#dreamwidth help

[bisexualbaker]

Let me tell you about Dreamwidth

Here's the thing. Dreamwidth is not Tumblr. It will never be Tumblr. Whether you consider that a good or a bad thing is up to you; I mostly consider it just a thing.

There are ways you can make your Dreamwidth experience visually more like Tumblr and/or Discord; @sunlit-skycat did a wonderful breakdown of that process for anyone who wants to learn how.

Dreamwidth does not have a native reblogging feature, though there's a workaround you can learn how to use (brought to you by some of the same people who brought you AO3, even).

There are guides out there for getting used to Dreamwidth as a Tumblr user (including the not-currently-updating @dreamwidth-help), whether you plan to keep using Tumblr or not, and for how to connect to people on Tumblr and find communities for shared interests (shameless self-plug).

But overall, Dreamwidth is simply more work than Tumblr. If you spent regular time on LiveJournal, whether running your own account(s) or just lurking, the setup will be familiar; but for people who got into the internet more in the past ten years or so, it's going to be a bit challenging!

If you're willing to put in the work, though—and there are lots of people who are happy to help with that, including on Dreamwidth itself—it can be very worth it.

[bisexualbaker]

This article is pretty LJ-centric, since it was written at a time when LJ was making some particularly nasty changes and Dreamwidth was one of the more familiar options around; however, the advice is still solid and should work pretty well regardless of what platform you're moving from. Still worth a look.

A look into how to transition to Dreamwidth.

[chronurgy]

I don't necessarily think that tumblr is going to go down in the next month or anything, but the layoffs are just more evidence of this site's long slow march to shutdown. I don't think it will be sudden (though the possibility that the site goes offline and the few people left lack the ability to get it back up exists) but I do think it's coming.

Obviously this place sucks, they're keeping me in the basement, etc etc. But also there's no other social media I've really been able to make work for me the way I've made tumblr work. I don't really know where I would go next (though I'd like to go somewhere, I think, since I do genuinely enjoy being weird on the internet with you all). Reddit is falling apart and not really comparable so that's a no, bluesky maybe? Except that's more of a Twitter clone and I've never particularly been interested in that. On the other hand, beggars can't be choosers so maybe I've just gotta suck it up. On a third hand (don't ask where I got it), fandom is very much about network effects so where I go is probably dependent on where everyone else goes and I don't think people know that yet and probably can't know that until the final shoe drops.

Discord clearly isn't a proper replacement, but I can give that out to find out where people are going. I have a dreamwidth with one post lol, that's another place I can be found if you want to find me. I dunno. I guess I need to start looking at other options.

[rosemirmir]

The Abyssalis Sisters

[fourfeetteninches]

in 2025 i am finally committing to leaving as much social media as possible (said in the tone of someone who understands it is necessary in the 21st century) and the sheer joy i feel at the thought of it tells me this is a good idea

[bisexualbaker]

I highly recommend checking out the community justcreate on Dreamwidth. There's weekly check-in posts where the entire point is to talk about what things you're working on or have created recently (where "create" can include "I created some clean laundry" as one not-typically-art example). There tends to be at least a little bit of conversation there every week, and it can be a good place for people who are unused to the structure to dip their toes in, so to speak. Very friendly, very accommodating, very open about what exactly counts as created.

fictional_fans is also good for discussion, but less reliably so, IMO. Still, if you poke around it for a while, you can probably get a decent idea of what sort of posts invite more discussion, etc.

Those are the best two I can recommend for actual discussions off the top of my head, but I'll try and keep an eye out for others. And I'm usually pretty good about responding to comments if you want to check out my account, though sometimes I also run out of spoons. My recent focus has mostly been on the custom mood theme I'm making.

Re: Dreamwidth.

Recently I've gotten back to it, even if except for a couple of communities I lurk I've yet to find my "circle" of people to interact with. The biggest problem, obviously, is that there doesn't seem to be people on there—but when there are, it feels like all the posts are... post-only? Like comments are unwelcome, at the very least on platform.

Granted, most people I've seen end up using DW as an archive for fan translations and metas, or maybe like a type of personal log to update people of what they've been reading/writing. But when it comes to discussions, it's like they aren't wanted. Even in posts that do raise questions to the reader, if you do comment it feels like intruding, and the comments you receive often confirm it.

I wanted to ask if I've just been unlucky with the people I've come across, or if you think that maybe the culture on DW has changed since it has become an appendage of other websites (like it happens for fan tls, posted on DW for reading comfort but usually discussed on Twitter), or again if maybe the culture has always been like this.

I got into fandom when the LJ era had already been dying, but most importantly I got into fandom through non-English communities so I never got to experience what it was like to use LJ or DW during their "golden age". I'm wondering now if the type of communities back then were more of a "your post inspired my post, but I won't comment"—even if that seems weird to me because I do look through lots of archives and I can see that many posts did have interesting discussions in the comments! So maybe it is really just the current use of Dreamwidth that is making finding a community of people difficult.

--

I think people remember some particularly good and active parts of LJ... but also the blogs of people who did like discussion.

