#adding the tag for organization purposes on this blog | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

queermania · 1 year

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How do tags work? I'm newish to Tumblr and I don't really get the tags. Do I need to tag everything?

hello and welcome! tags serve four major purposes:

to let other people find your content: this is only applicable if you are the creator of the post, not if you reblog it. for example: if you make a post about dean you might want to add the tags "dean winchester" and "supernatural" or even "spn" so that other people who are interested in content about dean can see the post when they're searching for content on tumblr (if you want to find content and you're using desktop, you can search tumblr.com/tagged/supernatural [or whatever it is you're looking for] and you'll be able to see original posts that people tagged as "supernatural." if you're on mobile, frog speed, my friend.) also, friendly reminder not to over-tag things. if you tag a post that is just about dean with "sam winchester" "castiel" "john winchester" etc people are more likely to block you. spam tagging is really annoying.

organization on your own blog: adding tags to your posts lets you find them on your own blog later (again, this is really only useful on desktop, not mobile) and this goes for original posts and reblogged posts. for example: you may have noticed that i tag all of my posts about dean with "dw." that's the organizational tag i use for my own blog. i also have tags that probably don't mean anything to anyone else but that help me to organize certain ~genres of posts on my blog (like "hashtag family"). if you want to search your own blog or someone else's for all of the posts you/they have in a specific tag you can do that on desktop by going to blog.tumblr.com/tagged/tag. so for example if you wanted to search my blog for the dean content you would go to queermania.tumblr.com/tagged/dw

giving other people the ability to block/filter content: this is relevant for both original posts and reblogged posts. for example: someone might have followed you for doctor who content but they are not interested in seeing supernatural content. you tagging your supernatural posts with a "supernatural" tag lets them filter or blacklist it so they don't have to see it. this is also relevant for certain types of content like nsfw, body horror, etc. you may see tags like "tw body horror" or "body horror tw" or "body horror cw" or even "body horror for ts" (that one's an old relic from a time long ago when we had to use an extension called tumblr savior to filter content). content/trigger warnings are subjective. not everybody uses them. not everybody is willing to use them. it's not uncommon to ask people (politely!) to tag for something that might be upsetting to you, with the caveat that they might say no and then it's up to you to decide if you want to continue following them or not. (for example if you asked me to tag for alcohol, i would politely decline, simply because i do not think i would realistically remember to do it and i don't want to promise something i can't deliver and risk harming you.)

commentary that doesn't need to be a part of the post: you may have noticed that a lot of us put our thoughts on any given post in the tags. this is a way to leave commentary without muddying up the post. not all thoughts need to be on the post permanently. in fact, most don't haha. sometimes if you leave commentary in the tags, someone will copy and paste or screenshot them into the body of the post because they think your thoughts deserved permanent status and that other people should see them too. we like to call this getting peer reviewed because we are nothing if not a website full of nerds.

so those are the ways we use tags on this website. you can choose not to use tags at all, use them religiously, or use them only when you want. it's really up to you. you create your own experience. however, if you do opt out of tagging anything at all, people might be less likely to interact with you because it makes it harder for them to curate their own experience. but again, it's really up to you!

#replies #anonymous #tumblr

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hashtagloveloses · 2 years

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so are you back on tumblr after a while or you're new? welcome! it's a lot nicer here lately, and, shockingly enough, the website actually works a lot better too, thanks to the hard work of a bunch of very talented people. the mobile app is constantly improving, but if you're on desktop and used to use things like missing e or xkit, the latest helpful extension is XKIT REWRITTEN, which you can go download and read about at @addons that was created by @april, who worked on new xkit back in the day and now works at tumblr itself!

here's some other helpful tips to know:

PLEASE REBLOG THINGS. it's the main form of engagement here. there is no penalizing for spam interaction, most people are not looking at your blog directly, and it is the main way people find you and you find good content to follow. for original content like fanart and fanfic, it also REALLY helps people out. likes are better for like, personal posts, and for storing things for later. also, it doesn't matter if you blog is a jumble of things - it's yours, nobody cares, and that's kind of the purpose of the site

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A PROFILE PHOTO, BANNER PHOTO, AND UNIQUE URL (that isnt like a bunch of numbers or something), or else people will think you are a bot and block you. you don't have to do anything fancy, you can use the default tumblr theme on your blog itself, but just make sure you look like a real account PLEASE

DO NOT CENSOR WORDS. much like on twitter, if you censor a word for a trigger, it will do the opposite of what you want - people's blacklist and mute functions won't work if the word isn't spelled out in the tags or the text of the post. also there isn't post suppression here.

