#also how do you properly format links

[deltamorphose]

chamomile + edelweiss!

this pair is interesting, because the first is hard to answer, but the answer is short, yet the second is easy, but the answer is long.

gifts are tough and annoying but I love giving and receiving them. what I try to give and love getting is something ive offhandedly ranted about wanting. shows attention to what the gift receiver has been saying, except I'm terrible at doing that. besides that, its also tough. I have a bunch of hobbies which have components that can be gifted. but its hard for me to remember gifts that I really liked getting.

the tl;dr of the second one is that its for it to not be my other username

anyways, story/rant time

there was one time where I was going through something a bit rough in terms of my relationship with someone. for some reason, idk what I'd hoped to achieve, I wanted to reset my online identity. and at the time the idea of using "metamorphosis" in my user name came to mind. I think it was something relating to personal change, trying to change my mannerisms with the identity or something. In the end, I never fully went through with it.

At some point, I realised that basically everyone that knew my main username could quickly find my twitter account. Didn't like that. Made a secondary, that was a priv at time of creation. I made the name recognizable, but not find-able, so only people I interacted with on the account would find it. Then I decided to make a tumblr to get off twitter. Didn't want to be recognizable or searchable for it, so I decided to name it something different. This concept of metamorphosis came back, and I wanted to include it. so I brainstormed for a bit, taking a little inspiration from Entomologists by ghost+pals, and settled with sticking "delta" to the beginning because it sounds cool.

to me, this URL means freedom. the ability to experiment and be cringe with less judgment. like putting pan flag centura pfp and putting she/her in bio.

can't think of anything else to add, so rant over

ask source thing:

(I hope I did the link formatting right. Woops)

[thesunpersists]

playlist for chapter 6 of the third thing!

listen on spotify read on ao3

[early-sxnsets]

by fuck i WILL make my own AO3 wrapped this year

[exopelagic]

supervisor was met. god help our souls

[adragonofthings]

Scam blogs (and how to spot them)

Unfortunately, scams do exist on tumblr. That is why it’s key to always try to search around when someone’s sent you a request for mutual aid. Not every account is trying to scam you and for the most part there is legitimate blogs who need your help. Sadly there are also scammers who pretend to be needing mutual aid as well so here is a simple guide to figuring out scams.

How old is the account? The pinned post usually is a good way to tell if the account contacting you is new or old. If you scroll the posts, you should see if they were made around the same time as the account.

How many posts are on the account? Most blogs will have more than just a few posts here and there. After all, a well used blog has thousands of posts for you to look at.

Are there more original posts? Usually someone needing help will have multiple posts of their own instead of a single post that’s pinned. They will also post updates regularly regarding their situation and answer asks clarifying details when necessary.

What does the link on the pinned post say? If it’s a linktree claiming to be a GoFundMe link, that’s something to be suspicious of because it’s likely not. If the link is an actual GoFundMe link that isn’t a linktree link then that usually means the account is legitimate and may have shared posts verifying who they are if you scroll a little.

Is the ask being mass sent to users? While this is done by legitimate accounts too, it’s unfortunately also commonly done by scammers. If you search the ask you got you may find it was sent to multiple accounts across several months and from several different senders with no changes to the overall text itself. Even the formatting errors are not fixed.

Are there any warnings out for the username? Try searching the senders username to see if anyone’s made a post claiming the account is a scam. There should at least be one post about them. If not, it’s likely that they are too new to have been reported yet.

Are you a well known account? How likely is it someone would find you without searching specific tags or posts for users to contact? Think about it. How often does someone send you asks for money that is a relatively new account with only a few reblogs and only one original post? If it’s almost daily, then you should be wary of the asks.

What do you find if you search part of the pinned post in your preferred search engine? If a fundraiser pops up using the same text and doesn’t mention using another mutual aid method, it’s highly likely the blog sending you the ask is impersonating a real person who needs support.

Does the mutual aid post make sense? Some scammers don’t know how medicine works and may list some that don’t work like claimed. They’ll just use whatever sounds ‘right’ without further research. Someone who needs medication will always know what their medicine does they don’t guess because they’ll usually have a doctors paper they go by.

If you have properly recognized a scammer and have fully been able to confirm that their a scammer with enough evidence, please report scam accounts and alert anyone whose shared the scam post.

