#how to dreamwidth

[bisexualbaker]

Dreamwidth Alternatives to Talking in the Tags

(Originally posted on Dreamwidth so I would have less editing to do when cross-posting.)

There's a number of technological and cultural shifts Tumblr users would have to make when switching to Dreamwidth; image hosting (and the lack thereof) is probably the biggest technological switch, but the one I anticipate giving people the most trouble is tagging.

On Tumblr, you can add pretty much whatever you want to the tags, in any order you want; there is no limit to them, and they're essentially used as a secondary comment system.

Not so for Dreamwidth! Dreamwidth has a hard limit on the number of tags any journal or community can register; it's 1,000 for free users, 1,500 for basic paid accounts, and 2,000 for premium paid accounts, and they're basically entirely for organizational purposes. One of the ways that Dreamwidth's code reflects this is that it lists tags alphabetically in posts, not in the order that they were written or added. If you want to include a stream of consciousness in your tags and have them make sense, your best bet is to find a way to make them alphabetical. There's also a hard limit of 40 characters per tag for everyone, regardless of account type (paid or free).

There are other organizational options, Memories chief among them, but it's not really possible to opt out of tags being organizational and switch them to being communication. So what, if anything, can you do instead?

(Here's where the post gets long.)

The first option, and most popular all the way back to Dreamwidth's predecessor, is icons! Free accounts get 15 icon slots for images of up to 100x100 pixels, and up to (IIRC) 60kb in size. Supported file types are .jpg, .png, and .gif—so yes, this means your icons can be animated! If you have the perfect reaction gif to go with a post or comment you want to make, as long as it's the right size, you can include a tiny version of it with your post or comment!

Icons also come with an extra nifty feature: Keywords. While this is, in part, to help you select which icon you want to use from your drop-down menu, the keywords are also visible as alt text, and you can have multiple keyword options for the same icon. So if you want to add a little bit of subtext to what you're saying, you can have some additional interesting content for those who go looking.

For example, you can replicate the very popular Supernatural Current Events meme via icon form: Make a gif where the first part is Castiel confessing his love, and the second part is Dean looking constipated and saying, for example, "Today's top headlines are..." Then for keywords you can use "Supernatural", "Queerbaiting", and "Current Events". You can then choose whichever keywords you want to use for the post or comment that you're making. Just talking about Supernatural stuff? "Supernatural" is a fine keyword. Complaining about media dangling representation in front of fans only to yank it away and go No Homo (etc)? "Queerbaiting" is a fantastic choice. Want to announce some breaking news? "Current Events" is your contender. And all three of those keywords will show the same icon.

Each of these options add a little bit more nuance and subtext to the icon you're using, and, in my opinion, increase the fun factor accordingly.

.

Another fun thing to do is play with titles. While titles can be used straightforwardly, as they are in this post, they can also be used to add a little bit of off-the-wall commentary. Want to include a note that is relevant to the post but doesn't quite fit in the body? Is it something you might put in the tags on Tumblr? Consider putting it in the title!

This works both for posts and for comments. Doubly for comments in fact, aside from contexts where the field is used for organizational purposes, such as fic memes and the like; mostly because the title field is so rarely used otherwise in comments. People do use it on Dreamwidth, and some people do so often, but the majority of Dreamwidth users leave the title field blank most of the time. If you've got something to say that is really more on the margins of the rest of the comment, the subject line is somewhere you can consider putting it.

One final option that I can't say I've seen people using, but is certainly possible: The edit field. When you edit a comment, you can type in the reason you're editing it in a field that shows up at the bottom. Mostly it's reasons like "I forgot to close a tag" or "I thought of something else to add to the comment" or "I found that link I was talking about", but you could use it to add Tumblr-tag-like commentary to your own comments. Caveats that this is only an option for comments (editing posts doesn't have that same field) and that you can't edit a comment that someone has replied to. The latter portion is to try and keep communication honest and clear, though there might also be technological reasons for it.

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The final option is post-specific (can't be done with comments) and are what Dreamwidth refers to as "Currents": Your Current Mood, Music, and Location.

Mood has a drop-down list of pre-selected mood options, some of which make more sense than others (how is "recumbent" a mood?). If you pick one of those moods, you may also get an associated image from one of Dreamwidth's provided/server supported Mood Themes; these are small and simple, and can be animated, but frequently aren't. You can check the available ones out here. If you have a paid account, you can also upload a custom mood theme, which you can make yourself or may be able to find made by someone else. Making them can take a while, but it can also be very rewarding to find or create just the right image for every mood in the menu.

