#i'm not tagging the other two examples because. no

[blankerthought]

since i'm already thinking about it and for once, don't plan on writing an essay on it, i'd like to point out to rpf-hating people that ideally, the point of rpf at no moment inlcudes or implies that you want the real life people you're creating this about to see it. it's real person fiction, something created for and by fans to enjoy, and ideally would never reach the people you're basing it on unless they're specifically searching it out.

nowadays, with online celebrites spending so much of their time, well, online, interacting with fans constantly, some nudging against fandom spaces should be expected, but to imply that simply creating fiction is immoral is very much something borne out of purity culture. thought crime isn't real, and most of the time, neither are any of the things we write on paper, asides from maybe the people we're referencing.

the other half of this, the argument that will be brought up over and over, is that of us showing it to them. to that, i say: well, i sure as fuck didn't. most of us writing it didn't. it was those who wanted moral outrage who brought the works written out to spaces where they'd find solidarity in shunning them- and in doing so, most of the time brought them to the attention of the actual people in point.

i cannot speak for those who did write it, did show it, did delight in discomfort. i do not know why they would do that, and i don't plan on arguing on their behalf either.

i also cannot speak for those celebrities who read their fics, liked their art, and for some reason also informed the rest of us fans that they'd done both and were actually delighted at this all. (yes, this is about dream. and also everyone else. what the fuck, gang.)

also, i'd just like to point out that according to my sources (aka: trust me bro) there's three levels to rpf:

Celebrities who nobody wants to see rpf of, much less them

Celebrities who many people want to write rpf of, with them not particularly enthused on the matter

Celebrities who loudly and enthusiastically want rpf written of them, preferably having passionate gay sex with their friends.

which can be caracterized with argentinian ex-president mauricio macri, whose fanfic i had to glance past once or twice and subsequently wished i could scrub my own brain off with sandpaper; markaplier, who Does Not want to see fanfic of himself, and dreamwastaken, who regularly likes pictures of himself and his best friend about to have sex.

so keep this in mind for rpf works, and act accordingly.

[yarrowleef]

dude nightheart and sunbeams entire relationship is so funny. if I felt like digging through other books id make a compilation of these moments. No, Nightheart will not be by Sunbeams side to help her through the invasion of ShadowClan. Nightheart will almost get violently executed in RiverClan, and Sunbeam will only show up after the problem resolved itself (off screen). Sunbeam doesn't even feel like grieving with him around.

this entire arc, every major problem required them to ~sadly~ separate, and then reconvene for some generic niceties after its all over. I really thought, at bare minimum, the reason that kept happening was going to accumulate in them doing SOMETHING major together in the climax of this final book, like, 'something something our relationship can survive all the plot inconveniences that kept us apart bc this event proves why we're stronger as a team blablabla'

but no girl, their asses are NOT stronger together, they are not supporting each other through anything, they are not working together to accomplish a single goal. right to the end, every one of their greatest physical/emotional trials must be done separate

like. like it's incredible. the most go girl give us nothing relationship development of all time. i cant even find it in me to be mad. they are so lame it loops around into comedy. is this a prank why did they write it like this help

[maulfucker]

This song is making me want to start yet another fic to never finish,, "Tell me... Where is your hideout? Who are we running from? I'm starting to think that you were right, and now I'm afraid of letting go of your hand...." Maul giving up on his Mandalore plan and deciding to just stalk Kenobi to tell him about his vision. Staying illegally in Obi-Wan's room because I love putting these guys in situations (and because Maul would NOT leave him alone until Obi-Wan actually accepted Maul is right, which he won't). Following Obi-Wan to Utapau and helping him escape after the clones attack, feeling equal parts vindicated and enraged (because he was proved right but Sidious still won). Them being on the run together....

[orchideae]

Uncle Tian. The importance that is Uncle Tian. ... With a "cameo" of Yelan in the second half, exactly at 1:00, which is incredibly so very important if you really want to get a proper glimpse into her 'professionally'.

[minothtime]

I'm so sorry op but i saw "trite" and blacked out

"oh i really love xyz character-" really? outside the context of shipping?

[dduane]

Just a local update

For those who'll be wanting to know how I'm doing: I think right now the line from The Right Stuff is probably apropos. I'm "maintaining an even strain."

I sort of have no choice, because there's a lot of bureaucratic stuff surrounding Peter's loss that has to be dealt with, and there's not really anyone else to fall back on in terms of local legalities; this burden falls on me. (shrug) So, I'm keepin' on keepin' on. It's not easy, when half your world has ended: but there's nothing else to do.

Just repeating the news that I just edited into the original post about all this: the "funeral expenses" issue is now handled.

And I want to thank EVERYBODY who so incredibly generously has stepped up to assist. You are all, every one of you, in my heart right now... not least due to the many, many kind things you've had to say about Peter. Current events mean I'm going to be backed up on the thank-yous for some days yet. Please bear with me.

For those who feel inclined, the Ko-Fi account here is open as usual for those who might simply want to drop something into the pot tagged "GNU Peter Morwood."* I'm looking into his notes about his preferred charities so that I can split all such donations in those directions. (For example, P. lost a beloved cousin to childhood leukemia, so I'm looking around for appropriate cancer charities. ...But more of that later.)

In local issues (ETA, 28 May 2025): The post-mortem required by law in Ireland when a death is so sudden has occurred, and I'm now waiting for the full report (which has to be delayed until pathology is done analyzing tissue samples and getting culture-&-sensitivity data back). This routinely takes from two weeks to a month. Not much to be said about this except that the sooner that's all handled and resolved, the happier I'll be. Then other adjacent issues can start being dealt with.

At the physical end: I haven't been sleeping terribly well, but that's probably no surprise. My appetite has been recovering somewhat (to the point where at least food is no longer a source of "no interest whatsoever" or of active distaste). Right now it seems I get better results from eating out instead of cooking in: so that's the way things will go in the very short term.

But for now, pretty much all I can do is sit tight, try to keep household business from getting out of hand (why does it suddenly take so much energy just to do the dishes? ...like I don't know perfectly well why), and wait for Forces Beyond My Control to get moving.

Meanwhile, let me take a moment here to thank everybody who's expressed concern about the state of my wellbeing (and that at a time when I care a whole lot less about it than usual). It's heartening, and I very much appreciate it. I promise to do my best to do right by myself, on all of your behalf. (Behalfs? Behalves? Pfft.)

