#for other folks tagging xkit etc.

[intricatepuckrituals]

hello! it's the fic WIP fairy🧚✨please tell us about what you're working on in as much or as little detail as you want! pass this along to anyone who you admire, anyone who you know needs motivation, or anyone who may not get to talk about their work often🌻spread the love💜and good luck on your wips!💓

hey sweetpea, this is very sweet of you! here's are some that i've been plucking away at recently:

leon/matthew, leon/matthew/oilers, matthew/mitch, matthew/leafs, leon/others: tentative title: our will ignite

magical realism au where mascots are patron gods and players complete tasks for favor in a sorta winner's room with other players and also on their own. E rating. easy 20k probably, depends on how into the world building i go. v obvs inspired by a couple of other fics 😜

excerpt:

“Answer me first,” Matthew cajoles, before Leon can work up to a proper tantrum. “Multi-charm for an assigned Task? In a Rite’s Room?” he pauses, “or out of it. For fun, yunno.” He grins.

“You first,” Leon says, hip nudging Matthew’s leg.

“Yeah,” Matthew says, easily. “Couple of times.”

Twice, but. Once was with 12 of the Leafs players, so he gives himself another couple on the count, for being on the bottom of that pyramid.

leon/matthew: tentative title: hello my old heart

future fic, post another league expansion AU where leon and matthew finally play on the same team together. feat: career ending injuries, falling in love in your thirties, mentoring kids in their 20s, gender happenings and queer contemplative shite, guys being dudes, hockey players being family, etc. E rating. i might be underestimating when i say could be 50k. i'm closing in on 5 already and its just the vaguest outlines.

excerpt:

“What are you doing here?” Leon finally asks, outright.

“Eating breakfast?” Matthew asks, waving a fork around. A piece of egg flies off.

“Why did you waive your NMC?” It was a good fucking deal. A flat-out NMC for five years.

connor/leon/matthew. tentative title: inceptus

inception au. leon and connor are a fixed extraction team in dreamwork. and yet, here matthew is, getting a job offer from just drat. what's a guy to do but ask a few questions. somewhere T-E rating. either 2k or 5-10k depending on if i decide it needs continuing.

excerpt:

It sounds fine. There’s no particular reason for Matthew to think about the last time they worked together; how Drat put his big, bloody hand on Davo’s strained, scruffy neck and chin to tilt Davo’s head up and slide a gun under his chin to shoot Davo out before the kick.

connor/leon/matthew.

winner's room au following the last oilers/panthers game of 2022, in which matthew is the forfeit for connor and leon sharing their 1st/2nd star win (in which matthew is always the forfeit for them). E. 10k-ish.

excerpt:

Sometimes he’ll huff and puff like the rest of the guys, get rowdy and raunchy and turn it into a joke, ‘ohhh, someone wants a piece of The Cheese,’ with the team, but.

But this is Edmonton.

This is where he’s forfeited the most.

as you can see i've gone uh, all in now that i've committed the hrpf once ✌😅

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

Pinned FAQ

How do I request a card?

You can request up to 3 cards for free during openaskbox events! During those, the /ask inbox opens up for a few hours, during which I try to write as many as I can live on twitch and post them on tumblr.

After the event is over and I close that inbox, there are still a BUNCH of leftover requests. This is how I fill the daily content queue, I use those up til it's empty again and then run another openaskbox.

On Sundays at 3pm EST I write all 28 cards due to go up for the week from that pool of leftover asks live on twitch and then queue them to go up after stream

What if I don't wanna wait?

If you'd like to throw a bit of cash around instead of waiting, you can buy via the etsy listing or you can tune in to those^ Saturday livestreams, there's a variety of ways to donate to get cards written for you on the spot

How do I buy the card I've requested?

The etsy listing is available here! Please remember to include in the notes of the purchase which card(s) you want to buy. If you'd like me to bundle together all the cards you've requested over a period of a few years, dm me here on the blog and I can quote you on a cheaper bundle price

Why did you answer all those asks, it messed up my dash?

Sorry about that! So to keep all of that ^ organized, at the end of the month, I answer about 112-140 leftover asks in order to record them to a proper "to-write document"

It helps me keep organized, it allows me to easily search for spelling issues, and it gets a few eyeballs on the request in case someone tries to slip an obscure slur into their request that I'm not cool with writing (it has happened)

Lots of the regulars are used to this dash nonsense, but there are folks who want to avoid it entirely. If you're on mobile I'd just recommend unfollowing for a while, but if you're on desktop, you can blacklist the tag "added to notepad" and go to xkit to tick the "fully hide blocked tags" option so it clears up your dash

Wait I thought requests were closed, why can I still send things?

That's because requests use /ask, but /submit is always open because it's for YOUR calligraphy, pet photos, fanart of man... etc. Requests are NOT open when it's not openaskbox day but feel free to send me cool shit YOU made anytime

Wait you have a twitch, do you do anything other than calligraphy?

I try! my schedule at work (restaurant) varies week to week so I try my best to stream whenever I've got free time to, nothing's really planned out though

What are your regular writing tools and paper?

I mainly just use speedball nibs, specifically the c-series (c-0 through c-4) because they're angled flat nibs that let me do most blackletter hands I write. I have a supply of leonardt thin tips for detailing and illustrating

As for paper, the cards you see on the daily are on plain index cue cards I buy from staples. When commissioned/doing larger pieces, I work with a variety of paper, including a 32 lb xerox paper that has juuuust a perfect amount of lamination that avoids ink feathering, black paper that I bought a hundred sheets of in 2019 and I no longer remember the label, and a BOATLOAD of southworth's ivory parchment paper at both 32 and 64 lb weights.

[autumnslance]

Another thing for new Tumblr users: Read Mores

We don't use excess spaces or ROT13 or anything to avoid spoilers here! We use a Read More cut. This is also handy for shortening long posts.

As of July 2 2023 (it can and does change over time, but mostly in where to find things) on desktop when making a hard return space in your post it pulls up the formatting menu for selecting images, gifs, links, etc. The last icon on the list--the straight line, squiggly line, straight line--is your Read More cut

On my iOS tablet app, the menu's found at the bottom of the post editor.

This lets you hide spoiler content and/or trim down longer posts, like long lists or longer fanfiction or character info or lore or whatever.

Now, this is also where your blog's customization comes in; someone clicking on a Read More cut will be taken from the dashboard to your blog post, to read it with your font and color choices. Please make sure they're actually readable and accessible. Even with only a minor astigmatism correctable by glasses, I've run into a LOT of unreadable blogs.

For readers, a way around this on Desktop is the XKIT REWRITTEN browser extension. Handy for a lot of ways to tweak your Tumblr browser experience in general, one of the options also lets you open Read More cuts directly on the Dashboard, which can be a lifesaver if avoiding badly formatted or inaccessible blogs.

Another strong word of warning: Read Mores link back to the original post. Handy if you want to Edit what came under the cut. But also--if you delete the post, or change your blog name/URL, it may break the Read More link on reblogs. The information is either gone or unable to be found, due to how Tumblr structures posting and reblogs, especially in the older text editors. This is often why you'll see people advocate not putting image or video descriptions under a Read More, even if they get long. Other vital information on a post can be lost this way as well.

So go forth without stretching your mutuals' dashboards or worrying about spoiling folks who haven't filtered their tags/words properly!

(Speaking of: please use filtered words and tags for things you don't want to see or interact with!)

