#< is that even a usable tag. will people who know about that see this post?? whooo knows

[hexjulia]

can anyone recommend a good book about drilling for oil and gas in the north sea? I saw a few but I have limited time and i'm trying to just pick a good one. I would just like to be more informed about both the politics surrounding it + how they actually do that.

[anistarrose]

Imagine, for a moment, that your internet just stopped loading images one day. Your dash might look pretty different (and less usable), but at least you can still make posts — whether about your internet situation, or about completely unrelated topics.

Now, imagine that one or more of your posts blew up, to the tune of hundreds if not thousands of notes. Imagine people started adding images to your posts.

Imagine your post circulating almost entirely in the form with four or five images attached, and with everyone in the notes laughing about those images — except you, who started the post in the first place, who can't even see those images because you're trapped in Tumblr's loading gradient hellscape.

You're excluded from any further conversations on your own post, because someone added a mystery image with the caption "don't leave this in the tags," but you have no idea which set of tags it is, and can't tell if it's one of the good takes from the tags or one of the horrible takes from the tags. You're excluded from the Tumblr users playing with JPEGs like dolls. You can try to guess the contents of the images based on people's reactions, but it's hard. And no one adding images even seems to notice the irony.

This is, of course, a real problem plaguing Tumblr users with regularly slow internet. And it's also a huge, insidious problem plaguing blind and low vision people who rely on either screen readers, or image descriptions in combination with enlarged text on their device.

People with disabilities around comprehending images, people who have images (or gifs) disabled due to photosensitivity, and many others are also affected.

If you add an image to a post without either alt text, an in-post image description, or even both for maximal inclusivity, you don't know if OP — or the person whose tags you're peer reviewing, or whose reply you're screenshotting — will actually be able to see it. From their perspective, you might just be shoving a mystery rectangle in their face, expecting them to be able to guess — or responding to them without them being able to know.

Imagine being on the receiving end of that expectation constantly. Imagine how isolating that must feel.

We need, collectively, to stop making assumptions that everyone we interact with online will be able to access, physically see, and mentally process images. The assumption that disabled people are vanishingly rare and statistically shouldn't really need to be considered is an assumption of structural and/or implicit ableism.

Write image descriptions. Write image descriptions for every image you post, if you're able — but if you have limited energy, or you're still learning, you should at least start trying your absolute best to describe images you add to other people's posts. If you're starting a conversation, even an online conversation, you should make your best effort to be accessible.

So: Write IDs, especially if they're as simple as just text, like screenshotted tags (link to guide). Write IDs even if you think the best ID you can write is too short, or too incomplete (link to post explaining why even "bad" IDs help).

Write IDs in general (link to a huge compilation of guides). Challenge ableist assumptions and inaccessibility.

[myfandomrealitea]

Pre-emptively blocking people is good for everyone.

Seriously. The amount of times I see people whining or laughing about being blocked when they 'haven't even done anything' just tells me that not many of you know its actually a really good way to properly curate your online space, and its not something to be offended over.

Blocking is a form of protection. Its also a form of mutual protection.

Especially on websites that don't offer more extensive or usable filtering, tagging and avoidance options. Twitter, for example.

Blocking isn't some personal insult. Its a method of saying; hey, we clearly shouldn't interact, so I'm gonna build this soundproof wall between us to make sure we can't.

To use The Salmon Analogy, if I run a restaurant based on salmon as the main ingredient, and you're allergic or or severely dislike salmon, me refusing to serve you isn't a personal sleight. Its me recognising that you can't or really don't want to eat salmon, and its me protecting you from an unpleasant experience and myself from you inevitably screaming at me for serving salmon.

If you are someone who enjoys 'objectionable' content, such as gore, and you stumble across an extremely anti-gore blog, its absolutely a viable option to pre-emptively block them. Maybe your paths never would've crossed, but its better to ensure they don't than potentially wind up the victim or hate or harassment.

Blocking is an absolute sure-fire way to ensure that you do not see something you do not want to. It should be used as liberally as you want to.

[velvetvexations]

Hi Velvet, hope you’re well!

I’ve just spent the past several days going on a mass blocking spree of every transradfem I can find, and I gotta say I’m starting to think that as a community this might be the better approach to take going forward. While I very much understand why people leave these bigoted accounts unblocked and continue to try engaging with them and documenting them, as someone who has been keeping a close eye on this discourse for over a year now, 99% of the time these people have no desire to engage in good faith and are completely unwilling to listen to any opinion they don’t already agree with. I think we have reached a point where continuing to platform these people - even if it’s only to call them out on their BS - is doing more harm than good. I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to speak out about the issues of radfem ideology in the trans community or pretend like it’s not happening, but I’m tired of seeing every single discussion of transandrophobia get derailed by bigots. I’m tired of community infighting taking center stage, I’m tired of posts needing a million disclaimers, I’m tired of discussion revolving around “proving” that transandrophobia even exists in the first place when that should just be a given, I’m tired of seeing an increase in actual transmisogynistic behavior from a handful of transmascs that comes as a reaction to being constantly exposed to so much transandrophobia from transfems, which just adds fuel to the flames on both sides.

I know this is tumblr discourse and not really an actual united community so maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I do believe if we could start collectively being more aggressive about just blocking all these people who are only here to stir shit, maybe we can actually start making our voices heard by a wider audience. There are still so many people out there who have no idea what transandrophobia is, or are only vaguely aware that it’s some current discourse-related term, and I think our efforts would be better focused on educating and informing those groups as opposed to arguing with people who have already decided we’re evil. Again, I totally get where everyone is coming from and I don’t think the folks trying to engage with bigots are doing anything wrong (in fact I admire their courage and patience), I just think it’s proven to be largely ineffective and maybe it’s time we make a collective effort to change our approach if we ever want to move on from these circular discussions that go nowhere. I think people who are genuinely just ignorant about transandrophobia would be far more likely to engage with the topic if the replies and reblogs weren’t full of arguments, and I think a mass-blocking effort would be the best way to kick TRFs out of the discussion and stop letting them control the narrative.

Anyway, I wanted to send this to you because 1. I know a lot of people involved in these discussions follow you so I thought it might be a better way to get this idea out there than posting from my own blog, and 2. I genuinely want to know what your thoughts are on this, since I know you’ve personally done a lot of work directly confronting TRFs - and again, I genuinely admire your willingness to do so, I’m just concerned that it’s not really getting us anywhere and wondered whether or not you would support a collective change in tactics.

p.s. I don’t really love the idea of public blocklists as I think it’s better for people to use their own judgement rather than relying on the word of others, so I’m not advocating for smth like that. however I’ve found that blocklists aren’t really necessary because it really is a relatively small community of TRFs who all reblog from each other, so it’s very easy to just find a couple popular posts from one of them with a larger following and use the notes as a blocklist. It’s a bit tedious, but after blocking 100 or so blogs I’ve found that the transandrophobia/transmisogyny tags have become far more usable and from there it’s easy to block any bigots that slip through, so this is what I would recommend others to do as well.

TLDR; this is a call to action to stop giving TRFs a place in the conversation and start treating them the same way we should be treating every other group of bigots: block on sight and do not engage

That's not kicking them out of the discussion, it's kicking yourself out of the discussion. You can not engage with them if you don't want to but ignoring bigots doesn't make bigots go away and unlike Christofascists engagement with TRFs actually has a better than zero chance of making a difference to either them, their followers, your followers, or anyone else that sees you deconstruct their arguments.

[whyitfucks]

Why it Fucks: City of Mist's Themebooks

lateral character progression rules!

For those who don't know:

City of Mist is a 2017 Powered by the Apocalypse game from Son of Oak Games. Described as "set in a modern city where legends are real people. Heroes, tricksters, and monsters are reborn inside ordinary people, regular Joes and Janes, who gain supernatural powers connected to their legendary alter-egos."

