Musings

Thirties, aroace and genderqueer, she/her or they/them please, multiple disablities, grad student.What you'll find here: whatever fandoms I'm currently in, disability stuff, some social justice stuff, some queer stuff, some stuff I just happen to like. I'm in many fandoms, and have too many OTPs to count. Ship and let ship. I'm not good at asks, but appreciate them anyways.

[bookishdea]

Every time I try this site again, I remember how much I hate it, argh. Just like *work* for me, okay?

[bookishdea]

Actua

Actually, I have more to say. I am utterly perplexed on how common it is to find "haven't read/seen X, all my info is from fan fic" in an AN. Like - not judging, you do you, but I just do not get how 1) you can want to write fan fic (and actually do so) without knowing the source material, and 2) even more: how on earth did you get into the fandom, especially one that is ~twenty years-old, in the first place? Again, I am not judging, so don't come after me and don't try to start anything.

This ties into another thing: popularity, in particular, fanon vs canon, and especially in DCU.

I'm thinking back to my DC days, not counting the two times (July 2015 and Fall 2018-Spring 2019) I dipped my toes back into the fandom, but - people just didn't do that kind of thing, in fact, people rarely mixed verses back then.

Like, if you wrote Teen Titans (2003 animated) fic, you could draw from the comics, but there was still a very clear line that you were definitely writing for TT and not the comics. The universes were kept pretty separate, to the point that when I watched TT, I didn't realize that Robin was the Robin as in Batman and Robin until I finally asked someone (in DP fandom, heh). It's not like you couldn't write for both, but you'd be writing two different fics, with two different audiences, with maybe some comics background in your TT fic, but that's it.

I don't really remember any fanon from...well, any DC media or DP media. And it's not like fanon wasn't a known concept because man, it was, I was a witness to the inception of Draco in Leather Pants, but I suppose neither fandom was big enough yet? Which makes sense because

DP was still waiting for season 3.

TT had recently ended.

Batman Begins had come out but The Dark Knight hadn't yet.

The DCAU was finished, but not that long ago.

The Batman was airing.

Superman Returns had come out in the last year.

Smallville was on-going and the one DC live-action series on TV.

Birds of Prey was over and already pretty obscure.

Etc.

So yeah, the comics existed, but it was still a very much "fan fic keeps itself separate from mainstream comics fandom" time, and by far the most popular/known versions of the DC characters (for fandom in general, not just DC) were from Smallville, TT, and Batman Begins, with some DACU thrown in.

Which lead to keeping the fandoms for each individual show/movie/series/etc separate. And yeah, part of that was definitely the FanFiction.Net "each piece of media has its own category and if you overlap, you'll have to put it into the crossover category" rule (which, for the record, was a category that contained crossovers for every fandom in the beginning. And then finally they made it so while crossovers were still in their separate category, each crossover had its own category. Which meant:

Danny Phantom/Teen Titans crossovers did not show up in the Danny Phantom or Teen Titans categories, but the DP/TT page, and a crossover between Danny Phantom and Batman Begins would have its own, separate DP/BB page.

FFN was a mess then but hey I joined the site in 2000 and clearly remember the outrage and worry when FFN went from "post each chapter as a standalone fic" to "you can upload all chapters into one fic! No more scrolling through an author's works, trying to find Chapter 5 of Fic x, when Author has posted over 50 'works!'", so I can take a lot of FFN annoyance tbh.

In the scheme of things, the Crossover thing was annoying and clearly influenced how fandom (at least DCU fandom) was delineated. Which, idk, I find kind of interesting!

But back to my original point - The DCU fandoms were small back then. There simply weren't as many different universes out there, and that meant that if you were reading (or writing!) for one, you were at least semi-familiar with it. Say - okay, maybe you hadn't watched the entire series of Smallville (or at least what had aired), but you'd watched at least some episodes. There was no point otherwise. Now the comics fandom was - it was definitely not expected to read all ~70 years of comics (at the time). In fact, my quest to read the majority of post-crisis comics (and some pre-crisis/ongoing assorted series including like 3/4 of the entire Batman comic) was not that common.

(Yes, the fact that I have to be intimately familiar with canon to write it is definitely a big reason I just do not get how people can dive in without knowing the source material.)