That's not all, though! An important thing about Mood is that you can also input a custom mood. Not to be confused with a custom mood theme, a custom mood is an area where you can ignore the pre-selected drop-down menu of moods and fill in your own, such as "over the moon", "sick of this shit", or "what the actual fuck". (Like Tumblr tags, moods are typically not capitalized.) Just using the Custom Mood field will not give you an extra image to use for your mood, but it can be combined with the Mood drop-down menu to display alternate text for the selected mood. For example, you can select "ecstatic" as your mood and input "over the moon" as your custom mood text, and the "ecstatic" image will show up with fresh text.

The Custom Mood field only allows up to 30 characters, but there's still a lot of potential for fun combinations.

The second "Currents" field is Music, but honestly it can just be whatever you're listening to. Your teeth grinding as the government makes yet another ill-informed decision? Your cat purring and taking away your worries? Your heartbeat going a mile a minute in the middle of a horror movie? The rain outside? You can even go abstract and claim to hear the sound of silence, and not in a Simon and Garfunkel way. Or the whooshing of a point as it sails past the heads of people who willfully misunderstand.

You don't even have to limit yourself to sounds, real or imaginary, you can just put text; same way with Mood and Location (next). Whatever you put in that field will be listed as Music in your post, but that doesn't mean it is.

The Music field has room for 74 characters.

Last is the Location field. There's some pretty important stuff to know about this one, so I'll just copy-paste from Dreamwidth's FAQ about Currents:

The location text area is linked to Google Maps. Whatever you fill in here will appear as a link to a map of that location when viewed on the entry. The field does not auto-detect your location: you must make a deliberate choice to type it in. If you add a ZIP code or street address the map link may pinpoint your location to others, so think carefully about your privacy and comfort level before specifying a physical location. You can also choose a non-specific location such as a city or country, or a descriptive phrase like "at home" or "in the library".

So yes, you can put your literal GPS location in the Location section! I don't personally recommend it for safety reasons, but it's an option.

You can also lie about your location and input the coordinates for anywhere in the world. You can go fantastical and claim to be in Narnia or in a galaxy far, far away, or you can say that you're surfing the waves of your own imagination. You can say that you're lost in grief or drowning in cookies. Or you can just continue whatever train of thought you were going with from Mood and Music. Just know that it can and will attempt to connect with an actual real-world location if you input one.

As with the other two fields in "Currents", it's up to you what you put there, but the Location field allows you a whole 80 characters to do is.

Also, despite the order they're listed in the post window, they show up in the order of Mood, Location, Music in your actual post, so keep that in mind as well!

So there you have it. Dreamwidth may not have "talking in the tags" the way Tumblr does, but it does have some other forms of communication that you can still have fun with.

(Side note: You might also be able to do fun stuff similar to the "Currents" options with the Age Restriction section, but I haven't tried that one, and honestly it might be heavily dependent on the registered age of who's viewing it. If you're making a fun joke that you don't want people to miss out on, maybe stick to the other options.)

[darstellung]

[muntadhir]

I wrote about some of the stuff on Geppetto’s blackboard months ago, and now that I have since learned how to actually look at the game’s files and manipulate the camera better, I figured I would take another look, starting with the “Daffodils and Narcissus” paper. There’s one on Geppetto’s blackboard, as well as on his desk and in various other parts of the game (perhaps notably, Lorenzini Arcade).

Initially I wasn’t super interested in this because I figured it was just a “lorem ipsum” sort of thing, and I still think it is, but conversely: the text comes (paraphrased, and otherwise mixed and added to) from an actual book published in 1923 that you can take a gander at online: Archive.org | some related images on Flickr from the Biodiversity Heritage Library

The full Lies of P text is below, but some notes: 1. I wasn’t sure if “forcing” and “flanged” were the right terms, but it’s used in the original so I assume it’s correct. 2. “We/our” from the original text has been changed to “I/my” in the game version. Maybe one of the devs just really likes flowers or they thought it was funny. Either way, valid. 3. There are undoubtedly errors, and I’ve intentionally kept some misspellings.

⬇️

Miss Ella V. Baines, The Woman Florist, Springfield Ohio. 11

Daffodils and Narcissus.