If you want to make static Tumblr pages (like all the ones I have on my blog), or have questions about how and why to Customize your blog (don't be mistaken for a spambot and also gain access to your full blog features!), I have other tutorials for that!

[titconao3]

how are you getting the best snape art posts??? honestly your tumblr + curation is so good <3

Oh hello!

and thank you <3 unexpected, but welcome!

So, er, methodology, eh? The short version: er, i see some art, i look at OP's tags, find a promising one such as "my art" or "(fandom) art" or "(character) art" and... go through it.

More under the cut, it got long. (Method in the madness or Madness in the method, i'll let you decide!)

Bear in mind that i Tumblr on a computer, using a browser, while using XKit (these days, it's XKit Rewritten): for most of my fandoms i have a pre-made tag bundle, so that's just a quick hover, scroll, and click each time. Well, click-click, one for [fandom] and one for 'fanart.' i draft all the posts then queue them alternating fandoms. All are tagged so that if anyone follows me (not that many people) they can easily filter out stuff they're not into. Once things are queued, they're also liked, so that whenever i see that art (or not art) post again, i know not to reblog it again. i have More Than Enough to queue already ^_^;; (so much more omg)

Most of the time i will reblog OP's own art and not reposts or posts from another website (sometimes it's the own artist's IG art, so that's alright, sometimes it's also from a deleted account.)

If the artist posts little, or lots but i like their posts, or most of what i'm not into i can easily filter out (i only filter tags, at least for now), then i may follow. i keep my dash manageable enough that i don't miss posts.

There are happy surprises because people aren't always systematic with tagging, so along the way i'll find other artists, draft the piece i noticed, and later when i have time i'll do the "go through OP's art stuff" thing. It can get a bit overwhelming when i get back in the drafts folder, if i've been away from home for a while and spent little time on a proper computer or laptop for days.

i also follow a couple of fandomedit tags (not fandom or character tags; that way lies madness and way too much discourse for me, tyvm), but only a small number and in fandoms where there is not a tsunami of new stuff every day.

Basically the clue is that i'm being a little Extra about things ;-) i do try to curb that down, because i've ended many times drafting then queuing all the art from every artist i found in a specific fandom, even when i wasn't in love with all the works, because i felt bad not reblogging them all (no, i'm not neurotic about stuff, why do you ask?). It's even sillier given that my drafts folder is so bloated that of course i haven't reblogged all the art stored there. In some fandoms i try to simply reblog the art i see from folks i follow and otherwise sit on my hands so i don't go down the rabbit hole of 'must check every work from every artist i see in every fandom i'm in.' That way lies madness; my drafts folder is already too unmanageable as it is.

i also am only on Tumblr, not twitgram, instatok, snapbook, or wherever fandom is happening these days. Well, i have a DW, for example, but i don't really go there often beyond posting my fic (sometimes weeks after i posted it on AO3) and managing event accounts (sibling blogs to those on Tumblr). i do use Discord but i vastly prefer one-on-one chats to group chats so i rarely wander into servers. i have to when i'm promoting an event i'm organising so i can do it when the stakes are high ;-) but it does mean that while Tumblr takes a lot of my online life, it's the only social media i spend any time on.

My use of tumblr is very much read/reblog: i don't post personal stuff here either, about myself, my woes, or my writing beyond the occasional 'i wrote this' post, and even that is not systematic. To me, it looks like it's either 1/ people See you and you become a potential target (or at best it becomes a job because if you do become popular, there will be more demands on your time and energy: can you reblog this? what's your opinion on that? etc), or 2/ people ignore you while you're writing stuff on a public platform because you don't want to be ignored, so you'd probably feel bad about it. However, reblogging art/gifsets etc makes the creator happy (well, i hope), so that's good. Although sometimes i see posts on how creators would like to see enthusiastic tags about why rebloggers like their work, but that would be extra work and pressure to say the right thing, so i don't. i still worry about it of course. #lifestyle ;-)

So i don't know if that's what you wanted to hear, but kudos if you got here, because that's quite a chunk of overly-tweaked text for what was probably just a throwaway note... oops?

[thiefscant]

all's well that ends...

#THIEFSCANT;; an independent, selective, and private roleplay blog for ANAIS EVERNIGHT, my tav aka the PLAYER CHARACTER from baldur's gate 3. my name is bean (32, they/she) and i will be your guide! pls don’t hesitate to approach with questions or plot ideas. i'm here for it all!

a study in: learning how to trust, moving from chaotic neutral to chaotic good, what's a god to a nonbeliever?, discovering life can be about more than just surviving but maybe there are some things worth dying for.

✑ CARRD » MEMES » HEADCANONS » PLAYLIST

beta editor + xkit rewritten only. rules under cut + everything else on carrd.

travels with: @bolyde. @crowshoots. @sacrificedmore. @stormlit.

currently playing: baldur's gate 3, act 3 (game unfinished) currently most interested in: canon/bg3 rp, dragon age rp, tolkien rp.

blogroll: @atomiqueen. @heartsdefine. @thiefscant.

                                      ...not as bad as it could have.

✒ RULES & GUIDELINES.

GENERAL: SELECTIVE AND PRIVATE. this means i’m particular about who i follow and i will only write with mutuals. my blog is semi-iconless (depending on the muse/if i feel like making icons or not). NOT SPOILER FREE. NO GODMODDING, metagaming, etc. EXCLUSIVITY IS RARE but not unheard of so you can find my mains/exclusives list here 

WRITING: I USE PRIMARILY THIRD PERSON PAST OR PRESENT TENSE. i'm not entirely comfortable roleplaying in first or second person (yet). when it comes to verb tense, i'll often check to see what my partner is most comfortable using and go with that. i can do one-liners or multipara threads, but longer things will likely take a bit more time.

SHIPPING: I SHIP CHEMISTRY, and i do not force ships because i’m not a monster. i definitely enjoy a good romance, but platonic and queerplatonic dynamics, rivalries, etc. are just as interesting to explore! i am unlikely to ship romantically with more than two portrayals of a canon muse, so as to ensure things don't get stale for me or my partners.

FOLLOWING/UNFOLLOWING: IF I FOLLOW YOU, IT MEANS I LIKE WHAT YOU HAVE GOIN' ON AND WOULD LOVE TO INTERACT. it doesn't have to happen immediately, just down the line! i'll give most folks at least a week to follow back (thus indicating mutual interest in writing together at some point) before unfollowing. but if i really enjoy your blog/portrayal, i may stick around as a passive follower so long as i am welcome!

BLOCKING: I PREFER TO BE HARDBLOCKED IF YOU NO LONGER WISH FOR ME TO FOLLOW YOU for any reason. this is so i don't assume tumblr unfollowed you for me and refollow, inadvertently crossing your boundaries. if i suspect someone has softblocked me, i will likely hardblock them myself to avoid refollowing in the future. (i am generally quite liberal with the block button, as i'm serious about curating my online space.)

PRONOUNS: ANAIS USES THEY/SHE PRONOUNS INTERCHANGEABLY. you will likely see me alternating between them in my posts, headcanons, replies, etc. if there is ever a time when this is too confusing (ex: I am writing opposite a muse who uses strictly they/them pronouns, making the prose easier to follow if I use strictly she/her for Anais), I am happy to use one or the other. If you find it too confusing to use both in your replies, our preference leans towards they/them (but she/her is also acceptable esp if your muse uses they/them also).

