#I wrote this while rping

[kowaindar0u]

//

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

aita for not inviting a friend of mine into my dnd campaign?

so i (18nb) have a friend (18nb, Martin) who i play in a main dnd campaign with with all our other friends (Ill name them Dan, Virgil, Mark, and Ray). Dan is our DM after we kicked out the old one bc she was horrible. We're a pretty close group of friends, but lately we've all been really busy with respective school & work, ect. so we didnt play dnd for a solid, like,, 4 months. I DMed a one shot for everyone besides Ray cause she was flaky anyway, and added in my boyfriend Zeke for it.

Everyone had a really fun time w it and I loved everyones characters, especially Dan's. I watch a lot of dnd shows, so i just keep getting more ideas- but while the one shot was fun it was messy as hell. Ive been wanting to write a campaign for a smaller group for a while, (because when i tried making a campaign with the whole group the character creations were... disappointing to say the least. this sounds mean but i created a fairy world that was very magical & told everyone to go crazy on character creation in a world with few/no humans, and like 5/6 people opted to be a human with a fighting class :/ )

ive been writing a campaign that im really proud of and have a good vision for, and decided to include Mark (because we're best friends) Zeke (because he wants to play dnd more and has no opportunities) Dan (bc he never gets to be a player) and then another close friend of mine outside the group named Gabe (who i love but never get to see) I love their characters & we're all super excited.

Thing is. I was briefly talking with Dan, Zeke and Mark about it at school bc I'd sent everyone a little intro message for the world and they were all super excited and wanted to talk to me about their classes. Virgil had no problem with this and was excitedly asking abt the world + characters along with some other friends from school, but Martin got quiet and went and sat by himself. I could tell they were off, but Martin is generally a quiet person anyway and is often sad + doesnt want to talk for like a hundred different reasons, so i left her alone. Later that day in a different class I have with Virgil he showed me his phone where Martin had sent him a message saying she was really disappointed & felt left out that i hadnt invited them to my campaign.

i instantly felt bad and started to text him, but,,,, to be honest, i dont think im at all responsible for this.

i have reasons for leaving Martin out, the main one being that they just..... arent a very active player. Hes soft spoken and doesnt actually like rping their characters- her character in our main campaign is/was literally mute bc they said they didnt want to have to speak as him. (theyve since taken this back and went through with a curse breaking thing to be able to speak, but her character,,, still doesnt talk much.) he writes really good, sad backstories but doesnt actually play or do anything with them and gets uncomfortable acting. Their characters are not only emotional, but like. crazy. they play a bunch of cool tieflings with insane magic classes & features and then, again,,,, dont roleplay them. I didnt want the group to be big and had a good reason for including everyone that i did, and our other friends that arent in it (Virgil, Ray who is Martins sister btw, all our other d&d interested friends at school) literally dont mind at all. i just wrote a campaign that theyre not in. Martin also has their feelings hurt very easily, so to be honest i just find her being sad about not being in it just... stupid. id never say that to his face & i get that he feels bad, but like....cmon.

im aware im a very very incredibly low empathy person- to be honest i struggle with depression and bpd very heavily and am often mean to my friends & loved ones without really processing why or how much it affects them. i told Virgil that i thought Martins reaction was stupid, and he said that that wasnt fair bc Martin had always been in my campaigns before (which is, yknow, one. Martin and I were even in a campaign with a completely different group a while back and Martin willingly left it very early because the group was loud & their character wasnt doing anything (yeah)). Every time Martins expressed (or i guess not expressed) sorrow for not being invited to it ive just sort of ignored them. this again isnt that uncommon cuz when shes sad he doesnt like to talk about it, and also they havent directly confronted me with this at all.

ive been talking about the campaign a lot because it occupies frankly a lot of my brain because i have so much to write, and i especially talk to the people that arent in it bc theres no risk of slipping up and telling them something they arent supposed to know. The other friend, Gabe, is friends with Zeke and Mark and I, and Dan is good around new people,, but Martins really quiet around people he doesnt know well, so if i invited her anyway they'd probably play the game even less than they already do.

again, im really bad at having an actual perspecitve on this. Virgil said he feels bad for Martin but not for himself, as far as i know Dan doesnt know about the situation, and i literally just dont wanna involve Mark and Zeke (Zeke HATES conflict and when people fight so he really doesnt have to be involved.) Mark Martin and I have all been really close friends since literally 7th grade and I guess Martin especially feels left out that I involved Mark and not them but Marks both really good at character creation and also talking in character, and like, hes my best friend who i do everything with.

I dont wanna blow off Martins emotions but but i truly dont give a shit that they feel betrayed by my not inviting him. especially because they havent bothered actually telling me this. objectively i dont think its my fault even a little, and Martin is really horrible at handling their emotions anyway (this isnt an insult, just a fact. i am too). aita for not inviting him + not caring that shes upset by it and acting like they arent?

sorry this is so long i really like providing context

What are these acronyms?

[swordfright]

https://www.tumblr.com/swordfright/756502816281018368/what-do-you-think-is-your-most-controversial-dsmp?source=share

I remember sending this to a bunch of dsmp blogs (starting with elmhat I think ?) bc I like when people share ideas/opinions who diverge from the main consensus because I find it the most efficient way for people to stick to canon and not fanon since people can have different interpretations of event

And it was super interesting to see the one about the experimentation being after prison rather than before (loved the two LN and Q ones too but as you said they were a bit more common. Would love to see your take on c!slime though now)

(And I wouldn't have a problem with you giving unpopular opinion about the fandom either but to be clear I was not trying to start anything with my first question, I just like seeing uncommon takes)

Don't worry lol I didn't assume you were trying to start shit. Ok, so c!Slime is pretty interesting in that he's the closest thing we have to an NPC in what is otherwise a roleplay, which implies certain things about how he can be used in the narrative.

