going insane. where's that one post. it's a picture of a (japanese? maybe?) liquor bottle w/a graph of the drinking experience that goes from eh to tastes like strawberry soda (or juice??) to I need him bouncing and moaning on it. to like. fugue state. or smthn

I cannot. find It. but I know. it exists

This is more of a problem on Facebook and Twitter, but there are some fellow authors who get a tad... upset when you talk about money and royalty earnings.

Needless to say, my frankness about how royalties work and just how little many of us are earning from our labor has drawn the ire of a few people, even here on Tumblr.hell.

I'm not particularly bothered by this. In my view, they're the same people who won't discuss wages in the workplace because they don't want anyone else to earn what they do. They know the system is unfairly rigged, but they like it that way because they're scared if more people are educated about how things work, they'll lose whatever competitive edge they think they have, thus enforcing the status quo.

Needless to say, I don't care for this view.

I'm very much a "holy shit, two cakes" kind of creator. I also very firmly believe in pulling people up behind me and spreading the wealth of information that was shared freely with me by other like-minded individuals who also believe that the mysteries around publishing are gatekeeping bullshit and everyone deserves the chance to earn money from their creative endeavors, not just the people who can afford to.

Anyway, David Gaughran's 'Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish And Why You Should' is an invaluable resource for indie authors and provides great insight into how publishing and distribution work. It is available for free through the retailers listed on his website.

If you don't want to publish exclusively through Amazon, draft2digital.com does global ebook and also paperback distribution. (I've only used it for ebooks, but I'll be trying out their paperback options for my next book.) You can pair it up with a books2read account to create easy-to-post buy links. Draft2Digital also allows for distribution through library lending services like Overdrive. So that's neat. (NB: if you use d2d, you can't use Kindle Unlimited, so be aware of what links you have active and where if you decide to enroll in KU. You can always opt for wide distribution again once your KU time expires.)

D2D also recently partnered with FindawayVoices.com for audiobook distribution. You can find voice actors there, or you can upload your own files if you already have them. You can submit to Audible through them, too, but you'll earn a pittance more if you upload directly through Audible. Findaway also allows for library lending distribution through Libby and several other global equivalents.

If you need ISBNs, you can buy them cheaper in bulk from Bowker at myidentifiers.com

Individual storefront options like Payhip.com and Gumroad.com are also great ways to allow people to buy directly from you, though I soured on Gumroad after the whole NFT thing and their CEO harassing people on Twitter over it. Payhip is now my preferred storefront, and as an added bonus, they calculate VAT in European countries as well, so that's one less thing for me as an indie author to work out. As an added bonus, Payhip can be directly integrated into your author website if you have one. It's a feature I'll be implementing soon.

itch.io also allows for the sale and distribution of ebook files, though I haven't used it yet.

If you don't have the means to hire a cover designer or the means to do it yourself in photoshop, Canva.com has some decent-ish ebook templates. Just make sure the images and fonts you're using have the right licenses for commercial use.

Editing and formatting are also extremely important, though I know not everyone can afford them. If you can, I highly suggest doing so and shelling out extra to have them format your work across mediums. Ebook formatting is different from paperback formatting, and it can look very strange if you just try to format an ebook into a pdf. It is a skill you can teach yourself (plenty of youtube videos) if you really want to, but I prefer to throw money at my editors, who provide formatting as an additional service. Whatever you can afford to do to streamline the process is money well spent.

Also, do not be shy about using affiliate links to sell your work. Authors lose a solid chunk of money to places like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, etc., in distribution fees. Whatever pennies you can scrape back through affiliate links for directing traffic to those sites is hard-earned--and it is literal pennies sometimes. You can also integrate any affiliate links you do have into draft2digital, so they auto-generate, which is handy.

When it comes to paperbacks, BookShop.org offers the best affiliate earnings, and a percentage of the sale goes toward supporting indie bookstores. They do not take that percentage from your earnings, they pay it themselves. Libro.FM is the audiobook equivalent of BookShop.org, and they also give a percentage of sales to supporting indie book stores.

