Gundam Roleplayers Union

RP help and resources, plus a blog masterlist for Gundam RPers of all series.

[ferhog]

100+ Gundam PFPs in a nutshell:

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

Thought some of you might find this amusing

[queenmelodis]

"Do we see Amuro impacted by the dozens of people he kills?"

Amuro:

[writingwithfolklore]

Writing Resources to use instead of AI

For coming up with character names:

Behind the name (my absolute fav)

Allows you to choose the origin of where you want the name to be from, whether you want a more feminine vs masculine vs androgenous name (as voted by users), random surname generator, and clicking on the name gives you important info like if there are any famous people with the same name, where it’s from, how common it is, and how people tend to see it, etc.

You can also search their name database by letter or meaning or origin, so if you know you want a character who has a name/surname that starts with an A from Ireland, there’s a whole list for you to choose from.

Census sites

Especially useful if you’re looking for a name from a specific place and/or time period. Just search “(country) census (year)” and you’ll find a database of real people who lived in that place at that time. No one can ever call your names unrealistic again.

For coming up with place names:

Fantasy name generator

This site can basically come up with any name for any person, place, or thing you might ever need. There are also specific generators for different fandoms if you’re looking to make an OC in an established world.

For finding that one word on the tip of your tongue:

One Look Thesaurus

This is my go-to. Not only can you find synonyms like a regular thesaurus, but you can also describe words like “unhappy smile” or “quiet laugh” to find the more specific word you’re looking for.

For coming up with ideas:

Word cloud

When I need to inspire a new idea, I write down all the things I’m interested in (hauntings, academia, lesbians, etc.) and put them into a word cloud to shuffle them next to each other. Sometimes seeing a concept in a new context can spark new ideas!

WWF Discord

This is my discord channel (shameless plug) for when you need to brainstorm off other people but don’t have anyone irl to talk to. We’re also happy to read and give feedback on writing, answer writing questions, or just chat!

For visualizing places and characters:

Pinterest

Pinterest can at times be a bit too sterile for my tastes, but if you use the right words, you can find more realistic photos of places. For example, adding “aesthetic” after basically any word will bring up a more broad collection of photos to help you flesh out places.

This is also a great way to find photos of people and fashion to help visualize characters. I’m bad at describing clothes, so I usually collect photos of outfits to help me know what my characters are wearing. Searching up “character inspiration” will collect more interesting photos and drawings of people who might not exactly be of our world.

(However, to make Pinterest not show you AI results, you have to go into your settings and check the “reduce AI” box. Luckily, it does mostly work.)

Minecraft

If you haven’t built your entire fictional city in Minecraft instead of writing, why not? It’s fun.

The Sims

This one is dual purpose because you can not only create your characters in Create a Sim, but you can design their houses. If you really want to go for it, you can bulldoze all the lots in your town and build your world from scratch.

For checking grammar:

Grammar Girl

Easy to follow definitions and examples, and if you learn better by listening, every article comes with a podcast to follow along with instead.

Grammar Monster

This one is my favourite for checking grammar rules because there’s tons of examples in graphics that helps for any situation.

Reedsy

Among other things, reedsy can connect you to professional editors within your budget.

For writing advice:

One Stop for Writers

This one was recommended from my discord channel and has all sorts of tutorials and resources for the writing craft.

My Blog Directory

Another shameless plug, but if you need writing advice on something specific, you can search through my directory to see if it’s there. If it isn’t, you can always send me an ask about it!

For an alternative to Google Docs:

Ellipsus

Think google docs but without AI. Yay!

(will update this list with any more suggestions or resources I discover 😊)

[gundamrp]

Actually, I didn't mean it as a ship. I wanted to explore Wufei's character a bit more because he didn't get a whole lot of screentime in the original TV series (although it was rectified in Episode Zero and Glory of the Losers). I was aiming to add more cultural stuff, as I did take a course on Chinese history during my undergrad days. I hope it clears things up. Also, if I were to write either Duo or Wufei, I hope I can invoke their dub voices.

That is especially cool~! I should have left the 'buddy cop adventure' joke that was in my first draft in my post! I wish I could remember it.

You also have the option of finding a cultural sensitivity reader, to beta your stuff for the cultural stuff, if you want. I don't have tips on that, as I don't often finish a writing piece anyways, but Chinese cultural readers exist. A a websearch/Google would help you there more than I could, as all the ones I know of don't offer much help anymore due to some drama (putting it very mildly) when some Chinese drama shows got popular with viewers who didn't care about anything but the hot dudes (obviously it was more complicated but that's the best short summary, imo).