A little bit of quick background: I spent a LOT of time as a kid doing RP online (it was an original story set in the Death Note universe and it happened on a website that went bankrupt in like 2017 and no longer exists lmfao don't worry about it) and idk what RP etiquette is like in other communities, but in the community I was a part of, it was sort of frowned upon for players to outsource heavy plot/character development material to NPCs. It was allowed and people did it, but it was seen as sort of a cop-out. The underlying idea being that if you're gonna bother to do RP, your character's most important interactions should be with other PCs, in part because it helps build/strengthen the RP community and in part because it better entrenches your character's storyline in the storylines of other PCs, which in turn encourages other players to keep RPing and keeps the story going. Again, creating NPCs was very common, but players were discouraged from having entire arcs or character trajectories be highly dependent on NPCs. It was seen as sort of a cheap, low-effort way of progressing your character's development without having to coordinate plot beats with other players, and doing it too often was seen as sort of antithetical to what RP is trying to achieve as a form of gaming-storytelling. To me, c!Slime is a classic example of when an RPer outsources a little too much narrative weight onto an NPC.

First of all, I wanna clarify that it's kinda difficult to define what an NPC is or isn't on this server, but I'd say c!Slime is more of an NPC because even though he's played by a CC with some degree of improv, we know that cc!Quackity specifically wrote c!Slime's character to fulfill a narrative role and asked cc!Slime to play that character - as opposed to alternate characters played by CCs of their own accord (Sam Nook, Dream XD, Sam Bucket, Mexican Dream, etc.) So, for example, I don't see Sam Bucket as an NPC but I do see c!Slime as an NPC. c!Slime wasn't an original creation on the part of the player, he's a narrative tool (which is fine, but it does mean that what he can and can't do in the story is limited to what cc!Q needed him to do.)

There are some things I think the addition of c!Slime did accomplish. For one, Q's interactions with him provide a platform for more introspective character work on Q's part. And while I that character work could've been done by having Q interact with a PC instead, I do think Slime is better positioned to act as an apprentice figure because he had almost no lore prior to Las Nevadas and didn't enter the story with baggage or ties to any other major characters. He's a blank slate, which makes him really easy to use as a narrative device. Q voices thoughts and ideas to Slime that he can't voice to other characters (usually because it would be OOC for him to do so, or wouldn't make sense in context), which means that Slime is sort of a vehicle for delivering Q characterization to the audience.

This is all fine and I think a lot of it was done fairly well. I like cc!Slime's acting and I think the character is a fun addition to the LN crew. That said, I don't think the payoff was great. Slime being an NPC really undermined what I assume cc!Q was going for with End of Las Nevadas, in large part because he doesn't have well-established relationships with other characters. Aside from Q, Slime basically only ever interacts with Tommy, Foolish and Ranboo, and even those interactions are limited to a really tiny handful of streams. Punz capturing and manipulating him, Slime helping c!Dream confront Quackity...all that stuff could have been a lot more interesting if it had more time to marinate. Like, I love the IDEA of Slime and c!Dream interacting, but we don't really get any meaningful interactions between them outside of Slime's function as a storytelling tool. He's there when he needs to be, and only ever when he needs to be.

For instance, I would've loved to see what Slime thinks about Q's slime army. It's really weird to model your mindlessly obedient slave army after your friend. That was a weird ass thing for Q to do, and it would've been cool to see Slime react to that. But because he's more NPC than PC, and because highly scripted lore like the LN series doesn't really encourage deviation, we never get to find that out. Slime doesn't ever really get to be his own character, which in the end kinda undermines a lot of the character development he triggers for c!Quackity because at the end of the day, it's really transparent that Slime only exists to be a prop. It's a kind of one-sided relationship that's unique to RP.

I think End of Las Nevadas was weak for other reasons too, but uhhhh yeah the Slime stuff bothered me a bit. Would've liked to see him do more. And he disappears after pushing Q off the ledge and, to my knowledge, we never see him again! If he had been more PC and less storytelling tool, presumably other characters would've had opportunities to react to Slime's role in the events of that stream, or notice that he's missing/back again/missing. But instead, he's able to just vanish from the story after he's fulfilled his role because that's all he was ever supposed to do.

[through-fire-and-flame]

[ i just

man, rambling post ahead

look laurentius used to get shipped a lot, and it surprised me, because i first started writing him in 2012 or so as a response to a relationship with a writing partner going south

effectively the writing partner kept pushing me to write things i didn't want to write - broody characters with questionable ideas on consent; i frequently inhabited head spaces i didn't enjoy because i wanted to please this partner who wanted conflict and hate-love type storylines, etc.

when i finally broke away from that friendship, i decided that i wanted to keep RPing, so i spun up the original through-fire-and-flames blog, and i elected to write the nicest character i could think of, which was laurentius

follow me here: i'd just been told by my former writing partner that the nice, fluffy stuff i wanted to write - all kindness and affection, etc. - was boring and unsexy (and by extension i was boring and unsexy, so on.) when i started laurentius' blog i figured i would at least get to write him being nice to people, but i thought for shipping purposes he'd be considered boring or vanilla

next thing i know he's getting shipped with so many other characters/roleplayers that i start getting irritable anons complaining that all i was doing was writing romance. i was baffled to see him become so popular (and equally baffled by this strange position i ended up occupying in the community for a while.)