[sims3alexsa]

Beckford World- Beta

Beckford is a secluded English town situated on a picturesque little island that radiates warmth and cosiness. The central square with its fountain is surrounded by cosy cafes and shops, where locals and tourists alike can enjoy a cup of fragrant tea or coffee from the comfort of the sunny terraces. The old harbour, with its moored boats and quiet streets, invites for leisurely strolls and romantic evenings by the water. The promenade, lined with flowering shrubs and benches, offers beautiful views of the ocean and sunsets, creating an atmosphere of privacy and tranquillity. The majestic cathedral with its tall towers and the cosy old castle become the real gems of Beckford, awe-inspiring not only for their historical significance but also for the atmosphere of warmth that surrounds them. Beckford is the perfect place for those who want to escape from the hustle and bustle and enjoy the simple pleasures of life surrounded by nature and friendly people.

This world-Edit Hylewood by the amazing @nilxis,credit for the terrain and plant placement goes to them.Then the world was redone by one of my favourite creators @Gruesim so the replacement texture roads are to her credit. The world has 27 public lots and 16 residential lots. Stor sets are present in the world! They are included in the download in package format,also in the build there are fixes for these sets.Please read the document inside on how to properly install the Stor fixes in PACKAGE format!!!!

Also in the world there are some mods that you can download from these links: 1.Mod functional printer 2.Tennis court mod 3.Mod purchase from inventory 4.Mod More vending machine fods 5.Mod system of petrol use by cars 6.post mod 7.Shop for clothing display pedestal mod 8.Social clubs mod

9.Private Clinic Psychiatry

10.Get Pumped

11.Yoga mod

12.Spin Class by Twinsimming

Recommendations for optimising the world. I advise and even insist that you use with this world mods Nraas:Master controller,nraas Overwatch,nraas Register,nraas Traffic.(Links to them do not give, I think they have you and so all installed):)Optimise the world with these mods: remove unnecessary transport, generated by the game stray animals, paparazzi and tourists. The world is released in betta version as it was little tested (and I will not have such an opportunity in the near future, so I put it out to you earlier than planned).

Download World

Download (mirror)

Download(mirror 2)

Download CC

(Download mirror сс)

Download (mirror cc 2)

If you have any questions, please write to us and we will solve them together. Gratitude I would like to thank all the wonderful creators I used for this world! Without you I would have nothing and this world would not exist. Thank you so much for your hard work! @Phoebejaysims,@Grandelama,@Martassimsbook,@aelisinsims,@Analogica 40,@Gruesim,@aroundthesims3,@bioniczombie,@Noir and dark sims,@simaddix,@wanberlust-pixel,@zivas-blog,@mequestrianequipment,@syninplays,@olomaya,@omedievalpixel,@kerrigan house designs,@Mspoodle. Sorry who I forgot )

If you want to thank me, buy me a coffee.

[olderthannetfic]

hi, as someone who is tragically gen Z and only ever read AO3, can I ask: what was so great about LiveJournal? Like, I know that there were fics posted there (and I've even read about the "purge", so I get why it isn't used anymore) and that it was sort of a forum-type thing. But what I don't understand, wouldn't Tumblr fill in the latter function? How was that site any different? I see a lot of people reminiscing about it and I'm confused

--

A big factor in LJ's greatness is timing and nostalgia.

It was genuinely great, but it wasn't quite as great as all of the Lo, shall the Golden Age ne'er come again? posts suggest.

LJ arrived at a pivotal time in the development of the internet both in terms of technical stuff and how many people had access. Many fans who are now in their thirties to fifties first discovered fandom through LJ and many were at a time in their lives when they were feeling energetic and up to making lots of new friends—and to figuring out how to make a site work for them.

I got on LJ in 2002 when it required invites. Fandom arrived in droves in 2003, first via coordinated campaigns to get invites to key people and then when LJ opened up free account creation to everyone. Back then, LJ's features sucked. It was impossible to search properly, among other things. At its height (2005-7, let's say), there was a reasonable site search, and fans had developed all sorts of community resources for finding each other.

People often remember this phase but not the early days of suckitude.

This development parallels how Tumblr used to not have that private chat feature and how a lot of fuckyeah[whatever] type tumblrs have helped curate the site and make it much more usable for fans. Fandom draining away from LJ after strikethrough also parallels people draining away from Tumblr after the purge.

