Meet Hex and Omen, a pair of Eclectus parrots.
Reference:
Really proud of how this one turned out!
RMH
Claire Keane
Sade Olutola

Kaledo Art
No title available

if i look back, i am lost
Xuebing Du

ellievsbear
we're not kids anymore.
i don't do bad sauce passes

Origami Around

★
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
DEAR READER

PR's Tumblrdome
wallacepolsom
Misplaced Lens Cap
Monterey Bay Aquarium

titsay
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year

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@camilladraymarch
Meet Hex and Omen, a pair of Eclectus parrots.
Reference:
Really proud of how this one turned out!
I have a few things I want to try before I call this done.
Why do I have to market books and worry about publishers and stuff why can't I just make up cool characters and stories and beam them by telepathy into other people's heads and earn a living wage from it?
Okay, so according to this post, @staff says they're listening to us, so...
Sound off, Tumblr! How do you feel about the latest update to the reblog and notes?
Hate it. 👎
Like it. 👍
No nuance. Go ahead and reblog the crap out of this.
Don't drag us along for this, @staff. No one asked for this.
Reblogs in a chain now get their own notes
The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve.
Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.
If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.
Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.
This is just the beginning. More changes are coming as we keep building this out – stay tuned!
It’s very clear that you all have strong feelings about Tumblr and about this change. We hear you. The passion people have for how Tumblr works is one of the things that makes this place special.
As this rolls out over the next few days and you explore it, we’ll keep reading your replies and reblogs, so please keep sharing your questions, concerns, and ideas.
Your creativity has always been the heart of Tumblr, whether you’re the original poster or adding something brilliant in the reblogs, and nothing about this change is meant to limit that.
If you’d like to talk directly beyond the comments, leave a reply and we’ll follow up with as many of you as we can. We want to work with you to make Tumblr better.
Hi, I’m sure there’s some logic you were using to make this that makes sense in your mind but this will make this website unworkable to me. If this change goes into effect I’m going to have to move the blogs I’ve spent over a year building up to a different website. You now cannot turn off reblogs, cannot do reblog chains meaningfully, any creator of any kind just cannot see how much attention their post is getting and it is ripe for usage by bullies. I just cannot make sense of where any utility is in this. I hope you will reconsider. I am going to send something to the feedback form for everyday until this changes, and go to the App Store when it gets rolled out on mobile and give tumblr a 1 star review, and I invite anyone who follows me to join me.
I barely have a following, so if you think I won't uproot and go somewhere else to scream into the void about my books @staff and @changes then you have a big surprise coming.
I submitted my first ticket this morning and I'll submit another tonight. Ditto the rating on the app store.
Okay, so according to this post, @staff says they're listening to us, so...
Sound off, Tumblr! How do you feel about the latest update to the reblog and notes?
Hate it. 👎
Like it. 👍
No nuance. Go ahead and reblog the crap out of this.
@staff
Stop making fanfic into orginal books please.
FANFIC IS FREE AND IT SHOULD NOT BE A BASE FOR CAPITALIZATION.
This seems a strange hill to die on given that all fiction is fanfiction to some degree.
I don't want to cause trouble, or to defend the predatory publishing industry, but why are we shaming authors here? If a writer puts a lot of effort into a plot, and realizes that it can stand well on its own, why shouldn't they use it for a published book? Ditto for OC's, settings, other work put into the story?
The thing to do, it seems to me, would be to make the fanfic into original books and leave the original post up. No harm, no foul in that case, and if the story is changed enough for publishing, I don't see why not have the cake and eat it too.
A lot of fanfiction is very similar ideas, each one a little more to the left or right as the author pleases, and no one minds. I don't see why having a book based on a fanfiction and the fanfiction itself would be any different.
I love the idea of a world where no one needs money as much as the next person. But that's not our world, so I'm not going to condemn people for trying to make money from something that they put time and energy into. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I won't condemn it.
!!!!VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!
I want to clarify my point because I think it got misread entirely.
I am not shaming authors. That was never what I said.
What I am saying is that capitalizing on fanfic is a problem.
On the "turn it into an original work and keep the fanfic up" argument — I understand why people see this as a solution but it still misses the point.
When filing fanfic down into original work becomes a known pipeline the entire culture of fanfic spaces shifts. Fanfic communities become incubators for product. That changes everything about what those spaces are and what they are for.
