#i think i might use one of these as my icon for my main account

[lixiepixiedust]

Peach to my Mario

pairing — idolbf!leeknow x f!reader (From the Unveiling Love series!)

word count — 2.7k words

warnings — she/her reader, tiny bit of angst, stress, tooth-rotting fluff

summary — Minho always avoids showing affection to you in public which makes his friends and members worry about his relationship, thinking it might not be healthy. However, in private, Minho’s a completely different person. One day, he comes home early and takes the chance to invite you over. During a little gaming sesh, his members accidentally walk in on him being overly sweet with you.

It was just part of Minho's nature to avoid PDA. He never showed affection when you were out with friends, and he wasn't the type of guy to show you off or post you on social media, even on his private account. When you first started dating, you went out to dinner with Minho and some of his members and their partners. It was the first time you were out with him around other people. Whenever you tried to initiate any contact with him, he'd gently push you away and give you a look that said, "Not here," which, at first, bothered you.

This constant habit didn't go unnoticed by his members. They saw how he acted with you around them, which made them worry about your relationship. Some even talked to Minho, suggesting he show more affection, but he always replied with, "I know what I'm doing." This left them wondering, "Are they even a happy couple?" because that's all they knew. They were never shown the real side of Minho in a relationship.

You eventually got used to it over time, as he had a way of making up for it. When you two were alone, he was the sweetest. He showered you with love, and he wasn't afraid to show emotion. It was fascinating to see how different a person he could be depending on the setting, and as his girlfriend, you somewhat liked this duality. When he'd get home from an outing with you, he'd immediately pull you into a hug and smother you with kisses, becoming a completely different person than he was a minute ago.

You didn't complain about the lack of PDA anymore because you were grateful that Minho saw you as someone he could be vulnerable with. He wasn't afraid to share his struggles and ask for your help, and you appreciated the connection you had with him in this way. It was so rare for him to have such a bond with someone, which made it so precious.

One day, Minho arrived at his dorms earlier than usual, and it was a particularly stressful day. They were approaching a comeback, and the choreography needed to be finalized with a tight deadline. A professional choreographer was scheduled to review their dance, and they had to have it perfected by then. The pressure was especially heavy on Minho, as he was responsible for everything, being the main dancer in the group. Comeback season always brought a lot of stress for all of them. The producers had to handle the tracks, and they had to attend numerous meetings discussing potential concerts and promotions.

Usually, during this stressful and overworked period, he would be staying late at the company, leaving little time at home. So, it was rather unusual for him to arrive home early. When Minho reached the door of his dorm, he tossed his bag onto the couch and slumped into a seat. He unscrewed a plastic water bottle and downed it in a few gulps. Minho buried his face in his hands, threw his head back, and released an exasperated sigh.

He took his phone out of the front pocket of his backpack and texted your number.

"y/n, do you have a minute?"

right after he sent it out, it showed as "read," with an icon popping up indicating that you were typing. 

"yea, of course. is everything alright?"

"i just wanna see you. and no one's home yet."

It shocked you that he was home already. You hadn't seen him for two weeks, given how busy he had been and how little time he had for himself. So, to you, it was surprising that he had texted you. You responded with a simple "kk" before getting up and preparing to leave. You were wearing gray sweatpants and one of Minho's shirts, but you decided not to bother changing, as it looked presentable enough. After all, it was just Minho.

You grabbed Minho's keys and phone, locking your own door as you left your apartment. Even though you had a car, navigating the busy downtown Seoul intersections often took longer than walking. Luckily, Minho's dorms were only a few blocks away, making it a short five to ten-minute walk. Upon reaching his building, you scanned your keycard at the lobby and opened the door after hearing the click. Minho had given you an extra keycard so you could visit him, although his roommates were unaware of this, as it wasn't something they would necessarily know.

You rode the elevator up to his floor, which was located quite high up, just one floor below the penthouses. Minho's apartment was notably larger compared to the others in the building, as he shared it with three of his group members. You went down the hallway and stopped when you saw his unit number.

You gently knocked on the door, not wanting to startle him. There was silence, so you decided to try the doorknob, and it turned out to be unlocked. You entered, taking your shoes off at the entrance before quietly making your way to the living room. As you entered the room, you found Minho sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the floor.

"Minho" You called out.

He jumped, snapping out of his thoughts and turned his head towards you. "You scared me"

"Did you not hear me come in?"  You chuckled.

Minho shook his head, a small smile forming on his face. "I guess I was too lost in my own world."

You walked over and sat beside him, giving him a gentle smile. "Long day?" He nodded and leaned into your touch.

You wrapped your arm around him. "What can I do to help you relax?"

Minho sighed, looking at you with gratitude. "Just being here is enough. I missed you."

You smiled, feeling a warm flutter in your chest. "I missed you too, Minho. "

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"Anytime," you replied, snuggling closer to him. "Why are you back so early, hm? Where's everyone else."

"They're still at the company, working on their own stuff now. I needed a break from the choreo, I couldn't think straight anymore," Minho confessed, rubbing his temples.

It was rare for him to take breaks for himself so you were glad he reached out to you in this moment. You continued to comfort him, running your fingers through his hair soothingly.

"You know you don't have to carry all the weight on your own, right?" you reassured him.

Minho nodded, appreciating your support. "I know, it's just... sometimes I forget."

"Well, that's what I'm here for – to remind you," you said with a soft smile.

Minho leaned into your touch, his shoulders relaxing as he let out a deep breath. "I'm lucky to have you," he murmured.

The two of you sat in comfortable silence for a while, letting the weight of the day slowly lift off Minho's shoulders. You could sense the exhaustion in him, not just physical but also the mental strain of the responsibilities he carried. 

I gave a him a gentle squeeze. "Wanna play something?"

Minho looked at you, exhaustion still lingering in his eyes but a genuine smile playing on his lips. "That sounds good."

You made your way to the Nintendo Switch (Felix's, obviously) and powered up Mario Kart. As the game loaded, you handed Minho a controller, and soon, both of you were engrossed in the competition. The colorful characters on the screen and the playful banter between you and Minho helped to lighten the atmosphere in the room.

As you played, you couldn't help but notice the transformation in Minho. The stress lines on his face seemed to fade, replaced by genuine smiles and occasional laughter. It was moments like these that made you appreciate the private side of Minho that he rarely showed to the outside world.

"You're gonna lose so bad, Y/n, you don't know," he teased, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Yea sure," you shot back, a smirk playing on your lips.

The races became more heated, with Minho throwing himself into the game, making exaggerated gestures as he maneuvered his virtual car. Every time you pulled ahead, he'd let out a theatrical groan, clutching his heart.

"I can't believe you'd do this to me!" he'd exclaim in horror, slumping dramatically in his seat.

You couldn't help but burst into laughter. "Come on, Minho, it's just a game!"

But for Minho, it was more than just a game. It was a battle, a challenge that he took very seriously. When the races got particularly close, he'd lean in closer to the screen, his eyes narrowing in concentration. And when you crossed the finish line first, Minho faked his death right on that couch. He'd plopped onto your lap and stick out his tongue.

As you and Minho continued playing, the atmosphere lightened, and the stress from earlier seemed to dissipate. The room echoed with laughter as the two of you engaged in a fierce Mario Kart competition. 

However, little did you both know that the other boys had finished their work and were on their way back to the dorm. As two of them approached the door, they exchanged glances, wondering if Minho was still immersed in his work or if he had finally decided to take a break.

As the door creaked open, Minho was in the midst of a loud cheer, having won a close race. Your lips formed a fake pout, teasing Minho for his impressive gaming skills. Before you could utter a word, Minho grabbed your face and planted a sweet kiss on your lips. With a satisfied grin, he plopped back down onto your lap, his eyes shifting to the TV which displayed his victory.

His eyes were fixed on the screen, and he didn't notice the entrance of his fellow members. Seungmin and Felix stood frozen for a moment, taking in the unexpected scene before them.

Minho, still admiring his victory, suddenly felt a shift in the atmosphere. His eyes flickered from the screen to your face, and then he followed your gaze to the open doorway. There, standing in various states of shock and amusement, were his friends.

Minho's cheerful expression faltered as he registered their presence. He quickly disentangled himself from your lap, clearing his throat awkwardly and avoiding eye contact.

"Hey," he mumbled, attempting to regain his composure.

Minho's sudden change in behaviour didn't go unnoticed by them. The two exchanged puzzled glances, silently communicating their surprise at witnessing a side of Minho they had never seen before.

Seungmin smirked. "Didn't know playing video games could be so... intimate."

Minho's cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he tried to brush off the situation. "No, just taking a break from choreo. Y/n happened to drop by."

You offered a friendly wave to the members, trying to diffuse the tension. "Long time no see."

"Didn't know he had such a soft side for you." Felix looked in your direction.

Seungmin raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, Minho, you've been keeping this hidden from us."

Minho avoided making eye contact with anyone. "It's not a big deal. We're just hanging out."

Felix interjected, "Alright, alright, let the man breathe. Maybe he's just trying out a new gaming strategy."

Seungmin smirked, "Yeah, because everyone knows that cuddling enhances your Mario Kart skills."

