#still just a hub blog but i want it to be easier to use the correct name for me lmao

[accursedkaleeshi]

Welcome back to Kaleesh Week! New hub blog this year: me, Accursed :)

Posting early to give time to the try-hards & the busy! Entries will not be reblogged until the week begins. Details under the cut!

What is Kaleesh Week?

Kaleesh Week is a week dedicated to the small but thriving subset of the Star Wars fandom that loves General Grievous and his people, the Kaleesh. Similar to much more well-known fandom celebrations such as Smaugust, Mermay, or Whumptober, Kaleesh Week can pertain to any medium of choice. Taking advantage of the fact that canon doesn't look over here to do whatever we want!

What are the rules?

The rules are simple, but should be followed to ensure the happiness of all participants and make my job as archivist easier!

Tag your stuff meant for the week with #kaleeshweek24 or #kaleeshweek2024 ! Tag @accursedkaleeshi additionally if you don't want me to miss it. I will be reblogging all the goods to my blog this year! (we still love TB, F in the chat. they aren't dead)

Any type of creation is allowed, whether art, fanfiction, gifs, videos, or anything else. As long as it's Kaleesh-related, there's no problem

Remember to properly tag all triggers

It isn't strictly necessary to follow along every day, this is meant to be fun! Post whenever you like, whether that's all seven days or just one. You can also post anytime after the week if you'd like

Alternate prompts can be used to mix and match in any way you'd like with the standard prompts, so go crazy

And last but not least, have fun!

What are the prompts, and what's the deal with alternate prompts?

The two lists of prompts a day are there to give any participants more freedom with whatever they'd like to create. The days are more of a guideline, as mentioned above. Go crazy, or for those of us with busy lives, freak it sensitive style in wild space. If you post only one thing of any effort whenever you can? You're participating fam! I will be reblogging your tagged posts when the week begins & beyond. pm me with any questions!

Prompts:

Color

Tusks

Tradition

Many

Food!

Fast

Nest

Alternate Prompts:

White

Teeth

Tech

One

Food?

Slow

Trees

Bonus Wildcard Prompt to swap with: Kaleeshi Hatsune Miku lol

I'd like to join the General Grievous Discord server! Where do I sign up?

If you'd like to come hang out with us at the Kaleeaboos server, simply PM me! We have all sorts of fun stuff going on, and a pretty chill vibe. I'm one of the mods there along with some other big names in the Grievous fandom. Come hang with us!

And finally, good luck, and have fun!

[writingsbychlo]

Hi! I might start writing fanfics and I was wondering if you could give me some tips/tell me how you started

hi my darling!! I can do my best, but honestly, I started writing so long ago now that I can hardly remember. however, if I was starting all over again now, here’s the things I would do;

set up your blog and make it something that both inspires me, and draws people in. your blog needs to look pretty if you want people to follow you and stick around, not just read a fic and move on.

make a masterlist! even if you only have one fic, because it makes your life easier from the start and also shows people you intent to write more!

just start writing. don’t over think it, just start doing it. you can go back and edit later (lord knows I edit a lot), but if you never start you’ll never know.

reblog other writers works, connect and interact, comment on their posts. if you want to make friends with writers and have them boost your stuff, just sending them links to your works asking them to read it is a sure fire way to make a writer feel used/dehumanised, and like you don’t want to be their friend. I get enough of ‘can you read my story, miss’ at work with the kids, I don’t need it here too. be my friend first.

build your network just as much as you write. be a blog people want to interact with, don’t do what I do and let all your asks build up like this. I’m not a good example to follow.

I also have this writers hub, you can check out. I don’t know how many of the links still work, so if anyone actually uses this and wants an overhaul of it, let me know!

[4dkellysworld]

Honest self-reflections

After much self-reflection, I've realized that being on here has now become an activity of ego indulgence in some ways. I started @4dbarbie-archive initially to sort & organise all of Ada's content in a way I liked as well as learn & make sense of her teachings, which creating the 4dbarbie remix posts have been most pivotal in. Then there were some thoughts I wanted to share and I created this blog and shared some of my experiences and thoughts with my writings and journal entries. I came here with some objectives and accomplished that; it was most rewarding and enlightening.

It's only been a week and a half since I first created @4dbarbie-archive and just over a week since I created this blog (feels a lot longer though lol) but now I feel like I ended up becoming too involved in this community and my ego feels a bit addicted & attached and almost obligated to continue being involved in order to help others out. This is counterintuitive to the journey of self-realization; the opposite of letting go of identity/thoughts/ego/externals in order to realize Self. It's hard to completely detach from all that while being on here.

I have really enjoyed my time here and am grateful for the experience but now I've realised it has become more of an obstacle on my path to self-realization. Of course, I'm sure others are able to continue being on this platform in a healthy way while still progressing on their own journey and not attach identity to it but personally for myself, it would be easier & better to step away for a bit and take time to just be in silence and focus inwards on Self.

To help others, I want to first know my Self completely. As Nisargadatta Maharaj said, you need not know to be, but you must be to know. To know is to be. Meaning you do not need to read a ton of information about non-dualism to realize your Self, it is not necessary at all and at some point after you have gained adequate understanding, it is just feeding the mind and ego. You need to experience your Self in order to truly know who you are. This is something that no amount of reading will accomplish (if only!!) because our Self is beyond the mind and not something that can be truly understood through words and intellect alone (which are just concepts). At some point, you just have to dive right in and do it yourself, and going all in is sometimes the best way to do it instead of having one foot in and the other foot out. This is something that success stories have all taught me and I want to thank all who shared their experiences, it most definitely does teach things that theory alone cannot. 🤍

As Lester Levenson said "If anyone of us could stop thinking right now and remain that way, he would be an unlimited Being from this moment on. It really is that simple, though not necessarily an easy accomplishment." Session 4: Happiness of The Keys to Ultimate Freedom

This is not goodbye but more of a see you later. This blog will remain up but I will be taking a pause from Tumblr to let go and go within. How long? However long it takes. I have no expectations or idea on that nor do I care. Though when I do come back (whenever that may be), I hope to see many more success stories of others who have also gone within, realized their true Self and are experiencing beautiful dreams. 🩷

It's going to be a bit hard to go cold turkey cos there is some attachment to this community so I might linger for a bit but again I know this is my ego and mind grasping on and I want to let go of this (the quote "Let go of your earthly tether" from Legend of Korra comes to mind and I love that). I know Ada would agree with what I'm doing too.

Special shout out to @adadisciple for creating her blog as a hub for all of 4dbarbie students to come together and share their experiences! Without your blog (and the anons!), I could not have had some of the realizations I have now so thank you! And it was nice working with you as a team at times over the past week to answer some asks. Don't forget to take care of yourself and don't sacrifice your own personal journey for the sake of your blog! And this goes for the other ND blogs too! You guys are all amazing.

Take care, everyone! Do what's best for you first and remember that this is all just a dream. There is no "must" in anything. It's all just a dream so make it beautiful 😌

May we all realize our Self.

--- Kelly out ♡

[raaorqtpbpdy]

Date Night Cat-astrophe

Vlad has a problem. He has a date in approximately... now... and he's currently trapped in the form of an ordinary house cat, unable to transform back.

For the prompts: Clockwork has a secret hobby, what is it and how does he keep it secret? And: Rich history fluff 🥺 [both from @fruity-hub-blog], and Vlad experiments with a new ghost power--taking non-humanoid shape without artifact assistance--and things go horribly wrong. [from @kuzann]

Read also on AO3

[Warnings for mentions of violence]

Vlad was... stuck.

This was most definitely not ideal, not the least because it was almost time for his date. It hadn't really been a problem two hours ago. However, after two hours of trying—and miserably failing—to return to his humanoid form, it was now, officially a problem.