Thanks again, everybody. —D.

*People are also reminding me that the financial health of the household's still-living member in the immediate future is also an issue here. 😏 Heaven forbid I should argue the point. If you want, tag such donations as "DD" and I'll note that. ...And thanks again, all. I can always count on y'all to look after me. ❤️

[montanabohemian]

i'm laughing at people on this hellsite decrying tumblr staff for "suppressing the palestine tag" and i just. first of all, this website is held together with scotch tape and some string. you give staff here way too much credit for doing something you think is happening. and second of all, a variation of current events *has* in fact been on the trending page for three weeks. palestine, gaza, israel, even social justice. it hasn't left the trending page once.

tumblr isn't fucking twitter. so stop acting like it. just continue to post and it'll be circulated. fucking blaze it if it's important enough to you.

[artfulstar]

Woah woah woah. Twitter is shutting down in Brasil? I'm thankful for your mental health but what?

Yep.

TLDR: Elon fired everyone in the Brazilian offices of twitter but legally Twitter can't continue existing in Brazil WITHOUT a legal representative. So now our Federal Supreme Court subpoened him to apoint a new representative or the website is getting shut down in the country

The long version with the context about the fight:

It all started when the supreme court started to shut down in the country profiles of brazilian people who had commited crimes using the website (an example is Monark, a dude who literally used his profile to say we should give n*zis and racists unlimited freedom of speech [he fled to the US to escape prison btw]).

Elon caught wind of this and decided to threaten our constitution and said that he would get the profiles back on because he wouldn't accept a government restricting "freedom of speech" on his platform. The supreme court issued a statement that if he did that, he would face a fee everyday for every account reactivated. It was money so he didn't do that (or maybe turns out he couldn't do it anyway and he was just lying for his lil fanboys).

This was all back at the start of the year but suddenly almost two weeks ago it was reported he fired every single employee in the offices of brazil, including the legal representative.

Then tonight, around two hours ago the official profile of STF replied and tagged elon with the doc of the subpoena because since they didn't have a legal representative, they couldn't do it in the proper way. The subpoena says that Elon has 24 hours to appoint a new guy for the job or the social is getting shut down in brazilian territory.

So we have 3 options for whats gonna happen in the next 24 hours:

Alexandre de Moraes (The guy who Elon started a one-sided beef with) backs down and doesnt shut down the website (highly unlikely)

Elon backs down and appoints a new guy so he doesnt lose the 4th biggest public of his site

Twitter gets shut down until Elon's manchild's ego gives in

thats all <3

Edit:

This was Elon's reply to the tweet. YES he is pathetic like that

Edit 2: it's currently 17:38 brasilia time of 30/08 and Twitter is bound to get disconnected soon, the order has been given by Moraes. People who use a VPN to access Twitter will get fined 50k reais (almost 9k dollars).

Yesterday a note was posted lying about Brazil being a dictatorship and saying that one of the people being censored is a 16yr old girl. The truth is that it's a grown ass man that use his daughters account to promote attacks on delegates, ministers, judges and other politicians. They also call orders to ban n*zi accounts "illegal orders" (WHICH ARE VERY LEGAL UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF BRAZIL). They also say "we don't want every other country to have the freedom of speech laws the US has" meanwhile they've been trying to impose them in a sovereign state.

I would say what I want to say to Elon but unfortunately my mother taught me to keep those kinds of thoughts inside. Just know they're three letters <3

edit 3: twitter was officially unavailable on brazilian territory by the time it struck midnight of the 31st

Edit 4:

Translation: 🚨 NOW: Elon Musk is looking for executives to represent Twitter/X in Brazil, to negotiate the platform's RETURN in the country, reports Correio Braziliense.

he's going to do what cellbit said kkkmk he purposely let them suspend it, then after a few days he'll come out and be the savior of the brazilian people and say he only did it for us

Don't let elon fool you. He doesn't care and is probably only doing it because his investors are threatening him with money

[tedkaczynskiofficial]

I feel like something that should be mentioned here (because I think this is where a lot of people struggle with the idea that exercise ≠ weight loss) is that, of course, calories in calories out is just physics. When people say something like dieting or exercise are not effective weight loss strategies, they don't mean that people's bodies break the laws of physics; they mean those treatment strategies aren't maintainable or have underlying confounding mechanisms, and that's not the fault of the patient. That could mean anything from exercising being unenjoyable and therefore not maintained over time to hormonal changes that make weight loss more difficult with one strategy compared to others. Again, neither of those things are the fault of the patient, and clinicians and researchers should be aiming to create sustainable treatment plans for all conditions.*

I don't know if you've addressed this somewhere in the notes already (apologies if you have! Same for the main point of my reblog. I feel like the idea was lightly conveyed, but I wanted to explicitly lay it out for people not reading close enough), but I do think it's relevant to also point out that the T2 diabetes article says that exercise patients have decreased adipose tissue weight that was offset by muscle gain. Usually, that's what people care about in weight loss, especially visceral adipose tissue from a health standpoint, so I'm not certain that particular article strongly supports your argument. I get that the aesthetic results of deceased visceral fat don't necessarily translate to conventional aesthetic aspirations, but I'm not really certain that that specific article supports the thesis that exercise isn't good for weight loss very well since the goal isn't usually strictly about numbers on the scale- for the patient or the clinician. That said, I do think T2 diabetics are a uniquely motivated group to adhere to exercise regimens (or any regimen) both due to the fact that they have to manage their diet and the awful societal shaming they get for what people view as a self-inflicted condition. TL;DR: I don't think the T2 diabetes article supports your argument well, but I also don't think it's particularly detrimental to it.

*I'm going to add as an addendum that being overweight isn't always an issue; extra weight can cause problems for some people, so we do need safe, effective weight loss strategies, but that's not the case for everyone. Regardless, if a patient doesn't view it as an issue, then the clinician needs to shut up about it unless it's immediately relevant to whatever is currently at hand (e.g. the patient needs surgery and being overweight actually increases their risk of complications), and even then the patient should still be allowed to make their own informed decisions about their health.

Me: Exercise does not cause weight loss. This is a fact that has been demonstrated so robustly in research that even doctors, who hate and fear evidence, are grudgingly starting to admit this.