Anyway, I hope that helps someone. Good luck out there.

Also, if you're the person who sent me the irate email about "giving away trade secrets," feel free to die mad about it. 😘

Hii so I'm currently doing an analysis on the boys and I wanted to know if each of the masks has any symbolism or hidden meanings? if the answer contains any spoilers so you can't answer then I completely understand but I'm just very curious

The masks have a lot of thought put into them! I can't find the post where she said it, but Mugi has confirmed that there is symbolism behind the masks, and a lot of it. Just look at Francesco and Cirrus; their masks are similar (there's no narrative reason for that, to the best of my knowledge, it's just design) but the things that make them different are symbolically important. So you should absolutely read into the masks and interpret things from them!

I don't have any definitive answers to give you, but honestly I think answers from us are far less important than the answers you come up with on your own. And if you do an analysis and post it here on our beloved tumblr.hell, tag us so we can see! We love seeing people's interpretations of our work!!

how to find people to follow on tumblr.hell, a guide for the perplexed

So, with reddit and twitter in the process of self-destructing, this blue hell site is receiving a wave of new users, many of whom have the question "Wait, I'm supposed to actually follow people? How do I do that?" Well, here's your guide, written by a thirteen year Tumblr veteran.

So, the first thing you need to find is the search bar. It should be at the top of your dash, and look like this:

Type a thing that your interested in, but don't press enter. That'll take you to the search function, which doesn't work. You should see a thing that says "Go to #search term" in the drop down menu. Click on that.

You have now discovered the wonders of tags. When people on tumblr make posts, they have the option of attaching tags. People who are interested in a subject can find relevant content by viewing the appropriate tag.

There are two ways to view a tag: latest and top.

If you are a little baby who needs to have content spoon fed to you, then feel free to pick top and the algorithm will vomit up a bunch of inane dribble for you to consume. But don't stay up to late, especially on school nights. And don't forget to have Mommy and Daddy tuck you in at night.

Assuming you're an adult though, what you want is Latest. This will give a chronological feed of posts made on the site tagged with whatever tag your searching for. Start reading. For small or even medium-sized fandoms, it is very doable to read an entire tag every day. Find content you want to see. Follow those people. Block the ones you don't want to see. Rinse. Repeat.

There are too ways that the tag viewer displays content. Either in a normal vertical feed, or haphazardly arranging a bunch of cluttered shit onto your screen. You should see the following icons near the top of the page.

Click on the one on the right to get the non-cluttered view.

lmaooo classic tumblr move 😂

crash

yesss i lost 2 followers today babey that's what happens when i log the fuck in

on 2/16/20 steve tyler told me i can do anything

and also asap rocky bought some salmon like 2 hours later

Do y’all remember when people would post gif sets of some guy everyone found so hot and the gif was low res and a fraction of the time gifs can be now because it was a while ago and everyone under the gif just commented “my ovaries!” ?

Do we remember that or was that a fever dream

The original post got buried under my Luca Discourse this morning lmao

Greetings, kings, queens, and in-betweens. I request your wise council.

I kinda want to start a series here on tumblr.hell of posts about things that I find to be inexplicably beautiful. Things that, whenever I take a moment to appreciate them, remind me that I'm flesh and blood and bone, and that I should take the time that I have here to love them for what they mean to me and to society as a whole. Just once in a while, write a vaguely poetic and entirely heartfelt paragraph about something special. The list of candidates that I have so far is as follows:

What plant I would be if I was a plant (bc I'm also including little rambles about myself)

How humans are made to love

Certainty in who you are

Wildflowers

Graveyards

Quiet

Music

Space (And what we find it to mean)

The ocean

Sunrise

Sunset

Fragility

And any suggestions that I might get.

Would anyone be interested in seeing me start this series?

Hope you don’t mind a question- how long is the delay between receiving and posting an ask? Not sure if a thing I sent got eaten or if it just hasn’t been posted yet 😅

Okay, so we’ve actually covered this topic multiple times, but tumblr.hell isn’t letting me find a post to link. That being said, I can go ahead and clarify. 