Sweet harbingers of Spring, that jump from old Winter’s lap, with cheeks of gold and silver and bedecking the earth with beauty, filling the air with delicious perfume. The wonderful creations in the way of new varieties have awakened an interest and enthusiasm among the lovers of flowers that has placed this, “The Flower of the Poets,” in the front rank of popularity and they merit all the praise that can be bestowed upon them. Appearing as they do, just after bleak Winter, they turn our gardens, lawns, and woodlawn walks into gorgeous masses of gold and silver, with a fragrance that is enchanting.

Note. — I wish to say my friends that the different varieties of Narcissus force into bloom in the house during Winter as readily as the Hyacinths. There is nothing finer in the flower line for this purpose. Indeed, they are my choice of all Winter flowering bulbs. They are so graceful and pretty. I can especially recommend for house culture the following charming varieties: Golden Spur, Porticus Ornatus, Orange Phoenix, Sulphur Pheonix, Von Sion, Horsfieldii, Giant Princess, Paper White, Chinese Sacred Lily and Golden Sacred Lily. Try these variations. They will not disappoint you.

Henry Irving. — Long, beautifully frilled trumpet nearly two inches wide at the mouth of rich golden yellow color. Petals of perianth very wide over lapping bright yellow. Received first class certificate. 10 cents each; three for 25 cents.

Hale’s Beaten Gold, or Maximus. — Large flower, rich yellow, elegantly twisted perianth, trumpet deep golden, large, well flanged. 10 cents each; three for 25 cents.

Obvallaris. — Tenby Daffodil. Elegantly formed, medium sized flower of rich yellow. Splendid for forcing. 8 cents each; four for 25 cents.

Large Trumpet Narcissus.

Two Colored Varieties — White and Yellow.

Grandis. — Flowers of the largest size, with broad, snow white petals and a magnificent yellow tube. Very beautiful. A flower of great substance and grand for cutting. 10 cents each; six for 50c.

Horsfieldii. — (Empress) The Queen of the Daffodils. This variety is considered the best of all Narcissus. Try it. Very large flowers, pure white with rich yellow trumpet. Very stately and beautiful and one of the most elegant for ladies’ corsage wear. This magnificent flower was raised by a Lancashire weaver — John Horsfield — and it has made him famous. 10 cents each; six for 50 cents.

Scoticus. — The Scotch Garland Flower or Large-Flowering Lent Lily. Large flowers of creamy white, bright yellow trumpet, elegantly flanged and serrated. 6 cents each; 50 cents per dozen.

Giant Princess. — (Ajax Princeps) A magnificent flower. One of the finest specimens of the Trumpet type. Cream perianth with golden yellow trumpet. 5 cents each; 50 cents per dozen.

Moschatus. — White perianth. Trumpet opens creamy white and turns to pure white. It is very large and showy and it never fails to please everybody. 10 cents each; three for 25 cents.

All White Trumpet Narcissus.

Pallidus Praecox. — The White Pyrenees Daffodils. One of the earliest and most beautiful varieties. Both trumpt and Perianth are clear, sulphur white. Was awarded a first-class certificate by the London Royal Horticultural Society. One of the best for forcing. 6 cents each; 60 cents per dozen.

Albicans. — The White Spanish Daffodil. Creamy white, with a silvery white trumpet, slightly flushed with primrose and elegantly recurved at the brim. 10 cents each; three for 25 cents.

The True Poet’s Daffodils.

Narcissus, with Miniature Saucer-shaped Cups.

Poeticus Ornatus. — Large, beautifully formed, pure white flowers with saffron cup, tinged with rosy scarlet. A magnificent cut flower. Very early. This is my special favorite of all Narcissus. Try it. 5 cents each; 50 cents per doz.

Poeticus. — The “Pheasant’s Eye or Poet’s Narcissus.’ Pure white flowers, with orange cup, edged with crimson. Splendid cut flower. 3 cents each; 25 cents per dozen.

Poeticus Poetarum. — The flowers of this splendid variety are much larger and the orange rim more distinct in the cup. This beautiful variety will be welcomed as a decided improvement over the old Poeticus. 5 cents each; six for 25 cents.

Chalice Flowered or Semi-Trumpet Narcissus

Including the Incomparabilis Barril and Leedsil Types.

The trumpet in these varieties are only half the length or less of the other varieties of trumpets, hence called chalice flowered. They are very beautiful and desirable.

Barril Conspicus. — (Barrii) Perianth yellow. Short orange scarlet cup. Extra fine. 5 cents each; six for 25 cts.