The game focuses on telling stories that merge the fantastical with the grounded. Okay, if not grounded "lower altitude". It's the structure that you'd find any on detective/police/superhero procedural on TV. A detective game, even if those detectives are also embodiments of legends like Red Riding Hood or the Goddess Artemis.

One of the delightful things about it, and the reason behind this post. Is its use of what it calls themebooks. Every character at any given time is host to 4 themebooks. These can be powers tied to the myth you represent (Mythos) or some part of your mundane life (Logos). A Thor based character could have a "Relic" mythos for his hammer, and a "Defining Relationship" Logos with his old dad he cares for. They provide benefits to rolls when needed, have unique weaknesses and so on. Most importantly they have a mystery (for the mythos) and identity (for the logos) that tell us why we care or give little hooks. These themes get discarded and picked up throughout the game as you use them. Letting characters change without worrying about balancing difficulty.

As an example, let's look at one of the characters from the quick start, Salamander, tied to the myth of, well, the Salamander

One of his 4 playbooks is based on his job as a city water worker. We can see it has the identity "I need my job to survive" this tells us why it's important to him. I won't go in to much of the rest about power tags and such, instead looking back up to Attention and Crack.

Attention is like an XP track for that aspect of your character. There are a couple ways of gaining it like invoking your weakness tag for a penalty for example. You evolve it, expanding out the power/importance of the theme.

Whenever you take an action that goes against or would cause conflict with one of your themes it takes on a crack. Maybe Salamander has to leave his shift to go fight some bad guys, angering his boss. When the crack track is full, Salamander will lose that theme and trade it for another. Broadly, the themebook creation rules are written very generously. You can come in with a loose concept and they'll help you solidify it into something usable

Why It Fucks:

SO. What we have here are characters with 4 individual aspects that serve as side plots, mysteries or recurring beats that each have two directions they can go to (focus or conflict) that are, for the most part, entirely player directed as to which way they're going. Some MCs might twist arms for hard choices but at the right table that's just good drama baby.

This is a game that frequently references television procedurals or detective stories as big touch stones. What they've done here is empower not only the MC but the players to thread together their episodic adventures in a way that can also reflect consequence without making that player less "powerful" in game terms. Facilitating really dramatic change.

City of Mist is a game I'm quite fond of, it has it's issues but design like this is why I want to start writing these posts. Whatever I think about the game, this single little bit is SO! juicy to me.

[chacusha]

My tips to new users to make Tumblr more usable

This is kind of random but I think Tumblr is one of those websites that hides a lot of its functionality from users and comes with default settings that makes it kind unusable (at least for me). So I've decided to collect some suggestions about things to do immediately in order to make Tumblr a much more usable website:

Most important: Put the content you actually opt into on your dash. First, go to Settings > Dashboard and turn off "Best Stuff First." In general, (1) I don't think it's good to let social media sites curate your content feed (they're not very good! you can curate your own content feeds!), and (2) chronological ordering is much more helpful for making sense of information. I don't know why you would want posts on a site to be presented in any other way. Please save yourself and make your dash chronological by toggling this monstrosity OFF. Also for the love of god, turn off "Include posts liked by the blogs you follow" and "Include 'Based On Your Likes!'" too. Other people's experiences might be different from mine, but when Tumblr first introduced this feature and I tried it out for a while, it was so predictable that every time I came across a post that made me viscerally angry and think, "How the HELL did this get on my dash?" it was always always some random post from someone I wasn't even following… So yeah, get rid of that.

Second, make the "Following" tab your default, instead of the "For you" tab. How to do this is not particularly obvious. From the Tumblr homepage (not settings), you need to find the tabs at the top of your dash (For you, Following, Your tags) and then click the toggle/settings icon to the right of those tabs. This will allow you to reorder your tabs. In particular, what you need to do is click the pin icon to the right of "Following," and this will set Following to be your pinned and first tab. By default, when you open Tumblr, your dash will show the posts of people you have actually opted into following rather than what Tumblr suggests to you.

Next, make sure timestamps on posts are on. This should be the default (despite what Tumblr says?), but if you don't see timestamps at the top of all posts, I highly recommend turning this setting on (under Settings > Dashboard). Knowing when a post was made is hugely helpful for understanding the context of the post, and I don't know why websites would allow you to hide this, really, unless they want you walking around with no sense of time or context, which uh… I don't recommend that social media experience!

Turn off endless scrolling (under Settings > Dashboard): Websites like endless scrolling to keep people from leaving the site. I recommend turning this off to make it more obvious how many posts you've scrolled through on Tumblr, to make it easier to find your place in older posts, and also to make the website just lighter to load. When I last used it, the Tumblr mobile app does not allow pagination, which is pretty typical of social media apps in general. Honestly, I recommend just not using the Tumblr mobile app at all. I've uninstalled it and aside from missing the convenience of being able to attach photos from my phone onto Tumblr posts, I really don't miss it…

Things that you may or may not be interested in:

Enable custom theme on (each of) your blog(s): So fun fact: If you don't have a custom theme enabled, then when people visit your blog when not logged into Tumblr, they will only be able to scroll through a few of the posts on your blog before being prompted by Tumblr to log in if they want to see more. This popup cannot be gotten around, and so people without Tumblr accounts or who are browsing on a device/browser without a login session just won't be able to see your posts. Personally, I do not like this behavior -- I like my blogs to be archives with useful permalinks that can be browsed by anyone. Anyway, you can get rid of this annoying prompt by going to Account > (select blog) > Blog settings and toggling that "Enable custom theme" slider. It doesn't really matter what theme you use (although there are a lot of options to choose from), just use a custom one!

Turn off "Shorten long posts" (under Settings > Dashboard): YMMV, but I personally don't find this setting very helpful as the maximum length for when it starts cutting off posts is pretty short and falls far short of what I would consider a "long post" that is inconvenient to scroll past. Instead, you may want to turn off this setting and create a filter for the tag "long post" (under Settings > Account > Filtered Tags).

Mature content: If you're interested in possibly seeing mature content, you may want to review your mature content settings (under Settings > Account) as by default, Tumblr is set to hide it entirely and doesn't tell you that it's hidden posts from you and so you probably just will not be aware this setting is a thing! Personally, I use the "Blur" setting.

Hiding content from users you don't want to see: As far as I can tell, if you see someone's posts in (e.g.) tag searches and would prefer not to see any of that person's posts in public places like that tag or appear on your dash by people you follow reblogging their posts, you should block them. Official Tumblr documentation does not say that this is a feature of blocking, but it is.

When Tumblr's functionality isn't enough… External tools such as XKit Rewritten provide a whole lot of QoL fixes to Tumblr's interface like making it easier to reply to replies, hiding posts you've already seen, showing how many new/unread posts are in tracked tags, showing all tags on posts by default rather than requiring you to click "See all," etc. For me, one thing I needed in order to make Tumblr semi-usable for me is hiding notes in tag searches (because I don't really need constant reminders that my tastes aren't aligned with wider fandom's tastes lol). I couldn't find a tool that does this, so I wrote a simple Tampermonkey script to do it for me.

Hope this helps new users of Tumblr, and feel free to add other helpful tips if you have them!

[bunny-heels]

all my blogs are finally fully backed up so.