There are people who talk about Tumblr the way my cohort talks about LJ...

And to the shock of no one, they are people who came of age on Tumblr, who found fandom via Tumblr, who were on Tumblr during pivotal times in their lives and ones when they had energy to make friends and figure out how a site worked.

Those same Tumblrites are now making all the same geriatric-sounding posts we LJers do about how other sites lack the required features to be good for fandom while missing that 90% of tumblr's "features" at its height (2012-2016, let's say) were actually fan-created and were basically the same as any fandom newsletter or links page or all the versions of this kind of personal curation stretching back to long before the internet existed.

What life phase you hit a site at matters.

--

With all of that said, no, LJ was not a forum. It was a blogging site with threaded comments.

The key point to understand is that conversation was always happening in a specific person's space. Unlike on a true forum, people were in the comments on a particular post in a journal owned by another fan. (On a forum, there's the first post in a thread, but it's still more of a communal space with less of a hierarchy.)

Overall, the LJ format can have a feeling a bit like you're over at someone's house for tea. There's more of a sense of intimacy and also behaving yourself in front of community members.

Tumblr being obscure and impossible to find anything in does give it some of the same vibe relative to Twitter, but it's still part of modern social media that tries to shove every rando into the face of every other rando.

But it wasn't just vibes: LJ also had robust privacy features where you could lock a post to this or that group of friends. You could moderate your comments section properly. Tumblr has far fewer controls to force people to behave or leave on a technical level.

--

The biggest thing many people miss about LJ is the threaded comments. At least by late LJ and on Dreamwidth, you can expand and collapse threads, making it far easier to deal with a massive comments section. But more than that, things are properly threaded with multiple levels of hierarchy that are all easily visible in the same place.

On Tumblr, it used to be extremely difficult to find all of the actual commentary on a post. Nowadays, it's far easier, but you still have to scroll chronologically, and multiple versions of a post with a long chain of commentary may be much more divorced from each other than what would happen in a LJ comments section.

--

But could we use Tumblr pretty much how we used LJ?

We could.

I do.

--

The key things that people tend to miss about LJ, aside from the younger and more excited version of themselves or the friends they've lost since then, are:

Heavily text-based

It may sound odd on the modern internet, but there are a lot of people whose brains don't like or handle an image-heavy site well. They were everywhere in SF book fandom. They were everywhere on the early internet. Today, they're hanging out on Dreamwidth and still going to their SF cons. They're usually not on Tumblr.

You could follow the discussion

Threaded comments help, but a lot of it is about having some place you can check for updates. It wasn't actually that easy to follow big LJ discussions unless you were subscribed to comments and reading along as things were happening instead of coming along after the entire mass of comments had been left.

The tone of the discussion is intellectual and one's enemies are "idiots", not "problematic"

All this requires is a penchant for longwindedness and an itchy blocking finger to remove anyone slinging ad hominems from the comments section.

On tumblr, it's as simple as conversations happening in the replies on a popular account and that person not tolerating suibaiting and threats.

(And make no mistake, a lot of LJ discussion was in the comments on popular accounts, not spread equally between everyone's.)

It does require that multiple people like that tone and want to engage in that way, but lots of people do want to.

--

These days, I interact with tumblr by checking my askbox and reading my activity page. The vast, vast majority of my posts are ones where I'm the OP, so if I block someone, they're booted from the discussion entirely.

For me... yeah, Tumblr functions almost exactly like LJ.

Also like LJ, while I'm hosting the conversation, if you hang around, you'll see the same people again and again in the comments. They may or may not also host that kind of conversation in their space, and there's a larger pool of lurkers who have some notion of which people count as regulars. Other people are watching from the shadows, enjoying or deriding the takes of the usual crowd.

People presumably do like reading my lengthy commentary or they wouldn't be here, but my tumblr wouldn't be popular like this without a healthy pool of other people who chime in regularly. It's not just that there are more people: it's that you see the same people over time. There's a bit more sense of place and community than on some parts of the internet.

--

So, in my opinion, the failure to just recreate LJ fandom on Tumblr was a skill issue.

Threaded comments were great, but LJ culture came from mailing lists, and mailing lists had the same issue as tumblr with the diverging threads.