fast forward: i drop RPing for a while after delving into writing laurentius in different ways that didn't feel good after the fact. slowly i'd edged into that same territory as that former writing partner. slowly i'd started writing toxic ships, occupying those headspaces - and eventually i got involved in a bunch of sideways drama that just put me off the community entirely for a bit. (mostly my fault, tbf.)

i keep coming back to him over the years, mainly anytime @yellowfingcr inspired me to do so, but never wrote a whole lot - mainly just short little drabbles and bits and asks. i didn't really ship him with anyone anymore; it was mainly just exploring his past and writing little tidbits and whatnot to keep the proverbial muscles from atrophying.

now: now some of the members of that community i was enjoying so much are back, now laurentius has this sweet ship with anri (thank you for indulging me so much @prismaiden) that lets me revel in the fluffy romance i really enjoy writing, and now i've poured more words into the poor fellow in the last few days than i have the entire year prior.

there are threads going! there are memes i'm going to reblog! i'm excited to log into this hellsite again!

so much of my proverbial ink these days is just stories for my day job, or freelance bits here and there. to get to come back and write something i'm really passionate about, that gives me such joy - i'm grateful for it, and i'm grateful for the people who write with me and meet me in the head spaces i want to occupy.

y'all are all wonderful, and i'm glad to have this outlet with you. ]

[mariequitecontrary]

2024 TF Reverse Mini Bang Memories Part 2

Link to Part 1! I am sharing just a few of my favorite memories of the @tf-bigbang

Let's keep going!

DREAM TEAM 66

The moment I saw @spashahoney's sketch, Team 66 LAUNCHED to the top of my list. I am so lucky to have been matched up with her as my partner!! She is funny, creative, encouraging, and I loved when we fed off each other's energy! I am truly proud of what we created and sincerely hope we continue to work together in the future <3

It was very fun knowing I wanted to partner with her even when I wasn't allowed to say XD

We were a dream team from the start and I'm not afraid to brag about this fact.

We were so chaotic and I had so much fun bouncing around with her talking transformers and about her concept for our collab!

I was also so, so very wrong about how much I planned to write for this fic XD

Either way, we adored what we both had made!

It's also SO TERRIFYING to even think about someone watching you while you write a fic based off of their art XD

It was VERY FUN and I adore my artist <3

Do I completely blame her for my new Optimus/Rodimus obsession? YES.

#BOBACULT

I bought...so much more boba than I usually do because of these people XD Boba Bthursdays and Bubble Tea Fridays birthed an ongoing boba addiction in me that I'm not trying all that hard to fix XD

RP

Getting back into rping! Most importantly starting to rp transformers! I've always been a big fan of collaborative storytelling through roleplay, so am always DELIGHTED to find rp partners to play with <3

I had to pause because of vacations and the bang deadline, but I can't wait to get back into it!

500 Word Writer Awards

We were challenged to write 500 words for a secret prize and suddenly every last block I felt that was preventing me from starting to write DISAPPEARED. I wrote 632 words and suddenly felt like I could do this🙂

I'm very proud of this reward and am keeping it forever.

I'm Easily Baited with Prizes

That was the start of something I kinda knew but FULLY REALIZED over the past few months...that I am so, so, so easily motivated with prizes. It takes minimal effort on the prize giver's part. All it has to be is something you took the time to provide for me and say its mine and suddenly I DRIVEN to complete whatever task is set before me XD

It's pathetic really. But also here are my prizes look at them I worked so hard for them be proud of meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

DO YOU LIKE THEM I WORKED SO HARD FOR THEM! *bright eyes and wags tail*

Friends <3

I made so many friends! Friends to brainstorm with, an ao3 moot, a friend I've entered into a blood pact with, friends I've written together with a sprinting bot, friends to rp with, friends to talk about space robots with and anything under the sun :) I cherish them all so so so much <3

The Great Cicada War

But my friends bullied me :( They witnessed me dealing with probably the most harrowing part of the year...cicada season.

Time of My Life

I hadn't had this much fun in an online community...in a while. The past four months contain precious memories and friendships made that I'll treasure forever.

To the mods, thank you so much for hosting such a fun event! You all put so much work into making this special for us and I couldn't be more grateful to have been a part of this.

To all my new friends, thank you for welcoming me into this space and making me feel like I'm a real part of this fandom! Thank you for being kind and encouraging me when I was down and struggling, and thank you for uplifting and cheering me on when I was proud and succeeding. May inspiration always come easily to you.

Thanks for all the memories! I'll see you soon :)

[exponenshul]

Purely for enjoyment anon here-

I’d argue that if both partners really want to try the birth denial and intentionally do it, NOT out of necessity, it’s even more indulgent than being forced into it and discovering they enjoy it, but that may just be me.

Also, shit, you wrote Inheritor?

I’m 99% sure (unless I’m thinking of the wrong series) that’s where I got the idea of rapid pregnancy leading to the baby continuing to grow while delivering until completely out, so if she doesn’t deliver quickly enough it quickly starts to stretch her far more than she is expecting!

Combine this with recreational birth denial at your own risk!

