#i'm not tagging to relevant tags but i'm okay with people reblogging

[unforth]

Okay, so over on the business account ( @duckprintspress ) I said that I'd finished reading the newest article about the Hugos by Chris Barkley and Jason Sanford (this article) and written up some thoughts that troubled me. I AM gonna post them, because I feel strongly that there are aspects of this being pushed aside as if they don't matter, and. They do matter.

To be clear, I am NOT an expert. Most of my knowledge second or third hand, but I've been active in Chinese fandoms for four and a half years, have friends in China, am actively studying Chinese, and at least have a (white, Western) point of view a little different from what I've seen in coverage so far.

What's troubling to me here is the minimal discussion of the dangers in China. It's mentioned in passing that self-censorship happens because the placement of the red line is so unclear that no one is sure what will constitute passing it. Leaving aside that that's an intentional design feature from the Chinese government - they enforce when they want to enforce when they want to enforce it - what's not discussed in this article is who was actually at risk.

The Chengdu organizers in China: if McCarty and the others didn't comply, would the Chengdu organizers have been in danger of ruin? Imprisonment? Execution?

The Chinese authors who were removed from consideration: what were the perils to them and their families if they hadn't been removed from consideration?

The Western authors who were disqualified: if they hadn't been removed, what might have happened to them upon arrival in China? Could their safety have been ensured?

This article presents a very narrow view (and extremely important and informative one, but still only) into one aspect of what happened. At the beginning of it, Barkley indicates that this article shouldn't be considered a final word, and that's a point that really needs emphasis: we know now about exactly ONE aspect of what happened. We do not know what was getting communicated to the Chinese organizers, and we do not know what they were doing with that information. We don't even know who those Chinese organizers were, nor who their influencers, stakeholders, investors, etc., were, nor what their goals were.

This article, and many others, ultimately end up reading like the Western organizers were Actors and the Chinese government was an Actor and that everyone else in China involved who wasn't The Man (business, government, etc.) was a passive receiver of whatever these three groups did. Without more information about all those other people (who, granted, NEED anonymity to be safe, but we don't even have anonymous statements), what we know about this situation is glaringly, starkly lacking, and it feels (if I'm being generous in my interpretation) patronizing that all these regularly Chinese people are getting treated as not having agency under the monolith that is Chinese Government And Business Interests (ill-defined in everything I've read) on the one hand and, on the other hand, Very Specific Named Western People Who Get To Have Names, Power, Agency, And Active Participation In Events.

We have no information whatsoever on what risks the Chinese organizers might have been willing to take.

We have no information whatsoever on what was discussed with the specific Chinese people who set this event up, bought ballots, etc., etc.

It's this ginormous gaping hole in the coverage, and while this gets acknowledged a little in this article, what no one seems to be saying is "if people outside China can't get this information for various reasons, perhaps we're not the right people to tell this story" or at least "we're only able to tell a small part of the story and people who have the necessary language skills, information, expertise, and contacts should do what they can to bring more to light." And again, Barkley and Sanford DO acknowledge that, but in ways that read to me as throwaway and incidental (my opinion, only, other people may have found that wording more impactful, I was already getting frustrated by that point and that would have colored by interpretation), and in the end I feel like it prevents them from posing some of the questions that are truly essential to understanding this. (Some of this is likely known, just not by me, to be clear, but these are the questions I'd personally like to know more about before I can draw firm conclusions about what happened.) For example:

Who in China was really behind organizing and funding this?

Why was the decision made to hold the event in China?

What research was done into Chinese censorship before the event bid was accepted, and what impact did the results of that research have on the decision to accept the bid? How much of that information was provided to the people reviewing the bids, and when and how was that information presented?

What is happening that is causing Chinese posts on this topic to be deleted?

What is the danger to Chinese fans who've spoken out? What is the danger to the Chinese organizers of the event? Have they been victims of reprisals, and are they safe now?

WAS this self-censorship or active censorship, and who was ultimately responsible for the decisions to remove the ballots?

There's so much we don't know, and so much that we probably can't find out at all, but the focus solely on Western sources (by Western journalists and interests, who seem to rarely have ANY contacts in China, much less ones capable of providing useful information) has been a huge flaw of virtually every bit of coverage I've seen on this.

China isn't a ginormous evil black box, and I'm getting really tired of reading coverage that foists off explaining what happened there onto "well, acshwally, the Chinese government..."

What I really want is an acknowledgement that had Dave McCarty refused to do this research, there's a very real chance that people's lives could have been in danger in China. And it's all well and nice for a bunch of people in the West to say "they should have stood up for what was right." But the Western Hugo awards committee people are NOT the people who would have been in danger had they taken a stand. They could have sat perfectly safe in countries with more secure freedom of speech, while their counterparts in China and Chengdu had their lives ruined over it.

And I'm not saying that was a factor.

I'm say we don't know. And without knowing that, I'll own I'm extremely skeptical of any conclusions being drawn about what we DO know. And I'm saying that if McCarty and the others knew that was a risk that existed, it could have colored their decision-making process, and pretending that the issue wasn't a factor feels naive at best. Knowing that the event was settled in Chengdu and couldn't be moved, I wish I was seeing more people asking: was insisting that these works be nominated for an award worth risking the lives of people's lives for? If there was active censorship, and McCarty and the others had fought it, could the Hugo awards have possibly have won against that active censorship, and if they'd tried and failed, what would the consequences have been?

Based on this article, I'm genuinely frightened for Chinese SF/F fandom organizers, authors, and fans right now. I've seen what can happen to people in China, and I'll own it's distressing to see how little that factor seems to matter to the people upset about the censorship, all of whom are safe in places that aren't China.

I want to see more discussion of: once the bid for Chengdu was accepted, what were the genuine options left on this topic? Was this censorship an inevitable outcome of holding the Hugos there? Or, as I personally suspect, is what is happening now not the result of the Hugos being held there OR of the censorship that was done by whoever did it, but rather the result of how all this coverage is making China look bad (when we STILL DON'T KNOW IF CHINA HAD A HAND IN THE CENSORSHIP AT ALL)?

I think we're missing way, way to much information for the level of conclusion that I'm seeing people draw based on this article, including myself in the meme I made based on only a surface understanding of the contents of this article.

I'll own, as someone who knows just enough about China to understand some of the risks people there took, this is feeling like a lot of Westerners going "CENSORSHIP BAD! STAND FOR WHAT'S RIGHT!" while sitting safe and sound and ignoring their counterparts in China and all of the Chinese SF/F fandom screaming "THIS IS DANGEROUS FOR US THIS COULD RUIN OUR LIVES."

I'm. Not comfortable with a lot of what I'm reading, including parts of this article. I'm not saying I know bad things have happened or will happen, but I do feel that a lot of people opening their mouths know far too little about China, and do not seem to think they have a responsibility to learn more, to be taking the stands that they are.

[tmae3114]

the example people always go for with 'taking things literally' is 'not understanding idioms and metaphors' or 'not understanding sarcasm' and that's frustrating for Me, Specifically, Personally because I am a person who has a lot of social struggles with Taking Things Literally but, crucially, not in that sense. I understand idioms & metaphors just fine and, as someone who's primary special interest is the written word & storytelling, actually am pretty good at them and thrive with them. I miss sarcasm occasionally but catch it most of the time and am often sarcastic myself.

No, my Taking Things Literally is that if you say something to me or give me an instruction, I will Understand It Literally. I will get what you said and not at all what you meant. There are exceptions to this in cases where I've learned the script and even use it myself (e.g. the other day I asked my mum "Is this Not Butter" about a thing, and she replied "Yes but it has buttermilk", because we both understood the real question was "is this the lactose-free spread?" because I was making food for my sister) but in the vast majority of cases, I just. will miss implications and unspoken assumptions. I will just completely miss them, they will not register, I Did Not Know They Were There.

Implications in a narrative? I am on it immediately, this is my bread and butter, I can pull a story apart to get to five layers of subtext & implication & theme like breathing

Reliably understanding that the request "Can you empty the dishwasher?" includes emptying the drying rack which is not physically part of the dishwasher because the real request is "Can you put the clean dishes away?"? Not a chance

[stellacendia]

I think I finally understand what it means when people say "you can't control your emotions but you can control your response to them" (something I've struggled with soooo much due to the extreme intensity of my emotions).

This morning my roommate left for work without moving her car out of the driveway so I could get my car out. Normally not a huge deal, since she has a spare key and I can just grab the key and move it. Except she frequently loses that spare key. And I was already going to be late for class if I didn't leave right then- not much time to look for it. So I called her and asked if she knew where it was. I ended up finding the key, I wasn't very late, it all worked out, but here's the relevant part:

On the phone she said "thank you for not being too angry with me." But here's the thing- I was angry. Or at least, extremely annoyed and stressed out by it. But when I was talking to her I made sure to keep that out of my tone and I was calm, though perhaps a little stressed still (idk I'm bad at judging my own tone).

And later after I got home from class I made sure to text her and tell her that no harm was done by her mistake- my class went fine. Also, my irritation at the situation was completely gone. It didn't end up being a big deal at all, not even close. A lot of times I have an admittedly disproportionate response to situations and I get lost in those emotions to the point that it's really hard to think rationally about how to respond without making things worse (I'm working on this).