The advice about avoiding hater tags still stands. Avoid and block people who are rancid about characters you like, write without preemptive fear, use the correct tags, and you'll have a happier writing experience.

Be like this with the block button:

And like this with writing:

(It'll be tough to talk your brain into it sometimes, because brains are assholes who like to make us feel bad about things beforehand, so poke around writing blogs for anti-inner-shame posts! I have to leave for a thing so I don't have time to find any, but I usually start with the tag 'writing advice' to find writblrs.)

[gundamrp]

I've just gotten into Gundam Wing lately, and I was thinking of writing Duo and Wufei. However, I'm scared of writing the latter because of his sexism, and I hope I don't get canceled on Tumblr for it. Would I get shit for it?

I'm not heavy into GW RP or fic reading at the moment, but I've seen the pairing before. I was never my jam so I can't say how it's received, but it exists already so someone had braved those waters. Perhaps they will stumble on this and give you some encouragement!

I will say this:

Every pairing has its niche. You'll need to find out what tags fellow 2x5 fans are using. If there are subsets of fandom that are argumentative about a character or pairing, find out what tags they're using and AVOID THEM. Hide the tag entirely in your Tumblr settings. Don't be like the Jiang Cheng fans from The Untamed who, upon finding out that antis made their own tag, starting using the anti tag on purpose (they say they're trying to "reclaim" it but it was never a tag used by actual fans of the character Jiang Cheng so I don't know what they're on about. It's all very childish and annoying, as you can probably imagine).

Basically, if the tag "canon wufei" or whatever is only being used by by Wufei haters, don't post in it. Let them stew in their bitterness, alone and unacknowledged, while you happily go about your day and post where other fans of your pairing will see it instead.

I wouldn't take out Wufei's grumbliness entirely or you won't have the same character, but if the sexism is not serving the story, it doesn't need to remain. Just don't write it. You can make him proud and abrasive without bringing "ugh women" teenager bullshit into it. Because frankly, I think he will grow out of it. He's got a lot of strong/competent women he has to acknowledge around him, and eventually he has to stop being such a pain.

If you feel like taking on that task, maybe you can write that character arc for him. But you don't have to.

You can't write for the haters. And by that I mean, if you worry about the people who aren't interested in your story, you'll be paralyzed before you even write it, or your story will suffer and you'll just end up with a fangless, bland bowl of mush. You have to write for yourself and the people who'll love it when they find it. Everything else comes after that.

Just write, first, and tag appropriately when posting. Worrying about anything else is just borrowing trouble.

Also, use your block button liberally if you do encounter issues. It's the best way to cut off people who suck.

[gundamrp]

Finding out What Tags You've Used on Your Blog

Ever wonder just which tags you’ve used before? Or needed to know how you tagged something in the past? Or are you making a taglist page and want an easier way to find out what you’ve used? Well, I have a solution for you! By viewing your Dashboard’s Page Source, you can get all the tags you’ve ever used, without combing your blog for them!

First, bring up the Page Source while you are on your Dashboard. The method varies by browser. I only use Firefox and Chrome for Tumblr viewing, so I have screenshots. I you use another browser, poke around; you’ll find it (or check your Help files for instructions).

On Firefox, click the Firefox button, go to Web Developer, and the Page Source will be in that menu:

For Chrome users, click your navigational button, go to Tools, and select View source:

This was an older screenshot and Chrome has since changed their layout a little, but in theory the method should remain the same.

Firefox loads the Page Source in a pop-up window. Chrome loads it in a new tab. No big deal, the contained data is the same.

Switch to the Source that just came up and click Ctrl + F to open a search field. Type in “user_tags” or “TUMBLR.USER_TAGS” to find the section that lists the tags:

What I did then is copy the line with the tags into a text document so I could save them. The tags are enclosed in single quotes and separated by a comma. Like so: ‘ooc’,'wtf’,'idek’

I wanted them in list form, because I find lists easier to read, so I went through and manually hit enter after every ’,’ combination. Here’s a shot of that in progress:

And once that was done, I used the Find & Remove feature to get rid of all the ’,’ to create a list.

(Double check to make sure you’ve hit Enter after every ’,’ before removing them, if you go this route; I didn’t and it took forever to fix.)

Now you have a list of all the tags you’ve used! This very helpful for creating tag lists for quick reference. Even if you don’t need to make a tag list, sometimes you can get a good chuckle by reading your tags.

~*Please note that you cannot edit tags on your actual page by going into the Source. You are looking at the HTML only, and cannot change the actual code. To change tags on your Tumblr, check out mass post editors or tag replacers (I should have at least one of these in my “tagging” tag on gundamrp).*~

[gundamrp]

2025 Update:

Soooooo this no longer works. It's several years old and many Tumblr updates ago. These things happen. Especially on Tumblr. I also recommend not using any layout/theme advice that's less than, like, two months old, because the devs hate custom blogs or something.