Don't like your dashboard? Getting bored? Feel like your community is getting annoying? JUST FOLLOW MORE PEOPLE (and maybe unfollow some. a block and an unfollow are always ok). nobody cares, or can see about your follow ratio, and it'll help your dashboard feel more lively (you'll also not give as much of a shit about petty dramas). the follow limit is 5000 last i checked

keep your comments to the tags (unless it's like....really funny or adding something good? use your best judgement). the tags are helpful for subject matter, but you should also use them to talk as like side commentary!

Close your ask box to anons and don't share personal information if you don't want to. You are under no obligation to share your name, age, diagnoses, history, location, face, and you SHOULDN'T. and the ask box is great but if it gets overwhelming just close it. If you're a minor, maybe say somewhere that you're a minor, but that's it. (that goes for any social media site)

MAKE YOUR LIKES AND FOLLOWS PRIVATE. for the love of god. just protect yourself.

just like any social media site - be critical about the things people claim are true on here. screenshots, takes, facts, can be skewed and you should do extra research before believing anything just because somebody said it on tumblr dot com

DON'T GET INTO QUEER OR NEURODIVERGENT LABEL IDENTITY DISCOURSE. whether you are young or old, on tumblr or another site, things will just get confusing and weird. if you learn something here that makes you feel affirmed, great! but also please make sure your interaction with fellow queers (or other neurodivergent people) is not limited to just this site. get involved with a local or school lgbtq center if you can, get to know queer people in your life or queer spaces if you can. (and if you can't - go read about queer history somewhere other than tumblr. do research, watch movies and documentaries. look into disability organizing and history outside this hellsite). Label discourse is also how many unknowing queers and others get recruited to T*RFy shit unknowingly so....be careful out there.

Don't get guilted into things on your dashboard. You should definitely care about the things people are talking about, but you don't have to know about every ill happening in the world at once to be a good person. If you're feeling lost, or hopeless and endlessly scrolling or feel guilted by people online, pick ONE thing you can do, for people in your local community, and then just make a reasonable effort to stay informed otherwise.

create an original tag for your "original" posts, aka the posts you make that aren't reblogs, so you can look at them later

explore the QUEUE FUNCTION! you don't have to use it, nobody cares if you reblog spam, but sometimes it's fun!

Don't know who to follow? Go follow the tags of things you like (TV shows, movies, musicians, aesthetics, whatever!), and suggested posts will pop up on your feed, or you can go through the tag and follow some people who look interesting

#tumblr tips #tumblr #twitter exodus #original post

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empty-pools-vacant-alleyways · 3 months

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Hello! This is @mohmadiwas fundraiser to flee from Gaza. If you have anything to donate, please consider doing that. Any amount you can give will help. If you cannot donate, please share this with someone who can or reblog so more people will see it. Thank you so much!

Also: this is a repost because the first time I posted this fundraiser, I added a bunch of unrelated tags in hopes of garnering more attention. I was then informed that doing so is against Tumblr guidelines and might get me reported. If anyone has any tips for getting more engagement on important posts such as these, please share them. Thank you.

UPDATE: Added a tag unrelated to this post but related to my blog because of the lack of interaction. Please note that the My Chemical Romance tag is for attention purposes only and is not related to this post at all. Thank you.

#free palestine #palestine #gaza #free gaza #go fund me #donate if you can #donations needed #please share #please reblog #please boost #please interact #very important post #all eyes on rafah #my chemical romance

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trekkie-lkm-archive · 9 months

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Kink meme archiving project: Star Trek

Hello! I've started a personal project in 2024 to archive the old kink memes on livejournal for my favourite show: Star Trek. I'll be working my way through them all slowly- so while I'm starting with the reboot one (which is a huge undertaking! will definitely take me a while) this blog will go through every single one I can find. This is not to repost fictions, you will not find actual works posted here just links to the original threads I find them on with additional links whenever possible to authors personal livejournals and other places they may have posted it, as well as a final link to where I am archiving said fics via the wayback machine-- Which seems to be as screenshots of the kink page as otherwise the comments (where the fics are) does not appear so please forgive any clunky/outdated appearances

This is not an ask blog, a rec blog, or anything else of the sort. It is purely for archival purposes to have everything located in one place-even then it is mainly to be used as a reference point for myself with my work with the wayback machine. As such asks will never be open and besides this I will not be posting anything besides links.