But I'm so, so glad I didn't let her hear my irritation. That wouldn't have helped anything and it would have just made her feel even more guilty for a simple, honest mistake.

I couldn't necessarily control getting so annoyed about the situation. But I could control whether or not I took it out on my roommate, and in choosing not to, the situation stayed small instead of escalating. I get it now.

[teaboot]

Hello, hope you're having a great day! You seem to be okay with asks, so I figured I'd ask you for help figuring something about tags here on Tumblr. I know general rules regarding tags/comment/reblog talking, but there's one thing I don't understand: do you need to, ideally, tag all your reblogs with things like tw for other people to see? If I don't tag, do previous tags disappear for the algorithm to take into account? I'm afraid my tagless reblog might slip under the radar and either show up unwanted or don't show up for people browsing the for you page or whatever. To clarify, I don't have any followers and don't use tags for managing my reblogs. Any answer is appreciated, and thank you in advance!

I can do my best!

The OP's tags make their post (theoretically) available results under the "search" function site-wide. Other reblogged add-ons are not.

Tagging posts you reblog (theoretically) makes them available results to search on your own blog.

If you dont copy the tags of the person you reblog from, they do not appear on your blog, and the people who follow you won't see them either. It's generally common courtesy to copy and add trigger warnings (tw) and content warnings (cw) for your followers, so they can blacklist them if needed.

Previous tags don't disappear if you don't copy them, they just don't move with your reblog. The things you do to your version do not affect previously reblogged versions.

There is no algorithm. Yet. Thank God

I personally only really "tag" potentially upsetting information, Fandom information, and relevant topics, so people can search or avoid.

You can choose not to tag anything at all if you don't want to, as well- I just have a lot of followers so I try not to bring up anything potentially upsetting without fair warning

[lily-orchard-gossip-blog]

Hello hello again! It's good to have you back for a little while! Unfortunately there is a lot of infighting in the critical sphere right now and it's not very fun to follow. And worse still Lily is as smug as ever. People are too invested in who ripped off what, who's disrespecting this or that, they should just be having fun at Lily's expense. That's what Saiscribbles has done, and you can tell how effective it is because Lily has tried every strategy in the book to prove how not mad she is.

You know what?

I think I would like to poke fun at the whole thing. I mean, it's sounds like she's gotten a bit ridiculous since I've been gone. (Ridiculous sounds like an understatement, thought.)

I've done serious and it's exhausting. You can only take her serious for so long before you realize she doesn't really even know or believe what she's saying.

As for the fighting, well... It's a shame, but let's try to focus on what's at the core of this blog: Gossiping about Lily.

...But I do have one thing I want to get off my chest, so I will mention it here and then move on. It is under the read bar just so those who don't care can ignore it.

I do have one thing to say about the drama, and that's about Ethel.

They are a liar liar pants on fire.

Seriously, I watched Evangeline Skovs video, which was one of the better coverages on the subject and there was no plagiarism. Not even of me, and I was a source!

Never mind that fact that Ethel legit lied about my blog in their rebuttal, claiming that Levi couldn't find anything on my blog about their video, or glade, so Evangeline was lying.

Their proof? Levi used the search bar, used the word minor and glade, and nothing came up except one post...

Fun fact: I'm bad at tagging things, and my search bar is kind of useless because of that.

(Side note: why would I use glade's name? Why would I want to draw attention to someone who I assumed wanted to be left alone? I'm pretty sure that was made clear in the video.)

Anyway, if you used my archive you could easily find TONES of posts from me talking about the video in question with details.

Here's one that Ethel conveniently left out:

And you know what's hilarious about that? They reblogged this take to try and rebuke it on their tumblr. (That they have long since abandoned.)

I decided to ignore it, because obviously I'm not going to try and get in a fight with them, and Ethel was so mad by that they messaged me directly to try and threaten me with legal jargon.

So I blocked them.

But hey, since I'll probably never bother with this again, here are the messages. Enjoy old drama from like...2 years ago:

Image text here:

[Okay, I've put this off for as long as possible, but please, read this case study as right now you are parroting harmful legal advice. Victim testimony not only constitutes evidence, but can be sufficient evidence to convict, a fact that was tested in Commonwealth v Gustavo Gonzalez Santos in Massachusetts.

I’ll highlight two relevant sections in case you don’t have the time to read the entire thing: “The defendant's sole argument on appeal is that the evidence was not sufficient to support his convictions. The defendant asserts that "there were no witnesses to the alleged assaults," "no physical evidence," "no medical or forensic evidence," and "no expert testimony." He argues that "there was absolutely no conclusive evidence presented at trial that suggested the [d]efendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."” And: “Here, the victim testified to facts that constituted each element of the charged offenses. Her testimony, which the jury found to be credible, was sufficient, standing alone, to support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt as to each of the convictions. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Lawrence, 68 Mass. App. Ct. 103, 104 (2007)

("The victim's testimony was sufficient evidence of [indecent assault and battery on a child under age fourteen]"); Commonwealth v. Gonsalves, 23 Mass. App. Ct. 184, 185 (1986) ("The victim's account of what the defendant did to him in the apartment was sufficient to overcome the defendant's motion for a required finding of not guilty of rape"). The idea that long infected our legal system that the victim's testimony in sexual assault and rape cases is less credible than the testimony of victims in cases involving other types of crimes -- an idea that reflected nothing more than sexism and an unwillingness on the part of our courts to treat sexual crimes as the gravely serious matter that they are -- has been rejected both by statute and by common law.”

When you and others continue to parrot the myth that victim testimony does not constitute as valid evidence, you are harming victims of rape and abuse. This is straight up rape culture and, since I’m pushing back any video coverage on the matter until I’ve finished dealing with Lily because I don’t want to muddle things, I need you to stop promoting falsehoods. We have legal members on our team who have passed the bar, Patchie does not, Opal does not, and neither does You Can Eat Hearts. You are causing unnecessary harm to victims by breathing life into myths constructed by rape culture. To be clear, I am not asking for your denouncement of certain people, just for you to please, stop publishing bad legal takes.

This is also the case in Canada, if you're wondering - https://www.accused.ca/evidence.htm

Sorry, I just realized I didn't give you the US case study. Here it is - http://masscases.com/cases/app/100/100massappct1.html#:~:text=The%20jury%20found%20the%20defendant,We%20affirm. ]

Oct 30, 2022 9:16 AM

Whew, you have no idea how long I wanted to spill this tea.

Alright, I've said what I've wanted to say on this topic. I'm now going to focus on laughing at Lily and her horrible incest stories.

[bobfloydsbabe]

PSA FOR TOP GUN WRITERS

Earlier this evening, someone reblogged my Mob Boss Bob masterlist. Happy about this, I checked the person's blog only to discover that they are a minor, aged 13, and are blatantly disregarding the 18+ and minors dni warnings on fics, including my own.

The blog is @topgunbb – they managed to reblog an additional three of my fics individually before I blocked them. The blog is also brand new, about an hour old when I last checked.

I'm asking that you block them. Please. They are disrespecting boundaries we have put in place to protect ourselves and others. I'm tagging a bunch of people below the cut, but please, reblog to spread the word. This is not okay.

TAGGING RELEVANT PEOPLE: @sebsxphia, @withahappyrefrain, @mothdruid, @yanna-banana, @rhettabbotts, @lewmagoo, @bradshawsbitch, @bradshawsbaby, @seresinsweetie, @wkndwlff, @sylviebell, @blue-aconite, @delopsia, @roosters-girl, @rooster-84, @thedroneranger, @cherrycola27, @desert-fern, @teacupsandtopgun, @rae-gar-targaryen, @joaquinwhorres, @veetlegeuse, @mxgyver, @wicked-remarks, @ryebecca, @writercole, @roosterbruiser, @roosterforme, @ohtobeleah, @callsign-magnolia, @topguncortez, @fanboygarcia

[weirdmageddon]

OK OK SO!!

First off!!! Hello fellow davejade enjoyer i see you. Second off—what sort of things do you wish you could’ve seen with these two in canon :0. Could be expansion on canon scene, arc direction, or just a new scene entirely. for me personally I would’ve loved to see some genuine fighting collaboration going on. I felt VERY teased with all the magic combo’s in collide.

Third! I know they do a lot of music collaboration in canon, and I’ve seen some things with them making a band together post canon. What sort of sound do you think they’d have/what artist do you think they’d sound like?