For tags, you'll want to either 1) search for something like "Tumblr tag cloud generator", which will do the work for you if you can find one that still functions (recommended) or 2) go to your blog (it HAS to be your blog page now, nothing works on the dashboard, and "username.tumblr.com" is vastly easier to deal with than "tumblr.com/username" in my test today) and search for "tags" and compile a list by hand from your posts (higher effort, do not recommend)

I haven't been keeping up with blog maintenance tricks or roleplaying stuff, so any gentle readers will want to find blogs that offer more current advice. Remember things are always changing online!

[hexiva]

Roleplay Is Not Dead Nor Doth It Sleep

There's a post going around about how text-based, freeform roleplay is dead, and I was typing up a huge response to this, with an accompanying guide on how to find roleplayer in 2024, when I realized it might have a bigger reach if I made it its own post. So here's that guide.

I hesitate to say that there isn't a problem with the new format of social media making roleplay more difficult to find, but in the desire to make that point, the OP of the original post has left people with the idea that there's no way for them to get into freeform text roleplay in 2024. Which just isn't true! Here, look at all the ways.

Forums

The link to RPG-Directory to find roleplaying forums is a good start. Once you've found a forum RPG, even if you don't join, there's usually an 'advertising' section on that forum where other forum RPGs post their ads - this may help you to find forums that don't advertise on RPG-D.

Another really good forum to find roleplay on is Barbermonger. Barbermonger is focused on connecting people for one-on-one roleplays.

This last one's going to be weird, but it turns out that there are still people seeking roleplay on the Gaia Online forums after all these years. I think this is delightfully retro and then crowd there seems a little older than average. No pre-existing knowledge of Gaia required.

Tumblr

You can also find forum roleplay groups (as well as tumblr and Discord groups) right here on Tumblr. Usually, the thing to do is to use the search function - search for "[genre] rp" or "[fandom] rp" and sort by "latest." (If you sort by Top, you are likely to find dead RPs.) For example, here's fantasy rp, historical rp, and marvel rp. You can also try jcink rp, as most roleplay forums are hosted on Jcink these days, or discord rp, depending on your favored platform.

There are also tumblr blogs specifically dedicated to advertising roleplays. I'm not super familiar with these nowadays, but just in the process of searching those tags above, I found these:

Jcink Tinder

RPG Adverts

RPings

There are more, I just don't know them off the top of my head.

Reddit

Listen, don't run away, I swear it's good now - I swear Reddit is good now -

Reddit is a good place to find Discord roleplays. It's a little heavier on smut-only roleplays than other platforms mentioned here, but it's not impossible to find sexless, plot-based roleplay here either. Most ads are for one on one RP, but you can find groups mixed in here too. The big subreddits for text-based freeform RP seem to be:

r/DiscordRP

r/RoleplayPartnerSearch

r/roleplaying

r/Roleplay

Some of these have weird rules about what you can put in your ad, and I don't remember which ones, so read carefully and don't get discouraged if your ad is initially removed.

Discord

In 2024, Discord is by far the biggest and most popular platform for roleplay, and it has its own native roleplay advertising hubs. Here are a bunch:

roleplay partner hub

Rockin Roleplay

The Roleplay Garden

roleplay help

the roleplay connection

RP Central

Roleplay Central

Roleplay Hub

Barbermonger also has a Discord server

Roleplay Meets: Reborn

RP Hub

The Scribes Guild

DM Rp Village

cherry blossom! roleplay hub

DM-RP

Roleplay Round Table (21+)

The Historical Syndicate (specifically for historical roleplay)

The Roleplayer's Directory

If you can't find the Discord roleplay you want on here, you can also try Discord hub websites, like Disboard. These work similar to tumblr tags - search for [genre] rp or [fandom] rp.

Other

The original post specifically mentions that 'all the old "omegle but for role play" type websites died out ages ago'. This is mostly true, but not quite! There's still Rolechat. It's a little janky, but what it needs more than anything is a bigger user base. Their Discord server is also a good place to find one on one discord roleplay. It is, of course, free, but if you want to support its development, they have a patreon.

Please reblog this post, and add your own tips on how to find roleplay!

[ot3]

i dont like the idea that kids these days are doing their fandom rps with ai chatbots. that's how you're supposed to make lifelong friends as a weird really online teen.