Minho sighed, realizing he was caught in a situation he couldn't easily escape. The members, still amused, decided to join the gaming session, pulling up chairs and grabbing controllers. The atmosphere lightened up again as everyone got immersed in the races. Amidst the gaming chaos, you felt a subtle shift beside you. Glancing at Minho, you noticed a small smile playing on his lips as he looked at you. Seizing the opportunity, you casually leaned against him, and to your surprise, Minho didn't pull away. Instead, he subtly wrapped his arm around your shoulders, bringing you closer.

Felix, ever observant, caught the moment and exchanged a knowing look with Seungmin. A mischievous grin spread across Felix's face as he nudged Seungmin, who raised an eyebrow in response. It seemed like the members were enjoying this unexpected revelation of Minho's softer side. Minho's hesitancy towards PDA seemed to going away slightly. He didn't shy away when you rested your head on his shoulder, and he even tickled you a little during one of the races. 

The night turned into a fun and lighthearted gathering, with laughter filling the air as everyone bonded over Mario Kart. The initial surprise at seeing Minho in a more vulnerable and relaxed state slowly faded, replaced by acceptance and genuine enjoyment of the moment. As the clock ticked away, the group decided to take a break from gaming and sat together in the living room, sharing stories and enjoying the dinner Jeongin had eventually brought. It was during these moments that you could see a different side of Minho showing the side that wasn't afraid to be affectionate in front of his friends.

The members of Stray Kids, who had initially been concerned about Minho's reserved nature in public, began to see the depth of his relationship with you. They witnessed the way he looked at you, the way he smiled, and the subtle gestures of affection that spoke volumes about the connection you shared.

After dinner, as the night wound down, the members bid their goodbyes, as you went over to the door to leave. Minho stood up, indicating that he would walk you home. The others exchanged knowing glances, teasing smiles playing on their lips. 

As you and Minho stepped out of the dorm, the cool night air greeted you. The city lights illuminated the streets as you began the short walk to your apartment. The atmosphere was comfortable, a companionable silence settling between you and Minho.

"I appreciate you coming over," Minho said, his tone sincere. "It's been a hectic few weeks, and tonight was exactly what I needed."

"I'm glad I could be here for you," you replied, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. "You don't always have to carry everything on your own, Minho. It's okay to lean on others, especially those who care about you."

He nodded, a grateful smile on his face. "Thank you,"

"Anytime," you replied, giving him a soft smile. "It was nice spending time with everyone."

Minho nodded, his hand finding yours. "I guess they know now," he added with a hint of playfulness.

You chuckled. "Well, it's not a bad thing. They seem to like this side of you."

He smirked. "Yeah, yeah, I can't escape their teasing now. They're gonna tell the other dorm all about it"

You squeezed his hand. "You'll be alright. Besides, it's nice to see you letting your guard down a bit."

Minho leaned in, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead. "I guess you have that effect on me."

As you reached your apartment building, you turned to face Minho. "Well, this is me. Thank you for tonight."

Minho smiled, leaning in to press a lingering kiss to your lips. "No, thank you. I needed this more than you know."

You both exchanged a loving gaze, the unspoken understanding between you deepening. With a final goodnight, you entered your building, watching as Minho waited until you were safely inside.

As you settled on your couch, you decided to check your social media accounts before getting ready for bed. As you scrolled through your feed, you noticed a notification on Minho's private Instagram account. It surprised you because Minho rarely posted anything on his private account, and he had never posted a picture of the two of you before.

Opening the post, your heart skipped a beat as you saw a candid shot one of his members must've taken from tonight. It perfectly captured the essence of the night – both of you smiling at each other, a shared blanket over your laps, and controllers in hand. 

The caption read: "Peach to my Mario"

Feeling a mix of emotions, you couldn't help but smile at the post. It was a small but significant step for Minho to share a piece of your relationship with the world, even if it was just on his private account. 

"Photo credits?" One of the comments read, from Seungmin.

As you liked and replied to a few comments, you couldn't shake the feeling that this marked a subtle shift in Minho's approach to PDA. Maybe, just maybe, the night had not only been a release for him but also a realization that sharing moments of vulnerability with you and his friends wasn't something to be afraid of.

[lolli-popples]

The Missing Link in Scott's Characterization

(Wrote this in a random document and I think it's good so I'm loosely transcribing it here)

These are some of my thoughts on a crucial facet of Scott's character in the Life Series that I think is overlooked by the fandom.

From my personal viewpoint, people put a lot of emphasis on Scott's caring about his allies over everything else. I think this is an important characteristic. However, I think this being shown as the most central trait is a detriment to how people read his involvement with the overarching narrative. It might be less of a problem if he wasn't directly involved with the final fight of nearly every Life Series.

Because of this combination of things, his main interaction with fans' reading of the final fight is being willing to do anything to make sure his friends win. It gives people the tendency to attribute some victories partially to him, which upsets people who want main read of the story to focus entirely on the winner. But this also has meant that one of Scott's main traits is overlooked.

Just as much, and often, more than Scott values his allies, he values fairness. To showcase this, let's look at Limited and Last Life, where he had the most control on how the final fight took place.

In Last Life, when it's down to the final four, Scott *could* have teamed up with Pearl, his ally all season, to kill Martyn and Ren. That aligns with wanting either your or your allies to win, no? But he doesn't. He suggests they split to the 4 corners of the map and have a fair fight on equal footing. Very fair.

With Limited Life it's even more apparent. Scott and Martyn have an impressive amount of time. They could both still die multiple times. Impulse is running out, and there's a numbers advantage. They could have killed Impulse and Scott could have let Martyn win, or Scott could have given Martyn his time to fight Impulse alone. But instead, he suggests they all go down to the same amount and have a fair fight.

In both situations, Scott puts fairness *over* an alliance victory. Even though Limited Life didn't end up ending fairly, that had nothing to do with Scott.

Double Life certainly has the strongest claim on Scott "letting someone win". That his death is an apology for abandoning Pearl.

But if you listen to what Scott says in the finale, he never apologizes. He says he didn't think they'd get this far, he says she deserves this more than him, and then he says the iconic "Tilly death do us part."

Scott didn't fight Pearl. But I don't think it came out of remorse. I think that too, came from a sense of fairness. Which is that Pearl, by all accounts, DOES deserve this win. If they fought it would basically be up to a draw. To chance. Scott has every chance of winning. But if you go over the events of Scott's final episode, he mostly runs. He survives. While Pearl 1v2'd two separate pairs and won! The only reason Pearl hasn't killed Scott already, who has been her enemy all season, is because they were randomly assigned to be soul-linked. A concept Scott has fought since the very beginning. He knows that while he never hurt their chances, Pearl is the reason they are here, and Pearl is the reason he is here. It wouldn't be fair for Pearl to lose to what is basically a coin flip. So, he doesn't leave it up to random chance.

So yes, Scott is loyal and does care about his allies, he proves that again and again. But the way he is involved in how the series end shows that his sense of order and fairness are equally important. Also, I think viewing his contributions from this angle help remedy some of the reasons people don't like his usual characterization because of how it effects the agency of other characters.

[yoshizawaviolet]

— ❝ One day at a time. ❞

✧ ADMIN. celeste (kroosluvr) / she/her / 23 / PST (but i'm pretty nocturnal)

✧ TATSUYA SUOU ASK/RP (@lonesingularity)

headcanon-based, canon-divergent at times, celeste's personal and beloved take on sumire yoshizawa! established july 17 2024.

all art posted or used as icons is either mine or from official persona media! please do not repost or use my art without permission!

please read my rules under the cut before following or interacting - we do not have to be mutuals to interact! ♡

no spoiler tags for p5r

open rp ✧ rp prompts ✧ all rp ✧ sumire musings ✧ art tag ✧ sumire answers ✧ verses

okay to respond to open rp, rp prompts, or musings whenever!

— ONE. my number 1 rule is absolutely no NSFW or R18 content. (even in AUs/timeskips.) aside from sumire being a minor, around age 15-16, i myself am not comfortable with that. i may also not interact with accounts that largely post nsfw/r18 stuff for my own comfort. please understand!!!  

— TWO. blood, violence is ok to a certain extent! but nothing crazy! i'll let you know if it's to an uncomfortable extent for me! 

— THREE. i may respond to asks/rp with art, but do not interact with me with expectations for art. if you even remotely tell me to draw something for you, i'll probably stop talking to you or block completely. (Vice versa, if you're an artist, please don't feel pressured to respond with art!!! <33)

— FOUR. this is my first time rping as a canon character, and running an rp/askblog at that! so, i'd like to restrict rp to persona series characters (and persona OCs) only for now. this might change later! the only mainline game i'm unfamiliar with is p1, and i haven't played strikers or finished tactica yet. 

— FIVE. i may not respond to your ask if 1) i can't think of a good answer 2) the ask is confusing 3) makes me uncomfortable 

— SIX. hopefully this is obvious but please no unsolicited flirting/overfamiliarity with the muse or admin, especially out-of-character.