Someone reading that post: Cool, but have you considered that exercise leads to weight loss?

Me: I am going to eat you

[tiger-in-the-flightdeck]

This is something I'm seeing more and more on AO3 that I'd never seen when I first got into fandom stuff, so I wanted to find out how you all feel about it.

What are your thoughts about seeing posted fanfiction that isn't commissioned, where the creator says that they have never read/watched the source material? For example, someone putting out a fanfic for a show they've never watched that includes the tag Author Has Never Seen Suchandsuch.

[often-daydreaming]

Here's a prompt.

Thanks to an overprotective Fright Knight shadowing him all the time Danny has a reputation similar to Alastor (The Radio Demon). Now Danny isn't aware of any of it since the only reason he's even visiting Gotham is to check in on Jazz and maybe drop off some of their dad's fudge but it's still Gotham and Fright Knight is working overtime after realizing there were way too many threats to the young prince/king gathered in a single city but back to the Radio Demon part of the prompt.

Danny gets clocked as something odd from the very beginning but nobody really cares. He's just another meta, a nobody that was easily dismissed until some of the local criminals operating around Jazz's apartment vanished. That one mugger who thought about going after Danny is just gone. The pickpocket who thought he was an easy target is nowhere to be found and it just kind of snowballs from there with little things adding up over time until finally rumors start flying around about a supervillain going missing. I'm using Scarecrow as an example but it could be anybody really with one or two rumors joking about the new meta being behind all of the disappearances since a street kid swears they saw Danny getting gassed during one of Scarecrow's attacks. Then Bane goes missing too and there're even more rumors about Danny being involved somehow and it only gets worse when he's seen talking with Mr. Freeze just hours before the man and his wife disappear. The street kids start thinking he's something supernatural. The thugs and goons swear Danny's some sort of demon. The working girls share stories about how a simple deal with him could change your life. The supervillains are slowly growing terrified because if you're unlucky enough to hear it then sometimes late at night when he's out for a walk an old TV or a nearby car radio will suddenly broadcast the sounds of someone screaming.

Danny isn't aware of any of it though because he's listening to music during his walks and other than helping a few people here and there he hasn't really had to go ghost for anything whenever he's visiting Jazz. Fright Knight is the one going around tagging any sort of potential threat with Soul Shredder and even he's baffled about some random radio being able to tap into his pocket dimension for a few seconds every other night.

[n7punk]

Tumblr Backup Options: None of them do everything

Cheeky but true. I'll go through what's good and bad about each option though so you can decide which balances out for you.

Covered: native export, WordPress (kinda), TumblThree, tumblr-utils (kinda)

Native Export

If you go to "https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/yourblogname", at the bottom of the page is an export option

Once you hit the button to start the request, it will start processing. Feel free to log off, this is going to to take a few hours. You don't need to keep it open. ~22k posts took roughly a day for me. If you have a small number of posts and get stuck, you're probably broken.

When it's done processing, you can hit that download backup button and then wait some more as you wait for the zip file to download. Mine failed the first time after like twenty minutes, and then I had to start over. I think it took 1-2 hour(s) and I'm almost certain that was on Tumblr and not my internet. And that was the zip file! So make sure your computer can be on for a while before getting this started.

So what do you get?

A media folder, conversations folder, and posts folder

Media folder: Every single photo, gif, and video that has ever been on your blog or in your DMs. There is no context data attached (except for dm images which do say which conversation they're from at least), but they seem to be in chronological order because they seem to be titled by the post's ID (the string of numbers in the address bar after "/post/"). They look like "100868498227", "100868498228_0", "100868498228_1"

When you see something end with "_0" and up that means the photos are in the same post, so _0 represents the first image in the post, _1 represents the second, etc (at least, I think).

Conversations folder: HTML export files of every DM history you have on your blog. These are actually pretty well formatted, see example here.

Posts folder: html subfolder and posts_index.html file

posts_index.html: File listing every single post on your blog by post ID on its own line with no other context. Example of a line: "Post: 780053389730037760". The ID number will link to the post in the html folder

html subfolder: contains a submissions subfolder and stripped html file versions of every post on your blog. See below first what the post looks like on Tumblr, and second what the post looks like in the html folder

The way you seem to be intended to use this is to open the file index, select a post ID, and be jumped to where that post is saved as an html file, but I don't know why you would bother when the index doesn't provide any information about the posts inside it. The posts all have extremely minimal formatting. See a reblog chain below.

Notice I said ALL posts on your blog. Photo posts without a caption will just have a broken image icon and then the date and tags. Theoretically, it might be that if you unzip the entire export folder that allows it to automatically link to the image saved in your media folder. I have no fucking idea, unzipping the folder was estimated to take two hours so I didn't do it. Let me know if you do though so I can update this post!

The submissions folder is such a rabbithole I made a post just on it but long story short it's asks you haven't replied to

What do I see as the main reasons to opt for this option? 1) you don't want to download any programs or files from the internet just to backup your blog, 2) your blog is relatively small, so digging through the ID files isn't a big deal, 3) you mostly just want to download either the images (which will be browsable via thumbnail previews in the media folder if you unzip it) or conversation history, which are fairly well formatted, 4) you don't need to update your export often/ever, because you'd have to request it from the start and download the entire thing all over again, 5) you want to be able to read your text posts clearly and don't care about preserving the full formatting, and/or 6) you don't plan to reupload this information elsewhere (say on... a WordPress blog)

WordPress Automatic Ex/Import

Move your post's from Matt's right hand to his left! WordPress (another product of Automattic) has a native Tumblr importer found under your WP Admin dashboard for your site under Tools > Import > Tumblr.

How does this work? No idea! I hit import 2 days ago and it has done nothing. Maybe I'm stuck, maybe it's permanently broken. It says to contact support if it's been over 24 hours but they don't make that easy. I disconnected from Tumblr (you can only port over a blog you have the login of) and reconnected and it still said it was importing. I don't think it's ever going to do anything.

Presumably it's supposed to 1:1 import every post on your blog onto the WordPress site, which will result in a whole lot of stolen art because there's no way to select just your original posts. Also, you'd need enough storage on your webhost to house all the posts (this honestly might be my problem, but I was planning to delete all the non-original posts once it imported.... anything and backfill what it didn't get to). The one thing I'll say about this option is that it's the only one I've seen so far that exports drafts and queues as well.