(Also do not binge read ca 70 years of comics history in a few months, especially while you're binging all the shows/movies you can get your hands on, AND are a college student in the middle of classes, LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES)

Anyhoo -

I think it was more expected to be reading the current issues involving the main characters you were writing about and then go to the beginning (or at least post-crisis start) of the books, and then maybe some definitive character stuff.

And now as more and more DC stuff comes out - the animated movies, the live-action ones, rebooting those, the shows - the fandom has really grown. Plus - and don't get me wrong, I love AO3, this isn't a criticism - all fandom categories can be mixed and matched, including multiple ones.

So, as of today, if I go to the Dick Grayson character page, there are 98,358 fics. Since AO3 doesn't really have rules about what characters you can tag and etiquette varies between fandoms, this means that he could be a main character, a side-character or technically only around for one scene of a 50k fic.

And this is cool! Then I look at the fandoms, and there are six fandoms that have a (type) behind them, three labeled "all media types" and one generic DC. And that's just the top 10 fandoms that have Dick Grayson tagged as a character in fics. Plus the fact that there are multiple media types now of various things, like Under the Red Hood, or Young Justice or Teen Titans/Titans, when before there was just Teen Titans (cartoon) and the Teen Titans comics, and the latter was not a big fandom in any way.

So if I wrote a fic with Dick Grayson as a Teen Titan in 2007, I'd tag it Dick Grayson, and I'd have to decide which fandom I'm writing for: cartoon or comics. Then I'd have to upload it to the correct one, or - on LJ - make sure I post it to communities that are for that version/ aren't just for one version, and label the verse. But that meant I had to be able to find a community in the first place. And my audience is only going to be people who are in that particular fandom/familiar with the character, and maybe my F-List.

.I don't know if the excuse of "it's to make it easier for new fans to get into" is actually valid for the travesty that is the New 52, and it honestly made me leave the fandom, but I think it did allow fans at least to have something that didn't take tracking down an issue from over 20 years ago if they wanted to look up some small detail (if you were happy with that detail in the first place). And then I guess DC realized its mistake and decided to make everything more complicated everything canon?

Ergo: more media -> more mainstream -> more fans + no longer strict divisions between fandoms/verses/media + the chaos that is the comics -> fanon portrayals -> reading/writing fic without knowing canon.

TL;DR:

Fandom evolution is wild, y'all.

[bookishdea]

Getting back into both Danny Phantom and DCU fandoms after nearly twenty years is a trip.

[bookishdea]

TFW your current hyperfixation that has lasted nearly two fucking years has eased enough for you to be like "okay, great, got some breathing room now, can get back to life, and THEN THE NEXT fandom hyperfixation pops up like immediately afterwards. Also, "eased enough" =/= GONE, it means like above, that while it is still very much on my mind, it's not the only thing that gives me the absolute comfort/satisfaction. Like - all the other fandoms, other stuff, it was still enjoyable! I was able to read other fandoms and daydream other fandoms! But it was sort of like getting chocolate cake when you asked for red velvet - nice, still tasty, just lacking that certain something that I needed to really feel completely satisfied. But now that (old) fandom is more like "this is still preferable to all the others except NEW FANDOM, which does in fact outweigh (old) fandom." And it's both like great because hey, NEW FANDOM really isn't new, it's the crossover of two fandoms I entered nearly 20 years ago (and damn I feel old now), one that has always been in the background and occasionally surfaces as the current hyperfixation, the other which I really haven't been in since, well, at least 15 years (I think it's actually been 16-17, I'd have to go look at my FFN account)

[lavenderpanic]

It's so insane because every time I watch CATWS I'm like... Steve Rogers would literally prefer to die at Bucky's hands than go on living without him. Steve would rather die than admit that he really truly lost Bucky. He wants to look into Bucky's eyes as Bucky kills him because at the very least, it's Bucky. He knows for certain he's gonna spend his final moments with Bucky, whether that's a peaceful death decades from now, hand in hand, or right now, as Bucky beats him lifeless.

[gay-jewish-bucky]

Reminder that the Winter Soldier only operated for 50 years of the over 70 years Bucky was captive.