And yes of course authors of popular fanfics want to bring their audience with them when they go commercial. That makes complete finacial sense. But I would rather they didn't. Not because I want to punish them but because the moment that pipeline becomes normalized it creates a commercial incentive that lives inside fanfic culture permanently. Every highly rated fanfic becomes a potential product. Every writer is potentially building a brand. That is not what fanfic is for.
Fanfic has always thrived because it exists outside commercial spaces. That is the unspoken agreement between fan communities and original creators. When commercialization enters — whether directly or through the file-it-down pipeline — that agreement breaks.
Ultimately authors want to take their existing audience and make money based on fanfiction which I find dangerous. The argument that all books are somehow fanfiction is one I disagree with cause there is a difference between inspiration and derivation, but that point is not relevant here because this is purely about the commercial aspect.
Beyond that commercialization brings a lot of people into fanfic spaces who may not have genuine respect for the etiquette and culture that exists there and that is not a good thing.
I think we may be imagining different things here. I was imagining taking some aspect of a fanfiction story and using it, not exploiting an audience.
I suppose I've never thought of fanfiction authors as having an "audience" that could be monetized except through ko-fi or something. That's a point I hadn't considered.
I think there's wiggle room here, though. There's nothing inherently wrong about telling people "if you like my writing, I have books." Again, publishing is a very difficult and predatory business to navigate. Social media followings are vital for indie authors, and if someone wrote a story I really liked on AO3, I'd want to at least know that there could be more in their voice out there.
As for the pipeline becoming a known thing... It's already there. We live in a post 50 Shades world. Reylo fanfiction became a best selling chemistry romance novel. There will be more and more examples as time marches forward with the internet connecting everyone to huge databases.
It feels like a balancing act to me. Like there should be a polite way to go about telling people "If you like what I write here, check out this page where my books are." Though I think I wouldn't personally enjoy attaching my nom de plume to the silliness I write on AO3, I think casting either option as back and white absolutes is a mistake.
On reflection, I think we may have been speaking past each other which colored my arguments after. I have been thinking about this and I think we have a fundamental misunderstanding at hand.
This is the original post:
Stop making fanfic into orginal books please. FANFIC IS FREE AND IT SHOULD NOT BE A BASE FOR CAPITALIZATION.
So when I read this, it sounded like "do not write books with ideas/stories/ocs that were in a fanfiction." Which read to me as unreasonable, because fanfiction authors put a lot of original work into their writing and I don't see why I shouldn't use OCs in their own stories or take the basic strokes of a plotline or a book. This is the point my original post was trying to make, and I stand by it. The work that a fanfiction author does within a fanfiction and all pieces that are not copyrighted are theirs and should be usable for other projects.
What it's become clear that you mean is "Don't advertise your commercial properties in fanfiction spaces." Which I agree with. Especially because AO3 outright bans this, which I did not know about before. And now that I've thought about it, this is probably for legal reasons, so if people do start turning this into a commercial pipeline, it would probably lead to negative consequences for everyone. Perhaps to companies having the legal ability to take down the space, which I agree should be prevented at all costs.
I was wrong out of ignorance, thank you for educating me about this topic.
I subscribe to a church and state approach for original work and fanfiction myself and it never occurred to me that fanfiction authors would try to use fanfiction spaces to advertise their original work or that it would even be an effective marketing tool. I do maintain that people should be able to link their socials to their fanfics (and if there happen to be original works on those socials, that's ancillary) but fanfiction spaces should not become advertiser pages for authors.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. @soulwriter-sp
Seems like we do agree on loadsnof things.
First Chapter of my newest WIP: Apotheosis
Chapter One: Coral
Coral climbed to her feet at the bottom of a slick ravine. The sky overhead was purple and streaked with yellow beams of light. Not sunlight. Nothing so natural. She had been at the bottom of the ravine for hours. The walls and floor were slick with mold and slime. It offered no purchase when she tried to climb free.
She tried to wipe off her hands on her pants. The material was already caked. So was her shirt. She physically pulled the mud off of each finger. A pair of similarly caked gloves were on the valley floor, somewhere. Probably already sinking into the mud and slime.
Gravity was stronger in this terrible place. She could feel the pressure on her body. Collapsing her ribcage. Or maybe that was just the underlying panic that drove every thought in her head.
She needed to rest. Her arms and legs ached and she was covered in the slime. Selecting the least slimy spot around her, she dropped down with her knees to her chest. She almost put her hands over her face before she remembered what was on them and crossed her arms over her knees instead. Forcing out deep breaths, she rocked gently on herself.