I mean, if it exported anything. If this ever does anything I'll update this post, but either my blog is too large or this tool isn't totally functional anymore.

TumblThree

(previously TumblTwo, etc)

TumblThree is an all-in-one program requiring no extra downloads beyond the main Zip, and was last updated fairly recently at the time of this post. In order to run it, unzip it into one folder and run the main .exe. It has a full UI interface with lots of very descriptive helper text to help you select the right options for you without looking at the wiki. I think it's user-friendly for non-tech people.

There are a lot of options in TumblThree to change what output it gives you, but I'm going to start with the largely universal parts first:

Everything from one blog will be exported to one folder, no subfolders or sorting. As a result, the output is very messy and difficult to wade through, but post metadata and the photos are named in the same way so you can scroll, see an image preview, and then click on the metadata txt for that post and read the caption.

Depending on your settings, you can export all photos, videos, text posts, etc as their own files or exclude them from the export entirely. For the different types of media posts, you can independently select if you what to download just the media, just the metadata for it (everything that surrounds the post when you see it on Tumblr, such as the caption, OP, tags, etc), or both.

Master txt file: For every type of media metadata you export, a correspondingly named txt file will be created (images.txt, answers.txt, etc) that contains the text/metadata of every post of that type in one txt file. This is also the default behavior for exporting text posts.

Note: for text posts (which includes asks/answers), it only creates a master txt file if you do not select "Save texts as individual files", in which case it will only save each text as an individual txt file and not make a master file.

The formatting on these files is so brutal I won't even give examples, but they're unreadable. Being a .txt file, there is no native formatting, so it exports in html formatting.

Example: instead of a post that says "I want to go swimming", it exports: "I want to go < b >swimming< / b >" (minus the spaces around the b) as the post body, which is a big part of what makes it unreadable, because there are a lot of hyperlinks in all the header information listed below.

Each post in the master txt exports with: Post ID, date, post URL, slug, reblog key (no idea what that is), reblog URL, reblog name, title, [the text/caption itself], and tags.

Theoretically this means you could ctrl+f "cybertrucks" in the master txt file and then browse all your posts making fun of Tesla owners by tabbing through the returns. This is not possible with any of the previous options, and only is possible because it's all in one file, as ridiculous as it is, which is why getting that master file is so important.

For the trick to get both the individual text posts and master text.txt & answers.txt file, as well as my recommended settings and details on how updating backups works, see the read more at the end of this post.

The images.txt includes all the information listed above, but with the following additions: photo url (NOTE: this is the url on Tumblr, not a link to where it is in your folder), photo set URLs, photo caption, and "downloaded files" (NOTE: this is the name of the file it has downloaded)

The video.txt is similar to the above

The use case for this would be similar to what I described for text posts above: search keywords from captions, tags, etc and when you find what you think is what you want, copy the name from "downloaded files" and search your folder to find the actual image

I really hated TumblThree's output the first time I looked at it and then I realized the single file is the only way to make browsing tags workable, because otherwise you would have to have a folder for every tag, and posts with multiple tags would have to be duplicated between them. I'm not pressed on finding a txt to HTML converter right now but it could be an option in the future if you wanted to make things more readable.

Okay, let's get into the non-universal stuff you can customize in settings, because it's like, everything:

File names: We've already established you can search with the downloaded file name for images, but what will that be? Whatever you fucking want. Post date, reblogger name, post ID, post title, original file name, you can make it any and all of these in any order you want! You can have actually useful file names! Personally I like %e_%p_%q_%i_%x which exports as DateTime_PostTitle_BlogOriginName_PostID_IteratingNumber (note: you need some kind of unique iterator to be valid so two files don't have the same name, such as multiple photos from one post). Look how much searchable information that gives me, in chronological order! It decreases your need for the master txt file.

Tip I wish I thought of before doing my massive export: make one of the unique headers from the master txt file part of the exported file name so it's easy to search for it after identifying it in the master file.

Files scanned: this is the only method I've found that lets you back everything up, remember what it backed up, and then lets you add any new posts since that date without having to download the whole thing again. That's a game changer, but see the read more below for limitations.

You also have the option to rescan the entire thing if you want.

Post type: T3 (I'm abbreviating it now) also lets you export just your original posts, just reblogs, etc - again, giving you the most control of any options. It also lets you export replies. I, uh, would not do this because if you have any popular post on your blog it might have hundreds, or thousands of replies but hey, you can do it!

You also have the option to only download posts with a certain tag.

Blog options: You can export literally any blog you have the URL of. In fact, if you copy a blog URL while it's open, it will automatically add that blog to its UI and create an empty folder for it. It makes it easy, no private key required. I do have mixed feelings about the concept of exporting someone else's blog... but I'm also planning to do it to some of Crew-ra's blogs so... my digital horde must grow.

You can also queue blogs up and leave it to run through a lot of them. It is a lot faster than Tumblr's native export, I started this import well after I started typing this post and it took a few hours, probably not all that much longer than just downloading Tumblr's export took (and that's while running it alongside other data copy operations because I'm backing up a lot of stuff right now).

I do recommend doing a test export with a sideblog, I was able to use wild-bitchofthenorthwoods as a test import since it only has one post and it has media, so it was super quick.

(I do want to note, I think the number of downloadable items starts out matching the number of posts on your blog without scanning them until you start the export - but if you choose to export everything as its own file, you're going to end up with way more than that because a post with three images would be multiple files)

Things T3 cannot export:

Since in its simplest form it's just accessing the public upload of your blog, it cannot export your drafts, queue, or conversations

It cannot export posts as HTML files, and thus cannot export them with readable formatting natively

What do I see as the main reasons to opt for this option? 1) you don't care about exporting your DMs/conversations, 2) you want the ability to export only certain kinds of posts (original, photos, using a tag, etc), 3) you want to control the titles of the exported files 4) you don't mind wading through massive folders, 5) you want the ability to search tags (using the txt files), 6) you want the ability to update your export without starting over from the beginning, 7) you either don't want to reupload this information somewhere else, or you want to upload it somewhere that supports automatic HTML conversion (for instance, you can switch a Tumblr post from a rich text format to HTML, same with AO3, so you can put it in as HTML and then hit post to see it turn into a rich format. This techically makes T3 the most versatile/useful export option if you're planning to do anything with it other than browse your own files).

tumblr-utils

Full disclosure: haven't tried this one. But others have! tumblr-utils is a no-UI, python-based backup software. This means in order to use it you have to type commands into the terminal. If you don't know what I just said, don't use this one.

