#tag system methods

[bard-powers-activate]

Welcome, friend! Feel free to browse my shiny things. Tag system if u want it 👇

I got the idea from following the illustrious @zoanzon.

hello to the spouse creature reading this; you will see this one will come up a lot purely because my spouse is also on tumblr, and is a creature. They don’t really enjoy interacting and reblogging and all that jazz. This is why in my bio I say I share a brain cell with the spouse creature lurking in my notes—we DO share a brain cell, they are chronically online/have all notifications turned on for my blog, and I use this tag to indicate something in the post reminds me of them or their interests. A form of marital flirting, despite (and in addition to) the fact we live together and also do share memes in person.

Now that’s what I call gender; a reference to the old music compilation CDs that came up on commercials every year. But, you know, about things that feel Gender™️ to my soul.

humans love boxes; it is in the nature of humanity to desire a sense of structure and form—in part to understand the world around us, and in part to better communicate with each other. For example, this tag system is an act of creating boxes for the purpose of organizing my thoughts/feelings around some of the more intangible aspects of life. It’s a helpful tool our brains use to process data. However, per my next tag, every coin has a flip side…

the tools are meant to serve you (you do not serve the tools) [warning: this one is a biggie for me so skip to the end for a TLDR]; What do you define as a tool? What first comes to mind might be a hammer or other physical implement. In that case, what about the DSM? The DMV? Universities? Systems of Government? Currency? Institutions are tools. Concepts are tools. Objects are tools. Language is a tool. That which is in a state of service is a tool. We aren’t the only animals on earth to use tools, but we still mark their ideation as a sort of Dawn of Consciousness because there truly is no living as we know it without them. Once upon a time, humans took care of each other in community groups as they hunted, foraged, and survived. Now, we have hospitals. See what I mean? It’s so easy to slip into the mindset of “this is how it’s always been” but EVERYTHING, from the clothes on our backs to the words we speak, were once absent from the world and subsequently created to serve a purpose. That is the divinity within us, these acts of creation. When the tools serve us we prosper. When we serve the tools…well, pardon me while I indulge in a little armchair theology: “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus‬ ‭20‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭NKJV‬‬) As a child, I despaired at this commandment. Why should the children experience the punishment of their ancestors? But when I look at this, the first commandment, through the lens of “the tools are meant to serve you, you do not serve the tools” it paints a portrait of generational trauma. Cycles of violence. Harmful concepts persist until a new generation rises to refute them. Think about language for a second—someone defines themselves as <blank> while another cries out that they are incorrect, they can’t use that word because THAT’S not what that word MEANS. Never mind that language is a constantly evolving construct (the words nice, silly, and awful have certainly flip-flopped definitions over time), a TOOL developed by humans for humans to facilitate community through communication. When you serve the tool, you limit yourself to its limits. Your actions, behaviors, even your thoughts are restricted and controlled. Its boundaries become law. Humans love boxes. But when you extricate yourself from its bindings, when you look upon your idols as the tools they are, the only question becomes…how does it serve you? Capitalism is a tool. Democracy is a tool. We can identify flaws, expand boundaries, improve and evolve our tools the way humans have done since that fateful Dawn of Consciousness as long as we view them as such. TLDR; When we serve the tools, our vision is narrowed. When the tools serve us, we flourish.

all flourishing is mutual (in a culture of reciprocity); this tag and all its variants are in reference to the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer—a book that has branded itself onto my soul for all of eternity. While the book as a whole covers many different aspects of life, history, creation, religion, and being, it is this central thesis that broke my brain the most. It’s so simple to understand and so easy to do, once one actually commits to it. A culture of reciprocity is one where we all give from our excess. Someone with five blankets and four family members to keep warm gives the extra blanket to the one who has none and is cold. It’s not about self-sacrifice or denying yourself what you need, it’s about sharing your blessings with your community because WE ALL WIN TOGETHER WHEN WE TRY TO WIN TOGETHER! This is how ecosystems function. A tree generates more energy than it needs from photosynthesis and shares that energy with fungal systems through mycelium, that in turn supply the tree with nutrients from the soil it could not access on its own. Read the chapter of The Three Sisters in Kimmerer’s book and let it all sink in. Community. Solidarity. Intersectionality. Sustainability. They aren’t ideals for idealism’s sake—they are effective tools in service of the whole. I, for one, endeavor to contribute to mutual flourishing in all aspects of my life.

meatsuits and starstuff; our bodies are made of meat. That doesn’t have to be an uncomfortable thing—we are mammals, after all. But there’s no denying a certain human obsession with the mind and the soul. As Carl Sagan so eloquently put it: “We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We are made of star stuff.” And yet, these three integral aspects of existence often come into conflict. Not to simplify all of philosophy and theology down to brass tacks, but…do they have to be?