Frigaro. (Incomparabilis) Perianth bright yellow, large orange scarlet cup. A very beautiful variety. 5 cents each; six for 25 cents.

Amabilis. — (Leedsii) Perianth pure white, cup or half trumpet primrose yellow fading to pure white. Very desirable. 5 cents each; six for 25 cents.

Duchess de Brabant. — (Leedsii) Periant white, cup or half trumpet a beautiful shade of canary yellow. Very fine. 5 cents each; six for 25 cents.

Albus Stella. (Incomparabilis) Large white perianth with yellow cup. This is an old and fashionable standby. 4 cents each; 40 cents per doxen.

Sir Watkin. — (The Giant Incomparabilis) Perianth rich sulphur, cup yellow, tinged orange. The best of all. Very beautiful. Extra. 10 cents each; three for 25 cents.

(Left column)

Giant-Flowered Narcissus or Daffodils.

Note. — In describing Narcissus I have referred to the “perianth” and “trumpet;” the latter is the long center, funnel-like tube, and the “perianth” is the surrounding row of petals, or leaves. All Narcissus on this page are hardy for garden planting. Also excellent for Winter flowering indoors.

Large Trumpet Narcissus — All Yellow.

Ard-Righ, or Irish King. — (Trumpet Major) — Earliest and most vigorous “Giant Trumpet Daffodil” in cultivation. Fine, bold flowers of immense size. Perianth and trumpet full, rich yellow. Extra fine sort for port culture and forcing. 5 cents each; six for 25 cents.

Emperor. — The Giant Narcissus. Largest of all. Flowers of richest yellow, trumpet immense, petals of perianth so large they overlap, and measure three and a half inches across. Petals a shade lighter than the trumpet. 10 cents each; six for 50 cents.

Golden Spur. — Extra large, bold, rich, yellow flowers. Foliage very broad and striking, unusually robust habit. Unsurpassed for gardens, pots, or forcing. 10 cents each; $1.00 per dozen.

[necrotic-nephilim]

Sorry if this might be a rude question but why don’t you just make a seperate account for your nsfw fics?

not rude, it's a valid question! tbh it's a combination of a couple reasons.

i started posting anonymous dead dove batcest fics long before i had the balls to make a tumblr. at first i was content to just leave them unassociated with each other because i didn't really care about them being tied to me. i made this blog to actually show solidarity to my partner who wanted to make a sideblog for Sandman comic stuff so we could cheerlead each other and be brave together, since i've wanted to make a batcest sideblog but i've been nervous about actually having to get it going. (mal ik you're reading this go be brave and actually make your blog so i can cheerlead you damnit-) only did it dawn on me then that i should probably mention the fics i've written on the blog after like, three of them were posted anonymously. and it would've annoyed me to have half of them anonymous and half of them not, because notifications for them would've gone in different places. i could go back and take my fics off anon if i wanted to, but i can't switch the account they're on without taking them down entirely and that'd fuck over people who have them bookmarked already.

which, ties into my second reason, if i made an entire second ao3 account it'd be harder for me to see notifications, reply to stuff, and post things for both accounts because i'd have to constantly switch. and honestly i'd be terrified of accidentally posting on the wrong one on a brain fog day. posting fics is always the most tedious part of writing them for me lol. it's easier for me to stay logged into one account and have all of my stuff in one place for me and just use the anonymous collection when i feel like it. if ao3 pseuds worked like tumblr blogs, where you can't see all my side blogs but i can, i would've used pseuds, but since you can see all pseuds on an ao3, i felt it was a moot point.

and the last reason is i just feel more comfortable being anonymous on ao3 because of the rise in anti culture. on tumblr it's very easy for me to just filter that out and find the people i want to follow and block the people i don't. i don't mind getting hate, on tumblr or on ao3. but i think, for whatever reason you want to blame it on, there's been a massive boom of antis on ao3 who are very entitled about how they read on ao3. i tag extensively, but i just feel safer from getting targeted attacks if everything i write on ao3 isn't attached to one profile. if people like a fic i wrote, want to find more i always link my tumblr in the notes, but if an anti wants to get huffy with me, they can't easily track down my other things. they definitely could if they wanted to, but being anonymous on ao3 just makes me feel more secluded, in a weird way. it's like saying "if you want you can come find me but on here i'm just a weird faceless guy throwing stuff in the void". i've used ao3's anon feature a lot, actually, i used to be a hydra trash party dumpster kid back when that was in it's prime.