OK !!! ദ്ദി ( ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ )

sending asks about specific ships/leaning towards certain pairings, and feel free to specify if you'd like! "i.e. what do you like to do with x, what do you think about y?" as i am an avid sumire multishipper, basically any sumire x pthief or highschool-aged npc is valid! cross-persona series characters are also valid with chemistry! (so probably don't ask "what do you think about minato" as there's nothing to go off)

if we follow each other (reminder that i follow from kroosluvr!) honestly feel free to shoot a starter anytime, i don't mind at all! even multiple rps going at the same time are awesome!!! ^^

totally ok to drop a thread if you don't see it going anywhere or it's naturally come to a close! (though i think ending it with an [END] of sorts would be nice hehe

my sumire is bi demisexual! my favorite pairings for her are shusumi/shuakesumi poly/akesumi (my favorites! feel free to read here for more), kitasumi/violetfox, annsumi, sumitaba, ryusumi, and sumifumi!! but as mentioned, totally willing to rp/think/draw other ships!

NO !!! Σ(°ロ°)

probably no rp with other sumires, sorry - i just don't think i have ideas for that haha

please don't push headcanons or ships on me!

please don't dm me unless we've interacted before!! if there's any inquiries you have re: my art, commissions, please dm my main, kroosluvr.

please do not push me to answer your ask!!!!!! totally ok to nudge me if we're mid-rp though and its been 48~ hours!

do not use the icons that i make for sumire, as they're tailored to my depiction of sumire and therefore i don't want anyone else to use them.

thanks for reading! let's have fun! ♡

[saintsenara]

1,8,18,21,22

thank you very much for the ask, @ashesandhackles. let's see how these go down...

[choose violence ask game here]

1. who is the character everyone gets wrong?

the last time i answered this question i said sirius - both fanon sirius and dark!sirius - and i stand by it, so this time, let's say... dumbledore.

and, actually, i think this for many of the same reasons which inspired my sirius answer. i really dislike dumbledore bashing, since it’s so frequently based in a complete misunderstanding of his character and the role he serves within the series’ narrative conventions - above all, the fact that the omniscient vibe he gives off in books 1-6 is not actually omniscience at all, as book 7 reveals; dumbledore doesn’t know that sirius is innocent, or that moody is barty crouch jr., or that kreacher is passing information to voldemort, because he’s just a human being. far too many criticisms of dumbledore don’t take this into account, ascribing to malice what is clearly just fallibility.

but, with this said, i dislike the anti-bashing turn in dumbledore-centric fics just as much, because many of these pair the idea that dumbledore is fallible (good and correct) with the idea that he is - for want of a better term - harry-ish. and this is just as bad a misreading of the character. dumbledore is not impulsive or reckless or radical - he holds radical views, but he does nothing to actually advance them in society (this is a man who is at the heart of the establishment for half a century, who does nothing with that power to dismantle the oppressive social structures which drive wizarding politics and prop up blood-supremacy). dumbledore is a hypocrite - he’s happy to be depended on by fudge, he is appalled that fudge might depend on lucius malfoy. dumbledore lives in an ivory tower. dumbledore projects his shame and self-loathing onto others in a way which is detrimental to their own happiness. and so on.

none of these things preclude dumbledore being courageous, but his ‘gryffindor courage’ is remarkably un-gryffindorish, and a lot of pro-dumbledore writing is surprisingly unwilling to confront this.

[also, there’s the other layer of pro-dumbledore writing i dislike - when authors make him hyper-whimsical. the man is stylish, rather than dressed like he ran into a charity shop and fell over. his sweet tooth is an incidental detail - and a trait which harry also shares - rather than his entire personality. he is not dithering and indecisive - he is a creature of inaction, but he tends to have settled on a single ‘right’ course very quickly in his mind. he is not silly. he is not a blushing fool in his relationships - all evidence is that he had just as much power over grindelwald as grindelwald had over him. he is not particularly emotionally demonstrative. he is physically strong. he is taller than voldemort. and, crucially, his mask of benign good humour is fake. all of his ‘whimsical’ traits are part of the act, the real dumbledore is ruthless and damaged and a nerd who loves reading and it’s iconic. let him be that way.]

8. what is the common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about?

there is no such thing as canon compliance.

by which i mean that ‘canon compliant’ is a useful tag to have on ao3 as an indicator of chronology - it’s a good shorthand for ‘the people who die in the series will die in this fic too’, ‘the main events which happen in the books will be mentioned here’, and so on. but i’m not sure that i think it goes beyond that.

and the reason for that, is that i have never seen anything which purports to be canon compliant beyond chronology - including my own work - which actually is.

there are several reasons for this:

the first is something which, if you’ve read other posts on this blog, you will know is a common refrain of mine - that the series is bound by specific genre conventions. if authors are transferring the action into a genre different from the ones the series makes use of, they are not writing something which is canon compliant, but canon coherent.

the second is that if authors are filling in gaps which are missing from the series - above all, the marauders-era or post-war-pre-epilogue timeline - they are doing something which is materially no different from writing a non-canon ship. i.e. writing exactly what they want. if your fic is crammed with original characters, or your marauders listen to cool muggle music, or you’ve spent more than twenty seconds thinking about the wizarding political or legal system then i love that for you - this is good and everyone should do it. but it’s not canon compliant. it’s canon coherent.

the third - and undoubtedly most controversial - is that you cannot write something canon compliant and hold the principle that the author is dead. because we know exactly how jkr thinks that canon should be interpreted, and this is often in ways which are - to borrow a phrase from ursula le guin - rather ethically mean-spirited. jkr’s views on fairness, violence, class, motherhood, love, and - of course - gender weave themselves into the narrative in ways which cannot simply be written off as ‘oh, it’s just harry’s perspective.’

i believe we have a moral imperative to know what she thinks and to interrogate the ways in which this appears in the canon text. i also think - obviously - that we don’t have to agree with what she thinks in order to write things which feel close to canon. and i don’t agree with her - not only when it comes to her views on trans people, which are actively harmful - but also when it comes to things like the fact that she’s clearly someone who’s rather vindictive, but who believes that this vindictiveness is really a strong sense of fairness (look, for example, at the dichotomy between how the text presents violence against people it thinks ‘deserve’ it - harry using the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow being a great example, neither harry, nor mcgonagall, nor the narrative give a fuck - and those it thinks don't). or the fact that her own experience of both motherhood and daughterhood - an experience which was clearly very traumatic for her (her mother died of multiple sclerosis, her first husband was violent towards her, she has an extremely difficult relationship with her father) - drives the series’ prioritisation of sacrificial motherhood, criticism towards mothers who don’t make their children the focus of their entire world, and certain coolness towards fathers (especially absentee ones - who will be blamed by the narrative for being murdered by their own sons). or the fact that she has extremely narrow views on cisgender women, even before her views on trans women are taken into account, which turn up again and again in how female characters we are not supposed to be sympathetic towards are written.

i am not, of course, suggesting that writing a fic which is heavily based in canon means that an author supports jkr’s views. what i am saying instead is that fics which engage with questions such as how harry understands violence against the bad guys in ways which go beyond ‘lol, lmao’ or which write lavender as a person whose fondness for stereotypical femininity doesn’t make her insubstantial or which point out that the narrative blaming merope gaunt for dying directly justifies everything voldemort believes are canon coherent.

and, actually, i think that this broader term - canon coherent - is a better one to talk about the non-chronological aspects of canon compliance. because the dividing line between canon compliant fics and canon divergent ones is incredibly arbitrary, and often doesn’t take into account how close to canon the writing in otherwise canon divergent stories often is. after all, if someone writes a story in which harry feels exactly like his canon self, except that the romantic partner he ends up with isn’t ginny, that is arguably more canon compliant than a piece of happy-ever-after hinny in which ginny is a doormat who gives up her career to be harry’s bang maid and harry speaks like he’s had twenty years of therapy. but only one of these pieces will be welcomed onto canon compliant rec-lists and into canon compliant discussion spaces.

[and it’s worth mentioning that plenty of canon compliant only spaces do allow flexibility - above all in being open to interpretations of characters such as james, harry, and hermione in which they are not white. this is good and they should continue to do this, but we can go further, especially in accepting queer interpretations of the main characters into canon compliant discussion.]

i also think - and i’m aware this may sound cruel - that thinking in terms of canon coherence, rather than compliance and divergence, would be good for everybody’s ego. i can acknowledge that plenty of people who diverge from canon can be dicks about it - and i think that the criticism people who prefer the canon endgame ships often get for being ‘boring’ (and, in the case of ships such as remadora, ‘homophobic’) is bullshit - but the canon compliant girlies (gender neutral) are, in many cases, no better. it is not harder to write something ‘canon compliant’ - not least because, as discussed, you’re not - and it is not evidence of an author engaging more seriously with the text and its themes. there is a tendency i have noticed in the fandom spaces i inhabit, many of which feature people whose preference is for the canon ships etc., for non canon pairings to be treated as - essentially - crack ships, especially in stories which are light or whimsical in tone. but when i say that writing on tomarry or snarry or snack or snapemort or drarry or riddledore or wolfstar or what have you can deliver characterisation and worldbuilding and narrative construction which feels infinitely more plausible than many ‘canon compliant’ pieces of writing, i mean this entirely seriously.

and i think it would be good if the dividing line which leads many people to say ‘i don’t read canon divergent fics’ or ‘i don’t read canon compliant fics’ was instead blended into a preference for fics which are canon coherent or otherwise. we would all learn something.