If you do, you'll need to separately download python and youtube-dl just to get this one running. You'll also need to give it your personal Tumblr API key and feed it commands deciphered from the wiki page I linked. Here are two different guides people have written on how to use it. Output:

Obviously I'm guessing based on the documentation, but one thing that is nice is this tool allows you to save each post in its own folder. Presumably each post is multiple files like we saw with T3, so this would make it easy to group them, but it also means you'd have to look in every single folder to find anything.

It seems to break posts up into timestamp folders by month, again, helping with management to narrow down where you have to search

It allows you to save only certain kinds of posts at a time like T3

It allows you to backup posts only from a certain time period (so if you keep a little .txt note of the last time you backed up, you can easily add only the new posts into your backup without having to start over from the beginning)

It allows you to only save posts under a certain tag like T3

It allows you to save only original posts

It's the only one I've found that lets you back up your liked posts

What do I see as the main reasons to opt for this option? 1) you don't care about exporting your DMs/conversations, 2) you want the ability to export only certain kinds of posts (original, photos, using a tag, etc), (okay now we get to the points that aren't also covered by T3), 3) you want posts to export already broken into folders, whether by post or by month, 4) you want to back up your likes, 5) you don't care what file names look like, 6) you're comfortable with the command line/coding and don't need a UI.

Summary:

None of these options are ideal for reuploading your files anywhere (except WordPress), but I do think TumblThree is the best of the options because of the written HTML formatting in the txt files being useful for websites that support automatic conversion (or require HTML input).

For starting another blog, WordPress wins. If it works. I'm trying to be generous here.

For searchability, T3 wins again.

For versatility... yeah you know it's T3, but tumblr-utils has a lot of the same features, too!

For sentimentality (aka conversations), it has to be the native export. There literally is not any other option.

For queues and drafts, the only theoretical option is WordPress. If it works.

For likes, the only option is tumblr-utils.

Every option does something the others don't, so theoretically to cover everything, you have to do all four options. Actually I would say do the native export if you don't have a lot of posts and aren't a freak like me, check it out, and if it doesn't work (I know it's finnicky) or you don't like the export, go with TumblThree. This also means you'll at least have your conversations even if you don't end up using the native export any other way.

And I wish it could go without saying, but don't repost people's shit, y'all. I'm backing up everything for my records only and it will never be shared with anyone else, or even browsed as long as using Tumblr instead is an option.

TumblThree adding to old backup quirks, recommended settings, & master file backup solution:

Adding to backup quirks:

From my tests, when you scan a blog you've already backed up to just add new posts to it, it does not update the master file, so if you want to update it, you'll have to do the steps I list at the end of this post. It might be possible it does update if you force rescan, but I highly doubt it.

If you scan a blog you previously backed up under more restrictive settings - say you only backed up original text posts as one file before and now you've selected to back up absolutely everything - it will only download up until the time you last backed up that blog. It will not blow past where you last downloaded to download all the photos and videos it didn't get before just because they're selected now. This is great for doing after using the master file solution I'm showing below, but if you do need to download everything after doing a more restrictive scan, you can once again follow the first few steps below to do so.

Recommended settings:

This will obviously vary by what you're trying to do, but one or two things weren't immediately obvious to me and I did say I think this was the best solution for less technical users, so I want give my personal recommendations. Settings can obviously be found under the settings button at the bottom of the screen (you may need to use the scrollbar on the UI for, which is separate from the scrollbar on the blogs panel), but when you click on a blog, when you click "Details" in the right sidebar, you can also see your most important settings at a glance and adjust them to whatever you want them to be "per blog". I believe TumblThree remembers what you last used for the blog and applies the things in settings only to new/other blogs.

The thing that is going to vary the most is how many different types of posts you want to back up (text, video, reblogs included, etc), so I'll leave that up to you. If you're going to export a media type, though, I generally recommend exporting the metadata too.

I already gave my preferred file names above and again that's going to be something that varies a lot by people. Hover over the "Filename template" box and it will give you all the options in the legend you can combine via underscores.

Leave "Skip .gif files" off unless you're hurting for hard drive space. This removes all the gifs from your download, and the reason this is provided as a separate setting is because gifs have relatively massive files (at least compared to a text file)

I'll be honest I haven't seen a difference between turning on and off "Group photo sets". Because of the way file names work, most conventions will naturally lead to photos from the same post all being in a row.

"Save texts as individual files": if you only want texts to be saved as their master text.txt and answers.txt files, uncheck this. If you want the individual files I highly recommend you also download the master file for searching purposes, in which case my recommendation is this:

1) Select to export texts only, leaving off all media options, and uncheck the "Save texts as individual files" option. 2) Export the blog. This will only result in two files, answers.txt and texts.txt. 3) Move these files elsewhere on the computer to save them. 4) With T3 closed, delete the folder for the blog and the blog's Indexes (see instructions at the end of this post for finding these). 5) Reopen T3, which shouldn't remember it ever saw the blog and create a new folder for it. Turn on the "Save texts as individual files", as well as any other media posts you want to download. 6) Export the entire blog again. 7) Move the texts.txt and answers.txt file back into the blog's folder.

I leave all other options on the Details tab off, except for:

"Force rescan" scans past the point it last backed up and searches the whole blog again. If you have a big blog, this is going to burn time. This is needed for the number of downloaded items in the panel to be accurate but I don't know why you would care or turn this on unless it lets you skip steps 3-4 above, but my blog is too big to burn through testing that, so if you try it, let me know and I'll update this post!

Master file backup solution:

See my 7 steps from above to skip having to do this, but if you accidentally do things out of order and then realize you still need the master files for texts post after backing everything else up, here's how you get it with minimal pain:

T3 will make an "Index" folder in both the main folder for the program where the exe is located and the destination folder where you have your blogs backing up (note: these were two very different places for me, if you just have it back up to the automatic Blogs folder within T3's folder, it might not create a second Index folder).

To make T3 "forget" what it has backed up previously so it goes through to the beginning and makes a master file that includes everything, all you have to do is remove the Index file(s) for the blog while it's closed so it doesn't remember it anymore. I backed my index up in another folder.