As it is not a rec blog or anything of the sort I will not be vetting the fics- by this I mean I will not be leaving anything (purposefully) undocumented in regards to these fics, regardless of how I or anyone else may feel about their subject matter--it is a Kink Meme and all possible warnings apply. I will be adding verbatim how the original prompts listed its kinks/warning and if an author added any warnings to the very start of the fic I will do my best to add them as well. But if you see a post and decide to read the fic it contains please do your own research if you know certain content upsets you.

I will not be saving unfilled prompts but the content that is there may not be complete either, basically as long as some sort of fill is there and available I will be posting it--If there claims to be a fic but I have no way to access it it will be made into a special post with screenshots and asks for help in regards to original content if I can not find it on any other archive-- a long shot but maybe someone knows someone who has screenshots or was the original author who can add a link to where they have saved their work!

All of this to say, while tumblr is questionable my posts may or may not end up in the tags, so I hope this pinned post is a useful as a sort of FAQ and that I don't get reported for spam or anything

projects like this are a big undertaking, and it's just me doing this, I can't be sure how fast or if at all I will complete this but I believe it's important to preserve fandom history, the kink memes are a big part of my fandom experience, and I've been so so happy to see them start to make a reappearance as 'prompt memes' on tumblr and A03, as the kink memes on livejournal are over a decade old there's bound to be TONS of fans who have never experienced them and find livejournal confusing to navigate, I'm hoping this inspires people to give older fics a try, give lots of love to those fic writers who might come across this blog, and even gives a boost to the current prompt meme revivals!

While asks are off, if you need to contact me you can reply to this post, I'm hesitant to give out my personal tumblr in case the content causes fandom wank--the internet is a very different place than it was a decade ago and terminology and kink that was commonplace in those circles may be harshly met now but we will see how it goes!

ALSO!!! if at any point in the future you see this and think this would be a good idea for other fandoms ( I know Glee has a fucking HUGE kink meme presence for example) you can just straight up go ahead and do it! no need to reinvent the wheel or ask permission if you like how I organized the info you can have the blue print-- I think the important part is archiving on the wayback machine. Think of how much past fandom history has been lost, and how much will be lost once old giants like livejournal and ff.net go down-- hell I think I even use to read fics on sites like quizzila at one point, gone now, and all the other places that existed like geocities, MAILING LISTS!! EMAIL AND GOOD OLD POSTAGE!

While A03 is doing amazing at archiving, places like the kink memes are hidden gems, so many fics are just small bits of love that don't get posted anywhere else and it's so sad to think about what will be lost.

Edit 11/1/24

I think I'm making steady progress! I know its going to be a slug getting through it all, just this one kink meme has 14 parts to it with like an average of 8000 comments each which could be like . . . at least a thousand or a good few hundred fics in each (would it be an 8:1 ratio??? i feel like that's too high) either way combined i'm looking at a good few thousand fics for ONE kink meme and there's TONS out there-- and if i manage to get through all of them before LJ gets shut down (this could very well take me years) then there's all the communities they get cross posted in who have their own fandom events and a whole bunch of fics to maybe also archive. Or just all the authors i'm finding who have other fics on their Journals who haven't been active in years! But I can't think that far ahead or I get overwhelmed, this is at its core a kink meme archive.

I've sorted out an issue I've had with a handful of fics where the adult warning archives instead of the fic. as far as i can tell there's no solution through it using the main archive (there is with other sites, but LJ is a special old girl) but there's a different archive I can use-though i cant seem to then archive THAT on the main site . . . so that's still a problem, but I've tagged those fics 'other archive' to come back to at a later date.

I have a hard time trying to locate other places people may have posted their fics if they don't leave me very obvious bread crumbs so if you (yes, YOU, the person reading this sometime in the future) see a writer you recognize you're more than welcome to tag them or add additional author info in a reblog or just whisper in the tags or reply (if this blog is still active mystery person reading this a decade in the future)

either way, i'm hoping to get through this particular kink meme by the end of the year. I know it's only 11 days into the new year but i'm really trying to pace myself so I don't burn out. I'm almost positive I can get through the first part this month so an average of one a month shouldn't be impossible (so average like a page and a half a day, which is still like 18 fics/per day)

24/1 lmao ok so I started Vyvanse, and I hyperfocused and basically archived 163 fics in the last 24 hours and finished the first of fourteen sections of the first kink meme on my list-- which is golden! Awesome! Spectacular! 410 fics in just that first part,( they tapered off from an average of 11 fics per page to 8 basically) I'm doing amazing! And--this is looking way to far ahead-- but I like to think now that I'm in a solid rhythm (of how to archive not how to pace myself) once all the kink memes are done I'll start a whole new blog and archive all the other trek comms I can find, because theres a lot of crossposting going on and theres just so many comms with their own special events and things that have been archived but on things like delicious which is gone or in blogs that have been deleted as a whole. like st-anon! But anyway I'm having a lot of fun! And I'm probably not gonna look at this blog for a week but I've got days in the bank baby!