We solved that back then by clipping out only the parts we wanted to respond to (you'd write "snip" around the quotation to show it was incomplete). We solved the smaller LJ issue by linking to other posts we were referencing and doing discussion link roundups. We solve it on tumblr by, again, linking to what we're talking about and even quoting multiple reblog chains in our own reblog of just one chain.

--

Tumblr's technical features and even general crap-ness aren't really the problem. 90s and early 00s sites regularly went down for periods of time unthinkable today.

The missing piece is people.

When one is in an active fandom with others who curate or with friends who let one know what's up, a site with imperfect features is easy to figure out and retrofit for fandom's needs. When one already feels out of touch and is between fannish passions—or at least fannish passions anyone else cares about—seeing the potential in a new site is hard.

--

Threaded comments are different and better.

LJ's built-in way to see everyone's blog in your own style was better. The automatic timestamps and the ease of seeing a paginated archive of an entire blog was better than tumblr's endless scroll and lack of clear date labeling. But some of that can be fixed with xkit or knowing your way around tumblr well.

A lot of it is nostalgia for the lj era and a refusal to take the time to figure out how to use tumblr in an oldschool internet way.

--

So by all means, people, weigh in about what made LJ great or how the culture felt at the time...

But if I see one more god damn response going "You can't have a conversation on tumblr!" in reply to my tumblr, which contains nothing but conversation, I am coming for you.

[thetoyboxs]

hi! Will you continue the tiny links drawings one day?

(Also. Love the art style BTW)

To properly answer this: I am actually actively drawing them! It's just I took a step back and decided to give them an active story. And I am just very bad at writing an actual story (And doing comics, I really really don't know how to format a comic)

I wish I could post some of these sketches I have of these tiny guys, but they're mostly just a growing doodle page

[howlingmoonrise]

Guide to backing up AO3 fics on the Wayback Machine

okay so on the interest of being able to link back to this instead of having to type it all over again the next time a friend asks:

yes, you CAN back up fic (and other websites in general) to the wayback machine, you don't have to be a specific profession or a member of the internet archive or anything

you can do this without an account, but you have extra options when you're saving a website using an internet archive account (saving ALL outlinks from that page, which is a huge time-saver; saving it to your web archive, which is useful when you want to look up the stuff you saved; etc). making an account is free.

specific things need to be taken into consideration when saving, such as whether a webpage requires login in order to enter. the wayback machine only saves a page exactly as it would show up to you if you were to open it on an anonymous tab right now with no extras installed (logged out, no saved cookies, stuff unclicked, etc) so you need to take this into consideration when saving stuff

why does this matter? because when it comes to ao3 fic, specifically, this poses some issues. at the risk of this post being nearly exclusively lists and bullet-points:

login-locked fics can't be saved to the web archive like this (please download them through ao3 itself if you'd like to save them as they are)

fics rated as explicit, mature, or not rated don't get saved properly if you use the normal fic link. they only get saved as the page where you confirm that you're willing to proceed unless you add this confirmation to the link you're saving (more on this below)

fics with more than one chapter don't get saved properly if you use the normal fic link. i see this happen a LOT with people who think they saved stuff but then only the first chapter was actually backed up. you also need to add a parameter to consider this to the link you're saving (more on this below). no, using the save all outlinks option won't help you here as the links to the next chapters aren't all indexed.

saving outlinks won't work if the fics listed in the page are explicit or multichapter, because you'll run into the same issues as in points 2 and 3. using the "save outlinks" option works when you're dealing with the page for a series where all the works are gen/teen oneshots. maybe twoshots, since ao3 now links to the latest chapter on the chapter count, but i haven't tested this yet.

--

step-by-step guide to how to back up fic and deal with the pesky multichapter/rating issues below the cut:

1. get the fic link

you want the one that is formatted like below, with only the work ID listed in the link

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007075

you can get this straight-up on oneshots, or right-click+"copy link" on the fic name when the fic is listed on an ao3 page (such as in the pages for bookmarks, series, or just in the plain fandom/ship tag). alternatively, if the link you have has anything else on it, such as:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007075/chapters/49717460

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007075/bookmarks?page=7

you can just remove everything after the work ID so that the format is the same as in the first example.