Matt is a fucking idiot. imagine being in charge of a website that advertises itself as the gayest place on the web when in reality all you do is sulk in your office being upset and whiny because people rightfully call you out on your hypocrisy, ignorance, neglect, and blatant bigotry.

there is a literal genocide happening that's been going on for years killing innocent people. a non-binary teen was beaten to death and the killers have basically gotten off free. and this fucking dumbass decides to worry about what people are saying about him online as if he isn't sitting in a pile of money like every other jackass CEO is dong. the fact Palestine isn't one of the listed trending tags on tumblr when i see news about it every 5 posts is ridiculous.

he's just like any other rich guy. he doesn't care about the wellbeing of others, thinks only for himself, puts others down when they feel threatened, and just wants more money.

tumblr stopped being a safe place for "outcasted" people years ago, even before the porn ban. in fact, maybe it never really was for outcated people. trans, black, and disabled users have been getting put down by this site for a very long time, and its fucking disgusting. this site literally houses the largest percentage of LGBT+ and disabled users i've ever seen if we're going by the polls where literally the option of cisgender and neurotypical is always under 1%. they literally are the reason this website still exist, because they've created their circles and safe spaces for them to feel comfortable sharing their life experiences and adventures through life.

most people on this site can't go a day in their real life without some form of harassment or hardship, they don't need that transferring to their digital life. every group of people deserves their own corner for them to have fun and get away from everything for a while. if that's taken away, you are left with people who are just throwing tantrums, and the actual users who made your site usable are now out there probably doing better than you and getting more respectable support than you will with your group of crying babies.

Matt is not a 13 year old kid running a GMod DarkRP server. Matt is not a 26 year old forum mod. he is a 40 year old CEO who is the founder of a well known blog creation site. he has an extremely important and powerful position, yet he is choosing to put his own immature feelings first before thinking about the safety of his own userbase that is literally used as this sites selling point.

the fucking audacity to do this shit to your own users that you literally use for a selling point when you won't even allow for certain tags to show up in the search because you claim for them to have sexual content meanwhile other tags are full of hatred, bigotry, and downright defamation of innocent people who just happen to live different lives is fucking gross. i absolutely cannot believe society and social norms have let the minds of people in power get this fucking bad. it's almost impressive, in a tortured lab monkeys way, not in an innovated and breakthrough way.

please protect all trans users, especially trans women/trans fems. please protect black users, disabled users, all people of color users, homeless/financially struggling users, harassed users, victims of assault users, Palestinian users, jewish users, any religious users-any user that you know for a fact could be thrown away by this bullshit system any day now, protect and take care of them, and make sure they know you'll always be there no matter what.

this post will be rebloggable because i want to pass these links.

palestine related links:

arab.org

gofundmes

esims

PCRF

funds for gaza

POC related links:

BHM mutual aid

american indian college fund

black family mutual aid

trans related links:

freedom oklahoma

transformationskc

trans liberation

suggestions for more plus any corrections are appreciated. reblogging and replying to add your own links for mutual aid and donations is extremely acceptable and encouraged. i apologize if anything in this is worded incorrectly.

if this is taken down despite me being a cis straight chick, you know why.

[ahaura]

i'm sure someone's already made this post but for anyone seriously new (or returning) to tumblr here are some cool tips and tricks for having a decent experience

download xkit rewritten (i think it's on github, iirc it's the most up to date xkit that makes tumblr easier to use so you can avoid ads, use quick reblogs, etc)

make sure to go to your dashboard settings and toggle off the features you don't want to see. best part about tumblr is that if you don't follow people you won't see their posts. tumblr has tried to get around this by adding "in your orbit" and "for you" dashboards but lots of people don't use these.

TURN OFF TUMBLR LIVE. it is not safe to use, even less so than social media sites typically are. you'll have to hit the snooze button on it once a week which is annoying but if you don't like it send a message to support to let them know. your can and should utilize contacting support for bugs and errors and issues. be warned that it's hit and miss tho

if you want to use a custom theme on your desktop, you'll have to contact support and ask permission to use javascript. they'll provide instructions on what you need to do to get approved

use the filter option for content you don't want to see. xkit has an option to entirely hide filtered posts on the dash rather than just showing a post with the hidden tag on it

you don't HAVE to use tags but it's strongly recommended for organizational and practical use. if you make content like art or gifs it's the best way you're going to get other people who don't follow you to see it

REBLOG, NOT REPOST! whether it's art, gifsets, scans, or something else it is standard etiquette and common courtesy to REBLOG instead of REPOST. you will get more of the content you like if you reblog instead of steal things from other people. reblogging posts is a vital part of your tumblr ecosystem. you don't have to reblog every post you see but if you take a look at blogs that aren't transplants from twitter you'll know what i mean

there are almost always bot waves on this site and you can usually tell by their empty blog and/or default blog layout. i STRONGLY RECOMMEND personalizing your blog (at least choose your title and icon) and reblog some stuff so people don't think you're a bot and block you.

if you use the blaze feature you will be blocked and ignored at best and harassed in the replies at worst. give tumblr money at your own risk

tumblr's post limit is 250 per day but the queue allows for 1000 posts and drafts to my knowledge are unlimited. utilizing the drafts and queue features is a good way to help run your blog

you can make sideblogs but if staff finds out you're hoarding urls you will be shadowbanned.

most importantly: be normal in your interactions with others. block people who annoy you or you simply don't want to see. this isn't twitter and the only reason this site is remotely usable is because it isn't a copy of tiktok, twitter, or instagram

good luck

[phospadparadscha]

a non exhaustive list of things i love about tumblr that have made it the only Usable Social Media(tm), as someone who follows the maximum amount (5000) of people and has seen it All:

-the tags. every othere sm requires tags to be uninterrupted, no spaces phrases and you can write full fucking novels in the tags on tumblr. this created a completely new ecosystem for how conversations and posts are structured on here. ppl post screenshots of tags, mention previous tags, encourage other people's writing and art in the tags, all while avoiding cluttering the original post's text with every reblog when you want to comment. you can make hushed commentary that sometimes gets noticed and adds a lot to posts when its picked up on!

-the ask system. we used to have fan mail on this site a few years ago but i don't know that it was as successful, so the ask and submissions system became the main way to go. its not as common to have themed ask blogs anymore (like "ask rainbow dash" where people draw responses, i've had a few of these kinds of blogs in the past) but it really allows people to acknowledge each other, get questions answered, and interact in a way i think is really missing from the internet in the late 2020s. its abused sometimes and anon hate still shows up on this site, but i think the culture has changed noticeably in that this kind of hate is brushed off more easily in most cases.

-the longevity of posts and how everything is archived. its so much easier to find old posts on tumblr than other places and you can sort archives of people's blogs based on a lot of different types, like photos only or text only, years posted, etc. really cool especially for looking back on your blog through the years and in the age of the New Posts Only its really refreshing to be able to revisit old posts. I see posts on here that show up from 2012 and its such a pleasant surprise since so much of the internet is being overwritten

- the absurdly customizeable color palettes and appearances of the site. its so customizeable and even though desktop blog sites aren't as common of a way to interact anymore (i miss them rip blogs with no desktop versions) you can literally edit the css and html and show your own personal aesthetics as much as you want to.

-the april fool's day rebrands

-the art is so good and photosets allow for longform posts which i never see ANYWHERE else on social media. you can post like up to 30 images in a photo set i think??? which was increased from i think max 10 and its all consecutive. also that we have a read more button to give people the option to choose to open long posts or not.

-the id system. i've seen a lot of people id posts and make posts more accessible. also people providing trigger warnings which you don't get other places tbh like i've never seen anywhere online where you could straight up choose what you didn't want to see so you don't have to encounter it in the wild! its really nice especially for someone like me who has several phobias lol

i could keep going but like.....i love you tumblr as someone who has been here for literally over a decade.

[wingedknightrose]

WIP Wednesday

Tagged by @lucien-lachance like, yesterday lol. whoops

here have another snippit from the first part of Apocalypse.