PLEASE DO: BREAK YOUR REPLIES FOR ME UP INTO SMALLER PARAGRAPHS if we write together, as my adhd makes hugelong paragraphs difficult to read; ASK ME TO TAG YOUR TRIGGERS if i’ve neglected to do so (whether i’m following you back or not); like my starter calls, SEND ME MEMES, turn my meme replies into threads (if we are mutuals); SHOWER ME IN PLOT IDEAS and ooc chatter; HAVE PATIENCE with me on all of the above; FEEL FREE TO UNFOLLOW ME at any time for any reason, as i will be reserving the right to do so myself 

PLEASE DO NOT: USE SUBSMALL TEXT or multiple spaces between words in our threads as i find both difficult to read; UNFOLLOW/REFOLLOW to get my attention (it won’t be the kind of attention you’re hoping for); EXPECT ANY KIND OF IMMEDIACY FROM ME IC OR OOC. i love making friends via roleplay, but i’m one smol nerd just trying to have a good time and i won’t stress myself out by trying to keep up with everything at once. just know it’s not personal, and i’ll get back to you as soon as i have the energy.

I WILL GLADLY: TAG NSFW AND TRIGGERS appropriately and accommodate those who ask to the best of my abilities; WELCOME LGBTQIA+ HEADCANONS; USE MY SHITPOST TAG (#blacklist for less soft nonsense.) on most of my inane ooc content so feel free to block it, that’s why it’s there

I WILL TRY: TO REMEMBER IF YOU DON’T LIKE TO BE REBLOGGED FROM, but please note that I have ADHD and may forget. Often and repeatedly. (A bit more info about this can be found here.) If being reblogged from on the reblogging website really bothers you, please feel free to soft/block me as needed. Relatedly, I don’t really care if you reblog things from me that aren’t in-character roleplay posts and/or headcanons. I do think it’s polite to reblog a meme from the source if you don’t send one in, but I don’t personally consider it a blockable offense.

MUNDANE: MY NAME IS BEAN/BEE. they/she. nonbinary lesbian. i’m 32, neurodivergent, and a full-time grad student with two jobs. I’M WHITE. in the event that i fuck up and/or swerve out of my lane, i invite my friends and followers of color (or fellow white folks who are wiser than me) to let me know. i can and will do better.

[fereldanwench]

Found my mind drifting back to Recent Fandom Events in the shower, and I thought I'd share something I do as a means of curating my dash without outright blocking people. Because sometimes folks, like mutuals-in-laws, are perfectly fine people but their jam is just really not my jam but blocking a tag would mean missing other stuff I do like. Or maybe blocking a mutual-in-law would cause more conflict than solve it. Whatever. There are a dozen applicable scenarios, I'm sure.

Obviously, if you're having an issue with hostility, harassment, spam, unwanted followers, etc., blocking is gonna be the best choice. But if you just don't want to see someone's stuff and blacklisting certain tags would mean you miss the stuff you do want to see, you can just add their username to your blacklist of choice (either Tumblr's official blacklist feature or through an extension like XKit). I actually find this is better than blocking when it comes to keeping stuff off my dash since blocking doesn't seem to hide reblogs from other people.

There are a few caveats to this method:

If they change their name, you'll obviously have to update your blacklist accordingly.

This might not be practical for some usernames, like ones that are a single word or common phrase, use a character or show name, etc.

Tumblr's blacklist feature in particular occasionally has false positives or picks up irrelevant content in tags or reblogs that will hide a post.

But I've been taking this approach for a few years now, and I find it's generally a much better method of curation than blocking. If it doesn't work for you, that's cool--I'm not suggesting this as a blanket solution to all dash curation, and it can be used in conjunction with blocking for particularly egregious situations--But figured I'd share if it does help. 😘

[clonehub]

Yeah people keep coming out with shit like 'Use AO3 Savior' or some other kinda skin thing and I DUNNO HOW THOSE WORK I should not have to be an amateur programmer to be safe on the internet if they want the site to be accessible to all people and the community shouldn't have to pick up the slack! I mean we criticize The Blue Hellsite for having Xkit because it means the devs don't care enough to actually make a functional site but when it's AO3 ohhh they can't be expected to do anything!

like they triple that goal in a matter of how. yall got no block, no proper reporting system, no easily accessible night mode. gotta use "skins" that i also dont know how to work.

and that love of no deletions isn't helping folks w screen readers. there was that mo dao zu shi person who had a fic with like. two or twenty thousand tags on it. miles of scrolling. people with vision problems who use screenreaders said it was hell to scroll past because they had no choice but to read through the whole thing. and the mods refused to take it down, you cant block people so that asshat's fic kept showing up in the tags, etc etc

like tumblr's block button isn't the GREATEST but its not terrible? in general it gets the job done? you can filter posts by both tags and and key words. on twitter you can mute people and key words. why do people forget that ao3 is a social media site

[dreamsurvivormultiplayer]

ive heard a lot of folks are moving from MCYTtwt to tumblr, so hello! Welcome! I am a tumblr boomer so let me teach you some things

number one: If you’re on browser, get the xkit extension. right now. literally first thing you should do it improves your experience on this website tenfold. [Here’s the xkit tumblr.] Do yourself a favor it has so many wonderful features, including blacklisting specific terms, blocking ads/recommended posts, or making tag groups. It’s a lifesaver. (Also definitely block terms related to your triggers/squicks/common gross things or anything you might be sensitive to. And NSFW, probably.)

Number two: Mobile tumblr and browser tumblr are very different in functionality. They have separate learning curves in terms of UI. You’ll get the hang of it, don’t worry, but know that both are kinda glitchy. Mobile tends to lag more and have more difficulty loading images (to the point where it’s a meme). Also on mobile you can’t see custom pages on people’s blogs.

Three: Tumblr has a very different comments language than other sites. Most people don’t actually comment on posts, but instead leave commentary in tags. You can’t put commas in tags but you can separate words and fill ‘em up a ton. You can also read tags on posts, so you can see what people are quietly saying or how they’re reacting to posts. There’s also a comments option, which doesn’t add on to the post but can be read as well. Actually adding an additional comment to reblogs is pretty uncommon unless you have something to add to the post. It’s highly recommended to read tags of posts on your dashboard.

Four: Tumblr is weird. If you’re making an original post that you want to be seen, the first five tags will be what your post shows under. Use those tags wisely. Also if you include any non-tumblr links in your post, your post won’t show up in tags, so be careful. Reblogs and additions to reblogs don’t show up in tags at all. Tags on reblogs or aside from the first five tags are mostly for personal blog organization or commentary. Also, you can add a maximum of 10 images to a post using the image function, and then paste as many more images as you want in the text portion. Images in photo posts can also be scooted around or reorganized (i.e. rows of four, two-by-five, etc etc. however you please). Tumblr won’t crop images images unless you put two images of different sizes in the same row/column. It also rarely cuts quality, and you can click on images to expand them. Also the search function is always broken literally everywhere all the time. if you’re looking for tags, just add “/tagged/[words]” to the end of the blog url and you should find it. put a - or + where any spaces should be. Also try to avoid using apostrophes in tags if you’re using them for categorization cause sometimes it breaks it. Also, don’t tag triggers/etc in the format of “tw: [x]”/“trigger warning: [x]” or “cw: [x]”/”content warning: [x]” - instead, tag it like “[x] //” or the word alone or similar. The tw:/cw: can glitch out tag blocks sometimes and render it useless. Putting the // after or just the word alone works better. Content warnings don’t need to be in the first five tags - tag/post blockers look at the post’s tags or the post itself as a whole, so it’ll just hide the entire post based on what you block. And for the love of fuck, don’t cross-tag.  [See #10 & “Cross-tagging”] The folks who use the Minecraft tag aren’t super fond of the tag being filled with only DSMP/MCYT content so be considerate of tagging MCYT content with just “Minecraft” as well.