(Fun times rping things of this nature, though with kik essentially sunsetting and the shutdown of omegle, I’ve been forced to use an RP AI, which I’ve actually gotten quite good at using)

That’s true- I don’t think I fully interpreted that from your first ask but yeah, if both partners are into it from the start/agree beforehand then that can be REALLY good

And yes, that was me! 🫶 A grand undertaking, that one…

[joker-ace]

This is kind of a wild thing to admit, but when my best friend and I were kids (like 12-13), we had an entire MHA RP and we used a lot of OCs we found randomly online. Obviously we grew out of that pretty fast, and as an adult now I look back on it with a little bit of guilt cause ya know, they were other people’s characters and I don’t think we understood why that was a weird thing to do at that age?

Anyway, long story short, Inori was one of the characters we used the most and I had honestly completely forgotten that I just saw him while browsing google one day and I loved his design, so I used him. I haven’t even thought about that RP in several years, but I thought you might get a kick out of knowing that Inori has been happily living on my Tomodachi Life island for AGES now. He’s one of the first Miis I added and he’s actually married to another person’s MHA OC (who we wrote as his love interest in the RP back in the day too 😅) He’s one of my favorites on there, and it didn’t strike me until today how his original artist had no idea about any of this!

I just thought you might laugh a little about it! I really hope that doesn’t upset or offend you in any way 😅 If it does, I genuinely do apologize. It’s not something I would ever do now, obviously!

TLDR: Inori is alive and well in my Tomodachi Life and my best friend and I really loved your art as kids :)

Genuinely feeling a mixed of things about this, so I waited to sleep on it before responding. And the lasting thought I had the past couple of days since getting this ask was "Oh yeah, been there, done that."

In my early internet RPing days, I too was just a kid that took random pics online willy-nilly bc I thought it no harm to do so, especially for something silly as a random rp online. Obviously, like u & ur friends, I realized later on how bad it was to just take someone else's character and make it your own, w/o consent from the original artist-- especially as an artist myself.

The overall thing I'm willing to say on this is that I'm glad you guys loved my art (and Inori especially apparently!! 😂). I can probably assume you guys weren't being malicious about it, and if someone had ever pointed it out back then, u probably would have stopped. 😅 But what's done is done, and I did get a laugh at Inori living in ur Tomodachi Life.

[chocolatte-and-despair]

Rules and terminology of roleplaying with people

While roleplaying is a fun medium that is mostly a free place for people to express their creativity, there are some rules, terminology and regulations that you would have to follow, to have a good reputation in the roleplay community, and if you want to attract experienced roleplayers to you.

Let's start off by a few sites I use to roleplay

SITES

Aniroleplay - a good place to roleplay, mostly consists of people playing original characters or characters from animated media.

Roleplay.me - much more populated than Aniroleplay, and quite fun, for me personally. My preferred rp site. You will find a fix of real life and animated characters on there, though most people play their original characters.

Flist - mostly adult rp site, but if you're looking for that? That's gonna be perfect. It can be a bit difficult to navigate at first, but after you get it, it's wonderful. The profile making is very in depth, so that's fun too.

Quotev - this is mostly a reading site, like wattpad, but what makes this different is the group option, which is mostly used by people to roleplay. This will be the most different style of roleplay, if you've never roleplayed before. I'll explain more later in the post. There are two methods to find a rp on here. Either write the Fandom you want in the Quotev search bar and go into group section, or write on the Google search bar Quotev directory and look through them. Roleplayers have made up directories to find rp groups much easier!

Tumblr - another unconventional rp platform. It's quite common for people to set up accounts as a character and interact with others like that. It's a fun way to interact with the community and at the same time, roleplay.

Those are the main places I roleplay on. Now, I want to share some of my "wisdom" about the unspoken rules I learned of rping with others and some terms you might encounter, which might confuse you.

RULES

- preferably, use third person. On cai you will most likely use second or first person to roleplay. That's a big no no for rping with real people. It makes your reply look cheap and most don't enjoy that format.

(example of pov writing)

First pov (I ate ice cream)

Second pov (you ate ice cream) (using you as the pronoun to talk about your character)

Third pov (he ate ice cream)

- make your reply descriptive, use various words. Don't use the same words, or make the reply simple. The fancier or better sounding the better. It makes people excited to reply, and makes them add more flavor to their text. People aren't like ai, they like substance.

- one paragraph and up. The more you write, the better. Sure, you can discuss to rp in shorter sentences, but the rp will grow stale and you will get dropped, or drop the person.

- space your stuff with paragraphs. Don't wrote everything in one huge block of text. It's hard to read and people will not want to rp if you make it hard for them

- don't rp in script. I'll explain what script is, but the rp usually gets stale fast, and no descriptive rper wants to rp with a scripter.

- don't interrupt 1x1 rps. I'll explain what that means later down. It's rude and you can get people mad at you.

- don't control what the other person does. It's annoying, and will quickly get you a bad reputation in the rp community, and you might start seeing that good quality rpers don't want to roleplay with you.

- There is a social dynamic in rp communities, especially aniroleplay and roleplay.me. If you are an asshole, impatient or create mary sue characters, you will start getting rejected for rps by high quality roleplayers.

- Be patient. These are people you're roleplaying with. They will not reply to you as quality as AI does. It might take hours, maybe a day or longer. It's just how this shit goes.

- Read the person's profile. They might have rules, original character information or just other stuff you might need to know before you can roleplay with them.

- Don't jump straight into a rp from the get-go, unless the account says they accept starter greetings. Discuss the rp beforehand and make sure your partner is okay with what you want to do. If you want to do nsfw roleplays, discuss it beforehand as many people are uncomfy with that sort of stuff.

- When discussing stuff outside of roleplay, add a little marker to make it clear you're talking out of character.