Stop making fanfic into orginal books please.
FANFIC IS FREE AND IT SHOULD NOT BE A BASE FOR CAPITALIZATION.
This seems a strange hill to die on given that all fiction is fanfiction to some degree.
I don't want to cause trouble, or to defend the predatory publishing industry, but why are we shaming authors here? If a writer puts a lot of effort into a plot, and realizes that it can stand well on its own, why shouldn't they use it for a published book? Ditto for OC's, settings, other work put into the story?
The thing to do, it seems to me, would be to make the fanfic into original books and leave the original post up. No harm, no foul in that case, and if the story is changed enough for publishing, I don't see why not have the cake and eat it too.
A lot of fanfiction is very similar ideas, each one a little more to the left or right as the author pleases, and no one minds. I don't see why having a book based on a fanfiction and the fanfiction itself would be any different.
I love the idea of a world where no one needs money as much as the next person. But that's not our world, so I'm not going to condemn people for trying to make money from something that they put time and energy into. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I won't condemn it.
!!!!VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!
I want to clarify my point because I think it got misread entirely.
I am not shaming authors. That was never what I said.
What I am saying is that capitalizing on fanfic is a problem.
On the "turn it into an original work and keep the fanfic up" argument — I understand why people see this as a solution but it still misses the point.
When filing fanfic down into original work becomes a known pipeline the entire culture of fanfic spaces shifts. Fanfic communities become incubators for product. That changes everything about what those spaces are and what they are for.
And yes of course authors of popular fanfics want to bring their audience with them when they go commercial. That makes complete finacial sense. But I would rather they didn't. Not because I want to punish them but because the moment that pipeline becomes normalized it creates a commercial incentive that lives inside fanfic culture permanently. Every highly rated fanfic becomes a potential product. Every writer is potentially building a brand. That is not what fanfic is for.
Fanfic has always thrived because it exists outside commercial spaces. That is the unspoken agreement between fan communities and original creators. When commercialization enters — whether directly or through the file-it-down pipeline — that agreement breaks.
Ultimately authors want to take their existing audience and make money based on fanfiction which I find dangerous. The argument that all books are somehow fanfiction is one I disagree with cause there is a difference between inspiration and derivation, but that point is not relevant here because this is purely about the commercial aspect.
Beyond that commercialization brings a lot of people into fanfic spaces who may not have genuine respect for the etiquette and culture that exists there and that is not a good thing.
I think we may be imagining different things here. I was imagining taking some aspect of a fanfiction story and using it, not exploiting an audience.
I suppose I've never thought of fanfiction authors as having an "audience" that could be monetized except through ko-fi or something. That's a point I hadn't considered.
I think there's wiggle room here, though. There's nothing inherently wrong about telling people "if you like my writing, I have books." Again, publishing is a very difficult and predatory business to navigate. Social media followings are vital for indie authors, and if someone wrote a story I really liked on AO3, I'd want to at least know that there could be more in their voice out there.
As for the pipeline becoming a known thing... It's already there. We live in a post 50 Shades world. Reylo fanfiction became a best selling chemistry romance novel. There will be more and more examples as time marches forward with the internet connecting everyone to huge databases.
It feels like a balancing act to me. Like there should be a polite way to go about telling people "If you like what I write here, check out this page where my books are." Though I think I wouldn't personally enjoy attaching my nom de plume to the silliness I write on AO3, I think casting either option as back and white absolutes is a mistake.
On reflection, I think we may have been speaking past each other which colored my arguments after. I have been thinking about this and I think we have a fundamental misunderstanding at hand.
This is the original post:
Stop making fanfic into orginal books please. FANFIC IS FREE AND IT SHOULD NOT BE A BASE FOR CAPITALIZATION.
So when I read this, it sounded like "do not write books with ideas/stories/ocs that were in a fanfiction." Which read to me as unreasonable, because fanfiction authors put a lot of original work into their writing and I don't see why I shouldn't use OCs in their own stories or take the basic strokes of a plotline or a book. This is the point my original post was trying to make, and I stand by it. The work that a fanfiction author does within a fanfiction and all pieces that are not copyrighted are theirs and should be usable for other projects.
What it's become clear that you mean is "Don't advertise your commercial properties in fanfiction spaces." Which I agree with. Especially because AO3 outright bans this, which I did not know about before. And now that I've thought about it, this is probably for legal reasons, so if people do start turning this into a commercial pipeline, it would probably lead to negative consequences for everyone. Perhaps to companies having the legal ability to take down the space, which I agree should be prevented at all costs.