It took over 20 years for them to break Bucky down enough to use him, and even then, not only did he need to be convinced what he was doing was good, but he constantly needed to be wiped to be kept complacent.

It only took seeing Steve and hearing 'I'm with you to the end of the line' to bring that all crashing down.

[soft-october-night]

Gonna reblog every single winter soldier post that crosses my dash like it's 2014 happy ten year anniversary Steve and Bucky sure was weird that they just stopped making marvel movies after winter soldier but best to end on a high note I think

[jenkil]

any thoughts on how the bradnate dynamic would be if brad was commissioned and nate was enlisted? could you even imagine brad as an LT or nate as a SGT?

Hi anon, sorry this is a week late, but thank you for giving me the opportunity to think about this!

I think it’s an interesting swap and a fascinating premise. It’s such a tremendous change to a core part of the show that I doubt I could pull it off, but I have a lot of faith in the writers in this fandom, so I’m sure someone’s chewed on this about this more than I have.

I guess a lot of my thoughts on this boil down to the same decisions you make when you transpose a GK character from a canon setting to a long-removed post-canon setting or an AU, which is: How much of each character is institutional, how much is situational (warzone-contingent), and how much of it is core personality?

Take Brad for example. My kneejerk reaction was that it’s easier for me to imagine Brad as a lieutenant, largely because Josh Person mentioned in a podcast that Brad was thinking “like a captain or a major,” when he was structuring the platoon, i.e. making Ray his RTO and not a TL or ATL, pulling Poke from infantry, etc. And then when I take into consideration in canon, there’s a level of unique understanding simmering between Brad and Nate, I think, okay, to some degree, he can follow Nate’s thought processes and decisions, so it’s not crazy to extrapolate him as a lieutenant. Maybe.

But then I think about how onscreen, Brad very obviously and regularly needs and wants things from other people that aren’t just work-related, and that chafes against the institutional demands of being a lieutenant/maintaining the hierarchy of command. (Couple of examples linked here; also, @oscartwofoxtrot has some great points about Brad as a character with wants.) It’s difficult for me to envision a way of him satisfying that need in a warzone as a lieutenant, largely because as Nate says, being a lieutenant is incredibly isolating. And sure, I believe Brad and Poke when they say Brad’s a loner and a misanthrope, but I don’t think that precludes him from being an active participant in the communities he finds himself in, regardless of whether his participation is for personal satisfaction or to make the community unit more effective and efficient. I once called Brad something along the lines of a “compulsive and deliberate caretaker” in his own little weirdo way, and maybe none of this matters if you think his hands-on caretaking is due to the institutional demands of being an enlisted sergeant and TL, but my take is that people often get less patient and more crabby under stress, so often, I attribute Brad not doing as part of his core personality.

I also think something that you have to do when you swap ranks like this is explain why you’ve done so to the audience, because they expect the status quo. But that opens up another can of worms, mainly because of the way we’re flung into the show. We never get any explanation in show canon as to why Brad chose to be enlisted or why Nate chose to be an officer (especially since we get indication they’re from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, but that’s another discussion.) Their ranks are just facts we have to accept at face value, but if you try to step outside of the show, you’re not going to get a straightforward answer, either. In OBA, Nate’s not all that forthcoming about why he became an officer. To the best of my recollection (admittedly, it’s been a hot minute since I last read OBA), he basically admits his choice to apply for a slot at Marine OCS was a capricious decision. I also think the lines of situational, institutional, and core personality blend with respect to the question, “Why’d you join up as enlisted/command?” For example, we know Nate went to college, so it’s likely he’d have more contact with NROTC/ROTC programs there as opposed to interactions with enlisted men. But none of that is rooted in the text of OBA or GK or any paratexts that I’m aware of. (Of course, if I’m blanking out or if someone knows of another text, please correct me.) And as for Brad, if you step outside the info we’re given in the show and book, you now have to account for a three-year gap between military school and joining up. So if you want to swap ranks, I’m not necessarily saying you have to account for all of this or address all these questions—let’s be real, this is just fanfiction, we’re all ultimately here to have a good time, and suspension of disbelief comes with the territory—but if you don’t want to go off vibes alone, that might be something to keep in mind.