19/2 I've reached part 3!!!! I'm right on track where I want to be mid february, there was a small decrease in the number of fics in #2 but a lot more than going through page by page made it seem-- a common theme I've noticed is misplaced comment fics, which is so fascinating! It's so easy to misplace your comment on threads, and instead of hostility or mod culling it's treated with comradery (get it?) and kindness. I'm still looking at around several thousand individual fics just for this kinkmeme and after this one there's so many more, one is already lost to a purge but there's at least one other huge one. My queue ran out the other day because I was dealing with a dead rat somewhere in my kitchen walls, very distressing, and a bit embarrassing cause this blog doubled its following in the last few days, and it definitely feels a bit strange to know that this project is getting attention. Feels a bit like I'm sitting on my bed, back to the window, and every time I peer around my shoulder I see more people peering down at what I'm doing. Which I WANT people to be able to do cause that's the whole reason I'm doing this but it's like a 'damn wish I'd thought to put pants on' kinda vibe. I don't feel very professional. But still . . . we persevere!!!

22/2 horrific news. Just realised I wasn’t counting the posts with multiple fics . . . As multiple fics. So even the posts with five individual fics. Have only counted as one in my count. The absolute buffoonery. The agonising idea of having to individually check each post. The massive urge to quit and sulk for five years. But still. . . We persevere. So I need to come back to stixk 1 & 2 and recount. But from the start of 3 we’re on track.

#star trek #archiving #kink memes #livejournal

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autumnslance · 1 year

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Search, Tags, and Tumblr

Tumblr's search functions are notoriously weird, but there's a few common things to know about how it works in conjunction with Tagging. First things first:

-Tags are for searching but also personal blog organization as desired. This is why some folks have weird/funny personal use tags. Tags can use dashes and spaces, but not regular double quote marks ("), though single marks are fine (').

-Tag for what's in the post; adding other, unrelated tags "for visibility" is against Tumblr's TOS and gets you reported for Spam!

Example: if you make a post for your new Clive Rosfield screenshots, make sure you're only tagging terms relevant to Final Fantasy XVI and Clive Rosfield (and any personal organizing tags like "screenshots"); don't add tags like "Star Wars" and "SpongeBob", as Clive has nothing to do with those!

-Tag without censoring words! We use filters/blacklists here to avoid things we don't want to see. Can also work for words in the body of a post. There's no rules here against using "kill" or "death" or other terms defining common human experiences determined "too negative/dangerous" on other sites (stay civil to each other).

-If you do alt-spell things, it's only in the body of a post and usually when it's dislike of a fandom thing as a courtesy to those enjoyers. If I make a shipping post and say, for example, "I can't stand R3y|o", that's when I want to use weird spelling and symbols--and no common tags for that fandom! If you do use tags for organizing, keep it to things like "#anti (thing) or "#(thing) critical", again spelled correctly for others' blacklisting purposes and to keep it out of the Reylo Search and Tags so those fans can enjoy their ship without seeing negativity. Because...

-General Search pulls from Tags and Also terms found in the body of a post. If I just put "Thancred" in the Search bar at the top of the page, it'll show me any and all posts with "Thancred" in them, including 1) if the name is in the body of the post, 2) if the name is in a tag that's a sentence/includes other words, and 3) even if not tagged for Thancred.

This caused some wank a couple years back for certain fans when someone tagged a lascivious picture set with what they knew was a triggery NOTP for many...but they also put the characters' names in the post body, not realizing simply searching for either of those characters would pull it up (They also, IMO, should have put the images under a Read More to be doubly safe, for themselves and for others they knew might be upset stumbling onto said images, but the crux was not realizing how Tumblr Search worked).

-Tag Search specifically pulls from the tags; per Tumblr's info pages, the first 20 tags (out of 30 total allowed) now will show up in search. Common, consistent tags first are good for visibility. You can also Follow tags you want to keep track of; there's even a tab on your Dash for it.

