#from my main blog since quite a few people message me on here as well!!

[antianakin]

So to start with, if you don't like this blog and the things I post on it, nobody's putting a gun to your head asking you to look at it. Feel free to block me, blacklist my username, block the anti and critical tags I try to use VERY frequently, etc. Nobody's asking you to look at the things I post and, quite honestly, the fact that you felt the need to leave me this message tells me that between the two of us, you're the one being unhealthy because you felt the need to tell someone innocently staying in their own lane that they're participating in fandom wrong rather than just... moving on and doing fandom in a way you enjoy more. If you want to see something else, go look at a different blog or make your own posts. Nobody's stopping you, least of all me.

But to actually answer the question you didn't ask, I made this blog because I wanted a place to make the kind of posts I wanted to see. Yes, it's a venting blog. That means sometimes I vent about the same thing more than once. Breaking news: people in fandom talk about the same hyperfixation more than once sometimes!

My best friend in the Star Wars fandom happens to be someone who really likes Anakin. So whenever I disliked something about Anakin, she was not the person I could go to in order to discuss it. Well, not always anyway. Not when I got particularly bitter about it. And at the time that I made this blog over a year ago, I didn't have anywhere else to go to vent those feelings, so I made one for myself. I made myself a tiny safe haven where I could simply write those feelings out that I never really saw anybody else making or discussing. This wasn't intended to be a popular blog. I expected it to get about two followers total maybe and a LOT of haters.

Instead, I've actually heard from a number of people that this blog let them feel seen. That the things I've written have felt really relatable to people who just can't connect to all of the Anakin love that tends to exist in the fandom. Because yes, Anakin's been the villain since the 1970s, but you must not have spent a lot of time in this fandom because that is NOT a thing that a lot of his fans tend to remember or even believe anymore. According to a good number of Anakin fans, the Jedi are the real villains and Anakin is just a tragic victim who didn't really do anything wrong. And even a lot of the people who DO recognize that Anakin is the villain of the story often still tend to like Anakin as this tragic character and will primarily post positive things about him. So for those of us who just... don't LIKE Anakin very much, there isn't as much content out there for us. You either accept all of the Anakin love along with the content for the other characters you like or you just... don't consume very much content within the fandom. Or you find a very specific niche to try to stay in that you like better, I guess. But Anakin's the main character of the main saga, he's hard to avoid entirely.

So this blog helps provide one little safe haven for others who just... don't like this character much.

And that's not even the entirety of this blog anyway. If you had scrolled through it much, you might've noticed the fic rec lists that have nothing to do with Anakin at all and are actually a lot more aimed at being Pro Jedi. Because this blog is just as much about loving the Jedi as it is about disliking Anakin. You might've also noticed the extensive AU concepts I've written a few times, one of the most recent of which actually ended up leading to Anakin surviving ROTJ and figuring out how to stop being a Sith and getting mentally healthy. And Anakin's not even the only character who's GOTTEN criticism on this blog, the pinned post on this blog lists a good 10 characters I've had to add to it because there IS going to be criticism for them here, too, from Satine and Bo-Katan Kryze, to Aleksander Kallus, to Crosshair and TBB as a show in general, to Padme Amidala herself. Not to mention some criticism of Ahsoka, as well, sometimes. I'm an all access kind of hater I guess, I like to have a varied diet of characters I complain about.

So yes, it's a blog named antianakin because the url wasn't taken, I thought it was funny, and it works as a WARNING for anybody who sees my posts or decides to come onto my blog. Obviously it doesn't keep EVERYBODY out who shouldn't be looking at them, look at yourself for a good example of that. But I like to think it's helpful. Yes, this is a venting blog where I allow myself to be negative and complain about characters I don't like in a space I have created for me to do that in. This does not mean that I am not EVER positive about Star Wars, it doesn't even mean that I'm never positive about Star Wars ON THIS BLOG. It just means that this is a place that I am allowed to be salty in, it is a place where I put my most bitter thoughts and feelings and throw them into the void that is Tumblr just to get them out of me.

This is MY safe space, MY little fandom haven. Nobody asked you to be here, so if it doesn't feel safe or even just entertaining for you, you're more than welcome to leave and go find somewhere else you like better or create your own little fandom space where you can create the kind of things YOU want to see. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

[vodika-vibes]

I'm asking on anon only because I have to message from my main blog, and that's not the one I blog my clones stuff on.

I was wondering if you would be able to write something with Dogma x Reader using the "complimenting their appearance" prompt.

And maybe if it could somehow be made known that the reader knows she is not pretty or beautiful by traditional standards. Maybe just plain, doesn't really do much with hair or makeup or fashion of any sort. And that maybe it's acknowledged by others also, so it's not just a situation of her feeling insecure, but that she really is just kind of plain, average shape and size, nothing outstanding either way. But that it's more than ok with Dogma, because even if he knows she's not "pretty by traditional standards", he still finds her attractive or cute or appealing in some way?

Or if that's way too specific, then just do whatever flows for you with Dogma x Reader. I mainly just want more DOGMA! :)

Thanks for opening up requests! No pressure! Ignore if you're not feeling it!

@clonethirstingisreal

In the Beholder's Eye

Summary: Dogma comes home from his deployment, and both of you are thrilled.

Pairing: Clone Trooper Dogma x Reader

Words: 885

Warnings: Fluff, some suggestive hints at the end

tagging: @trixie2023

A/N: I'm not sure if I quite hit the mark with this one, but I hope you like it anyway! Sorry it's so short, my coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet.

Divider by Saradika

You’re never going to be a supermodel.

You’ve known this since you were a child. Just a little too short, a little too plump, and a few too many imperfections on your skin classified you solidly in the “cute” category. 

And you’re fine with it. Really.

You weren’t so much, when you were a child, perhaps. Just one too many jokes about how your sister is the pretty one and your brother is the smart one but you have a good personality pushed you into being horribly insecure.

The best thing you ever did for your own mental health was go low contact with the people who made those jokes.

But that was then, and now you are happy, healthy, and thriving in the life you built for yourself on Coruscant, the life you’ve built with your boyfriend.

You opened your own bakery near the University of Coruscant, and you very quickly became popular with college students…and then their families.

It’s the end of one of those busy days, you’ve closed up shop for the day, and you’re doing final inventory for the day, so you know how much of everything you need to order for the next week, when you hear the click of the door unlocking, and you look up from your datapad.

A brilliant smile crosses your face when you see Dogma stepping through the front door of the bakery. He greets you with a small smile, though he’s quick to turn around and relock the door behind him before greeting you properly.

He sets his bag on a table, alongside his helmet, and he walks over to the counter, “I had a feeling that you would still be here,” Dogma teases lightly as he leans his hip against the counter, and allows his sharp eyes to drag across your features.

“Well, you know me,” You joke back with a bright smile. You set your datapad down on the counter and then walk around the counter so you can greet him properly. “I had no idea that you were back on Coruscant!” You say brightly, “If I had known I would have gone to meet you.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Dogma replies as he settles his hands on your hips, “Are you surprised?”

You laugh and wrap your arms around his neck, “I am surprised!”

His hands tighten on your hips, “Good.” Dogma leans in and presses a kiss to the tip of your nose, a small grin crossing his face as he gets a hint of sugar from your skin, “You’ve been baking with powdered sugar haven’t you?”

You blink at him, “How could you tell?”

“You always taste sweet after you do,” Dogma replies with an easy smile.

You make a face, “I should go and take a shower then. The last thing I want is to be covered in sugar.”

He laughs and slides one of his hands up to cup your cheek, “Is that an offer, ner cyare?”

Your huff and stand on your toes to press your face against his neck, “You, my love, have been spending too much time with men like Jesse.”

“Guilty as charged,” Dogma agrees.

You pull away for a moment and grin at him, “I mean, I do enjoy it when you wash my hair for me. So soothing.”

His thumb slides against your lips, and an adoring look crosses his face, “Oh, ner cyare…” He murmurs, “If you keep smiling at me like that, I’ll do anything you want.”

You kiss his thumb, and he releases a content sigh, “You’re kind of a cheap date, Dogma.”

“What can I say? I love your smile, it’s my favorite feature of yours.” He replies quietly. 

“Really?” You duck your head, flustered, “My smile? Not any other part of my body?”

“You’re beautiful, cyare, and I love every inch of your body,” Dogma says easily, “But you have a special smile just for me, and I would burn down Coruscant if it means that smile never fades.”

You laugh, “That’s kind of dramatic, Dogma.”

“I have also been spending time with Fives,” Dogma jokes, “But also, dramatic is written into my genes.”

You laugh again, and you reach up to cup his face with your hands, “I love you, you silly, dramatic, man.” You say adoringly.

He flashes a boyish grin at you, “I love you too.” Dogma’s gaze darts around the bakery for a moment, “Are you done in here?” He asks, his gaze locking with yours as he effortlessly slides his hands to the back of your thighs and lifts you.

You squeak and grab his shoulders to keep your balance, “Uh…I’m done in here.” You say immediately.

“Then let’s go upstairs.” Dogma says, his grin becoming mischievous, “I’d like to show you just how much I missed you, ner cyare.”

You shiver and lean in to brush your lips against his, “Yes, please.”

He catches your lips in a proper kiss, “Look at you, being so polite for me.” Dogma murmurs against your lips, as he turns to carry you towards the stairs that lead to your shared apartment.

You giggle against his lips, “If I’m nice to you, you’ll be nice to me.”

He grins, “Don’t worry, cyare. I’ll make sure you get exactly what you want.”

[tdmtdmtd]

Holy shit

HOLY SHIT

COOLMATH GAMES ARG

Part 3 - I was fucking right > last post

Another new post was uploaded to the CMG Instagram AS WELL AS a new game to the CMG website AND a message from the CMG Team

Let's start with the Instagram post.

It's nothing too extraordinary, just a photo of the prototype on the homepage. But where the crack was is now a message from the team.

Which takes you to a blog with the URL "burn-after-reading", the title of the page is "The Secret Has Been Uncovered". And the name of the upload is "Read This Before They Take It Down!"

It's Maddie. Talking about everything that happened and that they found. But as I read through it, other than a summary of what we already know, there's also things that we didn't know but are interesting to take note. Like how, since day 2 of the post, they felt like there was some sort of monster lurking the office. Or on Day 6 when they tried to get the game running themselves, the last line was to sleep with one eye open. But Day 8, today, they upload the game, the post, and end the message with "Use the clues found on this blog, look for the words that stand out. This is the key to the whole thing! Seek the truth and you shall find it."

If you don't want me to spoil the game and go try it yourself, here's a link to the game and on to the post.

For those who don't care about spoilers, get ready.

In the blog there are quite a few words bolded and italicized, this list includes: Search, Monster, Found, Myself, Escape, and Darkness. Starting the game, there's something broken down in the bottom right.

The story is that the player was in the middle of the forest with some other people, left for a minute, and when you came back they were gone. Going straight forward, you see the Hangman Monster and then get eaten by him. The choice before there is a hat that looks like yours.

"Huh, this hat looks a lot like mine. I don't remember anyone in the group having a hat like mine..."

Right before that, there were some popped balloons. Going left or right anywhere, there are two things you can click, the main object, and a bug after you solve the main thing. Both give you balloons, but the bugs give you glitchy balloons. Getting all the balloons, glitchy and not, you get a choice of path

Going left, you see the monster, not just the face, the entire Hangman Monster. It has something to say.

This strange forest is something I once called my home. Yet when I descend further, I see things are not as they seem. This forest is like no other; we cannot stay. There is no other solution. Do not fear me, I want to become your friend. Perhaps we can escape together.

The monster's balloons lift him from the forest, and so do yours and after a few more words, the monster says join me and the screen fades to black. You do in fact have to refresh the page to do anything again.

Going right, the balloons make you float away like normal... like if you didn't get all the glitchy balloons. You are then given a hint to look deeper. A very... subtle... hint

You actually see the color change as it's being written, or, typed, I guess. The next button text changes to "Find Me?" and then you restart after clicking it. One last thing to note is the instructions of the game.

I have nothing to say about them, but anyway, I thought I'd bring it up anyway. Also, I feel like the name is some kind of code, but I'm not too sure what code if it is.