He was just in his lab, experimenting with a new ghost power, something he'd done dozens of times before. All he was doing was attempting to take on a non-humanoid form under his own power. He'd thought he would just test it out to pass the time before his lovely partner arrived. He'd tried shape-shifting before—though, granted, not often. Surprisingly, he didn't really find a use for it much.

But the point was that nothing about this situation should have been especially new or different from anything he'd done before.

How was he supposed to know he'd get stuck? And in the form of a cat, no less. A smaller-than-average, black-and-white cat, with a red collar. He looked absurd.

Vlad huffed and shook his fluffy head. A cloud of loose fur billowed off him and he sagged in annoyance, knowing he would have to clean that up when he was humanoid again or it might contaminate his ectoplasm samples.

He'd thought using Maddie the cat as a model for his transformation would make this easier. In some respects, he supposed it had. Transforming into a cat hadn't been all that difficult at all. It was transforming back that was proving to be a problem. Twenty years of experience in mastering ghost powers proved to be utterly useless.

After two whole hours of concentrating, switching tactics, trying again and again as he paced across the floor of his lab, he was still utterly unable to turn his four tiny paws into hands and feet. He wasn't going to panic about it, because he wasn't a silly child with anxiety, but he was beginning to get truly frustrated, and time was running out until—

The sound of the a knock on the closed door of his ghost portal interrupted Vlad's thoughts.

Oh no. He was here.

Normally, Vlad would open the door himself but when he was only a foot high with no fingers, let alone the proper fingerprints to open the biometric lock, that wasn't really a possibility. After a few moments, Clockwork let himself in. Vlad had given him an override key so he could come over without being let in, not that a biometric lock could keep out the Master of Time, anyway.

"Vlad, dear, are you here?" he asked.

"Meow!" Vlad replied. He had meant to say, I'm terribly sorry my sweet, but it seems I've become trapped in the form of a house cat and may require your assistance, but that was decidedly not what came out of his tiny feline mouth.

"Hm?" Clockwork looked down, taking notice of him for the first time. "I thought Vlad didn't allow his cat in his lab," he noted, then levitated Vlad up to get a closer look. "You're not Maddie. Vlad never mentioned getting a second cat."

Vlad wanted to respond that he hadn't gotten a second cat. That it was him, and could Clockwork please help him instead of floating him through the air looking vaguely curious.

Again, the only thing that came out was, "Meow!"

Clockwork floated him closer and let Vlad drop a few inches into his cradled arms as the timeless ghost examined him. Vlad wanted to be upset, or at least disgruntled, but Clockwork's arms were so comfortable, soft and strong. Instead of mewling indignantly, Vlad found himself nuzzling into them involuntarily.

"You sure are fluffy," Clockwork observed. "No tag on your collar. Has Vlad not given you a name yet?"

I am Vlad, he tried to say, but what came out was, "Mew."

Clock work gently scratched Vlad between the ears. His eyes fell closed in the satisfaction, and a rumbling purr rose in his chest.

"You're a sweet little thing, aren't you?" Vlad could hear the smile in his partner's voice. "I can see why Vlad took you in... And you're a little ghostly, too. What, are you down eight lives already? On your last one?"

"Meow," Vlad replied, hoping to convey with his tone how bad that joke had been. Honestly, Clockwork had been spending too much time watching Daniel in the time-stream if he was making jokes like that. Vlad would have even said as much, if he thought it would come out as anything besides 'meow'.

"We said 6 o'clock, didn't we?" Clockwork said consideringly, looking at the digital clock up on the wall of Vlad's lab. "My darling is always so punctual. I showed up right on time, but he's nearly five minutes late. He didn't forget, did he?"

No! Vlad thought. No, I didn't forget. I would never forget. I'm right here!

"Meow! Meow!" he said. Curse his stupid feline vocal chords. Clockwork understood many languages, but Cat wasn't one of them.

"You're right, I'm sure he's just caught up in something unavoidable," Clockwork agreed, though of course, he didn't actually know what the cat had said. "I suppose I'll just wait here with you until he returns. What should we talk about, do you think?"

Vlad looked up at his love and blinked slowly, unsure what to do or say. Waiting until he got back would be useless when he was already here, but there was no way for Clockwork to recognize him in this form to help him change back, and asking obviously wasn't an option.

"Can I tell you a secret," Clockwork said conspiratorially. "Something even Vlad doesn't know?"

Vlad's eyes widened and he wriggled in his partner's arms, unsure what he was trying to do except somehow express his irritation that the ghost who supposedly loved him would share a secret with his cat and not with him.

"It's a bit embarrassing," the ghost continued. "Sometimes, when I'm bored, I search the time streams for apocalyptic timelines. Sometimes they're ones that have already been averted, or ones that would happen so far off in the future that the Observants haven't forced me to do anything about them yet. And you know what I do?"

"Meow?" Vlad asked, which of course was meant to be 'what', but he couldn't actually say that.

Clockwork smiled and stroked Vlad's soft cat belly.

"I like to go to places rife with chaos, and make them worse," Clockwork said. "I know the Observants will allow nothing in those pockets of time to actually come to be, so I just show up and make a menace of myself. Sometimes I use my powers, but sometimes I just set things on fire, or hit things with my staff. no matter what I do, it will never have actually happened, so no one ever finds out. It's ever so freeing. Cathartic even. Sometimes I just obliterate survivor's and imagine they're Observants and I'm making their big hideous eyes explode."

Vlad stared up at Clockwork with his mouth agape. He was thinking that he'd never been more in love with the ghost before him, but evidently Clockwork interpreted the look as judgemental because he quickly rose to his own defense.

"I know it's a bit dark, but since I always go to offshoot timelines, none of it actually happens," he assured. "It's just a consequence free outlet for the stresses and frustrations of my existence at the whims of that short-sighted council." He frowned and added in a grumble, "Considering none of them have any depth perception, they certainly have a lot of opinions on what they see."

Vlad mewled in sympathy and pushed his head against Clockwork's hand. Any time the matter of his work came up, Clockwork had nothing but complaints about the council of Observants that kept him in check. As their relationship progressed, Vlad had come to absolutely despise those wretched cyclopes—though he'd never actually mat any of them.

Clockwork sighed. "You really are quite the affectionate animal," he said.

Upon saying so, Clockwork lowered his head and planted a kiss on the space between Vlad's ears.

Vlad felt his heart rate skyrocket, and the next thing he knew, he was changing. His body grew, the joints in his limbs shifting from animal to human, his ears lowering on the sides of his head, his fur receding into his skin.

Then he was standing in his lab, pressed against his partner's body, with Clockwork's arms wrapped around him.

"It was an accident," Vlad said immediately, burying his face in Clockwork's chest in embarrassment. He listened to the quiet tick-tocking of his lover's core and let his heartbeat slow to match the sound. "I was just trying to pass the time until you got here, and I got stuck."

Vlad heard a rhythmic shudder, and he realized that Clockwork was laughing softly.

"Um... about what I told you..."

"I wasn't judging you," Vlad told him quickly, pulling back just enough that the two of them could look each other in the eyes. "Honestly, I think your... shall we say hobby? Is rather ingenious. And considering who you work for, I don't think anyone should blame you for wanting to take out your frustrations every once-in-a-while. Finding a consequence free environment to do so was exceptionally clever on your part."

"You think so?"

"I do," Vlad confirmed. "In fact, I think I'd like to join you some time. I'm trying very hard to be the good guy from now on, but frankly, I miss being the bad guy sometimes."

"Perhaps I'll take you with me next time," Clockwork suggested. "But this evening, I've planned something else?"

"Oh?"

Clockwork pulled away from the embrace, sliding his arms down Vlad's side and coming to rest when the two of them were holding hands.