-Reblogs do not show up in the searches, even with additions and new notes. However, a blacklist filter will catch tags put on the original post, even if the reblogger doesn't add it when it ends up on your Dash.

-You can also blacklist blog names/URLs. Think of it like Twitter's muting rather than a full block (though one can do that too, and should as needed).

Example: someone following Seanan McGuire doesn't like frogs, but she reblogs a lot of frogs. The follower blocked and blacklisted the blogs she often reblogs frogs from to minimize the number of frogs they see while still following a favorite author for her book info.

-If people ask you to tag a thing cuz it's a squick or full-on trigger, you can just do it, or you can politely say no; that's valid. It's up to that person then to decide if they want to blacklist or unfollow or block or what. Just be civil either and both ways.

In summary: if you're talking about bunnies cuz you took pictures at the local farm show, just write "bunnies" normally in the body and/or tags of the post, so anyone with "bunnies" blacklisted can avoid it--and folks who want to see cute pics of bunnies can find it!

Even if you use proper tags, or no tags, or only use alternate spellings in the post body to keep things out of the tags/searches, consider still using a Read More as a last line of courtesy to any followers or random folks you don't want to catch in the crossfire. Also consider hiding your blog from Search results, and/or Private posts.

Tumblr's Help Center (On Desktop browser, go to the "About" link, and then the "Resources" menu; on Mobile App, go to Account settings, General settings, scroll down to "Help" under "Account") has further info about Searches and Tagging (and everything else!), and as that info changes, it's a good idea to keep track of those page updates, as well as the @changes blog to keep track of new updates, bugs, recent fixes, and upcoming info.

#Tumblr #Tags #Search #Blogging #How To #Tutorial

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solanj · 5 months

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Art-only side blog

Hey! I know that my posting habits are quite... hazardous And while I do have an art tag, interacting with my blog for art purposes is probably tedious

So I made an art-only blog here: https://solanj-t.tumblr.com/ I tried to make tags there nice and organized so everything is easily find-able or block-able, and added at least some short descriptions of my OCs to the navigation page.

Hope it will be comfortable enough to use, feel free to message me with any suggestions!

It has only a few posts for now since I put almost everything in the queue. The art will be posted twice a day, starting with my very, very old pieces (2016, I think) and slowly catching up to new ones. I thought that it might be fun to see my change of interests and artistic growth over time like that, even if I shudder seeing some of my older art. If that seems fun to you too - may be give it a follow <3 Otherwise I will make another post once all the art had been reblogged there (should take a couple of months or so) and it's fully ready and up-to-date. And just in case: literally nothing will change for my main blog, all the new art will be in here too. My random reblogging sprees are here to stay as well - I'm sorry for that but only a little bit.

Also I love you all, just in case you didn't know <3 Thanks for putting up with me!

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fizzingwizard · 4 months

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There have been a number of improvements on Tumblr I've wished for over the years, such as

being able to pick which blog I want to post to from the bottom of the post, instead of constantly having to scroll back to the top (since posts would automatically jump to the bottom where tags etc are)

ability to delete reblog chains in your own reblog

even though I still complain about it, For You is a little better - at least I don't get recommended my own posts anymore.

some improvements to photos. some is better than none hehe

which is great. and i am hopeful for the new communities feature. i really don't know how it's gonna look on tumblr, but I do like the idea, and think it'll be fun and maybe finally get people more interactive with each other, instead of running off with their tumblr friends to interact on discord. fingers crossed

NOW my number one, biggest ask for tumblr, number one on my wishlist, something I've wanted since I started using tumblr back in uhhh - *cough*whisper* 2012 *cough* - is a better way to organize Likes!!!!!

Because it is and has always been an absolute mess. You like a thing, it gets stored in your likes, and then you never see it again because it gets buried so deep and there's no way to search for it except to page back endlessly till you find it.

Idk about you guys, but it often happens for me that if I reblog a post from my likes, the page sometimes gets stuck buffering and I have to refresh it. And if I refresh, I lose my place in the stored likes. And I have to start all over again. So I try to only open posts in a new tab before rebogging them... but fingers slip, you hit the space bar by accident *sigh*... innumerable things make trying to speed through 12 years of likes absolutely impossible.

