Si Eun...Si Eun, stop

pffff

So You Want to Tumbl?

There are lots of newcomers here these days, and I thought I’d spell out how to begin and what it means to ‘curate your own dash’ for folks who haven’t grown along with Tumblr for the past decade.

If you’re coming from a platform where content is fed to you, Tumblr can seem barren and intimidating in the beginning.  But that’s actually a good thing!  What it means is that you will see what you want to.  If you’re in a fighting mood, go find political discourse.  If you’re feeling fragile, make your dash nothing but art and nature.

How to begin?

You’ve made your blog and picked out your icon (seriously, choose an icon:  otherwise you’re indistinguishable from bots).  Feel free to be anonymous.  Most of us are, and it’s wonderful to have a place that’s not tied to your Real Life.  Here you can be a fandom freak (like me!) and no one judges you and your boss will never find out.

How to be Social and Interact

If you want to find your tribe and interact, it’s best to start following individual blogs.  (If you follow a blog, they have an opportunity to follow you back.  Simply following a tag is a passive, one-way street.)  To Tumbl is to be in a vast cocktail party, and you need to mingle and eavesdrop to find the things that galvanize you.

How to be seen and heard

Tumblr Etiquette

The most important part of “curating your experience” is learning to Block.

But doesn’t this mean my dash will be single-topic and boring?

The simultaneous joy and pitfall in following individuals is that MANY blogs are not single-topic.  You will be exposed to all kinds of reblogs/ideas/other people from the folks you chose to follow, and can decide for yourself if you (a) want to be involved in that topic, (b) are indifferent to that topic, or © want to run from it screaming.

Also, the blogs you follow will move from hobby/theme/passion over time, and you can move with them, appreciate their new topic without vibing with it, or drop them altogether.

And THIS is how you curate your dash, my friends.

***Install New XKit extension.  It’ll make your life easier!

***Here’s the Tumblr Help Center, where you can learn more details.

WOO HOO, y'all! I just realized that last year when they started the Beta Post changes that they changed the tag limit. So now it’s the first 20 tags that come up in searches (only from the original post, though, not reblogs). That means you have more leeway to fart around to find the tags that other people happen to be looking for.

Also, the tag limit is 30. this is a little sad, as there used to be no limit at all, but hey, it’s a worthwhile trade. So your tag stories and such will vanish starting at tag 31.

***An etiquette note: do not censor your tags! If you do, then people who filter (block) that tag are going to see your post against their will. You will not get in trouble or shadow-banned for using the tag #suicide or #kill, for example, but if you tag your post #su1cide then some traumatized people are going to be real mad at you.

***Well, Tumblr DOES actually censor SOME tags, most of which have to do with sex. You can see what tags they censor by doing a search for (for example) #nsfw. There will be zero results. That means that if you do a post with this tag, your post will be invisible to all but your followers and will not show up on search results. Some bizarre things seem to get qualified as sex, like #role reversal (seriously, grrr). If you’re unsure, do the search test. It’s random and dumb. Like, #dom/sub is fine, but #BDSM won’t show. *sigh*

Y'all should reblog this new, corrected post!

Sometimes I’m looking for something online - often “how to” articles - and I want to filter for - like - a website that was clearly built in 2010 at the latest, which may or may not have been updated since then, but contains a vast wealth of information on one topic, painstakingly organized by an unknown legend in the field with decades’ worth of experience. I don’t want a listicle with a nice stolen picture in a slideshow format written by a content aggregator that God forgot. I want hand-drawn diagrams by some genius professor who doesn’t understand SEO at all, but understands making stir-fries or raising stick insects better than anyone else on this earth. I don’t know what search settings to put into Google to get this.

thank you for articulating this cri de coeur for me

ngl these days i’m just happy when it’s not a video

search.marginalia.nu is the search engine you want!

“It is a search engine, designed to help you find what you didn’t even know you were looking for. If you search for “Plato”, you might for example end up at the Canterbury Tales. Go looking for the Canterbury Tales, and you may stumble upon Neil Gaiman’s blog.

If you are looking for fact, this is almost certainly the wrong tool. If you are looking for serendipity, you’re on the right track. When was the last time you just stumbled onto something interesting, by the way?

I don’t expect this will be the next “big” search engine. This is and will remain a niche tool for a niche audience.“

i clicked around for a few minutes searching various things and I now have two fourteenth century pie crust recipes and an apple filling recipe i want to try, so thanks!

it has been twenty minutes and I am deeply in love with this search engine.