Tldr; it’s difficult for me to neatly categorize what’s institutional vs core personality, so I get caught up on the details and it’s difficult for me to see them swapping roles, BUT in no way shape or form should that be a deterrent to anyone who wants to play in this sandbox, because it is possible, I think, and largely depends how you want to go about the transformative work of doing so. And as always, if anyone has any differing opinions or corrections to make, I’m all ears!

[bookishdea]

coming months late without starbucks: the things you find when you reopen a browser/computer after months why was I on page 15 of your blog months ago? the world may never know...

so I've actually thought about this at length since idk June? way up i the MD discord fic channel there's musing from me about it, because I came across a "mirrorverse AU" prompt on a challenge and started thinking about it and came to the conclusion that, as canon stands, at least character background/experience/voice? wise, Brad as a LT and Nate as a SGT just...doesn't make sense. I can maybe see Brad going officer at some point I lie, I actually have a lot of thoughts about an AU focused on that too but Nate going enlisted? With his background? Nahhhh. Upper middle class/"working class professional"people as Brad describes his own background, as fits Nate's background per both OBA and GK(book), just don't go enlisted without ~reasons~. Either there's a history of (likely enlisted) military service in the family (which technically Mr. Fick has, but also I got a clear feeling in OBA that since he was drafted and the fact that he got out when he could and spent a pretty cushy enlistment in Germany, the "urge" to serve his country wasn't exactly a strong one), or it's like rebellion (Brad?) or no other option (family cutting you off/family suddenly losing savings/something else), or idk just something that makes you feel that, for some reason, despite everything you've been raised with/for, you have to go enlisted. And as you said, while Nate's decision to become a Marine officer was I wouldn't necessarily say capricious in the true sense of the word, cause he does mention getting recruited by other services in OBA and how Rick's lecture plus the fact that the Marines were the only service who didn't try to recruit prospective officers through mailers and the fact that he seemed to want to prove himself in the first place (which I also have ~thoughts~ about, esp re: being pre-med), there's absolutely nothing in OBA or GK (book or show, implicit or explicit) that gives him any motivation to join as an enlisted man, especially after he's already at college. While he does originally seek out an enlisted recruiter, it's pretty clear to me that he didn't actually want to be enlisted but that he didn't know enough about the Marines to realize there's a difference between recruiters, which fair. So that means that - without any background change - I see Nate enlisting as pretty...improbable. Which is where the whole "mirrorverse" thing comes in, because if Nate goes enlisted and Brad goes officer, and Nate's background precludes him going enlisted, then... we have to change his background. Except - both the Ficks and Colberts are the same class, just East Coast vs West Coast, which albeit does mean cultural differences, they're not that pronounced to affect a decision like this.

Ergo, what's the one thing between Nate's past and Brad's that is completely different? Brad was adopted. And if we switch that around...well, then there are a lot of different opportunities. Brad was raised by his birth parents: how would that have affected his experiences? How would Nate being raised by other people affect him?

We know nothing about Brad's birth family, so you can extrapolate what you will. But with Nate's parents being a social worker and lawyer and Mr. Fick having already graduated college by the time he was drafted for Vietnam and Nate being born several years after the war, it very much seems that Nate was a wanted (probably planned, or at least not unplanned) child of two married adults who were at least stable in their careers. I mean, you could throw out that background and do what you want, but if we're generally sticking to canon, then Nate probably wasn't given up for adoption right after birth or willingly at all. I mean, why would a married couple who is established in their careers, careers that can certainly provide for a child, give up their baby? And if it wasn't willing, if the Ficks wanted to keep him but couldn't, for some reason, what possibly could interfere with their wishes?