Thank you :))

okay god theres so much i wish was expanded on in canon with regard to dave and jade

this post is swan dive into homestuck meta and took me over a day to write. so i would appreciate feedback or discussion on this if you'd like, reblogs appreciated!

despite this question being posed as davejade related, my answers here are actually relevant for anyone interested in homestuck meta as well.

it’s just recently come to my attention that there are a a handful of people on twitter who are vocal davejade dislikers. i didnt know it was actually disliked until i looked it up on twitter, i honestly thought it was a joke blown out of proportion but no they exist! it surprised me a lot to see people think they "lack chemistry". not only because knowing what i know about them thats a ridiculous insinuation, but also i haven't seen the vitriol on tumblr. probably because we can actually poast about it on here in an unabridged manner which thus enables better, deeper critical analysis and engagement with the media. i think also people forget that dave strider is canonically bisexual and are too yaoipilled + facing the consequences of the epilogues to even give davejade a serious look/analysis. (dave dates terezi and karkat in separate timelines, thinks jane is hot, thinks roxy is a babe but shoves it down when he discovers she’s his ectomom lmfao. davesprite—an extension of dave himself—dated jade! but i'm going to cover that in more depth in this post since theres a lot of misunderstandings about the nature of that relationship in fanon.)

(as a side note according to what some people have told me in inbox and what ive seen lol i think that ive been inadvertently been getting people into davejade. it's all in my davejade tag here in chronological order if you'd like to get a Whiff. be sure to read the tags on posts in there too!)

even though theres a lot in this post as it is, it doesn't cover everything ive talked about wrt davejade, and i think it would benefit readers to have complementary posts alongside this for the full picture with stuff it doesn't cover. there's a ton about why theyre cute and why i think they work well together in that tag.

here's some highlight analysis posts, but be sure to check the tag because there's a more in there:

post a / post b / post c / post d / post e / post f (← one of my favorite ask responses ive ever gotten)

i think a huge chunk of the issue has to do with how the narrative handles dave and jade. one of the most damning things to me is how glossed over their canon interactions were in act 5 despite them collaborating on one of the most important things in the story. i haven't talked about this yet but i'm going to do so here. because they’re put on the backburner by the focus of the narrative during act 5, people who don’t read carefully will miss the implications that are there all along in canon but easily passed over.

under the cut ive separated it into multiple parts

1. Jade’s Quest: What Frog Breeding Entails

this is an analysis examining apart exactly what jade and dave did while frog breeding. i wrote it while high which was extremely enlightening and it allowed me to comprehend it and hopefully explain it in an understandable way. i also discuss how shitty the lack of on-screen communication between jade and dave was for this part and the next.

2. Jade & Dave vs. Jack Noir

ive discussed this one before on my blog so it's not as dense (see davejade tag). but i still sewed the gifs together and discuss how unfortunate this was to be be delegated to a banner at the top of mspa and the neglect of that whole arc despite the outcomes of it being reissued by characters thousands of pages later

3. Davesprite and Grimbark Jade

i get into davesprite's head here and try to make his motivations about the breakup clear to the extent that i can infer because jesus fuck i love these characters way too much ive known them for a decade i understand their core personality structures and why they think what they do and what is most likely to happen when extrapolating? i also talk about how grimbark jade changed the way the fandom perceives their relationship, leaving davejade on a low note instead of a high note. and then hs epilogues had even worse consequences for davejade but i wont get into it because it was character assassination all around and doesnt deserve my time or yours. but if you wanna know what i think, here

4. The music question

where actually answer this ask like it's an ask and not an essay

1. Jade’s Quest: What Frog Breeding Entails

i wish we could have seen what collecting frogs entailed for the two of them. what exactly were they doing? jade’s quest is one of the most interesting.

before i start i want to take a tangent and say the frog breeding reminds me of back in 2020-2021 when i would breed hybrid flowers in animal crossing new horizons to get a very specific gene sequence for these flowers to not only use to breed for hybrids, but to get known gene sequences that i could use to “check” the genes of other flowers. the goal is to get two parent flowers whose sequences when bred would make a specific phenotype 100% of the time.

this sounds complicated but here’s what i did for the lilies:

(“rare island” refers to one of the first acnh patches that removed a nook miles island from the pool that had hybrid versions of your native flower of very specific phenotypes for each color. i wrote out the breeding chains to get parents that would always breed that exact flower found on the rare hybrid nmt island that is no longer available.)

the cleanup ALL TO GET the white 2-2-2 lily looked like this. and after i got white 2-2-2 lily it was smooth sailing

after all that i could use the orange 2-2-0 lilies and white 2-2-2 lilies made in the black lily process and get rare island orange 2-2-1 lilies 100% of the time. in mendelian genetics these numbers (2-2-1) are quite literally RR-YY-Ww.

RR-YY-ww (orange) x RR-YY-WW (white) = RR-YY-Ww (orange: heterozygous Ww gene)

and all that effort into getting white 2-2-2 lilies enables me to get it over and over again now. i don’t have to repeat that process to get rare island pink lilies. all i need to do for the pink 2-0-2 lilies is breed two default bag red lilies (2-0-1) together. 50% will be red (2-0-1) lilies, 25% will be black 2-0-0 lilies, and the last 25% will be pink (2-0-2) lilies.

anyway sorry back to the main point. FROG BREEDING. it just reminded me of it. now that i think of it the frog breeding process also reminds me a lot of artbreeder back from when AI was only a fun little toy 4-5 years ago

ok so have a look at what kanaya says about what jade must do. this is the coolest quest imo because of how it progresses and how long it actually is

here’s how it works. remember back in act 2, when the wayward vagabond needed to tie a longer cable to descend down the ship (and refused to give up the ones that made up his mayoral sash)? he used the appearifier in the ship to appearify the extra cable across the gap to his location? that’s how the appearifier normally works when when it’s locked to the present. it’s very straightforward.

when jade appearifies a frozen frog, it shows us this exact thing. she appearified the actual frog itself (the same way WV appearified the actual cable across the gap) to her exact location. it can get the frog out of the ice in the way WV could untrap serenity from the amber. if something’s destiny wouldn’t otherwise be changed, it will not be paradoxified, it will just simply itself be warped to that location, with precise carving if it is somehow trapped inside of something else.

if you could appearify it to your location right now, you wouldnt be able to take it out the appearifier’s crosshairs in person later to alter its destiny because the object won’t be there at that time. it wouldve been with you the entire time. unless you decide to take the appearified item back to that location so that you could appearify it in the past, but that’s the most pointless time loop ever and doesn’t change its destiny.

for this icicle frog jade and dave weren’t capable of changing its destiny anyway, because it was completely encased in ice, and just didn’t bother to go after it. partially because it was with jade at the appearifier the entire time anyway and she can’t exactly put it back in there in the future. the point is, besides jade appearifying it to her location, the frog had no other possible routes of destiny. in that part of lofaf where she appearified the frozen frog from, the ice is too deep to get anything out of it (other than appearifying it) and i’m not sure the forge would have melted it in time before their reckoning ended anyway.

the goal of jade and dave is to target frogs on the appearifier screen and trust that their future selves follow through in altering the frog’s destiny. if so, then the frog’s paradox slime will appear instead and its genes would be collected in addition to creating offspring between multiple paradox clone frog genes. then, dave and jade would necessarily have to go out adventuring and find the frog so that they end up following through for their past selves.

if i understand correctly, jade is creating all the frogs on her planet that grow up with manually modified genes. these frogs must be genetically altered from their parents so that the frogs she creates don’t grow up to become one of their parents (as they’d be identical). the mutant offspring frogs “generation A” she ectobiologizes will eventually mature from tadpoles to frogs, assisted by dave’s time travel. then she will eventually target “generation A” with the appearifier to get their paradox slime to fuse with some other frogs’ paradox slime and create new slightly altered frogs “generation B” (and then follow through on altering the “generation A” frogs’ destiny so their slime and genes can be paradoxified by jade and dave’s past selves). repeat until the genes are fine tuned for the genesis frog.

this is why i compared it to my breeding in animal crossing. getting the genesis frog reminds me of the blue rose paths. i worked with the garden council back in the day and i used backwardsN’s “cesspool” method, except i honestly gotta say my white 2-2-2 lily thing was much more involved and carefully maneuvered in a way that i imagine frog breeding is more like. backwardsN’s “genepool method” was basically making a red-orange-black rose primordial soup and waiting for a blue rose to emerge out of it, just increasing the chances seeing a blue rose sprout the next day after watering with each generation of offspring. you KNOW my ass was using time travel, even if i happened to get lucky and got a blue rose without even finishing the big turtle plot. without time travel, most players (95%) will get their first blue rose before these # of days. (open up advanced tag)

there must be so many daves running around to help her going back in time all within the span of a few hours while still having their own linear, older timelines that are much longer than the “time stage” they’re actually functioning in. this sounds complicated but it’s not. think of this “time stage” as analogous to the 3 days until the moon falls in majoras mask. it’s the “time window” all the time travel takes place within, but link doesn’t become a day younger when he travels to a day ago. the timeline of his “self” is older but is kept within the confines of the 3-day timeframe. similarly, in tears of the kingdom, two master swords exist simultaneously for most of history, but the one on the light dragon’s head (who was above the cloud barrier before the upheaval btw) is further ahead on its own linear timeline: it starts as the other, pre-gloomed master sword → broken by gloom → sent to the past to be repaired → renewed over time, existing at the same time on the “time stage” as its own pre-gloomed past self but ahead on its own linear timeline

now imagine this but within the “time stage” of just a few hours within the same 24-hour period. kanaya says frog breeding ordinarily takes weeks. multiple daves can exist simultaneously because they’re operating in the same few-hour-timeframe but one can linearly be days ahead of another. it’s the exact same thing as breeding flowers in animal crossing for irl days but to your game it’s whatever date you have it set to. your irl progress isn’t lost if you go back a few days in settings. i’d often find a week in june to use as a “time stage” to loop through when it would rain at least one hour on each day of that week which would save me the hassle of watering my flowers every day before time traveling to the next.