“Did the tree of life divorce its body?

Seek to save the soul but hate the bark

Long for freedom from its branches?

Despise the roots that plumb the dark

Are trees ashamed of needing sunlight?

Feeling guilt for being what they are?

Why does man despise the body?

Are we just afraid of death?

Or maybe we're searching

And growing and knowing

Separating good from bad

And maybe we're just tired of hurting

Afraid of losing what we have

Did the tree of life divorce its body?

Seek to save the soul but hate the bark?

What is life without a body?

What is love without the pain?

May we keep searching

And growing and knowing

Seeing both the good and bad

And maybe we could ease the suffering

Unattached to what we had

A man can learn to love his body

Without his soul being undone

You are spirit soul and body

Beneath it all…

…the ALL is ONE.”

—Tree, by Gungor

meatsuit maintenance; our bodies are made of meat. That doesn’t have to be an uncomfortable thing—we are mammals, after all. Do not despair of your vessel, for you are fearfully and wonderfully made! I like to treat my meatsuit the way I would treat a toddler: proactively tend to its needs, provide support for the things it can’t do on its own, affectionately dote on it with treats (within reason for its health and longevity), hold space for its pain with arms wide to hold and heal, arms wide to comfort and protect…never asking for more than what it can give.

arms wide to hold and heal; this is the energy of a mental hug, the warmth of someone giving you permission to not be okay…because it’s okay to not be okay and you are allowed to BE. This is what it means to hold space.

arms wide to comfort and protect; this is the energy of a mental hug, the warmth of someone giving you permission to not be okay…while glaring daggers over your shoulder at the perpetrator responsible and positioning yourself to bear the brunt of another attack. This is what it means to have community.

steward servant shepherd (king); a tag used when I see an example of a person demonstrating what it means to be a good steward, what it means to lead, and and/or exhibits a healthy example of divine masculine/divine feminine energy while in a position of power.

and I think to myself (what a wonderful world); humming along with the beauty of it all.

the vibes and times; that hard-to-put-a-finger-on occurrence when a vibe makes you feel like you’re in a pocket dimension. When something just IS so hard you can’t help but appreciate it. Immaculate vibes. When you take a step back, and it’s just a vibe and that’s all there is to it.

and all God’s people said amen; this tag is usually split into two parts and roughly translates to mean a hearty agreement or an acknowledgement of fundamental truth. It’s a personal reclamation of sorts—I may have left the Southern Baptist Church and its toxic theology, but that doesn’t mean they get to keep all the good toys. Growing up the pastor would say the first part while the audience would respond in unison, and in doing so was an awesome, powerful energy transference. And as much as it could be used to affirm alignment with weighty truths, it was equally used to comedic effect (especially by my Dad at the supper table). Whether as a punchline or words of power, the phrase stuck with me. Here, I have retooled it for my own particular purpose.

the sacred tension; two or more things can be equally true and in complete contradiction with each other. The tension in between may spark discomfort, but it is holy ground. Remember that even the binary is itself a tool, and it is meant to serve you—NOT bind you. Honor the sacred tension between concomitant truths. This is what it means to hold space.

Here is where we begin to get into the tag series systems. Each series acts like a closet organizer for my brain—identifying and cataloging concepts to facilitate a greater depth of appreciation and understanding. My personal goal is to craft turns of phrase broad enough to encompass a wide range of concepts, precise enough to finger the point, and poetic enough to meet my own aesthetic preferences.

I consider them to be living systems (as a good tool should be) subject to evolve in search of what resonates most. Some of these systems may seem deceptively simple, however, I do challenge myself to approach them thoughtfully—in short, to catalog the intangible in a distinctly tangible way.

What it means…Well, what DOES it all mean? How do we define meaning? As the nuns said of Maria in the Sound of Music, “How do you keep a wave upon the sand?” In my personal view, through the act of poetry in motion. Existence is a constant state of being. The moment you think you have it nailed down, something WILL change. So instead of making boxes FOR meaning, this endeavor is to make boxes OUT OF meaning. Whenever I encounter something along the way that has a whiff of answering “what does it mean to…” it gets sorted into that box. Deceptively simple, no? Special attention is paid to verbs and tenses, specifically what it means to HAVE <noun> vs. what it means TO <active verb>.