We have a very specific way that we run these blogs because the mods both have things going on in their personal lives, whether that be our mental health dips or our jobs. Mod T in particular has been an essential employee since the very start of the pandemic, and as such, we don’t answer every ask immediately as it comes in. We take what little time we can scrape together and queue as many asks as possible so that you all can still have content while we deal with our lives. 

That being said, we can and have deleted asks that make us uncomfortable, or that violate our blacklist, which you can find linked in our blog description on any of the blogs we run. We don’t do it to every single ask we get, but there have been asks, like the one from yesterday, that have sent the mods into dysphoric panic attacks and, as such, either get addressed or deleted outright. 

Yes, tumblr.hell has eaten asks before and likely will continue to until we eventually get bought by a competent staff or until Xkit buys the site entirely. I, personally, hope for the latter. Xkit is invaluable to us. 

In short, one of three things has happened to your ask. One, it never reached our inbox because of this hellsite. Two, it’s currently queued, and will be posted in the next week or so. Our queue posts four times a day, and gets refilled whenever we have the time and energy to go through the inboxes. Three, it may have been deleted due to the reasons stated above. It depends entirely on what the contents of your ask were. 

My suggestion to ensure that the third option isn’t the case is to review our rules and blacklist, and make sure that your ask is in compliance with them. If so, give it about a week or two for the currently queued asks to empty out, and if you still haven’t seen your ask, you’re welcome to try and resend it. Please don’t spam our inbox with the ask, because we have had people try to do that before when we’ve tried to restrict certain types of asks. For example, if you were to ask us for a shoutout/promo, which we already don’t do, and you try to spam our inbox with said request, we will delete the asks and, if necessary, we may block you. 

TL;DR give it time to come out of the queue, in about a week or so, and try again later if it doesn’t come out. 

-Mod T

I think if you want to reblog dworkin you have to accept that she's transphobic and that most all the blogs that post her are transphobic and radfems and it's not consistent to say fuck terfs and then have a link to their blogs just a click away. either find posts written by people who are explicitly critical consumers of her work or repost them yourself

In all of Andrea Dworkin’s work that I have read she has not once mentioned trans women. To give you an ounce of credit, I have not read everything she has written or know everything she has ever said. 

But I find it interesting that the only time I am expected to go through a blog whose post I reblog is when that post talks about women. People will reblog out and out white nationalists and never are their commitments to anti-racism questioned. Caring about the oppression all women face as women is not suspicious. I can and I do care about the oppression that women face, the oppression that AFAB people face, and the oppression that trans women specifically face. 

But I will not allow you to tell me which thinkers I can and cannot listen to “critically” or otherwise. I’m sorry but I am an adult human with a brain and I will not let randos on tumblr.hell tell me how to use that brain.

I am sorry if I reblogged a terf. I am. I am sorry if I caused you or anybody any hurt by doing that.

2! 6! 10! 13-14; 24; 44-45; and 49!! Please do whatever amount you are comfortable with - but I'm glad you've decided to receive questions from this numbered post too!

Man you just went absolutely nuts with this one, huh  Nice.

THIS GOT LONG; I’m gonna try to put it under a cut but you know how Tumblr.Hell has been to me, lately.  Maybe it’s in protest about all the horny content I’ve been writing.

Things that motivate you.

I’m always super stoked when I read something really good, or see an interesting scene in a film or show!  Whenever I see or hear an idea that goes “wow, that’s such a fresh and intense element of horror”, I get a really strong urge to work.  Sometimes it’s enough to make me throw all priority out the window as I struggle to capture an idea before it gets away from me, which is why y’all still haven’t seen that god damn Narancia fic.  I’m working on it, I swear.

It goes without saying, but knowing that people enjoyed something I wrote--especially if I’m insecure about it--also makes me really happy, and I get another burst of energy to write something for people.  Comment on fics, guys!  Tell authors you like their stuff!  You’ll get more!