She shuffled again, and a card slipped out. She picked it up and examined it. Eight of swords, upright. Fitting, she supposed. Also not that overly helpful. With a sigh she slipped it back into the deck and resumed shuffling, glancing at her computer monitor. The transcript she’d been typing up of Safiyya’s latest vision stared back at her, black on white, cold and uncomfortable. The last sentence was incomplete, largely because Safiyya had abruptly bolted out the door before she could finish it and had yet to come back. Also a terrible sign. There was a soft knock on the door, jolting her from her ruminations. She jerked a bit, thankfully not dropping any of the cards again, and called for the visitor to come in. When Victor poked his head inside, she gestured for him to take a seat. They had a fair bit to talk about. Especially when Safiyya got back. It had been a little while, actually, maybe Cveta needed to go check on her… “You all asked to see me?” Commander Belmont got straight to the point once he’d sat, which any other time might have felt rude or made her think he was mad at her, but considering that everyone had been on high alert for days now, she didn’t blame him. He probably had a million things to see to. “We thought you might want to know the sorts of visions everyone’s been having.” The current divination branch of the Brotherhood was fairly small, only about five people. Three of them were what were informally called Dreamers - their predictive powers were entirely based on interpreting their dreams. Cveta was the only one who had any real skill with the tarot - most people assumed that tarot wasn’t the sort of thing the Brotherhood would care about, which was only sort of true. The truth was, while she wasn’t as useful for seeing a problem coming, she was good for helping to figure out the right was to approach said problem. Even the vaguest hints were better than nothing. She was also good at typing up transcripts of whatever the others saw in their various visions and helping sort them into something usable. One had to be good at unpacking symbolism to deal with card readings, after all. The last member of the branch was the only one that had actual, honest-to-God visions, and she was currently pushing through the door looking like she might collapse on the spot. The Commander half-stood to go and help her, but she waved him off, adjusting her hijab as she moved towards the sink and the coffee machine. “Are you okay?” Cveta asked, concerned. She still looked about as pale as she had when she’d made her abrupt exit. “No,” Safiyya replied, leaning on the counter. “But I’ll be better once I get something to rinse the aftertaste out of my mouth.” Oh, she’d been sick. She’d had a vision so bad it had made her physically ill. Well that was a downright terrible omen.

[bellakenobi]

Get to Know Me - Sims Edition

I was tagged by @puffkins2000! Thank you so much <3

What’s your favorite Sims death? I never thought about that but the death by freezing ghost is kinda cute '-'

Alpha CC or Maxis Match? Oh well. I like MM clothes, some EA hairs (the store's ones are the most usable) and also alpha hair, and the skins I use could be considered alpha but they're not uncanny valley. So I guess I'm in the middle?

Do you cheat your sims weight? Nope

Do you move objects? Yup ^^

Favorite Mod? The NRaas ones since the game is mostly unplayable without them, and Simler's mod that fix a lot of stuff, even the "natality" issue that one of the patches broke and now babies are being born in my saves without my interference or using Story Progression (that I'm too paranoid with the lag it can cause to use it)

First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack? Late Night because I wanted hot tubs and the bars and vampires sounded cool too (but I don't play much with the EP features 😬)

Do you pronounce live mode like aLIVE or LIVing? aLIVE, and well being a non-english speaker I never thought about this '-'

Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made? My girl Mitsuko (the one in my icon) is my fave 💚💙

Have you made a simself? Yup, and of course she got prettier lol

Which is your favorite EA hair color? ... Black? It's the only EA color that I actually use so 🤷‍♀️

Favorite EA hair? Party on the Side from the store ^^

Favorite life stage? Young Adults I guess

Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay? I had a sort of builder era some years ago but nowadays it seems that my creativity for that is simply gone (even tho my buildings back in the day weren't that much, but it's stuff that I look today and think "WOW I really did that 😮")

Are you a CC creator? Apparently 💀 but mostly a converter.

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad? I'm kinda closer to @deniisu-sims because we know each other online outside tumblr but people at the TS3 Creator's Cave Discord are really friendly. But it's a bit difficult to me to socialize even on the internet since being introvert IRL wasn't enough '-'

Do you have any sims merch? / A Youtube for sims? Nope but honestly if I was less shy and had a better internet connection I guess I would have a channel '-' And I've been delaying for YEARS to make a Bella Goth chibi sculpture....

How has your “Sims style” changed throughout your years of playing? lol I guess it's been the same, I make a family and play with them, but lately I've been playing challenges so it can give me a direction and then I don't get bored easily.

Who’s your favorite CC creator? AAAAA DON'T MAKE ME CHOOSE! But not kidding, everybody that converts the stuff from TS4 has a special place in my heart ❤❤

How long have you had Simblr? I have it since 2013 and was somewhat active around that time, went through some hiatus and now I'm back on activity since last year.

How do you edit your pictures? I use reshade, for CC previews a preset that slightly enhances color and sharpness (becuase one of my pet peeves are those CC previews that are so heavily edited that you can't see what you're actually getting), Photoscape for quick cropping and making thumbnails, and Photoshop to write stuff in previews.

What expansion/ gamepack is your favorite? I guess it's Supernatural? I like the CAS stuff, the furniture, Moonlight Falls is a nice town to play, I LOVE playing with witches, the alchemy skill and the complementing harvesteables are really cool too 😊

I tag everyone who wants to answer those ^^

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

Tw: Amber heard and JD ment, intense guilt issues, idk if there needs to be any other tw, call me Wolf if that’s not taken so I can also find my ask later in the tags

I have so many abusers. About 20. Nobody believes I’ve ever been abused bc my abusers always had acted like we were good to everyone’s faces and the very few times my abusers did act out in public everyone seemed to just forget or just to my luck didn’t notice!

And they always had a say first in every interaction with other people or kids at school. I just never got to talk about my abuse story except online. But never to a friend. My abusers are all on the same page with abusing me and calling me a liar. Most of those 20 still use DARVO, still call me a liar about my rape and other abuse accusations. People think I’m crazy. Nobody loves me except God. And nobody is on my side except God. I genuinely have no human interactions.

And one of my abusers got together and recorded another abuser of mine, interviewing him, giving some sort of “testimony of how I abused him” when I really didn’t and my first abuser uses it to give to other people to say he’s “spoken with other victims” which is what I did when I recorded REAL victims of my abusers…. So stupid and I hate them all for it.

One of my abusers was 3 years younger than me.

Every thinks I’m the bully and the abuser and some usable worthless human when I’ve never done half the evil shit they’ve done in their lives to so many victims. I’ve never done any of what they behave like.

My relatives don’t even know my parents and brother are abusive and rapists. My abusive relatives all stick up for my abusive immediate family and say they’re great people when they’ve tortured me and raped me as a child. So many of my abusers also used rape and everyone says that women lie about being raped nowadays bc it’s the new thing abusive crazy women like AH do. Except AH wasn’t the abuser. Anyway. My image and reputation are ruined forever and I have to cut all contact with my family someday which I can do any day bc I moved out at 22 and so I can actually live my life but it’s a scary thought bc I feel so guilt ridden for it. And I don’t want to see my mother cry even though she abused me sm growing up even sexually, my whole immediate family was sexually and emotionally abusive. I don’t know how to not feel sui-guilt over this…

Hi Wolf,

I'm so sorry about what you've been through. Please know that we believe you, and you're not alone. It can be frustrating when our abusers are surrounded by people who enable and normalize their toxic behavior, and are seemingly oblivious in exacerbating the situation. It's similarly frustrating when people don't understand the gravity of the situation or find it important enough to even remember.

It's important to remember that it's possible for abusers to be younger than their victims because age gaps are not the only way that power imbalances are created. Things like socioeconomic status, intellectual or physical disabilities, and even fame can also create an uneven power dynamic.

Unfortunately it's common for abusers to use their social reputation or status to slander and silence their victims. Pitting everyone against their victims can make it easy for those victims to feel crazy and isolated. It can be incredibly damaging to deal with DARVO, and so it's important to make sure that your mental health is being taken care of. If you can access or afford it, a mental health professional such as a therapist can help you process your trauma, your experiences with DARVO and being gaslit, and develop healthy coping mechanisms to take with you on your healing journey.

It's also unfortunately become easy for abusers to weaponize AH to discredit other female abuse survivors. It can be especially difficult to feel comfortable speaking up about your experience in such a social climate. It may help to remember that the truth doesn't need people's validation to exist. As much as you have been made to feel otherwise, you know what really happened. You know your truth.