What does it mean to BE? - to be HERE - where is HERE? - HERE is ME - I AM ME - i am that i am; this tag and its many variants make up my mantra for experiencing existence. Personally…I get in my own head a LOT. This mantra helps me reorient myself in the present. It also helps me address my needs without invalidating my soft little animal body, my valiant meatsuit. I am that I am. Sometimes I am hungry, and so I feed myself. Sometimes I am tired, so I go to bed early. Sometimes I am overstimulated and so I take steps to move to a quieter room, to decline the party invitation, to go on a walk outside, whatever is needed to shift my present state of being as desired. I am that I am. It do be like that sometimes. Wielding these words, I challenge you to banish invalidation to the fucking shadow realm—in the pursuit of living and breathing, it is rarely an efficient tool.

What it means to BE; see above, but a little more to the point. This tag serves to help catalog the essence of being in its myriad of shapes and forms.

What it means to have community; posts with this tag contain some aspect or example of what I believe it means to HAVE community, one of our most fundamental aspects of living and, most especially, a key to the flourishing of all. This one comes up a LOT, especially around posts that look at the way tumblr functions…it’s a funky little community, after all.

What it means to live and breathe; this box is a bit esoteric, but I believe it still to be distinct from similar tags. Before explaining further, let’s look at an example: gender-affirming surgery strikes some people as inherently wrong and they balk at the idea of allowing it at all…but that is a judgment cast from afar, safely detached from need. The people actually asking for it—desiring it despite the stress of surgery or the post-surgery maintenance or the stigma—say they need it to live. I, for one, never want to discount what helps someone stay fucking alive, don’t you? The point of this tag is that you don’t get to decide someone “isn’t living the right way.” And not just life for the sake of not dying, that’s survival-mode, but for the sake of breathing, of flourishing. So chase after what you need to live and to breathe, and stop denying people oxygen for their lifeblood. May heaven on earth be a place where all God’s divine creatures live and breathe with ease. Amen.

What it means to have joy (alt: carving out joy); joy is a noun, not a verb. It’s a thing we seek to find, a thing we carve out of existence itself to possess for ourselves, and that we can carve out for each other

What it means to birth creation; seriously, I love humans, the things we create are so fucking cooooool. Full. Stop.

What it means to be a good steward; examples of leadership, sustainability, and all the other responsibilities stewardship represents

What it means to lead; see previous tag, but hyper-focused on aspects of leadership

What it means to be present; for those moments when you detach from all the stimuli and settle into the awareness around you.

What it means to learn and grow; stretch your mind-muscles, perform meatsuit maintenance, polish up your starstuff, and keep level-grinding life

What it means to listen; shoutout to my late Grandpa’s favorite book, The Awesome Power of the Listening Ear by John Drakeford. Listening is about so much more than using the human ear. It’s a state of awareness, of willingness, and of humility. Listening is how we could heal the world.

Blessings of… “When upon life's billows you are tempest tossed, When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, Count your many blessings, name them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.” –Count Your Blessings, 1897 “When I'm worried and I can't sleep I count my blessings instead of sheep, And I fall asleep counting my blessings.” –Irving Berlin in White Christmas

What do you define as a blessing?

Blessings of the absurd; the universe is quite often absurd. I love when people lean into the absurd, roll around in it, twirl it around their fingers, or even spit it at each other! Aka 99.5% of tumblr.

Blessings of the blessed; attuned to precious souls sharing their gifts by just being themselves—for example, cute videos of animals and children lol.

Blessings of the beloved; similar to the previous tag, but tailored more towards marginalized communities and expanding who we name as beloved (based on an art exhibit called Naming the Beloved Community at the Donald Gallery)

Blessings of creation (let all creation sing); attuning to the natural world in all its vibrancy and worthiness, in reference to how all of creation sings of cosmic divinity

Blessings of creation (to spin a yarn and weave story threads); attuned specifically to the writing of stories and narratives

Blessings of creation (what it means to create); still workshopping this and variants like it, but the concept is to attune to works of artistic creation in its myriad of forms

[zestyzigzagoon]

[diospore]

i was thinking about the problem where sometimes a fic has so many tags on it that it becomes a wall of text and what if you could like. on a scale of 1-10 rank the importance of the tag to the story. so like a major plot point would be a 10. and then like a tag for a minor aspect of the story that's only there for trigger tagging purposes would be a 1.

and this would also solve the problem of going into a fic tagged with a ship only to discover that it is a minor aspect of the story

i dunno what do you guys think?

[bumblingbabooshka]

care to EXPLAIN your most recent post??? (Tone /lighthearted and curious)

Yes!! The Post in Question

[the-blorb-system]

Back on my bullshit (I think I'm making it all up)

[milfbrainrot]

i hate astrology stuff too but i think this show sometimes misses that the belief systems of different planets aren't usually the problem. the governments based on belief systems are.