it must’ve sucked for dave to hear jade say the same things over and over again. the novelty probably wore off pretty fast lol…… dave says he saw his future self fighting and dying to jack and knew that’s what he’d eventually have to do as well. every single dave at all points of his linear timeline understood that and it probably settled something horrible into his heart.

im imagining during the original run dave was thinking to himself: “im bored but cant alter anything about this without creating a doomed timeline. if i dont see my future self hugging jade then i cant hug her even though i really fuckin want to. note to future self: hug jade. aww shit look at me go guess i remembered. hell fucking yes cant wait for that to be me in a few hours” and gives a thumbs up

future dave pov, hugging jade and watching his past self give him a thumbs up from afar thinking to himself: “ahaha i remember exactly what i was thinking there” and gives a thumbs up

but anyway. goddamn. JADE AND DAVE. what did hussie do to you.

this is a goddamn atrocity.. what the hell man. i wish we could have at LEAST seen the text file jade sent to kanaya. we got to see ConversationWithAVeryStupidGirl.Txt but not daveisafunnyguy.txt?

i mean i GUESS the humor is delivered through this

and like, yeah that is pretty funny? but i feel like the single laugh this gives me is nothing compared to the joy i wouldve gotten out of seeing what dave has to say about the cloning apparatus for ants here and talking himself into circles about frog procreation enough to make not just gigglehouse jade laugh, but kanaya too

we spent so much time learning about the mechanics of the punch designix and hardly anything about creating the seed of the actual new universe. we learn about it through kanaya and karkat messaging jade, instead of dave and jade working that out through SHENANIGANS. even though this is JADE AND DAVE'S session. it’s fine that kanaya is helping them, as she should, but we’ve seen parallel pesterlog conversations before so i dont get why we didn’t get that here! jade and dave frog breeding is one of the most important events in homestuck, and yet it was terribly glossed over. everything in the story, their futures, are predicated on their success. not just in their unwinnable session, but the one they split up for 3 years and escape to.

at first i thought, maybe their lack of shown interaction has to do with hussie working out the intricacies of pesterlog/dialogue thing? as he once stated on tumblr:

shoshaumbay asked: In the intermission of act 6, it says that they get to talk. Does this mean that their guardians couldn’t talk to them before and that is why they left them notes all around their houses?  The achievement badge only upgraded their ability to speak to each other as presented through the comic. I.e. it permitted them to speak to each other… WHILE WE WATCH! Do you think all the trolls were hanging out together, not talking at all? Or Dave and Jade were doing all that frog hunting without a single peep?? That’s ridiculous. On the other hand, abstraction weaves itself through the Homestuck reality, and it can be hard to pin down where abstraction is to be taken literally. The truth is, there is not much distinction between the layers of abstraction and the reality they are meant to stand for. John was both literally named on his 13th birthday, and not quite, because that’s silly. The guardians are both literally silent automatons, and not really, as there is indication through allusion they function as normal people too. And the kids went through a huge adventure, achieved immortal god status, and even then had to gain a few more levels just to gain the achievement of simple dialogue as a literal upgrade, as well as not literally, because that makes no sense. The reality is inseparable from the way the story is presented and the way the “game” is played. But those abstractions are also a facade for a more life-like reality beneath it as well.

then i realized, this is not only an arbitrary cop out that affects my enjoyment of the comic in retrospect because they wind up being able to talk later anyway and that makes me feel cheated in these moments, but also still actually awful within these parameters because hussie breaks his own rule here, proving he could have shown us dave and jade talking in person at any time regardless of needing the gift of gab achievement for us to watch them as readers. recall this is also the first time john and rose met in person (at least when rose wasn't asleep):

2. Jade & Dave vs. Jack Noir

this is where i take out my frustration over this being delegated to a banner at the top to the point where readers forgot it occurred.

(also i want yall to take a moment to acknowledge this ^)

i wish their time on lofaf frog breeding and fighting with jack was front and center and wasnt just in the banner at the top of the page. it makes it seem not as important when it completely was, considering that characters brought up what had happened in that scene multiple times.

it is significant because it is at that point that jack noir has killed all of the kids at least once. the only one left being jade who he refuses to kill due to bec’s loyalty

THIS IS WHAT THE REFRANCE (foreshadowing)

jack noir killed john on his quest bed which allowed him to ascend to god tier. then he killed john AGAIN but it wasn’t a heroic or just death so john was revived

jack killed grimdark rose. john smooched rose’s corpse, allowing her to take over on derse.

jack killed dave by redirecting jade’s bullets into dave’s body instead. jade smooched dave’s corpse, allowing him to take over on derse.

after jade shoots him through jack, he’s down for the count. she kisses him and he wakes up on derse; all he and rose have left of “themselves” in an existential sense are their dreamselves. they didnt know they were going to ascend to god tier delivering the tumor. they assumed they were just going to die like for real and not come back which is why dave went with rose since he didnt want her to die alone.

it was also an important point since her time spent with dave on lofaf is the first in-person contact jade has had with another living human since she was probably 4 years old with her grandpa.

for jack noir, we got [s] seer: desend and [S] ==> (3696) which were hella impactful. seeing jade and dave essentially go through the same thing but with an extended battle sequence honestly kinda warrants a flash in my mind. (the sad thing is that unite synchronization was originally written with those pages in mind (the track was originally called redshift) but of course malcolm brown couldnt have known what was going to happen unless hussie commissioned him for a specific track for a specific story beat, probably like whatever he did to coordinate cascade’s music with toby ahead of the 10/25/11 release of the flash and publication of volume 8 on bandcamp)

i think one of the worst parts is that entire conversations were referenced, but cut or never written.

this is a real forgotten homestuck fact: jade was completely freaking out after filling dave with bullets until karkat had talked her through it. very easily forgotten since even though it being referenced twice we never actually saw the conversation. (i overrode the black scratch background so it's easier to read)

wow thats so crazy i as a member of the audience dont in fact remember! would it have killed to write it my guy

and we find out thousands of pages later dave was thinking more about how it wouldve made jade feel to watch him die than knowing he was about to fucking die. if you even care btw

i wrote more about this here

3. Davesprite and Grimbark Jade

davesprite—an extension of dave himself—dates jade but breaks up because he feels inadequate at being the dave that he thinks jade deserves. NOT because they fought or anything. they were still on good terms. davesprite just felt inherently unlovable. john seemed more upset about the breakup frankly.

what davesprite did was because he thought it was in jade's best interest. there is nothing to suggest it was a fight / clash break up. they still seemed to be on good terms, davesprite asking where she went and all. jade says the breakup “is complicated” and “hes going through a lot of stuff”. given the context i think it's reasonable to assume that davesprite's thought process was: “we're coming up to the new session soon and youre going to meet up with dave again and i dont want to make shit awkward with you dating knockoff dave. you deserve to be with real dave instead so im gonna cut what we have going here in advance and distance myself from your life”

jade probably protested about saying how he's just as real as “real dave”, but davesprite made his decision already. im sure it wasnt easy for davesprite to break up either. with emotions running high (sadness, not anger) he probably just left to be alone and distance himself from jade, and seems to harbor guilt about it as we see in the log. that's probably why he wasn't at john's movie party. this is just speculation on my part but it doesnt seem in character for the breakup to be explosive because jade seemed more understanding than john. sad, but understanding.

i feel like a lot of people forget this. grimbark jade made it seem like davesprite did it to hurt her, or for this to mean that dave and jade are not actually good for each other, which is a wild mischaracterization of what happened but the one that stuck with the fandom nonetheless.

not only that, but davesprite's existence tragic and he's understandably depressed. after spending about a year in sburb (accounting for time travel) without john or jade, only to go back and give up your personhood to advance the alpha timeline and become forgotten is fucking crushing, and i think the breakup is also about davesprite coming to terms with that trauma, being okay with his existence as a sprite instead of being a bootleg stand-in for the dave that jade knew.

basically what vintagegamebro says,

it was such a tragic way for them to part for 3 years with no communication, and it was only proceeded by more tragedy because jade then had no one but davesprite to turn to, and davesprite needed anything but romance at that point

grimbark jade isn’t a good reflection of jade’s actual self. she pushed the mayor into lava for fucks sake which normal jade would never dream of doing, grimbark jade is straight up unhinged. i’m sure jade was hurt because all breakups hurt, but it was blown out of proportion (see how calm she was above a few days after the breakup?) because of Evilness. but also as @vintagegamebro mentioned it also felt somewhat … “off”? or out of left field? especially seeing what the nature of the breakup was from both sides in the above screenshots.

when dave says “theres no way i would have done that to you” i genuinely believe him. i have no reason not to believe him. look at him above asking for questions and clarification. thinking about how what davesprite did, a version of himself beyond his control and how it reflects on himself, i think it's obvious dave cares a lot about how jade feels about him

even after this confrontation in the game over timeline, dave laid down his fucking life to defend her corpse from the becs in he hope she could be revived by jane

and to think that after all this he still chose to save her, like always, probably knowing he had little to no chance, just because he cares for her, her life and who she is beyond this moment, really meant a lot for them. i really, really was mad that this would be the last time they would truly ever be together in a way that to me mattered

4. The music question

i wrote this post regarding instruments with this song in the back of my head if its anything. takes about 12 seconds to start after you press play for some reason

this too, closer to the “style”. i like imagining dave going apeshit on drums

[porcupine-girl]

Tumblr: Myth vs Fact

People have been talking a lot about Tumblr on Twitter lately (for no reason whatsoever), but that also means a lot of misinformation is going around. So if you're coming from Twitter, I would like to clear up a few misconceptions, starting with:

Myth: Tumblr is dead. It died with the Dec 2017 porn ban and now it's a ghost town.