I like discussion. There is no reason that people like that can't continue to be open to it on whatever platform they choose, including DW.

But I have noticed that a lot of people who claim to miss LJ aren't actually all that friendly to randos showing up to comment or can't handle comments that even mildly disagree. The thing they remember liking was either something other people fostered or is something they're no longer able to muster the energy and emotional space for.

That said, the main issue with DW is simply that there aren't enough people there. If you get unlucky now, that person who snapped at you for commenting is a significant part of who's posting. If you got unlucky on LJ, there were shittons of other active people around in every fandom of the day.

[lady-lazarus-13]

Is there a Garashir community on dreamwidth?

[bisexualbaker]

Whew! I'm glad you've got things handled, because journal customization is definitely not one of my areas of expertise 😅 I tend to pick a default theme and mostly stick with it, which is why I was so grateful for @sunlit-skycat's help on that matter. (I'm sure you have this link already, but I'm trying to be in the habit of providing relevant links whenever I talk about Dreamwidth stuff, in case someone new comes across it.)

And yes, Squidge is one of the options I've heard about for image hosting! I have yet to hear anything bad about Squidge in general, and am optimistic about its growing presence in fandom.

Image hosting on Dreamwidth does exist, but it's pretty non-intuitive if you're used to image hosting on Tumblr and a lot of other newer websites. It's probably not that different from hosting images on Squidge and posting them to Dreamwidth, but I don't have a Squidge account myself (yet) and so can't actually compare. And if Squidge has a higher hosting limit, all the better!

Anyway, my offer stands if you run across something you need help with, and goes for pretty much anyone! I certainly can't help with everything, but I'm more than happy to at least try and point people in the right direction.

Hello! Sorry to bother you, but I saw your tags on one of my Dreamwidth posts, and I wanted to know if you'd like any help? It's definitely a learning curve if you're used to newer web stuff, and I want to help flatten that out for anyone I can. If you're up to it, you can also post questions at Dreamwidth communities like "newcomers" and "the_great_tumblr_purge", but I know that posting in a new community for the first time can be intimidating! So if you want one-on-one help, I'll do my best 👍 (It might also help me figure out where other potential new Dreamwidth users might need help; I've been using Dreamwidth for so long, I don't always know what's intuitive or not!) Whatever your choice, I hope you get settled in at Dreamwidth and start having a fantastic time soon!

Hi! That's so nice thank you! I think at this point I'm really just dealing with like, an information overload tbh I gotta figure out how to organize all the 5000 resources I'm collecting so that I can actually put them to use (am I in the process of setting up a notion page to do that on right now? maybe so)

The biggest issue I had personally was just customizing the journal theme and it was because I simply could not for the life of me seem to figure out which hex code paired with what on the actual journal page - which I did have to go edit it again after I made a couple posts because there were things I simply couldn't see the colors of without having posts on the page - and lord knows I haven't even tried to touch all the other boxes for the customization yet - that is a problem for me later if I ever decide I'm unhappy with something

But, I don't know if this is at all helpful, but I know a lot of the "welcome to dreamwidth from tumblr" posts that I'm seeing keep mentioning the issues with image hosting because it just doesn't work the same and that you need to host images elsewhere and I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else but I looked into it and found this free image hosting site called squidge which is part of a bigger archive type thing squidge.org which seems to be a non-profit fandom system very similar to OTW & it looks legit from what I've been able to tell & it's been working well for me for the week I've been using it so if other people are uh ridiculous like me and want to archive their web weaves/gifsets or just post new ones this seems to work fine - I know I keep seeing a lot of your resource posts (which have been amazing) so I thought that might help

but yes, anyway, I'm just overwhelmed and trying to not like commit any new social media faux pas haha I appreciate you reaching out though! <3

[bisexualbaker]

What to post about on Dreamwidth

There's a question that may be on a lot of minds right now, that some people may be afraid to ask. Or you might not even think to ask it until after you're in deep enough that you'll feel silly for doing so! So let's get it out of the way ASAP.

"But what do I even post on Dreamwidth? Don't all posts there need to be super long and thoughtful?"

Not even a little bit! As with any social media site, posting is the blood that keeps social interactions going. You can get into comments, yes, but those happen best with posts! But with the (I'm sorry to say) sub-par image hosting interface on Dreamwidth (that will hopefully be fixed someday, but probably is at least several years out, I'm even sorrier to say), people who are used to an image-heavy social media site might be a bit daunted by Dreamwidth's text-heavy interface. So here's some ideas of things you can post:

Shitposts. It is entirely fine, okay, and even wonderful to make shitposts on Dreamwidth! Since Dreamwidth isn't a content aggregation site and doesn't have built-in reblogging, you probably shouldn't expect them to go very far (unless a member of metaquotes sees them and wants to share), but they're still welcome 👍

GIPs, or, Gratuitous Icon Posts! Free users get a total of 15 icons to use like reaction images and gifs, and sometimes when you upload one, you just want to share it with everyone right away! That's when you make a Gratuitous Icon Post. You can literally just make a post using that icon, and then put GIP in the text field, and boom! You're done.