Check off for it to only download text posts, and then uncheck the "Save texts in individual files" option. This will cause it to only create the master answers.txt and texts.txt file on the rescan.

The combination of only going for one post type and only downloading one file for it means this rescan is relatively fast. When you look at your Blogs folder, you'll find a new folder has been created for your blog name (in my case, there was "n7punk" and "n7punk_2) and your output is in the new folder. I just moved it over to the original folder.

At this point you can restore the indexes, though I've only gotten it to half recognize them. I can get it to recognize my original n7punk folder so everything can stay there, but the total downloaded items is stuck at what it was when I did just the text posts. I don't really care, it was mainly the folder thing I wanted to fix. If you have lag between your last full backup and your master-only backup, this might cause some issues? I don't know because I made sure there wasn't lag, so I recommend doing another backup to add any missing items before doing this method.

You can also use this technique if you want to download only your original posts and then download everything else to a second folder. Adjust the setting to only download original posts, download the whole blog, close T3 and delete the indexes, rename the folder to whatever you want ("n7punk_original", etc), and then reopen T3 and set it to download everything and run it again from the start.

[local-dragon-haunt]

hey! i’m an artist and i was wondering what about the httyd crossover art made it obviously AI. i’m trying to get better at recognizing AI versus real art and i totally would have just not clocked that.

Hey! This is TOTALLY okay to not have recognized it, because I DIDN'T AT FIRST, EITHER. Unfortunately there’s no real foolproof way to distinguish real art from the fake stuff. However I have noticed a general rule of thumb while browsing these last few months.

So this is the AI generated image I used as inspiration. I will not be tagging the account that posted it because I do not condone bullying of any type, but it’s important to mention that this was part of a set of images:

This is important because one of the BIGGEST things you can use to your advantage is context clues. This is the thing that clued me in: right off the bat we can see that there is NO consistency between these three images. The art style and outfits change with every generated image. They're vaguely related (I.E. characters that resemble the Big Four are on some sort of adventure?) and that's about it. Going to the account in question proved that all they posted were AI generated images. All of which have many red flags, but for clarity's sake we'll stick with the one that I used.

The first thing that caught my eye was this???? Amorphous Blob in the background. Which is obviously supposed to be knights or a dragon or something.

Again, context clues come into play here. Artists will draw everything With A Purpose. And if what they're drawing is fanart, you are going to recognize most of what you see in the image. Even if there are mistakes.

In the context of this image, it looks like the Four are supposed to be running from these people. The thing that drew my attention to it was the fact that I Didn't Recognize The Villains, and this is because there is nothing to recognize. These shapes aren't Drago, or Grimmel, or Pitch, or any other villain we usually associate with ROTBTD. They're just Amorphous Blobs that are vaguely villain shaped.

Which brings me to my second point:

Do you see the way they're standing? There is no purpose to this. It throws the entire image off. Your eye is drawn to the Amorphous Villain Blobs in the background, and these characters are not reacting to them one bit.

Now I'm not saying that all images have to have a story behind them, but if this were created by a person, it clearly would have had one. Our group here is not telling a story, they are posing.

This is because the AI does not see the image as a whole, but as two separate components: the setting, and the description of the characters that the prompter dictates. I.E. "Merida from Brave, Jack Frost from ROTG, Rapunzel from Tangled, and Hiccup from HTTYD standing next to each other"

Now obviously the most pressing part of this prompt are the characters themselves. So the AI prioritizes that and tries to spit out something that WE recognize as "Merida from Brave, Jack Frost from ROTG, Rapunzel from Tangled, and Hiccup from HTTYD standing next to each other".

This, more times than not, is going to end up with this stagnant posing. Because AI cannot create, it can only emulate. And even then, it still can't do it right. Case in point:

This is not Hiccup. The AI totally thinks this is Eugene Fitzherbert. Look at the pose. The facial structure. The goatee. The smirk. The outfits. He's always next to Raps. Why does he have a quiver? Where's Toothless? His braids? His scar??

HE HAS BOTH OF HIS LEGS.

The AI. Cannot even get the most important part of it's prompt correct.

And that's just the beginning. Here:

More amorphous shapes.

So these are obviously supposed to be utility belts, but I mean. Look at them. The perspective is all off. There are useless straps. I don't even know what that cluster behind Jack's left arm is supposed to be.

This is a prime example of AI emulating without understanding structure.

You can see this particularly in Jack, between his hands, the "tassels" of his tunic, and the odd wrinkles of his boots. There's just not any structure here whatsoever.

Lastly, AI CANNOT CREATE PATTERNS.

Here are the side-by-sides of the shit I had to deal with when redesigning their outfits. Please someone acknowledge this. This killed me inside. THIS is most recognizable to me, and usually what I look for first if I'm wary about an art piece. These clusterfuck bunches of color. I hate them. I hate them so. much.

Anyways here's some other miscellaneous things I've noticed:

Danny Phantom Eyes

???? Thumb? (and random sword sheath)

Collarbone Necklace (corset from hell)

No Staff :( No Bow :(

What is that.

So yeah. Truly the best thing to do is to just. study it. A lot of times you aren't gonna notice anything just looking at the big picture, you need to zoom in and focus on the little details. Obviously I'm not like an expert in AI or anything, but I do have a degree in animation practices and I'm. You know. A human being. So.

In conclusion:

(Y'all should totally reblog my redesign of this btw)

[coffeepaintwater]

shen yuan, luo binghe and shen jiu the most explosive trio to ever trio i fear (there are two duos in these trio and hint hint both of them feature sy lol)

also this is basically fanart for Shen Yuan of No Relation on ao3 by Gemi bc i'm binge reading/listening to it and it's so good!!! the characterisation is so on point it dragged me back into the svsss fandom by my hair. the character study tag 100% deserves its' place there.

notes, bc how could there not be??:

i saw a post that said that any svsss fanwork's inaccuracy to history can be attributed to airplane's lazy pidw world-building and. yeah. basically.