"The best Italian restaurant in all of history was in Naples. It was shut down by the government in 1997 because it was a front for a money laundering operation, but I happen to know the best time to go. Care to join me, dearest?"

Clockwork let go of Vlad's hands and offered him an elbow.

Vlad interlocked their arms with a smile.

"Sounds divine, my sweet," he agreed, pressing up to kiss Clockwork on the cheek. "Lead the way."

The was a flash of light, and the image of a clock burned itself into Vlad's retinas momentarily, and then they were standing on a street in Naples, Italy, across from a restaurant that definitely looked like a front for some mafia scheme, but if Clockwork said it was the best Italian food in all of history, well, he would know best.

Vlad did ask for a moment to let his eyes adjust. It was a bit jarring going from the relatively dim light of his lab to the sunny streets of Italy at what looked to be around mid-afternoon. Not to mention he'd forgotten to close his eyes when his love had transported them, and the image of a clock was still bright and clear every time he closed his eyes to blink.

Once Vlad was adjusted, however, the two of them walked in, side-by-side, and Vlad couldn't speak to all of history, but it was certainly the best Italian food he'd ever had. And with the best company to share it with, too.

[frosty-sneasel]

I guess this is an introduction!

Hello! I'm Lumi.- Or Frosty. The Sneasel's Camellia. You might know me as @battle-subway-ghost's friend lol, I still have his account password and everything! 😉

Accidentally deleted my account, decided to remake it now though. You can't keep me away forever.

Used to be a Pokemon trainer, I've retired from that though. Still sometimes battle if someone asks, but I'm just trying to live a calm life now! ♥

Nowadays I'm a freelance artist/graphic designer (sometimes!) I have my own professional accounts, this rotumblr is just for me to have fun. (If you do want to contact me for commissions though... 👀 lumi-p@porymail.com)

Anyways, here's my trainer card!

My pokemon:

Camellia the Sneasel (♀)

Aspen the Glaceon (♂)

Cookies & Cream the Vanilluxe (⚧)

Zena the Beheeyem (♀)

Hello! @act11as here again! You know the drill- ooc posts will be tagged as such, and will usually have the color green. I don't always do this, as it can be grating to look at after a while.

My rotomblr "hub" account is @battle-subway-aftershow!

Muse is an adult, mod is a minor. Don't be weird, or I'll screenshot your ask and make fun of you with my friends. Into the hall of shame with you.

(Weird: NSFW/Suggestive asks, fetish mining, etc. Do not fucking do these.)

Like my other blogs- All trigger warnings will be tagged as "[word] tw"! This is to make it easier to blacklist things! if I ever miss something or you need me to tag something in specific, shoot me an ask or a dm! I'll try to remember.

Additional warnings: chronic illnesses, hospitalizations, etc. are an important part of Lumi's character! This will be talked about a lot, sometimes more in-depth. They will be tagged accordingly, but if these topics make you uncomfortable, it may be for the best to unfollow!

Guidelines/Rules I guess?

ANY kind of Pokemon Irl blog can interact! Eeby deebies, sapient pokemon, evil teams, whatever! I cannot guarantee that Lumi will be nice to you, (ESPECIALLY an evil team) or believe you.

*Self-Insert fallers, please do not interact. I personally cannot handle these kinds of blogs. Self-insert ocs are fine, but the idea of a real person on rotomblr being isekaid into Pokémon is not.

IN CHARACTER anon hate is perfectly fine! Be an asshole to Lumi! I'm fine with (again, in character) homophobia, whatever. Keep in mind that I won't always respond to these however, especially if they go too far in my eyes.

Extra:

Pelipper Mail, un-mail, and Malice are always open! Feel free to torment Lumi whenever you so please. (links go to the source posts for all 3 lol)

Musharna mail, (sending dreams) and Musharna malice (sending nightmares) are always on! Once again feel free to torment her.

Magic anons are usually off, unless I specifically specify otherwise!

Organizational tags:

#[nickname] the [pokemon] - Most posts about Lumi's pokemon should be tagged like this.

#Frosty doodles - Doodles, usually MS paint. Probably inconsistently tagged, I forget

#Frosty's actual art - Actual art that may or may not get posted!

#Jore (Jean Lore) - Jean lore... elaborate bit between Mylah, Sprite, and Lumi involving jeans. Yeah I dunno how else to explain this.

#Jylah tag - Lumi's tag for @/tinkatinktrain !

#Jrite my jon - Lumi's tag for @/thatfailedpokemontrainer !

And that's all for now! There'll probably be updates as time goes on, Who knows? :3

[musicismymoirail]

Enjoy a dribble??? o: This is from a weird little world that floats around in the back in my head from time to time. I haven't wanted to fully flesh it out yet, but writing these news reports and blog posts following the birth of an Old God reborn (and an incident they might've caused later in life) was a fun little world-building exercise, ngl~ c:

The Sun Burned Bright At Midnight.

The residents of Gravehill were surprised by an unusual phenomena Yarasday night. A sun-like object suddenly appeared in the night sky, lighting up the town as if it was a hot summer afternoon. The winter-bundled residents were bewildered by the sudden flash, resulting in numerous traffic collisions, injuries and a lingering sense of insomnia in some.

While puzzled at first by the light, it wasn’t long before the cause was located. The timing coincided perfectly with the birth of a child at Mercy Vale General Hospital. A spokesperson for The Accord of the Seven-Threaded confirmed it this morning: an Old God was indeed reborn. This will be the sixth Old God rebirth in just as many years, but the spokesperson assured the public there was nothing to worry about.

“The Old Gods have always existed, and will kept existing until this universe burns out. While this uptick is highly unusual, it’s not unheard and it is nowhere near the record of consecutive rebirths.” The current record is in fact nineteen in the course of twelve years, set back in 367 PF.

The spokesperson continued though. “We’re already in contact with their parents, and steps are being taken to set them up with all the resources they’ll need. We may no longer have a need for the Old Gods, but we still should respect them and treat them no differently from each other."

It should be noted that most people don’t materialize new suns at midnight. However, the new sun has already disappeared and the family is in talks of being relocated to a safer area. And despite the uptick, it is rare to see any other old magic after the rebirth.

Let’s hope the newest Old God continues with this trend.

Hope Springs To Be A New Tether.

Hope Springs, a small island community up North, has been confirmed to be the latest Tether chosen. With the rapid increase in the Old God rebirths, triple anything we’ve seen in the last three hundred years, some say The Accord is struggling to keep hold Tether locations. The stockpile has run dry, according to an inside source.

The same source also reported that Hope Springs offered itself up as a potential Tether. As an island community, it has natural boundaries that make the Tether easier to set up and reinforce. There’s also speculation that having an Old God among its midst will be a boon to the slowly dying tourist hub. The Mayor certainly seemed enthusiastic, in a press conference yesterday afternoon.

“Hope Springs has always had a soft spot for the Old Ways, operating one of the oldest Seven-Threaded Churches in this country. It would be an honor to be chosen as a Tether, and we’re more than happy to make our newest family feel welcomed and at home here.”

It’s a hopeful sign, and we wish Hope Springs best of luck as a Tether is being set up. We all know how difficult a task it can be after Aresdale’s troubles setting up theirs. But the Accord has assured the public that natural boundaries make the process almost seamless.

“It Felt Like Every Molecule Exploded Around Us.”

It’s a line we’re all heard by now. A video from one of the Wilfail Narrows Bridge survivors went viral over the weekend, as they manically tried to explain what happened during the disaster. Fifty-two people lost their lives when the bridge had a catastrophic failure last Ohnesday, with another one hundred fifteen injured.

All the stories collected though seemingly paint a confusing picture to what exactly happened. The bridge showed no signs of failure previously. While the details from the survivors and onlookers are muddled, the failure appears to have happened in a blink of an eye and the few near the epicenter all describe a loud popping sound, like all the molecules of air around them exploded at once and simply leveled the bridge itself.