So there you go, the entire prototype, if there's another Instagram update or anything like that I'll make another post but this is it for now. For those who don't want to spend the time trying to solve the bugs I'll list them here: (sights, descend, other, appear, become, together)

[guillemelgat]

saying this all as someone who used to collect languages the same way and understands what it feels like. it is not always a practical, irl/real world-workable way to do things.

i know langblr encourages it, but minoritized languages aren’t pokemon. if you learn a language then a main point of focus that you take, *needs* to be whether you will ever use it. the welsh farm dream is one thing, since you intend to actually live there but you have upwards of 5 languages from so many parts of the world in your bio, that are not your heritage language or the one from the place where you grew up. do you consider how the speakers would respond to having their culture basically collected, but not actually joined into or lived in, as a diversion in the life of an academic from another country?

the strongest example from your list is romani. the romani are a very closed culture who usually don’t want outsiders speaking their language, and as for the others, the same principle isn’t as strictly applied with all, but: whether you are invited or not *does matter*, to the people in those cultures. there are levels of open vs closed. no, no one is stopping you, of course, but tact has a role. because (this will be the thought of people who are native speakers) why do you need this language if you’re interacting with few to no people in your day to day life who you will ever be speaking it with? learning it for its own sake as a kind of novelty won’t always be met well.

the reason many of these minoritized languages are minoritized is one involving politics suffering and war. as with bosnian.

i had to figure this out the hard way myself. so. just some food for thought

tl;dr i would figure out reasons why each has a strong call to you, read extensively on the political settings and how fraught things can be in those places and their history/present, and maybe emphasize focus on a small handful of them while ruling out those you’ll never personally interact with. just a few documentaries with interviews from real people who live there and speak the languages might give some perspective shift.

Thank you for sending this message! I've been ruminating for a while about everything you've brought up, and wasn't really sure how to answer this well, but I'll give you my best attempt at an answer(?), if this even counts as a question in need of an answer.

In terms of myself, I'll give you what this made me think:

I will fully admit that I started this blog when I was 17, and I'm now 23. That's a lot of time to change and evolve as a person, which I most certainly have. At 17, it definitely felt like learning 10+ languages (regardless of which languages, even) was a perfectly tenable goal. At 23, I'm realizing that it's not quite as easy as I thought it would be. So I have scaled back my ambitions a lot since then, and am only trying to focus on a couple of languages now. Because of that, I will say that the list on my about page has started to become somewhat misleading. And it does frustrate me that the languages that younger me thought I could learn were all minoritized, because I feel like a shitty person giving up on them—hence why I have tried to put this off for a while.

I did start learning these languages knowing that "collecting minoritized languages like Pokemon" was not something that I wanted to do. It's extremely important to me to be plugged into a language culturally and socially when I'm starting to learn it—everything that you've given as advice here is generally much less than what I've done for all the languages I'm studying, and I wouldn't be able to imagine learning one not having done these things. I will say that I have talked with speakers of every single one of the languages that I'm studying except for Tamasheq. On the other hand, I could certainly do better. I've been struggling with this for a while, and I think that this might be a good time to step back from some languages unless I'm willing to make them an active part of my life. Basically, if I had infinite time, I would be able to maintain all of these languages, but in this world, I have to be realistic.

And I also had some general thoughts on the subject:

I honestly think a lot of the problem with the way people treat minoritized languages is tied up with the attitude that they're "folkloric" or "exotic" and not just. A Language. What I mean by that isn't that they don't have boundaries or can't be closed or you can just learn two words and say you speak them, but I do think that the real question to ask yourself when you're learning a minoritized language is if you're treating it as a full language. A lot of times you'll see famous polyglots or whatever tacking on minoritized languages, and it is really frustrating to see that they can do that with them when they can't with something like Spanish or French. I do think that with minoritized languages, it's easier to go around pretending you speak them (or to think you actually do), because there's usually fewer people to question you and in many cases native speakers are kinder than with larger languages. That is, however, a toxic attitude that I want to avoid at all costs—I'm sure I've done it, because I'm not perfect, but for example I don't bring up languages I'm learning unless there's a context where they're needed. This is the only place where you can see the language I've studied, and I mostly leave it there for clarity. That being said, I won't say that I'm immune to any of this stuff, so I don't want to pretend like I'm without criticism.

I do think that while your definition of strict necessity is fair as a tough question to dissuade beginners, I don't fully agree with it. A lot of these languages I came into without a really good reason to study, but thanks to learning them I've met people who I wouldn't have otherwise met and can't imagine not being in my life. Use is not contingent on living in a place—I've always said this and I will continue to say it. Languages come up in all kinds of places you wouldn't expect, and if you choose to make them a part of your life they do so even more. Especially for minoritized languages, being a part of the community means reaching out to people, pitching in, and doing things in the language. I've found you can do that in many different ways, and in fact, the strict usefulness of the language is usually a factor that hurts minoritized language speakers rather than helping them. I don't know, just something to think about that didn't really sit right with me.

I think that the only thing you can do when learning a minoritized language is immerse yourself in its history, culture, and people. And by people I mean make friends who speak the language. Make the language have weight for you. Understand it on a human level. This sounds really dumb (and looks kind of cringe when written out, sorry) but I think if people did this it would solve a lot of these debates. Just my grain of salt.

Sorry for making everyone read this, if you made it here I hope it was of some worth to you. I honestly think the only thing that you can do as a learner of any language is really to always know that you have more to learn, and to be open to being taught—whatever it is that people have to teach you. That's how you build a respectful language learning relationship, and that's what I hope I've done. Now I definitely need to update my about page though, it's been time to do that for a while 😅

[mydarling-suggestions]

I’m not sure of the scope of questions you answer but I need some help and I’m not sure who else I could turn to.

So I’m in a moderately popular fandom on this site and I’d say for about a year, I’ve been bullied by someone I had a nasty falling out with. They go on anon but I know it’s them based on the language and context used—they don’t seem to be too stealthy honestly. Anyway, I’m not sure what to do about it because I find myself getting paranoid whenever I get an ask or a message, because this person has managed to taint a lot of my relationships with people on here that I engage with. I’ve since been blocked, harassed, had death threats received and it’s all very overwhelming. Turning off anon only works for a short amount of time, but my blog is meant to be a safe space, so I don’t like to keep anon restricted all the time.

This fandom I’m in is wonderful in so many ways, but this has been such a sore spot for me, because I just want this person to go away and live their life, though sad it may very well be, and leave me alone. I’m not sure how to manage this mentally. I’ve found myself fighting quite a bit with the anons I get, and I think because of that, I’ve found my engagement with others disappearing. Idk, it’s been a mess. This person btw has caused someone to leave the fandom and the website because they were being harassed too, and all of the mutuals were sad about that, because they were lovely. I’ve tried reporting this user to Tumblr countless times, to no avail.

I don’t know what to do anymore. They are ruining this entire fandom, and they have quite a fierce following of people behind them, supporting them. If they only knew how ghastly this person acted towards me and continued to harass me…

*sigh* I’ve properly talked your ear off. Any help would be appreciated. If not, I understand.

Hi nonnie, gosh this situation sounds horrible I can’t imagine how draining it would be on you mentally and emotionally 😞

I haven’t checked the inbox here for a while so not sure when this was submitted, but this is really disappointing and immature behaviour from this individual. It seems you’ve tried a fair few things to try and combat their bullying already, and it sucks that your attempts to report this user has yielded no results.

There aren’t many other solutions I can think of except for two. My first suggestion is to make a post informing your followers that you’ll be inactive for a short period of time, however long you feel you need, for a mental health break. Hopefully by doing this you can improve your mental health and perhaps come to a solution in the meantime, or even better, this bully decides to move on. My second suggestion is rather drastic and likely not something you’d want to do, but I would suggest making a new tumblr where you can engage with everyone in the fandom that you’re currently engaging with, although under the guise of someone else so you wont be targeted by this bully anymore.

My main hope however, would be that this bully moves on eventually, but preferably soon. I would also add that this is entirely a reflection on them and not you, and try to not take anything they say to heart. Nasty people like them normally know exactly what to say to hurt people and their words can cut deep I know, but don’t believe whatever they may be telling you or calling you. I know this is all far easier said than done, but if you notice you get another nasty anon message from this person, delete it as soon as you realise what it is, please don’t go on to read the whole thing, you don’t deserve to be tormented by this person.

I would also highly recommend talking to a friend about this if you haven’t already, even if you just vent it should do you some good to have someone to talk to and receive support from. Perhaps a friend of yours might even have a solution to all this, and even if they don’t they can keep you happy and distracted! And finally, speaking of distractions, stay as distracted as possible! If worse comes to worst and theres no way for you to really avoid the bullying, spend time with friends and do the things that make you happy and try your best to not dwell on the actions and words of this person.

Keep reporting them to tumblr in the meantime and hopefully something finally gets done about them because bullying should never be tolerated, anon or not. I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this nonnie and I really really hope that the bullying stops or is dealt with 💛 And you can always come for a visit to all of us here because this is a safe space and there’s plenty of love and support for you here 💛💛

[transitofmercury]

Note: I'm WAY more active on my Casualty sideblog (@medicallymercury) right now but I'm still around over here!

✧ Hi, I'm Transit of Mercury! ✧

Hi, I go by Mercury on here. I'm 19 years old, I use she/they pronouns and I’m from the UK. Generally speaking, I love historical fiction that I believe has "potential, if sometimes questionable execution" - most of my posts will be about Horrible Histories: the Movie or Katherine from Newsies. I also have a sideblog dedicated to the BBC medical drama Casualty, I mostly go on about Teddy Gowan and sometimes Sandra Mute over there.

Please, please, please send me messages or asks about absolutely anything on either of my blogs!! I’ve been a little MIA over here recently since I’ve been more active on my sideblog and I’ve been doing uni stuff, but I still see my messages/asks/notifs and do my best to reply. Hateful people - racists, misogynists, transphobes, etc. - will be blocked.

 ✧┊  Here's my tags for: the Horrible Histories movie (Atti and Orla, I also have a resources post), Newsies (Katherine), my own posts, reblogs, self reblogs and answered asks.

AO3 ✦ Dreamwidth

₊˚ ✧. *┊  That probably covers all the main stuff you need to know about me but this is an additional section where I’m allowed to ramble:

₊˚ ✧. *┊  I’m from the Midlands and currently a first year History student. I’ve been aware of fandom for about 10 years now (ah, the joys of unregulated internet access at 9) and actively ‘taking part’ for a little under 7, with my first (long deleted) Tumblr blog being dedicated to Holby City and created in 2017.

₊˚ ✧. *┊  I’m interested in historical fiction of all kinds (though I do lean more towards earlier periods than more recent stuff), right now I’m reading my way through Rosemary Sutcliff’s stuff. I’ve read The Eagle of the Ninth, Song For A Dark Queen and The Chief’s Daughter so far and I’m currently reading The Shining Company. Song For A Dark Queen is my favourite that I’ve read, but Cottia is my beloved Sutcliff character.

₊˚ ✧. *┊  As my Casualty sideblog and deleted Holby blog imply, I love whatever your mum is watching on TV. I’m not begging you to watch Casualty or anything… but if I were begging you to watch Casualty, I’d say that Welcome to the Warzone (37x26) is a great episode to pick the show up and catch up to it in relatively not that many episodes. I’d also say that the improvised episode, Thin Green Line (37x12), is a piece of actually brilliant and severely underrated television. I’d also say that the best episode for my Casualty OTP is On The Edge (36x22). My Holby days ended in late-2018. I also love Call The Midwife but all my favourite characters have left (Val save me… Val… save me, Val). Those are my big ones, I occasionally check in with Eastenders to see what’s happening over there but I’m not properly caught up with it.

₊˚ ✧. *┊  I’m into quite a few musicals, though I don’t really post about them besides Newsies. Off the top of my head, some of my favourites are Legally Blonde, Anastasia, Falsettos/The Marvin Trilogy, Sunday In The Park With George and Evita (it’s a mess but the songs are such bangers).