(Example)

-

()

[]

/\

- They are not your friends, so don't make the first message you write something like "hi, how're you?". You guys are here for rp, so get to the point. If they have rules, include that you read them, and if you have a specific idea you wanted to try with them, include that in the message. Make the rp idea no longer than 4 sentences, as you can discuss the details together later.

- Avoid sending prewritten greetings. It's very easy to notice when you are doing that, especially if it's a long message. If you have to gave a prewritten greeting, keep it short, and add more info to it, based on the profile you are contacting.

- Don't use text language in rp. It makes your reply seem cheap and can turn a lot of people off. It also takes out the soul of your reply.

(Example)

u

totes

lol

TERMINOLOGY

Double up - It's a style of roleplay where you play two point of views. One being your original character and the other is the love interest of your rp partner. This is a popular roleplay style on quotev.

(Example)

Mary walked down the street, sighing.

----

Bakugou was mad that he couldn't see him today.

1x1 - It's when you rp one on one with someone. It's in other words, a private roleplay.

group rp - It's when you roleplay with multiple people at the same time, in the same roleplay, each taking a role, and adding onto each other. *I don't personally like this, as it can get messy*

rp - stands for roleplay

pov - stands for "point of view". I explain the different povs in an earlier part of the post.

AU - Alternative universe.

"You add, you message first" - Something you will often see on accounts that take a more serious approach to roleplaying. It means that If you add them, you will have to message them first, or they will delete you out of their friend list.

Script - It's a style of writing.

(Example)

John: I guess that's weird

Descriptive - It's a writing style

(Example)

John sighed, shrugging his shoulders. "I guess that's weird"

Mary sue/Gary stu - cliche characters that usually make your character overpowered, or not fit in the setting at all.

godmodding - Taking control of your partner's character. Very frowned upon.

IC - It means "In character". It means the person will talk to you as their character.

OOC - It means "Out of character". This person will talk to you simply, not playing their roleplaying character.

OC - It means "Original character". It's the character you play, if you create them.

Admin - A term used when a person has more than one rp account. It's usual that you only contact and rp with one of the accounts under that one admin.

I hope this helps. If anyone has any questions, or need any help or anything related to roleplaying with real people, feel free to dm me!

[thecreativeforge-a]

Edit 10/3: This blog has been officially archived. Have a good time on Tumblr! 👍

Hey everyone,

I will be archiving this blog and officially closing the last of my RP blogs on Tumblr in the next few days. It's a decision I've been contemplating on making for a while now, and I think it's time to act on it.

My personal opinions and rants below the line, if you're interested.

I will be moving back to Discord. If you have it, you can get in touch with me there to chat, RP and anything else. If not and you wish to stay in touch, you're welcome to message me and I will consider giving my handle.

Thank you for all the wonderful threads and the rare gems I came across being here. Y'all been an absolute blast! ❤️

The transition to the Tumblr RPC wasn't an easy one for me to begin with. I had to get used to a lot of new terms and rules, spoken, unspoken or otherwise. But with time, what bothered me most about Tumblr RPC is the lack of communication on this platform. It could be just my rotten luck or people just don't like me here, or this is just how it is, but people don't talk to each other on this platform.

When I write with someone, I love to talk to my partner about ourselves, about what we write, gush about things and just enjoy each other's writing and company. There is certain dedication to the story and the communication that shows. For me, it hardly ever happened here. Sure, I have people I write threads with, but we don't really talk to each other at all. I don't expect people to be connected by the hip nor do we need to become best friends to write (I myself enjoy a certain level of privacy online); RPing is a mutually cooperative hobby for me, and having some form of chemistry and communication with a partner is necessary.

This, unfortunately, didn't happen for me here. It wasn't about people being busy or not, because everyone has lives outside this platform and it's not about how fast or how often you reply or send stuff, it's just nobody talks to anyone here. And it's something that dampened my mood to write more often than not.

Again, this can be just my bad luck. Maybe I haven't found the right people to click with, or maybe people I wrote with didn't want to click with me, I don't know. But for the recent while, I had a long hard look at myself and realized how RPing on Tumblr just felt more and more like a chore and a burden with time. I became exhausted and passive, my writing felt terrible, I lost my muse more often than I had it, I didn't want to send anything because my askbox was always empty, I was coming short with ideas and initative because it was hardly ever returned, and it just... Wasn't it anymore.

I'd like to say I gave it an honest try. To be fair, it took finding a new partner on Discord to realize that maybe my expectations don't match the Tumblr platform and it really just isn't for me. The cycle was growing vicious and I knew I had to cut it short.

Overall, it's been a good learning experience. Thank you for tolerating me, and for all the wonderful threads I did get to write with some amazing writers out there. It's important to mention that there are partners out there that I had an absolutely amazing time with. I did have a blast for a while, and I won't forget it. I apologize if I ever ignored or hurt anyone.

Have a wonderful week! 😊

[rowrowrowanurboat]

Here's an old Starker prompt that I loved when I wrote it and then never looked at again, haha.

Feel free to comment or reach out for collaborative storytelling, RPing, sharing plot bunnies, etc.

[Recently Established, adult!Peter.]

After a month of dating and working together almost daily, they've been slowly moving into becoming intimate with long dates, cuddling on the sofa, casual touches while working in the lab.

This evening, Tony was pretty sure that they were headed for their First Time™. Everything was good, a perfectly cooked romantic dinner (that he'd practiced five days in a row), a movie in Tony's luxurious living room (Theater -- Peter insisted) after, hand holding and Peter's shy slightly awkward flirting.

It all culminating in a slowly building passionate make out session on Tony's sofa as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension played in the background, unwatched by either of them.