18. it’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on…

delphini.

another reason why canon coherence over canon compliance is valuable is it means that one can pretend the cursed child doesn’t exist.

but i would like to make a case for the fact that delphini as a concept (so, nothing like the way she’s written in that play…) makes sense and is a character i’d like to see added to more stuff. she works within both voldemort and bellatrix’s canonical arcs, she gives rodolphus something to do post-war after he spends canon being futile, imagine how funny it would be if teddy had a crush on her, george-michael and maeby style (truly les cousins dangereux), imagine how funny it would be if she is the spitting image of her muggle grandfather and her dad’s having a crisis every time he sees her, imagine her trying to parent trap voldemort and bellatrix into actually falling in love…

you can do serious things with her too - in fact, i have - but, as someone who thinks anything is improved by someone spindly and vaguely sinister, i think she’s a hoot and she deserves to turn up in more things.

21: what part of canon do you think is overhyped?

my eyes were bone dry when dobby-ex-machina died.

22: what is your favourite part of canon, which everyone else ignores?

that harry is a luxury boy. let my man buy his solid gold cauldron, hagrid, don’t be a narc.

[in general, i don't love versions of harry which show him as really abstemious or austere - he's pretty careless with his possessions and he doesn't regard the expensive things he owns as something to be unusually protective over. in his adulthood, he's 100% making sure his shed is stocked with the best brooms on the market and buying himself a little treat whenever he's feeling spenny.]

[alo-piss-trancy]

Maybe I should just ask this on a reddit sub or smth but I figured I'd try here first since I'm hoping the tags are more active now that the new game is coming and people might be replaying the series. Dragon Age question:

Okay so, I have all 3 base games (Origins, 2, Inquisition) on disc for my ps3. I've played through Origins, exported that worldstate to 2, and am now on the last act of 2. But there lies my problem. Apparently you can't export from 2 to Inquisition, you have to enter all your choices into the DragonAge Keep website, then export THAT into Inquisition via an EA account and it'll link up with the console.

Unfortunately to do that I think I need PSN access to go online. But uh... I've had this ps3 since I was like 13, and my profile seems to be bound to my dad's old email address (I was pretty much the only one who played the console, so the few times he got on, I think he just used my profile instead of the others we made for him and another family member. He pretty much only played Arkham City which has multiple save slots, and I was always ahead on progress/trophies, so this wasn't an issue at the time). I never played online and neither had he (idk why/how he set up the email part), so I've never actually had to sign into PSN before.

From what I'm reading, once a profile is bound to an email for PSN, it cannot be unlinked. So I HAVE to log into my profile with his info if I want to keep over a decade of game saves and trophies, including my Dragon Age saves, and still be able to go online.

I do know the email, because it is automatically filled in when I hit the PSN icon. But I think we've tried many passwords and his birthday and it never works. I'm wondering if maybe he didn't finish setting the account up way back then??? But it won't let me link the profile to a new PSN account I made with my own email, so his is clearly bound to it in some way.

I guess I could try customer support on their website and pray they'd be willing/able to recover the info and help me change it, but I'm not sure they'd even bother since it's a ps3 with no actual online play history/friends list and we've never bought anything digitally.

I'm just wondering if anyone has advice on what I can do if I can't get into this damn PSN. If I made another user profile on the ps3 and attached my own new PSN to that one, could I log into Dragon Keep's site, set all my choices for the first two games, & successfully link EA/export to Inquisition? It'd suck not being able to have all 3 games/trophy lists on my main profile, but at the end of the day I just want to be able to finish the trilogy with my worldstates instead of a default one 😭🙏 Or would it somehow not work since I wouldn't have any save data from the first two games on that ps3 profile?

Idk this whole system is fucking stupid, we should be allowed to unlink shit ☠️

[toxicanonymity]

RULES & FAQs

THIS BLOG IS 18+ NO MINORS 🔞

WELCOME ABOARD! This blog has amazing readers which makes it a lot of fun. You can call me Tox or Toxy (she/her). I usually write smut. Sometimes I write darkfic. I dabble in horror. Please do not follow me if you're sensitive to the warnings on my masterlists, found in my bio. Check your content settings to make sure you can see everything. Heed warnings on fics. Last updated July 2024.

Basics

Tox/Toxy, she/her, millennial. English or Spanish.

WIPs are on hiatus. I'm kinda struggling but trying to do my best. Thank you for your patience.

Do not copy, translate, or reupload my work. Do not put it into AI or make bots of it. Ty for understanding.

Please do not follow me if you are averse to dark content including dubcon and noncon.

Q: Are Requests open?

A: No, but questions are welcome 🩷

Q: Will you write more every inch/left in Lincoln?

A: I would like to. More here. For Every Inch, there are two more parts planned.

Q: When is [fic] coming back? How many chapters?

A: IDK, sorry :( If I knew I'd tell you. In the future, I'm not planning to release things as I write, I'm gonna try to finish everything before posting. Problem is I have a lot of one shot fails / play as I go AUs. We'll see. I can tell you Every Inch has 6 total parts planned.

Q: Did you read my fic?

A: I wish I could read everyone's fics, but in addition to there being a lot of you, I'm a slow/bad reader. I'm also overdosed on pedro rn, but I still share fics on @toxicrecs. You are welcome to send a fic or tag me if you think the readers here would like it. When I read a fic, I also reblog it here on main. I am most likely to read shorter drabbles/fics.

Q: AO3?

A: Here, I've done a lot of catching up but still not everything is on there. If there's something specific you would like me to bring over let me know and I will.

Q: Tag list?

A: Please follow @toxicfics, use the person icon to turn on notifications, and use this trick for getting a tab on your dashboard just for your blog subscriptions so you can see what you missed.

Q: Are the fics always dark on this blog?

A: No.

Q: What is the brothel?

A: I HC my characters as living in a brothel which has its own crack sideblog @toxicbrothel.

Q: What are Joelkémons?

A: Reader-coined term for the Joel variants on this blog. Some are listed here: Joelkémon cards.

Q: Can we make your characters into bots?

A: No, please don't do this. It makes me feel bad and they don't even work. Every time, it puts me farther away from updating the fic. Please lmk if you ever see my work made into a bot, copied, etc. Please don't draw attention to it without speaking to me first 🙏🏼 I generally like to keep things quiet and not make a big deal out of it.

Q: Who's night walks!Joel? Who's thighs out?

A: Night Walks is an AU where Joel is your hot, older, creepy pothead neighbor. Night walks masterlist. Thighs out (another AU) is your boyfriend's hot slutty dad.

Q: What's a HOG? Who/what is GILF?

A: Hot Old Guy, from Silence can never be bought pt. 2 and 5. GILF is grandpa I'd Like to Fuck and may refer to the one from Pawn Shop (Joel in his 60s) @gilfjoel.

Q: Who is Dr. Rock?

A: Hot sex therapist who roleplays my characters. Dr. Rock is also the poster boy for avoiding discourse.

Q: Do you still write slashers?

A: Yes. I just wrote my first Thomas Hewitt in March 2024. Main/slashers masterlist.

Q: What other fics & blogs do you rec?

A: Please check out @toxicrecs

Q: How can I stay motivated to write without getting a lot of notes?

A: Please see these posts: here and here.

Q: Which anon tags are taken?

A: 🍯 🍹 🍓🦡

Q: Why did you unfollow me?

A: I could've lost (some or all) interest in your fandom. I may have forgotten why I followed you, especially if what you're posting has changed. Or I might be wanting to reduce the discourse I see.

✨Q: Am I blocked? Why can't I see your main blog from my account? / Did you soft block me?

⚠️ A: The most common reasons I block are for policing or judging what others post, kink shaming, or spreading harmful rumors. ⚠️

When it comes to rumors and shaming, silence is not a sign of guilt or agreement. It's confidence in the truth and desire to keep harmful takes off the dash. As a rule, I would ignore and block false accusations, rumors, or kink shamers instead of giving them a huge audience by responding or addressing it.

Harmful takes in the wild / targeted harassment: blocked. And if a post is bad enough--such as calling for targeted harassment of writers or trivializing a serious crime by casually accusing writers of it, I may block people for positively interacting with it. I don't want to be on your dash if you share those views, even if it's about something I don't write. On my blog, it's important for readers to be able to understand fiction can't be equated with real life. And who's to say I won't offend or traumatize you on a different topic one day? It's for your own good.

You can get blocked on anon too.

[intrepidacious]

hi! ok I just wanted to ask someone who knows how tumblr works haha

so I found someone who writes amazing content so I decided to follow them. I binged lots of their fics earlier today and when I checked their profile again later, their profile doesn’t show. It seems they might have blocked me and I don’t know why :( I commented that I loved their fics and the comments are removed. my profile has my age and I am decently active on reposting & commenting on fics. This happened to me one other time too so I just am confused I guess :( I tried to message them but it said it wouldn’t go through so that makes me think I’m blocked? I guess I don’t know why a couple people blocked me? Just kinda made me sad bc I really enjoy their work but now I won’t be able to see anymore ☹️😢

happy to!! 💛

first thing you gotta remember that in all likelihood, your getting blocked is nothing personal. reasons for blocking someone on tumblr include but aren't limited to:

you don't have your age (range) listed in your bio/clearly visible on your blog

the age you have listed doesn't adhere to boundaries a blog has set (f.e. you're a minor, or it only says "18+" which i know many writers don't accept)

your blog is completely empty i.e. you don't post/reblog stuff

you don't reblog other people's writing

you spam like posts

you've never changed the default icon/header to something else

people don't vibe with the things you reblog

your theme is a colour they don't like

a lot of the time, it comes down to everyone's preferences. god knows i've been blocked by people and didn't understand why, but frankly it's none of my business. most likely, you won't ever find out, either. everyone is creating their own online space, and sometimes that means having a quick blocking finger. i'm sorry that you won't be able to read those stories anymore but you have to accept creators' boundaries.

however, there are some things you can do and try to prevent getting blocked in the future. these are only a couple of suggestions around tumblr etiquette i've picked up on over the years; if anyone else wants to chip in here, please do!!