₊˚ ✧. *┊  I’ve been into comedy, specifically britcom, for longer than I can remember. The Thick Of It and Peep Show hold the shared number one spot for my favourite comedy shows - TTOI for how well written it is and Peep Show for how many times I’ve rewatched it. I think I’ve watched too many to list here, but my shows of my year (they came out years ago but I got to them this year) would probably be Crashing, Plebs, People Just Do Nothing and W1A. James Acaster is my favourite stand up comedian.

₊˚ ✧. *┊  Send me a message if you’ve got any HH movie related questions because odds are that I probably have an answer and if I don’t then I will also want to find the answer as well. I also know a pretty good amount about the Pulitzers, I’m no expert but I probably know more than most people do and would be happy to go on about them. I bring nothing to the Casualty fandom beyond a passion for idiot paramedics and the occasional edit.

[feuqueerfire]

23.5 Degrees Ep 1 - 8 Live Blogging

I've been wanting a MilkLove series since I watched Bad Buddy in early 2022 and now I finally get to watch it! I'm excited, I've liked the gifs and clips I've seen on social media. It's a regular high school drama but I can enjoy those when done well, so I'm hoping it's charming.

I wanted to watch more of this show while it was on air but it was exam season, so I avoided watching anything that was airing, but now I'll watch up to the first 8 episodes and watch the last few eps (9-12) as they air.

Ep 1 (Apr 27)

1-1

It makes me so giddy already hehe

So what is the family dynamic? Is Alpha the older sister, Ongsa's the younger one, it's their parents, and Aylin is the cousin who's living with them?

Also, I wonder if Love rode that motorcycle? it was going through narrow spaces and such

1-2

so ridiculous lol Ongsa fainted looking at Sun's face

Aw, poor loser Ongsa

leave her alone or I'll start killing you creeps

Euro's character + Sun to the rescue

omg in the comments, people were talking about how they can't believe they're at the age when the main characters are their age... meanwhile, I was like oh? 10th grade? so young! T.T I'm at the age when I'm the same age as the older BL characters because they're mostly still in uni or uni age lol

1-3

I believe Sun's family are gonna be cute and nice

smiley moon :)

oh the shadow on Ongsa's IG makes it seems like she's a guy

pls Ongsa spiraling after sending "Goodnight" which reads as flirty is hilarious

not a fan of the yelling necessarily

1-4

Aylin giving advice

loll Alpha and her friends fucking up the bullies. I saw a tiktok of this

Earth that revolves around the sun

oh noo, not shy guy Earth

I knew a lot about this episode already, so nothing was really surprising but it's cute so far! Lots and lots of space motifs

Ep 2: Universe Club (Apr 28)

2-1

I'm so confused about when people came to Bangkok, like I thought they moved here just a month ago? How is Alpha already the school president and famous in the school and stuff?

Aw, Earth isn't answering Sun's messages?

loll Earth's cuteness aggression

oh, yknow I thought they might mention period cramps or smth to cover up Earth's screaming in the bathroom in ep 1 but they didn't, so I thought maybe the show isn't gonna mention periods but indeed Aylin came to get a pad from Ongsa

2-2

yaas lesbian teachers

it's kinda funny that I've never been spoiled about this Astronomy Club curse, does it play a part in the show after this ep?

Aylin and Luna are so cute, my ViewJune !

pls not Sun talking to Ongsa about Earth

Ongsa digging herself into a deeper hole

purposefully throwing away phone into the trash is wild lmfao

2-3

bird poo T.T

ahhh "exploring space by yourself can be lonely. Want to explore it with me?" romance

pls "I'm talk to Earth" all her friends: "huh? a guy?!" lesbian Sun hehe

2-4

pls Earth having no access to a good electronic device, Sun thinking Earth went MIA and dumped her, Teacher Bambam falling down the stairs and ending up at the hospital, supposed curse strong af

more trans lesbian teachers but one of them is crazy about Astronomy Club and would withstand bodily harm to get it running lmfao i love them

2-4

yaas phone acquired

lol so cute Sun holding a grudge

loll wiggling enough to fall off the bed, reminds me of Pat in Ep 7 Bad Buddy squeezing nong nao doll to death + Tinn wiggling on his bed a few times in My School President

Aw, Chaeron and Tinh going out of their way to buy a protective amulet for Ongsa

ah, P'Ton Ongsa's ex-bf. I knew this already but if I didn't, I too would've been shocked

Also I've learned hapless means unfortunate/having no luck. I knew the word before but didn't quite know that that's what it meant

Ep 3: UFO (Apr 29)

3-1

they dated only for 3 days, i'm crying

oh lmfao that's too long apparently + he got broken up with

okay, so last year Alpha was still at this house and school? While Ongsa came for Songkran and then went back to Phuket

everybody in this fucking school is obsessed with recording everything

girl became the treasurer for gay reasons and now has to get money from ppl

these ppl gotta leave Onsga aloneeee, she doesn't even like Ton pls

3-2

I hope Mawin/Tinh happens

Alpha is younger than Ton?

oh this is the event where lots of them are at school at night and there's an Onsga-Sun hug

oww Aylin wants to meet her alien friends so bad T.T "Someone like you with many friends wouldn't understand"

pls this basketball

3-3

not Tinh broadcasting him breaking into the school like girl

please 2 instances of falling over each other onto the ground lmao

not Ton's fandom lightstick, plssss

everybody running in different directions in the school reminds me of Alice In Borderland kinda when they played Tag in that apartment but the situations are so different lol

hug

my poor Aylin who didn't meet her friend

Alien-Moon friendship

gonna take a brief break from 23.5 to watch the Alice In Borderland S2 game in ep 3/4 Jack of Hearts, guess the symbol on your collar.

mini-break to blog about AoB oops but I forgot who the jack is, I keep thinking it's the blue shirt guy but that's too obvious and the emo guy is also obvious, but it feels like it's one of them?

Ah, indeed it is one of those two and I guess it's the emo guy since they're pushing the blue shirt guy to be a more obvious Jack?

so funny when his partner kills himself and he's like whelp, I've lost my partner. Seems like I'm screwed.

oh yeah, I remember what happened now. kinda corny but sure, fun enough

back to 23.5 oops

3-4

lol Alpha giving out punishments but also doing Mawin a little favour by making Tinh his assistant

oof, losing the basketball game as expected

ah, Charoen now knows Onsga likes Sun

Ep 4: (Apr 29/30)

4-1

Charoen Immediately calls Tinh to tell him Ongsa likes Sun lmfao

4-2

ahh Sun's heart beating fast when hugging and thinking of hugging Ongsa heh

Luna (June) and her bambi pretty eyes are sooo cute

4-3

Aylin excitedly following after Ongsa when friends knock on the door aww

Sun also makes an appearance and Onsga’s brain breaks

4-4

yaas fortune tellers

I loveee how cute the "I'm going to buy water" "i'm coming with you" "annoying human Phi" "i'm coming na~" Aylin-Luna part is, I had a tiktok I liked with it

Ongsa having a sudden strike of bravery as she tells Sun's fortune omg?

"To my Sun, from your Earth" omg ?!

I hope Ongsa actually confesses and doesn't just say that she knows Earth who told her to do this or something

I think I wish that love was juuuust a teeny bit better of an actor? Make her lines seem slightly more natural cuz most people are doing well and she's doing well too but it sometimes feels like she's acting rather than being the character Sun. But it might also have to do with her character and the script giving her lines that make it feel like her sentences aren't genuine.

The show reminds me of My School President, which makes sense since they're high school shows, and this one reminds me of that one ep when they had to do the club fair and set up that "cafe" thing.

Started doing 1.25x from part 4-4, oops.

Ep 5: The Gift (Apr 30)

5-1

oof, yeah, I started watching this ep Immediately after ep 4 but indeed she says the delivery guy just left it with her rip. okay I'll do my episode stuff like reblogging gifs before I watch ep 5

aww poor Onsga ot being able to talk to Sun as her real self

5-2

Luna defending Aylin from some bullies

why are Luna and Aylin so cuteeeee

5-3

man, Sun was clearly giving you an out, why say "see you" instead of "sorry" smhh

This is so frustrating because Sun literally gave Ongsa an out but Ongsa said she'd be there (as Earth) without any plans of how to make that happen and now Sun's sad on her birthday :(

5-4

aw man Sun :(

It's just frustrating that Ongsa as Earth keeps giving Sun hope because Sun will be heartbroken one way or another because Earth straight up doesn’t exist aghhh

“It’s tough human but you must keep going.”

idk if it’s because the show is picking up or because i’m watching on 1.25x speed but it has definitely become more watchable and it doesn’t take me a whole day to get through one ep lol

Ep 6: The Apocolypse (Apr 30)

i haven't watched the previews but according to someone's post and BE podcast vibes, it seems like Ongsa's gonna get found out by Sun?

6-1

idk I'm on Dear's side like Earth is hiding something for sure (in that... he doesn't exist)

ah, I hope Mawin and Tinh comes to fruition fr

Luna's face so funny as Aylin's telling her the whole story

6-2

Luna (and Aylin) instigating lmfao I know they're tired

we know Earth is just Ongsa and she doesn't have malicious intentions but Sun, girl, you're getting catfished and your trust in Earth is misplaced, it's probably good that you have friends and seniors looking out for you lol

Luna and Aylin, I fawking love you

hold onnnn what is this mood, like I've been annoyed at the Earth secret just dragging on but ahh now Sun kabadoning Ongsa and being like "you want me to get mad?" is so fun

almost telling Sun so many times but alas

ahhh it's been like Ongsa turn off your notifs/your phone or you're gonna get caught by Sun texting you for a few episodes now and finally indeed it's the reason.

I hope Sun gets to be mad and sad and frustrated and is allowed to lash out because this sucks, and I want her to be able to show emotions other than niceness and kindness (+ some sadness at Earth not showing up to her party). let's give her some Depth but also idk... feels like I haven't seen many Angsty eps or moments around social media for this show

6-3

aw man

Sun really gave Ongsa so much opportunity to explain but like.. what even is there to explain, I guess

I think I need to gain more empathy fr because how are you as a 16 year old just... leaving without informing anybody and not picking up anybody's calls just to wallow? Tell your friends/family that you're just gonna hang out outside or pick up their calls to let them know that you're not dead even when you're going through something. This irritated me recently in I Fly Towards You the drama with the ML's younger brother as well.

I don't want Sun to get cool and be chill too fast !! Feel more angry and upset and betrayed!

"It's good that Ongsa is Earth" nooooo, not yet !

6-4

Aylin worries so much for Ongsa in this state ahh

ooof, I don't want Sun to be the one who acts normal and rational and kind and reaches out first and is understanding with little to no effort from Ongsa's end beyond wallowing in her self-pity

Sun literally having to beg and run after Ongsa to get her to talk to her, don't piss me offffff

I don't remember when this happened in the show but the people on BE Podcast were saying that Ongsa sent a photo of something from her room (her ceiling with lights?) to Sun and that's how she was gonna get caught. Anyway, the phone notifications were another massive way to get caught and seems that was the way they went.

I can't believe it took 20 minutes of show (no joke, like 10 mins of part 3 and 10 mins of part 4) before they made up and are now getting to know each other again agh. And we see so much of Ongsa's devastation but barely anything from Sun and she's the one who has to chase after Ongsa smhh It's as if Sun isn't a real character for real, she has no emotions or agency or function beyond being somebody pretty and nice who Ongsa likes.

I do get her fear and anxiety that she's a girl and Sun's a girl and she doesn't know how they could ever work it out but I think I'd be more receptive to her feelings in this scenario if Ongsa didn't hurt Sun repeatedly and then Sun have to take the initiative to patch it up.