It was heaven, sweet soft lips growing wilder and firmer as they kissed and kissed, and the most ridiculous firm body pressed up against his, his heart swelling with each precious shiver or sigh. But then, suddenly, it went the opposite way, a shock to the system like being volunteered for The Ice Bucket challenge mid-sleep.

They had started to get a little handsy, new territory for them, when in the blink of an eye Peter seemed to panic and was suddenly gone from Tony's lap and halfway across the large living room. Even Tony's mind couldn't process things quickly enough for him to make sense of Peter's sudden absence in the moment.

Worse yet, Peter all but rambled in an attempt to make an excuse about an exam the next morning, not saying much more than repeated apologies as he crammed his shoes on the wrong feet, hoodie still on the back of the sofa, and he was gone before Tony could even get out more than half a plea to ask Peter to stay.

Worried and a little more hurt than he'd ever let on, Tony immediately fired off a text, then another, and another until he felt as though he'd successfully managed the ever-elusive Communication.

Insecurity and embarrassment at his own scrambling-and-rambling reaction, Tony sighed at himself and dragged his hands down his face, desire entirely replaced by a ball of unpleasant feelings.

[Okay, so I definitely fucked up there. I know it, you definitely know it, I just can't quite figure out what I fucked up yet.]

[And, like, not to call what you said a lie, because you're You, but I'm just pretty sure that there's a lot more to what happened tonight than you suddenly remembering a Differential Equations exam. I wouldn't be upset if that's true. You can be honest with me, Peter. In fact, I really need you to be honest with me.]

[If you've changed your mind on *anything*, you can tell me. I'm sorry if I did something – anything – to make you uncomfortable. I'm even more sorry if you felt pressured in some way or if you felt like you couldn't be honest that you weren't feeling it or that I crossed a line.]

[I'm just worried that I fucked up and hurt you or worse, scared you. Or even that you've realized that I'm a Turn Off in some major way -- please tell me, even if you think it's rude.]

[You don't have to tell me things are fine if I'm making you feel rushed into sex or anything else physical. If anything, I wouldn't want it either, if you didn't.]

[So, yeah, I'm not mad. I'm not really upset. I'm just…worried. I'm sorry. Really. Shit, kid, these fifty fucking texts aren't helping a goddamned thing are they?]

[thedrarrylibrarian]

Several people have been kind enough to let me publish their thoughts on fandom, community, and queerness to celebrate Pride in the Library. Today's piece comes from @wolfpants.

Dear readers, dreamers, and purveyors of the glittering, gilded aisles of the Drarry Library,

Fandom life began for me at age fifteen. We just got our first family computer, taking pride of place in the utility room between the boiler and my dad’s boxes of tools. I had recently come out as bisexual to my friends at school, who, props to them, had all taken it quite well despite the small town we grew up in (I was very lucky, they were great - everyone else though? Not so much). Still, even with supportive friends offline, I never felt like I could talk to them about what I really enjoyed: watching Buffy, reading Harry Potter and looking for queer subtext (I could never have convinced any of them that Harry’s story screams gay allegory–no matter what JKR has to say on the topic back then or now), scouring bookshops and libraries for any sort of queer content I could get my hands on, desperate as I was to read something that spoke to me, to read about love outside of the heteronormative landscape of the popular media. I wasn’t just tired of boy-meets-girl; I had never identified with it in the first place.

The year we got dial-up internet was the year I discovered Livejournal. The absolute joy I felt, stumbling upon an LJ community specifically dedicated to roleplaying Harry Potter characters in queer pairings. Discovering, beyond that, that people wrote stories about Harry and my other favourite queer-coded character of the series: Draco Malfoy. And then it was Wolfstar (specifically Sirius), then Drarry again, and somewhere along the way my lurking fell off and I stopped reading fic for a while when I moved to London and settled into my first job, my first real relationship, and sitting uncomfortably atop my bisexual identity and not really knowing where that shift happened and why. All the while, I was pursuing a writing career on the more journalistic side: writing for music and film outlets, doing a little bit of secret creative writing on the side, dipping in and out of HP RPGs but never really—connecting. In “real life”, my relationship with my ex was falling apart, and I felt very disconnected from the LGBTQIA+ community because, even though I knew I belonged, I never felt like I could be truly me with anyone—perhaps because I was, unknowingly, still discovering who I really was.

When the pandemic happened, it gave me the breathing space I needed to get to that point. It brought me back to fandom.

It started with reading The Popular Wolfstar Fic Everyone Was Reading, and reopening my ao3 account to re-read some old favourites from over the years. It then unrolled to, hey, I have some free time, why don’t I try writing my own Wolfstar fic for my oldest, dearest friend (who I met RPing on LJ at 15!), which then turned into: you should publish this, and see what happens.

So, I did. And I made a tumblr account, and I lurked for a while, shyly reblogging things and scrolling through author accounts I’d admired from a very young age, astonished and really fucking impressed that they were still in the game. I read their new fics, I was drawn back into Drarry, and from there I discovered what a wonderful community this is, not only for its immensely talented creatives, but for its values as a inclusive, equitable, supportive, uplifting, and joyful group of individuals who genuinely welcome everyone with open arms and love. That, in itself, has made it easy to reach out to like-minded folks here, to make life-long friends, to chat to people who have been through similar experiences in questioning their identities (it is truly thanks to this fandom and the many discussions I’ve had with people here that I’ve been able to realise my identity as a NB lesbian). To write! To share! To not be ashamed of my kinks and to discover fun, delicious rare pairs! To look at breathtaking art and read some of the best goddamn writing I’ve ever set eyes on!