1. make sure your blog is, by all appearances, that of a human being

this might sound stupid because of course, you are a human, but with the recent bot wars it's all the more important to double check for red flags.

check your url. does it include a random string of numbers, lots of dashes, just a name and an adjective? all of these have been indicative of porn bots and people might block you on sight.

change your icon and your header. yes, both of them. there are lots of creators on here who make wonderful fandom related headers and icons, or you can create your own with canva. just be sure to follow creators' rules and preferably reblog their creation

change your blog title. if your account is new, it will just say "untitled", which is another indication you might not be a human. use quotes, song lyrics, anything you enjoy

add a bio. this is where you put your name or nickname (you can make one up) age, age range, links to second blogs (if applicable), more quotes, whatever. i prefer my bio short and to the point, but that doesn't have to be you.

important: do this for all blogs and side blogs you use regularly. if you have a second blog for reblogging fics, you need to put up your age there as well, or at least visibly link to your main blog so creators can see you're not a minor. the harder it is to verify that you're an adult, the more likely it is that you will get blocked

2. know the different kinds of interactions on tumblr and navigate them well

there's a difference between liking, commenting, reblogging, and reposting, and it's important. lots of people use reblogging and reposting interchangeably, but that's actually incorrect and can lead to serious mishaps. let's dissect them one by one.

liking.

you're familiar with the like from other social media platforms. you tap a post twice or hit the little heart at the bottom of the post and it's added to your likes. wonderful, right? well. tumblr is a little different.

tumblr doesn't have an algorithm. let me say that again. there is no algorithm on tumblr. i guess there is, on the for you page, but that doesn't count because it's really shit. the only important thing on tumblr is your dashboard, and your dashboard only shows original posts and the reblogs of those posts from people you follow.

no one cares about your likes. your likes don't do shit. that's why creatives on here keep talking about reblogs. you need to reblog things on tumblr in order for them to get seen. it's a snowballing effect. likes are nice and all, but they're private. they're not contributing to a story or an artwork being seen by more people. they're essentially empty interaction. what's more, should a post get deleted for whatever reason, that post is gone for you forever.

i know some people use their likes as bookmarks for things they want to look at later, but i would strongly urge you not to do that. people block serial likers, because most of the time it is, sadly, very unlikely that they will come back and actually interact with the post again. that's just the way it is. we can thank tiktok and instagram for that. again, tumblr doesn't have an algorithm. if you want to genuinely support and encourage people on here, you need to do more than liking.

commenting.

this is a step up from liking, because you're actually interacting now. a comment will show up in the activity of the person whose post you left it on and of the original poster (op)—more on that distinction in a minute. comments are encouraged especially on ask/answer type posts, or as a reply to an earlier reblog.

when it comes to fanfic, there are, again, pros and cons. you can only leave a comment from your main blog, which means that even if you have a second account where you reblog fics, there's not necessarily a link between the two. this can lead to your getting blocked if you've never reblogged a fic to your main blog. on the other hand, if people comment on your fic without reblogging it, but they do reblog other people's fics, that can also rub creators the wrong way because it creates a strange sort of hierarchy: why those fics? why not mine?

important thing to note: i am not saying that to make anyone feel bad about "just" commenting, i just want you to be aware that this might go on in a creator's head. it has in mine. i'm very aware that this is a me problem, but it's also a reason why people might get blocked out of the blue, which is why i wanted to bring it up.

reblogging.

ah yes, reblogging. reblogging is the thing that makes tumblr tumblr, and it's so easy to do. you just hit the little 🔁 symbol at the bottom of the post, and boom, it's reblogged to your own blog. everyone who follows you can now see it on their dashboard, and if they reblog it, their followers can see it, and so on and so forth. every time someone reblogs a post from you, you will get a notification in your activity, and so will the op.

reblogs are the heart and soul of tumblr. yes, original posts are (usually) individual creations, but the community aspect of this site is born through the reblog. there are different variations on how to reblog. all are valid, because all help spreading posts around.

the empty reblog is the quickest option. there's literally a quick reblog option on mobile: if you hold your finger on the reblog button for a second or so, you will see your icon appear. if you swipe in that direction, the post gets immediately reblogged to your blog. something similar can be done on desktop with the xkit browser extension. it's fast, it's easy, it gets the job done. it's perfect for when you like a post but don't have anything specific to say/reply.

the reblog with tags is the second fastest option. tags, on tumblr, are sort of the sotto voce version of comments. yes, you can use tagging to organise your blog and make your posts easily findable (is that a word?) but the real fun begins when little asides are added. you can keysmash in the tags. you can put your thoughts in the tags. you can go full caps without it looking overwhelming in the actual post. if you're just starting to comment on things, the tags are a great place to start, because the actual post will keep looking the same; the tags are just a little additional bonus for both you and the creator. this is what you would use for the majority of posts that aren't works of art in any way, too, like text posts you want to find again, polls, photographs etc.

the reblog with additions though? oh boy. that's the real stuff. imagine it as clipping on your thoughts to the post, right there for everyone to see. you can add gifs, and memes, and change the font, and change the colour, and scream, and keysmash, and ramble without limitations. it's like catnip for the op. if you reblog a fic, a moodboard, a piece of art, a gifset, whatever it is, and you put your thoughts underneath? man, it's amazing.

side note: if you're new to commenting on people's fics and you don't know what to say, i highly recommend referring to this post. (btw i linked my reblog so it can act as an example of the different forms of adding to a post: there were other reblogs before mine, and i've added tags. useful in its content and as an example!!)

reposting.

this is where we need to be careful. reblogs are great. reposts are theft. where's the difference? reposting refers to you copying another creator's work, whatever it may be, and creating a new post without any indication to the original person's efforts. even if you do include their url, you will most likely get reported and blocked. because now, you've become the op of this copied post, and the actual creator will get absolutely nothing.

you will most likely have seen banners in fic communities that state something along the lines of "don't copy or translate any of my work to this or any other site". that's what this refers to. this would also include the following:

posting another writer's story to ao3/wattpad/another fic site of your choice without their permission. you can absolutely never do this. "but what if"—NO. never. fullstop.

some creators allow translations of their work, but you can only ever share those with their explicit permission and proper credit.

saving a gif to use without linking back to the artist. this is maybe my biggest gripe. yes, i know this site sucks at making gifs searchable, but still, you can't do this. and no, "credit goes to the original artist" doesn't count, where did that bullshit even come from? it makes me so mad. that's not giving credit, that's being lazy.

3. be nice, and have fun

this is fandom, and it's supposed to be a hobby. this is supposed to be a good time. none of us are getting paid for any of this. yes, we're all passionate about what we do, whether we're looking at other people's creations or we make them ourselves. we're fans of that common thing, and isn't that great?

just a little more internet etiquette that's not really tumblr specific but could be a good reminder for everyone:

not everything is for you, and that's okay

if something's not for you, scroll away

if you don't like what someone is posting, ignore them. mute them. block them.

do not ever, and i mean ever, send anyone hate. you don't know who's on the other side of the screen. block them and move on. life's too fucking short.

don't correct people's grammar/spelling. only assholes do that. if you can't help yourself and they're a person you've interacted with before, shoot them a private message and be nice about it.

don't offer unsolicited advice. i don't care if you want to give constructive criticism to help the other person. unless they've explicitly asked you to do that, don't. you'll get blocked so quick, and you'll ruin someone's day.

if you're reading a fic that's not finished yet, don't ask for an update. yes, you're excited for the story to continue. but "part 2", "when's the next chapter out", "more please" and so on are all things that put pressure on creators whether that's your intention or not. it gives us the impression that what we've already put out is never enough. and that sucks. by all means, be excited about what comes next, but not like this.

read!! old!! fics!!!! the beauty of tumblr being the way it is is that there's zero shame in interacting with older posts. it's not like you're liking a seven year old post on instagram. in fact, if you're commenting on a seven year old fic/gifset/moodboard/artwork on tumblr, i can guarantee you're gonna make that creator's day.

i'm absolutely positive that i've forgotten something in this post even though it's longer than several of my wips, so if any of my moots want to add something that'd be great!! in fact i'm gonna tag some of you because you know what? if you've read all of this you deserve a kiss. have a wonderful day 💛

@marvelettesassemblenow @barnesafterglow @imaginearyparties @aphrogeneias @brandycranby @writing-for-marvel @foreverindreamlandd @sanguineterrain @demxters @wildlivelychild

[chthonic-cassandra]

Recent books, non-fiction -

Samuel Delany, Of Solids and Surds - A compact little book of brief vignettes on the question "why do you write?" This wasn't particularly substantial, but I will read absolutely anything by Delany, and it was sweet and fun. Not a place to start with his non-fiction, but I would recommend it for fellow fans of his work.