Steal some prompts from sunshine_challenge, snowflake_challenge, or thefridayfive. While you can also do any of these challenges in real time, there's nothing stopping you from doing them whenever you want, and The Friday Five has a huge number of back-posts to dig through. Just go back a few pages on the main community page, pick a day with questions you like the look of, and post those (with your answers) to your journal!

Do you have a pet? Or more than one? Post about what they're doing right this second. Someone's bound to be interested in that!

To-do lists. Not only can it be helpful to have these actually written out, some of your followers may chime in to root for you to do them!

Media reviews in three sentences or less. Of course you can make them longer if you want, but if you're just looking to get a quick post out, this one might be pretty fun.

Something you're looking forward to! It doesn't have to be a big thing, even something like, "I can't wait for my next afternoon nap!" or "I just bought a new book and I'm really looking forward to reading it!" or "I wanna go home so I can pet my dog so bad!" Any of those would be a fine post.

Three (or more) Things Make a List: If you've got at least three things you've been meaning to post about, but don't have a lot to say about any of them, jumble them all together in the same post! Pretty sure this tradition dates back farther than Dreamwidth, though damned if I could say where it started.

It may not seem like these ideas have a lot in common, but one thing they're all good for is starting a conversation with your followers. And that's at least half the fun of Dreamwidth, IMO.

There's more ideas out there, but these should at least get you started. And if you keep it up, you'll have the hang of Dreamwidth in no time 😉

[sisterdivinium]

Guilt served as comfortable bed sheet, as did darkness — the price for the sacrilege of love.

But a mischievous light shone briefly from outside and Jillian perceived the shapes of the woman she had spent the night adoring: scars, dimples, hair and fat which she only loved all the more, growing ashamed of her shame, of hiding her own mangled arm.

Then she saw the thin, injured skin of Suzannes’s knees and understood.

She could not hide from God.

Jillian dropped to her own knees, cursing the cross, defying it; worshipping her lover with new passion under His resentful eye.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

havent really had more indepth thoughts since than the posts i made last night but i just got to the "my name is zephyr" line again

like it's meant to be heavy bc we knows names are Sacred (<- lots of worldbuilding questions there forever to remain unanswered) and so yes theres the trust in penance, but it's also like, to claim a name, "my", is to claim an identity. it's an expression that there is something more to you than just your role, your function, the cause youre in service of.

and if transition is the only thing shes ever done for herself, right? and all the rest has been in Service. what shes called at any point is just the title of her function in the circumstances. but to say My Name is to claim an identity, that exists for its own sake. as is. not for anything. just is.

and if she chose the name herself, it's like an expression of a Want. which is what i was talking abt with the joy/pleasure thing. she doesnt Want anything, really, except maybe just for "this to be over". she starts out, in this story, at like the most Unwanting state you can have. being suicidal, most of the time, rather than a positive wanting to be dead, usually it's more a negative not wanting to be alive, you know what i mean?

and she remains in that state for all of the story we get. she doesnt really Want anything in a positive sense, mostly just wants like, things not to be like this. the world not to be like this. and not to be in the position shes in. but shes stuck in that position bc the world is like this. so the only way out is to try and make it,,,not like this. which is the main thing driving her for the whole season i think.

to say "my name is zephyr" i think is an expression of a positive desire. it's i want to be zephyr. it's, maybe, i want to just live. i want to just live instead of i want to stop fighting.

[axel-mania]

Just found out about this femslash ficlet event from someone's fics and posted a fill for Giulia/Rina Yamashita here on the last day: we should get covered in blood, together

It was weird thinking deeply about Giulia again! She was in my favorite Stardom pairing for a long time with Syuri. But I pretty much parted ways with her before she even left Stardom. It was after a long period of angst over her phoning in it, starting in her red belt reign. But you almost can't blame her. The company's issues are epitomized in the one time Giulia and Rina met in Stardom. They bring her IRL good friend Rina in to do an extremely tame silly death match and then the management changes and she's never allowed to do even that kind of deathmatch with Rina again, even after they pretty much confirm it by saying it so loudly in the comments.

[thisbluespirit]

New seasonal challenge up at TARDIS Library, the Dreamwidth Doctor Who reccing community!

Simply comment in the sign-up post, receive 5 random characters (we have lists for New Who, Classic Who & various spin-offs you can choose from), then rec 5+ fanworks for at least 1 of those characters at the comm to complete the challenge, receive a banner, and share the love for some excellent fannish creative endeavours!

You will need a Dreamwidth account to post recs to the community, but they're free to sign-up for, with no strings attached, if you'd like to take part. <3

[fake-ascension]

me, wondering why ive been having panic attacks at night recently

[sokovianfortune]

i've been in such a writing funk lately :/

[99centmusecd]

​please does anyone know of any rp servers or sites that are casual (as opposed to a dozen small games already going or once a week-or-so chat events), 18+ but easy on the nsfw if at all, actually active in rp channels, and focused on OCs in a modern setting?

get off ai and join an rp server. you must