. i ran across that on a friend’s dash, and also ran across the promo for vv from that friend’s dash, as well, and joined bc y not.

everything was p cool for a while. it was nice to meet some new people and some of my mutuals on there. mina seemed like a fun person. she was about a year, year and a half, maybe, older than i am. the first things that kind of started rubbing me wrong at the start was how she would kind of dismiss suggestions for the server than i and a friend had, and how she kept bringing up her age - she would often say things like “well i wouldn’t do that but i’m an Old(TM) so maybe i just don’t get it” and i can’t really explain why that bothered me. i think it felt dismissive, like Younger Folks Don’t Know How Things Should Work. also, like. she kept bringing it up. as if it meant something, as if plenty of us on that server weren’t actually around her age. there was a convo on vaccinations where i wanted to make the point that a lot of anti-vaxxers should be educated instead of ridiculed and shamed, but i never really got to making that point bc she jumped in very sharply and explained that anti-vaxxers all come from a class of people who are generally educated. i didn’t bother saying anything else.

at the start, it was tiny little things like that. i chalked it up to her personality and mine just not quite matching up. i sat down a lot and examined my own internal biases, bc i knew something was bugging me, but i couldn’t tell if it was legitimate, or if i was jealous and petty, or if i was being discriminatory towards her identity. i still wonder that a lot; i want to be careful that i’m examining her actions here, and not the person who made those actions.

because the other thing that bothered me was that she was perfect at pretty much everything. she was a decent, if not good, writer, from what i read. i thought her “art”/edits were neat, even if sometimes i looked at them going “that just looks like an edit, not your own art, but u kno, edits are art too, so i’m not gonna say anything.” she had a lot of motivation, a lot of ambition. soon, this kind of transferred over into me feeling like she acted like she had to be perfect at everything. i think this is probably one of the more “lisa is just being petty” things, rather than a judgement on her character, but she seemed to flaunt her own skills and accomplishments a lot. not that no one is allowed to brag sometimes! but it was just another layer of “this bothers me.”

then there was the hero worship.

people in the server loved mina. i liked her. i had no problems with her, even if there were a few things i was a little “ehhhh” about. vv got pretty big, pretty quickly, and i assume there was a decent amount of turnover and people who just joined to lurk or sometimes share things in the promos channel or elsewhere. but the most active folks just. they adored mina with every fiber of their being. mina could do no wrong. no one ever called her out on anything; everything she did was hailed as fantastic and wonderful. and honestly, for the most part, it wasn’t like she was doing crappy stuff. some of the praise was well-deserved, imo, but it just bordered on embarrassing for some of these people, how much they just worshipped the ground she walked on.

and she didn’t really like, discourage it. like, at the start, i think i remember her being more modest, but in general, she just let it go, and so did i, bc like. i aint that kinda jerk.

the stated purpose of violetvineyard was to have a community that valued reciprocity. reciprocity was mina’s biggest thing. there was a channel for people to post their stuff on, so the rest of us could browse and read and reblog. i, admittedly, didn’t do as much of that as i wish i did, but part of it was because i do have a life outside of the internet, a memory and attention span the size of a gnat, and because like. 90% of the stuff that people put in the promos channel were things like edits, writeblr intros, wip intros, etc etc, when all i wanted was to just read some actual writing. but that’s neither here nor there. what got hilarious to me, though, was whenever mina’s fervent admirers would talk about how mina was, quote, a pillar of the community. how vv was doing something No Other Writeblr Group Had Done Before. how Important and Special this server was.

folks. i’ve been on here for several years now. we don’t have a community. we have a bunch of little cliques who reblog from their friends and complain about people not reblogging them. noah fence, but come on. vv got pretty dang big, but it was still a small corner of a small section of tumblr. like. sorry, all y’all, but them’s the breaks.

also, this was hilarious to me bc there are several big writeblrs who have been running around long before mina and vv showed up. yet, according to these people in the server, mina had Single-handedly Brought Hope To This Desolate Wasteland.

in the end, vv became just another little clique whose members reblogged from their friends. i don’t want to devalue the good that did come out of vv. a lot of the picture being painted rn was that the majority of the server were scary dog-piling people. the majority of the server were just writeblrs looking to promo their stuff and talk about their writing. unfortunately, few bad apples, bad rep, negatives outshine positives, etc etc. but i think it did do some good re: exposure for a few folks, even tho it didn’t turn into what it could have been.

another one of the things that was a minor irritant to me was that they eventually started archiving the vent channel, which was probably the most-used channel. that didn’t sit right to me, but as always, i was a coward had nothing to say about it, so i didn’t. the reason given was that there were often things in the vent channel that people might regret being there, so it was periodically archived and a fresh channel started.