How did writing change you?

I consider things more analytically and find myself trying to work out how I’d describe a particular emotion, or sensation or experience.  It’s also given me a better appreciation for the work of others!  I tend to pick up on things I like or dislike about a work and better articulate why I feel that way, and then dissect the author’s approach and their strengths in conveying things.  It’s like an English class, but far more fun!

How do you do your researches?

I get the idea for a fic, sit down and write it, and then as I start describing how a character’s thrown through a wall go “...wait a moment.  Would drywall realistically be used in the construction of a house at this place and time?”, which turns into an hour-long rabbit hole where I learn all about Midwestern architecture instead of writing.  Other times I’m dissatisfied with my own understanding of things and have to spend some time running several iterations of a medical (sometimes suspicious) question to get accounts from people who experienced the injury, or a doctor’s opinion on what’s likely to happen.  FBI Agent-chan, I promise I’m not actually going to feed someone lye!  I just want to know some things about what would happen,  if I theoretically did.  Theoretically.

Hardest character to write?

*Narancia materializes behind my shoulder like the ghost of a murdered Victorian child*

...good characters.  I should say, it’s incredibly difficult for me to write heart-of-gold ultra goodboys like Okuyasu as the antagonist of a horror fic!  There are characters who are generally good-aligned but are more than willing to get their hands dirty to get a job done, and there are characters I just really have a hard time seeing hurt people, so I avoid them if I can’t think of a good angle.  I can’t--maybe won’t, it’s all the same thing with my Hell Fuck Brain--write something if it doesn’t feel in character, and I avoid doing pure/straight fluff on this blog.

Easiest character to write?

KIRA.  I used to be pretty interested in true crime and serial killers (a fact that should surprise absolutely nobody), and of all JJBA’s villains he’s very...human, in the way that we have plenty of real-life people with his motivations and deeds, if not his exploding housecat.  I really enjoy dissecting his psychology, because he exposes a lot about his worldview in only a few interactions with women.  Anyway, writing him comes very easily to me, because I understand him.

Favorite scene you’ve ever written?

Why, Anon, I don’t know what you mean!  I love all my scenes equally!

*later* ...I don’t care much for [you’ll never know]

I actually had to think about this one for a moment, because I actually don’t think about my scenes too much once I’m done with them.  Always looking to the next thing to write, I guess lmao.  If I had to pick a favorite, though, I’d definitely say it’s the Doppio scene.  I’ve got a soft spot for that one because of the research that went into it (that ultimately ended up meaning VERY little lmao) and the muted horror and agony that I think really defined what I wanted to do with this blog.  I think I tended to veer more towards psychological horror than body horror since then....until this month, anyway.  Lmao.

Do you write linear or do you write future scenes if you feel like it?

It’s very difficult for me to start a fic ‘in the middle’.  If I’ve got a good middle bit, I’ll sit on it and sit on it until I think of a good way to get there, and it’s not until I have the beginning that I actually start.  Not because I want to, that’s just how my brain works lmao.  I tend to keep most of my writing in my head (drafts WHO?  Outlines WHAT?  Don’t know her, bitch!), so the future scenes I have just stay there and keep developing until I’ve got the scope of the fic all set.

Share the synopsis of a story you work on that you haven’t published yet.

"Company Man”

Haha, what if I wrote a Modern/Office AU...just kidding...

unless...?  Trouble-prone Reader-Chan is a new hire at Brando and Associates, where they discover a whole new definition of ‘cutthroat’ as they immediately get enmired in brutal office politics of unbelievable scope.  The salary’s great, but the workload is...shall we say, murder.

Writing advice?

Play Dnd.  Specifically, run DnD...or any tabletop storytelling game, really, there are plenty of systems that focus on storytelling and don’t really care about dice.  I understand that this might require you to be a little more social than the advice you were expecting, but doing so is going to really help you with:

Flexibility.  You must adapt to what your players unexpectedly do--there’s no way to prepare for every outcome--and still make a story that’s coherent and interesting.  You have to learn that your characters--not your plot--is the king of your story, and sometimes they’re going to take things in a direction you didn’t plan on.  ‘Yes, and’ or ‘Yes, but’ is going to become your best friends, and this strategy will be a big help when you feel like you’re in a writing roadblock because your characters won’t do this or that!  

