Do you by chance have any advice for people that want to get into RPing but have never really done it before? It looks fun!
yeah here's a few. Note that this is geared specifically toward tumblr RP, not like, D&D or something.
So here's some ✨total beginner advice.✨ Most of this is geared toward How To Maximize The Odds That People Will Want To Give RPing With You A Shot; learning to be good at actual roleplay takes time, as it depends on both writing skill and teamwork, but step 1 is like, not accidentally scaring off people because you don't know local etiquette.
First: if you've got friends who are already RPing go to them first lol. Buddies are more willing to help you figure out the lay of the land and help hold a newb's hand through figuring out what works and what's a faux pas.
If a roleplay blog gets a new follow and/or message from somebody they don't know, the very first thing they're gonna do is click on your name and glance at your blog. Make it easy for people to find the important stuff fast! If your roleplay blog is a sideblog to your main, include a link to your RP blog in a pinned post so it's clearly available. On your roleplay blog, make it quickly obvious what people can expect to find. A description with a deep, meaningful song lyric is no good to someone trying to figure out wtf you offer unless you remember to include "(RP blog for Blorbo from My Show)" at the end of the description.
And following up on "help people find the important stuff fast": you want to actually have some RPing on your blog. After looking at someone's description & pinned post, the next thing they do is scroll down and skim the first few posts to see how you write. Since a new blog obviously doesn't have any roleplay threads somebody can read, I generally suggest that a new blog post a drabble or two in-character, both to help you get a feel for writing your character and to let anyone visiting your blog see how you write.
Lots of RPers add info pages to their RP blog. The most common info pages are a Rules page (most often: who you will/won't interact with, what kinds of plots you will/won't write about, if you tag any specific content) and, secondly, an About page (usually a bio about your character; some are long, they don't need to be). Info pages aren't mandatory, but some RPers are wary of someone who doesn't have one. If you're like "damn I can't think of any rules tho???" you can always say something like "I'm new to RP and don't have rules yet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ be nice plz" and some folks will be more forgiving lol.
If you do have info pages, make sure they're easy to access for someone clicking on your blog the first time. These days, usually that means including the links to them in a pinned post, since that's most easily accessible on mobile.
When you want to reach out to somebody, first check their blog to see if they have info pages. If they do, at BARE MINIMUM read their rules page. Respect their rules! If they say "i don't want to roleplay XYZ plot lines" and XYZ plot lines are the only thing you want to roleplay then just leave 'em alone! Most RPers will be miffed if it's clear you haven't read their about page, so it's optional but highly recommended; but reading someone's rules is mandatory courtesy.
The most common thing you'll see RPers say "if they don't have ___ I won't interact with them" over is listing your age. There's a lot of adults who don't want to write with kids and kids who don't want to write with adults. If you're not comfortable listing your age in your bio, that's cool—just be aware that it'll be a trade-off, maintaining privacy means not getting to interact with people who don't want to interact with someone whose age they don't know. If you want to split the difference, some people leave it at "I'm over/under 18" and that's enough to satisfy some people who want to know ages.
Okay so that's my general Getting Into RP new blog setup advice!!! Now here's a list of totally subjective opinions that I offer as sagely advice but that people will disagree with me on because it's mainly a bunch of pet peeves lmfao:
If you're RPing in a fandom instead of with OCs, don't tag the names of the canon characters involved every time you make a new post. It's kinda acceptable for a brand new RP blog if they're still trying to drum up a little attention; but even as borked as tumblr's coding is, there are still people that follow tags to try to find fanart and meta posts and announcements about canon and stuff. If somebody is trying to look for cool posts about barbie dolls they don't want to see five posts in a row from some RP blog like "Anon: hey Ken, are you and Barbie still fighting? Ken: Ugh, yeah it sucks. #barbie #ken #life in the dreamhouse"
Some blogs like to make extremely fancy formatting! Meticulously spaced and aligned text, tiny text, colored text, multiple fonts, fonts they copy/pasted from other sites, etc. But the more fancy your formatting is, the more people it will be inaccessible for. Special characters break or display as boxes on older devices, precisely-spaced margins break in weird places when switching between desktop/mobile devices, weird characters & colors are rough on people with vision impairments, and if somebody's using a screen reader/text-to-speech a lot of the fancy formatting options prevent it from reading out correctly. If you want to not passively inconvenience some of your potential RP partners, keep the formatting simple.
Lots of blogs use icons—little bits of artwork to convey your character's expression/emotions. They're not mandatory! If you think they'll add to your fun then use them. If you don't think they'll add to your fun, don't feel like you've gotta put them in. If you do use icons, don't use somebody's fanart without permission. Notice I didn't even say "without credit"—I said "without permission." Unless they've got some kind of blanket "you can use my art for anything anywhere" statement on their art page, you've got to ASK THEM and GET A YES from them. Lots of people don't do this! You'll find people using fanart icons they got from someone who got it from someone else who got it from someone else who got it from an icon maker that releases icons in 500-image batches! I think it's rude. I don't even have a particularly #aesthetic art style but I'd be irritated if I discovered some RPer I'd never met before using a tiny filtered crop of one of my drawings in the middle of a dozen other tiny filtered crops of other people's drawings.