If anyone has any comments or suggestions, feel free to add on. Otherwise, I hope I could help, and please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun

[readwing]

It has occurred to me that aside from off-handed tags, vague references, and the occasional poll result that I don’t really share-share stuff about me online.

So allow me to break that streak for a moment to gush about my job:

I am, without being too specific, a Fancy Data Accountant. Let me explain.

I am not a CPA and I did not go to school for this, but I did take a variety of loosely related classes when I was in college. These classes + the slow grind of being An Employee During the Recession + a general thirst for knowledge + good organizational skills = a solid understanding of business fundamentals and a willingness to learn Accounts Receivable (A/R) and Accounts Payable (A/P) without fucking it up.

If any of you younguns don’t know - A/R and A/P are positions that are always in desperate need of smart people willing to learn. If you add to this even a basic knowledge of General Ledger accounting then congratulations you are 95% more competent than most of the people currently doing that job. The reason for this being that for small businesses, it’s usually a filler job. It’s usually passed on to like, whoever seems to have the most time leftover to do it.

Receptionists and owner’s wives. Lots of times it’s those people. And lots of times, they do not want to being doing that job either.

And since accountants tend to want to actually make good money and pay off their degrees, they also do not want those jobs! They’re mostly decently paying jobs, higher than entry level for sure, but they’re not CPA-paying jobs.

So there ends up being a knowledge gap between the people who are inputting all the financial data and the actual accountants who really really would prefer it if the data was better organized. Accountant and Tax Prep people, in fact, tend to need this so much that they sometimes hire people to work for them internally who can help business owners pretty things up so the data is fucking usable.

Enter me.

So I bounce around for a bit doing my thing - which is Easy, it’s so Easy that the only challenge I get is coming into a Messed Up set of books and fixing it. But then at a certain point…they are fixed. So what now?

Well my what now was ‘you know, this business (that I was working for at the time) has a stupid amount of manual input data. Not only that, but the data that’s being input is only a fraction of what we could be using to analyze and make decisions, and that’s because the industry relies on third party software for its A/R but a completely different software for its A/P. Since the two don’t talk to each other, we’re stuck relying on truncated reports out of our A/R that are somehow both watered down and crowded with unnecessary noise. No bueno!’

So bored little me signed up for a free library class on coding. I’m kind of shit at it, but that’s okay because that was the first time in my life I actually understood what syntax was in programming.

By the end of the class what I realized was that while I was too lazy to ever properly code something, it didn’t matter. What I really needed to know was:

1) what raw data I had available from System A

2) what the simplest, bare minimum amount of functions / formulas I needed to manipulate that data-

3) -so that I could then package it and download it into System B, preferably with minimal typing!

So that’s what I did. That was my new challenge. When I had a free moment at work - and boy did I find lots of those - I would play around with my little spreadsheets and these clunky programs. There needed to be checks and balances, you see. Whatever the output numbers said had to equal the new input numbers, or the accounting would be off. If Karen down the hall accidentally fat-thumbed in a new product or department, I needed it to 1) not break the formulas, and 2) be easily identified as an anomaly. Whatever happened between export/import needed to be cleaned, checked, and verified for the integrity of both systems.

So that’s what I built. Between doing my job and browsing Reddit at work. I built this whole system that would take this very boring part of my job and make it easy.

And yeah the place I worked for sucked, and I had plenty of issues happening personally, but this I was good at!

And the results kind of made me look like a god, which is always nice. And it got me a raise.

The pay bump was almost worth the mind-numbing boredom of the variety of other tasks I usually had to do to get to the fun bit. Almost.

Then last year in a moment of fed-up-ness I applied for a slew of jobs. Just slinging rezzies into the void on Indeed like a pizza maker flinging ‘za. Mostly for the same positions, just with better perks and pay. I wasn’t hoping for much. One of them called me back. Scheduled an interview. Did the interview. The next morning I had a job offer.

Y’all. I lucked in so fucking hard.

Not only were their books a mess, not only were they running a separate A/R and A/P system PLUS ANOTHER TWO INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC SOFTWARES, but they were actually excited to hear my ideas on how to fix it.

(And they were fucking soluble as all get out, which was a first for me.)

They were so excited, in fact, that it’s gone from being maybe 15% of my job to being about 80-90% of my job to just slowly fix and maintain everything they’ve got going on. Why the investment on their side? Because they’re looking to enter a potential partnership with X-number of other companies, all of whom have messy books that I could potentially end up fixing. Also the company has just started to open up a new location. Also the main owners are looking to start X-number of ancillary companies spinning out of the current one. All of these companies, of course, will have slews of data that need analyzed, with multiple Point-of-Sales systems that need to talk to each other, and good gosh golly, they know just the kind of person who likes to do that kind of shit now don’t they?

Then there’s little old me, sitting at my computer with my chunky spreadsheets and my limited amount of Visual Basic, somehow producing goddamn magic. Because programmers don’t understand generally accepted accounting practices, and accountants care even less about best data practices and management.

I have somehow waded through mires of bad decisions and late stage capitalism to find myself an oasis. I feel like I have somehow tricked the people around me into paying me good money to let me have fun at work. This in spite of the fact that I know that no one can do or even wants my job. Even AI can’t touch me, because that would require the robot be capable of standing up and asking a room full of otherwise intelligent people ‘what the fuck is this? Why did you enter it this way. Yes, I know it was easier for you and yes it’s technically accurate but you are going to accidentally break the law if we leave it like this Kenneth’

I am a cog, yes; but I am a well-paid cog, who gets to learn and feel challenged and buy ridiculous toys for my cats and fund Patreons now. And books. And sushi. And paints. I even splurged on a gym membership.

And y’all - it’s nice. It’s really really nice. And I really hope it keeps going like this, ‘cause I’m really happy with how things are going.

[cowboylikedean]

If y'all really want to improve usability, bring the old editor back. Allow us to backspace when we accidentally hit enter on mobile. allow us to block quote multiple paragraphs without creating weird and ugly spacing issues.

Without the "quote" post type differientiation, one of my favorite stylistic features of my theme is gone. I want it back.

The editor is difficult to use not intuitive. Even the cool things about it like colors. Since you can't change colors while you're typing, you have to type your thing, highlight it, and select the color, it messes with the flow of creating a post.

I am typing this on mobile and I accidentally hit enter when Ibwas hitting the period. Insteaf of backspacing, where my thumb was already at, if I really needed to stay on that line, I'd have to go up there and click on it. That's bad usability.

If you want to improve usability, give us the option to search our DM's.

If you want to improve usability my GOD bring back the "all notes" tab so we can more easily track which reblog made a post pop off. the reblog map has no names, nor can you click on it so it's useless to tracking your post and the success of said post. This helps for conversation tracking too.

Since we're talking about conversation tracking... Let's talk about prev tags. Now, I hate prev tags, but people use it all the time. If you want to improve usability and conversation tracking, make it so I can click on the url of the person that is being reblogged from and find their reblog again. Wouldn't be hard, cause you just broke it.

If you want to improve customization and usability, allow us to fully opt out of tumblr live, which none of us wanted, asked for, or use.

If you want to improve usability, GET RID OF THE FUCKING LIGHTBOX. Which literally took away the ability to PAUSE. you know, you can pause on tiktok and instagram and youtube and twitter... but not on tumblr!!!! What????? this makes videos unusable. And we have told you we hate it, y'all habe ignored it tho.

If you want to improve customization, LET LINKS TAKE YOU TO SOMEONE'S CUSTOMIZED THEME IF THEY CHOOSE!!!! I worked on that for hours, but I'm likely the only one who ever sees it when i need to find something on my blog. Fucking why???

