Reblog To Make It Die Faster

8 useful websites & apps for writers

Notion

Desktop app for organizing your notes with tons of views and functions - works like a mini personal website.

Ommwriter

A peaceful writing program with focus options and ambience settings - complete with typing sound effects!

Reedsy

A massive website for writers with tools, generators, prompts, programs, tips and services.

Figma

A free-form editable and collaborative mind-map interface, for laying all your notes out visually.

Novlr

Free online writing software with goal setting and thorough tracking options, now with in-app courses as well.

Freedom

Distraction-muting app that blocks attention-sucking websites for a set period of time.

Milanote

Another visual board organizer for your notes and plans.

Wordtune

Editing app to rephrase your sentences depending on length or tone.

Do you need help getting your WIP organized?

Pick up my 3 extensive workbooks for writers, with dozens of fully-customisable templates. These are my first ever original E-books and templates available outside of my coaching programs!

The Writer’s ToolBoox contains: The Character Bible, The Plotter’s Almanac, and The World-Builder’s Chronicle

Grab it through the [link here] or below!

the-plottery.mykajabi.com

Writer's ToolBoox

The Writer's ToolBoox is a pack of 3 extensive E-books that cover the areas of: character craft, world building, and plotting. It comes with

me? i'm just a private eye trying to make a difference here in this hellscape we call a city. folks come into my office, beggin' me to track down some long forgotten shitpost. and it's my job to oblige. my name is Hellsite Detective, Tumblr Private Eye.

you lookin' for a post? whether it's a recent post, or a long forgotten cold case from a decade ago, anything goes in this business. so long as you provide me with a lead to follow, be it a quote from the post, a detailed description, or a screenshot, i'll do what i can to chase leads and track that sucker down.

for any of you saps that can't figure this one out: send in an ask requesting a post to be found, and include a quote, description of the post, or a screenshot, and i'll find it and tag you with the results

disclaimer: i'm only takin' on one case at a time. so you fellas are gonna have to wait your turn.

Ghost Trick spoiler ahead!

Heart attacks symptoms are different for women. I recently learned this. 

Remember if you’re out at a store and someone says “This is a robbery” you can say “no it’s not” and then the robber will leave because theyre a robber and this is no longer a robbery .

A curiosity test to explain some cultural context, bias, why some things go more viral than others, or simply curiosity.

(reblog if possible for more data).

Is it just me or are the new tumblr users convinced there's a penalty of some kind for using this site like it's meant to be used?

I’ve seen a lot of posts on my dash tonight about users who are threatening suicide, with other Tumblr members posting in effort to try to get ahold of them. I think you all should see this:

IF THERE IS EVER A TUMBLR USER WHO HAS POSTED A GOOD-BYE MESSAGE, SUICIDE NOTE, VIDEO, OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT, PLEASE FOLLOW THIS POST.

1. Scroll to the top of your dashboard.

2. See the circular question mark icon at the top? It’s the third one over from your home symbol. Click on that, and a screen similar to the one in the picture will come up.

3. Where you can type in questions, the box with the magnifying glass at the top, type in the word “suicide.”

4. Click on the first link that shows up. It should say, “Pass the URL of the blog on to us.”

5. Type in the user’s URL and tell Tumblr admin that the user is contemplating suicide and has posted a message indicating that they are going through with it or will be attempting. Hit send! Tumblr administration will perform a number of actions to contact the user and take the necessary steps to prevent the suicide.

TUMBLR: THIS COULD SAVE A USER’S LIFE. PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE SUICIDE THREATS.

Reblog this to keep other users aware. Suicide isn’t a joke, and neither is someone’s life. If you didn’t know this, someone else may not, either. Pass it on.

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)