i was thinking what would the disciple robes look like to both seem regal to the commoners (as described in 99% xianxia novels) and good to train in and i realized that there shouldn't probably be more than two layers anyways because it isn't even really accurate. also, i like the interpretation that each disciple has a subtly different uniform, but i just can't picture how that would work???? 100% the rich kids and older disciples who can actually earn some money would add accesories to their robes, but for shen yuan and luo binghe, i just couldn't imagine where they'd get anything like that, besides the hair pins ning yingying made/gave them (sry if i mix some shit up, i've read 20 chapters in 2 days okey have mercy). plus, with a world that focuses on social standing as much as pidw/svsss does, i think that the sects would naturally aim to recreate that hierarchy in their own society.

with the example of cang qiong mountain, yue qingyuan would have the highest rank, and (as syonr showed!!!) probably boast the biggest estate on the peak, inheriting all the wealth the previous sect leaders had accumulated. and while from what i understand, being a sect-affilated cultivator means your payment is basically getting fed, clothed and having a roof over your head in the sect instead of idk, coin, yue qingyuan would still have monetary means because of, surprise surprise, inheriting it. so, clothes just on the better side from the other peak lords perhaps

next in the food chain would be the other peak lords, except that we see that even the peaks have different 'rankings'. so, while on the outside each peak lord carries the same authority, shen jiu would have been able to be as he was in canon (MASSIVE side eye btw) and no one would have been really in a place to kick him in the gut and say he was a fucking asshole, for example, besides yue qingyuan. that is, from a purely theoretical stand-point, bc all hierarchical order is sometimes broken but that's besides the pointttt. the point is, they would have freedom to dress however they wish and while i believe the disciple robes remain unchanged since the founding of the sect (bc svsss universe is implied to be a largely unadvancing society, regarding anything besides cultivation), the peak lords most likely don't have one set uniform, besides each peak being color-coded apparently??

there was a post i was inspired by (https://www.tumblr.com/svsssfanonarchive/736782613008809984?source=share) that confirmed that the peaks (or at least three of them, but we don't get much of the others anyways) do in fact have the disciples wear robes of one color. qing jing favors greens and teals (see the post for more details pls pls pls it's so good) BUT i love adding white to my art bc i feel like a fabric this vibrant and light would fit the scholars there. also, white seems like the furthest one could get from the gutter to me, bc while it is the color of mourning, it's also the color of purity and shen jiu would take the chance to put one more barrier between shen qingqiu the peak lord and shen jiu the slave. don't ask why i put shen yuan in better robes; there's no reason other to make him more like a mini shen qingqiu lol

the head disciples could probably get modified uniforms or a layer more, to make them really stand out. and i'm not touching on the hall masters and senior disciples bc NOPE. not my problem for now

last thing, fu yue my love, my beauty, my life force, WHICH CHARACTER ARE WE TALKING ABOUT FOR FU?????? i decided on these ones bc there were the closest i could get to the meaning Gemi intended but :(( i have a gut feeling the first character is wronggg

[prettycottagequeer]

ok maybe I'm a little late to this BUT I'm gonna do a to-do list motivation thingy because I've had the worst two weeks since I started college :)

SO these I should start on asap:

50 I make the snack I really want but I haven't had the motivation to make

100 I clean my dorm. another thing I've been meaning to do for a week

150 I do the presentation about mid-victorian fashion I've been putting off (due Monday)

200 I start memorizing the monologue that was due a week ago (now due Tuesday)

these can wait longer:

300 I spend time outside. It's so nice but I'm getting stuck scrolling because I feel like shit. vicious cycle ect

500 I start setting a better weekend routine (aka getting up before noon)

1k I start working out again. I was doing a routine to get more masc and build muscle and I liked it but life hit me like Crowley driving the Bentley and I've missed like 3 weeks

2k I buy my first binder. I've been coping with sports bras for almost a year now and I haven't been able to justify spending $50+ on a binder even though I know I'd love it and use it everyday.

Do I tag people? I don't know but I'm going to. @the-globe-theatre-maggot @weirdly-specific-but-ok @howmanyholesinswisscheese

here's just some context if you want to read, feel free to skip. some of this I've talked about in the maggot server, some I haven't, but I really just need a place for this to go that's out of my head. tw homophobia, transphobia, car crash(??)

How I Have Been Run Over By The Bentley Going 90 In Central London What Feels Like 50 Times In The Last Two Weeks

I'm going to college about 4 hours away from my parents, and it's been really nice. They.. suck, to say the least. transphobic/homophobic ect, super traditional conservative catholic, racist, all of it. so i tried to move somewhere where I wouldn't have to think about them and I could be myself and do what I can to be happy. March 1st was the start of my spring break, which meant going home because the dorms close. I was already not excited, but I was prepared. the problem with being away from home is I forget just how bad they are. My optimism gets the better of me and I think maybe this time they'll be better. so I decided to not hide my septum piercing.

that was a mistake. it starts a whole fight where they say we know you're trans, you're actually a girl and you always will be, we have the bones argument, they think I'm being influenced by demons or something (if only they knew about crowley) because I want to change my name, and they tell me that going on t will completely ruin my body and give me cancer and other things. They're also mad about my dyed hair, septum, and general style, and say I'm setting a terrible example for my (5) younger siblings and make it a point to tell me just how much of a disappointment I am. I think I'm pretty cute and fun but y'know, whatever. very fun time. I lie so much, don't give them any more details about my identity, and say I'm not planning to go on t to save my ass. which is all on instinct which makes me feel worse because if I'm really trans I should be able to stand up for that, right? maybe I'm faking the dysphoria.

the next morning I wake up really sick, and spend the rest of the week sick and feeling like shit because I'm home and back in the same place and situation I was a year ago that I thought I escaped. at one point I pretty much lose my voice but also kind of get gender euphoria from it. it's weird.