The main changes I'd love to see to Likes:

pagination, same as on blogs, so if you lose your place you can just go back to the page you were on instead of starting off from square one for the nth time

a search feature!! that would be amazing. searchable tags or searchable text

or how about the ability to tag likes when you like them, so you can just click a tag from your list and easily find posts you filed under that category for later?

heck even the ability to search through likes by the year they were added to your likes would be a help... at least to long-time users like me

honestly I don't need all of theses, i'd be happy just with the pagination. but I really really would love to see some changes. i don't reblog everything I like at once for a lot of reasons, and I have tried the queue, but I had issues with the queue dropping posts and me not knowing what ones they were, and also I just plain don't like it. If I post a thing I want to see it immediately. I uses a "queue" tag and still offended myself when posts I'd queued on purpose showed up and I'd forgotten about it till I saw the tag xP Yes, that's my own stupidity, but a better system for likes would definitely help my experience, and be overall useful to everyone I think.

#tumblr #fizz talks into the void har har

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monstersdownthepath · 1 year

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Various dream beasties

So about 4 or so days ago, I found out by complete accident checking the notes for my main blog (which I try my best to keep separate from this one; do not ask for it. if you find it you find it) that looking at an old post of yours will show you similar posts you made from around the same time. Because of that, I re-discovered the old tag I used to chronicle the strange dreams I had, especially when I dreamed up particularly odd beasts. Some I’ve already turned into existing concepts, but some I had completely forgotten about!

Below the cut is a few I found that I still like, even after all these years and separated by whatever context I was thinking of at the time. Most of them I don’t really have plans or even a solid concept for, but if enough interest is shown in them, I may dust them off and turn them into something.

THE ORO

One of the strangest. According to the post, the dream was centered on an elaborate children’s school play in which the POV character was tasked with guarding some form of machine from various ‘attackers.’ Eventually, the task was failed as the ‘saboteurs’ broke the machine, causing an announcer to read off the names of everyone who was now ‘forfeit’ because the Oro would now come to ‘collect its due.’

An ominous rhyme was spoken that I wrote down: “The Oro is hunger, the Oro is hate, the Oro’s the end to the souls that it ate” as little fabric ‘souls’ were taken from various plants in the audience, causing them to dramatically fall over as the ‘souls’ were sucked into a gigantic, elaborate puppet of a grub-like creature with four tiny, tentacular arms and a sheet with alien runes draped over its ‘face.’

Eventually, though, the ‘camera’ zoomed out and revealed the entire school has been sealed from outside contact by heavy iron doors. The words “ORO DRILL IN PROGRESS! DO NOT ENTER!” are over every door and window. In the distance, the real Oro approaches at a glacial pace. Its body is slug-like, made up of sagging pallid flesh that’s draped with scraps of white or pale cloth. Despite its appearance, it’s bone dry. It has four rubbery limbs on its front that waver like insect antennae, and its body terminates in a ‘head’ that’s a round, white ovoid pushed into its front, like a chicken egg into clay. It has no face, but it has the impression of one on the paper and cloth scraps draped across its head, which are all scrawled with the same alien runes as its play version.

The dream ended before the Oro reached the building, but people began screaming from within as it drew closer, as though they could sense it nearby without being able to see it. Waking-me added on an extra bit of whimsy; the puppet version had a balloon that drifted over it that the play-souls ended up in, so the real Oro had a balloon of unnaturally dry, latex-like mucus that it blew from an orifice on its back, in which it would contain the souls it drained from its victims via doing... something. It’s never said how or why the Oro does what it does, or even if it really eats the souls or merely stores them for some dark purpose.

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IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN

A shorter post, but no less strange. The stars of the dream were zombies choked with plantlife; vines and leaves sprouted from under their skin and pulled them along, colorful flowers growing without rhyme or reason across their body, which acted as their sensory organs. Nothing in the dream told of how the infection started, was spread, or how far into the infestation the world was. What was the focus was the sounds the plant-zombies were making: “It’s going to happen.”

No groaning, no moaning, no sentence fragments. A perfectly audible, understandable sentence repeated ad infinium by every undead within earshot of a living person: “It’s going to happen.”

The ‘heroes’ of the dream dismembered dozens of them before locking their remains in a warehouse before becoming distracted by a different plotline, but eventually the dream came back to that very same warehouse, now overgrown with unnaturally verdant plantlife. The foundation was creaking and groaning, and eventually human limbs poked through the tangles to force open windows and the doors of the warehouse. Just before the dream ended, though, the POV apparently zoomed in on one of the windows, where a pair of glowing green eyes could be seen in the darkness between the vines, and the line was repeated just before the dream switched entirely: “It’s going to happen.”

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“THE MENTOR”

TW for self harm, drug overdoses, general themes of drug use, and eye horror.