Fact

Well, okay, yes, it did die with the Dec 2017 porn ban. Mostly. But it got better! On November 5, 2020, Destielpocalypse happened and Tumblr rose from the grave. Since then it hasn't been as busy as in, say, 2015, but it's gotten over its death and has had a steady stream of traffic ever since.

See the rest below the cut!

Myth: Tumblr is where all the drama and discourse starts.

Fact

Again, this hasn't been true in quite a while. When Tumblr died in 2017, most of the people responsible for the discourse moved to Twitter. Since then, it's been pretty chill, even after Destielpocalypse resurrected it. People like to say that Twitter is just Tumblr five years ago, and... it's pretty true right now, at least in the drama department. We'd appreciate it if you didn't try to change that.

Myth: Porn is allowed again on Tumblr!

Fact

Sadly, this is not true. However, nudity is allowed now. Just no visual depictions of explicit sex acts. Here is a pretty detailed explanation from the CEO of Automattic (the company that owns Tumblr) on why they can't bring porn back right now, even though he would like to.

Note that this only applies to visual depictions. Explicit text (yes, that means smutty fanfic) has always been allowed.

Myth: You should never add anything to a post you reblog.

Fact

Actually, one of the really cool things about Tumblr is how a post can grow and develop with every new addition! Simple Tumblr posts have turned into repositories of useful information or complex scifi world-building thanks to users collectively adding cool stuff with each reblog, or sometimes just asking relevant questions for others to answer in their reblogs.

But you don't have to add anything in order to reblog! Most people don't! And if you have something to say that doesn't really add to the post (like "Cute!") or is just for your followers, it can go in the tags.

Which brings us to a related myth:

Myth: There is a complicated system of etiquette around reblogging and tagging and if you don't follow it everyone will point and laugh.

Fact

Okay, there are some general etiquette guidelines that have developed that most people follow. Like the above, about only adding onto a post if you have something substantive to say and putting other comments in the tags. I'm sure you've seen rules like this around.

But these are flexible and nobody is going to hate you for violating them now and then. If you reblog something and forget and add "Cute!" to the post instead of in a tag, nobody is going to dogpile you. Worst case, people will click back to the reblog before yours and reblog it from there instead of reblogging yours. Or they might just reblog yours because tbh it doesn't really detract from the post. Just don't be rude, and remember that the OP and everyone who sees the post can see your tags very easily now.

The main thing is please do reblog stuff! That is the #1 way posts get new viewers (see below, most people turn the algorithm off). You don't have to add anything or even tag it; reblogging it is just a way to say "hey followers, look at this neat thing I found!"

Don't let the idea that you're not reblogging "correctly" prevent you from reblogging at all.

Myth: It's cringe to reblog old stuff, or to go through and reblog/like lots of things from someone's blog.

Fact

Posts are made for reblogging. We are all here for the reblogging. We want you to reblog. There are posts from 2012 or even older still making the rounds. If someone stumbles on my blog and reblogs a bunch of old stuff in a row, I'm just happy that they enjoyed my blog.

If OP doesn't want a post to be reblogged anymore, they now have the ability to turn reblogging off. Otherwise, reblog away.

Myth: Tumblr is the golden land of no algorithms!

Fact

Tumblr is the golden land of allowing you to avoid the algorithm if you so choose.

Most Tumblr users changed these settings years ago and have been living algorithm-free for so long they forget that when you first sign up, it does have an algorithm unless you turn it off.

Here is how to customize your viewing experience (on the app):

From your blog (the little people in the bottom right corner), hit the Settings wheel in the top right corner.

Go to General settings

Go to Dashboard preferences

The first four are all various algorithms. Best stuff first reorders your dash by algorithm - if you turn it off, it's all chronological all the time. 2-4 add extra stuff to your dash that the algorithm thinks you'll like. If you turn them off, you will ONLY see what's on the blogs you follow. (Note: if you turn off "Include followed tag posts" you can still view the tags you follow in the "Your Tags" tab at the top of your dash.)

4b - If you want to view mature stuff (nudes but also violence or anything drug/alcohol related) go to Content You See and turn it on. It's off by default. This is also where you can set tags or keywords you want hidden.

(These settings can all be found in similar places on desktop.)

Even after you do all this, if you really want to see what the algorithm has to say, just go to the For You tab. It will... probably convince you that you made the right choice in turning all of this off. Tumblr's algorithm really isn't that great, and we're fine with that.

Myth: Neil Gaiman is an active Tumblr user.

Fact

@neil-gaiman has no social media.

Myth: Supernatural is a television show that went off the air two years ago and is no longer relevant.

Fact

Welcome, you are now on the Supernatural website, where even if there wasn't a prequel series currently at this very moment airing, Supernatural will never die. Or will die and be resurrected repeatedly. It will probably creep into something on your dash eventually. Mute a few keywords if you don't want it, but brace for the occasional gif anyhow.

[emilykaldwen]

I'm seeing this discourse re: people going on hiatus/leaving their blogs and I'm just like yo that's not the actual problem

At the end of the day, fandom is never owned by a select group of people, or a specific trend (flashbacks to Cassandra Claire holding court at the harry potter cons back in the day and on LJ specifically). Tumblr, for what it is worth, is not the center of the fandom universe. And it can be very, very lonely when you don't write the 'popular thing' in your fandom sphere, or are on the popular team. I know my team black friends feel pretty damn lonely here a lot of times.

There's fear. There's jealousy. People are, of course, human and these are all normal and valid emotions. What's not okay is going into people's inboxes on anon and getting weird about it, or hate reading people's fic and making a joke/game out of it. Just stick in your lane. You don't have to be friends with everyone - it is, in fact, impossible to have an actual friendship with 100 people, let alone 20 people. But also we are a community, and we all need to do our part. You don't have to reblog everything. You aren't a hub for that content.

But reblogging what you do like? That should be a no brainer. Likes are nice, but on tumblr, they don't do anything. Just reblog the stuff you like. Also try give things a chance. Reblog things you think someone else might like. For example, I don't really care about Daemon, but my bestie does, so when I see things I think she'll like, I do try to reblog them! (like the Daemon and Laena cut scene that just released).

Our blogs aren't just for us, they are also about the people we care about too. At least, that's the tumblr world I grew up in, where people reblog things and tag our friends in it going 'HEY! relevant to your interests!'

Think of tumblr as going through the biggest thrift store you've ever seen and you find this... IDK cat statue with bat wings and you don't care about it but you yell to your friend in the next aisle about it so they can see it. You hold it up like simba to show!

Also, what the fuck, don't bug people about not reblogging your stuff or walking into their DMs to ask them to reblog things that's weird don't do that.

tl;dr, it's not even about reblogging everything, it's actually about just... reblogging stuff you like and this whole thing, imo, isn't about burn out, it's about the weird gatekeeping stuff I see happening to people. Pockets of people in fandom have made it an overall unwelcoming place and make people feel like they need to become content farms/write only specific things instead of extending their creative legs to write what they are truly excited about.

[aeor-is-for-reccing]

Survey Results! Finally!

I’m finally getting to posting the survey results! It’s taken about a month longer than I expected – work got busy and my laptop screen is busted. Also, writing this out took was longer than I expected – ten pages in total.  And that’d be a horrible tumblr post.  So instead, here’s the main findings and the longform answers, and you can take a look at the google doc here for a more in depth analysis from each question.

Main Findings:

Respondents are about evenly divided as to whether or not they reblog.

People generally kudos and comment!

Nobody knows we have a fic randomizer.  (We have a fic randomizer. It’s on the spreadsheet)

Sixty percent of respondents either do or would self rec

The biggest write in answer for why people don’t rec is shyness

The biggest reason for why people don’t read is they don’t remember to go back

Opening up the reclist is contentious, people are generally okay with a script and could use a reminder

What we're doing/did in response:

There’s now a @reclister role on AiFL, request it to get pinged when the rec list goes up or to get reminders as to when to rec

I’m posting what fics have been recced with the 24 hour reminder and the tag list.