Ep 7: The Overhead Sun (Apr 30)

7-1

lol awkward Ongsa and Sun

heh the phone screen scene

Ongsa and Sun flirting across the classroom while Chaeron and Tinh are arguing about who's a demon

plss talking about taking it slow but now Sun wants to stay over for the night and wear Ongsa's clothes while hers are in the wash

not Sun running away when asked about whether they're girlfriends lmfao

7-2

Luna and Alpha together really are just so older girls and friends lol

Ton is just so over-the-top, I'm dead. Also, I knowwww that guys will use -kha when speaking with girls sometimes to like either flirt or to idk seem social or whatever but in my head, it's usually just like oh he's a girl <3 except this time i'm like yes... Ton is indeed using -kha to batter up the girls... esp the way the translation is using honey/sweetheart/etc to indicate what his use of -kha means

heh they've successfully made Sun jealous

also, I didn't realize this stuff was in ep 7, idk why I thought it was ep 8

getting a makeup ad but it's a cute scene

7-3

pls awkward ending to the almost kiss lol

and it ending with Ongsa escaping to go home

Ton gtfooo and cant even publicly admit whether he's hitting on Ongsa smhh he's fr laying it on thick this ep

lolll the iconic scene I've seen on twitter/tiktok where Ongsa's like yeah Sun's acting weird today ig she doesn't like my makeup

"I like this team" "Me too" Aylin-Luna are gonna be the fucking death of me

7-4

loll lesbian Phi announcing she's single as PR

the friend group is sooo good at poking Ongsa and Sun lol all working together to make Sun as jealous as possible

loll possessiveness

so public

heh so Ton was indeed in on it

this was a pretty cute and happy episode, wonder what the next 5 eps will be? since the Earth this is over with and they're now also girlfriends.

It's also an endearing episode and we get to see angry/jealous Sun and I wish... these emotions were present last week so that she could properly be angry at Ongsa. whelp

Ep 8: The Starry Night (May 1)

8-1

ah, so this ep is gonna be about how to behave in a relationship and maybe working on Ongsa's self-esteem

Merit Tiffin Box just reminded me that we also used to call lunch at school "tiffin" I wonder what it means?

"Tiffin is a South Asian English word for a type of meal. It refers to a light breakfast or a light tea-time meal at about 3 p.m., consisting of typical tea-time foods. In certain parts of India, it can also refer to the midday luncheon or, in some regions of the Indian subcontinent, a between-meal snack." ohhh interesting, it was usually lunch for school but it wasn't as heavy as like actual lunch that I used to eat after going home lol

I too wonder about the appeals of kissing tbh

8-2

hehe Nida and Bambam

make a move? idk what that entails but it makes sense that Sun would want it since she was the one who chased Ongsa after finding out she was Earth + asked her to be her gf last ep as well

pls let Sun watch her action movie in peace, Enough Pausing

lol Sun's gotta be doing this on purpose aw is she nervous about kissing

hehe Sun in the bathroom

8-3

hehe now Aylin has taken to throwing paper balls at Luna

meteor shower Aylin-Luna date let's gooo

I already know Mawin's gonna be rejected cuz of a post on Twitter aughh i don't wanna watch :(

pls them looking through the little windows on the door is so funny

Ton smh making up pitiful scenarios about Chaeron in this head

8-4

watching the meteor shower in pairs you say?

Nida trying her best while Bambam's casual and oblivious plss

omg Aylin already with the I Love U in morse code ahh very fast

cheek kiss hehe

pls not Chaeron swearing at Ton

Ton, let go of her arm!!

we're not gonna get Mawin and Ton right, i'm not into them

joy and happiness that MilkLove have a pretty good kiss cuz people (including me) were afraid that it'd be awkward/dead fish

Thoughts so far:

I caught up!

The show is cute but I don't know if I did a good thing by deciding to start it when there are still 4 eps left. It's a cute high school show, which might be a better binge than watching 45-55 mins a week because it may not keep my interest. I don't know, we'll see.

I find Ongsa-Sun to be cute but I don't feel like I have an emotional connection to them.

On the other hand, I'm quite invested in Aylin-Luna and love Aylin! It's especially fun because I became Obsessed with ViewJune after seeing a few edits from 10YT of them being enemies and then friends? I was shipping them and retweeting their edits and stuff and then !! the ship actually materialized in this show, that's wild (first spotted in Dangerous Romance but idk if they even really happened there lol), especially because they weren't supposed to be in this at all (instead GeminiFourth were gonna be the side ship). I guess many people other than me were also into their chemistry in 10YT. Like I didn't even watch the show, didn't know anything about them but still was hooked on twitter and tiktok edits.

We still have a third of the show left, I wonder what it'll be about. I think I saw something about a scholarship mentioned? Going abroad?

[adumpofdumbstuff]

Closure, aka the real last post about #a scandal in tumblr

Post below the cut

Despite having blocked both of them and determined to stay out of the drama from not long before consultjohnwatson made the split public, I have been lurking on both consult-sherlockholmes and consultjohnwatson. This was just me wanting everything to be okay.

I guess I just wanna piece together the unfortunate piece I was involved in, despite my involvement in the roleplay being very brief. I know I talked about it in my last post about the situation, but now that it’s been quite some time since the split went public, I’d like to share it again.

On February 21st (I think), consultjohnwatson reblogged my well-loved mustache post and gave me advice about my cold that I was having, hence the tag for the posts on this blog, #☕️🍯🔎 . After a few days, I also got in contact with consult-sherlockholmes, awkwardly saying hello and soon becoming mutuals for a short time. I ended up starting a sideblog to keep the reblogs from cluttering up my main, not unlike what ended up happening with the papa-terzo-emeritus roleplay, which I am also no longer a part of. I may discuss that another time.

Now, here’s the part I feel terribly guilty about. 

I am aware that this split was planned, but I feel, if I hadn’t been involved, it would have been a lot less messy. Why?

Because I was the one who told consultjohnwatson that consult-sherlockholmes got in criminalisticonsultant’s car. 

Even though I know now that this split was a long time coming, I still feel sort of guilty about this. The split was messy because of Moriarty’s involvement, and that aspect wouldn’t have come to light if not for my actions. I know he may have seen the posts on his own, so I shouldn’t beating myself up over this, and I wouldn’t even be writing this post if I didn’t feel terrible over the fact that it’s been almost a month since this happened and people are still talking about it.

I guess criminalisticonsultant was right. I don’t know what’s good for me.

I believe most of us were unaware how OOC this thing really was, so I had no idea what was really happening until consultjohnwatson messaged me to take down a post I made after the “replacement” drama went down. I genuinely had no idea about the split until this moment. I had my theories when when consultjohnwatson answered the other Sherlock’s ask, but I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted to believe this was all part of the roleplay. consultjohnwatson told me about the split and that consult-sherlockholmes was aware of this, something that shocked me because only minutes earlier, consult-sherlockholmes had reached out to me for help, in-character I assume, though with her it was hard to tell. Even now I’m not sure. She had told me to not tell consultjohnwatson about our messages, a direction I did not obey. I tried to explain to consult-sherlockholmes that consultjohnwatson wanted to split, she claimed to not know about this and to not trust consultjohnwatson and to stay.

At this point, I was like, “fuck this shit, I’m done”.

I told consult-sherlockholmes that I wasn’t doing this anymore, which was met with more begging which, frankly, felt like blackmail. My final decision was to block both of them (and criminalisticonsultant), delete my sideblog and every post and reblog made on my main prior to the sideblog’s creation and finish it off with one last post.

Clearly, now it’s two last posts.

In those messages, consult-sherlockholmes said this felt like a divorce, and that feeling I see goes both ways. Three years those two did this together, and I got there just in time to watch it all end and have a very unfortunate experience. I felt terrible after all was said and done. I felt sort of sick. I felt very much manipulated. I thought everything was going to work out, and I thought wrong. The worst part? I sort of forgot this was pretend, especially after the now-deleted 16 Personalities post, which if you don’t know, consult-sherlockholmes, who was my mutual by this point, reblogged it. In my post, I ended up comparing myself to Sherlock, and I suppose for a moment I forgot this was a roleplay and I felt like Sherlock Holmes was actually telling me I have potential. This fact only made the reality a lot harder to swallow.

So where do I stand on this now?

consultjohnwatson.

consultjohnwatson has my full support. I believe that the reason for the split is totally valid. Two people should be on the same page when working together, not struggling to see eye to eye. Hell, that ended up translating to the actual roleplay. I do agree with consultjohnwatson that replying to the other Sherlock was a poor decision, and keeping the fact that this was an OOC issue out of conversation for as long as it was was probably not the best.

consult-sherlockholmes is being extremely immature about this. I do understand her frustration with the post where she asked consultjohnwatson and atamh (Mycroft) to stop tagging her despite the split, but the Ides of March post was a little far. Even though she tagged nobody to it (I did see the #john watson), it was absolutely passive-aggressive.

Anyways, that’s all I have to say about this. I try to put this out of my mind, but it sure is hard to. I hope consult-sherlockholmes is able to move on. I hope all of you who have decided to continue with Sherlock roleplays do. Cheers to y’all, and thank you for the tea with honey.

[radixxsort]

My intention in posting this is not to announce a return to tumblr, but rather, to provide a “where is she now”-esque update and most likely disappear back into the void.

Don’t worry – in the time since I last posted, I have been completely fine, and in all honesty, probably better after doing some of the work to unplug more compared to before. I am posting this to share my own experiences in detoxing from social media, in the hopes that someone finds even just one of these ideas useful. You don’t have to quit tumblr in order to benefit from this advice – I just personally don’t have much of a reason myself to try making tumblr work for me.

The main reason I joined tumblr in the first place was to try and find a sense of community, especially considering that I felt a void in terms of connecting with other feminists after quitting Discord due to privacy concerns with it as a platform. However, I haven’t been able to actually connect with people here on tumblr, and I think this is just a matter of the fact that I find it much harder to start and participate in conversations here. Additionally, I found that I was quickly falling back into old habits of obsessively scrolling through recent posts without really getting much from what I saw, just on my dashboard instead of channels in a Discord server. If there is enough demand for it, I might consider starting similar communities using Matrix or XMPP-based messaging services to allow for the sense of connection I had without the same privacy concerns as Discord – I would want to see if it’s possible to strike the right balance of allowing for a sense of community without falling back into the pit of eternal scrolling. On the one hand, I crave this sense of connection that I had on Discord, but on the other, I desparately want to make some sort of real difference that feels much harder to achieve over the internet. (If you’re interested in reading more about organizing over the internet and reclaiming our control, I recommend checking out this post of mine).

That being said, tumblr still has its things that kept me around for some time. I enjoyed having an outlet to write longer posts. In school, I was one of those students who always did well with essays, but didn’t actually enjoy writing them – having a tumblr blog, and even some other experiences since I left, have slowly shown me that I can enjoy writing argumentative and informative works when I actually get to choose the topic and I’m not stressed out from dealing with my poor time management skills.

The real thing that kept me around, though, was seeing well-crafted arguments from other users. Every so often within my dashboard, I would come across a post that articulated a specific issue very clearly or shed light on a novel perspective. On the one hand, it felt like these posts were Expanding my Intellectual Horizons and allowing me to Witness the Forefront of a Force of Change, but on the other hand, these hits of satisfaction would fuel my addiction and motivate me to slog through countless other posts that would be forgotten within a few minutes.

A short side note – if you’re like me and want to have access to YouTube for video tutorials that are genuinely useful, but you’re concerned about Google’s privacy practices and the addictive UI patterns, I’ll talk about my solution. I use Invidious (usually the yewtu.be instance, but there are many URLs that run Invidious) to watch YouTube videos without having as much of my information being set to Google, and a few browser extensions to cut back on distractions. I use Invidioucious to custom-tailor the UI and have these changes actually be consistently applied between browser sessions (specifically, I set the “other arguments” field to “&related_videos=false&comments=[]” to turn off related videos and comments), I use Redirector to automatically change any Invidious “popular” or “trending” feed page to redirect to a blank search page with no videos shown (I redirect both “*/feed/popular*” and “*/feed/trending*” to “$1/search$2” – note that in all of these, the quotation marks are not included in what you actually enter), and I use LeechBlock to automatically give me a 30-second delay in accessing the pages for YouTube channels on Invidious (blocking “*/channel/*”), since browsing through all of a channel’s videos is a way that I personally tend to fall down binge spirals. If you still want to use official YouTube instead of Invidious, then DF YouTube is a browser extension worth checking out for changing the UI.