Given the Wilfail Narrows Bridge is the main road to Hope Springs, many have questioned if its local Old God had anything to do with it. It’s been roughly eleven years since the Tether was placed, and things have been relatively quiet since. The location of the Old God has been suspiciously absent from reports, even when asked by reporters. “We will not comment on the location one of our community's children, especially given the tragedy at hand,” said the Mayor.

There will be a public candlelight vigil held on the 6th at the Sunset Plaza.

Edit: The Morningtide Gazette apologizes for the commentary made by Mr. Fray. The implication of a child causing such a disaster, and willingly, falls well below our journalistic integrity. We’ve chosen to edit that section out, and we deeply apologize to the victims and their families for this baseless tabloid speculation.

“Madness To Pretend Otherwise.”

The idea of Old Gods reborn is such a misnomer. The Old Gods have never entered this reality, and never will. We know they are simply incompatible with our realm, and thus stay away. Are they kind enough to realize that they would unravel the laws of our universe, or do they simply fear their powers will be suppressed if they crossed over?

We’ll never know, and the Churches have been fighting over that idea for eons. What we do know is this: what we call reborn Old Gods are simple humans, like everyone else. The magic that causes such phenomena like midnight suns and sand tsunamis are because of a fragmented sliver of the Old God that slipped through realities, and those fragments enjoy attaching themselves to newly born infants.

There’s a debate to be had that the Old Gods of Old were the same: humans possessing the same fragments. Without the Tether, it’s hard for the modern souls to fathom the powers these humans could wield. They would’ve felt like True Entities, and perhaps without a Tether, they were more entuned with our Gods Beyond the Sea. We simply don’t know, and that's because from birth itself, we’re deemed problematic and are clipped at the wings for the sake of the greater good.

And I understand why, more than any of you will. Have you dull the sun because the hangover hit you too strong? Dance on the atoms, up into the sky, without a worry of falling? Seen existence born into life, and decay in the next? Neither have I, but part of me remembers. Part of me longs to connect to something bigger than myself. I crave it, deeper and darker than you can imagine.

But often, I wonder, is that because of the fragment resting in my soul? Or, is it the isolation I’ve been forced to suffer my whole life because of my birth? If you were able to look out and see lights and people and connection, a world living without you, wouldn’t you want to touch it too?

If that one did cause the bridge collapse, it is a pity. Truly. It’s a tragedy. But, I still understand the compulsion to leave intimately. We all want to leave. It’s madness to pretend otherwise.

-An excerpt from the personal blog of Rue Hioca, the One Thousandth, Seven Hundredth and Twenty Second Old God Reborn and Vocal Advocate for lifting the rule of regarding Tethers.

[7grandmel]

Blog Update - 04/02/2024

TL;DR - Google Form for rip requests and other anonymous comments is open. Link to it can be found on the blog's Pinned Post, which has been overhauled. Tagging system on daily posts has been vastly expanded with individual tags per ripper and more. "Media Player" has been scrapped - rips using tentative names are being edited per their official releases.

Hey everyone! Been a hot minute since I did one of these. I've wanted to make a post talking about the tinkering I've done with the blog for a while, but figured it'd be best to wait until all of it had been done. Well, now's that day - conveniently right as Season 8 of SiIvaGunner is rolling out, fresh out of the oven with Puyo Puyo day.

Let's start with the most recent, but most important change - I've opened a Google Form for requesting rips to be covered on the blog. Tumblr's default Ask box is mighty convenient for me, but over the months I've noticed several users troubled by having to start Tumblr accounts just to submit to the blog, even anonymously! You can of course still use the Ask box if you're a Tumblr user already, but now even non-Tumblr users should be able to request to the blog - or just leave anonymous comments! - completely hassle-free.

Next, to help promote this new request system and to accommodate for all the other changes made to the blog recently, The Pinned post of the blog has been given a pretty significant overhaul, alongside adding the current Eighth season to its per-season filtering buttons. I've done my best to also reword the main body of the post to more properly convey the blog's goals, and to help readers new and old navigate it easier. For instance, I've added descriptors of some of the tags that I use for the blog's contents, as well as links to said tags and their Archive views. Take a look around yourself if you wish!

I've been doing a lot more than than just explain the tags, however - you'll notice that the tags #high quality art and #epic flintstones have been added! To help make this blog the ultimate hub for SiIvaGunner activity on Tumblr, I'll be reposting fanart/official art and just various funny posts under these tags to feature on the blog! If you're only here for the daily posts, you're of course still able to use the prior mentioned navigation buttons on the pinned posts to only see posts tagged as #todays siivagunner. But what if you want to get more specific than even that?

Well, alongside retroactively tagging all fanart and shitpost reblogs with the two aforementioned tags, I've added a few more categorizing tags to all 490+ of the Daily SiIvaGunner posts - most notably, the names of every person credited per rip. This both makes it easier for myself to check how many times a ripper has been featured on the blog prior, and should help you find out more about your favorite rippers on your own! There's also some other miscellaneous tags added, such as tags denoting if a rip has visuals, if a post is covering multiple rips at once, if a rip is a Fusion Collab, and so on - I'll have a post properly denoting all of these tags up sometime in the future.

Finally, back in July of last year I described my thought process for how to handle rips that, due to lacking album releases, lack proper official names per the time of writing - alongside spitballing an idea for a post-navigation "media player". First off, I can say now after six months that I'm not moving forward with the media player concept, as fun of an idea as it was - I don't believe it offered much benefit over what can be done through just using the pinned post's links to begin with. Second off, though, a lot of the rips I've covered with tentative names, primarily rips from Season 7, have gotten official album releases, and thus been retroactively edited to feature their new official names. You can see an example of how this looks with Persona 64, which was previously titled I'll Face Gay Bowser. All mentions of a rip with its tentative name as featured across other posts will also be edited to feature their official release name.

Whew! What a big update! I've been having the time of my life with this blog in the months since the last Update, and the lack of updates here have certainly not been due to a lack of confidence in the blog - I've simply had too many ideas on what to do for them to be properly distilled to just one post! Hopefully this conveys everything I've been doing in the background of it all. If you have any feedback or other changes you'd like to see happen on the blog, please let me know!

[battle-subway-ghost]

Intro.

Never been good at introducing myself. But, here we go.

I'm Paris. Or Ghost. Either one works. Ghost is a nickname, and has been an alias for a while now. I don't really care which one you want to call me. Anyways, I'm 24, and my pronouns are he/him.

I used to fight in the Battle Subway a lot. So if you remember a guy named "Ghost" from there, that's probably me. That's all over now though, I've been living in Galar for a while now. Still connected to my Unovan roots though. Imagine some braviary sound effects here, I don't fucking know.

If you think you recognize me, firstly no you don't. I keep my face private for a reason. Secondly, don't come up to me if you aren't looking to have a battle. Not gonna force you but I don't like talking to strangers outside of that.

So my horse accidentally posted a video of me getting attacked by my rival's Froslass. So my face is kinda out there now. Don't fucking harass me or shit like that, don't be a weirdo. (and no, this doesnt mean ill be posting more pictures of myself. Don't ask.)

Anyways. Enough about me, here's my team.

I've also got a battler in-training, and 3 rattata that I keep as pets. I might as well give 'em all a graphic here.

FAQ because people in real life keep asking me this:

Q: Cheri looks very pink. Is that normal? A: Yes, he does. It probably is.

Q: Is that a shiny alolan rattata? A: No. Bean is albino.

Q: What's wrong with Grungle? A: Nothing. He's a weird subspecies or hybrid, not sure which yet. Either way, he's REALLY FUCKING BLUE NOW, HOLY SHIT. He's safe though- it's not dangerous.