Five: Tumblr is old. It has a lot of jokes and popular posts. You can acquaint yourself with a lot of them here: https://heritageposts.tumblr.com/

Six: You don’t need a carrd or whatever it is. Really. Trust me. Nobody will read it. All you need in your bio is like, what you want people to refer to you as (i dont suggest making this your actual name, but i can’t stop you i guess), your pronouns, maybe your fandoms, and maybe if you’re an adult or minor. Don’t put your exact age for the love of fuck. don’t do it. and don’t make your username anything including your real name. be dilfza69 or whatever, trust me, no one will care. just dont use your real name. trust us on this one. and probably not your discord tag. it’s not that tumblr is inherently any more dangerous than the rest of the internet, just that it’s one of the few places left where you can remain very private. utilize that. it’s very nice. Lots of people make an about page on their blog though, so you can include any other fun stuff you want to include there, like your zodiac signs or fandoms or other social media or whatever.

Seven: Don’t worry about how old posts are. nobody gives a shit nor can anyone tell. Also, you will find most people’s main blogs consist of mostly reblogged content unless they are specifically a content creator (usually an artist, musician, or voice actor). This is normal. Reblog a lot. ‘Tis our way. Also, you can’t see how many followers other people have unless they post it/tell you. Follower count is meaningless here. It doesn’t impact your posts at all even. Don’t worry about it. Everybody’s the same level here.

Eight: Go to your blog profile (top right icon of a lil person. it’ll open a drop-down menu. From there, click on the name of your blog.) Select “edit appearance” and scroll down. There is a section titled “Advertising” that says “On-blog advertising” with a little switch. Turn that off. You’re welcome.

Nine: You can make side-blogs. These are like normal blogs except you can co-own them with other people, you can’t like posts from it, and you can’t follow people from it. They’re connected to your main blog. You can make a lot of them. I legitimately have like 30 blogs.

Ten: Lil bit of tumblr lingo for ya. Not even close to the full list, but a good start.

Nightblogging - when someone is blogging a lot when they clearly should be asleep. Tends to include lots of existential/”shower” thoughts.

Shitposting - General memery and silliness. Usually to an absurdist amount.

Liveblogging - Just like livetweeting. Live reaction posts to something happening, be it watching a show or stream or anything really.

Askblog - A blog focused around a character or multiple characters who respond to questions asked to them. Usually art/comic-based, but also sometimes text or even audio based. If you find one of these, shoot them an ask or two. It’s nice and they’re fun and a dying breed. 

Mishapocolypse / Dashcon - Some highly iconic tumblr historical moments. You will learn of them in time.

Tumblr User [x] - How we politely refer to each other. You may hear about some very popular bloggers, many from days of olde - legends such as Pizza (rip) or Sixpenceee (don’t look there) or maybe even smaller known bloggers like Glumshoe (that one’s safe, unless you don’t like bugs or traditionally “gross” animals).

Bone Stealing Witches - There have been like three separate instances of this. This isn’t even a joke. Like, literal actual real people who practice witchcraft who stole or did something involving human skeletal remains. This is not the weirdest thing that has happened on this site. You will get used to that.

Inbox - If someone sends you an ask, this is where that will end up. This too tends to be broken, usually in the form of tumblr “eating” asks (they never appear in the inbox). Most common cause for this is allegedly links or things that tumblr thinks are links (basically anything in a [x].[x] format. Make sure to put spaces after your periods or your ask may be eaten.)

Cross-tagging - Tagging posts with tags that don’t or barely apply (i.e. tagging art of Bee Duo with “Bench trio”/”Tommyinnit” when Tommy isn’t in the image or referenced at all || tagging as many members of the dsmp as you can when the post is only about one singular content creator).

Hope this helps some of y’all new folks. If you have any questions, my inbox is open.

[all-chickens-are-trans]

Ethereal asks: Honesty, Memories

Honesty: Three things you like about tumblr, three things you dislike about tumblr? (without offending anybody!)

Things I don’t like:

we all tend to agree that tumblr is the most bearable social media site these days, but it still has some toxic elements to it - the way cringe culture and cancel culture is still mostly directed towards marginalized folks who are usually pretty young, some or most of them autistic, neurodiverse in other ways, and/or mentally ill. I don’t agree at all with making fun of those people or attacking them

it’s not very social for a social medium, is it? adding stuff onto posts of other people is often considered bad etiquette, so we’re less talking with each other, and way more at each other. feels like shouting stuff out into the void sometimes and then retracing your steps to see if anyone, anywhere heard it. it’s gotten a bit better since the activity feed has started to show tags, but still i think we should try to talk to each other again more. this is a cordial invitation to clown on any of my posts, add your own stuff directly and not just in the tags, and to generally just talk to me if you want. that’s what I’m here for

i don’t have to say this really, but the site itself?? what a mess. i use xkit so most of the stuff is mostly functional, but i keep on not being informed about messages, recently found out that this extends to dms as well apparently, I never find anything on my blog even when i’ve properly tagged it, and let’s not even talk about how they’ve driven away legit sex workers and people who just like to post their nudes, but I still get up to ten porn bots following me in a week. what the fuck. 

Things I like:

my friends are here and I get to communicate with them in such a nice, low-key way!! like, I don’t have to think of anything to say or force my way through uncomfortable, painful small talk, I can just reblog their stuff and put my thoughts in the tags, and send them memes and gifs and cute animal videos, and that’s it! So easy! It’s like quality time without the need to talk, but always with the chance to if you want

the way even the tiniest fandoms can exist here. when I left tumblr in 2019, i didn’t regret it for a long while - until a new webseries started airing and I had literally nowhere to flail about it. Like sure, I knew one or two people who watched it (mostly because I talked them into it), but it’s not the same as getting to talk in depth about new episodes, sharing gif sets, analyzing characters, making headcanons, etc. at the time, my main social media thing was instagram, and that’s not really made for that kind of experience. and i was never much of a reddit person, so that was always out of the question. so, back to tumblr it was! and it’s been so nice, that, no matter how niche my interests are, i can usually find two or three other people at least to talk to about them on here. <3

the memes. literally what i missed the most when i was gone. people irl were referencing memes and i was like ???? what is it i wanna laugh with you!!!!! but the way of the tumblr memes is that they’re almost impossible to explain, so if you’re not experiencing this stuff first-hand, there’s almost no chance to be in on the joke. Nov 5th was a good example for that. I’ve tried to explain that to multiple people outside of tumblr, but it’s no use. we have our own language here and our own way of communication. as a sociologist, i’m deeply into that. (that’s a nice way of saying “i’d like to study us”)

Memories: Ever met a famous person?

Some, but usually at conventions. I went to a couple of Supernatural conventions back in the day, so I met a bunch of those people, and one Doctor Who convention, where I met Catherine Tate and nearly fainted, no joke. When I interned/worked at various opera houses, I met a couple of famous opera people, like Jonas Kaufmann and Diana Damrau and Anja Harteros and Klaus Florian Vogt and idk who else. I met a couple of German musical actors at stage doors, my favorite encounters being with Jan Ammann, Lucy Scherer and Roberta Valentini. Oh, and living in a city with a football team in the Bundesliga, I’ve seen a couple of football dudes around. I wouldn’t say any of that qualifies as me actually “meeting” any famous person really, since all of this was usually just in passing, or exchanging a couple of words, nothing more.