[voredere]

it's because forums are dead. tumblrs become too janky to easily find communities and many are abandoned, twitter isn't very intuitive for it, we don't have mailing lists, facebook doesn't really let you make character accounts anymore, and all the old "omegle but for role play" type websites died out ages ago. toy house exists, sure, but can be hard to get into and in my opinion is more oriented towards displaying art and designs rather than writing.

these days there just isn't space to meet other online rpers and connect like there used to be. back in the day you could go to gaia, neopets, any number of pro boards and other custom forums, you could meet people in chat rooms, there were websites dedicated to rp matchmaking and ads, email lists and circles and "guilds", tumblr communities, just unlimited networking options.

these days if you don't have an established network your options are:

-reach out on mainstream social media (high risk of no one finding your profile, high risk of regular accounts finding your profile and being rude about it)

-join an MMORPG, LARP, or tabletop (not the same imo)

-get really into solo writing

-use the janky AI out of desperation

it sucks pretty bad but i feel like the best way to tackle the issue isn't "ugh why do people use these awful bots" so much as "hey where the fuck DID all the role play networking websites go"

it's the same energy as when people started wondering why kids don't go outside anymore after they were banned from the malls

[synobun]

Use RPG Directory for finding roleplaying forums. No established network necessary and there are dedicated fandom sections.

[the-party-bus]

“Wait, there are people blaming the writers?”

Are you surprised? Fandoms have become notorious anti-writer spaces. Studios love you guys. They can cut the budgets, cut the number of writers, cut the wages of the writers, and you guys always blame the writers. “The writers ruined the show!” It’s never “the studios ruined the show.”

I hate to break it to you: more than half the shows you complain were “ruined by the writers”, were ruined by the studios. Studios cut the scenes and arcs you were excited for. Studios cut the budget of the show, or even raise the budget of the show and force a “bigger, louder, bolder” tone on shows that were unexpected hits (this is where we get “the Netflix look” on every show post-Stranger Things and Queen’s Gambit).

You guys do not do your research. Half your fanfics are tagged with bad faith digs at the writers, when a few searches would reveal how strapped that show was and how poorly the writers were treated. Writers are being given a single week to write each episode—I’m not kidding, one-week-per-episode is one of the reasons for the strike. How are good arcs and scenes supposed to happen under that time limit, with a max of only four writers?

Tumblr, the self-proclaimed “pro-union, pro-worker, pro-artist” site is also a major fandom site. You guys rarely practice good faith consumer etiquette for television and film writers, because your fandom salt always turns you against writers. And studios love you for it.

Yeah, individual writers do create bad writing from time to time. But so do painters, chefs, and musicians. Directors and actors sometimes refuse to film certain scenes or follow a show’s projected style and arc, and the writers always get the crap for a bad performance or a poorly directed episode. This isn’t to blame actors or directors; it’s to point out that you guys have one villain, and it’s always the writers. You guys never give writers the same grace you give animators, designers, directors, actors, composers, and editors.

Studios love you every time you say “the writers ruined the show.” Every single popular fandom is guilty of this. View any of the “why did the writers cut this scene, they hate my characters” talk when leaked scenes hit the internet. Writers barely get paid for what they do write. You think they’re writing scenes and then happily throwing them in the shredder? You guys just eat the talk that studios put out. Always have.

[binghsien]

the number of people reblogging this with "except for [x]" is appalling.

i have spent a long time digging into bad tv and bad movies. it's always the producer's and exec's fault. there are no exceptions to this.

[laughterbynight]

Y'all, tell me right now if paper cell dress up dolls of the G boys were ever made and sold because I'm losing my mind looking at this listing.

Like there's little red flags between the art and the title on the package but also it was the 90s so...y'know. Things got weird a lot.

Mostly interested in this because what is Trowa's folk costume? The matrix? Hacker?

Unfortunately I can't get a clearer image.

[laughterbynight]

So I have been told these are real, which, sweet Jesus okay.

I found a blog post from 2013 where someone shares their experience of getting their hands on these and a music box, so here are some clearer images of the "outfits".

Seriously who was in charge of the fashion on this show. I just wanna talk.

Source

[lemontrash]

i thought Trowa was fully bare chested under his suit and nearly choked on a raisin wheat.

[incorrectgundamwingquotes]

I can’t fucking concentrate all I’m seeing is Trowa’s “folk costume”

TROWA ARE YOU FROM THE MATRIX???

[dangerscully]

the x-files (1993-2018)

[psilocervidae]

Doctor Who (1963-Present)

[purlturtle]

Star Trek (1966-Present)

[gundamrp]

Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-Present)

[animenostalgia]

Happy Halloween, everyone! And for those who don’t celebrate, Happy Discount Candy Day-Eve! 🎃 Here’s my Haro Witch pumpkin, to celebrate the new Gundam series, The Witch From Mercury!