Death. Yeah, sorry Nate, but I really feel that the only reason Nate would end up adopted, would end up being available for adoption, is because his family could not care for him any longer, and there are only limited reasons for that, and death is the one (imo) that makes the most sense. Ergo, the Ficks die when Nate is young, he has no other family to take him in (we know he has a living grandmother at Christmas 2002, but it's not improbable that she wouldn't be able to take care of a young kid or if the Ficks are dead, she possibly died with them, or some other reason), he gets adopted. And while I certainly have my headcanons fic plot about how that changes him enough to lead him to enlist instead of going to (an Ivy League) college, I think that no matter what you have to fundamentally change Nate's background in such a way that his (birth) family has little (or at least lesser) influence on him than the family that raised him. Otherwise, sorry, I just can't see it. As for dynamic, well.... that also really depends on what background you give them both, and what you feel is nature vs nurture. I am a shipper, but even without shipping, I think that show!Brad and Nate definitely have something more between them than just officer and his team leader, even if it's just a platonic deep understanding. I don't think that would just disappear with a role reversal. Nate's 25 in OIF, Brad's 28. Kocher, I believe, was 23 and a SGT and team leader, so Nate being 25 and having a stellar reputation in the battalion still fits. Brad being an infantry officer with at least some combat experience also can fit, though he could be a captain and is, in my fic but still the lowest ranked in the company (battalion? there's a LT in Alpha who could possibly have less TIG/TIS than Nate, but I don't think that really has an impact on the way the battalion treats/views Nate).

So, assuming that they still end up as LT/CPT and SGT, I think they'd have a similar dynamic as canon, but also different in other ways, based upon the way they were raised. I also think brad's West Coast upped middle class background is going to be more pronounced than in canon, because Brad can't just adhere to the "I'm a grunt, grunts do as they're told and don't think" mentality that (imo) enables him to deal with...well, everything that happens, whereas Nate probably won't have as much uh East Coast upper middle class...ness he has in canon.

TL;DR: Nate going enlisted with the same circumstances/background in canon makes absolutely no sense to me, and of course nature vs nurture plays a role, but I don't think that a role reversal/mirrorverse would preclude a dynamic at least similar to canon.

[winterandwords]

📖 #CalmWriMo 2023

If you want to do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) but a 50k word goal doesn't work for you, you're invited to join me in CalmWriMo 2023 on Tumblr for a chilled-out creative experience this November.

Here's how it works...

📝 Set a fun and achievable writing goal

This can be a word count goal, but it definitely doesn't have to be. It also doesn't have to be new-words writing. Editing, research, outlining, or anything other writing-adjacent activities are great too.

You might want to...

Work on your WIPs for [however many] days

Complete a draft or a certain number of chapters

Spend [however many] hours editing

Create an outline for a book

Research specific topics for a WIP

Make graphics or moodboards for your stories

Create or overhaul your author website

Or anything else connected to your WIP(s) or writing

🍵 Choose an accessible and enjoyable self-care focus

This can be anything at all that helps you take care of your physical and/or mental health while you work on your writing goal.

You might want to...

Be more consistent with your journaling habit

Get to grips with your sleep schedule

Start or continue a daily yoga or meditation practice

Drink more water

Reduce screen time before bed

Read more fiction, non-fiction, or writing craft books

Go for regular walks

Or anything else that benefits your body or mind

💻 Share your own CalmWriMo intro and progress

If you'd like to join in, you can make a post to share your writing goal and self-care focus using the #CalmWriMo tag. You're welcome to @ me (@winterandwords) in your intro post if you want to.

You're also welcome to use the tag to post progress updates and WIP snippets throughout November. Bear in mind, reblogs don't seem to show up in tag searches on Tumblr, so creating new posts for each update might make them more visible.

I'm going to check the #CalmWriMo tag throughout the month to see how everyone's doing and share some of your posts.

Anyone taking part is encouraged to do the same if you would like to have you have the time and energy for it. In the spirit of CalmWriMo, there's no obligation to do anything other than what you're comfortable with 💜

[aniamra]

A Tumblr User’s Guide to Dreamwidth

I’m sure by now, some of you may have heard of the site Dreamwidth when some people talk about Livejournal and old sites they wish they had. Maybe you’ve become a bit curious about how this place works or why people are so interested in it anyway. To answer that, I’m going to give you a little primer on Dreamwidth and what you need to know when converting from Tumblr!

So what is Dreamwidth?

Dreamwidth is a Livejournal code fork and like Livejournal it is an old social networking blog. How is that different from Tumblr? Well to clarify, Tumblr is a content aggregation site, not a content creation site. This means that Tumblr’s purpose is to spread things for other people to see, and these things do not even have to be something you made. It is not intended for feedback and communication, it is only intended to be looked at. That’s why any comment and communication features are so lackluster, the creators genuinely did not want it to work like a blog, and they continue to fight that.