[faranae]

Small reminder on tagging

Alright, so this has come up again. TW for “q” word. That is the only warning, desktop users you may press “J” to skip to the next post and skip this one entirely.

Yes, I’m unapologetic regarding the word “queer”. It is my identity. It is my community. I will not stop using the word with regards to myself. 

HOWEVER.

I acknowledge and respect that some folks may not want to be referred to as such, and for others it may bring up painful memories. Their reasons are absolutely none of my business. 

I just wanted to remind folks that you can and should block tags that you find upsetting. I make every effort to tag subjects that folks might find as such, and “queer” is no exception. Any post I make or reblog that references it I’m going to make a thorough effort to tag. 

No, I am not changing my chosen tag from “queer” to “q word” or even worse “q slur”. If you don’t want to see the word, please do yourself a favor and block the whole word. I will also not be substituting parts of the word with asterisks such as in “q*eer” as that is COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE. Tumblr’s built-in blocking system does not support wildcards*. Everyone who censors themselves like ths is BYPASSING the filters and putting people at risk. 

Tumblr users go on about “curating your own content” constantly, and I’m one of them. Often however we forget that without the proper tools to do so, people who need to filter and curate their experience cannot do so. 

So! Here’s a list of tags that my followers may want to block if that’s their thing:

#nsfw (Not safe for work. Generally artistic nudity/heavy petting);

#HOMD (Yearly event celebrating NSFW freedom of expression);

#VAYOR (View at your own risk. Gore/suggestive themes/etc);

#trigger warning (General trigger catch-all)

#discourse (General “THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING” drama tag);

#queer (All posts mentioning the word);

#politics (Sometimes you just need a break, I’m not judging)

To filter: Head to your account settings on Tumblr (/settings/account) and scroll to this section:

I am always more than happy to tag on (reasonable!) request. Please don’t hesitate to ask! As well, if I ever reblog something that has glaring errors, missed tags, or is genuinely problematic please let me know either through DM, Discord, or my Askbox. I will ALWAYS accommodate do-not-publish requests in my inbox. Full stop. No exceptions. Just ask. 

Please remember and respect that my personal blog is my space. While I will not censor myself for anyone’s sake, I consider it a basic human decency to at least try to make folks comfortable if they choose to be in my company. All I ask is that you use the tools at your disposal to keep yourself safe, sane, and healthy.

* I’m not actually 100% sure on wildcard support with Tumblr’s native blocking. I’ve tested it myself since the system rolled out and did not find wildcards to function, but it may have changed since then. This does not include XKit’s tag blocking which I believe does support wildcards. 

** To those who do not know what a wildcard is, it allows the search/filter to block variations on a word instead of requiring an exact spelling. “word” = “word”, where “w*rd” can = “word” “wird” “wqrd” etc. In most online systems this is read as substituting one character/letter, though in others it can include any string of text in between.

[killian-whump]

Friends and followers sometimes drop posts or drama into my message box, because they know I like to keep informed about such things (even if I’ve lately tried not to post about them as often). It seems the drama du jour this week is all about blocking, which is likely why people felt it would be of interest to me, as I’ve been pretty vocal about the fact that I’ve been blocked by a number of people and that I don’t agree with the practice of wantonly blocking people as a means of controlling one’s fandom experience.

Click to read my ridiculously long take on some unnecessary drama...

I mean, personally, I take being blocked as the tumblr equivalent of someone lobbing a tennis ball at your head in a crowd, and when you pick up the tennis ball, it has “FUCK YOU” written on it in black Sharpie. Now, if I’ve recently had a fight with the person, then fair enough. I probably deserved that. I’ll even go out on a limb here and say I’m almost positive I deserved it. I mean, we interacted, it didn’t go well, and the person has decided they never wish to interact with me again. I get that.

But on tumblr, it more often happens that it’s someone I literally had no idea even existed until I tried to reblog something from a friend’s blog and got the dreaded “This post cannot be reblogged” message, or heard from a friend that they were blocked by someone and being asked if I’ve been blocked too - and sure enough, more often than not, I have been.

In most cases, I’ve never talked to the person or interacted with them at all. In worse cases, I have interacted with them and even been downright friendly with them. And yet, for whatever reason, they’ve decided to hurl the proverbial “FUCK YOU” tennis ball at my head as a form of conflict resolution regarding a conflict we never even had.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that people block others based on the posts they’ve made or the opinions they hold or arguments they’ve seen them have with other people. I’m not stupid. I know how it works. I just don’t approve of it working that way. I believe in people of differing opinions and mind-sets coexisting peacefully. I believe in people finding common ground and overlooking their differences. I believe in giving people a chance.

And there are plenty of ways to curate your experience without resorting to blocking someone. XKit’s Blacklist and Tumblr Savior will happily cleanse your dashboard and search results of unsavory people, tags, topics, words - you name it, literally, and it will erase it from your view. Blocking goes that extra (mostly unnecessary) step of preventing someone from ever interacting with you at all - and making sure they KNOW it. It IS a big “FUCK YOU”, when simply walking the other way and ignoring them would have sufficed.

Of course, none of this applies if someone is interacting with your posts in an unpleasant way. If they’re adding tags/comments you don’t like, then a block may be necessary to prevent them from infringing on your experience. But blocking someone who is minding their own business and has never even wandered into your lane? That’s an unnecessary “FUCK YOU” to a complete stranger, and I’m sorry, but you deserve whatever ire that stranger may feel in response to your actions.

And that’s why I block people in return. I DO mean it as a “FUCK YOU” on a tennis ball lobbed at the back of their head as they saunter off after throwing their own tennis ball at MY head - especially in the case of asinine folks who block someone and then continue to reblog their content. [insert Lana “I don’t THINK so” gif here.] Fuck that shit.

But that said, I also add them to my Blacklist, because blocking them does literally fuck all in terms of erasing someone from your fandom experience. And that’s my advice to others who find themselves blocked: Block the individual back, blacklist them completely so you never have to see them again, and then forget about them entirely. Odds are, you didn’t know who they were before they blocked you... so you can usually go right back to not knowing who they are again without much trouble.

Honestly, most content creators are more interested in providing GIFs/stories/etc to everyone than they are in playing exclusionary “Oh no, you’re not good enough to reblog my content” gatekeeping games, so the majority of people blocking others without provocation are going to be nobodies. And if it IS a content creator who’s blocked you? Consider, honestly, if you might have interacted with their content in a negative way. If you have, consider changing your ways in the future when reblogging. But if you really can’t figure out why they did it, then give a hearty “fuck them” and forget about it. There’s plenty more content creators where THEY came from, and the vast majority of those creators would LOVE to have your reblogs, comments, and support :)

So, in short (too late), blockers of the tumblr world are free to keep blocking whomever they want for whatever reasons they want... but folks who get blocked are ALSO free to take offense to getting blocked and to respond with anger and/or reciprocal blocks. Expecting otherwise is tantamount to hurling a grenade into someone’s window and then acting scandalized when they throw it back out the window at you. Don’t stand there going, “Where on Earth did this come from? How dare they do this to me?” when you’re the one who fired the first shot.