If you want to improve usability, let us choose which polls to subscribe to and get pushnnotifs about so we can casually vote in polls we don't care about that much without getting push notifs spammed.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[uncleasad]

Thinking about the way the tumblr dashboard “truncates” long posts, and reblog chains in particular…

Right now, we get to see the top N inches/pixels/whatever-measurement-is-relevant of a post (which is likely mostly/only the OP, and maybe not even all of the OP at that)…and the tags of the person who last reblogged it.

It feels entirely decontextualized—especially if the person who last reblogged it added text/images/etc in their reblog.

Moreover, if it’s a post/reblog chain that has been repeatedly reblogged—for instance, you and some friends are having a conversation about something via reblogs, or it’s one of those evergreen posts—you have no way of seeing what’s important about the reblog, what’s new (if anything) in this latest reblog. All you see is the same N inches of the original post—and you have to expand the entire thing and scroll all the way through to the end to see if there’s anything new.

What tumblr really should do is what we’ve done on the Mac for decades with long filenames and window titles…middle-truncate.

Show us the OP’s banner and the start of their post, maybe 50% N for the original/initial posts, and then show us the banner of the person who last reblogged it* and the start of that post for the last 50% N, and then finally the tags of the person who last reblogged.

A) If the post of the person who last reblogged** fits entirely within that final 50% N (or whatever the proportion might be), show the “Expand” overlay directly above the “end” of first 50% N portion of the reblog chain.

B) If the post of the person who last reblogged** does not fit entirely within that final 50% N, then show the “Expand” overlay over the “end” of the final 50% N post, wherever that falls in the final post.

In Scenario B, there might be reason to use two different “Expand” overlays—though some usability testing is needed. But the overlay positioned as described in Scenario B could function only to expand that final post in the chain (perhaps renamed “Expand This” or “Expand Post” or even “Expand Final Post”/“Expand Last Post”), while the additional overlay—positioned as described in Scenario A, but named instead “Expand All” to clearly differentiate its behavior—expands the entire reblog chain in one click like the current “Expand” overlay does.

I don’t know how widely useful this “alternate Scenario B interface” might be, or how confusing…for me, it would be useful in those ongoing conversation reblogs where I know the full chain and context already and want only to see the latest addition (final post), but would probably be less useful for the evergreen reblogs. But it felt like something worth thinking through and writing out.

And maybe the whole thing turns out to be more confusing than the current experience? But I do think it’s hard to make what we have now worse, particularly because of the decontextualization problem.

* Unless the person who last reblogged the post only added tags, in which case show the previous reblogger’s banner and start of their post instead.

** Or the last person to add a new post to the reblog chain, if the last person to reblog added nothing or only tags.

*** Please also note my explicit disuse of “user” in this explanation—this site is populated by those who post, blog, reblog…all people. And we make or create posts/blog posts, not “content.”

[bucketsofmonsters]

The Shapeshifting Detective - Part 1

cw: parental death, grief, slow burn, more tags will be added as the story continues

male shapeshifter x fem character

word count: ~4k

part 1  part 2  part 3  part 4  part 5  part 6  part 7  part 8

“I found him.”

She could barely manage the words, barely make any of this make sense, let alone answer questions. 

“Yes, you said that already. I need you to describe what happened.”

“He was just…” She felt like she might pass out. Members of the police force shuffled around, investigating the room just to her left. Even the thought of it left her dizzy and disoriented. The sounds of her mother sobbing from across the room echoed in her ears. It was odd, she thought, that she wasn’t crying. Most people cried when things like this happened. Someone had said she was in shock, maybe that’s what it was. 

The detective’s words pulled her out of her head and back into reality.  “Katherine, I need you to tell me what happened, while the memory is fresh.”

“I don’t think I’m going to forget it anytime soon, detective, I wouldn’t worry about that,” she snapped. Grief turned to anger in an instant, the emotion eager to find something productive to do with itself.  

“Katherine…” he said, more warning than sympathy in his tone this time. She knew better than to snap at him again. 

“I found my father on the floor of his study, I don’t know how long he’d been there, it looked like he’d been stabbed. I screamed and now you’re here, I don’t know what more you want from me.” She kept pulling back, trying to recall it again, remembering and remembering. Surely there was something she missed, some clue. The person who did this was just wandering around right now while her father lay dead, that couldn’t be right. There must be something she could do, anything to rectify the situation. 

“Do you have any idea who could have done this?” he asked, his patience clearly wearing thin, despite the faux sympathy he was attempting once more. 

“If I did, I would have told you by now.” She couldn’t keep the frustration out of her tone. Why was he just sitting here, asking the same questions? Surely there were more urgent matters, things that needed to be done to find justice. 

The detective just groaned, rubbing his temples as he did. “Perhaps I should come back tomorrow, when you’re less hysterical.”

The urge to slap him was overwhelming. So many emotions ran through her, begging for some outlet and this detective was making a strong case for it to be him. 

She managed a strained, polite smile and even that was a miracle. “Yes, perhaps that would be best.”

He nodded and stood, eager to get out of her home

“Detective, can I have your name?”

“Detective Harvey Lewis, miss. I’ll see you in the morning.” 

He was halfway out the door already when she called out to him again. “Aren’t you going to interview my mother?” She turned to see one of her maids comforting her as her body shook with sobs. 

“If I couldn’t get usable information out of you, I certainly couldn’t get it out of her. Goodnight, miss.”

That felt unfair. 

Before she could protest it, he was gone, eager to get out the door. Other police officers shuffled in and out but she couldn’t stand it any longer, being so near to it all, so she just left. She didn’t want to go to her room, people would look for her in her room, so she just found some forgotten closet and sat, waiting for morning.

Eventually, morning did come, despite how endless the night felt. She picked out on her dress, making sure it was a presentable black. Something plain that fit the situation. This would be her attire for the next year. A year of mourning for a dead parent, two years for a dead spouse, all written up for her, a guide for young women everywhere. She’d always thought the rules silly, surely someone could determine how long they should mourn on their own, but right now she appreciated the rules, having something set out before her. One year and then she was done. Was that how long it would take? The hollowness in her chest would be gone in a year, the flashing images gone, at least if they followed the rules of etiquette. She couldn’t imagine they did. 

Her maid, Anne, helped her get dressed, uncharitaristically silent. Usually they talked and joked, they were close friends, but right now there was nothing. Katherine could feel her, searching for something to say but too unsure to try. She didn’t mind, it was better than the endless condolences she’d already begun hearing, words that she was sure would lose all meaning shortly. 

When she was told the detective had returned, the numbness left and frustration took its place again. She knew she wasn’t quite being fair to him, that she was probably reading into his behavior too much, but it really felt like he didn’t care. The worst thing she could ever imagine was happening to her and he couldn’t even bring himself to care. 

When she made her way down the stairs into the main hall, her anger was immediately overwritten by confusion. He didn’t seem to notice her, too caught up in either what he was doing or his own thoughts. What he was doing was holding a handful of flowers. At first she thought maybe he’d brought them for her family but she quickly noticed the vase that they’d been taken from sitting on a table in front of him.  

She couldn’t remember if the flowers had been there before or if someone had already managed to drop off flowers as condolences. The water was dripping from their stems onto the floor and still this didn’t seem to ring any alarm bells in the detective's head, he just stood there looking down at the dozen or so flowers in his fist, eyebrows furrowed as they made a mess below him. 

As he stood there, unaware of her presence, she got the chance to really take him in. His thick brown hair was shaggy, desperately in need of a good cut and some styling. Likewise, his face was covered in stubble, like he typically shaved but hadn't gotten around to it in a while. She didn’t recall his clothes looking this disheveled last night, his white dress shirt and long, tan coat looking like he’d wadded them up and then thrown them back on before coming over. 

Somehow, this appearance did not inspire confidence in his abilities. 