so i’m rambling a lot about stuff that’s probably boring and inconsequential. that’s 90% of this whole vv thing, tho, you need to understand that.

the biggest thing that bothered me about mina, i think, came about from the constant hero worship from her adoring fans. and i know there’s a whole argument to be said about expecting labor from people with marginalized identities, which is an argument i agree with - don’t expect someone of a minority group to educate you or to face trauma or to shut down bigots, etc etc. but by now, mina had a lot of followers in general, and in specific, she had quite a few people who would defend her at every single perceived slight.

she made a lot of those fun writeblr reblog games, like “send me a fruit that says this about my writing.” those were cool, i’ll admit that. but she was super into “you have to send an ask to the person you reblog from, RECIPROCITY!!!!!!!!!!!” and seemed to struggle with the fact that sometimes, people don’t follow her established rules on her posts for these games. she’d complain about it every single time that happened in the vent channel, which, again, that’s fine? that’s what vents are for, it’s annoying to not get cool fun asks when you do these games, but also, that’s life for you. she could depend on her fans to send her plenty of asks, whereas the much smaller blogs who reblogged these games would probably get f-all, half the time. if you’ve gone through nuwuhorizons or one of the other blogs i mentioned earlier, you’ll have run across the incident where mina’s friends harrassed an 11 year old for not doing her ask game right.

an eleven year old.

and this is my biggest grief with mina. she only stopped her friends from dogpiling people... once? maybe twice? that i remember. and not only that, but there were SEVERAL occasions where she would get on the vent channel, complain about someone who had said something wrong on one of her posts (and sometimes, again, these were legitimate!), and then ask if someone in the server wanted to reply to them. reasons for such ranged from “i’m too busy rn” to “they would probably listen more to a white person than me.”

again. this, on occasion, is not necessarily a bad thing. we cannot expect labor and response from minorities. my issue was that she kept doing this. and sometimes it was fine, just someone who would drop a note on the post or send a polite anon. but this, to me, the whole asking someone else to fight your battles for you? that really bothered me. mina is a grown adult. either ignore it, like the rest of us chumps, or deal with it yourself. having friends support you is not a bad thing - if i was attacked on tumblr and my friends jumped in to defend me, i’m cool with that. but i wouldn’t ask them to, and then not do anything myself.

to me, this attitude just encourages dogpiling. this felt like she was taking advantage of the people admiring her so whole-heartedly, and using them to deal with minor grievances. (again, i don’t want to downplay some of the actual racism and xenophobia she experienced on this website, because there was some pretty sketchy stuff that did need someone else stepping in to object to. but then there was “ugh this person asked me what program i use to make my music and i don’t want to answer them bc that’s rude,” and stuff of that caliber. like, mina, you built yourself a pretty big following here on tumblr, you don’t get to complain when people are trying to ask you questions and engage with you when you set yourself up as a knowledgeable person on a subject.)

i’m going to mention @gingerly-writing because she already made a post on the subject, but there was an instance where we were in the vent channel and watched a lot of mina’s friends send anons and reblogs of a hurtful nature to one person. eventually, ginger stepped in to say “hey, i don’t think we need to keep doing this, they are a minor,” and after she did so, i also jumped in, saying something along the lines of, “yeah, i’ve seen this kind of stuff blow up in another server and end in a really regrettable situation where no one was happy, can we stop.” both ginger and i received a private message from the mods (individually) saying that we shouldn’t police the chat, etc etc. not during that message, but on the vent channel, another mod jumped in to say that the people dogpiling the blogger were also minors. as if that makes it okay, and isn’t actually extremely worrying in its own right.

after that, i pretty much took a stance of “all right then i just won’t say anything at all.” i stuck around vv because i hated myself actually really liked a few of the others in the server, including a couple of the mods who are actually really cool people, not all the vv mods are sketch, and because honestly? i lowkey knew that vv was going to crash and burn sometime, and i wanted to be there to watch what happened. due to the pandemic, and her line of work, mina became less active, and the whole server died down a bit.

then someone reblogged one of mina’s ‘art’ posts and accused her of tracing. mina’s admirers immediately jumped into action. nuwuhorizons has it pretty well documented on their blog. there was nothing in the server about it, except one of the others said “oh man i saw that and it pissed me off,” there was some minor chat, and then i woke up and wanted to know what had happened, and was told “don’t worry about it.”

so, naturally, bc the only thing i thirst for is water and Drama(TM), i went looking for it.