I’d say I welcome any and all opposing opinions to the thoughts presented here, but let’s be real. Most of the folks who disagree have probably already blocked my ass, and I’ve blocked them back, so c’est la vie :P

[lacirph]

My Top 5 New XKit Extensions

UIt’s no lie that Tumblr updates fuck us roleplayers up constantly. Luckily, the New XKit program helps to fix or correct these updates that Tumblr has been so graciously granting us. New XKit may seem intimidating at first, but it has a lot of helpful extensions. So here’s a post no one asked for of my Top 5 Favorite New XKit extensions that I recommend everyone in the RPC should download! If they haven’t already, that is.

5. Header Options - This one may not seem so useful, but it’s the best thing that’s happened to me. It’s especially helpful if you have sideblogs onto your main account. It helps to easily sort through which blog’s posts you’re staring at. I like it better than clicking the little person icon on the far right hand side to be able to get to my posts, drafts, activity, etc. 

4. Tweaks - This is the best because you can get everything just the way you like it. It especially helps with unwanted buttons on the dash. There’s a ton of ways you can customize your dash experience with Tweaks, but my favorite options are “Hide Explore Link at Top of Page” and “Hide Tumblr Radar,” among others, of course. 

3. No Recommended/Anti-Capitalism - I’m counting these two as one because they hide the clutter from your dash. Anti-Capitalism has options for you to click that made any sponsored posts disappear, hide Yahoo View links on posts, as well as hide the Ask Time banner on the dash. Nothing’s more annoying than seeing unwanted posts and ads on the dash. 

2. Tag Tracking+ - RP groups often have you track tags so you can easily find the posts the other members and the main account are posting. RPH/T/A’s might track tags that are relevant to them, to see if anyone is talking about them or making posts for them. It brings you back to the golden age of 2013 when our tracked tags were on our sidebar on the dash! Plus, it gives you a count of how many new posts are in each tag. 

1. Editable Reblogs - Finally, topping off my list at #1 is Editable Reblogs. It is essential that everyone uses this. This extension allows you to cut posts and reply without having to copy & paste your partner’s response or having posts that take up three pages. No one wants to scroll for forever. Be sure you install Editable Reblogs and not Edible Reblogs!

So there ya have it folks! That’s my top five favorite New XKit Extensions. Most of you probably already have these installed, and if you haven’t, I hope I helped. Feel free to like and reblog this post if you found it helpful or think other people might find it helpful. It was fun to make and I’ve been wanting to share my New XKit favorites for a while now!

[shinelikethunder]

disconnected thoughts on fandom and the indieweb

Recently I discovered the IndieWeb project, and I... think I am a lot more intrigued by it than by other Better Social Media Platform pipe dreams and decentralization projects I’ve seen? Because it’s not a monolithic platform that has to be all things to all people, or even one that has to gain a critical mass of userbase before it’s useful for anything. It’s just a bunch of people, making sites that work for them, and banging out protocols so their sites can talk to each other and hook up to the social-media hangouts du jour.

The basic idea:

- Have a personal website, preferably a personal domain name, that is the hub for your online identity and stuff. Posts, tweets, pictures, links, reading list, events, whatever you’d normally be posting to social media. You host it, you control it, you own it. You tweak it to fit your needs, no Xkit required.

- Once the original archival copy is up on your personal site, cross-post it to whatever social media sites it belongs on. You don’t have to quit your Tumblr habit, or convince your friends to quit theirs, or give up the audience you can reach on a large site.

- Use a pingbacks-on-steroids tool to collect all the responses (likes, reblogs, comments, etc) from the various sites you’ve cross-posted to. Ideally, display them at the bottom of the post back on your website.

As an idea, I like it a lot. In practice, a lot depends on what tools are already available, how useable they are, how capable you are of coding/templating/configuring to fill in the gaps, and how difficult large sites make it to push/pull from them automatically. That’s pretty much what I’m interested in exploring in the near future, for my own use if nothing else. I already have most of my Tumblr content backed up to a Wordpress install on my own shared hosting account, so I’m kinda curious see how much IndieWeb compatibility I can manage using plugins and template tweaks.

Indieweb and fandom:

As a potential tool for fandom to wean ourselves off the various hellsites we’ve inhabited over the years... okay, it’s an interesting thought. One with lots of unanswered questions, but interesting.

Lots of unanswered questions, so the rest of this is going under a cut.

- Upside: I know a lot of older fans are still nostalgic about the early blogosphere and even--heaven forfend--the Geocities days. Many things about them were shit, but the archipelago of personal fan shrines, indie blogs, having a personal site with a personal archive of your work, etc. was awesome. And the “own your own creations” ethos fits in nicely with AO3′s “we have to own the servers” philosophy.

- Enabling factor: Fandom builds and customizes stuff like crazy. Yes, including the younger generations who weren’t around for the “build it yourself” days and seem to think AO3 burst fully formed out of the forehead of a long-lost deity. What, you haven’t noticed that even on a hobbled hellsite like Tumblr, teenagers are using the relative freedom of the theme system to spontaneously rediscover all the sins of Geocities web design? (I rib with affection, as someone who definitely had a page with flaming torch gifs and a sparklecursor back in 2001.) Full, out-of-the-box, point-and-click setup is necessary to get fandom to adopt something in any decent numbers. But once we’re there, a disproportionate number of us start tinkering with anything that’s customizable, and when someone with actual coding skills comes out with a useful tool to supplement missing capabilities, it spreads like wildfire.

- Gaps and directions to expand: Indieweb principles include “scratch your own itches,” so here are my itches, which I’m going to shamelessly project onto fandom at large.

Import--needs rock solid LiveJournal-clone and Tumblr support if your site is to serve as an archive. I don’t know if there even is a working Wordpress plugin to import from LJ or Dreamwidth. The best-supported Tumblr->Wordpress importer is actually better than most standalone Tumblr backup tools, but it still mangles video posts/embeds. It’d also be cool to have import tools for AO3, Deviantart, and other major fanwork repositories.

Once your Tumblr posts are in, there's no way to automate the very first thing I’d want to do upon liberating my data from the vise-like jaws of What Tumblr Wants You To Do With Its Site: separate out posts I created, posts I added comments to, and posts I just shared via reblog. A nice addition would be the ability to copy Tumblr tags to a metadata field that’s separate from Wordpress tags--WP tags tend to be organizational, whereas on Tumblr, tags are often a sidechannel for comments that don’t propagate on reblog, thus filled with all sorts of crap.

On that note, Itch #3 is mass-organization tools. Select all posts that fit certain criteria and do a mass edit on their tags, categories, post types, or other taxonomy data. Lots of fandom folks have years or decades worth of content from various sites, making organizational tasks highly impractical to do manually. I’ve dicked around with a few Wordpress mass-edit plugins, but none of them seemed to work that well.

Not sure how well the existing backfeed tools support Tumblr notes, but for fandom to bite, the Tumblr support oughta be pretty damn slick. And the cross-posting should ideally support all the features of a native Tumblr post, because by god, we will use them, and we will notice if an expected one is missing. I can spot IFTTT cross-posts from AO3 without even reading text, and tbh my eyes usually skip right over them, unfair as that may be.

If this project extends to feed readers/aggregators, the embrace of multi-site cross-posting implies a need for deduplication. Preferably getting rid of Tumblr’s charming “barf the full post back out onto your dashboard every time someone you’re following shares/responds to it” behavior in the process. For fandom use, it’ll need a blacklist feature. And I’d love some more heavy-duty filtering, selective subscriptions (like to just one tag of a blog), creating multiple feeds based on topic or on how much firehose you want...