During this stretch of time when I wasn’t on tumblr, I got back into reading. In the case of political theory, this allowed me to find a concentrated stream of the High Quality Takes that I only found in fragments here, often by going to the source in finding books that I saw frequently quoted. I was an avid reader as a child, but stopped reading as much in 2018 or so. I’ve read 41 books to completion in 2022 (with a few more I’ll probably finish by the end of the year). Most of that reading took place in May or later, and the majority was non-fiction – this was by far the most non-fiction reading I’ve done overall. I feel like this shift has had a distinctly positive impact on my mental well-being, by allowing me to become more informed without external distractions and by training myself to rebuild my attention span and think. I mention this so I can provide some advice for others looking to pursue this as well – the rest of this post is reading-related advice.

Firstly, I recommend knowing where you can get free books. You can definitely get far with resources like your local library or Project Gutenberg, which provides free e-book versions of books that are old enough that their copyright has lapsed. Also, as devastated as I was when Z-Library was shut down, I am not going to publicly endorse downloading books that were not properly authorized with regards to copyright, even though I personally think that copyright law is, to put it politely, a load of bullshit. (Whatever you do, though, don’t go to Library Genesis, unless you want to get eaten by the copyright monster or whatever…)

I’ve been developing a to-be-read list for a long time, probably a few years now. However, I found that even after I acquired a large hoard of free e-books through completely legitimate means and definitely not piracy, actually convincing myself to read them was a different issue. This brings me to my next piece of advice – know what format works for you and use that to your advantage. For a while, I tried getting back into reading just using my computer, only to find that it was an absolute slog. Reading dense text on a bright computer screen and hunched over my desk in an uncomfortable position doesn’t really work for me. I ended up purchasing a used Nook Simple Touch from eBay that cost me less than $20 USD, including tax and shipping, and its e-ink display and portability ended up being a fantastic match for my physical comfort.

However, I have explored other options for reading e-books without needing to purchase a new device, and I still had some good findings, even with the e-reader being my favorite. I tried using speed-reading software, which displays one word at a time at the same position, allowing you to read very quickly without moving your eyes. The fact that it is much faster, and in my case, a dark background with light text as opposed to the other way around, mitigated some of the discomfort in my eyes. However, I was unable to find software that actually saved my place in the book, and skipping to the place I wanted to read was a major pain because there was no function to skip a chapter at a time, so I had to hold down the arrow key to get to the specific place I left off at. There is probably software that does have this function, I just didn’t find it – even if there isn’t, this is still a good option for something you know you can read through in one sitting, such as shorter books and articles.

I have also tried reading in conjunction with text-to-speech software, and the combination of audio and visual input turned out to work well for me. This actually also allowed me to read at a much faster pace than one might expect – I usually gradually ramp up the speed in the text-to-speech software to 5 or 6 times the default speed, and I know that it’s working best when I feel myself fall into a rhythm with the way my eyes move through the text. Not only does this allow me to read faster while using text-to-speech, but I’ve found that it actually serves as “training wheels” to help me read faster without the text-to-speech. On a similar note, I recommend doing research on speed-reading techniques. There are many techniques that can be used together to do this, but the one that I think has helped me the most is learning to read with my peripheral vision and keeping my eyes towards the center of the page, mainly moving my eyes vertically and much less horizontally. To help with this, I recommend making sure that the overall column width of your e-book isn’t too wide, if you’re using a digital format.

[dido18j]

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Mijn populairste berichten in 2022:

#4

YALL USED TYPEWRITERS?? REAL SHIT?

Some in my class did! I don't know if the school provided them (typeclass was after school I think). They were not the really old-timey ones, they were more like this, a bit more modern:

But as I said in my tags, I learned it on the computer and that was pretty new and unusual at that time. I think only one friend in my class also learned it with the same method on the computer online and I remember that a salesperson or something came to our house to talk about starting the course. I don't remember at what age I learned to type, but I think that was perhaps like 15-20 years ago? (man now I feel really old...). Think I learned it in a transition period for how you would learn how to type :P.

0 notities - Geplaatst 14 juli 2022

#3

I saw your profile picture and immediately freaked out lol. That anime is literally my childhood and i am so so happy to see someone probably also a big fan of it!! <3

Awww, thanks for sending me this message Anon, it makes my day to hear that! Always great to see other fans of that anime! The anime (Kaichou Wa Maid-sama for the people that don't know it) is one of my first Romcoms (first one was Ouran High School Host Club) and one that I found on my own without it being a recommondation from someone ^^. While there are many other great romcoms out there, this one holds a special place in my heart as being one of the first and I just like the main couple so much, I feel like I can relate with Misaki since she is so hardworking and I really like Usui and seeing them together is just amazing. The confession at the end is also just so great, now I want to rewatch it again haha. The manga is also one of the first ones I wanted, but it took a while to get it since the first translation only got a few volumes, so you can imagine my joy when I heard they were publishing them in omnibus versions!

I just checked my MAL to see if I had recorded when I watched it and dang, it has been 10 years already :') I'm feeling old lol. At least my love for romcoms is still here!

1 notitie - Geplaatst 13 november 2022

#2

Tag trope game

Thanks @bumblewyn for the tag! I’m a sucker for tropes, so lets see what my preferences are 😄 found family or soulmates || slow burn or established but complicated || enemies-to-friends-to-lovers or best friends-to-lovers || love at first sight or get back together (works best if they don’t act on it immediately but they had been in love with the other person from the start :3c) || morally grey character or unreliable narrator || sunshine character or sarcastic character || self-sacrificing or teamwork || fire-forged friends or childhood friends || description-heavy or dialogue-heavy || fluff or angst || high school au or college au || flower symbolism or color symbolism  (not that I know flowers lol) || hero from the start or reveal the hero near the end (this might be recency bias because of the Extraordinaries serie) || body swap or gender swap || bed sharing or clothes sharing || magic au or human au || de-aged or future fic

Tagging @jellyfishdragon  as well as anyone who wants to do this! (template below)

found family or soulmates || slow burn or established but complicated || enemies-to-friends-to-lovers or best friends-to-lovers || love at first sight or get back together || morally grey character or unreliable narrator || sunshine character or sarcastic character || self-sacrificing or teamwork || fire-forged friends or childhood friends || description-heavy or dialogue-heavy || fluff or angst || high school au or college au || flower symbolism or color symbolism || hero from the start or reveal the hero near the end || body swap or gender swap || bed sharing or clothes sharing || magic au or human au || de-aged or future fic

1 notitie - Geplaatst 26 september 2022

Mijn #1-bericht van 2022

About the jimmy gifset: no the caption doesn't explain jack squat. These are better call saul scenes and the quote is from breaking bad FKSKKFKSKD

Loool, I thought it sort of explained that he was doing cat things (hadn't made that connection), so new questions arised about why is he doing cat shit but apparently that is not even the case lol. Will just have to keep watching the shows to figure it out then XD

1 notitie - Geplaatst 1 oktober 2022

Bekijk je jaaroverzicht van 2022 →

[that-damn-girl]

All About Shadowban

Tumblr ‘How To’s

I had no idea about Tumblr’s shadowban until it happened to me. Since then, surprisingly quite a few number of people have texted me about them getting shadowbanned as well. Now that I’m aware of it, I realize it’s becoming increasingly common for legit blogs like mine to get shadowbanned for no reason at all. So hope this helps everyone who has to unnecessarily go through this.

What does shadowban exactly mean?

Basically, your blog exists and mostly functions as it normally would, but Tumblr has made it invisible to everyone else. Tumblr lets you believe that everything is fine and that you can interact with others, but actually you can’t. (Look at the wikipedia definition here.)

Why does this happen?

From what I understand, blogs get shadowbanned since they are suspected of being bots, or just sketchy, or they might be going against Tumblr’s guidelines. I’m not sure, but it might also happen if someone has reported your blog. 

But more often than not, it’s just a tumblr glitch. 

How to tell if your blog has been shadowbanned? And most of the things that happen during this state.

(These are the things that I personally went through. It might not be the same for everyone. Also, my main blog (@that-damn-girl) was shadowbanned. My side-blogs were fine. So in case your main blog is fine but your side blog is shadowbanned, you might have a different experience.)

(P.S. remember that commenting on a post and sending an ask are features reserved for the main blog only.)

The ‘Messages’ section disappears. 

My main blog had no ‘Messages’ section, but my side-blogs did.

Naturally, you won’t be able to text others. 

NOTE: Others will be able to text you, and from their end Tumblr will show that the message has been sent and all is fine. But you won’t receive/see any messages.

Others won’t receive your asks.

You’ll be able to send asks to others, and Tumblr would even give you a ‘Ask has been sent’ notification if your post notifications are turned on. But since Tumblr’s made you invisible, whomever you sent it to won’t receive your ask. 

NOTE: You’ll be able to receive asks. But when you answer it (assuming the ask wasn’t anon) the blog which sent it to you most probably won’t get a notification that you have answered their ask. It might not be visible to them even if they scroll though your blog.

Others won’t receive notifications from your blog. 

You’ll be able to like/reblog a post as you normally do, but the original poster won’t receive a notification. 

There’s no evidence of you interacting with a post.

If you simply like/reblog a post with 0 notes, the number of notes will change to ‘1 note’. But if you open the notes section, it wouldn’t show you your name or if you’ve reblogged/liked it.

Can’t reply/comment on any post.

You can type a comment, but when you hit enter there would be no effect.

Can’t tag anyone.

Even if you can, they wouldn’t get a notification.

NOTE: Others won’t be able to tag you either. But again, even if they can, you wouldn’t get a notification.

Your blog won’t be visible in searches (assuming your blog wasn’t hidden from search engines and tumblr searches beforehand)

Your original posts aren’t visible in searches.

Quite possibly, your original posts won’t be visible to your followers either (whether on their dashboard or if they decide to scroll through your blog.)

[Reblogged posts]

If you simply reblog a post without any comments (i.e. without gifs or tags or texts, basically any input from your side), they are visible (i.e. your followers can see it on their dashboard). But if you reblog a post with your personal comments, it doesn’t show up in your follower’s dashboard or in the notes section of the post.

NOTE: The posts you had queued up/scheduled before your blog was shadowbanned will be visible to your followers, even if there were any gifs/ personal comments added from your side.

What can you do to un-shadowban your blog?

Well, there isn’t much that you can do except sending a ticket to the Support here. Tell them about all the trouble you’ve been facing and why you think your blog might be shadowbanned. Try to keep it precise and relevant. 

P.S. try to be polite/formal. After all they’re simply employees trying to make an earning for themselves. It’s not like they intentionally shadowbanned you.

How long will it take for your blog to get un-shadowbanned after you’ve contacted Support?

In my case, it took them 5 days to respond to my first ticket (I had panicked and sent them 3 tickets in the first 3 days. I don’t recommend bombarding them with tickets like I did). They said that it was a glitch on their side and apologized. My blog was back to normal instantly. 