Jessi Hempel, The Family Outing - Memoir of Hempel's journey to come out as lesbian alongside the rest of her immediate family also coming out with previously undisclosed pieces of their sexuality orientation, gender identity, or trauma histories. While the premise here might bring Fun Home to mind, this has nothing like that earlier book's wit, sharp gaze, and capacity to hold complexity. I found Hempel's book insipid, flat, and as blandly inoffensive as a self-promotional social media post. Nothing here felt vulnerable, or specific, or complex. Not recommended.

Ethan Mordden, Gays on Broadway - as a teenager I loved Modden's gossipy, encyclopedic series of musical theater history books by decade, so I was excited to see that he'd written this history of queer representation in NYC theater. This was filled with Mordden's typically delightful anecdotes, but it lacked a strong organizing thesis, and its focus frequently felt skewed in random ways (I know Mame is a gay icon, but how many pages do we need on both the play and musical versions of her story?). Only recommended for Mordden completionists, not a great way to learn about the topic.

Vivian Conan, Losing the Atmosphere - DID recovery memoir. Conan talks about having written this book over a period of decades, and you can tell - it's meticulously detailed, sometimes to the point of laboriousness (and she says she cut it down by several hundred pages!), but I did appreciate the rigor in the way she documented her journey; she's a particularly strong narrator of her different therapeutic relationships, and the book is an excellent account of what those arcs can look like. This book gave me a lot to think about, particularly around the intense attachment-focused work she did in her final, and what she considers to be her most successful, therapeutic engagement. While there was violence in Conan's childhood, the main sites of trauma she identifies were less about those experiences and much more around very early neglect and relational misattunement; this means that, though her final therapist seems to use some similar modalities to the ones I've been trained in, their work together and the way she engages with her own dissociation looks different in a couple of significant ways from what I do either for myself or with my clients as a therapist; I need to sit with some of my reactions to parts of that.

W. Scott Poole, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horrors and the Origins of American Empire - horror criticism. I found this extremely uninspired; a lot of critics have made many of these same points more cogently and interestingly.

[emmalalairalie]

Quotev Replacements for anyone struggling to adjust after Q's downfall

i have taken it upon myself over the last few months to try and search for a suitable Q replacement that has similar features to what Q lost, and also would be easy for my friends to migrate to. I didn't find a completely perfect option that would suit all my friends but I did find a few sites that are really cool. i thought it might be helpful if i shared them! this is just a quick overview of each site, talking about why they are good Q alternatives, and i'll probably accidentally leave out a few details, so sorry in advance.

Dreamwidth

Dreamwidth is based off of LiveJournal, but as someone who has tried both, I can confidently say that I think Dreamwidth is better. So basically, you set up your page (its highly customisable btw, lots of cool themes), and you can post blogs. There's direct messaging, though it is a bit clunky.

There are two things that I really like about this site, and they're why I think its a good alternative for people looking for something like Q.

Privacy options. Each post can be set to your desired privacy setting. When someone follows you, you can choose whether to grant them access to your more private posts.

There's this really cool feature called communities. Basically, it means that multiple accounts can post to the same blog/journal page. This, along with the privacy options and the fact that you can have up to 15 icons (more if you pay), could really be fun for a Q style roleplay community.

I'd also like to add that while dreamwidth doesn't have an option to post stories in a book format, i have found a cool way to post chaptered stories to dreamwidth. its a bit clunky but works pretty well. see my writing account for how i've done that. (my stories are usually on access list only but I changed one to public so you guys could see how i've done it)

angel-town

angel-town is a super niche site, created by someone called Cinni, using oxwall software. its got a very small userbase, and an even smaller active userbase.

this site is mainly built around its feed, which is similar to Q's. there's also options to make forums or blog posts, or to upload images or videos, but mainly the feed is how people communicate. there's also a good direct messaging system and everyone on the site seems pretty nice.

with a few more users, this site could have a feed similar to how active Q's used to be.

unfortunately though, there isn't really any way to private your feed. sure, you can only follow your friends and you won't pop up on anyone else's feed, but your posts will still be seen on the main page.

GraffitiWall

GraffitiWall, like angel-town, is another good alternative to the Q feed. Its kind of a bit like a mixture of twitter and tumblr.

there's good privacy options! with each post, you decide who you want to share with. there's also an option to see the public feed, so if you want to see what people outside of your following group were doing, you can.

Direct messaging is weird though. Posts are called notes, and to send someone a private message, you have to set your note posting status to "direct". so you basically communicate with people through private posts, its a bit strange.

replying to posts is a bit weird too. basically all replies are like tumblr reblogs, instead of having a comment section on the post.

There's also options to upload images and create 'pages', so there's probably lots of roleplay and story writing opportunities waiting to happen.

this site really does remind me of the Q feed quite a bit and it makes me want to stick around even despite all the weird features.

so basically, TLDR;

dreamwidth is good for people who miss the fandom, roleplay side of Q, and it is also possible to do a bit of writing on there

angel-town and graffitiwall are good Q feed alternatives, with varying degrees of privacy and community size

[dicesmasher]

Stop using spell slots! Alternative mana system for 5e

Lately I’ve been really getting into the idea of The Elder Scrolls as a TTRPG - taking my players through the lands of Skyrim and beyond in that rich, iconic setting. Thankfully, a 5e mod for this has already been made, called ‘Delvebound’ or ‘Unofficial Elder Scrolls TRPG (UESTRPG)’. I will provide a link in this post. Now, I ultimately decided not to use all of the mod, as it has a lot of design decisions I really disagree with. All I took for my own game were the races (which I modified to suit my own design philosophy) and the magicka system, which replaces spell slots. This is what I want to focus on in this post.

The magicka system is simple. Instead of spell slots, your spellcaster has a pool of magic points (MP) similar to their HP. This is drained when they cast spells of 1st level or higher, and different spell levels cost varying amounts of MP, as explained in the chart here: 'https://wiki.uestrpg.com/wiki/Spellcasting_Rules'. Just like in Elder Scrolls games, and most other video games that include spellcasting. It’s smooth, simple and elegant, and flexible. Using this system, you can cast additional lower-level spells if you wanted to, or forgo some of your lower-level spells to cast additional higher-level spells. You won’t get stuck with a handful of 2nd-level spell slots you don’t know what to do with.

It’s also an easy 1-1 conversion from base 5e. Your MP pool is determined by adding up the MP value of all the spell slots you would have under the base 5e framework, so in theory you could cast as if you were using spell slots, and nothing would change. Within the same game, some players could opt to keep using spell slots while others use MP, and nobody would have more or less magic than the others. However, the spell-slot users would still miss out on the flexibility of MP, and through MP there are additional opportunities I would prefer all my players to be able to take advantage of.

But before I proceed, I know what you may be thinking. Without some additional rules, this system would be horribly overpowered at later levels. A level 17 wizard starts his day with 107 MP. A level 9 spell costs 13 MP. Thus, I could cast Meteor Swarm 8 times in a day if I wanted to, and while I would forgo my ability to cast many other spells, I might not need to! However, the designers of Delvebound did account for this, with one more simple rule: You cannot cast a spell of level 6 or higher more than once per day in that slot. This lines up well with base 5e, as higher level characters only have 1 slot for levels 6-9 anyway, until you’re level 20 giving you one more 6th level spell slot. This does mean a level 20 character using MP is technically worse off this way, missing out on an extra 6th level slot, but you could easily just say ‘okay you can cast a 6th level spell twice per day now’. Or do yourself a favour and don’t play at level 20.

So what are these extra opportunities? Drawing from The Elder Scrolls, potions of magicka! Be wise with these, as the limit on spells cast per day is the main balancing factor for spellcasters who already are known to outstrip their martial colleagues, but on occasion, giving out a nice blue potion which restores a small amount of MP would be a really cool consumable magic item for your spellcasters. You could even roll for the MP restored, like a healing potion, say 2d4+2 which already restores juice for at least two 1st-level spells. At lower levels, depending on how often you give them out, they should be stingier than this (say, 1d4+1). You could also put a limit on how many potions a character can drink in a day without getting sick, especially if they are easily craftable or bought from shops.

Another opportunity I saw in MP was using this more simple and flexible system to handle interrupted long rests. If a long rest is interrupted by rude bandits or ghouls, should you get all your spell slots back anyway, or none of them? I believe RAW it’s none of them, but this seems too punishing especially if a character has already used up all their slots. A nice halfway solution is to restore half your spell slots, but how exactly? Well, I could use a somewhat complicated system where you break all your spell slots down into 1st level slots, add them all up, restore half of that pool, and allocate which slots you get back based on that budget (makes sense in my head but difficult to explain). Or, just get half your total MP back. Easy!

Using an MP system is also a godsend for DMs trying to use enemy spellcasters. Instead of keeping track of a monster’s spell slots (which most of us understandably don’t do anyway), we can keep track of the monster’s MP instead, in the same way as we normally keep track of its HP.