Feedback.  A story has to be engaging first, deep and profound or whatever second.  Players will be able to immediately tell you ‘hey, this is fun’ or ‘hey, this isn’t cool’, and by playing with different people you’ll be able to catch weaknesses in your storytelling style sooner, and also get a better feel for what you just enjoy doing.

Also, write.  Even if it’s bad.  There’s a post on tumblr with this example, but it’s better to make a hundred shitty pots and improve each time than it is to wait and make a really good pot that could have been way better with the time you spent waiting to perfect it.

A Big Fuck Off Rant Here Lads, Be Warned This Is About Terfs/Radfems As Well As A Bunch Of Political Stuff

I hate that God awful sinking feeling I get in my gut when I end up on a Terf/transphobic persons blog and I just, realise people that are that desperately hateful exist. I found a blog and was going through it, the name making me think they were trans friendly seeming as they had it in their name, only to become rapidly confused and kinda sick when all their posts were outright seethingly angry and hateful towards trans people. Like, the first few I read I thought I was misunderstanding but the further I got I was like, oh, no, they are a Terf/transphobe or align with their ideals.

I don't have a problem with people having opinions, it's your right to think and say what you want. But what I do have a problem with is you putting that vile hateful shit online where kids, trans or otherwise, can see it. To be fair, kids shouldn't be on Tumblr even after the shitty facade of a purge they did to make it child friendly. However, kids ARE on here and they ARE reading your posts and posts like them. It's how conservatives and other far right and even drastically far left groups manage to keep relevance in our lives despite most people disagreeing with them. It's through feeding kids their crap over and over again, sometimes without them realising or wanting to. It happened when I was a kid but luckily my parents aren't nearly conservative and simply hold similar beliefs in some areas. I grew up thinking those hateful things were right, and okay.

Until I opened my fucking eyes and realised they weren't. That you shouldn't feed children your hateful and poisonous rheteric when they don't understand the situations. I, as a little fucking child, genuinely believed that asylum seekers didn't deserve access to our country because they didn't go through legal channels. My parents offloaded their beliefs onto me and for quite a while I didn't even question it. The news/media in Australia didn't help either. But then I grew the fuck up and realised that I was fed a bunch of shit. That what they were saying was bullshit. That the media was trying to shove that shit into my head because it distracted me from them, and the government and what they were doing. It was to give me a fake enemy so I wouldn't see the very real one right under my nose.

Those people, all people, deserve safety and respect unless they are actively causing harm to others.

The problem is a lot of those children grow up not realising those ideas are old, outdated and toxic to change. That they are media crap designed explicitly to keep your eyes away from the blatant corruption of our world and that it is rapidly being killed. And they vote. And have blogs online where they spew their vile crap for newer generations to see. It's why I wish kids weren't allowed on this site. Because a lot of the crap on here is just that, crap. Shit that doesn't actually have a foothold in the real world or if it does, it's so small that it doesn't matter. Terfs and radfems on Tumblr have a huge foothold and use it to attack trans people just trying to live their fucking lives, not hurting anyone. Trans women especially are the victims of this, trans men less so, though it is still a big deal. Terfs and radfems are so concerned with policing who can do what that they don't police themselves.

Their community supposedly stands for women's rights (and by that they mean cis women because God knows they don't know how to be accepting) but as soon as a cis women comes forward supporting Trans women and trans women lesbians, they are instantly shut down, saying they must be an idiot or they are brainwashed. They only support the people who support them. They don't stand for feminism or women's rights, because if they did they would include trans women BECAUSE THEY ARE WOMEN. No, they just want to support their own little bubble and exclude anyone they don't like, just like we are back in fucking highschool with friendship groups and cliques.