When I talked to others who were shadowbanned too, I found out that this response time varied greatly. For some, it was only a matter of hours before their blog was normal. For some, it took over a month. (I recommend sending the support a second ticket after an interval of 2-3 days if your blog isn’t back to normal.)

~~~

Wow, it got a little longer than I had expected. But hope it helps! 

[strawberrybabydog]

explanation why ask box was closed under cut

post-writing comment: now that im reading all of this i think i will close it again actually. sorry for the false hope LOL

TLDR, i have an unhealthy relationship with the blog. i developed OCD & an addiction over it and i need to Not Do That, among other reasons

my week and a half without this blog was peaceful but the main reason it was closed is because i had a Moment one night & during the Moment i realized that my words are having significant impact on delusional spaces online

its fun and cool to have a popular blog, but it’s terrifying to have that much pressure, even if i know im doing the right thing. im already seeing a lot of the internet’s typical unforgiveness when i’ve made mistakes in the past, but as my blog grows more there wil only be more of that, with the opposite side taking my word as holy. neither of which i want obviously LOL. that paired with my notice of many people misinterpreting the things i’m saying, not totally listening to my words, etc etc - communication issues - its much worse!

i dont think it really matters how much i encourage yall to do your own research, i know full well it won’t happen (/npa) and i also dont want to try to force anyone into reading academic papers, the academic jargon is sometimes even hard to get through for me and im privileged enough to have minimal trouble with reading

i just fear when new research emerges in the next few years some of the posts here (which although are currently up to date/correct based on current research) will age poorly, even though when new research emerges i will do my best to debunk my old posts and other misinformation. this is a hypothetical, i guess its possible that everything i say here is correct, but thats also not likely because thats just The Way Things Are. i just dont think im prepared for the harassment which comes with “well, you said THIS two years ago, and i see you have not deleted this specific post which i have severely misinterpreted, because you obviously still fully agree with it and not because you forgot it existed. care to explain yourself.” very annoying and i just dont want to deal with it

i also put a lot of Myself into this blog and many of the posts i make. i’m sure although many of you havent seen me in real life, if you lined my body up with other people you’d easily be able to pick me out regardless just based on my physical mannerisms and clothing. i view this blog as an extension of myself when in Reality that’s not at all what this has to be, im just unsure of how to pull back really

i feel a very strong responsibility to this blog, i feel like i owe everyone who interacts with it something. which is also obviously not very cool. basically TLDR i have an unhealthy relationship with this blog, partially by fault of myself and partially by fault of the internet just being the internet. i just may not be cut out to emotionally handle that in the end which will result in my askbox being closed indefinitely, should i make that decision

aaand to top it all off i became extremely OCD about checking the inbox. seeing the little notification that someone asked me something is a good source of dopemine but addictive and - when i say i developed OCD over it, im not using hyperbole i mean it very literally. i still get dopemine to see the little notification! but it’s not really worth the obsession-compulsion of refreshing my tumblr every 2 minutes for hours every day, constantly having tumblr open incase i got a message, etc. since closing the ask box my OCD in reference to other things i normally have OC-intrusive thoughts with has also gotten better

it wasnt closed because i got a specific rude anonymous message i didnt like or anything. like i said i just had an episode and had some post-episode clarity over things i’d been stressed out about for months. quite a few posts from my blog disappeared because i was fighting the urge to not wipe the entire blog mid-episode so i just settled on some posts which were argumentative/discoursey/too personal

[deviltoys]

IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!

hey, kevin here, i apologize that somethin' of this matter is being posted so late like this and so sudden. i won't be typing as i usually do as the accusations here are a serious matter and there won't be a need for my usual, light-hearted typing style.

it has come to my attention, though this information has been kept private for maybe a month, two? but has only just recently been brought to my attention by a good friend of mine. the claims were sent to him over instagram by my ex; kai or huhrizon. the photo will be attached below in which, kai, is laughing about the fact he believes he's found out that i am a minor. more specifically, fifteen. which couldn't be farther from the truth, this thread will be debunking and defending myself before he can come out and express these fabricated lies to try and ruin my reputation because he's upset that i wasn't ready for a relationship.

kai messaging mattia over the fact he believes he has uncovered 'my mother's facebook profile'. which will be debunked below.

very interesting that you decided to not only, try to uncover things about my identity after i politely explained to you that i no longer wanted to pursue a relationship, but that you're brewing up fake rumours just to try to get back at me for it.

onto the main claim. kai has been professing, that i, am infact a fifteen year old falsifying his age online. the reason he believes these claims are that, one, he found my mother's facebook profile. and two, that there was a photo on there of me, with the caption 'happy birthday kevin' posted onto the account. mattia has explained to me that this photo isn't here to be displayed as evidence, solely because kai sent the picture through instagram's vanish mode.

* this mode automatically deletes anything sent after the chat is closed.

mattia informed me that this photo was overall suspicious though as kai had blurred out the user's facebook handle. very odd indeed kai, very odd. i have no clue what this women looked like as there were no further photos, so until then, i don't know how i can debunk the woman not being my mother; appearance wise.

what reason do i have to believe this is motivated out of spite? before kai and i had become acquainted, i followed him through dylan, who had publicity posted about how his friend had created a dark blog. wanting to follow more creators who shared a similar interest, i followed him. immediately, kai had started sending asks about whether or not i was single. we had not talked nor even messages before, we had liked a few of each others posts and that was the max of our interactions. but i responded with a flirty remark, which i am now known for, but wasn't at the time. flirting was thrown back and fourth and after awhile i had realized i was no longer ready, mentally or emotionally for a relationship at that point in time. i still had full feelings for kai, yet kindly expressed my discomfort with a relationship. which he mutually accepted and that was that. i thought we were ended things on great terms, we both communicated and got our messages out of the way.

apparently this was not the case, as kai, without my knowledge goes to search for any sort of dirt he can find on me. which, i will be using a post by dylan to explain why i have reason to be swayed into the fact this was out of anger— i love dylan, and he's not included in these accusations whatsoever, but this post is important to view. do not drag him into this, please. i'm serious.

dylan admits to kai being able to ruin people's lives for fun. which is obviously, not a good look for him. he purposefully goes on the hunt for any information he can attach to someone. unluckily for him, he couldn't find anything worth exposing, so he restorts to making up lies about my age in an attempt to get some sort of revenge? as punishment for breaking his heart i presume. very, very mature after a breakup which i calmly and kindly let you know that i wasn't ready for anything further.

now, onto the rebuttal i have for his big accusation; me being a fifteen year old who's mother's social, kai sniffed up. my mother does not own any form of social media, she has an email which is technically not even a social app. ( this is used for her grad teachers, in order to contact her for reasons that will be explained ).

my mother hasn't had any social app for years, much less posts or takes photos of us to display whatsoever. my mother entered a relationship with a man, who at the time she didn't know was very, very anti-lgbtq.

* before anything else it's important to note that kai, believes i have a brother. i told him this in order to stray away any true information about me, as there are very few people i fully trust with the knowledge of my personal life. much less, someone who i just met at the time; i.e kai. kai had mentioned a friend of either his or his brothers being named 'hank' to try to also fit the lie of having a brother, i told him it was a funny coincidence that my brother had the same name. i do not have a brother, my sister and i are both trans— she being mtf, and i being ftm. she has given me explicit permission to disclose this, as i wouldn't ever dream of letting that information out without her word.

this leads into my main argument. my mother had been with this man for quite awhile, and had finally asked us for permission to give him the news, that we were both transgender and that he should know for the future of our family. he obviously, did not take this well. to keep details minimal for the safety of my family, i'll briefly explain some of the shit he's done to my mother. stalk, threaten, send unsolicited photos and dead animals to our home, try to get my mother to meet up - or find her location to meet up with her, and many, many more vile things. my family has been hiding, moving, and changing our identities ever since. my mother has wanted a healthy, safe environment for her children to grow up in without fear that their lives would be taken or in some way ruined by this man. we can't keep a house for more than a year before we're forced to go into hiding because of a message from him or some sick prank from somebody who knows about the situation. this is all i can say, as i don't want him to somehow get ahold of this post. which is also why i am withholding my families legal names as well as her ex's legal name just to be cautious. though it is never ever justified to lie to your partner, kai and i had barely talked and i felt pressured by the environment and excitement to rush headfirst into a relationship. causing me to hold back any truth to my personal life, excluding interests, stories, and stuff of that sort. which deserves an apology all on it's own.

now, where this fifteen, number came from. not a clue in hell, my sister, is sixteen but was fifteen at the time i was in a relationship with kai. i have no clue if this has anything to do with it, but he knew, as i told him i was celebrating her birthday through text. letting him know, the age she was and the age she was turning.

i live off the grid and always have. my legal name is not on here, my family or friends names, etc. my personality, all me, the stories or hobbies i have? true. my job? true. i express the true me on here while still holding back information that could cause my family into another year of hiding. my mother never has and never will have any socials. she barely uses her email out of fear, but has no choice as it's her only means of communication to her job.

another quick thing i would like to mention, to be truthful, as this is a post solely based on trust alone. as i have no physical evidence to back it up. i sent a photo to kai, letting him know it was taken when i was in middle school. i told him my mother put a filter over it, which is weird right? i just explained how my mother doesn't have socials, he's got to be lying, right? no, my teacher had taken the photo and she had edited on her photo to show our grandma, who she sent the image through phone messages. this was no lie, but it was a misdirection to try to get kai to believe my mother posted about me. i still didn't trust him and never fully did, so this was another. morally wrong, attempt to cover my true identity by lying to him about it. which, again, never right to lie to your partner. but i have a family to protect, it's hard to make friends and relationships online when you have to hide who you truly are your whole life. and i'm sorry that's been the case, though the information my mutuals privately know is all the truth. i've grown to trust a fair few, so thank you.

as a summary, these claims are total bullshit. i can provide more context or answers to any questions you may have, below, through dms, or through my inbox. this was once again posted before he could get his word out, as i wanted to make sure everyone knew what i had to say, in case he decided to 'expose' me while i was at work, or too busy to compile a rebuttal. thank you all for listening, you don't have to believe a word of this. as yes, my story does sound far-fetched but i have no way that i can verify it without putting my family in danger. which, i'd much rather lose my online status over a silly rumour than harm my family for another multitude of years. this is a rather short and rushed post though, as it's been bugging me for awhile and i just need to push it out.

[myhoneststudyblr]

I often get asked for tips on various aspects of creating a studyblr and then how to grow it! It can be really daunting before you start if you don’t know how to go about it or what to post - I remember really wanting to create one for months before I actually built up the courage to make one.

This post is hopefully going to make this easier for you and give you the tips you need to get the best out of your blog!

Disclaimer: this is quite long! i wanted to make it as detailed as possible and it kinda got away from me XD

What is a studyblr?

study + tumblr = studyblr

A studyblr is a tumblr blog that posts anything associated with studying.

These blogs are part of the ‘studyblr community’, which is an online community of students who share their love for studying, stationery and their current lessons and study tips.

Why should you create a studyblr?

There are honestly so many reasons why i think that studyblrs are an amazing thing and why i can’t see myself leaving this community any time soon! here are some of my personal experiences:

1. i want to study! i have always been a very conscientious student and i have always worked very hard but i’m going to be completely honest with you and say that a lot of the time, particularly as i’ve been getting older, it has been a real struggle to get the motivation to do work. since i’ve started my studyblr, i’ve noticed a real increase in my desire to work because i want to have new things to post and talk about. it acts as a sort of outside external motivator!

2. my studying has got more interesting! when i say this, i don't mean the content. i’ve learnt so many new techniques and ways to organise my work that each set of notes that i do is different and i don’t feel like i’m doing the same thing every day!

3. my notes and handwriting have got neater! if you follow me, you might have seen a post from me a while back where i talked about my insecurity about my handwriting because i was *always* the person with the messy handwriting™. unfortunately, i am a perfectionist and i really wanted to have neat handwriting and notes. so my studyblr - because i wanted my posts to look good - made me spend more time focusing on the appearance of my notes and forcing me to slow down (this had been my main problem). now i can see a huge difference and i’ve reached a place where, even though my handwriting will never be the perfect font-like handwriting, it is noticeably neater and more consistent and i now love my pretty and unique handwriting

4. incredible advice about everything studying related! no matter where you are from, or what you study, it is possible to find advice about something that is relevant to you! people in studyblr are going through or have gone through everything you have and they give incredible advice on some many different things, from college applications and how to study a certain subject, to book recommendations and notetaking tips. but there are also plenty of tips on lifestyle and self-care, which are invaluable. even if you can’t find a post that helps you, you can always send someone an ask or a message and they’ll always try to help you out!