found it on some of mina’s friend’s blogs, where i found who had reblogged and said mina was tracing, and followed those reblog chains, where several of mina’s followers attacked the accuser and made fun of their name and age and defended mina, pulling out progress videos and stuff of mina’s work. the accuser was trans and still a teenager, even if technically an adult, so that made things a lot worse. mina eventually posted something explaining that she was pencil tracing and had a very cheery, false-positive tone to the whole thing.

things sorta ended at that, but then maybe the same day, or the day after, user hyba made that big ol post about the Big Scary Tumblr Mirror Website Copying All Your Good, Hard Work. mina and her friends jumped on this. they threw it in the server and talked about things like intellectual property rights and “i don’t like how this makes me feel :(” and from there, went in to how tumblr was a terrible garbage site and then mina and most of the mod team decided that it was time to pack up VV and leave tumblr completely.

pretty much everyone i know were mina’s besties have vanished off tumblr. mina made an announcement that VV was “migrating” off tumblr and discord(???) and dropped another application to join the great vv migration. i did not apply bc i just have too freaking much going on in my life and needed to get out of this for the sake of my own mental health. it was tempting as hell, tho, i will say that.

a couple things about this - at the time, mina is also having some pretty bad things going on in her family. she was very vague on the details, but i think that really contributed to wanting to leave; on top of the pandemic and everything else, she was probably heckin stressed. but also like. she never called out her followers for attacking her accuser. she never made any sort of post talking about it. she never told her friends on the server “hey don’t do that.” she never took accountability for it, or, honestly, for anything else she or her friends have done that didn’t feel too good. the mirror sites aren’t really a big deal.

after the server was archived, it was left up a couple days so everyone could grab contact info, etc. during this time, i was checking the ‘violetvineyard’ tag and saw someone post “what happened to mvcreates they haven’t answered my application to vv,’ and i responded with “oh, the server closed down bc of the copy cat sites.”

the same day, i got a tumblr DM from one of the former mods asking me not to give away any details about vv leaving tumblr. it was very politely worded and everything, but it was still just like

okay? vv is over? why are you asking me not to say anything. and it wasn’t like i was even spilling any hot goss, i was just repeating the excuse (and i do mean excuse) mina gave us.

anyway, that mod is off tumblr, too, as far as i know, or else they stealthin. which is fine, u do u, buddy.

uhh conclusion time, i guess? i have a few scattered screenshots of things, but i’m not posting em bc i’m lazy and also running late for a thing. but really, for me, i didn’t have a whole lot of beef with mina or pretty much any of the other folks on vv. i thought that mina and her friends were a bit too eager for blood, and that really bothered me. i’m annoyed they shut down vv completely, because it could actually have been something great. if mina wanted off writeblr, i wish she had given the whole network over to people interested in running it; instead, what was a good thing for a lot of people is now completely gone, with no existing framework for people to build on. sure, anyone can go make their own network/family for writeblr, but now it’s just going to splinter into a bunch of different, smaller groups, and we’re all back to square one.

but whatever. i didn’t get to see the server go down in flames, instead it just ended with a hasty retreat and a few whimpers, and quite honestly i wished my staying in had paid off.

i do want to reiterate - there were quite a few people in vv who i think are great, and this does include some of the mods themselves.

i’ve also gotten a couple messages from a few other folks who had been in vv who have their own real, real sketch stories, which are making me rethink how i feel about mina and her friends, and all the good credit i gave them. i just wanted to present this bc it’s my blog and i do what i want, fight me.

and if anyone wants to chat about vv, hit me up. i keep things as private as you want them to be, and i love love love talking about this nonsense. Give Me The Deets.

#violetvineyard #vv drama #long post #sorry not sorry #i just wanted to give a touch more balanced view on vv #i have a few other things i could talk about but none are really worth the effort

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quilloftheclouds · 4 years

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“The electricity controlling alien that’s been terrorizing our entire city for months, the cause of thousands of injuries and a near apocalypse... is an innocent child!?”

- CIRCUIT, a WIP about humanity, morality, responsibility, and other important ‘-ity’ words.

The alien? Her name is Tilly, by the way. Turns out she didn’t mean to hurt people--she escaped a terrible homeworld was “sent” here unaware that the planet was teeming with devices that would harness her power and stretch her too thin to control her own mind. The fall-back on her instincts forced her to protect herself from any potential threat, a category that included innocent people just trying to do their jobs.

But now she’s alright! And she’s nice! And very lost and very scared. Unfortunately, G.R.I.D., the agency responsible for her sanity restoration... doesn’t really believe her. And they’re... not very nice.