I was wrong out of ignorance, thank you for educating me about this topic.
I subscribe to a church and state approach for original work and fanfiction myself and it never occurred to me that fanfiction authors would try to use fanfiction spaces to advertise their original work or that it would even be an effective marketing tool. I do maintain that people should be able to link their socials to their fanfics (and if there happen to be original works on those socials, that's ancillary) but fanfiction spaces should not become advertiser pages for authors.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. @soulwriter-sp
Today is pie day and tomorrow is die day
Stop making fanfic into orginal books please.
FANFIC IS FREE AND IT SHOULD NOT BE A BASE FOR CAPITALIZATION.
This seems a strange hill to die on given that all fiction is fanfiction to some degree.
I don't want to cause trouble, or to defend the predatory publishing industry, but why are we shaming authors here? If a writer puts a lot of effort into a plot, and realizes that it can stand well on its own, why shouldn't they use it for a published book? Ditto for OC's, settings, other work put into the story?
The thing to do, it seems to me, would be to make the fanfic into original books and leave the original post up. No harm, no foul in that case, and if the story is changed enough for publishing, I don't see why not have the cake and eat it too.
A lot of fanfiction is very similar ideas, each one a little more to the left or right as the author pleases, and no one minds. I don't see why having a book based on a fanfiction and the fanfiction itself would be any different.
I love the idea of a world where no one needs money as much as the next person. But that's not our world, so I'm not going to condemn people for trying to make money from something that they put time and energy into. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I won't condemn it.
!!!!VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!
I want to clarify my point because I think it got misread entirely.
I am not shaming authors. That was never what I said.
What I am saying is that capitalizing on fanfic is a problem.
On the "turn it into an original work and keep the fanfic up" argument — I understand why people see this as a solution but it still misses the point.
When filing fanfic down into original work becomes a known pipeline the entire culture of fanfic spaces shifts. Fanfic communities become incubators for product. That changes everything about what those spaces are and what they are for.
And yes of course authors of popular fanfics want to bring their audience with them when they go commercial. That makes complete finacial sense. But I would rather they didn't. Not because I want to punish them but because the moment that pipeline becomes normalized it creates a commercial incentive that lives inside fanfic culture permanently. Every highly rated fanfic becomes a potential product. Every writer is potentially building a brand. That is not what fanfic is for.
Fanfic has always thrived because it exists outside commercial spaces. That is the unspoken agreement between fan communities and original creators. When commercialization enters — whether directly or through the file-it-down pipeline — that agreement breaks.
Ultimately authors want to take their existing audience and make money based on fanfiction which I find dangerous. The argument that all books are somehow fanfiction is one I disagree with cause there is a difference between inspiration and derivation, but that point is not relevant here because this is purely about the commercial aspect.
Beyond that commercialization brings a lot of people into fanfic spaces who may not have genuine respect for the etiquette and culture that exists there and that is not a good thing.
I think we may be imagining different things here. I was imagining taking some aspect of a fanfiction story and using it, not exploiting an audience.
I suppose I've never thought of fanfiction authors as having an "audience" that could be monetized except through ko-fi or something. That's a point I hadn't considered.
I think there's wiggle room here, though. There's nothing inherently wrong about telling people "if you like my writing, I have books." Again, publishing is a very difficult and predatory business to navigate. Social media followings are vital for indie authors, and if someone wrote a story I really liked on AO3, I'd want to at least know that there could be more in their voice out there.
As for the pipeline becoming a known thing... It's already there. We live in a post 50 Shades world. Reylo fanfiction became a best selling chemistry romance novel. There will be more and more examples as time marches forward with the internet connecting everyone to huge databases.
It feels like a balancing act to me. Like there should be a polite way to go about telling people "If you like what I write here, check out this page where my books are." Though I think I wouldn't personally enjoy attaching my nom de plume to the silliness I write on AO3, I think casting either option as back and white absolutes is a mistake.
Spring 2026 WIP round-up, pi day edition.
Placeholder title: Albert - Cozy arranged marriage romance set in a fantasy world. 118003 words. First in at least a duology. Closing on the last chapter in the next 25k words at least. I want to end a little bit after the actual wedding for this first book, to close out Albert's current arc and set him on the next phase. Not in a cliffhanger way, of course.