[staff]

Listen up if you use tagged pages on your blog!

Hello,

From Dec 1, 2021, we’ll be changing how tags in URLs are parsed, making searching for tags with special characters or multiple words more precise. You can choose to opt in ahead of time via a toggle over at tumblr.com/customize. Read on for more info.

What’s this about? We’re telling you about a new setting you can toggle on the web at tumblr.com/customize, to support spaces, hyphens, plus signs, and underscores in tags. After Dec 1, this change will be enabled on all blogs, but you’ll still be able to opt out using the same toggle.

Who will be affected by this change? Anyone who has:

Bookmarked /tagged or /search pages;

/tagged or /search page links in a post, a blog’s theme or description, or somewhere outside of Tumblr.

What do you need to do? If that’s you, click here or head to tumblr.com/customize and toggle the “Use better tagged and search URL decoding.”

You’ll need to update any hard-coded URLs to /tagged and /search pages that you added manually to those URLs. However, you won’t need to make any updates to the tags on your posts.

Questions? Read the original announcement on changes, read the Help Center article here, let us know what you think over on @wip, or reach out to Support with any queries.

[zukkas]

since staff is absolutely useless at explaining what this actually implies, i went to turn it on to see what happens, and basically it just changed the way tags and searches work in urls

before, if you wanted to go to a blog’s tag that had a space in it, the url would end in “/tagged/tag-here” but now it’s “/tagged/tag%20here” (html/javascript/ascii or something encodes a space as %20)

so before, to view something i’d tagged as “#ask game” on my blog, i’d type my url and “/tagged/ask-game” but this is where that leads now

and to get to the actual “#ask game” tag i have to type this now

i hope this helped somewhat, i don’t know how exactly this impacts the search function since it’s so broken i never bother to use it, maybe someone else can explain that

i think it’s a pretty good change, since before you couldn’t have any dashes in tags bc they wouldn’t actually display posts properly if you tried to go to that tag later, they’d just be changed into spaces, but it does mean i’ll have to go around and change some urls in my pinned and bookmarks. i’m glad you can opt out tho bc i imagine this would be extremely annoying for some people

[animenostalgia]

Yoshikazu Yasuhiko Directs Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island Anime Film Opening in 2022

Film to retell 15th episode of original Gundam TV series

News - The original Gundam character designer & creator of Gundam: The Origin Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, will be directing a new Gundam film! Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island will be a film retelling of the infamous 15th episode of the original Gundam tv anime, which is usually omitted from home releases in the US due to Tomino himself feeling that it's not up to par with the rest of the series. This film is set for a 2022 release in Japan.

[gundamrp]

I don’t have anything important to say except: my most popular Gundam screencap character collection by number of downloads is BY FAR the “Setsuna F Seiei 2312″. The next most popular is “Flightsuit Setsuna”. 

I feel the Setsuna love in this AD 2312 Chilis tonight.

[animenostalgia]

Netflix to Stream Live-Action Gundam Film; Jordan Vogt-Roberts to Direct

Brian K. Vaughan to write script for Sunrise, Legendary's movie

News - Originally announced back in 2018, it seems that the live action Hollywood Gundam movie will now be exclusive to Netflix. Check the link above for more details.

[ao3commentoftheday]

https://archiveofourown.org/skins/3756

[emperorsfoot]

This is a fantastic solution to the wall-o-tags problem on AO3 and I truly appreciate it and will promote this skin whenever the opportunity presents itself! <3

That being said, I probably won’t personally use this skin since it doesn’t appear to have either a night mode or a sepia version. Being able to comfortably read fics is more important to me than having a convenient way to scroll past irritating tags. 

[ao3commentoftheday]

Go to your AO3 Dashboard.

Go to Skins.

Click on the Create Site Skin button.

Scroll down and hit the button that says Show next to Advanced.

Scroll down to Parent Skins and click the button that says Add Parent Skin. 

Type Reversi into the field and select it from the dropdown. That’s dark mode.

Type Shortening long tag fields into the field and select it from the dropdown. That will shorten your tag fields. 

Scroll back up and give your new skin a name, then save the skin and use it. 

If you have a site skin that you’ve coded for yourself, you can add that in by typing its name into the field instead. Or you can add this new skin to your custom one using the same steps.

[eigwayne]

“Shortening long tag fields” is fantastic! I’ve been using it all day. It doesn’t work on fics with tons of series tags (story ID 29297151, lookin’ at you (derogatory)), so you’ll need to use it in conjunction with something else to deal with all the offenders.