After trying and failing to figure out what he was doing for a few moments, Katherine cleared her throat and the detective whipped around, clearly startled. He relaxed as he saw who it was, apparently lacking the self-awareness to look embarrassed about the frankly bizarre thing she’d seen him doing. 

“Can I help you?”

He dropped the wet flowers onto the table next to the vase they belonged in and gave her a smile. 

“Hello, Miss Katherine. Are you feeling alright?”

Was she feeling alright? No, she felt about as far from alright as humanly possible, actually. 

“As alright as I can be.” She knew her smile must look strained, a far cry from the practiced, measured fake smile that usually adorned her face but for now it would have to do. 

“Have you confirmed that the flowers didn’t murder my father or do you need more time to investigate?”

For a moment he had the audacity to look at her like she was the one who was acting odd before his eye widened in recognition and flicked back to the flowers he’d set down. “No, the flowers are not high on my suspect list right now.” There was not a hint of humor in his voice and she wondered if he thought she was an idiot or if he was one himself. 

“I’m Harvey, by the way.” He stuck his hand out towards her, expectantly. She took it and he gave it a quick shake before dropping it, still looking at her eagerly

She nodded, confused by what was occurring. “I know, you told me last night.”

He nodded, running his hands through his hair absentmindedly. “Yes, of course, just wanted to remind you. A lot happened last night, it would be totally understandable if you’d forgotten.”

“I’m not stupid,” she shot back, already on the offensive.

His hand flew up in a quick surrender. “I don’t think you are, don’t worry. Just here to ask you some questions about last night, is that alright?”

She nodded, leading him into the sitting room so they could talk. 

He got situated, taking out a pen and notepad that she was certain he had not been holding the night before. She wondered if it was because he hadn’t been taking her seriously, hadn’t even thought to write down what she’d said.

As he sorted himself out, she took the opportunity to inspect him once more. He seemed much more pleasant than he’d been last night, had she just imagined it? Had his demeanor seemed harsher and more hostile last night, when emotions were running high? Or maybe she’d caught him at a bad time, although that didn’t seem quite fair, if anyone could use that excuse for their poor behavior last night surely it was her and not him. Either way, she was grateful that he’d been kinder today, she wasn’t sure she’d survive a repeat of last night. Or more aptly, she wasn't sure if he’d survive one. 

Speaking of, he wasn’t the only one who’d been less than pleasant last night, although she was certain her snappiness was more justified. However, she needed to be on his good side, to build some sort of nonantagonistic relationship with the detective so she could obtain as much information on the case as she could. 

“Before we start, I’d just like to apologize for how I behaved last night.” The second she started to speak his head snapped up, hanging onto every word. At the word apologize, his head cocked to the side, confusion written all over his face, a vacant, uncomprehending look in his eyes.

“Why would you need to apologize?”

He even made apologizing difficult. Maybe he wasn’t more pleasant than last night after all, swapping one type of irritation for another. “You were clearly frustrated and I snapped at you and that was unfair of me.”

He seemed absolutely baffled and a little upset. She hoped that wasn’t directed at her. “I was… frustrated. At the scene of your father’s murder. So you’re apologizing.” He sounded like the clarification was more for him than for her, a desperate bid at trying to unravel the meaning of her words. 

She managed another polite smile, although she wasn’t sure how many more of those she had in her. 

“That is what I said.”

“Right, I’ve gathered that much. Well, no frustration today so no more apologies will be necessary.”

She got the distinct sense he was attempting to humor her but couldn’t quite manage the energy to fight him on it any longer. It seemed more like a problem for him anyways, she was sure she’d been perfectly understandable. 

“Can you walk me through what happened last night?” 

“I have already walked you through what happened, I don’t know what more you want from me.”

For a moment he froze, looking like he was trying to read something out of his blank notebook. “Right, well, you’ve had some time to reflect and I’ve had some time to prepare…”

“Were you not prepared last night?” That was a great sign, she’d painstakingly recounted how she found her dead father and he appeared to not have even cared. 

“Apparently not because I haven’t written anything down.” He was clearly frustrated but she didn’t think it was directed at her. He seemed to be getting angry at himself more than anything.

“Are you feeling alright?” She made sure to lace the words with what sounded like genuine concern, trying desperately to keep him on her good side despite her words. “Do you need anything? Some tea, maybe a breath of fresh air?”

The passive aggression seemed to go right over his head, his face softening at her words. “No, I’m fine, really. You’re too kind, after everything you’ve been through.”

If she was less upset, it might’ve been endearing, the way he seemed to be absolutely oblivious to any attempted rudeness. As it stood, she just wanted to get this over with.

“Alright, please just ask your questions then.”

He nodded, sitting up straighter in his chair, like he was trying to look more official. “Do you have any idea who could have done this?”

“As I told you last night, if I knew that don’t you think I’d have already told you? Is there perhaps another detective I could speak to? I don’t think this is getting us anywhere.”

Panic flashed across his face, 

“I’m so sorry, it’s protocol and I want to make sure I have all the information and I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s protocol to ask the same asinine questions over and over again?”

Before he got the chance to flounder once more, Katherine heard her mother calling her name.

As soon as she entered the room, the detective stood up from his chair, back straight and chin up, as if he was standing at attention. 

“Daniel’s here, he wants to see you dear,” she said, before noticing the other man already in the room. “Oh! Hello, Detective, I hope she hasn’t been giving you too much trouble.”

“Not at all, she’s been an absolute delight. I’m Harvey, by the way Harvey Law… you can just call me Harvey if you’d like. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

“Well, I’m glad we have such a reputable detective on the case, I’ve heard nothing but good things. I don’t think we got the chance to speak last night”

“No, we didn’t. Actually, I was wondering if we could speak but I don’t want to cut short our time, Miss Katherine.”

She shook her head, eager to be done with the detective. “No, I think we were just finishing. I’ll go see Daniel.”

She hurried out of the room, glad for the excuse to be done with the matter. The walk over was the best part, having a moment to herself where she could breathe. Who knew a murder was such a social event, she just wanted to have a minute to herself but it seemed like the whole town wanted to talk to her. 

She paused outside the room Daniel was in, taking a moment to check her hair and makeup. It felt ghoulish, making sure she looked pretty enough to take condolences for her fathers death, but she needed to maintain a good presence, especially now that she was on her own.

When she stepped inside, Daniel’s eyes widened as he saw her, a smile breaking across his face. “I came as soon as I could, are you alright?”

She nodded, already sick of the question. Surely people knew she wasn’t alright, she couldn’t understand why they kept insisting upon asking.  

“Good, I’m glad. I was worried about you.” His voice held more sympathy than she’d ever heard from him before, which wasn’t saying much. He wasn’t so much unemotional as he was self-obsessed, typically unconcerned with how she actually felt. So long as she could maintain a vaguely pleasant facade, he was more than happy to accept it as the truth. 

He leaned in closer, still maintaining a respectful distance. The two of them weren’t alone. They couldn’t be, it would be improper. A few people lined the room, giving them some space but ensuring that nothing improper happened and, more importantly, no rumors spread that something improper had occurred. 

His voice was lowered when he spoke but she was certain everyone in the room could hear him anyways. “Honestly, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I heard he’d lost most of your money anyways, put the family in debt to some shady people. The police ought to have an easy time on this one, I say it’ll be closed within the week.”

She was normally better at regulating her emotions, but she couldn’t help but start fuming at his comments. Of course that was what he was concerned with right now, gossip and money, it was silly to assume anyone would be actually concerned for her well being, let alone Daniel. That wasn’t how things worked. 

He seemed to misinterpret her anger as fear, which was probably for the best. 

“No, don’t worry dear, the debt won’t matter, when we marry I can take care of you, you don’t need your father’s money.”

“And my mother?”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head, I’ve got everything handled. And, silver linings, without your father in the way we can be wed. Nothing heals a damaged heart like a wedding and a steady hand, everything will be just fine.”