Cue the focus shifting to an ordinary person by the name of Frankie. They’re one of G.R.I.D.’s agents. Initially, they’re of the same opinion as the rest of their team. But then... things change.

And now they’re on the run from their own people with a little alien.

genre – Science Fiction, LGBTQ+, YA pov – First Person Limited, Multiple features – LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, and MCs of colour. Cool gadgets and cooler people, the most adorable alien ever, and friendship and family and finding a home. content warnings – Violence/death, mind control, fire/explosions, references to an abusive family. status – Currently outlining! playlist – HUMANS - KLOUD // The Mind Electric - Miracle Musical // It Makes No Difference Who We Are - Celldweller // Blackstar - Celldweller // TRIALS - STARSET // Just Breathe - Rival x Cadmium ft. Jon Becker

Oh no, a new wip! Quill has no self-control. I’m thinking this will be a novella, but I don’t have a full outline planned out yet, so who’s to say? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This one has a much more solid plot concept than my other side wips, so I think I’ll actually be developing it a lot more. It’s fun! With tons of comedy to make your guard slip before I tear your heart out with terrible things~

Let me know if you’d like to be added to a taglist! <3

#wip intro #violetvineyard #wip introduction #aesthetic #science fiction #circuit #circuit wip #this one started entirely as a dream #then developed way more as i listened to celldweller #then i said 'why not'#and now it's a wip!

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fictional-semantics · 4 years

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the seven natures

log #2: magic types

“You need to know just what you’re going to be dealing with, here.”

“They’re shapeshifters. People wonder if they’re truly human, if they’re a mirror of who we want them to be. Their people have a long, tragic past. You don’t want them as your enemy, because you never know where they can hide. Take it from me— I am one.”

WEAKNESSES: when transforming into a species outside of their given one, they must be bitten by said creature. This has led to the downfall of many.

“This magic is easily the most dangerous if used improperly. They must not be the kitchen appliance, but your mind could very well look like it came out of one once they’re through with you. And unfortunately, it happens the blenders here aren’t very friendly. Perhaps the power has gone to their head.”

WEAKNESS: most blenders cannot manage beyond simple mind reading, or even illusions. Their minds will crack under the pressure if they attempt to go beyond their limits.

“They’re the closest thing we have to reviving the dead. Most of the Enders usually choose this path. Magic simply isn’t meant to interact with the dead. They twist and mould it until they can reach into the cold depths of the afterlife. My advice? Don’t get too close. Their magic wouldn’t stay like that forever...”

WEAKNESSES: their magic is unstable. That in itself is dangerous. And if they project their spirit into the afterlife for too long, they will not be able to return to their body.

“The best way to put it is that their magic is bound to protection. They can mould it to how they like; anything they want as long as it is needed to protect themselves and others. They can be feral— as I’m sure you’ll learn if you attack those they care about. I fear them the most.”

WEAKNESSES: they cannot rely on their magic for much offense, as they are hardwired to protect and defend.

“Frienders communicate. They can communicate with anything they choose; any creature, any species, hell, they can even speak with nature. That’s what makes them so powerful. They hear the whispers of guidance no matter where they step. That’s why they appear to already know everything they need to know.”

WEAKNESSES: it takes a lot of energy to communicate. They are often distracted by the constant chatter and sometimes get caught in traps because of that.

“The menders are made to heal. They study hard, and are blessed with the knowledge of the human body. Their magic is much softer and more delicate than the others, so there’s not much else they can use it for, unless they take supplements. Their knowledge on weak points makes them invaluable.”

WEAKNESSES: they rarely enter combat.

“You guys are rare. Far too rare to be considered in the Seven Natures, but perhaps there was a time where you walked hand in hand with the rest of us. The forces of nature will answer your call if you can tame them. Renders are strong in that way— you must be what you control, but you seem to manage that just fine.”

WEAKNESSES: sometimes, they are unable to manage their power. It eats them from the inside out if they cannot control it. Be careful.

there are smaller subcategories, but there aren’t as many around here.

end of log.

notes taken by rivrin s. mangjol || recorded by alexos r. cesarini: december 5th

FOR THE LOST TAG: @imintheunderworld @carnationwrites @writerfae @jfictitional @musicofglassandwords @inherentlywritten @andiwriteunderthemoon @semblanche @kimblewrites @lottieiswriting @captainrynna @aelenko @shattered-starrs @reininginthefirewriting @peepos-prose @writingbyjillian @islaaries @burningoffaroad @skiiwriting @pen-and-inks @themillionthdraft @writeblrfantasy

let me know if you would like to be added!