Dunno what else to say here. My main interests are battling, so if you have any questions about that, feel free to ask me. I'm not an actual EXPERT on it or anything, but it's whatever.

Hello! This is the OOC part of the introduction! I follow from @act11as, and ooc posts will be tagged as such, and will usually have the color green. I don't always do this, as it can be grating to look at after a while.

My rotomblr "hub" account is @battle-subway-aftershow!

Muse is an adult, mod is a minor. Don't be weird, or I'll screenshot your ask and make fun of you with my friends. Into the hall of shame with you.

(Weird: NSFW/Suggestive asks, fetish mining, etc. Do not fucking do these.)

Additionally: If your main is NSFW, please do not follow me. I will block you for my own comfort.

ALL TRIGGER WARNINGS WILL BE TAGGED AS "[word] tw"! This is to make it easier to blacklist things! if I ever miss something or you need me to tag something in specific, shoot me an ask or a dm! I'll try to remember.

Guidelines/Rules I guess?

*ALMOST ANY kind of Pokemon Irl blog can interact! Eeby deebies, sapient pokemon, evil teams, whatever! I cannot guarantee that Paris will be nice to you, (ESPECIALLY an evil team) or believe you.

*Self-Insert fallers, please do not interact. I personally cannot handle these kinds of blogs. Self-insert ocs are fine, but the idea of a real person on rotomblr being isekaid into Pokémon is not.

IN CHARACTER anon hate is perfectly fine! Be an asshole to Paris! Keep in mind that I won't always respond to these however, especially if they go too far in my eyes.

PARIS CAN AND WILL BE AN UNRELIABLE NARRATOR! He doesn't know all the details, he can be wrong, he can flat out lie. Just something to keep in mind!

Extra:

Mystery Gifts are now open! And Preferred! Feel free to go crazy with this ^^

Pelipper Mail, un-mail, and Malice are always open! Feel free to torment this guy whenever you so please. (links go to the source posts for all 3 lol)

Musharna mail, (sending dreams) and Musharna malice (sending nightmares) are always on! Once again feel free to torment this guy.

Magic anons are usually off, unless I specifically specify otherwise!

Organizational tags:

#[nickname] the [pokemon] - Most posts about Paris' pokemon should be tagged like this.

#mind's eye - Usually ask games- these are not things Paris would actually say out loud, at least in the way the post says it, to a degree! Consider these semi-canon in nature. Feel free to press him outside of ask games, if you see something interesting though ^^

#Paris used Sleep Talk - a bit of a mixed bag, posts made by Paris either when he’s tired, falling asleep, or actually asleep. Usually angst but can be memes as well. Mixed bag like I said

#rival tag - Tag for posts mentioning/about Paris' rival, also known as @/subzeroiceshard

#mylah tag - Tag used for @/tinkatinktrain- Paris' friend.

#sprite tag - Tag used for @/thatfailedpokemontrainer- similar situation to the above.

#frosty tag - Tag used for @/frosty-sneasel!

#bluebird anon/bluebird tag - Tag used for @/blu3b1rdsss!

#beedrill tag - Tag used for @/a-nickits-den!

#shilo tag - Tag for @/shilo-sumac!

Previous arcs/Lore:

#A Frosty Reception / #A Frosty Reception 2.0 - Takeovers of one of Paris' childhood friends. done twice because I kept getting sick :(

#Gone Fishing Arc - Paris fucked off into the woods and almost never returned! Good look into his character. (warnings for pokemon attacks, injury, and frostbite)

#Kicked to Kanto - Smaller thing, what it says on the tin.

#Team Fauna - Inconsistently tagged, but should have the vital bits in the general area? (Check "Cult tw" if otherwise). Paris goes undercover in a cult to save his friends. This does not have consequences whatsoever (obviously, warning for cults.)

#Unraveling arc - Post Team Fauna- Something strange is going on with Paris' reality... It seems to be falling apart! Unraveling, even! (Warnings for horror, body horror, and unreality)

#Greyed Walls Event - The aftermath of Unraveling. Our Paris is missing, and a curious foxlike entity has gotten involved... (Askblog-style event- this is an AU of Paris, set in a post-apocalyptic world!) (Mild warning on top of the obvious apocalypse for horror and talks about injury + amputation!)

--

And finally, for music enjoyers- Here's his playlist! NOW ON YOUTUBE TOO BECAUSE FUCK SPOTIFY!

[renisence-a]

I want to get more active here, but my muse and urge to be on tumblr is so low. My muses are active, but I don't really have much motivation to go on tumblr. While tumblr is a great platform most times, it can cause stress, especially with activity for me.

I feel an urge to be constantly active with tumblr, which usually results in bursts of activity and then a huge span of inactivity because I've burnt myself out. Losing followers due to this can stress me out as well. (Which, do not feel bad if you do or have unfollowed me, I understand completely, this is only my personal feelings) Discord is what I've been using for roleplay these days, because it's more...Personal.

I can make groups with friends I've met to roleplay with, and I feel less pressure to be active because I can always default to talking to them in a friendly manner. I feel less stress because it's so much easier to just talk to people, when on tumblr, with the broken IM's and peoples urge to not have a roleplay blog post too much OOC content, (Which I also understand!) I feel like it's a lot harder to talk to your roleplaying partners, and to decide things.

So that makes more stress happen as well....

I've been debating whether or not to use this blog as a hub for my discord roleplay, but I also don't want to entirely abandon tumblr roleplay, because it's been in my life and an important part of it for so long.

I think for now I'll be on Hiatus, while trying to still come online to reply occasionally, while I try to figure out this phase of my roleplaying career.

[inkabelledesigns]

Sideblog Update!

Hey gang, it's occurred to me for a while that because I reblog so much over here, it feels like my original stuff can get a little lost. I wanna keep reblogging cool art and posts that get me thinking, but I also wanna have a place where my art can exist and be easily searched through. So I've got a couple of sideblogs I'd like to introduce you to that I'm gonna use for organizing and reblogging my stuff from this blog on. The first is @chroniclesofequinox. For those of you that know me for nutcracker stuff, this one is for you. This is the place where I can put Auran and Loraine's story, along with all their friends. It'd be really nice for ask games in particular, and for those of you that have questions about this world outside of that. The invitation is always open, but sometimes I know that needs reiterating.

For my general art and voice acting, there's @katalystsstage, which is the same handle as my YouTube page. I'm gonna be adding this to my linktree so it can serve as a gallery of sorts for my work.

For dolls, I have @heya-dollface to share doll customization tips and act as a resource for the craft/a hub for my photography.

To clarify, I'm still gonna be sharing all of these things on my main blog here. I'm just also going to be putting them over there so it's easier to find stuff I'm looking for and keep organized. And I think I'd also like to bring some of what I love over on my Bendy sideblog, @angelofthepage, back over here. There are some Bendy things that I want to be shared here in addition to there. I technically have a sideblog for my AU, @searchingthedepths, but I'm gonna be real, it's been so dead for years now, I dunno if I wanna open it back up. XD lemme know your thoughts, I'm curious to hear what you're thinking.

[mille-marteaux]

Touhoumon Purple (pinned post)

This is a pinned post! There is newer blog content below this point, but the rest of this post is contained beneath the Read More button.

Last update: March 19th, 2023

Documentation, downloads:

Changelog:

New documentation hub and landing page. It's included as a link to a Google Spreadsheet. While this is primarily the same as the contents of the text files, its easier on you for not having to juggle like ten tabs or whatever.

Mandatory Strength boulders have been pre-moved by default. Optional ones for items still require the HM, however.

Starters now evolve at level 30 instead of level 36. Learnset levels are adjusted for starter Chibi forms and evolved forms, including stone evolutions.

Red UFOs exchanges changed. They are now used for IV maxing NPCs near Mossdeep.