This one was one of the longest posts in the tag, and followed the exploits of a grizzled noir detective--”the most stereotypical one you could envision,” apparently--investigating a bizarre series of murders in which the victims all appeared to be overdosed on a drug that defies being analyzed. They know it’s a string of murders and not just a rash of unfortunate circumstances, because each victim’s eyes are missing, removed with the precision of a surgeon.

Without going too much into needless detail (the post is extremely long; i’m surprised i never did anything with it), there are some breaks in the case: there’s a woman who claims to be on the mystery drug, and even managed to steal a sample of it from ‘the Mentor’ before she escaped it. She can’t elaborate on who or what the Mentor is, only that she refuses to be alone so it cannot find her. Thanks to her unfortunate help, it’s revealed that the drug supercharges the victim’s senses; she can see, hear, feel, taste, etc “everything” according to her, to the point it’s debilitating, painful, and completely overwhelming. Had she not gotten to the detective when she did, there was a chance her brain would have simply burned out from the overstimulation. Even though they have a sample of the substance, the detective’s assistants have a hard time analyzing it for reasons that aren’t explained.

The unfortunate victim is placed into sensory deprivation until the drug works its way out of her system, but not before she states where she got the supply. The entire time, by the way, the detective has apparently been seeing flashes of glowing red eyes on various rooftops, down alleys, and around corners, so he tells everyone in his lab to be on guard as he heads out to find the dealer. The dealer is a hulk of a man run through by countless sharp implements, eager to tell the detective how the drug lets him “really feel,” and how eager he is to “experience” the detective’s violence. A massive struggle ensues where the hulking man reveals he’s practically superhuman, shrugging off almost everything done to him even when the wound logically should have killed him (a knife in the heart, mainly). Soon, though, it’s shown that for all his toughness, he can’t resist the loss of blood and the damage from his own broken bones; he lasts far longer than he should, to a supernatural degree, but eventually he’s beaten.

Before he dies, he reveals he’s not the Mentor, but “you shouldn’t bother looking for the Mentor, it’s already looking for you.” God, two paragraphs ago I said ‘without going into needless detail’ didn’t I? I’m going to skip some more stuff now; if you want the full story, I’ll straight up copypaste it. The Mentor is eventually revealed to be a humanoid entity in a trenchcoat and wearing some sort of latex or rubber clothing over most of its body, with a gas-mask over its face that has glowing red eyes. It’s only when the detective stabs the Mentor that he finds out it’s not at all human; it’s latex, glass, plastic, and metal all the way down, its body surging with a purified and extremely potent version of the drug it’s been dealing. Inside glass canisters in its chest, dozens upon dozens of eyes, all taken from its victims.

The Mentor’s body stretches and deforms with the sounds of creaking metal and grinding glass as it fights the detective, its gas-mask-like face gradually deforming into the head of a plastic mosquito, mouth dripping with its drug. It scores a blow on the detective, and as his senses sharpen from the powerful dose, he looks at it and says “oh. is that what you really look like?” which, for some reason, causes the abomination to recoil. He continues, madness in his eyes: “You helped them see the real world but hated what they saw in you. You’re afraid they’ll know what you are.”

Whatever this means, the Mentor shrieks mechanically in some sort of rage, which awakens every OD victim as a zombified husk. This plotline is apparently abandoned by the dream, as nothing comes of it, but it’s important to note anyway. The Mentor and the detective have one final, climactic battle, but he’s no match for the inhuman creature and is eventually overcome; one of his eyes is stolen, the other destroyed by its proboscis. However, backup arrives and chases it off before it can kill them, and though it escapes, the dream ends on a somewhat positive note because the pure sample of the drug from the detective’s wounds lets the police lab synthesize an antidote for it, saving the detective’s life and potentially the lives of any of its future victims.

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THE THREE DEVILS

Simpler, because this was a daydream that never ended up getting used. There were three entities, all with concealing robes over their bodies that shrouded everything about them. Even their hoods fell over their heads so their faces, if they had them, couldn’t be seen.

All three of them are powerful figures that grant people’s wishes. They each can grant just about any wish, but each of them has a different specialty, a type of wish they are drawn to more than any other. While at first they seem to act altruistically, anyone that calls on them more than once begins to see the mounting price of their work–the more wishes they grant, the more chaotic and unstable the world gets, and the one type of wish they cannot grant are wishes to travel through or alter time to rectify one’s mistakes. The other type of wish they will not grant is a wish that directly undoes a different wish, which would eventually cause a horrid breakdown of the very laws of physics, were it not for the repeated “weakness” they possessed in that they can be tricked into indirectly undoing wishes.