#wip: for the lost #writeblr #original writing #writing #worldbuilding #magic types #creative writing #writeblr community #fantasy #violetvineyard #for the lost #magic world building #alexos and his log #my wips #wip guide

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radley-writes · 4 years

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I’M ON THE BATTLEFIELD LIKE OH MY GOD (oh la la) // KNOCKING SOLDIERS DOWN LIKE HOUSE OF CARDS (oh la la) // I’M A ONE WOMAN ARMY

listen to playlist here!

Name: BVK-88

Alias: Buck

Gender: Irrelevant. (Addendum: it is said to use she/her pronouns.)

Origins: Ganymedian Military Testing Site G9.

Age: 31

Prior Convictions: Arson, murder, numerous counts of grievous bodily harm, public indecency, vandalism, and disruption of the annual system-wide hydroponics summit. Accusations of weapon theft and military desertion have also been levelled by the Ganymedian ambassador. As the stolen weapon in question was BVK-88 itself, the former charge was dropped.

find out more about Volt here!

REPORT CONTINUES UNDER CUT

A separate list must be made for war crimes committed by BVK-88 post-desertion. Namely, the eradication of four enclaves, each containing upwards of ten thousand civilian souls.

Details: As with all assets from the ‘Jaegernaut’ experiment, BVK-88 is fitted with a series of deep-tissue brain mods that artificially enhance aspects of its endocrine system. Particularly notable are the vast increase in epinephrine, non-epinephrine and testosterone in response to relatively minor provocation; and the boosts to oxytocin and endorphins stimulated by nociceptive pain.

To put it in layman’s terms: if you piss BVK-88 off, it won’t stop punching until your face breaks or its fists do. Your face is unlikely to win. Especially since BVK-88 will then switch to kicking.

BVK-88 illegally claims independence from the United Stellar Alliance as part of the ‘Jaegernaut enclave’ – a terrorist faction of rogue sapient weaponry. The ethical question of whether a weapon can be tried for war crimes (especially when it has no official personhood under Alliance law) was debated at length by the jury. The transcripts will be of interest to generations of barristers to come. Almost as much interest, perhaps, as BVK-88’s corpse, which is due to be presented to the Medical Modification Board after its termination.

Strengths: …Strength. Lots of it.

Weaknesses: It has been said that BVK-88 is not the sharpest multitool in the box. Just not to its face (or at least, not by any Alliance officer who survived long enough to make a report). In addition, while BVK-88’s mods prevent it from feeling pain when it fights, they don’t prevent injury. BVK-88 is at its most vulnerable when its mods deactivate, at which point it suffers the physical effects of all accrued injuries simultaneously, along with a significant mood drop.

BVK-88 was subdued by the capture of one Zeebe Adeyemi, Prisoner 197825. Threats to this prisoner prove far more effective than threats to BVK-88 itself. However, officers should be aware that BVK-88 also promises to enact graphic bodily harm against anyone who hurts Prisoner 197825 - and to date, has always followed through.

Danger rating: High to extreme. Do not anger. Please. It’s getting hard to find janitors willing to sponge entrails off the ceiling.

Hope you all enjoy the playlist! And this introductory insight into Buck. In case it wasn’t obvious enough, she’s a woman who uses she/her (mostly) - the Alliance are just dicks. Thanks again to @castironbitch for your amazing playlist suggestions~ <3

Image descriptions:

1) A muscular four-armed White woman stands before a police line-up board, ranging from 5′0′’ to 9′0′’. She clocks in at roughly 8′5′’. Long blonde mohawk in a single braid, several ear piercings. She wears a tight blue ab-flashing vest top and jeans with a belt. She has runic tattoos on each arm: a band around each bicep and forearm. She’s sticking her tongue out at the ‘camera’, holding her line-up number plate - II - with one hand and flipping birds with two more.

2) A purple-orange space scene with ‘VOLT’ written on it in a white sci-fi font.

3) A faint blue space scene with a tracklist reading: ‘One Woman Army - Porcelain Black / Trouble - P!nk / Bitches - Tove Lo, Charli XCX Icona Pop / Godzilla - Eminem, Juice WRLD / Million Reasons - Lady Gaga / Bury Me Face Down - Grandson / Sucker For Pain - Lil’ Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Imagine Dragons / Problem - Natalia Kills / Weapon - Grant, BAUM / Blue - Beyonce, Blue Ivy / Feel Invincible - Skillet / Soldier - Tommee Profitt, Fleurie’

#violetvineyard #amwriting #writeblr #original writing #science fiction #sci-fi #writers on tumblr #original character #currently writing #VOLT #volt: buck

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