There are four NPCs with different IV spreads.

One is all 31. This is for most casual users in-game.

One is Attack 0, rest 31. This is to minimize self-damage from confusion on puppets that aren't using their Attack stat. Very min-maxy.

One is Speed 0, rest 31. This is even more niche and min-maxy than the last; the only use case for this is for purposefully slowing puppets down for Baton Pass. Gen 3 will sometimes use Baton Pass as a neutral turn switch, similar to U-Turn.

The last is Attack/Speed 0, rest 31. This is very niche and min-maxy. This is again for Baton Pass, but also minimizes confusion self-damage.

EV training NPCs in the Frontier changed. They now give 4 EVs in their listed stat per battle. This slows the process of EV training down but makes it way easier to make specialized EV spreads.

All TMs are now in Lilycove Mart, as well as the "rare" berries

Tori can now evolve into Chibi versions of the birds in the sprite

Yes, this does some absolutely ridiculous things to their movepools. blast burn mystia lets goooooooo

Tewi, Attack Tewi, and Defense Tewi can now all fully slide Attack and Defense could already slide, so this just makes it funnier. Use a Power Shard on Attack Tewi to turn her into normal Tewi, etc no advent though she can keep that movepool to herself

"Energy Ball" has, finally, been renamed to "Focus Blast"

Evolved Koishi now holds PP Up at 50% and PP Max at 5%

Reisen II buffs, finally -- Typing is now Heart/Fire -- Stats are now 65 HP, 60 ATK, 80 DEF, 130 S.ATK, 65 S.DEF, 85 Speed -- Her level-up movepool is unchanged, but she can learn a huge mess of special moves via TM now. This makes her usable if you want to, but you have to invest in her pretty heavily depending on what you may want to run -- Her primary ability is now Magnet Pull -- Gained Pickup as a secondary ability

Added another above-curve item, similar to Elder Pain and Psycho Wand -- It functions as a Quick Claw that always activates. Due to its relative ease of obtaining compared to the previous two items, there is only one way to obtain it unless playing the Sandbox version

This is actually the final update to this hack because I'm sick of binary hacking. It's tedious, slow, annoying, and things can just break. I'm tired of making multiple gigabytes of backups just because I want to change some images or text around.

This project is done! Complete, finished. There is nothing more that I can reasonably fit into this game anymore that I want to include.

I want to be done with this project.. so I am! Unless something is broken, I guess. If it literally does not function by my own fault, I'll fix it, but I'm not adding or changing anything else from this point on.

The shift to a Google Sheet is because we anticipate the current hosting, and by extension website, to go down permanently.

While backups are in place whenever a new hosting plan is picked out, this will continue to exist as a central information hub just so you don't have to thumb through multiple text files and wiki dive.

As of the time of posting this, the documentation is not 100% complete - I have yet to do level-up movesets and TM/HM compatibility, but I intend to work on that soon enough.

There are a few more things cooking right now, so stay tuned!

[stevetown]

On The New Tumblr Desktop Dash

I've been using the new Tumblr desktop dashboard for a few days now and I have some Thoughts that I thought would be useful to put out in to the wild. Most of the reaction I've seen has been...abnormally harsh about this UI update, so I think it would be interesting to actually go through the changes and point out what I like, what I don't, what I think could use some improvement, and maybe break down a little about why those Twitter comparisons are way off the mark.

More below the fold, but the tldr for me is - I think it's great! At the end of the day, I feel like I use the desktop version of Tumblr more and more since the change. Whereas before I used to just pick up my phone and refresh the app, now I get a hit of dopamine flipping over to the Tumblr tab when I need a work break.

The change is clean and logical, and as someone who came to Tumblr a year ago and still never quite grokked what all the icons at the top meant, having them spelled out is much nicer than guessing what they mean, even for someone who has become more familiar with the site. And to be clear, from what I can tell that's the goal of this change - to make it easier for newer people to use Tumblr and find their way around. Despite all the hate this change is getting, that is an unabashedly good thing.

The Left Nav

It's really, really clean. The old dash had a lot of unused space on the left, it makes sense to carve some of that out to have a menu that actually lays out what each icon means. The font size and style is comfortable without overcrowding. It just feels more...confident? Like these are the features Tumblr has. Use them! It's also just a more familiar web browser experience for anyone who has been using web apps since the dawn of email.

The badges also fit much nicer with the left nav. They don't float above an unclear icon, they're right next to what it says on the tin. You got 20 new posts to read, buddy. 5 new notifications. 1 anon ask. It's just better on my eyes.

I do understand the gut reaction that things are "too" cluttered. One of the first things I did was snooze Tumblr live and that helped me out a lot. Just removing all of the noise of live tags and loading-in thumbnails of people I'm not interested in watching went very far. It brought the post content further up on the screen.

A little before and after snoozing Live:

Explore

I didn't even know what Explore was used for before. It was a compass icon. I think I thought it was some kind of search? I can't remember if I ever clicked on it before. Explore is much more interesting to me. It makes me curious. For a site that struggles with getting new users to find new content, it's a beacon that says "Find some cool new stuff!"

My problem with Explore is that clicking on it...doesn't get me much. The landing page just takes me to a feed from @todayontumblr that almost never has any content that I'm interested in. The "For You" tab on my regular dash is where I go mining for new blogs, along with "Your Tags." If Staff finds this change leads to more Explore click-throughs, I'd love if the tab itself get some love and made it a hub for finding new content easier. Maybe mixing up a feed of any tags you're following, trending posts, and other algorithmically sorted goodies that I'll want to take off the shelf and put in my chronological dash. I want it to be a place with the goal of encouraging me to follow new blogs.

Live

The transition to the Live page doesn't feel good to me. You're taken to a totally different kind of page, and the UI jumps all the way to the left. It feels like you're going to a separate site. At least when you snooze Live it also removes the menu item. That's really nice! But I'll save Live thoughts for another day.

Activity/Messages/Inbox

I never knew how much I suspected these things were a bit redundant, but I'm glad now that they're separated and labeled correctly. I don't have to remember what the face icon/mail/lightning bolt all mean or why they're different. Things are much cleaner in that regard.

I don't really care for the popups when you click on them. Those do feel cluttered to me, like I'm going to lose sight of my dash, or the notifications. I don't have much UX advice here, other than to say I think I prefer how the Inbox is handled, where you're just taken to a full page view of the page. However maybe another solution would be how the Account and Settings icons are conducted...

Account/Settings

This is the section that sold me on the new dash. On the old dash, I found navigating the Account and Settings options...ephemeral. I was afraid I was going to lose my place if I didn't find the menu I needed. Here, having them slide out as a drawer, keeps me in place and lets me orient myself easier. It's made exploring settings overall frictionless. I've changed dash palettes like ten different times just because I could and it was easy to find. Maybe something similar for inbox/messages/activity would make the UI feel more consistent and less overcluttered-feeling?

I do notice that the Account dropdown adds a new scrollbar which makes things like the t logo and badges jump to the left. That can be a bit disorienting.

TumblrMart/Get a Domain

The Get a Domain menu item is fine, but TumblrMart feels like it needs some love. On a new refresh, clicking the icon loads for a total six seconds before the mart pops up. By this point, if I wasn't intentionally testing, I would have just moved on. Again, I also just don't like pop-ups like this. Feels loosey. Much prefer the full-spread domain page you get.

Create

This is maybe my least favorite change. Every time I switch to my Tumblr tab, I see it in the bottom left and think it's the "Where were we?" button. When I do want to create a post, it feels like I have to travel far to get to the button, and then I have to travel again when the dots come up to select what type of post I'm making.

I wonder if just tucking it at the bottom of the menu under "Get a domain" would be better? Or at the top of the menu? Not sure. I feel in my jellies there's a better spot for this one.