This may be a personal itch, but at least for personal archiving needs, I’m sick, sick, sick of the recency bias that’s eaten the internet since the first stirrings of Web 2.0. Wikis are practically the only sites that have escaped chronological organization. It would be cool to have easily-manipulated collections with non-kludgey support for series ordering, order-by-popularity, order-by-popularity with a manual bump for posts you want to highlight, hell even alphabetical ordering. None of these things are remotely unsolved problems, but they’re poorly supported on the social-media silos most people’s content lives on these days. Fandom’s suffered from this since at least the days of LiveJournal, which had the ominous beginnings of what’s since become the Tumblr Memory Hole. Relentless chronological ordering + the signal-to-noise ratio of any space with regular social interaction = greatest hits falling down the memory hole unless a community practices extensive manual cataloguing. Hell, LJ fandom did practice extensive manual cataloguing, but even within that silo, there was so much decentralization that content discovery was shit if you didn’t know the right accounts to search through. Like, fuck, at least forums bump threads to the top if they’re still active--LJ and blogs have the same "best conversation evar falls inexorably off the map as new posts are added, no matter how active it is” problem that InsideTheWeb forums did in 1999. (Anyone else remember InsideTheWeb? AKA 13-year-old me’s first experience with platform shutdown, frantic archiving attempts, and massive data loss. Fun times.) Tumblr and Twitter, meanwhile, spam you with duplicates of the original post every time someone you’re following replies to/shares it, a key component of the endless firehose of noise drowning out any attempt to hang on to the signal.

All those itches are things I could probably code myself if I got a stubborn enough bee in my bonnet, which might well happen. On the other hand, I have some deeper doubts, ones that aren’t going to get addressed by Wordpress plugins or shiny backfeed support:

The whole concept of IndieWeb fails to address (and might even worsen) what I suspect is the core dysfunction of social media. Which is the degradation of community spaces, and their replacement with a hopeless snarl where all content lives in individual accounts. There are a lot of weird effects that arise when the “social” sphere is built entirely upon the one-on-one connections created when someone subscribes to another account or gives someone else permission to view their restricted posts. Echo chambers, shame mobs, out-of-context remarks going viral, popular accounts setting off harassment storms whenever they disagree with someone, the difficulty of debunking hoaxes once they’re out in the wild... all of those are either created or made much, much worse by the lack of any reasonable, stable, shared expectation of who a post’s audience is.

Basically, if “own your content and host it on your site” also applies to your comments, interactions, etc, it starts running counter to one of the strengths of the Old Web. Which was community contexts where you explicitly weren’t posting to your own space or addressing everyone who might be looking at the main clearinghouse of all your different stuff. You were posting to the commons shared by a particular group with a particular culture and interests, not all of whom were people you’d necessarily want to follow outside that limited context, some of whom you might disagree with or dislike, but in any case you knew what audience you were broadcasting to. You knew what the conversation was, how similar conversations had gone in the past, and the reputations of all the main participants--not just the ones you yourself would subscribe to and the ones attention-grabbing enough to get shared by the people on your subscription list. And you weren’t spamming all your other acquaintances with chatter on a topic they weren’t interested in.

Shared spaces can also establish whatever social norms they need and moderate accordingly. (Plus, plurality of spaces = plurality of norms for different needs, which would solve a LOT of what’s currently ailing fandom.) Peaceable enforcement of a code of conduct, beyond the “minimum viable standard” sitewide abuse policy, is fundamentally impossible on social media, where individual muting is the closest thing you can get to moderation. That + unstable audience = any social norms that exist are so unenforceable it turns people into frothing shame-mob zealots, ratcheting up the coercive pressure on everyone the more it fails to work on the handful of unrepentant assholes who would’ve been permabanned from any self-respecting forum within a week. Moving onto personal sites with beefed up syndication/backfeed capabilities ain’t gonna fix that. Meanwhile the truly heinous dickweeds who’d ordinarily run afoul of the sitewide abuse policy will have the same capabilities, minus any risk of getting banned.

If there haven’t already been epic drama meltdowns caused by the “reply in your own space by making your own post, which includes a copy of the original post for context” model... it’s only a matter of time. You don’t even need malicious actors, just a human conflict where one party has overprotective subscribers. Or information turns out to be faulty and in need of correction. Or an argumentative type stumbles on the permalink of an acrimonious reply post that was actually resolved amicably several replies downthread. Or someone edits an apology into their controversial post and someone who’s been attacking it refuses to update their copy because tilting at strawmen is more fun. Or someone tries to make an embarrassing post go away by deletion and their co-conversationists don’t cooperate. Tumblr’s “reply by reposting in your own space and adding commentary” system already spawns endless floods of drama and misunderstanding, and that’s a system with some limits on the participants’ control, and relatively disposable accounts/identities if the shit hits the fan.

Basically, I’m all for personal websites as archives of your creations, but seriously dubious of them as archives of your interactions. Especially if the interactions aren’t well-segregated from the regular content feed that goes out to everyone who follows you. Yes, abuses of moderator power when interaction is all taking place on a site the mod controls are a thing. But if those sites are an archipelago of indie spaces rather than a monolithic platform, shitty mods don’t thwart the development of a healthy social ecosystem, they just drive everyone away to a competing space whose mod sucks less.

(Private/access-restricted archives of your interactions might be a compromise? You still have your stuff in case the other site goes down, but it’s not out there replicating the ill effects of the Tumblr reblog-to-respond model.)

Leaving aside all that, the IndieAuth component--using personal sites as stable identities you can log in with--is just as workable for community platforms as it is for cross-blog commenting. Proliferation of unlinkable accounts was one of the downfalls of forums, after all. That said, one potential point of friction is that fandom is far more pseudonym-centric than the devs and tech hobbyists who’ve coalesced around IndieWeb so far. But stable pseuds with years of reputation behind them have social effects that resemble real names more than anything else, so as potential culture clashes go, I’d hope that’s fairly surmountable.

As noted in the musings on LiveJournal archiving above: CONTENT DISCOVERY IS A BITCH IN DECENTRALIZED COMMUNITIES and that’s a major stumbling block for fandom. OTOH, platform-agnostic protocols with customization potential = room for experimentation with independently-run discovery/search/tagging layers. (Life goals: stay uncool enough that my “Like Uber, but for ___” elevator pitch ends up being “It’s like Technorati, but for fanfiction of Kirk drilling Spock.”)

Okay, that’s it, jesus christ it’s time for me to go to bed.

[elitaxne]

GENERAL TF5 PSA

With the movie coming out this week here’s some small reminders:

1. TAG. YOUR. FUCKING. SPOILERS.

#spoilers or #tf5 spoilers at the end of your tags takes .5 seconds, SO DO IT. ( Or any combination really ) #transformers 5 spoilers, #transformers spoilers, etc.

Seeing as not everyone will have the opportunity to see early screenings Tuesday, opening night Wednesday, or not even until next weekend PLEASE REMEMBER TO BE CONSIDERATE.

1-B. Tumblr Saviour or New XKit has the blacklist feature. Use it for spoiler tags. People are going to be talking about it on here, so if you’re not going to be able to see it for a few days or a week, it’s up to you to take those precautions. ( If you’re on mobile, my sincerest condolences ) --- it’s up to you to gamble logging in tbh. Unless you don’t care if parts are spoiled, live your life my dude.

