#why use dreamwidth

[alectoperdita]

admittedly this is "old man yells at clouds" energy, but I think it sucks that modern fandom often only conceives of community in the form of discord servers

[gyokujyn]

.

[bisexualbaker]

Why do people keep recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative, when Dreamwidth and Tumblr are so different?

To be flat-out honest, it's because Dreamwidth has so many things that Tumblr users say they want, even if it's also lacking a lot of features that Tumblr users have come to love:

Dreamwidth has incredibly lax content hosting rules. I'd say that it's slightly more restrictive than AO3, but only just slightly, and only because AO3's abuse team has been so overwhelmed and over-worked. Otherwise, the hosting policies are pretty similar. You want to go nuts, show nuts? You can do that on Dreamwidth.

In fact, Dreamwidth is so serious about "go nuts, show nuts", it gave up the ability to accept transactions through PayPal in 2009 to protect our ability to do that. (It's also one reason why Dreamwidth doesn't have an app: Dreamwidth will never be beholden to Apple's content rules this way.)

Dreamwidth cares about your privacy; it doesn't sell your data, and barely collects any to begin with. As far as I'm aware, it only collects what it needs to run the site. The owners have also spoken out on behalf of internet privacy many times, and are prepared to put their money where their mouth is.

No ads. Ever. Period. They mean it. Dreamwidth is entirely user funded.

Posts viewed in reverse chronological order; no algorithm, opt-in or otherwise. No algorithm at all. No "For You" or "Suggested" page. You still entirely create and curate your own experience.

The ability to make posts that only your "mutuals", or even only a specific subset of your "mutuals", can see. Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie, Clyde, Butch, and Cassidy? You can do that! Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie and Butch, but Clyde and Cassidy can't see shit? You can do that, too!

The owners have forsworn NFTs and the blockchain in general. Not as big a worry now as it was even a year ago, but still good to know!

We are explicitly the customers of Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth wants to make us happy, so any changes they make (and they do make changes) are made with us in mind, and after exploring as many possibilities as they can.

Dreamwidth is very transparent about their policies and changes. If you want to know why they're making a specific change, or keeping or getting rid of a feature, they will tell you. You don't have to find out ten months later that they're locked into a contract to keep it for a year (cough cough Tumblr Live cough cough).

So those are some things that Tumblr users would probably love about Dreamwidth.

Another reason Dreamwidth keeps being recommended is that a significant portion of the Age 30+ crowd spent a lot of earlier fandom years on a site known as LiveJournal. Dreamwidth may not be much like Tumblr, but it it started out as a code fork of LiveJournal, so it will be very familiar to anyone who spent any time there. Except better.

Finally, we're recommending Dreamwidth because some of the things that Tumblr users want are just... not going to happen on the web as it is now. Image hosting is the big one for this. Maybe in the future, the price of data will be much cheaper, and Dreamwidth will be able to host as much as we all want for a pittance that a fraction of the userbase will happily pay for everyone, but right now that's just not possible.

Everywhere you want to go that hosts a lot of images will either be running lots of ads, selling your data, or both.

Dreamwidth knows how much it costs to host your data, and has budgeted for that. They are hosting within their means, within our means.

Dreamwidth is the closest thing we may ever get to AO3 as a social media platform. One of the co-owners is from, and still in, fandom; she knows our values, because they are also her values. It may as well be the Blogsite Of Our Own.

[olderthannetfic]

hi, as someone who is tragically gen Z and only ever read AO3, can I ask: what was so great about LiveJournal? Like, I know that there were fics posted there (and I've even read about the "purge", so I get why it isn't used anymore) and that it was sort of a forum-type thing. But what I don't understand, wouldn't Tumblr fill in the latter function? How was that site any different? I see a lot of people reminiscing about it and I'm confused

--

A big factor in LJ's greatness is timing and nostalgia.

It was genuinely great, but it wasn't quite as great as all of the Lo, shall the Golden Age ne'er come again? posts suggest.

LJ arrived at a pivotal time in the development of the internet both in terms of technical stuff and how many people had access. Many fans who are now in their thirties to fifties first discovered fandom through LJ and many were at a time in their lives when they were feeling energetic and up to making lots of new friends—and to figuring out how to make a site work for them.

I got on LJ in 2002 when it required invites. Fandom arrived in droves in 2003, first via coordinated campaigns to get invites to key people and then when LJ opened up free account creation to everyone. Back then, LJ's features sucked. It was impossible to search properly, among other things. At its height (2005-7, let's say), there was a reasonable site search, and fans had developed all sorts of community resources for finding each other.

People often remember this phase but not the early days of suckitude.

This development parallels how Tumblr used to not have that private chat feature and how a lot of fuckyeah[whatever] type tumblrs have helped curate the site and make it much more usable for fans. Fandom draining away from LJ after strikethrough also parallels people draining away from Tumblr after the purge.

There are people who talk about Tumblr the way my cohort talks about LJ...

And to the shock of no one, they are people who came of age on Tumblr, who found fandom via Tumblr, who were on Tumblr during pivotal times in their lives and ones when they had energy to make friends and figure out how a site worked.

Those same Tumblrites are now making all the same geriatric-sounding posts we LJers do about how other sites lack the required features to be good for fandom while missing that 90% of tumblr's "features" at its height (2012-2016, let's say) were actually fan-created and were basically the same as any fandom newsletter or links page or all the versions of this kind of personal curation stretching back to long before the internet existed.

What life phase you hit a site at matters.

--

With all of that said, no, LJ was not a forum. It was a blogging site with threaded comments.

The key point to understand is that conversation was always happening in a specific person's space. Unlike on a true forum, people were in the comments on a particular post in a journal owned by another fan. (On a forum, there's the first post in a thread, but it's still more of a communal space with less of a hierarchy.)

Overall, the LJ format can have a feeling a bit like you're over at someone's house for tea. There's more of a sense of intimacy and also behaving yourself in front of community members.

Tumblr being obscure and impossible to find anything in does give it some of the same vibe relative to Twitter, but it's still part of modern social media that tries to shove every rando into the face of every other rando.