[kooldewd123]

i hope next pokemon game they come up with a raid system that actually stays fun past the honeymoon phase

[thethingything]

pro tip: quickly end your host's 45 minute long panic attack by co-fronting and shoving a bunch of wholegrain mustard in your mouth as a distraction

[astralazuli]

So there's that D&D class quiz going around, & I took it & was so deeply offended I got Paladin.

& so I have had conversations with both Bestie & Birdfriend about this grave insult & they both were like, "Well... They have a point?" & informed me that my desire to absorb hits meant for others & deep drive to help whenever I actually can & strong convictions make me a bit Paladin-coded.

& I am just so... Idk. It's just interesting to get glimpses of yourself from other people's POVs. To be told that my defining characteristics are protecting & healing others & being incredibly fighty about the things I care about... Especially as someone whose brain specifically fixates on whether I care enough, do enough, give enough... Yeah. It's just kinda wild.

Anyway, I'm now adjusting my self-perception to include the fact that if I were a D&D character, I would be an Oath of the Ancients Paladin & not a wizard & that actually that's okay.

[bigbarabelly]

Ah my shits getting flagged

How tf do u tag for n sfw without it immediately trigfering what I’m assuming is an app sweep for it

Regardless I need to find a better censoring workaround anyway and learn preview box dimensions

[mosscrab]

mgsv has so many literary references to books i have essays abt it kind of makes me.

[woundedheartwithin]

Just for reference, since the naming convention for the series has changed, I tag all games in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon universe (including je/lj) #yakuza

Mainline games are tagged #yakuza [number]. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth will be tagged #yakuza 8 for just general posts about the game, and spoilers will be tagged both #yakuza 8 spoilers #spoilers. Spoiler tags are generally only used to denote major plot and/or substory spoilers, so if you want scorched earth blockage of information about the game, I suggest filtering both the spoiler tag and the game tag.

Spin-offs are tagged #yakuza #[subtitle/title] (ie #yakuza #judgment, #yakuza #ishin, etc), with the exception of Gaiden, since there are many games with the subtitle Gaiden and I don’t want to blur tags. For that reason, that particular game is tagged #yakuza #yakuza gaiden

This convention goes for all posts, past and future, and believe me, if I could go back and redo my tagging system to just rgg I would, but that’s thousands of posts at this point. One day I’ll make a full guide to my tagging system, but for now, for spoiler purposes given all the new information about y8 and gaiden (praise be), here’s the current fandom specific version

As a general rule, my tagging convention for all my posts is: fandom, game, character, ship, spoiler tags, archival tags, my dumbass thoughts

Character names for rgg follow East Asian convention (surname first, given name last), with the exception of canonically western characters and/or characters using western naming convention, such as Ryan Acosta and Nick Ogata

[jestoria]

It's 11:51 pm, and I've just learned that I can hold my breath for 1 minute and 48 seconds. Underwater.

Why did I test this?

...I have no idea.

[workofthediesel]

maybe it's just me but i do think it should be fully illegal for any company outside of a federal agency to require your social security number for anything

[amplexadversary]

I wonder if a really dedicated collection of book nerds could get those Elaine Duillo style cover illustrations a foothold in the publishing industry again. There are certainly enough artists who can achieve that level of intricacy that a really really popular Trend might be able to do it.

Perhaps any of those bookbinding hobbyists might want to try to go pro and pair up with an artist to refurbish something well enough to hook the really rich art snobs into buying unique, custom pieces for a fuckton of money.

[literaryvein-templates]

Writing Worksheets & Templates

will update this every few weeks/months. alternatively, here are all my tagged Writing Worksheets & Templates

Chapter Outline ⚜ Character- or Plot-Driven Story

Death & Sacrifice ⚜ Magic & Rituals ⚜ Plot-Planning

Editing: Sentence Check ⚜ Writing Your Novel: 20 Questions

Tension ⚜ Thought Distortions ⚜ What's at Stake

Character Development

50 Questions ⚜ Backstory ⚜ Character Creation

Antagonist; Villain; Fighting ⚜ Protagonist & Antagonist

Character: Change; Adding Action; Conflict

Character: Creator; Name; Quirks; Flaws; Motivation

Character Profile (by Rick Riordan) ⚜ Character Sheet Template

Character Sketch & Bible ⚜ Interview your Character

Story-Worthy Hero ⚜ "Well-Rounded" Character Worksheet

Worldbuilding

20 Questions ⚜ Decisions & Categories ⚜ Worksheet

Setting ⚜ Dystopian World ⚜ Magic System (AALC Method)

Templates: Geography; World History; City; Fictional Plant

References: Worldbuilding ⚜ Plot ⚜ Character ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

all posts are queued. send questions/requests here.