I’ve added ‘Less Common Authors’ as a possible theme

I’m going to open up the reccing sheet to everyone – I just have to lock down some stuff first

I’ll update the value filters for the reccing sheet

I’m going to work on a script that updates the basic fields (title, author, word count, rating, ect) for the form.  This one might take a bit.

And now , the long form responses, under the cut:

Thanks to everyone who was thankful that I was doing this! We’re just going to be a thanks ouroboros, happily!

The reason I don’t rec every week is that I find writing summaries hard, everything else is easy for me/The summaries aren’t very useful to me:

So, a short guide to writing summaries for recs:

If the author has something that works – you can always copy it. Part of the reason why this isn’t ‘just a copy and paste what they have’ option is that AO3 summaries can take up space, and we don’t want folks to get sad about having to scroll lots. But if the author has a sentence at the bottom of the summary that explains everything, there’s no reason to do more work.

If the author didn’t provide a one sentence summary, then include the basics of the plot. (Essek gets dicked down by Caleb, Essek and Caleb skip through the wildflowers together, aeorian magic turns Caleb into a capybara and Essek into a hot tub filled with oranges, ect).  Then add an adjective or two that has something to do with tone.  (A hilarious story about Essek being dicked down by Caleb, a tense account of Essek and Caleb skipping through the wildflowers together; Aerian magic turns Caleb into a capybara and Essek into a hot tub full of oranges. It’s surprisingly romantic.) Think about how it made you feel, what genre you would put it in, what tags you’d add on storygraph.

Don’t worry if it’s kind of dry! A) It’s probably less dry than you think, and b) you can do more gushing within the ‘what you liked about it’ section.

One last thing to remember – there’s no one right way to make a summary, people are looking for different things.

If the rec form was opened up to people who aren’t on AIFL don’t you think the name would need to be changed to reflect that it’s not an AIFL thing anymore?

Maybe! I wasn’t planning on not posting it on AiFL, and I’d suspect that the majority of reccers would still be AiFL members (just because getting notifications of something on tumblr is a lot harder).  But to be honest, this would be a relatively small issue.

I'm not a huge shadowgast fan, but I think reclists are cool, and sometimes the fics are relevant to my interests

Thanks!  Have you heard about the other reclists?  There’s @critter-genfic-events for a genfic one that was started by @Professor-Rye and is now being run by @operafloozy, there’s @widomaukficrecs, and I also have the reccing blog tools (group version or single user) in case you want to start your own!

Less a suggestion and more a general thought. I believe the anonymity of the reccers is an important part of this process and I am in no way saying that should be removed, but at the same time, it does feel impersonal, like a lack of commitment to one's tastes. Word of mouth doesn't tend to sway me to read new fic when I don't know the mouths the words are coming from. That said, take this with a grain of salt because, for the time being, I'm not the target audience of the rec lists.

Hey thanks for the comment! I agree with you! There’s a definite trade off in not knowing whether a reccer’s tastes line up with your own. It means that there’s not a great way to add moderation into the rec list, and with anonymity being an ever- dwindling resource on the internet, people’s attitudes towards it have shifted further into suspicion of intent. Even when it’s something like a rec list, I think there can be an anxiety about people finding a way to use it to bully authors – moreso than even having a consistent pseudonym. When really, I think there’s a good reason why reccers might want anonymity. Admitting you like something can be a vulnerable act! Social anxiety was the number one write-in reason as to why people didn’t rec, as is. I want people to feel comfortable reccing fics that are weird or kinky or require a lot of different warnings, and I wanted people to feel comfortable reccing their own fics. And it’s one thing to leave a kudos on someone’s work while signed in – something nobody else is going to see unless they bother to look – and another to put your name saying you enjoy any sort of beastiality or noncon or whatever else where any purity culture lover can object to on tumblr for all to see. The last thing I want is for people to be hurt or harassed because they participated in something that’s supposed to be a net good.

Anyway, this is all saying that I don’t think your concern is unfounded – and while I’m not likely to change anything about this rec list’s anonymity, if anyone else wants to try their hand at running one, it’s something to think about.

Also, I know I tend to read fic the same way, but it does seem to be a ton of repeat authors week-to-week, so maybe if once in a while the list can be to branch out to a never recc’d person?

I really like this idea, but the logistics of it are a little complex. I crunched the numbers, and out of 558 recs, there’s been 175 authors recced. Which is admittedly is a lot of overlap, but also that’s a lot to expect reccers to keep track of.  But a top ten list should be doable!  I crunched the numbers a couple of different ways – top numbers of times an author was recced, top number of different fics recced by an author, and top number of themes recced, which got me a list of fourteen authors – that seems doable. It’s now a possible theme.

More Information I got from number crunching includes:

86 authors have only been recced once

418 fics have been recced, 324 have only been recced once.

Most recced fics are Hard Mouth at seven times.

Royalgreen has had the most recs at 24, the most fics recced at 18, and the most themes recced at 17, but they also have 51 Critical Role Fics, so.

Further info can be found in this details sheet. I've also added a randomizer for general use, just because.

knowing upcoming themes further in advance

This can be done – it’s how the genfic rec list is currently set up. (as a note, while I’m currently running the genfic rec list, @professor-rye was the one to create it).

The AiFL rec list is currently set up so you can rec fics after the tumblr post, with the idea that people would probably look at the list of recs at the google sheet – which I realize isn’t the way it’s currently used. So you can still rec later, it just doesn’t have the same visibility.  (The two exceptions for this are the ‘older recs’ and the ‘hidden gems’ recurring themes, because we know they’re going to recur and they’re not likely to be ineligible when the theme rolls around again, the way works in progress might be).

Logistically, the selecting the upcoming themes in advance doesn’t work as well from the admin side. Instead of remembering that next week is the last Tuesday of the month, I’ve got to remember to count the Tuesdays and order the progress.  Right now the way it goes is that we pick the theme from the randomizer right before we post the reclist, so the same theme gets pasted into the ‘next week’s theme’ section, the google form, and the tumblr post at the same time. If I’m choosing a theme a month out, I select next month’s theme, add it to the google form, then go back and check what I’d selected a month ago and post that into the tumblr post and next week’s theme. 

There’s also the fact that if we give too much lead time, it means folk procrastinate and forget. Most of the recs currently come in soon after I post the tag list or the 24 reminders as is, and while some people on the gen fic reclist post for multiple weeks at a time, I find that most of the recs are for the week of, anyway.

Anyway, I’m not completely against this, but currently the drawbacks outweigh the perks. Figuring out a different way to sort the upcoming themes for the genfic list is on my to-do list, maybe afterwards I’ll come back and revisit.

[nonbinaryresource]

hmmmm not sure how to phrase this exactly, but I've been looking through the questioning tag and thought I could try just asking specifically. (Sorry it got quite long!)

I'm pretty sure watching too many trans tiktoks did not make me nonbinary, but it sure brought up questions. Mainly, what if relating to nonbinary/trans experiences in my case is just that, relating? I'm thinking I might be nonbinary or trans, all because I suck at almost everything considered my gender, from looks to skills and so my "disphoria" is me not liking how others see me, rather than it being my body. I don't want to be my body to people first and then my person, besides I get the feeling top surgery would make me look and feel aesthetically cooler lol but that's just me

Is that a thing or I'm just extremely in denial?

Not sure if you caught the study we were just reblogging on how dysphoria and transness is not caused by "social contagion" like tiktoks, but if not, it feels relevant to link.

Researchers from the Fenway Institute disproved the theory of "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" (RODG) and determined that "social contagion" does not influence gender identity in the largest study of its kind, published earlier this month in Pediatrics journal.

"The hypothesis that transgender and gender diverse youth assigned female at birth identify as transgender due to social contagion does not hold up to scrutiny and should not be used to argue against the provision of gender-affirming medical care for adolescents," Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, the study's senior author and director of Fenway's National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center, and the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, said in a statement.

But I'm gonna focus on the idea of "what if I just relate to trans experiences but aren't trans?"

Okay.

So.

What if you do?

What?

Then what?

You...find out more about yourself?

You...discover new things about your own feelings and comfort?

You...consider all of the options and come to decide on which label is best for you to adopt?

I'm not seeing a downside here. I'm not seeing anything to panic about. The transphobes have turned exploration and experimentation into the boogeyman. Life is about exploration and experimentation. Capitalism has absolutely ruined us. It's ridiculous to expect children who aren't even done psychologically developing yet to know and pick their life path and dedicate the rest of their life to it, including going thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree if necessary. It's ridiculous to expect people to not explore and experiment and have some damn fun in life, whether that's trying out 60 different jobs to find something that they want to do or discarding and picking up a new hobby each every single week to find what they actually find enjoyable or playing around with genders/sexualities/names/pronouns/clothes/etc. to figure out their feelings and better get to know who they are.

There is nothing - NOTHING - inherently wrong, bad, or immature about exploration and experimentation in life period.

So what if you relate to trans experiences but are actually cis? So what you identify as trans now for whatever length of time and change how you label later? So what?

I am so tired of the idea that anybody knows what they are doing ever. Nobody knows! We're all just making it up! The imposter syndrome we're putting everyone through for every aspect of their lives - from their jobs to their hobbies to their genders to their sexualities - is out of control. The society we have built is not meant for people. And that's incredibly, incredibly heartbreaking.