The main caveat of this system is that it’s not intuitive how much MP each spell level costs, so DMs and spellcasting players will need to keep the chart handy until they know the MP costs by heart. It also introduces additional mental maths that have to be done, with mistakes more easily leading to players using more or less MP than they’re supposed to. This is why there is no shame in making a calculator one of your tools at the table! Indeed, rather than making the game harder, I think the MP system might make it EASIER for new players to pick up spellcasters. The spell slot system isn’t the most intuitive thing in the world, especially when the word ‘level’ has distinct meanings between spells, slots, class levels and character levels, which don’t always align with one another. Newcomers coming from video games will find this especially easy, as most gamers already know what mana bars are, the same as health bars.

The second caveat is… this is all theory. I haven’t actually playtested this system very much as my Elder Scrolls campaign has only just started. The cleric and wizard of the party haven’t yet had an opportunity to cast many spells. I don’t foresee any major problems with using this system especially at low levels, but I’ll make another post if I do find them.

P.S. Warlocks!!! Their spell slots work differently to other classes as they always cast at the highest possible level and regenerate on a short rest. Using the MP framework doesn’t actually change anything here, as for balance reasons you should spend MP as if for your highest spell level even when casting a lower-level spell that can’t be upcast. For this reason, I recommend warlock players continue to use pact magic slots instead of warlock MP, and for multiclassers to track their MP and pact magic slots separately. If you’re going to use magicka potions in a game with warlocks, you should also think of a balanced way warlocks can use them, but that’s beyond the scope of this already too-long post.

[likeadog]

making a copy of this bc op disabled reblogs and i just got reminded it existed and would like to not lose it

ok so . im outing myself to the world but thats fine this is too funny to not share

so. ive run a roleplay blog for a few years. i keep it separate from my main, yknow, its just a side hobby and ive been doing it since i was like, 12. its cringe but hey yknow at least im not 30 and writing ya novels

now its pretty common for rp blogs these days to have rules. right? you dont want to just bag any weirdo on this website, and as you can imagine bnha roleplayers are batshit crazy (see: conversion therapy todoroki) so mine are pretty strict and detailed. because ive been doing it long enough to be exposed to what counts as carbon monoxide poison from a screen. one of those rules is "if youre mutuals with people who write porn of the kids even aged up im blocking you we're keeping a ten foot pole on this". because as a 20 year old man i have a healthy disinterest in seeing paragraphs of teenagers fucking

so the dash is astir with talk of a guy writing age up bakugou porn and im like ok whatever. make a post bitching about it . mutual likes those posts but then the mutual is turning around and being buddy buddy with this guy so i dm the mutual like hey whats going on here . mutual is like "well why dont you talk it out with him hes not as mean as he seems i prommy" and im like sure whatever i can have civil conversation and if it ends with One Less Person writing weirdo porn then i might be able to get into heaven

so i dm him and he loses his fucking mind. it lasted all of 10 minutes because he was sending paragraphs like this and i was too tired to give a shit

(take note of my icon thats a special tool thatll help us later)

(also he goes by the name rxgelord. WITH the x. thats also important just because its funny as fuck)

so the guys clearly bothered by the idea that people might possibly talk about him without his permission and im a little miffed after being misgendered (which hed do again later) so i just post our dms. swing first and hey batter batter lets play ball i dont give a shit this is bnha roleplay

once again: loses his damn mind. he makes a psa post about me talking about how im just some pussy infant and hes too HARD for me and shit and also they do bakudeku muffin roleplay in the comments of that post which is fucking insane

anyway. at one point while joking about the whole thing i called him a "wannabe bakugou kinnie" as a joke and apparently he felt a very serious need to address this

and im like holllllllllllllly fucking shit

you may have noticed that his posts are incredibly over-formatted. this goes for everything he does he is pouring a LOT of time and energy into typing his 9 paragraphs about how im an insane bitch or whatever. (if theres literally one thing i can give him credit on its that his graphic editing skills are kinda good. i will be honest) his rules document is also just as insane and features gems such as:

(this dude thinks hes pulling bitches on a bnha roleplay blog)

so we're just full on ragging on him at this point and hes getting MADDDDDDD MAD. he misgenders me again and when i point it out he has the following excuse:

(art by @/pcktknife. anyways)

after a certain point i get dmd an old copy of a 130+ page callout he had a year prior and im like WHAT and it included his yugioh rp blog career and various allegations like having been involved in gang violence, doxxing, etc. also a picture of the hickies he bragged about leaving on his uwu pink glitter gf which looked more like he was trying to go for the killing bite but hey. yknow. apparently im a toddler idk how that works

along in this we also find his twitch account, which was under the name rxgelord, and it featured edited graphics of his real life face with bakugou. he posts selfies a lot too i wont share them even if theyre public but he has knuckle tats and a goatee and uses the greyscale filter. if this gives you an idea. he also had 5 twitch followers and detailed his desire to be a rapper/dj and im like holllllly fucking shit this guy cant be a real person. holy fuck.

anyways. skipping a lot of unnecessary bullshit and paragraphs of text with gifs from 2013 attached hes constantly going on about how we wont just "say it to his face" which i think is hilarious bc i was, the entire time. but im like ok fine you want me so bad

so i send him this. he posts about how "he won when he got all might" (for some reason hes calling my ex mutual by the character name. i dont know) and then hasnt posted in 4 days. he deleted his twitch. im a little worried bakugou. dont say that. may have actually chased this man off the internet . to go have real life sex with his real life girlfriend so he isnt so mad

anyway we ended up turning one of his posts into an eminem uberduck

im honestly probably forgetting something this was so much and it was so fucking funny and honestly im glad to have been there

update: he has not in fact posted since last summer. god bless.

[terminal-termi]

Hey! I'm Synthi from @synthis-synthesizer! I started this blog for me and my friends' use, just to have a little space for us to talk and stuff! Was wondering, do you have any tips for a new blog to help the experience run smoothly with multiple people? Thanks! :3

(OOC note from the account owner: I had to anon ask because it wouldn't let me ask on the account for this. For context: this is a roleplay blog I set up to try and get some lore out in a fun, writing-based fashion. Just kinda wanted to ask something over here that actually makes sense to ask. No need to answer, don't worry.)

I... don't exactly think I have much good advice actually. There's the whole "indication of who's writing" thing but it seems like you've already figured that out.

...did my systems slow down a bit while I was putting the signature icon there?

◈ ERROR - "process halted" ◈ NOTICE - "renderable content located"

◈ NOTICE - "external content out of character"

oh hey aplle (ooc) for the few asks i did do relating to this i just didn't care about the fact that my main shows up instead of this one. i kind of needed it for the icons. though i have been considering maybe swapping those out with just simpler indicators? might test those in remote scenarios first.

[lutiaslayton]

The timeline thing is a godsend!! Is there any chance or you creating one that is year based, instead of days? This is more intuitive than any other writing/plotting timeliness I've been able to find.

Hi, thank you and I'm glad this is (somewhat) helpful to you!

To be entirely honest, the timeline I am using for my own story purposes got even MORE insane with even more options, and I've been wanting to share that template as well. But unfortunately... Making it "I don't know how to code 😭" friendly is insanely hard (even more so because now I'm using a python script to automatically generate the main HTML file out of sub-files + a number of parameters that can adjust things such as which time period is shown, how wide/thin the time scale is, custom elements for the size of icons and such, etc, and ALSO by far the most important detail, my timeline now actually has a smooth transition between day X and day X+1 instead of having a blank that creates an offset every time the clock strikes midnight, I'm so sorry that the currently downloadable version has that issue in horizontal mode), and unfortunately I just don't have the free time to make that right now (<- PhD student with way too many side projects).

I could try sharing the current state of my timeline as it is now, but I don't want to do that because it's like. full of spoilers for my own fanfic for obvious reasons lmfao. So for the time being I guess I can just share a screenshot of what it looks like and just how insane I am:

Regarding your question on the time scale: you could change that yourself by changing the contents of the svg file named "scale.svg" in the chr folder. It is actually a text file, not an image, and hopefully the logic behind it can be guessed easily enough! So if you know what exactly you want, and if you're willing to risk tinkering with it yourself, you can make a backup of that file, remove/change a few lines of code in the scale.svg file (don't rename it or move it around, change exclusively the file "scale.svg"), then reload your main timeline HTML page in order to see what that does.

The numbers in that file are X/Y coordinates for the most part, so by adding/moving/removing vertical bars, you could transform that 24-hour scale into a year scale. I guess it's convenient that a day has 24 hours and a year has 12 months! You could start first by deleting one in two hour bars and renaming the labels from "XX:XX" to month names. After that if you want to add the days... Well, it'll be trickier, but hopefully you'll have figured out a bit better how the logic of that file works so you'll be able to add these smaller day marks through a bit of trial and error.

......After looking at the state of my SVG file actually that might be a bit trickier. However, I have good news for you: you can copy-paste the code into the website SvgPathEditor in order to make your editing process much easier! All you have to do is copy-paste only the part of the code that looks like "M0 20 0 50M300 20 300 50M600 20 600 50M900 20 900" (the logic here is "M 0 20 0 50" = one vertical bar that starts at coordinates (0, 20) and ends at coordinates (0, 50), so it's just a list of the vertical bars one after the other. Sorry it's much less clear than I remembered it ^^')

(EDIT: I just hope you don't need to account for leap years, because due to the way the timeline is coded, I don't think it can afford to do that unless you make your scale so that it works by four years instead of only one. And let's not even get started on the "sometimes it's a new century so there's no leap year but some centuries do start with a leap year anyway" rule.)