But it wasn't just vibes: LJ also had robust privacy features where you could lock a post to this or that group of friends. You could moderate your comments section properly. Tumblr has far fewer controls to force people to behave or leave on a technical level.

--

The biggest thing many people miss about LJ is the threaded comments. At least by late LJ and on Dreamwidth, you can expand and collapse threads, making it far easier to deal with a massive comments section. But more than that, things are properly threaded with multiple levels of hierarchy that are all easily visible in the same place.

On Tumblr, it used to be extremely difficult to find all of the actual commentary on a post. Nowadays, it's far easier, but you still have to scroll chronologically, and multiple versions of a post with a long chain of commentary may be much more divorced from each other than what would happen in a LJ comments section.

--

But could we use Tumblr pretty much how we used LJ?

We could.

I do.

--

The key things that people tend to miss about LJ, aside from the younger and more excited version of themselves or the friends they've lost since then, are:

Heavily text-based

It may sound odd on the modern internet, but there are a lot of people whose brains don't like or handle an image-heavy site well. They were everywhere in SF book fandom. They were everywhere on the early internet. Today, they're hanging out on Dreamwidth and still going to their SF cons. They're usually not on Tumblr.

You could follow the discussion

Threaded comments help, but a lot of it is about having some place you can check for updates. It wasn't actually that easy to follow big LJ discussions unless you were subscribed to comments and reading along as things were happening instead of coming along after the entire mass of comments had been left.

The tone of the discussion is intellectual and one's enemies are "idiots", not "problematic"

All this requires is a penchant for longwindedness and an itchy blocking finger to remove anyone slinging ad hominems from the comments section.

On tumblr, it's as simple as conversations happening in the replies on a popular account and that person not tolerating suibaiting and threats.

(And make no mistake, a lot of LJ discussion was in the comments on popular accounts, not spread equally between everyone's.)

It does require that multiple people like that tone and want to engage in that way, but lots of people do want to.

--

These days, I interact with tumblr by checking my askbox and reading my activity page. The vast, vast majority of my posts are ones where I'm the OP, so if I block someone, they're booted from the discussion entirely.

For me... yeah, Tumblr functions almost exactly like LJ.

Also like LJ, while I'm hosting the conversation, if you hang around, you'll see the same people again and again in the comments. They may or may not also host that kind of conversation in their space, and there's a larger pool of lurkers who have some notion of which people count as regulars. Other people are watching from the shadows, enjoying or deriding the takes of the usual crowd.

People presumably do like reading my lengthy commentary or they wouldn't be here, but my tumblr wouldn't be popular like this without a healthy pool of other people who chime in regularly. It's not just that there are more people: it's that you see the same people over time. There's a bit more sense of place and community than on some parts of the internet.

--

So, in my opinion, the failure to just recreate LJ fandom on Tumblr was a skill issue.

Threaded comments were great, but LJ culture came from mailing lists, and mailing lists had the same issue as tumblr with the diverging threads.

We solved that back then by clipping out only the parts we wanted to respond to (you'd write "snip" around the quotation to show it was incomplete). We solved the smaller LJ issue by linking to other posts we were referencing and doing discussion link roundups. We solve it on tumblr by, again, linking to what we're talking about and even quoting multiple reblog chains in our own reblog of just one chain.

--

Tumblr's technical features and even general crap-ness aren't really the problem. 90s and early 00s sites regularly went down for periods of time unthinkable today.

The missing piece is people.

When one is in an active fandom with others who curate or with friends who let one know what's up, a site with imperfect features is easy to figure out and retrofit for fandom's needs. When one already feels out of touch and is between fannish passions—or at least fannish passions anyone else cares about—seeing the potential in a new site is hard.

--

Threaded comments are different and better.

LJ's built-in way to see everyone's blog in your own style was better. The automatic timestamps and the ease of seeing a paginated archive of an entire blog was better than tumblr's endless scroll and lack of clear date labeling. But some of that can be fixed with xkit or knowing your way around tumblr well.

A lot of it is nostalgia for the lj era and a refusal to take the time to figure out how to use tumblr in an oldschool internet way.

--

So by all means, people, weigh in about what made LJ great or how the culture felt at the time...

But if I see one more god damn response going "You can't have a conversation on tumblr!" in reply to my tumblr, which contains nothing but conversation, I am coming for you.

[arowitharrows]

These are some links to recourses on different topics, mostly things I want to be able to find again so I'm collecting them here. Please be aware that many of these articles include discussions of queerphobia, racism or abuse. I can't put warnings on every link, so proceed with caution. This is not meant to be a complete or final list, I will most likely be editing it as time goes by.

Aspec terminology / Flags

Queerplatonic coining post on dreamwidth (x)

Sunset aroace flag original post (x)

A History Of Words Used To Describe People That Are Not Asexual (x)

Discussions of aphobia

Note: I am still waiting for the day when aphobia can be discussed without aromanticism being treated as a subcategory of asexuality.

Stonewall report on asexual discrimination, UK 2023 (x)

Scientific America article on medical stigma against asexuality, USA 2023 (x)

Article about the religious right attacking sexless marriage, USA (x)

Podcast about the religious right attacking platonic marriages and general analysis about why the religious right hate asexuality (and aromanticism), USA part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

Amatonormativity

Website of Elizabeth Brake, the coiner of the term Amatonormativity (x)

Amatonormativity in the law: an introduction, USA 2022 (x)

Opinion: I grew up in a culture that embraced physical touch. Then I came to America, Ethiopia 2023(x)

'I Dont Want To be a Playa No More': An Exploration of the Denigrating effects of 'Player' as a Stereotype Against African American Polyamorous Men (x)

Romance is not the only type of Black love that matters by Sherronda J. Brown, USA 2018 (x)

Relationship Anarchy

Relationship Anarchy, Occupy intimacy!, Spain 2020 (x) also available in Spanish and catalan

The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy (x)

Tumblr post with multiple links about relationship anarchy (x)

Marriage and being Single

Ted talk: how romance and capitalism could destroy our future, 2014 (x)