On Friday it's time for me to drive back 4 hours to school, and I make it about 3/4 of the way when google maps takes me on a random gravel road and I crash my car, really crash my car, like sideways-in-a-ditch-windows-broken-crawling-up-out-the-door crash it in the middle of nowhere. (I was fully paying attention to the road, it was raining and super slick) I call my parents because I have no one else to call and I sit in a Subway for 3 hours while they drive to get my car. when they get there they're (understandably) really mad, and they tell me that I'm not mature enough to be going to school so far away and I need to get my shit together and stop depending on them. which. is probably true. but made me feel even more stupid about the fact that I crashed my car. I get back to school and I'm still Very Sick with no energy or motivation to do anything. So I've spent the last week trying to get better and honestly to do anything. it hasn't really worked. I'm a lot better health-wise (Not emotionally), still sick but I have a lot of work due, so I really need a push to get started

[alfheimr]

My Favorite Cheap Art Trick: Gradient Maps and Blending Modes

i get questions on occasion regarding my coloring process, so i thought i would do a bit of a write up on my "secret technique." i don't think it really is that much of a secret, but i hope it can be helpful to someone. to that end:

this is one of my favorite tags ive ever gotten on my art. i think of it often. the pieces in question are all monochrome - sort of.

the left version is the final version, the right version is technically the original. in the final version, to me, the blues are pretty stark, while the greens and magentas are less so. there is some color theory thing going on here that i dont have a good cerebral understanding of and i wont pretend otherwise. i think i watched a youtube video on it once but it went in one ear and out the other. i just pick whatever colors look nicest based on whatever vibe im going for.

this one is more subtle, i think. can you tell the difference? there's nothing wrong with 100% greyscale art, but i like the depth that adding just a hint of color can bring.

i'll note that the examples i'll be using in this post all began as purely greyscale, but this is a process i use for just about every piece of art i make, including the full color ones. i'll use the recent mithrun art i made to demonstrate. additionally, i use clip studio paint, but the general concept should be transferable to other art programs.

for fun let's just start with Making The Picture. i've been thinking of making this writeup for a while and had it in mind while drawing this piece. beyond that, i didn't really have much of a plan for this outside of "mithrun looks down and hair goes woosh." i also really like all of the vertical lines in the canary uniform so i wanted to include those too but like. gone a little hog wild. that is the extent of my "concept." i do not remember why i had the thought of integrating a shattered mirror type of theme. i think i wanted to distract a bit from the awkward pose and cover it up some LOL but anyway. this lack of planning or thought will come into play later.

note 1: the textured marker brush i specifically use is the "bordered light marker" from daub. it is one of my favorite brushes in the history of forever and the daub mega brush pack is one of the best purchases ive ever made. highly recommend!!!

note 2: "what do you mean by exclusion and difference?" they are layer blending modes and not important to the overall lesson of this post but for transparency i wanted to say how i got these "effects." anyway!

with the background figured out, this is the point at which i generally merge all of my layers, duplicate said merged layer, and Then i begin experimenting with gradient maps. what are gradient maps?

the basic gist is that gradient maps replace the colors of an image based on their value.

so, with this particular gradient map, black will be replaced with that orangey red tone, white will be replaced with the seafoamy green tone, etc. this particular gradient map i'm using as an example is very bright and saturated, but the colors can be literally anything.

these two sets are the ones i use most. they can be downloaded for free here and here if you have csp. there are many gradient map sets out there. and you can make your own!

you can apply a gradient map directly onto a specific layer in csp by going to edit>tonal correction>gradient map. to apply one indirectly, you can use a correction layer through layer>new correction layer>gradient map. honestly, correction layers are probably the better way to go, because you can adjust your gradient map whenever you want after creating the layer, whereas if you directly apply a gradient map to a layer thats like. it. it's done. if you want to make changes to the applied gradient map, you have to undo it and then reapply it. i don't use correction layers because i am old and stuck in my ways, but it's good to know what your options are.

this is what a correction layer looks like. it sits on top and applies the gradient map to the layers underneath it, so you can also change the layers beneath however and whenever you want. you can adjust the gradient map by double clicking the layer. there are also correction layers for tone curves, brightness/contrast, etc. many such useful things in this program.

let's see how mithrun looks when we apply that first gradient map we looked at.

gadzooks. apologies for eyestrain. we have turned mithrun into a neon hellscape, which might work for some pieces, but not this one. we can fix that by changing the layer blending mode, aka this laundry list of words:

some of them are self explanatory, like darken and lighten, while some of them i genuinely don't understand how they are meant to work and couldn't explain them to you, even if i do use them. i'm sure someone out there has written out an explanation for each and every one of them, but i've learned primarily by clicking on them to see what they do.

for the topic of this post, the blending mode of interest is soft light. so let's take hotline miamithrun and change the layer blending mode to soft light.

here it is at 100% opacity. this is the point at which i'd like to explain why i like using textured brushes so much - it makes it very easy to get subtle color variation when i use this Secret Technique. look at the striation in the upper right background! so tasty. however, to me, these colors are still a bit "much." so let's lower the opacity.

i think thats a lot nicer to look at, personally, but i dont really like these colors together. how about we try some other ones?

i like both of these a lot more. the palettes give the piece different vibes, at which point i have to ask myself: What Are The Vibes, Actually? well, to be honest i didn't really have a great answer because again, i didn't plan this out very much at all. however. i knew in my heart that there was too much color contrast going on and it was detracting from the two other contrasts in here: the light and dark values and the sharp and soft shapes. i wanted mithrun's head to be the main focal point. for a different illustration, colors like this might work great, but this is not that hypothetical illustration, so let's bring the opacity down again.

yippee!! that's getting closer to what my heart wants. for fun, let's see what this looks like if we change the blending mode to color.

i do like how these look but in the end they do not align with my heart. oh well. fun to experiment with though! good to keep in mind for a different piece, maybe! i often change blending modes just to see what happens, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. i very much cannot stress enough that much of my artistic process is clicking buttons i only sort of understand. for fun.

i ended up choosing the gradient map on the right because i liked that it was close to the actual canary uniform colors (sorta). it's at an even lower opacity though because there was Still too much color for my dear heart.

the actual process for this looks like me setting my merged layer to soft light at around 20% opacity and then clicking every single gradient map in my collection and seeing which one Works. sometimes i will do this multiple times and have multiple soft light and/or color layers combined.

typically at this point i merge everything again and do minor contrast adjustments using tone curves, which is another tool i find very fun to play around with. then for this piece in particular i did some finishing touches and decided that the white border was distracting so i cropped it. and then it's done!!! yay!!!!!

this process is a very simple and "fast" way to add more depth and visual interest to a piece without being overbearing. well, it's fast if you aren't indecisive like me, or if you are better at planning.

let's do another comparison. personally i feel that the hint of color on the left version makes mithrun look just a bit more unwell (this is a positive thing) and it makes the contrast on his arm a lot more pleasing to look at. someone who understands color theory better than i do might have more to say on the specifics, but that's honestly all i got.

just dont look at my layers too hard. ok?