Untitled Anthology of Horror Short Stories: 6 stories in Alpha, ready for critique. Approximately 18000 - 24000 words total. Currently working on "The Unspeaking Eyes." Looking forward to updating this at MerMay, hope to commission some art for it and to debut the revised Mako Pup and His Little Prince.
Apotheosis - Cosmic Horror novel about a group of survivors navigating a chaotic pocket of space and solving the mystery of why they're there, who sent them, and how to get out. 13064 words currently, and working on headshots for each survivor to post with lore about the world.
Eclectus Parrots in Gouache, which I am developing a love-hate relationship with:
I have learned that Gouache is tricky, that understanding what I need to do does not mean I will be able to do it, and that I need more practice.
And that's been my 2026 so far.
Stop making fanfic into orginal books please.
FANFIC IS FREE AND IT SHOULD NOT BE A BASE FOR CAPITALIZATION.
This seems a strange hill to die on given that all fiction is fanfiction to some degree.
I don't want to cause trouble, or to defend the predatory publishing industry, but why are we shaming authors here? If a writer puts a lot of effort into a plot, and realizes that it can stand well on its own, why shouldn't they use it for a published book? Ditto for OC's, settings, other work put into the story?
The thing to do, it seems to me, would be to make the fanfic into original books and leave the original post up. No harm, no foul in that case, and if the story is changed enough for publishing, I don't see why not have the cake and eat it too.
A lot of fanfiction is very similar ideas, each one a little more to the left or right as the author pleases, and no one minds. I don't see why having a book based on a fanfiction and the fanfiction itself would be any different.
I love the idea of a world where no one needs money as much as the next person. But that's not our world, so I'm not going to condemn people for trying to make money from something that they put time and energy into. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I won't condemn it.
guys i think twitter is the real hellsite
the true hellsite ™ is-
Tumblr
Twitter/X
Both
Neither
Tumblr: hellsite (affectionate)
Twitter: hellsite (derogatory)
LinkedIn: hellsite (corporate)
I have a question about the em-dash.
So normally when I'm writing in Word, I use the hyphen key like this:
He looked - eyes flashing up at her - and raised his bow to fire.
And in Word, that automatically lengthens the hyphen and makes the space between the hyphen and the words smaller.
I was under the impression that this was actually an em-dash. But I've been told by a member of my writer's group that I should use the em-dash instead of hyphenating the clauses.
I am very confused. Do you have insight on what is/isn't a real em-dash?
no
so when you add a space after a hyphen in word, what it creates in an en dash. however it only creates this in situations when an em dash would be appropriate, just for funsies
dash: hyphenated words i.e. t-shirt
en dash: ranges i.e. 2000–2025
em dash: microsoft word — which should never be trusted for grammatical issues — likes to put en dashes where there should be em dashes
do i know this? yes. do i bother correcting the en dashes to em dashes as i'm writing? no comment
Ah, I see. So I've been using En-dashes, thinking they're Em-dashes. At least no one will mistake my work for AI.
I guess the follow-up question would be if this is a grammatical faux pas to overlook or if I should go to the effort of breaking my established habit to bow to the opinion of someone I just met two weeks ago and making writing an even more challenging endeavor than it already is.
...I will offer no further comment on what my choice will be...
I have a question about the em-dash.
So normally when I'm writing in Word, I use the hyphen key like this:
He looked - eyes flashing up at her - and raised his bow to fire.
And in Word, that automatically lengthens the hyphen and makes the space between the hyphen and the words smaller.
I was under the impression that this was actually an em-dash. But I've been told by a member of my writer's group that I should use the em-dash instead of hyphenating the clauses.
I am very confused. Do you have insight on what is/isn't a real em-dash?
no
I will never know...
So, I ran across something on a second-hand book site today...
The worst part about growing up in the age of self publishing was that 17 year old me knew about it. Little Camilla Draymarch not only knew about self-publishing, she wanted to use it.
I could make books before I knew what editing was or why people did it.
When I thought I was a prodigy writer, and everything I made was brilliant enough as it was.
Worse. I marketed them. I took them to local book festivals. I gave copies to people.
Fortunately, I woke up when I hit college and started to understand writing as a craft. I pulled them off of Lulu and made them unavailable to purchase.
I could not imagine what I had released into the world.
...Those books are on second-hand websites. People bought them and now they're selling them on. They have my pen name on them. They have the beautiful art work I commissioned for one of their covers.
My pen name is going to be associated with those cringey teenage novels forever.
What have I done.