People should be allowed to play and explore and experiment!

People should be allowed to grow and change!

People should be allowed to be confused and unsure!

People should be allowed to not know!

People should be allowed to try on identities like we try on clothes at the store!

Fuck the self-gaslighting society is pressuring you to put yourself through.

I don't care what you know for sure. I don't care if you're going by a label you're unsure of. I don't care if you're going by a label you know is technically not the most accurate. I don't care if you stuck up a bunch of identity labels on a dart board, threw a dart, and decided to identify as that one. I'm here for you. The messy, confused, complex, hard to understand you. The real you.

Could it be a thing that you relate to trans experiences, don't really relate to cis experiences, and yet are cis? Sure. (Slightly tangential, but I think you might get some food for thought out of this piece of writing.)

But don't sit here thinking you have to identify as cis because you don't have "proof" of being trans. That's not a thing. It's just what the transphobes want you to think. You can identify as any damn thing you want (let's avoid cultural appropriation, though!), even if you're only 0.5% thinking you might be that thing.

If you think you might be nonbinary, practice not giving into the thoughts like "but I can't really be nonbinary because I'm only just now thinking about it". Practice letting yourself try out being nonbinary! For at least several months, unless it's just too terrible and you realize right away that it's not right for you. Don't debate on this or put yourself through a court of law or beat yourself down. Just let yourself be nonbinary. In a couple months, then come back to the questions of "is this right for me?".

And there is no "right" or "wrong" reason to identify with whatever identity. Some people identify as nonbinary because they have a very specific, pinpointable, non-binary gender. Others identify as nonbinary because they're not really sure but nonbinary makes them the most comfortable. Others identify as nonbinary because they want to be nonbinary. Others identify as nonbinary because they don't relate to or don't understand or don't want to identify with the binarily gendered structure of our society. Whatever your reasoning, it's both valid and nobody else's business (though ofc you can tell anybody why if it's what YOU want to do).

~Mod Pluto

P.S. If anything in this ask comes off as angry or frustrated, it is not with you. It is towards society and bigots who purport attitudes that harm people, even if in seemingly "little" ways like making them feel like they can't trust their own feelings.

[sapphire-heart-tippy]

Hey, everyone. Asks are being turned off as of right now because I am overwhelmed. I also want to talk about something regarding that. I'm not angry, I have no hard feelings towards anyone, and this needs to be addressed:

"Too long, didn't read" at the bottom:

I have 433 asks in my inbox. It is very difficult for me to get the energy to answer every single one of them. I am going to delete them all (unless I find something I really do not want to delete) and clean my inbox out. Don't get me wrong, I do have fun with these a lot. That being said, being spammed with questions, especially the same ones I have answered multiple times, is not fun for me.

The Jonny Headverse stuff is fun, and I can have negative feelings about it. I have been thinking about this for a while now, but I never wanted to ruin anyone else's fun. I feel it is time to speak up about it anyway.

Please give me a little space. I do not dislike you, I am not angry, I am overwhelmed and a bit disheartened. I very much appreciate the fan art, the writings, the jokes, and everything in between. However, every time I do an event that is only supposed to be for Vanilla, TipVans, Bel, or an f/o takeover of some sort, it is always somehow about Jonathan and the other heads.

It, admittedly, hurt my feelings when it was mine and Vanilla's anniversary and I got asks that were mostly about the heads. I even had a few that were, "Okay but what about Jonathan and Erina's anniversary?" (which we actually did earlier in the year)

It all started with a visual gag I made in a mini comic about my s/i raiding the fridge. I got the idea from Futurama yes, but mostly this one DIY Halloween decoration where you print out a picture of a face, put it in a pickle jar filled with oil and put it in the fridge. Which is why he was next to the pickles in that drawing. I have no qualms about other artists and writers doing the Jonathan head thing. If somebody decides to make that their shtick, then that is wonderful. Yes, Jonathan's Head is an important character in my fanfic, but he is not the focal point.

My fanfic is all supposed to be from the viewpoint of Vanilla. My own s/i isn't even the main character, he is. It's not only about the romance between Vanilla and Tippy, but it tells a story about what would happen if two complete opposites of people (Vanilla and Polnareff) got a second chance. Polnareff remembers everything, but Vanilla remembers nothing. The tension, difficult decisions, the "what would you do in this situation?" feelings, and giving a backstory to a throwaway mini boss type villain.

I digress. To add on to what I said previously, it is discouraging to draw and write my heart out about something only to have it derailed by another subject. I have tried to take it all in stride, but my feelings are hurt. I would talk about Vanilla doing something, it gets derailed to Jonathan even when he wasn't even relevant to the conversation. I would say something about TipVans or Bel or Ramon or Emmanuel, it would get derailed so fast and I would get 20 asks about the heads doing the same thing my f/o or other characters are doing.

When I would do the f/o takeovers, not a single question I would receive was about the relationship Vanilla has with Tippy (although I could be wrong and don't remember. I only remember getting asks about taking care of the disembodied heads).

I don't want any of you to feel bad or think that I am mad at you. I am very overwhelmed and disheartened. I put a lot of passion into my art work and writing. I am very grateful for all of the kind words I receive and all of the wonderful encouragement I get on tags when my art gets reblogged every now and then.

There's this one drawing I have worked my best on and put my all into, which is a semi realism digital painting, I am very proud of (here). When I first uploaded it, I had somebody go, "Okay, now do semi realistic Jonathan's head." I can't just do a semi realism painting. It takes a lot of patience and energy.

I'm asking for a little bit of space, and a little bit of grace.

Like I have said before, I am in no way, shape, or form angry with anyone. Please, by all means, continue drawing, writing, animating, and talking about the Jonathan Head universe. I want you all to have fun and continue having fun. Do what makes you happy, create to your heart's content, please

I only ask 2 things: please, do not derail my other art works or writings anymore with Jonathan's Head stuff unless he is in them. And please do not bombard other artists/writers with asks, especially if they are uncomfortable and expressing their discomfort.

For now, asks are closed because I am overwhelmed with things and this (unfortunately) was the final straw.

Please don't think I will be angry with you if you decide to tag me in something Jonathan's Head related. I will still like it and share it and be happy for you and/or the person who created the work.

Once again, I am very grateful and thankful for all of the kind words and feedback I have gotten on my fanfic and drawings. I will let you all know when asks are turned back on as well. Then one day we can roleplay and stuff again💙

TL;DR: Overwhelmed with asks. Asks are turned off. Disheartened by my art and writing being derailed by Jonathan and the rest of the heads. Not mad, very supportive of your creativity. Wish you all the best 💙

[greatstormcat]

Can I have some advice from one writer to another? It's okay if not, feel free to ignore

Basically, I'm fairly new to posting my fics and art here on Tumblr and I can't stop myself from feeling a little inadequate sometimes. I've been posting for about four or five months now and my writing posts rarely get more than 20-30 notes, if that. I've had my more popular posts, one of which hit almost 1000 notes, but other than that I don't really see much attention.

I feel bad for thinking like this, since so many people say that I should be writing for myself and not the validation of others, but I really want to share my work with people. I've been writing as a hobby for a while but I started my writing blog because I want people to find joy in my work as much as I do.

But when all of the stuff I post doesn't get much reach, it just feels awful. I keep getting the feeling that my ideas/works aren't that great, because if no one else finds them interesting then why should I?

With all of this said though, I feel so superficial for thinking this way. I want to be happy with my work but none of it feels meaningful the more I post and the more my stuff gets put to the wayside, y'know? A few of my mutuals have hyped me up and it feels good, but then it wears off really fast when even after weeks I barely see any notifications from anyone other than them.

Sorry for the long message, but I just wanted to see if you had any ideas on how to stop myself from starting to dislike my work because no one else really enjoys it, or at least don't show that they enjoy it.

Ahhh I know this thought process very well, and I promise you that everyone else that reads this that’s running a blog of any sort knows it too! We’ve all been in this exact same spot, some more recently than others. My first piece of advice is cling to those mutuals, hype eachother up because those are the people that will look after you. Getting a load of notes from faceless internet denizens isn’t going to sustain you anywhere near as much as you think it is. Getting random/insane asks and comments from people who interact with you is so much more important. (Sending hugs to all my mutuals.)

But, that said, I know you want to get your stuff out there to the people that will enjoy it, and this is hard work. I’ve not been going very long although I’ve been lurking around Tumblr since it was first created. My top tips for you are firstly nag the shit out of people to reblog your stuff. Unfortunately a lot of people are happy to hit like on something but leave it at that, they forget that unless stuff gets reblogged it sits still and dies. Reblogs are the lifeblood of Tumblr!

Secondly don’t be afraid to use a load of tags, just make sure they are appropriate ones. Don't tag spam, you’ll get flamed for that as it is terrible etiquette and will piss people off and get you blocked. Use as many tags for your subject/character as you can get in there and your post will pop up in the following tags section for readers. You can also use the scheduler which looks at when you corner of the site is most active.