The escalating costs of being single in America, USA 2021 (x)

Unmarried equality, many articles about discrimination against single people. USA focused (x)

No Shelter for Singles: The Perceived Legitimacy of Marital Status Discrimination, USA 2011 (x)

Loveless Aro

I Am Not Voldemort: An Essay on Love and Amatonormativity (x)

Aroworlds loveless Aro friendly fiction collection (x)

Loveless Aro experiences and explanations (post0 aurea article post 1 post 2 post 3 post 4 post 5 post 6)

[marypsue]

Look, I get it, those of you who loved LJ love the LJ format and think Dreamwidth can do no wrong, but I used LJ for a year and could not figure out how to find another human being on that website who I did not meet on and get linked to from another website. LJ was unintuitive, hard to navigate, and cliquey when you did happen by some goddamn miracle to stumble upon a group you might be interested in, and I'm gonna need everybody who's responding to first-time Dreamwidth users' frustration with the site with 'yeah!! and we LIKED it that way!!!!' to understand that this is part of the reason why Dreamwidth has not seen wider adoption. It's hard and frustrating to figure out! Maybe try 'yeah, here's how I use it to make it fun, and here's how some things work that aren't necessarily obvious' instead.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

even if he was objectively guilty of every single crime levelled at him at any point in the narrative, the cumulative influence of jin guangyao's time as a spy for the sunshot forces during the war and his tenure as xiandu is still orders of magnitude more substantive, and positive, than anything else accomplished by any other named character in the text.

even if you believe he did every single foul thing he is accused of doing, he still saved the life of the gusu lan heir and ensured irreplaceable sect knowledge wasn't lost during the razing of the cloud recesses. he still killed literal tyrant and megalomaniac wen ruohan and ended a war. he still pushed through his watchtower program, which saved countless commoners' lives, and rooted out corruption in jinlintai to the point that no jin sect disciple would ever think about accepting a bribe in the city. he is the reason why wangxian get to fuck nasty on every surface of the cloud recesses post-canon--because jin guangyao used his influence to ensure the cloud recesses were rebuilt. he is the one who pulled nie huaisang's hands out of the fire after nie mingjue set all of his precious belongings on fire. he's the one who arranged to have those burn wounds tended to. he still built a temple in his mother's image and interred her body beneath guanyin so that all those prayers would go to meng shi, to grant her a better afterlife. he still gave fairy to jin ling.

even with the least charitable, worst faith interpretation of his character, these things remain true.

---

this post has been added to my dreamwidth meta archive here: https://thatswhatsushewrote.dreamwidth.org/4496.html

[kanna-ophelia]

Please enjoy the Good Omens Script

It's a pretty open secret that I hand out The Good Omens Movie Script (of the never to be made 1990s movie) to anyone who asks nicely or checks my current Dreamwidth. It was published in a small edition, and a pdf of it was very widely circulated in book fandom back in the day.

Someone broke all fan etiquette, and common sense, and the fourth wall and brought it to Neil Gaiman's attention, forcing a situation where people who had already read it would refuse to share it saying it was to respect Neil Gaiman. Me, I never really was very cool with this "I've got mine!" attitude. Incredibly irritatingly, people did circulate out-of-context quotes and used them to portray it as terrible, script!Crowley as abusive, and script!Aziraphale as a doormat. None of these are true: it is an extremely, extremely loose and weirdly Americanised adaptation, but it's fricking adorable, and so are its versions of Crowley and Aziraphale. (The characters who get done badly by are Madam Tracey and Brian, IMO - best to think of them as entirely different characters.) It lacks Terry Pratchett's grace, complex humanity and way with words (see also: GO S2), but it's laugh at loud funny at times and this version of the Ineffable Husbands is a seriously cute grumpy/sunshine couple. Also, it has Business Exec Satan.

All this led to the ridiculous and annoying situation of people who had never read it being derogatory of it, while, despite being published, it was in danger of becoming lost media and a lost opart of GO history. (See also: Revenge of the Old Queen and Rocky Horror.) So I'm sharing the link here. If you want to yell at me, I ask you to first consider why you want to respect Neil Gaiman's wishes on anything and reconsider your priorities. It's a damn pdf of something only eleven people own in hard copy.

Feel free to share, or to archive it yourself. If it gets taken down, let me know and I'll find a new home for it. Just be aware that I'm rarely on Tumblr so it takes me a while.

[amtrak12]

After a conversation with a friend about this weird trend of fic readers who only want epic length fics (and also what seems to be a massive misunderstanding between parties on terms and their definitions), I went searching for the fandom sources I cut my teeth on. I don't have much bookmarked from those days anymore, but googling got me to this fiction length/terminology breakdown from a Livejournal blog. (Which also has good fandom definitions for other terms like A/N and fanon too, so if you're super new to fandom, go check that out.)

The definitions come from the publishing world (hence the page counts), but fandom and fanfic has always borrowed heavily from official publishing terminology. Flash fiction (aka, anything less than 1k words) is called a 'ficlet' within fandom. We call everything else a fic until it reaches the novella mark -- which may start at 20k words but as synecdochic breaks down on their Dreamwidth blog, there's a lot of overlap between short stories and novella word counts. Because, when you're not constrained by physical page counts, the real dividing line between short stories and novellas are the number of plots and themes you're using. (Seriously, go read their meta on this topic. It's fantastic!) Either way, once you're hitting tens of thousands of words, you're in longfic territory. And then if your fic is even longer than that -- 100k+ like shown in the screenshot above -- it's called an epic fic.

And these terms, longfic and epic, are important because they're used to differentiate these stories from the average fic. Because, at least in the 2000s up until the 2020s, the most common fic lengths you ran into were between 1k-20k words. "Fic" made the reader assume only a few thousand words at most. It's only when you changed the term to drabble or ficlet or longfic that they would realize 'oh this is going to be shorter or longer than normal'.

I don't really understand why that baseline assumption has changed amongst the newer demographics (and maybe amongst some long-running fandom members too?). I've seen a lot of theories and 'tiktokification' complaints, but I honestly don't know what's true. And I don't want to start a fight or even try to change anyone's minds if they are dead set against reading short story length fics. You can do what you want!