Dreamwidth is a blog with features centered around content and comment management. How you use it is up to you, but it is a more or less static site with each post self contained, no reblogs or sharing apart from manually linking to the post themselves and the only things you see on your feed are the blogs and communities you’ve personally added to your watch. The format is best suited for medium to long-posts and posts to start a dialog among people, but that’s not to say it can’t be used for microposts (and there are communities dedicated to that kind of use). Comments are threaded which makes them easy to keep up with, and easy to read.

Dreamwidth is, above all else, a site dedicated to freedom of expression and is one of the few places left that genuinely cares about that.

Dreamwidth Terms You Should Know

Cutting You’ll see this term used a lot, and it’s a really huge important feature of the blog. Cutting is like the ‘read more’ feature you can find on tumblr. The difference is that you can choose exactly which portion of the entry is behind a cut and which one isn’t. You can also have more than one cut if you like! This is especially useful for long, informative posts to help people jump to the exact spot they want.

Cuts can also have their own titles, so you can inform people briefly of what’s behind the cut in the link itself. Good knowledge of how cuts work is super important and super helpful! https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=88

Access Filters A term you’ll see show up when composing an entry is what access filter is applied to the post you’re about to make, (sometimes this is referred to as ‘locking’ the post). When you create a post you are given the choice to either make the entry public, make it available to only those who have general access to your blog or choose a specific access filter which you have a pre-determined group of people on a list that are the only ones permitted to see those posts. You can set up as many access filters as you want and change them at any time, and none of the members are notified of these changes so you don’t need to worry about that when making changes. You can even make a post entirely private so that only you can see it, and you can modify the access settings on any entry at any time. https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=21 https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=22

Paid Accounts Unlike tumblr, Dreamwidth does have paid accounts. The entire site is ad-free and they support themselves entirely on those people that purchase paid accounts. The free accounts give you more than you need to enjoy and interact with the site, but paid accounts give you extra features such as the ability to add custom mood icons, journal customization options and more user pics. https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=4

Sticky Posts You can sticky an entry on your Dreamwidth, this can be useful to use as a means of introducing people to your journal and what to expect. https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=199

General Dreamwidth Etiquette

Tags You will find that on Dreamwidth no one ‘talks in tags’. This is because each journal keeps a record of every single tag used on a page both yourself and everyone else can see and has a limit to the total amount of tags you can use. Tags in Dreamwidth are seen as a means of organization, not as a means of subtext, you’ll have to add the subtext in text formatting separately. You can of course, edit and delete any of the tags in the list at any time so you’re never stuck with the tags you’ve used if you ever change your mind.

Images While this is a holdover from the old days when bandwidth was not as accessible as it is now, generally speaking, images posted are kept around 800px in width if posted without a cut. This is to prevent stretching and just general friends page tidy-ness. Similarly, when posting several images, they are either done by way of small thumbnails, or they are posted behind a cut.

Cutting It is seen common etiquette to cut overly-long entries or entries that contain a large number of images, or entries that could contain sensitive information. This was both to keep the friend reading list trim and tidy, as well as warn people before they read potentially triggering material or something just generally distressing (especially in the case of images). Of course it may be worth it to set up an access group if you find yourself talking about a subject some of your audience has conflict with but cuts are always a good choice when you’re not quite sure.

Response Speed As a note, Dreamwidth and other blogging systems are naturally slower than Tumblr. This is not a bad thing! But don’t be surprised if some people don’t comment on an entry till a week later. People on Dreamwidth are far more likely to pay attention to entries and read all their backlog so there isn’t a need to constantly remind or repost the same thing. Dreamwidth generally slower pace can be jarring to some people, but you’ll find it has it’s own benefits even if it doesn’t offer instant gratification.

Comment Subjects You’ll notice when replying to an entry there will be an option to add a subject to your comment, this is not a requirement, only an option. In general, this is rarely used and can sometimes be considered disruptive if it is filled out without serving any specific purpose. Ways it is more often used are for specific community activities, specific content warnings, meta data or something otherwise specific to the format. Be aware that comment subjects work similarly to email subjects in such that replying to any comment with content in the subject line will copy the subject line into your own comment with “re:” prefacing it.