i also used to be vaguely popular on a different tumblr blog and my main ao3 and while i think it'd definitely be cool if i got a decent chunk of followers on this blog too, i don't really miss having fanfiction do so well i got targetted hate on all of my fics from the same people, i had my fics stolen, etc. it was really exhausting for me. i have 120+ works on ao3, not counting what's anonymous, and that level of exposure tires me, even when i use my main ao3 to post things that aren't trashy. it's just a weird feeling knowing so many people are subscribed to you on ao3 and what if you post something they won't like because you jumped fandoms again, or you're posting something niche, or you don't think it fills enough fandom tropes to be well-liked. i used to obsessively think like that, and it made me not write the things i wanted to because i cared about numbers. and i don't want to slide back into that hole. writing on anonymous is mostly to remind myself i wrote this for me, and if other people like it, they can come find me, but i don't have to perform like that anymore. if i get a really weird fucked up idea, i can write the really weird fucked up idea. at the end of the day, just makes me more comfortable! but i get it's a super confusing set up from an outsider perspective so, i really don't mind the question, thank you for asking!!

[realbeefman]

i think we need to bring back fandom-specific newsletters i think it would be so so awesome if i could just like. get an e-mail once or twice a month going "HERE'S SOME OF THE REALLY AWESOME NEW FANWORKS WAHOOO!!!!" i think that would be so so cool.

[acertainmoshke]

I am never ever leaving tumblr BUT I thought I would try to expand a bit to Dreamwidth and Pillowfort, and I finally get what it's like for people who don't find this site intuitive to try and transition to it

[anghraine]

I really wanted to try and do the full Snowflake Challenge at Dreamwidth this year, which I've never managed to do before, but other things kept piling up etc and one of the challenges took up a disproportionate amount of time (#11, create a fanwork—I wrote a 2.5k prologue for the Mass Effect/P&P AU). And I kind of had wanted to prove to myself that I could stick to something, even something very low-stakes and self-indulgent, and carry it through to the end by Jan 31st.

And I did it! I was behind (thanks, #11) but I simply refused to go to sleep until I'd finished, despite being both tired and sick. I posted the prologue at Dreamwidth and then speedran the last four challenges and wrapped up #15 just around midnight.

I'm ridiculously proud of myself, lol.

[all-peristeronic]

Tumblrinas want what Dreamwidth has (the ability to friends-lock posts).

[mythandlaur]

For no particular reason, what kind of stuff do people usually put on neocities?

[gjdraws]

Your due south art is so rad!!!!

THANK YOU! I'm still figuring out their faces and general them-ness but it's very compelling cant seem to stop!

[kdsburneraccount]

I wrote something on dreamwidth and realized i have shipped matt and julio since december of 2020

[bisexualbaker]

Dreamwidth and Reblogging

I keep forgetting about it because I don't actually use it, but there is actually a third party script that will allow you to "reblog" stuff on Dreamwidth! I'll have to do some digging to find it (unless someone who knows where it is can link it in the notes perhaps?), but it does exist.

Another thing a lot of people do for signal boosting and sharing stuff is provide easy code you can copy and paste to your own account. They'll usually have all of the HTML ready to go and look neat for you, and it may even include a neat graphic! I'm not sure about rich text options (again, not something I use), but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people start offering a basic copy-paste-able "Share this paragraph" thing to get the news out.

[notasapleasure]

The first handful of posts on my dash this morning were all like 'where will you go when we have to leave tumblr/I could never blog anywhere else waaa/now that tumblr is dying...' and I scrolled on assuming eventually I'd find some explanation as to the nature of the current bin fire. But no? Were these posts just coincidence or what?

[marley-manson]

could the non idiots on staff just add options to the algorithm stuff higher ups want anyway so we can switch that shit off

like don't tell them, they'll never know

[monsterhugger]

i feel like for the last six years I’ve been watching the state of tumblr slowly go from “it sucks but there’s nowhere else to go” to “well i guess there’s nowhere to go”

[optiwashere]

Hate seeing the fanlore page for BG3 half updated so that only (some of) the men even have fanlore pages. I think we all know which male companion doesn't have a page yet.

Hate seeing that none of the ladies have pages. HUH? I would've figured one ship would've put in some work there.

Hate thinking of the time it would take to update it to my satisfaction, thus taking away time from writing fic.

Hate all of it lmao.