Just maybe shift your attitude about it a little bit? Remember that it's a personal preference the same way tropes are, and that one story length isn't better than another. Just like tropes, each story length serves its purpose. Some stories are best told in 1-2k words. Some are best told as 100 word drabbles -- or even a single sentence! And then, yes, some stories do need to be 100k+ in order to be told properly.

But that's not every story. And it shouldn't be expected of fic writers to pad a 1500 word plot into some sprawling epic just because they left it on a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger is probably the point of that fic! Short stories are an entirely separate art form to novels and as such are able to cover different topics than novels can or cover the same topics differently. And that's what makes them special!!

And look at that word count breakdown by genre! That's mainstream publishing standards! Now, go back up there to the definition of a novel and notice that the average published novel is 80k words long.

Let me repeat that:

The average length of a published novel is 80,000 words long.

Could a novel go longer? Sure! And if you're dipping into adult sci-fi or fantasy, absolutely it will be longer! But does your fic need to be longer than the average novel in order to be good? In order for you to feel satisfied when you finish reading it? Why does the length of the fic matter more to you than the content?

idk just some rambling food for thought, but I guess too long, don't read:

~✨~ Every story length is valid ~✨~

It just depends on the plot you have and the structure you want to use to tell it.

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

Hypochondriac

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1k (including lyrics)

Warnings: fluff

Summary: Before, you never had any regard for your life. It was always a gamble whether you were going to make it to the next day. Now that you have Spencer, you’re always looking for a way to better yourself… for him. Everything you do is for him.

Square Filled: diary/journal for @tropebingo (dreamwidth bingo)

Author’s Note: this is based on the song Hypochondriac by Sasha Alex Sloan

x

I used to smoke like a chimney Never took a vitamin in my life I abused my kidneys Knew I had two, so I didn't think twice Never ate breakfast Then I'd get stoned and eat too much I was kind of reckless 'Til I fell in love

You’re sitting cross-legged in your closet with photo albums all around you. It’s high time you cleaned out the clutter in here and decided to take a break by looking at your past through photos. These photo albums are of your life before you met Spencer.

The first picture you open up to is you with an alcohol bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. You’re with your friends in the middle of the New Year's party. Next to each picture is a snippet of what you were thinking at the time. Polaroid pictures were all the rave back then, so you were able to write down exactly how you were feeling when the picture was taken.

1989 New Year’s Party with my best friends. If we hadn’t smoked so much weed, we would have never been caught by the police.

Oh, yes, you remember this. Your friend, Jill, had access to a lot of weed, and she shared it with the group. You got so high that you started disrupting the party more than you should have. The cops were called, and you all had to spend the night in jail. What they didn’t know is that you also took some LSD which is why the cops were called.

Cigarettes ruined your lungs. Alcohol ruined your kidneys. Drugs ruined your brain. However, you didn't care. You didn’t care about your life the way you do now. You’d refuse to eat breakfast and only ate whenever you got the munchies. You were reckless with your life.

Spencer Reid changed everything about you. He took the broken girl who would turn to drugs and alcohol and turned her into someone you’re proud of.

“You were a fun part of my life, but I’m glad you’re in the past,” you say to the photo.

I used to drink like a sailor If I had a weird pain, I'd say a prayer Used to need an inhaler Any time I went up a flight of stairs I'm not sayin' I'm perfect now But you gave me something to think about all of the time Glad I made you mine

The second page you flip to has two pictures. The first picture is of you in the hospital giving the camera a thumbs up. The second picture is of you helping your friends move into their first apartment together. They had secret feelings for each other, and they finally did something with that in 1995.

Note to my future self. Don’t do cocaine. It messes with your mind, and it’s very easy to overdose on it. No matter what you feel about it, Jill will kill you if you try it again, is written next to the picture of you in the hospital.

You had never tried it before, and you knew a guy who was supplying it. You only took a little, but that was enough to send you to the hospital. You spent a few days there getting sober, and you haven’t touch the shit since. Jill ripped you a new one. She even put together an intervention with your other friends. It’s safe to say you’re lucky to have people watching your back.

Next time Jason and Rebecca want a place to live in, make sure it has an elevator. Walking up these stairs all the time is going to give me a heart attack, is what’s written next to the second picture. Every time you walked up even the shortest flight of stairs, you’d need your inhaler because it always took the wind out of you. It didn’t matter how much you weighed or how much or little you worked out.

You didn't take care of yourself and often needed that inhaler for short distances. When your past was your present, you didn’t think much of the shit you were doing to your body. You didn’t have any care in the world about your health.

You’re suffering the consequences for it now, but you have something your past self didn’t have. No one has cared enough about you than Spencer does. He changed your whole life from the moment he stepped into it. You wanted to be better for him, and now you are.

I'm not sayin' I'm perfect now But you gave me something to think about

You’re not perfect by any means, but you’re doing better than before. You close the photo album and decide to be done for today. You get up and find Spencer in the kitchen.

“Hey, get some cleaning done?” he asks.

“Yeah. I found a box in the back from my past. Kind of forgot about it until now.”

“Find anything embarrassing?” he jokes.

“Nothing I want to remember. I think I’m gonna throw it all away.”

“Are you sure?”

You walk over to him and wrap your arms around his neck. “You’re my life now. All I want to remember is you.”

He leans down and kisses you gently. “I like that plan.”

You grin. “Me, too.”

Now I call my doctor every day Since I met you, something in me's changed Second that you called me yours I had something worth living for Now I'm scared of planes and heart attacks If I die, I'll never get you back You made me a hypochondriac

That night, you and Spencer cuddle on the couch while watching a movie. Your head is on his shoulders with your legs draped over his. He rubs your bare thighs in soft circles, making butterflies flit in your stomach.

“Did you take your vitamins today?” he asks.

“This morning after breakfast and then after dinner.” You two fall into a comfortable silence. You lean up and kiss his cheek. “Thank you for making me a better person. I never used to care about myself or my health before, but with you… I want to live a long and healthy life with you. So, thank you for saving me from myself.”