All that being said, thank you again for your kind message, I'm sorry I can't do more than that for the time being (and you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for an update, I honestly don't know when / if it will ever have the time to happen :')), and good luck! I hope what I gave with the current zip file + this reply's advice will be good enough for you.

(EDIT²: For people who never heard of the original timeline post, here it is! It's a tool I made forever ago that lets you create a timeline in order to keep track of what each character does at what time in your own stories.)

[just-antithings]

Hey, I'm considering making another Tumblr blog to talk about my 'problematic' ships. Do you think it would be enough to just make a secondary blog or should I start a whole new separate account? I'd rather not deal with a separate account, bc I'd need to manage another email, but i might do it anyway. I was wondering what you/your followers opinions were on what is better?

I can help with this! So, for my more problematic ships, I created a whole other account. (I also created a separate ao3 account, but I'll stick to talking about Tumblr.)

Now, other anon, it depends on how secretive you want to be. I have a mutual who created a sideblog for their more problematic ships in our fandom. They'd made a name for themselves, mainly shipping/creating wholesome content, so while they've always been vocal about saying "ship and let ship", they got nervous about suddenly posting about their problematic ships/headcanons on main, so they made a sideblog.

Since it's a sideblog, their interactions with other blogs are a bit more limited, unless they want to "out" their main, which they did by accident. They made a post, another mutual replied, and then my mutual replied to that, forgetting that when you reply in the notes, it shows your main account url and icon, not your sideblog's url and icon.

From what I've seen, this hasn't caused any problems for them, but while our fandom has lots of anti-leaning people (a big blog in a server I'm in was complaining about proshippers being bad and too many people in the fandom making problematic content or "letting it slide", but that's a separate thing), most people in the fandom seem to go by "block, complain to friends in servers/group chats or make vague posts, and move on".

If the fandom you're (other anon) in has more vocal antis, you might want to make a whole other account, like I have. Now, in my case, the reason I made a completely separate account is that I've gotten stupid. I've gotten really personal on my main fandom blog, and things I've said can make it easy to doxx me. (Like, I wasn't giving out my legal name or anything, but someone with too much time on their hands could go through my personal posts (now deleted) and piece together enough to guess my general location or potentially find my old accounts on other social media, which could lead them to my (dead but not deleted, I think, unless Musk made good on deleting all unused accounts) twt, which has my deadname.)

I also plan on publishing at some point, which I've been open about on my fandom blog, often talking about my original content, not just my fandom stuff. After years of seeing how the anti mindset has infected authors on twitter, I've decided I DO NOT want my fandom persona and the pen name I'll be using when I publish to be connected. Especially when my main fandom is one of the "problematic" ones.

Having a separate account (the email I use is one I already had that I use for spam stuff, like online shopping/subscriptions/etc) makes it so I don't have to be as careful when it comes to sending asks or replying in posts, like my mutual I mentioned above. I'm also more vocal on my "secret account" about ships and other fandoms I've never mentioned on my main account, and the aesthetic is different, too.

Now, for me, I plan on not using my main account after a while and making my "secret account" my main one eventually. (Basically like Shippers Protection Program lmao) For me, privacy/secrecy was the biggest reason for me making a separate account. A side account leaves way too many chances for me to make a "whoops, wrong blog!" mistake when posting or reblogging. For my mutual, a sideblog is enough, since most mutuals they regularly interact with either ship the same problematic ships or support them shipping them, so they wanted to keep their secret blog open enough that their friends/mutuals could find them and talk about their ships.

Basically, my mutual just needed a separate room to feel safe talking about their ships. I needed to move into a whole new house to feel safe talking about my ships/interacting in fandom in general. It's all about what makes you feel safest. Good luck, and have fun!

Some great advice for anon!

[corviknight-appreciator]

Hello rotomblr!

You can call me Persephone. I use she/her.

I’ve been lurking for a bit, and was recently convinced to make an account by the local weatherboy since I’m the only one whose internet connects to other dimensions, apparently.

I’m from another world. I reserve the right to not answer questions about this depending on what they are.

I might post pictures of my team, if I feel like it and they do something particularly cute

Please do not send me pictures of fire or open flames. This is a hard boundary.

Icon from the game Coronet

Sometimes one of my rivals posts on here, because he can also access multiversal internet when basically no one else can. He uses purple.

[OOC info below, updated 4/8]

OOC: mun uses they/it. This blog takes place after the main game (update 2/22 now postgame too!) of Shield. Persephone has been isekai’d from another media, but that’s not her actual name. She likes her internet anonymity for a few reasons! The icon for this blog is from Celeste, which I hc in the pokemon world is called Coronet.

I am going to be sporadic for a bit! In universe let’s blame this on the gym challenge, but I have some irl responsibilities. I’ll try my best to interact though.

Generally up for interactions, but might stay away from high-stakes pokereality stuff on account of “I think I’d prefer any high-stakes stuff on the pokeblog to be local to Persephone’s current dimension”.

She will treat sentient pokemon, hybrids, and eebydeebys completely normally. This does not register to her as potentially weird at all. So feel free to interact with those accounts!

Pelipper Mail is on (with ooc limits on what I’ll accept, but feel free to be menacing if you want). Musharna Mail is OFF for the duration of the “dream goes on” arc. Magic anons inactive.

If you think you know Persephone’s deal, or would like to know it, feel free to dm me about it because she definitely isn’t going to tell you if she can avoid it.

Please tell me if you’d like anything tagged!

Mod and muse are both adults, but no nsfw anyways please.

Ooc tags are: pokemon irl, rotomblr, pokeblogging, anything for blacklist so it’s easier for people to track, arc tags (“dream goes on”, “back in the future”, “balcony horse arc” (which I started on a whim oops), and muse mixup madness tags/the tags I decided on for if I bring the AU Persephones back for events, etc. if it doesn’t look like someone rambling in tags it probably is ooc) and //anything that starts with two slashes like this

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

may i ask how long u've been on tumblr/how you reached 10,000 followers? it seems like quite a feat and i've been trying to post my own stuff (aesthetics, themes, moodboards, etc) for while now almost regularly and i've been stuck at 59, 60, or 61 followers for that entire time. it only ever fluctuates between those three numbers and my most recent followers have been bots. i guess i'm asking if you have any advice? 😅

i’ve been on tumblr for exactly two years, but in october 2022 i accidentally deleted the account and had to start over (kids, the lesson is to never try to delete a sideblog on your phone, do it on the pc, that’s the only place you can do it, because if you try on the phone it’ll delete everything, all of your blogs, including your main) so, it’s taken me 1 and a half years.

well, i have tons of advice about all manner of things, but this specifically, how to get more followers? it’s a little more loosey goosey and based on luck and stuff. but here are a few of the advice i can give:

well, first of all i believe that kindness goes a long way, certainly with getting your followers to stick with you.

ALWAYS check the tags when you post stuff you want people to find, make sure you aren't using any tags that are broken or anything. this is part of the routine i have whenever i post a new fic, always always check that it's showing up in the tags. i'm also always that anon for my moots whenever i notice that their stuff isn't showing up and they either didn't know or needs a bit of help. if you don't know your way around tumblr tags, then this post right here is very very helpful. also just use the proper and appropriate tags, but i'd think that was a given.

you say that you post stuff like moodboards and such? to be honest, i don't know how many of my followers follow me exclusively for that genre of my content, i don't know how many followers are normal when that is your blog's thing.

some people like to spam post a ton of stuff, some people like their dash extremely active, i personally don't. i've unfollowed/just not followed people who i like just fine, but who post an overwhelming amount. i might not be the only one who's like this. i personally have some posts queued, i have a bit of a schedule of regular posts that i trickle out. like stuff that i reblog, there is a pattern to how i do it, just to spread it out and to keep it organised (because everything in my life is meticulously organised). like i always have a comforting little thing to reblog between 5 and 6 in the morning for me, because then it'll be one of the first things people in my timezone sees and one of the last things a nightowl might see.

also try and keep your blog organised, have tags for things so that it's easy for people to filter (and also easy for you to find stuff), have a pinned post that's kind of a gentle welcome/intro/guide to whoever clicks on your blog, that kind of stuff, also just try and make the blog pretty and inviting, not just the default tumblr icon and stuff (those lowkey scare me)

keeping timezones in mind when you post. think about if it's a good time for most people, is it a time of day where one could be looking at their phone, taking a little break.

reblog stuff! interact with people! support others that you like and maybe that someone will support you!

i've never posted stuff "in order to get lots of followers," or anything. i just personally really like my writing, and since i do, then there must be someone else that does as well. turns out i was right.

learn that your blog is like your little house. you make the rules, you decide who gets to stay, you get to do whatever makes you happy and no one can tell you that you are wrong.

at the end of the day, everyone is gonna like something different, you can't please everyone, so just make your blog, your content, exactly how you like it, just be your wonderful weird beautiful self and no one else.

「 come join my 10k celebration 」