Userpics Many of you have not grown up with the ability to change the icon you can use at any time but it’s something that’s been an essential part of communication with DW and other lj-likes. All accounts get 15 userpics that you can use on your account, they’re 100x100 images and you can choose between any of them when you make a post or comment. They can be used to display mood, expressions, fandoms, events, in-jokes, all sorts of things and can be used to help convey tone or mood in the post/comment you’re trying to make. It’s not perfect by any means, but thoughtful userpic choices can help a lot in trying to convey what you want when text alone can be difficult to interpret.

Q&A

Can I make multiple journals on the same account? No. While this is a feature many RPers would like, and it has been talked about, there is no system that creates Parent/Child journal accounts. If you want a second journal, you would have to make a whole new account, and log in and log out whenever you want to change.

Can I reblog other people’s entries? No. Everyone’s blog and posts are static, there is no way to share another’s post on your own blog other than manually linking their post.

How can I meet people if I can’t reblog? Meeting people on Dreamwidth does take more work, it’s not as easy to stumble across new blogs casually in the day without putting effort into it. Communities are a large social component of Dreamwidth and there are communities for just about any fandom, hobby, craft type and even small niches, and you can start your own communities at any time. There is also an ‘interest’ section in every user profile, which can be used to help find people of similar interests. And then there’s always meeting people through friends of friends in the comments of one’s entires. This post in particular has a much more through break down on socialization and how to find people https://bisexualbaker.tumblr.com/post/147873750806/how-the-heck-do-i-find-cool-stuff-and-people-on

Where can I host my images? This is of course, the biggest pitfall in Dreamwidth. As it stands right now, there is a small image hosting option however it only can store up to 500MB in size. For anything significant you would have to use a service like Imgur, Flickr, Sta.sh, or other storage option. https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=248

Hopefully this has provided the base amount of information you may need to start a Dreamwidth account. It’s very different from Tumblr in the way it’s used but it’s not completely different, but it’s not intended to be a 'replacement’, it’s just another service you can use if it fits your needs. Personally, I’m of the opinion that everyone needs at least one quite, static place they can hash out their thoughts on without fear of making a mistake, and Dreamwidth is very good for that kind of thing.

[shinykari]

Apparently DW is making a comeback since tumblr is back on its bullshit. If you’ve never been there, this is a nice primer. tl;dr: it’s free, it’s old, but its stable and does have image hosting (though not as extensive or easy to use as tumblr). And yes, it sucks on mobile.

[teaofgan]

A friend & I have been going back and forth about some silly Camelot concepts, and I decided to draw some.

Elaine of Corbenic & the Fisher King who is literally just a goldfish that needs to be carried around in this adaptation.

[hotside]

Sad Kylo thinking about the pretty scavenger who doesn’t want to rule the galaxy with him. 🥺

[jessepinwheel]

writer survey question time:

what software do you write your stories in

google docs

microsoft word/libreoffice

notepad/other plaintext editor

scrivener

a markdown editor

directly in tumblr/ao3/dreamwidth/whatever website you're posting to

discord/other chat client

a physical notebook

something else? (tell us about it!)

I don't write, I'm just nosy

Voting ended onMar 10, 2023

inspired by seeing screencaps where the software is offering (terrible) style advice because I haven't used a software that has a grammar checker for my stories in like a decade

if you use multiple applications, pick the one you use most often.

[sadmac356]

At this point it's kinda evenly split between word/physical notebooks/notepad

[drtanner]

I'm purposefully trying to move away from using Google Docs and from Google in general. Been having a good time with Scrivener!

[thatdisasterauthor]

The amount of people using Google Docs is terrifying. It barely functions when you have too many words! It eats things! IT'S GOOGLE.

[akaluan]

Some fun (and potentially horrifying, if you know anything about coding) facts about Google docs that I have forcibly discovered via my new job:

1: due to their newest "this is a GREAT IDEA!" idea, Google docs is now actually an Image, not actually text on your screen.