Spencer lets the movie play as he looks at you. He slides one hand in your hair and pulls you in for a kiss.

“If anything, you saved me.”

“I love you,” you grin.

“I love you more.”

x

Want to be tagged? Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[apple-sapling]

PSA: Blanket Statements

What is a blanket statement?

A blanket statement is information on your preferences for other creators to interacting with your works. It is helpful for others to know if you welcome podfics, fanart, recursive fiction, translations, remixes, etc of your works!

How can I make a Blanket Statement?

You can use Fanworks Permission Statement Builder to build a version tailored to you!

Or if you want your Blanket Statement to be a Blanket Permission for all fanworks you can use/modify the sentence below:

I welcome transformative works based off of my fan works! This includes podfic, fanart, translations, remixes, recursive fiction and any other fanwork inspired by my works.

Once you have your BS add it to your Ao3 profile. You can also add it to a pinned post in your Tumblr profile or on any other sites you use (Dreamwidth, bluesky, etc).

Reblog with links to your Blanket Statements to let your followers know where to find it!

More info on Blanket Statements in below:

Do I have to allow all types of derivative/transformative works in my statement?

No, the statement is only an information on your stance on fanworks based on your works. You can allow all fanworks - amazing! You can say you'd rather be asked first before anything is published- great, it makes you more approachable! You can say you don't want any derivative works - thank you, now I know just to admire your works and not bother you with requests ^^

You can even have a mix for example: "Blanket permission for podfics and fanart. For translations or continuing my fics - please ask me first"

What are other information are useful to have with your BS?

How to contact you (comment/tumblr/other social media)

How would you like to be creddited? Is inspired by option on ao3 enough?

Are there any platforms you'd rather derivatives of your works be not shared on? (Note that ao3 doesn't have native hosting for audio and images, so any works in that medium will need to be hosted elsewhere, for example on Internet Archive, Gdrive, Tumblr, Youtube)

I'm worried about AI using my works.

That's understandable. You can add a note saying you do not allow your works to be used by AI in any way - for example to train in or to be used in AI prompts.

I don't have any/much works published. Is it still helpful for me to add a blanket statement?

Yes, in case you create something in the future you'll have it ready to go! And even if you don't it still normalizes having a BS and raises awareness about them!

Why don't people just ask for permission directly?

It can be hard for people to reach out with permission requests for a variety of reasons. They might be participating in time-limited event, where waiting for a response is not viable. They might be in the mood to create *right now*. Asking for permission sometimes feels like a commitment too, so it's easier for many creators to just surprise author with their creation after it's done. Sometimes people ask for permission, but never hear back, or get rejected.

Having an ask-first statement helps you be more approachable too! It shows that you might be open/welcoming to the request.

I've added a Blanket Permission to my profile! Is there a way for me to make it even easier to find for other creators?

Yes! If you have a Blanket Permission available publicly you can add a link to it and username to fanwork permission statement list. You can use this sheet to submit your own permission. There is a browser extension that highlights all usernames with BP in the fps database on ao3.

[cr-summer-wildflowers]

Nominations are Now Open!

Okay, here me out: Verin and Cerkonos. Why isn't this already a thing? Himbo 4 Himbo communication.

Or... okay okay okay - Fearne & Orym needs more fics. But also Beau/Yasha/Imogen/Laudna definitely needs more attention. Or maybe you're a Vexleth truther or an Esswulf fan or think that the Temult family dynamics are absolutely fascinating.

Does this sound like something you'd be into? Then we have a fic exchange for you!

Critical Role Wildflowers is an exchange that features pairings that have fewer than 500 works on AO3. The first step in the process is nominations - where we decide which pairings will be eligible for signing up.

Nominate here

FAQ & Rules are here

Discord is here

The things you need to know for nominations:

The relationships can be platonic or romantic, but all characters have to originate in Exandria and have under 500 works in AO3

When nominating a ship, don't use the main critical role tag for the fandom! Instead, use one of these: Critical Role Campaign One Critical Role Campaign Two Critical Role Campaign Three Exandria Unlimited (note: includes Calamity, Kymal, Divergence, as well as the original) Wildmount Wildlings Darrington Brigade Critical Crossovers The Re-Slayers Take

For the relationships - please do use the canonical tag whenever possible! This is the one that autofills whenever you start typing. If nothing pops up, then please try to add the full character name, alphabetizing by last name. (For example, Lucien Tavelle/Tyffial Wase, but Cree Deeproots/Lucien Tavelle)

Want answers to the following questions? Check them out under the cut:

How do I contact a mod?   Who all is running this anyway? How can I follow the exchange? Do I have to join the discord?

What's the schedule? What is the difference between nominations and signups? Why are they separate? What exactly is a crossover, considering campaign 3? Are platonic relationships allowed? What relationships are not included? So is everything else included? What does it mean for a relationship to not be included?

How do I contact a mod?

If you need to contact the mods for any reason, here are the ways in which you can do so. Please use the method which suits you best. If you do not receive a response within 48 hours, please try again using an alternate method.

E-mail: CR.Summer.Wildflowers@proton.me The CR WIldflowers Discord A comment to any post on the Dreamwidth Community Tumblr message or ask to the Summer Wildflowers blog.

Who all is running this anyway?

From 2021 - 2024, Wildflowers was run by @ladyofrosefire and @capitola

For 2025, it’s being run by @operafloozy with generous help from @mapleandgingeroatmeal (helping with answering questions and clarifications, discord moderation among other things), and @anubisisms (graphics design and discord creation/moderation). If you know any of us and are more comfortable reaching out to that person directly, please feel free to do so.

How can I follow the exchange?

You can follow us here on Tumblr and Dreamwidth. You can also join the CR Wildflowers Discord Community.

Do I have to join the discord?

Nope! It’s completely optional. We’ll be using the discord for questions, resources, sprints, reminders, encouragement, and general camaraderie, but if it’s not your jam - or you just are in enough discords–that's perfectly fine.

What's the schedule?