I have spent thirty-seven years on this planet. A good chunk of that time has been spent questioning many parts, pieces, and niggly jiggly bits of my identity. Who am I? What am I? Is there anyone out there who is just like me?

After many years of searching in the dark, of asking these questions over and over, I can joyously say that the answer is: yes. And oh, how thankful I am for that, for all of you, because fandom has really been the community I can categorically point to and say: they did that for me, we did that for we, and I will do anything for you.

Happy pride.

Thank you, Wolf, for joining me in the Library. Your love and joy for fandom have left me feeling quite tender-hearted, in the best way. It's so so good to ask the question "Is there anyone out there who is just like me?" and find over and over that the answer chorusing back is "yes." Thank you for adding your yes to our chorus, and joining me for Pride in the Library.

If you want more @wolfpants be sure to check out their work on AO3! I can't help but recommend the fic that made me fall in love with her writing in the first place, Pages of You, which I've featured previously for Happy Hour. It's got Drarry and Wolfstar, and is one of my favorite comfort rereads.

🏳️‍🌈 Lots of Love and Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈

[quoththemaiden]

10 Questions for Fic Writers

Thanks to @forsssnaken and @katiefrog217 for the tags! No pressure tags to @contritecactite @mywaywardcupcake @justapalspal @resuri-art

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 15

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 22,620

3. What fandoms do you write for? Currently, Good Omens. Before that (and maybe again soon), Spider-Man. Yu-Gi-Oh!'s always lurking there as a possibility, too.

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I do! I didn't at first because I grew up on ff.net where the way you responded to comments was by doing it in an author's note at the start of each chapter. Us kids did that, while the cool adults didn't, so when I started posting on AO3, I was determined not to be so socially inept and begging for attention. Turns out, AO3 has a very different culture, and responding to comments is fine there! So I'm back to doing it again! (Besides, as a commenter myself, it delights me that I get more AO3 notifications that are a reply to my comment than I do comments on my fics. I love hearing I made people happy! It's fun!)

5. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Probably? It seems like it would've happened back in the webring days, but I honestly don't remember.

6. Have you ever co-written a fic before? You bet! 💖 It looks like I co-wrote 8, via the high-tech method of having a group chat and taking turns writing out lines. Half were with just one person or another, and the other half were with a group. I haven't co-written anything in the modern era, though; I have no idea how people do it these days, although I'd love to learn.

7. What's your all-time favourite ship? Puzzleshipping from Yu-Gi-Oh!. Sorry not sorry. It's wildly unhealthy, baffling physically, and goes entirely against the moral of the show. It's twisted. It's great.

8. What are your writing strengths? If I'm writing well, it's a toss-up between nailing the character voices and slipping poignant headcanons into otherwise funny scenes.

9. What are your writing weaknesses? I cannot do plot. 25 years of RPing every day and I still cannot come up with a plot. I adore reading long, plot-heavy series, but the only way for me to figure out what happens next in one of my stories is to write out the characters doing it, and that doesn't work well with a long action-adventure plot.

10. First fandom you wrote for? Digimon. I was known for Yu-Gi-Oh!, but Digimon was my first window into the idea that the internet can be used for fun things, not just researching school assignments. The first fic I read was Digimon, and the first ones I wrote were Digimon too.

[sylvctica]

Author Portrait

get to know the author behind the blog! repost, do not reblog.

Basics Name/nickname: Aid Age: 26 Pronouns: she/her Years of writing: 10+

Reflection I don't quite remember when I started RPing, but I know I started on devART yearsssss ago, cringe ass days (only cause wow my writing sucked LOL). At some point I ended up migrating to tumblr in the 2012 ... 2013? Era??? And I've been here ever since LOL.

Do you have any writing routines? uhhh massive hiatus??/ LOL no but on serious note it usually is just inspiration striking or making time for it; if I end up making time for it, I tend to play brown noise in the BG while I write (or rain sounds) so i can focus. if i get lost in the sauce i just kinda. Do it.

What's your favorite part about writing? Character development!!!!!! My primary OCs I've had over the years have developed primarily through tumblr/writing/rp partners; Sylvie is one example, then my previous booboo which was Hideki, then my Bleach OC I brought over when I came onto tumblr

Three things you like about your writing:

I second Ash on dialogue cause Sylvie is fucking chatty as hell, so a lot of the personality comes out through how they talk + secondary gestures

I like my voice!! I usually try to write how I think + speak, and I like how it comes out in my writing

I'd like to think it's digestible writing? <:)

A question for the next person! Write a question for the next person to answer. Once you've answered it, leave a new question for someone else to answer. From Ash: Is there a character from media you disliked that you then grow to really like because of a specific mun's portrayal?

Um, I can't say I have any characters I've disliked in particular...? At least not for Genshin, for Bleach I can definitely say ... I didn't dislike anyone there in particular (not counting minor characters that just left weird tastes in my mouth), but I've warmed up a lot to some characters due to writers there.

Especially since a lot of them put a lot of love and thought into their portrayals; Kaname Tousen has a special place in my heart due to a writer in the Bleach RPC that passed years ago due to health circumstances. I didn't dislike Tousen in any way tbf, but she wrote him (alongside the Starrk she had a ship with) in such a way with heart and love that I grew to love him and ache for him.

Same case with Childe—I never disliked him don't get me wrong, I thought he was cool as heck from the beginning, but it's the RPC writers that I associate with him that make me point and remember the portrayals I've seen; I often warm up to characters due to the writers.