I called them “devils” but in Pathfinder terms, they work more like daemons. They want reality to collapse and are willing to unhinge it as much as they can by gifting mortals wishes and then twisting them into unraveling the world.

The Sodden Devil is dressed in moldering grey-green, it’s robes thoroughly soaked and so heavy that it is forced to hunch, and carries a thick driftwood cane to lean on. It specializes in granting wishes that would directly benefit others, especially ones that result in one or more lives being saved, either immediately or over the long-term. Of the three, the Sodden Devil possesses the most foresight, which borderlines flat-out omniscience. It can always tell when one of its wishes will have a “big payoff,” even thousands of years in the future.

The Ashen Devil is dressed in a blackened, ash-stained robe, smoke constantly wafting from its “feet” and trailing from its “hands” as it moves its arms, the hems of its robe burning almost constantly but never shrinking down. The Ashen Devil specializes in wishes that would quickly cause vast amounts of change on scales both great and small. It snorts at the ideas of balance and order, often dressing up its opinion as a dislike of “stagnation” and the decay that complacency and unchanging laws eventually cause. Of the three, the Ashen Devil is the least subtle but perhaps the most powerful, it’s wishes manifesting explosively (in one fashion or another), not only responsible for numerous natural disasters, but some say that it is also responsible for almost every social upheaval in history, either directly or indirectly. Of the three, the Ashen Devil could use the biggest rework, but I’m not sure what I could rework it to.

The Devil in Red is the tallest of the three, towering over its brethren and most mortals. It dresses in fine red robes and decorates itself with lavish jewelry, and it manipulates items and beings with rope-like mists of perfume that waft from it rather than any physical limb. It specializes in wishes that are entirely selfish and self-serving, benefiting the wisher and very few–if any–others. As such, the Devil in Red is the “most popular” of the three, seeing the most summons by the greedy and the desperate; the other two usually must seek out patrons to offer their power, but the Devil in Red is called directly more often than not. It revels in this attention and in the slow, mounting discord that it’s work causes as people wish for things that put greater and greater strain on reality.

I could potentially make a Daemon Harbinger out of these three; harbingers of wishes gone wrong and deals having unforeseen consequences. Sacred animal? Monkeys. ... actually, y’know, I could rework them a little further for more irony...

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THE TALENT SCOUT

This is the one that inspired me to make this post, despite the difficulty one would experience trying to fit it into the Pathfinder setting. I find the creature’s design and modus operandi too fascinating not to share, and I’m surprised I never did anything with the concept! It fits well into a more modern setting; possibly Starfinder, a modern-day PF setting, or the setting of a different TTRPG such as Monster of the Week, or one of the many World of Darkness modules.

The Talent Scout is a hunched figure that dresses in a shabby tan trench coat (the second trenchcoat monster from my dreams, and certainly not the last) and a wide-brimmed hat (the Mentor also had one, natch) that cast a shadow over its face. Where that face should be was a giant camera lens, but in the dream the rest of its head was never seen, so I assume it’s only the camera lens. The rest of its body, however, was flesh and blood. In fact, it had a cluster of eyes of varying sizes embedded in each of its palms that it used to peer around corners or obstacles on the lookout for its next “star.” Anyone it snapshotted with its camera eye became cursed.

Each night, a cursed victim would dream they were on a movie set, being forced to act in a film. The conditions would steadily worsen over time, with the victim eventually gaining no rest as they slept due to the poor quality of care they got from the unseen director, awakening ragged, exhausted, and eventually even bearing injuries they sustained while ‘on set.’ Eventually, after about a year, the victim would vanish completely in their sleep. Across the world, new VHSs or DVDs would appear in stores, flea markets, yard sales, packed in Redboxes, and the like.

The movies on the VHS/DVD were generally low-quality, mediocre horror films starring the victim (or victims on some occasions), though the special effects detailing the victim’s injuries were frighteningly realistic– because they were real. The movies usually ended with the victim’s horrid demise at the hands of a monster, a criminal, or a natural disaster, but even in the cases where they didn’t die, they were left in a situation in which their survival was not likely. In any case, the victims are never seen again once they vanish, and there was seemingly no way to rescue them from their fate, as destroying the medium they were held on just caused a new one to appear elsewhere the next time the Talent Scout was in the area.

#original concepts

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