For 2025, the schedule is as follows:

Nominations Open: April 25 Nominations Close: May 8 (11:55 EST) Sign ups Open: May 9 (9AM EST) Sign ups Close: May 23 (11:55 EST) Assignments Go Out: No Later than May 26 (11:55 EST) No Penalty Default Deadline: June 23 (11:55 EST) Assignments Due: July 7 Works Revealed: July 14 Creators Revealed: July 21

What's the difference between nominations and signups? Why are they two separate things?

Nominations: You have the chance to nominate various relationships - platonic, romantic, or sexual. This is not required to participate, but if nobody nominates a relationship, you can't request or offer it.

Signups: You look through the list of nominated relationships and create 4-10 prompts based on them and offer to write 4-10 relationships. This can be relationships that you nominated or ones that you didn't - and you don't have to request or offer every relationship you nominated (it's considered good manners to at least intend to request or offer them). You have to do this step to get a gift fic.

Why is it done this way?  There are a lot of possible combinations of relationships that are out there, and you're all creative individuals. The 2024 tagset had over 300 relationships nominated. This is an exchange, which means that the offers and requests have to match. We need to limit it somehow. And you might decide to offer or request relationships that don't match the ones you nominated (maybe someone else nominated them - or someone else has an idea so brilliant that you want to steal it).  But also - the background logic for automatically signing someone up based off of their nominations would be a lot for poor AO3.

After the way campaign 3 ended, is everything a crossover? Is nothing?

The general rules we have are as follows:

a) If the characters largely interact in one campaign, nominate that pairing in that campaign. For example, Ludinus Da'leth/Trent Ikithon would be in Critical Role Campaign Two; Ludinus Da'leth/Predathos would be Critical Role Campaign Three

b) If the characters interact in multiple campaigns, nominate that pairing within the campaign they are featured in the most. For example, Keyleth & Percy interact in both Campaign One and Campaign Three, but because they are more heavily featured in Campaign One, they should be nominated there.

c) If the characters are from a miniseries (Exandria Unlimited, for example) and are also seen within a main campaign, go with the one where they have more screen time (approximate).  For example, Dorian & Fearne and Fearne/Opal are pairings that have interacted in both Campaign 3 and Exandria Unlimited, but Dorian & Fearne would be Campaign Three, while Fearne/Opal would be Exandria Unlimited.

d) If the characters feature in different campaigns and haven't interacted or you're not sure if they've interacted, nominate them within Critical Crossovers.

Use your best judgement, you're not going to be yelled at for getting it wrong.

Are platonic relationships allowed?

Yes! Platonic relationships are allowed and encouraged, and this includes platonic versions of the disallowed romantic relationships. If the platonic relationship has more than 500 fics, though, it also falls outside the guidelines for this exchange.

What relationships are not included?

This year, in 2025, the list is as follows:

Keyleth/Vax'ildan Kima/Allura Percy/Vex'halia Percy/Vax'ildan Vax'ildan & Vex'ahlia Beauregard Lionett/Yasha Nydoorin Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast Essek Theylss/Caleb Widogast Fjord Stone/Caleb Widogast Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast Jester Lavorre/Fjord Stone Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast Nott & Caleb Widogast Yasha Nydoorin & Mollymauk Tealeaf Laudna/Imogen Temult Laudna & Imogen Temult Orym/Dorian Storm

Is everything else included?

All relationships where all of the characters involved originate from Exandria (or Ruidis) count. Note that this does not include RPF.

What does it mean for a relationship to not be included? Does that mean that Yasha can’t ever refer to her wife or Vex and Percy can’t ever have a conversation about their kids?

The relationships above aren’t eligible to be included in the nominations, which means that people can’t sign up to have them be the focus of a work. Other relationships can be depicted (unless they are specifically listed in the DNW list), but the requested relationship should be the focus.

[fandomtrumpshate]

Wanting to tweak your auction listing? Sit tight!

We know that our creators (all 1200+ of you!) are eagerly awaiting the email that will announce the arrival of their auction post and provide a link to the editing form. We should have that for you in just a few more days!

In the meantime, please do not email your edits to us. We hate to say it, but emailing us your edits will not get them done any faster.

Why do we do it this way now? Why not let you use the edit link Google Forms can provide?

Basically: We want/need the spreadsheet with the signup info to be as stable as possible, both while we're getting our scripts set up as signups are coming in, and especially after signups close as we start to process them and create posts. If we use the Google Forms edit link, it doesn't notify us when information has changed, which can jam things up if a cell said one thing the first time our script saw it and says something else now. We also can't turn off editing for individual signups, so if you went to edit it after we generated your post, that edit would not make it into your post.

Which leaves us with changing things manually. While there were limited cases during the signup process where we went in to edit people's signups in the spreadsheet (for example, people with typos in their email addresses), in general it is just much, much safer for us to go in after the fact and edit an individual Dreamwidth post than for us to be mucking about in the spreadsheet with all 1500+ auctions, where one wrong move might delete someone else's information.

So please sit tight and wait for that link! Thanks for your patience in the meantime - and if you're bored waiting, don't forget to check out our reading resources over at @fthaction and this Tuesday's upcoming AMA with Kat Calvin from Spread the Vote and Project ID!

[emylilas]

Ladies of WOT - a potential community ?

Hello fellow WOT show enjoyers!

I am deliberately not tagging the show because I am aiming for a very specific demographic. Among those who watch WOT and are talking about it in different spaces (discord, twitter, here), I've noticed that people are having very different experiences watching the show, depending on what they want the focus to be on; to the point it might sometimes feel like we're in very different fandoms.

I realise the show is a book adaptation and I understand why people would expect more attention to be given to Rand, or Perin, or Mat, because those are the names who often come back, rather than some of the Aes Sedai who aren't as fleshed out in the book (I'm looking at you, my beloved Liandrin), but I have no interest in developing a sense of community with people who are watching the show for very different reasons than I.

I am absolutely not here for the men of the show, it's fine if you are, good for you but don't come at me. There are some men whose stories I enjoy following, but I'm here for the aes sedai, the forsakens (I can't wait to really meet Moghedien next season), the younger girls, the seanchans... and I would very much love to be able to share my love for the show and those characters, and to enjoy the show with people who share a similar enthusiasm.