1a: Google docs uses an html element called a Canvas now, which is exactly what it sounds like -- using JavaScript, Google accepts your key presses, cursor movement (for selecting, moving text chunks, etc), and other such interactions, translates those actions into a form the canvas can understand, and then DRAWS THOSE ACTIONS ON THE CANVAS

2: if you're wondering how efficient this actually is, the answer is "not very". Every interaction you make, from clicking to move the cursor, typing a single letter, deleting a single letter, highlighting words... it all triggers code that quickly erases a large chunk of the canvas and then redraws everything previously erased with your new change. Sometimes even just sliding your cursor across the doc is enough to make the JavaScript code erase and rebuild an entire page image. Yes, this happens literally on every keystroke. Yes this is probably part of the reason that Google docs eats things sometimes.

3: yes this is actually Horrible for accessibility needs, because all that text you see on the screen? It's not text. It doesn't exist AS TEXT in any location that external code (or you and I!) can access. Google saves your document as a bunch of text + metadata about that text (and any images, so yes, images being added to a Google doc are being Redrawn On The Canvas) but we can't access that without explicitly getting access to the Google doc API

4: yes this means that screen readers can't actually read anything on Google docs except via the API (which requires a Lot of hoops and is frankly very poorly documented, as many APIs are) or via some. Fascinating code wiggles.

4a: yes I'm aware of this specifically because I needed to get a specific screen reader web extension working with Google docs, and yes I went the route of the fascinating code wiggles because it enabled me to get screen reader support on shared but uneditable documents, which is actually NOT GUARANTEED with any other method of getting access to the text.

5: somewhat unrelated to screen reader accessibility, and much more of a 'huh, weird decision, but I guess I get it', but all those Pages you scroll past in a long document? Google is reusing 4 canvases at most to display that whole document. Depending on your direction of scroll, Google keeps Last Page, The Two Pages Potentially Visible On Screen, and Page After Those Two Pages (so if you're looking at the middle of page 4 of a document, Google has probably got page 3, page 4, page 5 and page 6 loaded on the four available canvases. If you scroll up to the bottom of page three, those loaded pages switch to pages 2, 3, 4, and 5). The canvases are erased and redrawn with the new page as you move, which is why if you fast scroll thru a long document, everything goes WEIRD as gdocs tries desperately to load/erase/load canvases fast enough to keep up.

That bit really doesn't affect too much of my work, it's just a weird aside I found fascinating while I was working on the extension.

6: have you ever felt that the font and font size you're typing with on gdocs doesn't look Quite Right? That's because the canvas interface has it's own specific interpretation of font and font sizes that doesn't always align with browsers or word processors. This is less on google and more just a result of the fact that font and font sizes are not, and have never Been, actually standardized across different programs. Every browser, word processor, browser based word processor, text pad, etc has Literally Their Own Interpretation Of Display. Most of the time you can't see the difference with your eyes, because a lot of these interpretations agree pretty well with each other, but sometimes the difference CAN be spotted, especially if you're opening the same document in multiple places and comparing them.

I'm sure there are other things I've forgotten about, but this is getting long enough, so XD

[thatdisasterauthor]

Okay, I knew Google Docs was bad. But what the fuck.

[blurryf4ce]

reblog this and in the tags, write the band that comes to mind first when you think back to being 13 years old

[mckitterick]

ADHD life hacks #41,279: Vegetable Management

source tweet: X

[y-that-crazy-five-foot-two-chick]

DUDE

[pauputoot]

where do you land on the eyesight kinsey scale

exclusively wear glasses

wear glasses, occasionally wear contacts

wear glasses and contacts about equal amounts of time

wear contacts, occasionally wear glasses

exclusively wear contacts

wear glasses/contacts only as-needed (driving, reading, etc)

i am vision impaired in a way that glasses would not help so i don’t wear them

i have perfect vision and don’t need glasses (you lucky dog)

Voting ended onFeb 27, 2023

reblog not for a “bigger sample size” but because polls like this are a fun way to help people reinforce their own self-concept and passing it along so that other people can also have the opportunity to strengthen their sense of self by pressing a button is a cool and nice thing to do

[high-quality-tiktoks]

A traveling witch realizing there might be a hole in her bag