She was not in the mood to put up with him right now. She knew she’d have to do the rounds, see everyone who wanted to say they’d come by to check on her so they could give themselves a pat on the back, but she didn’t have the patience she normally did, especially not for this. How he could imagine she was thinking about marriage right now was beyond her. 

But, at the end of the day, he was right. She didn’t really have a choice in the matter, she needed him, even more so after her father’s death. So she put on her prettiest smile and did her best to look excited. 

“Yes, of course, at least we have that. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“Well, you don’t need to worry about that now, I’m right here.”

“Yes, you are. And I’m so lucky for that.”

“Chin up, darling. Things will get better before you know it.”

And then he was gone. More pleasantries were exchanged, of course, but she went into autopilot, smiling and nodding and doing the bare minimum. It’s not like anyone ever noticed so it didn’t matter anyways. But eventually, he brought the thankfully short visit to a close, eager to get out of her home and the gloomy, grief stricken atmosphere that hung over the house like a fog. That, she could not blame him for. If she was honest, she wanted out too. The energy was suffocating. 

She should go back and talk, hash things out further with the detective or comfort her mother but instead she ducked away. She’d earned a little selfishness. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could even step outside and get a breath of fresh air without anyone stopping her. 

Her escape was intercepted by running straight into the detective, who had seemingly finished his discussion with her mother. 

He seemed unphased by the incident. His arm shot out to keep her steady after the collision but already he was talking about something entirely different. “So, this Daniel, your mother said you two are courting?”

She pulled away from his touch, she was perfectly capable of standing on her own. “An original question! How unexpected, Detective Lewis.”

Unfortunately, she missed her mother standing behind him in the doorway. Her handkerchief shot down from her teary eyes as she gasped at her words. “Katherine!”

She spoke through gritted teeth, knowing she’d be getting an earful about this later. “Apologies detective, I’ve lost my manners.”

He waved off her concern. “It’s perfectly alright, I think you’ve earned a little rudeness after what you’ve been through. Speaking of, I should leave you two, I think I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

Her mother had already begun reassuring him, telling him that of course he hadn’t and he was welcome to stay for dinner but by then, she was already off, taking the opportunity to escape while her mother was distracted. She could feel his eyes on her the whole time she left.

Her decision not to sleep had seemed sound the night before, she knew she wouldn’t have been able to manage it anyways, but now that was catching up to her. She needed to rest, at least that gave her a good excuse to get away from everyone and stay in her room for the rest of the day. 

She let out a sigh of relief when Anne entered her room, eager to interact with someone who could behave like an actual human. 

“Hey, how’s your day been?” Katherine asked with a laugh, knowing how absurd the question seemed. 

“Probably better than yours.” The girl gave her a sympathetic look and this one she actually believed. “At least Daniel came to visit, that’s exciting.”

She snorted. “Since when do you like Daniel?”

“Right, I don’t. At least he came and checked on you, right?”

“He didn’t come to check on me, he came to tell me how excited he was my father was out of the way and to inform me that we will, in fact, be getting married now.”

“Are you engaged?”

“Not yet but he’s definitely ready. He’s made it very clear that he doesn’t think I could survive on my own and at this point, I think he might be right.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” Her tone was reassuring but it did little to help. 

“Sometimes I think about what you said, about running off. I know you weren’t serious but it’s nice to dream about sometimes.”

Katherine could tell she was choosing her next words very carefully. In some ways she appreciated it, that she didn’t want to give her any false hope. “If you want to run there’s nothing stopping you.”

You. Not us. Because of course she wasn’t about to leave her stable life for some pipe dream. Who would? 

Even what she had said wasn’t true, there was plenty stopping her. “Can we not talk about this and let it just be a nice thought?”

“Yeah, of course.” She quickly changed the topic, clearly not wanting to dwell on the issue. “How’d things go with the detective earlier? Did you tell him everything?”

“I did my best. He was quite odd, he barely seemed able to string a proper sentence together, let alone solve a murder.”

“I’m sure he has his reasons, don’t be too hard on him.”

Katherine gave her a once over, trying to figure out why she was defending the man. Normally, she was more than happy to gossip and talk badly about the various people who entered the household. 

“Don’t tell me you fancy him, I mean he’s not the worst looking man but he was an ass the first time we met and incompetent the second time. There’s better men for you to fawn over, I promise.”

Anne’s face immediately turned bright red. “No, that’s not… I mean, I don’t…” After a few failed attempts to deny these accusations she opted to instead bury her head in her hands. “I’m just saying, maybe he’ll surprise you. I don’t know.”

“You’re being so weird, what’s up with you?”

“No, not weird.” She dismissed the idea as quickly as she could. “I’m just worried about you! Do you want to talk about any of this?”

Maybe that was it. Katherine didn’t have any real idea how she’d comfort someone who’s father just died, she couldn’t imagine it was any easier to figure out when it was her that needed comforting, she couldn’t blame her for that. “Not really. Can we just be normal? I should get ready for bed anyways, can you help me with my corset? I haven’t slept and I need to be sharp tomorrow when I start poking around.”

“No!” she practically shouted, eyes wide with panic and face flushed. Katherine’s heart sank, was she going to try and tell her not to investigate? She’d assumed that at least Anne would be on her side. Insead of protesting, however, the maid began to stumble backwards. “I just remembered I need to leave.”

What was going on today? She felt like the whole town had gone mad. “You need to leave?”

She nodded, backing away towards the door, running right into it as her hand grasped blindly for the doorknob so she could exit the room. “Terribly sorry, I’m sure I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t get into too much trouble, sleep well Miss Katherine.”

Miss Katherine? Anne hadn’t called her that in years. 

She watched the girl leave and did her best to reach around and undo her corset herself. So much for acting normal.

And then, a few minutes later, like she hadn’t just run off acting like she’d seen a ghost, Anne walked right back in the room to the sight of Katherine trying and failing to undo her own corset. 

She snorted at the sight, walking over immediately. “Please let me help with that. I swear Kate, you’re absolutely useless.”  She said it with a fond smile, her hands immediately falling on the lacing as she’d done a million times before. 

“Anne?”

The girl hummed in acknowledgement, clearly barely paying attention as she loosened the undergarment. 

“Were you acting weird because you don’t know how to act around someone who’s grieving or because you think I killed him?”

That got her attention. 

She turned, concern written all over her face. “When was I acting weird? I was kind of quiet but I thought you might appreciate the silence, since when does that mean I think you killed someone?”

She sounded offended at the accusation, which was fair, but Kate couldn’t think of any other plausible explanations for her behavior. “No, not this morning. Just now, before you left.”

Anne’s hand drifted up to feel her forehead, her moves slow and intentional, like she was worried she might scare her off. Kate couldn’t help but lean into her touch, it was the first genuinely comforting thing anyone had done since all this had begun. “I haven’t seen you since this morning. Are you feeling alright? When was the last time you slept?”

Great, apparently she was hallucinating now. Either that or her best friend was lying to her but honestly, she’d prefer the hallucinations. 

“The last time I slept was before all of this, I’m probably just tired.” She rubbed her temples, trying to understand what was going on. It almost made sense, everything in the last day had felt like a dream anyways. She’d love to be able to say that of course she knew what was real, that she wasn’t hallucinating anything, but right now that seemed as possible of an idea as anything.  

Anne squeezed her arm in quiet reassurance. “Don’t worry, I think everyone’s off kilter with everything that’s happened. I mean, the detective sees stuff like this all the time and even he seemed off, although I think there’s something not quite right with that one if I’m being honest.”

At least the non hallucination version of Anne agreed with her evaluation of the detective. She had a feeling that he wouldn’t be solving much. Even if he wasn’t incompetent, she couldn’t just leave this in the hands of someone else while she sat and did nothing. If she had to sit around, stuck by herself, she was certain she’d join the growing number of people going mad, if she hadn’t already. 

She might not be a practiced detective but she couldn’t be worse than the one they already had.