Here's my issue, though, I find it hard to build a sense of community on Tumblr, interactions are limited by a very poor comment section, which is a shame.

I don't believe Twitter should be the main place for fandoms, because there's no room for in-depth conversations and everything has to be done quickly, It's more about posting and liking than engaging together.

I enjoy Dreamwidth and it would be, I think, a lovely place to build a community (besides, there is some WOT content over there) but I know it's not the most popular place, and it works more as a forum, which might lack the spontaneity of conversations.

Then there's Discord, and I am conflicted about Discord, on the one hand, it's convenient to chat and it can be well organised, on the other hand... I have wandered on quite a few fandom servers and they weren't for me, except for one. They're usually too crowded and I found that, in some places, the conversations are overwhelming in quantity but there aren't any real discussions.

As for that ONE server that worked for me, that one is quite special. You see, it's a small fandom of a show with a lot of wasted potential, but it's also the best fandom I've had the pleasure to join. People really interact, most of us know each other at least vaguely, we have a general idea of what are people's likes and dislikes, even when they aren't people we've chatted a lot with, and the mods always come up with fabulous events to keep the community living and it does keep on living, even after the show got cancelled in 2022. This discord doesn't have that many people in it, we talk a lot about the show, we also talk about specific characters, talk about ships in their dedicated channels, chat about our progress in our fic/gif/edits and support each other... people are interacting and we're all loving it. And those same people participate in fandom events because what unites us, even if we don't love the same characters or ships, is our love for that same show.

This is this sense of community built on the common love for a show and its potential that I would like to find for WOT, and more specifically in this case, about the women of WOT (but of course, talks about the show as a whole are always welcome and encouraged, it's just that watching with a preference for the female characters really change the conversations ones might have...) Especially with the new season coming in March, with all those new intriguing women that joined the cast, it would be lovely to have our little corner somewhere to chat together, as a small part of a bigger fandom, rather than individuals floating in the big WOT show tag and struggling to connect.

(And maybe those places already exist and I just haven't found them yet and I'm the only one struggling to connect. In this case, if you know places, please fill me in, I am dying to connect with fellow ladies of WOT lovers.)

So I guess that's it. I would love for us to get a chance to better connect, as show lovers (book readers are welcome, but please, be really mindful of spoilers, I am sick of being spoiled things even though I muted tags because people believe using emojis to talk is good enough to prevent spoilers, like we don't have functioning brains enough to put 2 and 2 together...).

To sum up my wish list: I wish we, those of us with similar interests (I don't care which women you enjoy in WOT, I love them all and they're all interesting, even if I have my own preferences I will gladly chat about any of them with you), could create a little corner in this big fandom so we can start acting as a community rather than separated individuals scrolling through tags. But a community who takes its time, to have nice little chats about the show and its women, to discuss our ideas and hypothesis, to share our thoughts and headcanons about our favourite ships (and yes, please, let it be plural and not just one ship) and characters, to support each other's in our writing, drawing, giffing, editing... all that, free of the drama that too often seem to happen in fandoms. A little place where we could always find someone who's up to chat a little about the show, and its women.

(Little place, because I really think once you're over 100 persons in a discord server (and probably less) it becomes nearly impossible to really get this feeling of a community).

So I'd love to know your interest in building such a place, and where you think it would be the most convenient for you!

[ds30below]

30 Below: resources & AO3 collection

First things first: here's the AO3 collection for all your future fanworks! Yay!

Now, some links to get you started.

🐢Where can I watch due South?

Well, we're all in luck — it's on youtube!

There's also Slings and Arrows and Hard Core Logo, both great—but not only—points to get into Canadian 6 Degrees. You can DM this blog, flownwrong on DW or emotionalrisotto on Discord for a better quality rip of HCL, or something more obscure ;)

🐢Are there transcripts?

Why, yes, there are — wonderful and detailed, on Dreamwidth and AO3. Courtesy of @agentreynard!

🐢Where do I look for history and discovery?

@juniperpomegranate's lists of Livejournal and Dreamwidth DSC6D communities are an endless rabbithole of joy (note that some of them are alive on DW, pop in to see what's up!)

LJC's due South page is just one example of many, many fansites of yore. This one is still up, offers lots to see, and links to many other fansites (see: Wayback Machine)

Fanlore. Linking categories, not just fandom articles, because there's a lot more: due South | Canadian 6 Degrees.

Official site, archived. Honestly, this one is just cute. This is a link to a random snapshot — if it doesn't work, see below.

You'll have to deal with a lot of broken links. Most often, Wayback Machine has your back: paste the link into the search bar and click around on the timeline until you find a working snapshot!

These links are just a few ideas, and mostly concern the online era of dS fandom — please feel free to share your own suggestions.

Otherwise — just pick a link and go from there. Use whatever you find as inspiration. You'll likely see something I didn't and do something I haven't thought of. That's the point. Enjoy!

🐢fest info

🐢themes & prompts

🐢navigation

[azriona]

Well, I took 10yo to see Lilo & Stitch.

I have... mixed feelings.

I still think the original animated version is superior, I'm glad I went... but mostly in the same vein as being glad I lived in Saudi Arabia so I can talk about what it's like to experience living in that country. Because there's a whole lot of nuance involved in what makes the new version of the movie so disturbing, as well as some issues I haven't even seen raised that bother me, too.

(Spoilers under the cut. Slightly modified from a post on Dreamwidth.)

So the biggest difference between the animated and live-action versions of the movie is obviously the ending: in the animated version, Nani stays with Lilo, with the added bonus of a supportive extended family structure from David, Stitch, Pleakley, and Jumba. Not so in the live-action: Nani goes to college in California, Lilo is being cared for by their neighbor, though there is still the extended family structure from Stitch, Pleakley, and Cobra Bubbles.