Third, interact with other people who like the same stuff and they’ll likely end up looking through your blog and sharing your work. This is the one I struggled with the most because my autism is a nasty huge hairy bastard that stops me behaving like a normal human being in conversations. 

Fourth bit of advice, stop comparing yourself to who you consider ‘big blogs’. Behind every screen here is someone writing an idea on their tea break sitting on the toilet. There are no celebrities in fandom, just a bunch of normal people like you and me who happen to enjoy the same thing. Don’t think ‘oh I’ll never be as good as X blog’ because that person is thinking that same though about someone else. 

Last piece of advice following on from that, enjoy what you’re doing. It's really obvious when someone is just making ‘content’ because they think they have to keep up posting to be relevant. Only post stuff you have enjoyed writing/drawing and if you need a break, take one.

The biggest thing is to not hang your selfworth on this, it's just a bit of fun and doesn’t reflect you as a human being. 

That turned out like a huge motherly talk, and I hope it doesn’t come across as condescending because tone is hard to convey. Feel free to use or ignore as you see fit! If you feel up to it feel free to tag me in something you’ve written or drawn.

[rizaposting]

bff help 😭😭😭😭 i look up to you so much (and a lot of other royai/riza fan artists, but you seem the most friendly) and i wanna start posting my own riza art, but im scared ill be booed off the app 😭 any advice for first time fma artists? 🥺 i mostly plan on just making riza fanarts, a little riza x oc, stuff like that. thank you 💕

WAAAHH anon you're so sweet!! First and foremost GRABS YOU you should absolutely post your Riza art! Everyone should post Riza art forever because I'm starving and slurp it up. But you should ALSO post it because it's fun to create and share with people! No one is going to boo you off of the platform, and frankly if anyone tries to they probably need to take a long walk in nature and say hi to some people they pass on the street.

As far as advice, the biggest thing is to try to avoid the "# notes = success/good quality" thinking. It's totally natural to want feedback, and Internet Validation Numbers is encouraging! But if you post something and it doesn't immediately get attention, don't beat yourself up about the quality of your work. Some of my favorite pieces (drawings and writing) are "flops", but I try not to let that discourage me or sour how I feel about them. Sometimes it's just bad luck with timing; or good luck, oppositely

Okay now for more technical advice:

Schedule your posts on tumblr. I usually schedule my art to post at 7:30pm EST kind of arbitrarily, it feels like a good compromise of time zones. Please do know that you might flashbang yourself with your art every time (I do lmfao)

Reblog your work again the next day; mix up your timing and don't be afraid to do a few self-reblogs.

Tag your posts thoughtfully but not excessively, afaik only the first 5 tags are will be where it shows up (EDIT: apparently I'm thinking of 2014 tumblr and it's now the first 30 tags! But I would also posit you absolutely will never fucking need 30 tags. Over tagging will not help, so only tag what's relevant). Series name and acronyms, character name(s), and ship name are good. Also include a tag that you put on all your art so you and others can find it easily!

Comedy usually has more reach. People love silly memes and shitposts and frankly who can blame them! That's not to say serious posts don't also get attention, but just something I noticed

HAVE FUN!!!! this sounds so patronizing, but honestly it's best to do things that appeal to you and have fun with likeminded people. Your passion and enjoyment with telegraph through your work and it will make people smile!!!

I also just want to say that a lot of other Rizalikers are super friendly!!! It can be intimidating to talk to people, but we're all just freaks on the internet rotating a fictional character in our heads. The best way to get to know people is just to reach out and comment on their art/writing/silly posts. It doesn't need to be anything crazy! You can also join fandom discord servers to talk to them on a more casual (and frankly easier) platform, with less pressure because it's less 1-on-1. If you want to DM them (discord or tumblr) def go for it, but I would recommend against just saying "hi!" and then not following it up with anything else, because then I just go "hi!" and then I don't know how to push the conversation forward lol

I would love to see your creations and hear your Rizathoughts, Anon! I believe in you! I hope you decide to come play with us in this rizaspace. Feel free to message me off anon or send me a DM if you want to chat :]

[markantonys]

Do yall still see spoiler jokes in the tags if the person tags it book spoilers?

that's a great question, and the answer is YES. disclaimer that i'm a tumblr elder who still uses the tumblr savior chrome extension rather than tumblr's built-in tag filtering system (i was so used to only having filtering options on desktop and not mobile for so many years that i've just trained myself to only ever browse on desktop and to use mobile solely for checking my notifications lmao), so i'm not 100% sure everything i'm about to say applies to the built-in system, but after reading through the info page on the built-in system i think it works in about the same way.

in total, there are 4 places where tags can be seen:

the original post on your dashboard/on OP's blog/in the relevant tags you're searching or browsing. OP's post tags are visible here.

a reblog of an original post on your dashboard/on the reblogger's blog. the specific reblogger's tags are visible here.

in the notes of your own or someone else's post, when you see a post and click to show all notes. all rebloggers' tags & comments are visible here (provided that you haven't blocked or been blocked by any of them)

in your notifications, when you get a notification that somebody reblogged your post and here are all the tags they put on it. all rebloggers' tags & comments are visible here.

of these 4 places, blacklisting a tag ONLY safeguards against the first two. if i have the book spoiler tag blacklisted, that will prevent me from seeing an original post or a reblogged post that contains that tag.

it WILL NOT prevent me from seeing a post that does not contain that tag, opening it up, and reading all the notes on the post. reblog tags that contain the blacklisted tag will still be visible to me if i'm accessing them via opening up the notes on a post. however, this would be something i'm doing deliberately and so it's only me who's accountable for any spoilers i might see, not the people putting spoilers in their reblog tags. (and as some of you can attest, 85% of the WOT spoilers i encountered were ones i deliberately sought out and then got mad about seeing djkfgj i only have myself to blame for those scenarios!)

so the key issue is category #4. if i make a post, i will get notifications for EVERY SINGLE REBLOG TAG, COMMENT, AND REPLY that is EVER made on that post. likewise, if i've reblogged a post that someone else made, both i and the OP will get notifications for every single reblog tag, comment, and reply that is made to my reblogged version of the post. nothing is filtered out. if i make a post saying "i'm a show-only and i don't know what's to come in the series" and you reblog it going "#oh they're gonna die when [massive spoiler] happens #wot book spoilers" i will see 100% of those words in my notifications, even though you've added the book spoiler tag and i have that blacklisted. tag blacklisting does not work for notifications.

this is why i always say, if you do not know for a fact that the OP of a wot-related post AND the person you're reblogging it from BOTH have full book spoiler knowledge, then do not put any book spoilers in your tags (even vague ones) when you're reblogging their post because they WILL see it, no matter how good a blacklisting system they have.

and it's especially egregious with gifsets! if somebody's made a text post then oftentimes it can be fairly clear from what they're saying if they're a show-only or a reader and so most rebloggers will consciously go "oh, seems like this person doesn't know X yet, i'll keep quiet". but for gifsets of the show, people will just reblog them putting full-on late series book spoilers in the tags with no thought for whether the gifmaker OP might be a show-only, because they're too excited thinking about how this scene in s2 will relate to something in book 12 to spare a thought for wondering if the real human person who created the gifset will be okay with seeing them discussing all those spoilers in the tags. i was spoiled that the man rand fought at the eye was not the dark one within 1 hour of watching 1x08 because everybody was reblogging my gifset and talking about ishamael & the forsaken in the tags lmao and there were definitely some other examples from my show-only-s1-giffing days too.

thus, When In Doubt, Be Silent! or make a separate post saying "guys i just saw this other post [link/screenshot making sure to include op's name for credit] and here are my book spoilery thoughts on it". but, of course, if you are confident in going "hey i recognize this blog and i know they've read the books" then no harm in letting spoilers fly in reblogging the original post!

[ineffectualdemon]

Hello. I saw your post on tumblr etiquette, and well I'm like a lost cat on this site. So I was wondering if you could help me. But I don't know if you accept these sorts of asks so I'm sorry if I bothered you.

Say, I created a post and in the tags I wrote a question I wasn't expecting to be answered. But Person A reblogged with a comment and I found it useful.

Do I then reblog from Person A to express my thanks and add my thoughts? Do I write them in the tags or caption? Or are these considered unnecessary?

Thank you.

You're more than welcome to ask me questions on this site works! I am happy to help :)

You are not obligated to reblog to thank the person who gave you helpful information but it's not frowned upon to do so and it can be quite nice and a way to enter into a chatty kind of friendship

It can also help boost their helpful comment for more people to see

Like I have a post about autistic communication Vs allistic and someone replied with advice on how autistic folk can navigate conversation which I replied to because it was helpful advice!

You can either put the thanks in the tags or in the text of the reblog but if you want to encourage chatting you can do it in the reblog

Tbh the idea that you can't ever comment unless it's in the tags is silly and not quite accurate

We do use tags to chat and to make dumb jokes but if you can build on or you have a question or a story that's relevant it's okay to add. If people don't like your addition they'll just go up the reblog chain

But yes you can reblog and give thanks in the body of the reblog or the tags or the secret third option of dropping them an ask and letting them know you found it helpful

All of those are acceptable :) hope that helps