5. my mental health has got better and the community has helped me through so tough times! being a student today is hard and keeping your mental health in a good place can seem even harder. but i personally have found the studyblr community really helpful with this because i don’t feel so i alone. i know that there are so many mutuals and blogs that i follow that are going through similar things and i know i could always reach out to them for anything. i’ve also become less hard on myself and give myself significantly less impossible goals since i started studyblr

6. you will meet some incredible people. this was something that i wasn’t really expecting because when i started my blog i thought i would get 100 followers *max*. instead, i have been completely embraced by the community and have had some amazing conversations with people i know genuinely consider to be my friends. it is so easy to meet like-minded people who just want to support each other!

these are just the most important benefits that I've experienced with my own studyblr journey and there are so many more!!!

The 5 Basic First Steps

1. create a blog

if you are seeing this post i assume that you already have a blog! maybe you don't but luckily for you its very easy to create one. the main think you need to think about is whether you want to create a primary or secondary blog! you can find the differences between these here!

2. choose a URL/blog name

your username can be pretty much anything and can be a good way to show your personality, your likes or dislikes, or your goal for your studyblr! you can get really creative with your username and though most are, it doesn't have to be study/studyblr related.

here’s are some ideas that you could use when coming up with a username:

Your name or nickname

Favourite subject or your degree

Your dream job

Role models or fictional characters

Stationery

Brand names

Study utilities

Your favourite study snacks

COFFEE (this is very popular with many studyblrs... i wonder why?)

Your favourite animal

Basically, it can be anything! and don’t worry, if you decide later that you don’t like the name or you come up with soemthing better, you can always change it

3. choose a theme

this can seem like a very daunting task if you are completely new to tumblr but don’t worry! there are plenty of options and you can play around with this until you get what you want!

mobile theme: this is usually just changing the colours to fit with what you like and the mood of your blog

desktop theme: this is where it gets interesting! your desktop blog usually looks much more unique compared to mobile and you can add various different pages and really get it to look professional. there are so many different incredible themes that you can find that are free to use and can be customised slightly to fit your blog (there are also paid themes). you can also make your own theme (but i know nothing about this so i can’t really offer advice for that!)

4. find an avatar/icon

i personally think icons are really important because they can often be how people begin to recognise your blog when they see it on their dashboard and it can be a glimpse into what people expect

you can just use a normal picture for this: for example of your notes or something that relates to your URL or blog (eg a coffee cup)

however, you can also make your own from scratch! you can create your own icon using applications like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Canva or Word/Pages. i personally used canva to make my icon (as well as all my banners for posts) and it is really easy to use and best of all is free! there are also people who have made icons for you to use (as long as you give credit) or will make them for you (sometimes for a small fee)

5. find some studyblrs to follow

this is probably the easiest step! if you know about studyblr, you probably already know a few blogs! just go through their blogs and see who they reblog or you can search through the #studyblr tag. i am also always happy to give recommendations of my favourites blogs (of which there are too many to count) or can try to recommend blogs that i know who study the same thing as you/are at the same level of study or are from the same country

Introduction Posts

i am a big believer in studyblr introduction posts! i think they are the best way to meet people when you are just starting and are the way that you get people to notice and interact with your blog.

what should you put in a studyblr introduction post?

your name or a nickname so people know what to call you

your pronouns

where you are from

your age

what you study

what level of study are you at (high school, uni etc.)

your hobbies and passions

why you made your studyblrs

what your goals are

tag some of your studyblr inspirations! (this is quite important because they will probably reblog the post and more people can discover your blog

these are just some suggestions and you don't have to include all of them if you are comfortable with sharing certain things!

if you want some examples of these posts, have a look through the #studyblr introduction tag! on my blog you can find that here!

What to Post

the beauty of studyblr is that you can pretty much post whatever you want and you will find a place in the community!

i love reblogging posts that come on my dashboard that i love or stuff from my mutuals! however, it is also really important to post your own original content because this allows people to get to know you and is probably the best way to grow your blog!

here are some ideas for what to post:

pictures of your notes

pictures of your current book

pictures of your annotations

pictures of your desk/study space

pictures of your food/ study snack

pictures of your drink/coffee

pictures of your favourite cafe

pictures of nature

pictures of your handwriting

text posts about something funny that happened in school/class/uni/your life

text posts about what is going on in your life

text posts about what is on your mind

texts posts where you share your journey completing a particular goal

text posts where you share your plan for the day

study guides

advice posts

self-care and lifestyle tips

essentially, it is whatever you want and whatever works for you!

When to Post

you should post whenever works for you! i know for a lot of people (myself included) most of the time you do not have time to post every day because that is a big commitment and that is absolutely ok!

when i first started, i thought that i had to post every day and it was a lot fo pressure! it was basically impossible to keep up because not only was it taking up a decent amount of my evening editing and posting my notes but also i didn't actually have enough material available to post! a studyblr should never get in the way of your schoolwork so try to fit it around this! post when you have time!

if you do want to have a more consistent posting schedule, there is a feature that allows you to schedule posts! so, say you have a bunch of free time on the weekend, you could schedule all the posts for the week ahead of time!

i would also recommend building up a queue for reblogs because this means that you again have some consistency in posts and you have new stuff quite regularly! (i personally always have a huge queue)

How to Grow Your Studyblr

the main thing i want to stay is that you should not be too worried about how many followers you have or how many notes your posts get because it really is unpredictable! i’ve had posts that have got crazy amounts of notes and i literally expected them to get hardly any and vice versa! i have no idea how the tumblr algorithm works so you just have to try and post for yourself!

that said, i know that it is really nice to have people interact and appreciate your posts so here are 3 quick tips:

use popular studyblr tags. these include #studyblr, #notes, #studyspo. you could also tag the stationery that you used, what subject it is and what level you at are (eg #high school or #uni)

tag other studyblrs. many studyblrs track certain tags and if you want them to see what you've posted and they will often reblog your post! i personally track the tag #myhoneststudyblr. you can find a post i made a while ago with some studyblr’s and their tags here! (note: this may be slightly out of date)

try and have a relatively consistent ‘look’ to your posts. you don’t have to follow a specific aesthetic but having some consistency in your posts can help people recognise your stuff. i personally keep my pictures of my notes very clutter-free (often just the notes and the pen i used) and bright. however, you can definitely switch things up if you want!

How to Get Involved in the Community

There are so many different ways that you can do this! Here are some of the best ways in my opinion!

send asks and messages to people!

i highly recommend sending asks to people, for example, if they reblog an ask game post or even just asking for some advice because they will start to recognise you as someone who is engaged with their blog and you could also learn something new about one of your favourite studyblrs!

messages are also a great, slightly more personal, way to interact with people. it can be as simple as messaging people to tell them you love their blog, or again asking them for some advice. if they do a post about a test or exam that they have coming up, you could even message them good luck or ask how it went. i have had some amazing conversations with people through messages and it is a great way to meet new people

just a reminder: always be respectful and polite in messages and asks to ensure that the community remains positive

reblog posts with a comment on their posts!

(or just add a comment, although this could be confusing if your studyblr is a side blog so just be warned)

this is a really nice way to let people know you’ve seen their post and it is always nice to give feedback. a comment can be as simple as: i love your handwriting! or good luck in that test! but that simple message reaching out it so nice to get! also, reblogging is really helpful to blogs because it means more people see the post

join a challenge!

ok, so i’ve had this blog for about a year and a half now and i had a pretty decent amount of followers (which i seriously do not understand XD) but i never got the same amount of interaction and involvement in the studyblr community until i created my #2020 quarantine challenge (click here if you wanna find out about this). i would get reblogs and likes on posts but i don’t think that i used to get nearly as much interaction with my posts with people leaving comments and stuff. furthermore, although i had blogs where we were technically mutuals, i didn’t really have mutuals like i do know where we actively keep in touch and check out each other’s posts all the time and stuff and that is honestly the nicest thing

challenges mean that you are most likely posting every day (or at the very least pretty regularly if you cannot manage every day) and this is good because you post lots of new content for people to discover. another great thing is that there is usually a tag that you can search for and scroll through and find others who are doing the challenge alongside you. the person who created the challenge also probably checks the tag out every few days and reblogs the posts

for these reasons, i cannot highlight how amazing challenges are for interaction and getting involved in the community!

The Golden Rule of Studyblr

🚨 ALWAYS BE POLITE AND FRIENDLY 🚨

probably my favourite thing about the studyblr community - and i know many others share this opinion - is that is such a friendly and welcoming place. it of course has its problems but this is a place whose ultimate aim is to support each other through our studying journeys! we are all here because we wanted to find likeminded people who we can make friends with and share our lives! therefore it is really important that we always try and lift each other up because you never know what someone is going through

Summary

there are lots of benefits to starting a studyblr so you definitely should!

it’s good to make your blog look nice and clean!

studyblr introductions are very important to start your blog off!

post what you like when you like!

tagging can be a great way to grow your blog!

don't focus too much on the number of notes you get or how many followers you have!

send asks and messaging, reblogging and commenting on other people’s posts and joining challenges are all great ways to get involved in the community!

we are all here to support one another so always be polite and friendly!

Other Resources

From Me

here is an answer to an ask i received about starting a studyblr (here is another one)

here is an answer to an ask i received about editing photos

From others

A Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Studyblr by @eintsein​

12 Step Guide to Starting and Running a Studyblr by @emmastudies​

How to Start a Studyblr by @caffeineandcoding​

Advice for New Studyblrs by @studyquill​

Starting a Studygram by @studyrellablr​ (many of the tips are the same for studyblr)

I hope this was helpful to any new studyblrs and even existing ones! As always i am always happy to answer asks and messages about and give any advice! If anyone else has any tips or tricks, please add them below!!!

[thecharlestonroyalfamily]

Here’s the thing about the royal simblr drama..

So I feel like I’m a fairly neutral party in the middle of all this drama (kinda fitting considering that’s what I build my nation as as well). I know and have worked on my story both with the people accused and those who haven’t. All of them are lovely people who I’ve enjoyed working with and who gave me no hard time. Now sadly I’ve found out that this isn't the case for everyone. However as I too care about this community I want to help and make it a better place.

Here are some points of observation from someone with years of studying and first hand experience in psychology about the situation: (It’s a long post)

1. The “cliques”. Now we as humans naturally tend to form “cliques”; groups of like minded people who we share interests with. This is completely normal and nothing to be ashamed off. And we as people also tend to not get along with everyone. This too is also fine and completely normal. It is completely okay and acceptable to vent about people/things/concepts you don’t like or find annoying to your friends. We all do it. Yes, even as adults, cause guess what we don’t all get along and that is fine. Is this an excuse to treat someone like shit? No and that’s where the problem begins. 

2. Power corrupts. Shortly when we as humans are placed in a position of power aka a situation where we feel we have the upper hand or are in some form “above” others it gets to our heads (take the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment as an example). Now I’m not saying that these people necessarily think themselves better, I’m saying that with bigger follower number and more influence your behavior might change. Maybe they don’t even consider themselves being mean or gatekeeping.

3. Original ideas. There is no such thing as an original idea. All of us have had our stories inspired by other stories, real or fiction, to some extend. However this does NOT mean you can flat out copy someone else’s storyline. But what is counted as copying? If you take another creators scene, plotline, etc. and add it your story without making any or barely any changes THEN you’re copying. “But I have a scene just like XXX and now I’m being blamed for copying.” If you didn’t intentionally do it, it’s not malicious copying and you can still fix it. If you’re unsure talk it over with the other blog and/or just re-take the pictures from a different angle or re-write dialogue. Being inspired by others if fine! Just know and learn the difference between inspiration and copying.

4. Gatekeeping. Now this is a tad tricky. You see those who first started telling royal simblr stories, and in doing so created this community, might have had or might still have ideas and wishes for what this community looks like. However since this community is this large it’s simply impossible to have those wished granted. We all have different sets of skills and amount of time to put into our stories. While to some this is like making their own book or tv show, others just want to take pretty pictures of sims in grand palaces and tiaras. Both of these approaches are fine and valid! The problem is that when you hold something in high value to yourself and see someone else just “mess around” with it you feel hurt. How can they not take this seriously?! But the thing is they are, just as you. They just have a different set of goals and motivation for their story. Not every book is a bestseller and that is okay.