The reports I'd seen about this ending--"NANI GIVES LILO UP TO THE STATE"--are very reactionary. Not to say they're wrong--they're not--but there's nuance there too. The neighbor is set up early on as being a sort of "auntie" to the girls, already watching over them and offering assistance (which Nani refuses to take). The reason the neighbor has Lilo is partially because she suggests it, and partially because CPS agrees to the plan to see her as a foster parent for Lilo.

Is Lilo still ward of the State, ultimately? Yes. (And this is something the movie 100% glosses over, because I doubt it's that easy or fast. And I don't mean to downplay that part of it: Nani 100% relinquishes parental rights, and while the movie insinuates that she can get Lilo back again... come on. We all know. We've all seen those Lifetime specials) Is Lilo in a family unit that is familiar, comfortable, and accepting (and also native Hawaiian, which was my big question)? Also yes. The sisters also still have close contact with each other: the last scene is Lilo and Nani Facetiming each other... and then actually together, in the same place, via a device we see Jumba using earlier that allows them to move from one location to the other easily.

(An argument I saw online which does make sense: If Nani can use the portal-ray-gun to visit her sister in Hawaii while she lives in California, why can't she live in Hawaii and use the portals to attend classes in California? Which is an excellent point too.)

But there's also a lot of weirdness about the movie, things that rubbed me the wrong way, and choices that I just didn't like.

Jumba's characterization is erased. He doesn't have the Russian accent. (Every time he spoke, it was jarring.) He doesn't have a redemption arc; at the end of the movie, he's taken away by the Intergalactic Counsel. Which means, he's not part of Lilo's ohana at the end. In the original version, he has a sort of... fatherly relationship with Stitch; that's gone. I wouldn't say it's far that in this version, Jumba doesn't see Stitch as a he, but an it. 

Which also means, the dynamic between Jumba and Pleakley is shifted. They're not the comic relief ambiguously gay uncles anymore; they're almost working against each other from the start. (Pleakley's character is left almost intact.) And credit where credit is due: Zach Galifianakis plays Jumba really well... just that the changes made to the character made him unlikable in the end. 

Cobra Bubbles also had some shifts to his backstory; he's not CPS in the movie, he's actually CIA. (Even though for what he does in the movie, it'd make more sense for him to be FBI.) He goes undercover as CPS to get close to Stitch, but he's not actually CPS at all. I can't decide if I like this switch to his backstory, or not. I did really like Courtney B. Vance as Cobra: he looked and sounded just about how you'd expect a live-action version of Cobra Bubbles to look like. This made his changes infinitely better than Jumba's. (Probably helped that they weren't so drastic. And Cobra really is 100% part of the family unit in the end this time, which I don't think was so explicitly stated before. That's maybe a positive: if Cobra's not actually CPS, it means his inclusion in the family unit is by choice and not necessity, which makes it that much stronger a statement for the flexibility and inclusiveness of found family.) 

Another thing that bothered me, and which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere, was the focus on health insurance (and lack thereof) as a major plot point. Because trust me, it is. The social worker at the beginning of the movie (who is not Cobra Bubbles but a new character entirely) tells Nani that she must sign them up for health insurance. And for whatever reason, Nani doesn't get this done. No mention of how she would even do that, how difficult it would be, if the insurance would start immediately (do they, even? I've never not had it through one workplace or another).

But when Lilo is hurt in a surfing accident and ends up in the ER, and Nani doesn't have insurance... well. That's the thing. Nani is literally told that the only way out is to let the State have Lilo, because only then will the State cover Lilo's doctor's bills.

And that, to me, is pure evil. That right there, should be the main takeaway from this movie. Not that Nani gives up her parental right... but why she gives up her parental rights. It's not to go to college. It's not because she can't handle the pressure of being a mom to her sister.

IT'S BECAUSE SHE LITERALLY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO OTHERWISE. Because one single visit to the emergency room--with no indication that Lilo is even going to have any major complications afterwards--is enough to utterly and completely destroy their delicate balance between being okay, and being ground into utter poverty.

It's borderline blackmail. It's kind of disgusting. And in almost any other country in the world, it wouldn't have been an issue. I have to think there's probably some interesting commentary on that plot point in other places, more or less along those lines. "Look how fucked up the American health care system is; in ours, that whole debacle would have maybe cost Nani $200, not the guardianship of her sister."

Another complaint I've seen is the downplaying of the tourist trade. Definitely saw very, very little of that: mostly in the form of when Lilo is sneaking onto a resort area and using their services when she shouldn't be. (She gets caught or called out a couple times; there are zero consequences shown. Mostly people just say, "You aren't supposed to be here" and that's the end of that. There are no interactions with tourists at all. Anyone Lilo interacts with is either Native Hawaiian or if not native, a Hawaiian resident. I think of all the speaking roles in the movie, maybe... four were not POCs. (Two of those being Jumba and Pleakley. One being Mertle, who barely appears. One being the woman working at the animal shelter. If I'm forgetting others, they appear even less than Mertle.

Having lots of POCs in the movie in main character speaking roles? Awesome. Having zero comment on the tourist trade in a movie that low-key gives you a very idyllic helicopter view of Disney's Hawaiian resort.... eh, we're getting a little sketchy here. You just know that resort is going all-in on Lilo & Stitch tie-ins. 

I can't help but think: every time there's a movie that features POCs as the main characters, there's also so many problematic issues with the movie themselves (which generally have NOTHING to do with the main characters or main actors) that there's usually a campaign: boycott this movie! Don't go see it! We saw that with Captain American Brave New World (oh no there's an Israeli actress featured and that's pro-Israel very bad). We're seeing it with Lilo & Stitch. What are we going to see it with next? All that ends up happening is it gets harder and harder for studios to justify making movies with POCs. "Oh sorry your movie tanked, we can't do a sequel." That's not their fault you approved a problematic movie.

Sigh.

Anyway. 10yo liked the movie. He doesn't see the problems, he just saw how Stitch (and Lilo!) were loved despite being wild children who have trouble controlling themselves. For him, that was the biggest message. And how family can include everyone. I don't mind him taking away those messages: they're the same ones that appealed to him in the first movie. They're the same ones that ultimately appeal to most kids. And those were still in there, just framed differently.