On Twitter

If I can address the most frequent criticism I see on this site, which is that @staff are trying hard to "ruin" Tumblr by "turning it into Twitter," I understand that gut reaction.

But I'd encourage folks to think about that for a minute. UIs change, and a left-aligned nav is extremely common for a reason. Since the dawn of email, menu navigation has been relegated to a left sidebar. Twitter is not "burning to the ground" because their nav bar was on the left. Having a left sidebar means literally nothing in the grand scheme of what makes a website what it is.

What, truly, has this nav update changed? It does not change the functionality of the site at its core at all. It doesn't change what you can post, how you can post, what content you find, reblogs, or tags. For a site that struggles with new users "getting" the site and finding their way around, this nav change makes it much easier to settle in with something a bit more ubiquitous to the modern browser-viewing experience.

Thus leading me to believe the only reason people hate on this change so vehemently is they don't want to see new users or any effort at all to attract them at all, and I think that's exclusionary crap. Knock it off.

Change is Scary!

That said, the change is scary! Having your muscle memory interrupted isn't fun and can take a while to get used to. Every change has a growing period. I get that. For me, I got over that period fairly fast, but I recognize this process is different for everyone, especially those who have been around here for a lot longer than I have.

The change is also open for valid criticism. There are usability and likely accessibility concerns for sure. Staff needs time to iterate, and they need to know what problems are actually worth fixing and addressing. "I hate it turn it back" doesn't help anyone - it doesn't help Staff, and it doesn't help new users who are trying find a new place on the internet to call home after *shakes fist at the rest of the internet.*

I really like this change as a starting point, and I can't wait to see it iterated on further.

And on a small end note, if you also have thoughts and opinions that you want to tell Staff, please, please, please remember there are other human beings on the other end of line.

[purplekoop]

Okay so question:

As I'm posting more and more about War Bots, I wonder if that would warrant getting its own side blog, while this remains as my general personal blog and the hub for smaller projects like Role Requeue.

The main pro to this is organization: War Bots posts are almost always super long, often have big images, and are for a pretty niche audience at the moment, so for people scrolling through my blog backlog I can imagine they're a bit of a nuisance. While you can easily find every War Bots post just by searching for the tag on my blog, it'd be easier to find stuff on its own separate blog where the Overwatch takes and twitch links and random cute dog videos I find aren't clogging things. I'd also be more willing to tag more specific things, like individual characters, different types of posts, and so on, which could be useful for later organization.

There's also the more subconscious benefit that if I have a dedicated War Bots blog, I'd be more encouraged to post to it regularly. I'd feel awkward if I had the second blog and never used it, so... motivation by avoiding mild embarrassment?

The cons are... a little more numerous.

The main issue is that I'm lazy and have never had a side blog before. While I'm aware Tumblr makes having a side blog relatively easy, it's still more of a hassle than I'm used to.

A more serious issue is that it's less convenient for other people too. If anyone who wants to follow the project wants to keep seeing posts for it, they have to go follow the other blog, which I'd have to advertise here and also would probably cross-promote posts. It also hurts how many people in the future could get their eyes on it, since just by virtue of being a variety blog (granted with a heavy Overwatch lean) more people follow this blog than a new blog dedicated entirely to a project with its own specialized tags that wouldn't get seen by anyone not already aware of it. If I want more people to know about War Bots (which, to be transparent, I do), then it'd be more probable for people to see it on the blog that uses established popular tags like Overwatch.

The last big thing that discourages me from going ahead and making a War Bots sideblog is a little more silly, but is still a concern in my head. So like. If I make a separate blog for War Bots... why don't I make a separate blog for, say... Role Requeue? That's another project with a dedicated sub-audience that might prefer a dedicated blog for it. What about one for my Splatoon OCs? That one definitely could benefit from both urging me to post more about them and also better organization, and I don't think anybody follows this blog currently for the sake of Splatoon content, so it would warrant getting a separate audience there. And those are just the things I actually post about on here, there's way more original projects like War Bots that I have in mind and wanna talk about some day. Obviously those don't warrant blogs now, but what about later? It's kind of just opening pandora's box for someone with so many random projects like me.

I dunno, just things to consider. Right now my current stance is to not make a separate War Bots blog yet, but I want to hear specifically what people think. I'd make it a direct "yes or no" poll but that feels to harsh, so I'd appreciate feedback in the replies or reblogs on this post. I'll make a separate poll in a moment, but that'll be more for fun and vibe checking than any serious decision making.

[protect-namine]

I was gonna put these tags in tumblr's feedback form but like. if I was someone reading feedback, I'd honestly rather read something that's actionable (because sentiment is easy to understand but hard to make solutions for) so I'm just gonna draft here some suggestions before sending, because apparently, I have opinions. anyway this'll just be one of many, I'm sure staff will see a lot of suggestions in their time, so I'm not really expecting anything to come out of this. but uh, my two cents:

okay, first of all, what is tumblr? (I promise I'm going somewhere with this, it informs the actionable points later). I think it's obvious now that the tumblr userbase wants tumblr to stay true to what makes tumblr unique instead of copying what other social media sites are doing. but what is it that makes tumblr unique? why did people come here, and why have users stayed on this platform? a lot of us have been here for more than a decade now despite this site "slowly dying" and just hanging on by a miracle.

for me, what I like is how different tumblr culture is. tags function as community hubs, as ways to archive and organize individual blogs, and as quiet commentary. blogs are not treated like social media "user accounts" tied to an identity and one way of socializing. they are pseudonymous and flexible enough to function as a portfolio, a diary, an account to interact with other accounts, a collection of essays, anything really! it's a blog! you can do whatever you want! as much as we engage with other users, blogs are also a personal space just for you. this is your own little place on the internet, your own bulletin board. it can be anything you want it to be. and like, the pseudonymity thing (and not making follower count public) is important, I think, because it informs how users interact. nobody here gets influencer points. just do you. it's freeing in a way other sites aren't.

also, you can queue posts. how neat is that? I think it's cool because posts have longevity in this site, which also builds into site culture. this is why we have homegrown memes and inside jokes. posts don't disappear after 24 hours. you can reblog 10 year old posts if you think the art is really cool or the joke is really funny or the post is still relatable, and no one will find that weird.

and that's the thing, isn't it? tumblr is a microblogging site before it is a "social media" site. customizability is built into the platform. don't want an algorithm? you can opt-out on so many ways your dashboard can show posts. you can customize your blog theme and create your own tags to organize posts. you can change your dashboard colors. posts don't have a character limit and they give you so many tools for formatting. you can make sideblogs!! double, triple the blogs!! maybe you have a public fandom blog, an aesthetic blog, and a personal diary that you keep private. so many tools to make your experience flexible.

okay, so what are actionable things we can do to double down on what makes tumblr special? mind you, these are all just suggestions and like, I didn't really think of how easy or fast they will be to implement nor how much money this will rake in. but like. also, even if these suggestions are stupid hard to do, I believe that just showing the general direction of changes to do and prioritize should be reflected on showing off what makes tumblr different. and I hope to illustrate that here.

so, sticking on that theme of blogging and customizability:

we have a blog system. cool! you know what blogs have? about pages. tag pages. we used to make custom pages for this, now newer users just link their carrd. yeah, that's easier, but what if all tumblr blogs just had a default about page and tag page? like, you know what frustrates me about the mobile view for blogs? I have to manually link about and tag pages there (or carrd links, but I don't have a carrd). why can't it be a default thing? make all blogs have an about page and a tags page. users can turn it off if they don't want it. users can customize the pages further if they want to make it fancy. the tags page can list your top 10 tags or whatever as a start. we already show popular tags in a blog's search bar, so just take that to the next level. and this has the added benefit of reminding people that, hey, you have a blog and this is your playground for self expression. playgrounds are fun when there are toys! give users toys for their blogs, tumblr!