INCREDIBLE. I *do* want to know how to test Windows 95 for Y2K Compliance and I am glad that someone is still hosting step by step instructions for that.

tl;dr: search.marginalia.nu for the old or old looking and just plain serendipitous stuff that google or Duck duck go are gonna not find/bury on the 20th page. For perfectly good reasons, but …

My absolute favorite part of having made this post - other than causing people to be introduced to this site - are the people in the tags/comments talking about their interests and stuff they found about their hobbies.

Good luck out there surfing the cyberweb, you crazy cats. I love the shoelace website too - Ian’s Shoelace Site [link], unless there’s another. My personal favorite old-school site is Alysion’s string figure collection [link].

“You are a silly girl, and I am a useless prince. Actually, we make a good match.”

Nice

Here

Bees don’t fly in the dark!

Idiots

Insta killstreak

This is amazing

Also, in defense of these bees: If I were going about my day outside and it very suddenly and with zero warning turned dark like God tripped on the sun’s plug and yanked it out by mistake, I would absolutely duck as a first instinct before looking for cover, whispering “what the fuck, what the fuck” the whole time.

Awesome

sound ON

also the small pig just casually hanging out fucking makes this

Video description: a tiktok tutorial based on this post by @ao3skin

The video begins with a page showing 2 works on AO3. One of the tags is blacked out. Several other tags have a yellow highlight behind the text. The narrator asks, "Have you ever wanted to be able to blackout or highlight certain tags?"

After crediting the original blogger and saying that you must be logged into your account, they proceed with the steps to create a site skin.

They demonstrate both the blackout and highlight at the same time. For the blackout code, they use this:

li.blurb a.tag[href*="angst" i] { background-color: #000; color: #5e5757; }

And for the highlight code, they use this:

li.blurb a.tag[href*="fluff" i] { background-color: #e9f23d; color: #5e5757; }

This version of the blackout has text in a very dark grey (#5e5757) instead of black, so you can zoom in on the tag and read it if you want to know for sure what it is. If you'd like to change any of the colours, they recommend using a hex colour picker like the one available through google.

This code works based on text strings, which is another name for the letters inside the quotation marks. The code will look for those letters in that order and highlight or black them out, along with the rest of the words in the tag with them.

After copying the code and adjusting the words and colours to your preference, scroll to the bottom of the page and tap on the Submit button to save your site skin. On the new page that loads, tap on the button labelled Use in order to use the skin.

Additional information not included in the video:

If you're copy/pasting the above code while you're on mobile, your phone might change the quotation marks on you. If you go through the steps and the tags aren't changing, check the quotes. If they look curved or curly, then they're the wrong ones. Replace them with the straight up and down quotes and it should work.

This code is modified slightly from what ao3skin posted. I've specified li.blurb so that only the tags in a work list are affected. If I enter a fic, the tags are neither highlighted nor blacked out anymore. This still works on a search, browse, or bookmarks list though.

You can add this code onto a skin you've already made without breaking it. You can also combine this skin with one of the AO3 public site skins by adding the public skin as a parent. To do that, tap on the button labelled Show next to the word advanced. Then tap on the button labelled Add Parent Skin and type in the name of the public site skin you'd like to combine this with. AO3's dark mode is called Reversi.

I joined twitter the other day because... I don't know why. But anyway, here's a very long and detailed thread about filtering on AO3 if you know anyone who might need that information.

Nothing Changed, just a light hearted princess grew up. | Monarch Industry

lmfao turns out you can just get an extension to show youtube dislikes again

chrome firefox

The woods are lovely, dark and deep 🍃🍂

Part 2 🍃

I think I accidentally deleted half of this post so here’s part 3 and 4 again lol enjoy

i am home.

(My Favorite) Queer Characters in Anime

I just wanted to make a compilation of a few of my favorites for no reason. (NOTE: LONG POST!! And fyi I tagged the series/characters mostly.)

~~

Ymir and Historia Reiss (Attack on Titan)

During my very first watch of the anime, I fell in love with these two. I just absolutely adore them and their dynamic. Their relationship was so sweet. Whatever your opinions are on the conclusions to their arcs, there’s no denying these two were incredibly impactful in the story. 

~~

Hange Zoe (Attack on Titan)

One of my favorite characters in the series and happens to be somewhere outside of the gender binary. Gotta love them. 

~~

Shinji Ikari and Kaworu Nagisa (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

While many people deny it, there’s undeniably romantic feelings between these two. Shinji’s relationship with Kaworu was complicated – as were all of his relationships – but it was monumental for his character.  