5. False positivity. False positivity helps no one however there’s a difference between being falsely positive and being supportive. The main difference? What you wanted out of the conversation. A person looking for criticism to improve their work does not want or benefit from just supportive comments alone! If that’s all they get they’ll get frustrated and that’s where bad feeling towards other start. Same thing other other side, a person looking for encouragement does not want criticism! What they need is your thumbs up emojis and a few positive words. If they get unasked for critique they don’t receive it as such, to them it’s easily just bullying. 

How to fix the situation:

Now please note that these are just MY individual ideas. There’s no simple solution to this and it surely doesn’t happen over night but change can be made.

1. Make two separate channels on the server; CONSTRUCTIVE CRITISISM and ENGOURAGEMENT. Those looking for support can choose which variety they want and need. Now this also means that if you go to the criticism channel that’s what you’ll get! Everyone needs to take personal responsibility on this and not go on the channels they don’t want. If you don’t want criticism from complete strangers DM a friend, or ask a specific creator if they’d have the time to give you critique. 

2. Own what you’ve said, and apologize. Those that have said mean words need to own up to them, apologize from the individuals affected and stop. Private messages shared between friends is fine (it’s human nature), however if your discussions revolve around judging and/or belittling others you might want to reconsider. Also if you’re not directly involved or asked keep your opinions to yourself. No one likes unsolicited comments.

3. NO MORE GATEKEEPING! Now this is should be obvious to everyone. This is a community which means people are going to do things differently. Don’t follow blogs who’s stories you’re not interested in. Don’t send anon hate cause you don’t like what they do. Unlearn the idea that there’s only one way to tell a royal simblr story. If you can’t do that, grow up.

4. Say no. If you don’t want to collab with someone say no. Seriously. Going around this will only create more behind the scenes trash talking. And if you’re told no, accept it. Most of us are adults, we can or at least should be able to handle a no. It sucks when the other person doesn’t share our enthusiasm for an idea but that happens. With so many stories out there sadly not all of them are going to align. Luckily we’re a big community so the odds that someone out there likes your idea is quite large! Which brings me to the last point 5. Keep an open mind. As said we’re a big community of different people from all over the world. We come from multiple ethnicities, religions and countries, we’re individuals of different sexualities and genders. We all have our own set of ideals and ideas we’d like to see. We’re storytellers and readers, weavers of massive intricate worlds, or people who just like to keep it simple. Our difference is a richness. You might not like every idea but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Let people be and do their thing.

So that’s it for me. I hope I didn’t cross any lines with this. Thank you for taking the time to read what has been the longest Ani’s rambling ever. Let’s work towards a more healthy and welcoming community. My asks and anons are on.

Love, Ani

[itsclydebitches]

Hey there! Admittedly I'm a little bit nervous since this is my first ask, but I'll try to not be too rambly.

So, recently the main subreddit, r/RWBY, made a ban on active users of the r/RWBYcritics subreddit. As a result there's been discussion around bad-faith criticism in the latter subreddit. What are your takes on bad-faith criticism?

For me personally, I think a bunch of people are misusing the term "bad-faith" and using it as a way to shut down criticism, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Hey there, everyone! We woke up to some drama this morning, huh? And hello to you too, Tortoise! I'm so glad you decided to send in an ask, even if it's following some pretty tumultuous events...

Right, I'd like to start with a story. The story of how I personally don't spend time on Reddit, but I have plenty of friends who will occasionally cross-post something for me to see. Yesterday (or the day before? Idk time is meaningless) a friend told me about a post — which, significantly, I'm now having trouble finding — that covers RWBY's inconsistent writing and the fandom's tendency to try and explain away those missteps. They'd thought I'd be interested because I'd just had a conversation here on tumblr where I made that exact point to someone who, also significantly, vehemently disagreed with me, but in a very civil fashion. Given everything going on, I feel like this side point needs emphasis: we debated, we did so in a sometimes heated, but nevertheless respectful manner, it was clear neither of us was going to sway the other, and the conversation ended. The two "sides" of the community interacted without Armageddon coming about.

But back to the purpose of this tale. I went to take a look at this point and found that it no longer exists. There's just some vague message about it not obeying the subreddit's rules. "What happened?" I asked. "Why'd they take the post down?" "People were getting too heated in the comments," my friend replies. So, given that the comments were still visible, I proceeded to read through them, expecting personal attacks, slurs, harassment, etc. Any number of things that would justify deleting the post itself to put an end to such behavior. Instead, I found a thread of people having a conversation. Was the conversation heated at times? Sure. Did one or two individual posters edge into the realm of petulant, "No. You're wrong and stupid" responses? Yes. Was any of this remotely what I was expecting given the post's removal? NOPE.

"This isn't allowed?" I said. "Well then what is? People were being civil! Or at least as civil as hundreds of strangers ever get when discussing a series they're passionate about online."

Then, this morning, I hear that the entire critic subreddit has been banned.

So to answer your question, Tortoise, I don't actually think that "good faith" criticism exists. Meaning, it's not just that fans are misusing the term "bad faith criticism," but rather that there is no unified, agreed up method of writing criticism that will meet their standards. It's not possible and we know it's not possible because fans have been trying to meet those elusive standards for years:

A fan posts nothing but praise for RWBY until changes make them criticize the show as it is now. Their entire body of work is dismissed as the product of a "hater," despite the overwhelming gap between positive and negative reviews.

A fan posts a review that's a pretty balanced mix between praise and criticism. They're dismissed because it's still too much criticism.

A fan posts a review that's 99% praise with 1% criticism. That's still too much, with fans focusing on the single problem they had with the work and using it as an excuse to dismiss the entire review out of hand.

(As an aside, the argument that critics are "obsessed" with only saying negative things and that the only problem here is that they're "too" negative ignores the argument that... RWBY has a lot of flaws nowadays. Few are willing to acknowledge the possibility that it's not fans insisting on making things up to be mad about/ignoring the good parts of the show, it's the that show is, as of now, legitimately more of a mess than it is a praise-worthy product. If I'd been writing recaps in the Volumes 1-4 days, my work would have been skewed far more towards the positive. The critics' stance is that RWBY has gotten worse, which yes, results a higher volume of critical posts. To say nothing of how criticism takes far longer to explain, likewise resulting in posts focused primarily on that side of the divide. I really enjoyed the image of a crying Jaune reflected in his sword. I did not enjoy that moment's context. Saying that you liked an animation choice is a one sentence thing. Explaining the complexities of Jaune securing emotional moments, the problems with Penny's second death, the hurt many fans experienced watching an assisted suicide, etc. takes a whooole lot longer. Hence, you get massive, multiple posts about these nuanced topics and fewer, smaller posts about the details that are working well.)

A fan talks about a topic that has been metaphorically banned by the fandom as a whole. They have something good to say about Ironwood. They dislike something about Blake/Yang. They enjoyed Adam as a character. They have a problem with Ruby's leadership, etc. There's a whole list of topics nowadays that will result in an automatic dismissal, regardless of the point the fan is trying to make or how well they make it.

A fan talks about the minority representation of RWBY — its black characters, its queer characters, its disabled characters, etc. — and as a result has something to say about the biases and missteps of those writing these characters. This is considered an attack on the writers and, therefore, automatically bad.

A fan talks about how they enjoyed RWBY as it was years ago and is having trouble reconciling the dark, complicated story with the simple, hopeful one we started out with. This is seen as an attack on Monty's vision and an unwillingness to accept that "everything is planned."

A fan does as asked and ensures that their post is meeting all the requirements of "real" criticism. They have an argument to make. They have a point. They provide evidence. They recommend a solution. They keep their tone respectful. They don't attack the creators. They provide disclaimers in every single paragraph about how they do not hate RWBY. It doesn't matter. They're considered too negative.

I have, quite literally, seen every one of the above examples on multiple occasions. I have had many of the above accusations leveled at my own work. When fans say that they're fine with criticism provided it's not "bad faith" criticism, they don't actually have a specific post-type in mind; a checklist of behaviors another fan can emulate and, provided they do that, no hate will come their way. Or, if an individual fan does actually go, "Yeah. That criticism I'm fine with" that response is in no way universal. One person's "They make a good, civil point" is another person's, "Omg stop bashing the show!" Because "bashing" has come to mean everything from curse-laden insults towards everything RWBY has ever done, to posts that just happen to say something other fans don't agree with.

It's a rigged game. There is no way to post criticism about RWBY in an agreed-upon, appropriate manner. This recent ban is proof of that. I think it's incredibly telling that almost immediately after I was going, "Wow. A pretty calm debate about the flaws of RWBY in the main sub. That's great to see," all posters from the criticism subreddit were banned. The main sub literally just had the sort of criticism that they claim to accept — people respectfully posting analysis-based arguments resulting in calm debate — and yet they implemented the ban anyway. I'm not going to pretend that I've never gotten too heated on my own posts, never made snarky comments when I'm frustrated, never used exaggerated reaction GIFs that can come across as insulting... but I'd say on the whole my RWBY work is precisely the sort of "good faith" criticism that other fans are supposedly looking for. I never make an argument I don't think I can back up with evidence. I try to allow for the nuance and differing opinions of complicated topics. I try — even if I don't always succeed — to write in a clear, respectful manner. Yet none of that work has stopped people from telling me I'm a "bitter... raging asshole," a "deranged, delusional psychopath," telling me to set myself on fire, threatening to smash my head in, or just messages to straight up kill myself. If someone like me who legitimately works hard to create fair, defendable criticism and who only ever posts on a personal blog that people can easily block, who never engages in debate until someone else starts it first, never seeks out other fans I disagree with to harass them about what they like... if someone like me is still a "bad faith" critic who "deserves" that kind of hate mail... then what kind of criticism do people want?

Nothing. That's the answer. No criticism whatsoever, of any kind, no matter if it's delivered respectfully, is making a good point, whatever. That's why "RWDE" was created. That's why the critic subreddit was created. The community at large has demanded a complete separation between Praise and Anything That's Not 100% Praise, which has now resulted in this ban. Any other explanations we see are excuses, which becomes glaringly obvious when you look at the mods' supposed reasons for implementing the ban:

"Constant arguments with r/RWBY users" - As opposed to the arguments surrounding things like shipping that never, ever happen?

"Vote manipulation and comment brigades" - The subreddit with 3,000 participants, with around 200 on at a time, is manipulating the votes of a subreddit with 155,000 participants, with over 1,000 on at a time? Those numbers just do not check out. If a positive post is downvoted, or a critical post upvoted, maybe that's because large swaths of the community actually agree/disagree with that assessment, not because the incredibly smaller group is somehow manipulating things.

"Attacking and harassing those they disagree with" — Again, as opposed to those non-critics that never, ever harass people? This is an individual problem, not a community problem. Both critics and non-critics have their sub-groups acting in ways they shouldn't. If anything, the main sub will have more individuals harassing other fans, simply by virtue of being so much larger. As the above examples attest, it's not other critics who have told me to light myself on fire and, just to be clear, the asks I've responded to are a miniscule number compared to the amount I've received. I delete the lion's share for my own sanity and to save my followers from reading the really graphic threats.

"Months-long NSFL spam brigades" — I am, admittedly, not sure what this is referring to. Spamming of NSFW content? If so, that's also an individual problem.

"Homophobic, transphobic, and racist attacks towards our users" — See the above points. Again. If someone is being homophobic, transphobic, or racist, then yes please, ban them. Don't ban an entire community for the actions of a few. It's like walking into a store and banning a customer for causing a scene... but then also banning everyone else who happened to be shopping at the same time. It's guilt by association.

The silver lining to all this? The community as a whole isn't pleased. At least according to the main subreddit comments and a few individual voices like MurderofBirds. Despite the increase (from my perspective anyway) of critical voices post-Volume 8, criticism of RWBY is still very much seen as taboo. As this ban showcases. But it's really reassuring to see so many fans, critics and non-critics alike, going, "This was a mistake." A community is meant to include all aspects of engagement: praise, criticism, and the gray area between. If anything, fans like the mods of the main subreddit should be creating a separate subreddit that is specifically for praise. In the same way that there should have been a tag for RWBY praise, rather than trying to eliminate any and all criticism from the main "RWBY" tag. The majority of fans, even those who claim to hate critics and all they (presumably) stand for, recognize that a blanket ban of all criticism is not the way to go, especially when "criticism" has come to have such a staggeringly broad definition. If you want your RWBY experience to be nothing but sunshine and roses (ha), then cultivate your own internet experience to reflect that. Create your own pockets with rules about how this is the space for praise and if you're not up for praising RWBY right now, don't interact with us in this particular space. Don't try to make the entire community — the main tools used to discuss the show online — conform to your preferences. As established, there is no "good" criticism that everyone in the fandom will accept, which just leaves a fandom with no criticism at all. I'm glad to see I'm far from the only one who, when presented with that extreme, is going, "Nope. No thank you."