My question for you: Is there something you'd like to tell to your past self when you first started writing / getting into roleplaying?

Tagged by: @melodicbreeze

Tagging: you!!!! >:)

[jessaerys]

Opinions on DirkRose?

so when i was 16-18 in high school i was briefly in this very tightknit three person online friend group with me + this extremely popular homestuck artist at the time + their best friend that i quickly developed a crush on. and this online friend roleplayed dirk at the same time i was roleplaying rose (a rose from the same timeline as whom is probably the most famous dave strider roleplayer in the history of homestuck rp. but that nuclear fallout is a story for another day) in the wild wild west that was the 2012 homestuck rp landscape on tumblr (aka the multiple timelines theory)(at some point my rose was involved with, like, a marius pontmercy. yes from les mis. and also a genderbent rose in an ambiguous almost selfcest situationship.)

anyway so i asked her if she wanted to ship our rp characters which was very "baby's first time asking for what they want" of me, and she said yes, and dirk and rose wrote each other a couple of inter-dimensional letters that were quite beautiful and poignant at least in my memory. the vibe was "very traumatized young adults find an equally jaded and verbose kindred spirit and they tentatively show each other the vulnerable side that they can't show anyone else through the safe distance of penpalship" so of course the rp brain chemicals were INTENSE (by the way the three of us were in a slightly larger skype group chat with a couple of other tumblr friends, whom ocassionally would make "you and alex should date lol!" jokes. my fragile teenage psyche was convinced it was going to happen)

but anyway the writing was super slow and i knew that this friend was much more into dirkjake (and VERY hung up on our other friend/her best friend) but whenever i could hold her attention she seemed to be interested in our writing

her dirk had a poetry sideblog (i want to say cringe in retrospect but honestly. at the time i thought it was some elevated literary use of the medium. and it probably was) and i would check it CONSTANTLY trying to decipher if anything new dirk posted was about my rose, but the posts were too vague for solid conclusions

anyway long story short for what was probably somewhere between months and a year (can't recall) i lived in that rp brain chemical addiction thrill-of-the-chase hell state surviving on kernels of character interactions and fantasies about dirk and rose, like i'm talking emotional-support OTP levels of emotional investment. the daily emotional rollercoaster was insane. it would make or break my day depending on what vague poetry dirk strider posted

until ONE DAY.... I FOUND OUT.... she had been rping dirkjake with our OTHER friend/her best friend for a while AND JUST DIDN'T TELL ME. BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T WANT TO UPSET ME. I WAS HEARTBROKEN (these weren't multishipping type blogs. you had one character timeline and by god you stuck to it)

i legitimately do not recall what i did re: the dirk ordeal, but i do remember that at some point (the timeline in relation to the rp drama is long lost to the sands of time) i confessed and she rejected me and i felt soooo led on which was probably a product of this friend being so conflict averse. i was in a crying or close-to-tears state for about a day and a half which i recall very vividly because at the time it was by FAR the biggest social heartbreak of my life. a solid 36 hours of "i'm going to feel like this FOREVER and my heart will never HEAL" teenage angst. i remember it so viscerally lol. especially because my parents straight up didn't notice. but that's an entirely different can of baggage

anyway eventually i met my then-girlfriend and the three person friend group drifted apart. much later i found out they had felt soooo betrayed but what was i supposed to do. third wheel them as the least important person in the group forever??? i think at some point the three of us hung out together for an afternoon when we happened to be in the same city but it must have been completely unremarkable because i don't remember any of it.

anyway what was the question again. yeah dirkrose is fine

[kissesandarsenic]

Hello, I saw your blog and I liked it. You have a wonderful and amazing sense of creativity. I don’t know why your words are so beautiful and enchanting, but your ideas are beautiful and wonderful. But I have a question: What is your point of view on submission? Should a person always submit, be controlled and subjugate him in order to feel that he has value?

Aw, thank you so much! Turns out writing a bunch as a kid until now has really contributed to my abilitiy to put subby things in their place 😘

I'm never sure when people ask things like this if they want me being all kinky, narcissistic Domme bitch or not but genuine answer is - I absolutely think submissives has value outside of submitting.

I actually wrote a whole kinky post on it that veered into OOC territory because there's a lot of 'you are worthless unless you're serving your superiors' shit which is like! Hot in kink, I get it. But also too much of that can fuck with a person's head, especially if you're dealing with some shitty fucking Doms that don't adhere to RACK.

That's a vent for another time.

Submissives are people! They have plenty of worth even if there's a whole TPE thing going on. I would genuinely be considered and run the fuck away from anyone who says otherwise if they're not RPing a dark character.

As Dominants, we should view a partner's submission as the gift it is! I'm a switch so I know how much vulnerability it takes to let yourself be seen in that light and trust someone enough to take care of you and not fuck with that.

And while yes, I love being a psychotic bitch who uses and abuses for my own gain and gets off on people's tears and reading them for fucking filth - it's an act. It's me being able to express these fantasies of grandeur (fucking lol) without actually hurting anyone unconsensually.

I have totally gone off on a fucking tangent here but tldr - submission is a gift that should be treated with respect, a person should submit when they feel safe to do so with a person who consents to dominating them, and I'd hope they'd feel value outside of a scene as well as in it, if that is the desired outcome of said scene.

[dchuntress]

one of the random hcs i have had while rping dazzler is that she's got beef with katy perry because when the "firework" song came out everybody was asking dazz if she wrote that song and it pissed ali off so bad