For Trans men, if the terfs and radfems don't just outright dismiss them and call them confused women or women trying to escape the patriarchy, they are infantilized. They see us as women. Not as men. I can't force you to accept trans people and even if I could, I wouldn't want to. The fact you are so critical and hateful only speaks volumes about you as a person, about how you either hate yourself or are so drastically narcissistic that you need mental health assistance. Nobody filled with that much anger and hate for people they don't know and who are not doing anything wrong, is happy in their lives. You reek of low self-esteem and self loathing and I feel sorry that your way of dealing with that is to lash out at trans people instead of taking the time to listen to yourself and heal. It's not a way I wouldn't want anyone to live.

In the real world and not tumblr.hell, radfems and terfs have a much smaller voice. It's there, no doubt, and there are some much louder voices and ideas, but they are rightfully ignored for the fact they are just spewing hate. Anyone who does agree with them is normally a conservative, cis and straight. All things that mean they cannot understand the trans experience, let alone the LGBTQ one. Now, there are a lot of radfem/Terf lesbians, who loathe the idea of trans women in their spaces because "they aren't women, they are men just trying to invade our spaces and take them away". No, they aren't. I'm not a trans women, but I do know a lot about the trans experience on the other end as a trans man. Trust me when I say that trans people do not want to steal your space. They are people who want to find support and comfort within a group of people. Trans women can be lesbians because they are women. Trans men can be gay, because they are men. Hell, it was trans women who pioneered the LGBTQ movement, so you wouldn't have the spaces you do today without them. Learn to break free of your biased thoughts and move towards understanding how to be including and accepting. I don't even begin to understand every facet of the LGBTQ community. So many parts of it confuse me. But it's not my place to tell someone they aren't allowed to identify as something. Unless it is genuinely hurting someone, like pedophiles and maps (which newsflash, despite what terfs and radfems want to pretend and scream, trans women aren't. They just want to fucking pee and shit in the toilet for fuck sales).

So, this whole long 3:15 am insomnia ridden post really boils down to, is this. Try and step out of your bubble. Out of the comfort of your preset ideas on people and the lies and garbage fed to you by the media and even your parents in some cases. Try and understand others or at least take the time to listen instead of blindly attacking like a wounded animal. You are not inherently hateful. You deserve the chance to step out of your little cave and learn that the big bad world isn't out to get you. Trans women aren't trying to invade your spaces, or forces lesbians to date them. Trans men aren't trying to escape the patriarchy or are women haters, or trying to change what being gay means. We are real people deserving of respect. We aren't asking for you to bow at our feet. We are asking you to stop attacking us without reason, to stop listening to the horse shit the media throws out to defame and make us look like the villians. Because while your out here attacking innocent trans people, your getting your rights slowly erroded by a government that doesn't give two shits about you. That is purposely force feeding you garbage through the media to make you complacent and distract you from what's going on. Do you think big bussniess, the thing that bloody runs our governments now, gives a shit about you? About what you think? No, they want to make money. Your a number to them. They blatantly pull the strings of all major governments and take away any right you have to object. They are tearing the planet apart to the point 1/7 people will survive.

The planet is dying, rapidly, and if you stopped worrying about us merely existing and instead turned your attention to the real problems, we could do so much more to fight for our rights.

Your very lively hood, the thing you so vehemently fight for is not only on the line, it's at stake. They are trying to kill us, and your bitching online that a trans women went into the female bathroom to pee like a goddamn human being.

Get your priorities straight.

Wow I am So Fucking Glad that I can't find a single fucking post related to the Fandom I'm searching for because EVERYONE decided that general Fandom posts should be reblogged with EVERY SINGLE FANDOM in the tags. Wow so relatable let me just bury Fandom specific content under all this garbage and make the search function on tumblr.hell useless.

where else to find me

hey so since tumblr.hell is going to be getting rid of all nsfw content, figured i should post links to other places where you can find my art

twitter: https://twitter.com/kirsgoat

FA: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/papaburry/