a functioning blog navigation system. what do all blogs have? well they have submissions and asks, and users will usually have some custom tags for them. blogs have a whole archive system that's underutilized and rather hidden. why not create a system that makes it easier to find all of these when scrolling through a blog? let users set their custom tag for asks and make that visible in the blog navigation menu, or just make them more accessible and easier to find. I don't want to go to the web version and type /archive in the url anymore. also, users can decide which ones to enable/disable in the nav system (maybe users don't want submissions or archives there, that's cool too).

users can see the top posts for a blog. cool! how about we make a customizable version of that? like, we can still keep the tumblr-generated top posts, but what if we let blogs have a user-generated highlights page as well? keep the highlights page limited to a couple of posts, maybe 10. artists can put their favorite art there. writers with their fics. fandom blogs with their meta essays and funny posts. aesthetic blogs with gifs and moodboards they're proud of. random posts about their day that they want people to know. maybe a blog has a combination of all of them to show the variety in their blog. give users a way to show what's generally on their blog in a flash. like top posts, but users decide which ones are the top one. like pinned posts, but longer.

we have a badge system. cool! how about we let users create their own custom badges? and let them share those badges with others? heck we can even make it a paid feature. I buy a badge from the marketplace, tumblr gets a small cut for distributing, but the creator gets most of the payment (this is important! pay your artists!). I mean, this is already a thing with blog themes (though idk, do people actually pay for themes these days?)

this one is just a personal thing, but aside from badges, can we get little hats for our icon/pfp/avatar/whatever people call it these days? like the top hat from that one april fools'. just a lil hat on the dashboard, I think that would be cute. :)

create an onboarding experience for new users. show users a guided tutorial on what settings they can opt in or out of, what they can customize on their blog, how to follow tags, and so on. maybe we don't need to appeal to how users from other sites use those sites. we want them to see what makes tumblr unique and how to actually see it. and I know what you're going to say. "oh, but the friction, protect-namine. the onboarding experience means it takes longer for users to start using the site". one: make it optional then. two: honestly, we probably should have more friction because we have a spambot problem. one of the best deterrents for spam is making it harder for them to start using the site.

tumblr is a playground and playgrounds need toys that are fun. tumblr live/tv? hate it. polls? love it, it builds community and everyone likes clicking buttons. layout change? don't like it, it makes tumblr look like other sites and it looks cluttered and takes attention away from the dashboard. ability to set popular tags in a blog search bar? love that, it makes my blog mine, now can we just extend this concept to every other change we can do for the site?

I am suggesting these things with love. maybe some of these suggestions are too hard or we don't have resources for them, maybe some of them are already in progress. I have no fucking idea. but I just think tumblr already has something going on for itself, and I would really like for that thing to keep going and be prioritized instead of seeing this site be cannibalized into something it isn't (a twitter clone).

[cdevroe]

Diversions #4: Tree branches and LLMs

Diversions is the central hub for news about the membership, behind-the-scenes details of my personal projects, as well as a wide variety of links to people, places, and things that inspire me.

A bit of housekeeping: I’m turning Diversions public. While a fair number of people have signed up for both free and paid memberships (thank you!), my analytics show that not everyone logs back in to read each edition. Perhaps it is a bit too much friction? So, I’ll be turning the free membership into a more newslettery type subscription and the paid membership I’ll reserve for more exclusive content and still as a way to support my projects. Stay tuned.

I could bore you with excuses as to why there hasn’t been a Diversions since early June and that I plan to publish more regularly, but that would be breaking my very first tip for blogging – “Don’t post about what you will do, post about what you’ve already done.”

Summertime is moving at breakneck speed. As Anh put it in a recent, and lovely designed, weeknotes post “It’s July, and the passage of time continues to be disorienting.” Well, it is August and I only read that post today and so that just reenforces the point. I’m not sure if it is age, busyness, or *waves arms gesturing at everything* but disorienting is a great way to describe how time seems to be moving.

Since the last Diversions was published, we’ve had family reunions, building permits and variants filing, glamping trips, dinner parties (with us hosting 25 people

), blueberry picking, trees falling, software updates shipping, and lots of customers. There was a week that felt like far too much. I need to be more careful with my scheduling.

That being said, things are good.

Spending 8-10 hours cutting a felled tree led to some meditations on lessons learned from the experience. This was a tree we knew would eventually come down. Fortunately, the only thing injured was a relatively new pear tree. But the amount of work to clean up after something like this was not expected. Trees are bigger when they are laying flat in your yard and you don’t want them there.

One lesson that was reinforced was to take large projects and make them into many small ones. We’ve had a hot summer so working in the afternoons would have been extremely unpleasant – so, I woke up early each day and got a little more of the tree taken care of. Steady progress made me happy and I also didn’t totally wear myself out. There is still a bit left to do.

Another lesson is that even though a less-than-great thing happened, I did get a few years worth of campfire wood stacked in the backyard. Each windstorm usually snaps enough limbs to give me a fair amount of sticks and branches to have some nice fires. But this new bounty means that I likely won’t need to go get fire wood for our fire pit for many summers. And it was free!

I’m using LLMs a lot lately. I continue to use them as an accelerator. And they’ve grown more capable and I’m able to run them locally (both to cut costs and to get more familiar with how they work).

I’m using Simon Willison’s LLM command line tool to install and interact with models locally (and, online). The command line isn’t the best interface for interacting with these chatbots – a web UI allows for dragging and dropping, easier copying and pasting, and other tools built on top of the chatbots. However, it is a great way to do quick prompts right from where I am in my project. I’m looking forward to seeing how local models progress.

Some links for your edification:

Jordan Stone on TikTok – If you would like to trip on acid without harmful drugs getting into your spinal fluid, here is your chance.

Aegir Hallmundur’s blog – A fun blog where each post has its own style. It reminds me of Jason Santa Maria‘s blog “back in the day”. Particularly V4.

Zellyn Hunter Recreates Schotter by George Nees – Don’t miss the multiple parts. I cannot skip a blog post recreating analog generative art.

The Nook by Isaac French – Yes please.

Solstice 2024 – Ian Giffin shares a pinhole solargraph showing the path of the sun on the shortest day of the year.

Meredith Frampton – Extraordinary work.

[x-other-souled-x]

I think we're thiiiiiiis close to moving accts soon, and yes i made sure the new blog got the boop...

Our record keeper of a headmate outlined some things for us and I think we do have a better understanding now of how we function as far as social media goes. Trust me, before this it was a mess and honestly stressed a lot of us out. Now that we can better understand our needs and what we want, we can prepare accordingly.

I never used to think we had any real issues, and idk if this even counts as a "real" issue but it was something we didn't know was causing distress so it's good to know it anyway. Basically, jumbling up ppls spaces that was clearly labeled for them causes issues, no duh. But we didn't really understand where the jumbling and encroachment was coming from or how it was even happening. It took a while of really sitting down and experimenting and seeing what made us feel bad to figure it out, and we determined that yeah actually everyone DOES need their own blog or acct or whatever. For tumblr it's easier, sideblogs make it easy, but for other places it's gonna take some setting up...

We do plan to be on twitter and mastodon too, and we've had a few of the more classically inclined headmates make dreamwidth accounts. I think we're gonna use a shared bluesky until it's less small or it allows easy switching between accounts like twt app does. Anything with built in easy switching, anyway. Anything that doesn't its... just not realistic to ask a bunch of ppl who are chronically tired to log in and out over and over lol...

This is what we determined...

Sadly only the main blog got the boop icon, since no side blogs were made (no clue how to structure them yet lol) so we're still gonna use the main blog as a hub, a collective blog, but we're gonna keep it sfw and really tame probably...