2. New Movie = New Additions to the Fandom.

We were all newbies at some point just hopping onto the scene filled to the brim with inspiration and creativity. So be patient. Be welcoming.

Think back to your first baby steps here, how intimidating it was, what a relief it was to be with like-minded people because you lacked that support system irl. Be. Fucking. Nice.

Also keep in mind: not everyone who joins is going to be an ~adult~ these movies have a LARGE age demographic. There will be youngsters who are just learning things. And that is A-OKAY!

You don’t have to rp with EVERY new blog, but don’t be an ass either, folks.

3. New Ships Ahoy, Captain!

It’s inevitable. We all know how this goes, so let’s not open up a can of worms that needn’t be opened. Be respectful of other people’s preferences. Don’t like ‘x’ ship for ‘y’ reason? Blacklist it! Boom. Done. Out of sight, out of mind!

3-B. ON THE FLIP SIDE: Tag your ships so people who don’t like it won’t see the content. Consideration is a two way street friends, and it’s easy enough to do! PLUS, it adds your content to the tag for other shippers --- WIN, WIN!

That’s all for now, feel free to add more that I’ve missed. Wooooooooo

[mittensmorgul]

Hi :) will you be live blogging 1301 ?

Hi there! Yes, of course I will!

I was gonna make a post tomorrow, like I do every day a new episode airs, with my tags so people can avoid spoilers, and to kinda give a heads up to anyone who’s followed me since the end of last season and has no idea what they’re in for... :P

I’ll post the thing tomorrow, but for anyone seeing this who doesn’t want to get hit with LOADS of spoilers during the first airing of the episode, and then LOADS of gifs, reaction posts, coda fic, etc... it’s probably a good time to look into xkit or tumblr saviour or one of the other extensions that allows you to blacklist tags.

Most of the folks who liveblog will tag EVERYTHING. Xkit allows you to create tag bundles so you can automatically tag every post with a single click, so there’s really no excuse for folks not tagging their spoilers. I mean, unless they’re just dicks...

tags for me this season will be #spn s13 spoilers, and #spn 13.01

But again, I’ll make a formal warning/announcement post tomorrow. :)

[queerofcups]

why do u think tumblr is trash for fandom? not that i disagree lol, i've just never noticed u talking about it and would be interested in hearing your thoughts

 terrible for fanfic writers - i’m biased obviously but tumblr is a really terrible format for any kind of text based art. 

formatting - theme fonts are really variable and i’ve seen countless writers blogs (usually younger/newer writers who need the attention) with fics that I won’t read because I *can’t* read them. 

getting people to read your fic - Also, if you’re posting to tumblr only and not to the Ao3 (which I totally understand especially for drabbles) there’s a strong chance only your followers will see those as opposed to posting in a community where, if its a central fandom comm you’ll probably get decent traffic from folks who’ve never heard of you. and if you want more people to see something you have to keep reblogging it because it gets pushed down by your other blogging because you can’t have pinned posts (which is way easier than creating a separate masterlist page). also tags work like 60% of the time

feedback - if you get feedback on fic on tumblr its either a. a reply that you may or may not be able to reply to easily depending on if tumblr/xkit is freaking out or b. in a reblog that you then have to reblog to reply to cluttering your/your followers dash further

 terrible for building community

If I go to someone’s tumblr and they don’t have an intricate tagging system, chances are pretty good I don’t know shit about them other than their name/age/maybe pronouns. Y’all don’t know shit about me as an actual person unless you happen to catch the one post or hell, the one tag where I talk about being from the American southeast or the weirdness of planning a wedding while feminist, or how I’m working up to weightlifting. Meanwhile, I have a friend that I friended in 2007/8 when I was in bandom who just graduated with her PhD! She was just starting her program when we met. She also just proposed to her boyfriend whom she’d just met when I started following her. I know her, as a person, not just a fic producing machine.

Which brings me to my next point. Tumblr’s great for being a lil bitch without accountability. Don’t get me wrong. Wank is as old as fandom. Where there is fandom there will be wank, bet on that. And its not like the journal-based websites and forums didn’t often have an anonymous function. But anon hate on tumblr is so normalized and so easy-- you don’t even have to log out to ask a question on anonymous on my blog! And even if you aren’t leaving hate. I talk to 2.5 people regularly via tumblr chat regularly. I think of them as my friends. I know their names. They know mine. They call me by my name. You could be the same anon that’s asked me an anon question since I started this blog. We could be well on our way to fandom besties and I would have no idea. To be a lurker on tumblr is to be anonymous, whereas to be a lurker on your livejournals and dreamwidths still came with some name recognition. 

Also tumblr is great for BNFs. Which like. Whatever, I don’t think there’s any one unifying quality I can place on everyone who’s The Most Popular in a fandom (...and I’m not sharing my phandom bnf opinions with an anon) but I do think that tumblr makes it feel like you either have many thousand followers and a constant stream of anons or you’re Nothing and that’s some ol’ bullshit. 

Livejournal and Dreamwidth (the ones I’m most familiar with) had community functions where one person created a blog to which lots of people could submit fanworks. The bandom one I was most familiar with was called bandslashmania (go check it out!), there was minimal modding and it was on you to post your fic, post it with the correct formatting, tag it so people could find it later, etc. And it was a hub that everyone could go to. It could be your daily stop, congrats now you have a selection of the fic that got posted that day. And if you miss a day, or you read a fic and want to go back to it weeks (or even years) later, you can just go to the tag. I’m having very strong feelings about how much fic we’re going to lose because of fucking tumblr (seriously. post your shit to Ao3. Also if you have a favorite fic? C/p that shit and save it to your computer. That’s the only way to (sort of) guarentee you’ll always have it) and the fact that you can accidentally delete your blog.

You ever made friends in the replies or reblogs of a tumblr post? If you did you’re a rarity. That shit happened every day in forum/journal based 

And I love IDB, I think its a really cool space to have more extended conversations, but I still don’t think its a great place to get to know people unless you have time to be really active on there and pay a lot of attention to peoples usernames, lol.

This is. A delicate one. I’m not going to shit on the tumblr’s contributions to people’s growth in awareness of social justice and the experiences of marginalized folks. Its been a really integral piece to amplifying the voices and communities of people who, previously, would have been shut down and made to talk about their issues only on their blog. That’s a statement. And I think tumblr likes to get on a high horse. There’s some shit fandom does that I have real problems with (the fact that I have to block extreme underage on Ao3 is A Problem for me. The blatant racism of who fandom chooses to write about over and over again is A Problem for me. I could go on). But I do think that there’s a subset of fandom that’s like oh, I don’t like this thing, lets use social justice language to talk about why its Bad and Morally Wrong, rather than just not reading it. And that gets extra annoying because they then sound like people who are trying to point out some real ass problems and so people lump these groups together and I have to ask myself before I follow someone if they’re disagreeing with the idea that fandom’s collective love affair with whitecock is problematic, or if they just want to write their fucking otayuri fic.

This is probably way more than you were expecting! I don’t hate tumblr (...mostly). I just find it really frustrating that we’ve decided that this (and a little bit twitter and a little bit instagram which i’m just flummoxed by) is our fannish home when its actually The Worst for a hobby of which one of the main tenants is community building. Like we’ve glued and stapled shit together, we’ve adapted like fandom always does but like Dreamwidth is right there. We could have it all, we just don’t take it. 

Lol, other Fandom Olds that follow me, feel free to hop on this post, I’m sure you have other shit about fandom on tumblr that you hate.