~~

Yuri Katsuki and Victor Nikiforov (Yuri!!! On Ice)

One, Yuri on Ice is incredibly sweet, and two, it was my first anime. Yuri and Victor’s relationship was also monumental for queer male representation outside of BL, so I have to give it some recognition.

~~

Alluka Zoldyck (Hunter x Hunter)

I absolutely adore Alluka – she’s just so incredibly sweet. I also love how her brother Killua calls out their family for misgendering her and is incredibly supportive. 

~~

Langa Hasegawa (Sk8 the Infinity)

While some people believe that Langa’s feelings toward Reki are platonic – despite Langa stating that he likes him – I think it’s undeniable that he has quite the crush on him. And awkwardness about these new and strong feelings is incredibly adorable!

~~

Mafuyu Sato (Given)

Not to say I don’t love the other characters from Given, but Mafuyu holds a special place in my heart. Seeing him deal with greif through music all while falling in love with Uenoyama was truly touching. 

~~

Yuu Asuka (Stars Align)

I love Stars Align, and I especially loved Yuu. Seeing this anime use terms such as ‘non-binary’ or ‘FtM’ was so incredible, and Maki’s talk with Yuu about gender with very sweet. 

~~

Suruga Kanbaru (Monogatari Series)

Definitely a controversial character from a controversial series, but I still love her. While people debate her sexuality, it is explicitly shown that she is attracted to women. She’s weird like everyone else in the series, but she’s complex and incredibly human. 

~~

Reo Niiboshi and Mabu Akutsu (Sarazanmai)

From one of the weirdest series I’ve seen comes one of the most interesting and heartbreaking relationships I’ve seen. I loved their song (Kawusoiya) and loved watching more and more about them unfold. Also, they have one of the most explicit declarations of love I’ve seen in a non-BL series, and the show doesn’t shy away from their relationship once. 

~~

Shun Hashimoto and Mio Chibana (Umibe no Etranger)

This movie and manga series was literally so sweet and wholesome. Reading and watching the relationship between these two just makes me smile. I have nothing more to say. 

Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!

Heads up that this is a very extensive questionnaire and might be daunting to a lot of writers (myself included). That being said, it is also an amazing questionnaire and I will definitely be using it (or at the very least, some of it).

pro-tip: a lot of the time, when an image off google is automatically saving as “.webp” or “.gifv” in order to stop you from using it, you can work around this con pretty easily. all u gotta do it right click and select “open image in a new tab”.

notice how this new tab’s url ends with “.gifv”? or some kind of code converting a normal image to a webp (ex: “.png?type=webp”)? literally just manually edit the url so it just ends at “.gif” or “.png”. delete the “v” or delete the code. then hit enter so the image reloads under this new url, and hit save. it should save correctly this time <3

video description: an ao3 tutorial on tiktok, narrated by a female voice. This is in answer to a comment saying, "Is there a way to find a fic with a characters name in which they are the central focus and not just a tag mention?"

The screen shows the tag search results for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

"It can be really difficult when the character you're looking for is always tagged in fics and also barely in those fics. This is sometimes referred to as the Bruce Banner Problem."

The narrator opens up filters and says that first she is going to use an Include filter for Bruce Banner as a character. This will guarantee that he is tagged in the fics.

The character names that are automatically populated in the Include/Exclude filters are the top 10 most popular characters. If the character you are looking for is not listed, you can type their name in the box labelled Other tags to include and choose them from the dropdown.

"To increase my chances that he actually shows up in the story in a significant way, I'm going to come down to Search within results."

The narrator then types

summary: bruce

into the text field box. She says that doing this will combine with the character to tag to result in fics where Bruce Banner is tagged as a character and also his name appears in the summary.

After filtering, she shows that the number of works has decreased from nearly 58,000 to just over 8,000. There will still be instances where he's not a major character, but the chances have significantly improved.

A commenter on the tiktok pointed out that they do an OR search on the summary to also allow for his last name being used.

summary: bruce OR summary: banner

Another commenter stated that it's also worthwhile to check if there is a character-centric additional tag that you could search for as well.

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

And!

Here’s one that a lot of people miss, but that can be helpful for the reader: 

Obviously, people can often get it from context even if you don’t do this, and grammar and punctuation is a thing that evolves and changes over time, but I do like this rule because it actually benefits the reader. 

this video is great because i think this is the most i have ever heard him speak in one go but this video is also great because he seems very relaxed and like he's having fun!