2. edit the link

if the fic is a gen/teen oneshot, you can just leave the link as it is

if the fic is explicit/mature/not rated, add ?view_adult=true to the end of the link

if the fic is a multichapter, add ?view_full_work=true to the end of the link

if the fic is explicit/mature/not rated and a multichapter, add ?view_adult=true&view_full_work=true to the end of the link

you can just use the last one for any fics and it'll work! it's just more difficult to find on the wayback machine if you only have the original link to work with, so i try to keep it to the simplest version possible.

as an example, you'll end up with something like this for the last case:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007075?view_adult=true&view_full_work=true

the edited link you end up with is the one you'll use from now on in this tutorial!

3. check whether the link has already been saved on the web archive (optional)

if the fic was saved, say, yesterday, or the writer has vanished from the interwebz since like 2003, and everything looks to be in order, there's little point in saving it again unless there were major changes since (and PLEASE check if the only save wasn't just an error page instead of the page itself, sometimes this happens and it's heartbreaking when you only notice after the page is gone.)

you can check this by going to the main page of the web archive, entering the link, and then checking on the timeline for how many lines there are in it (if there are no saves at all, they will ask you if you want to save the page). for the fic we're using as an example, someone appears to have saved it in 2021. click on that line, and then on the calendar below (where there'll presumably be either a blue or a green bubble around the date in which someone tried to back it up. other colours are no bueno):

green bubbles/links indicate a redirect. this is not particularly worrying by itself: it happens, for example, when the link is being redirected from the work ID-only format to the ID/chapters/chapter-ID format. but it can also be a redirect to a warning, for example. click on one of those timestamps and check whether the fic shows up as you expect it to. (once you have the page for a snapshot, you can just paste your next links in there to check if they exist instead of doing this all over again.)

for example, in the case of this particular fic, only the third chapter appears to have been saved. weird! you definitely don't want the only back-up of it to be this one, so it's time to move on to the next step.

4. save the fic!!!!

go to the wayback machine save page. paste the link. if you have an account and want to keep the saved website at hand, check the "save in my web archive" option.

whether you want to save error pages (for example, in case ao3 is having server issues, or for archival/historical reasons) or not is up to you, but i prefer to uncheck the box because it's usually more visible if there was an issue. below is the page of a 404 page i tried to save with the box unchecked:

and here is an attempt for another 404 page with the box checked:

the second example saved the error page only, and can mislead you into thinking that the fic was properly archived when it was, in fact, not.

DO NOT CLOSE THE PAGE UNTIL THE ARCHIVING IS DONE OR UNLESS THEY TELL YOU YOU CAN! this latter case usually happens when there's a lot of strain in the archive and the back-ups are happening with some delay, but in general you want to keep the page open so you can see the status of your save.

YES, it's slow as fuck, you're just gonna have to deal with it. i usually have 3-4 pages open when i'm working on saving several fics at a time. be patient. do other stuff meanwhile. i usually do this at the same time i'm updating my bookmarks with the fic title/author/summary/link in case the fic gets deleted and i have no clue which one it was anymore, so i have a pretty steady "copy link->edit link->save fic->update bookmark for that fic->repeat" workflow going on.

5. save the link you used!

bestie. i'm pleading with you. save the fic link somewhere. any! fic link! for that fic! even the original will do! any link that you can reverse-engineer into the one you want! because good fucking luck finding the save you did when you no longer know how to get there, even if you save it on your own web archive (i have a couple thousand websites saved on mine so it's like finding a needle in a haystack).

the web archive does not neatly save the page name so that you can search it easily, so you ABSOLUTELY need the link for the fic or you're likely done for💀

you have a couple options here! place the link in your ao3 bookmark directly, if you have the fic saved on there. if you're the kind of person who bookmarks directly on their browser, go for it, i guess? (but keep a backup of your bookmarks somewhere). create an excel with the fic data in a column or two and their corresponding links on the following one. it's up to you! just save it somewhere.

preferably, save a downloaded copy of the fics you love, too, instead of solely relying on the web archive, but that's a lecture for another day.

6. bonus round: saving series!

also adaptable for saving works by a specific author - the essence of it is that you want every page you'd need to navigate to in order to reach the rest of the works. for an author, this would likely be their main page -> their works page (or their [works in specific fandom] page) -> every page within that -> the works within each page.

this is where the outlinks are your best friend.

get the series link (the format is something like https://archiveofourown.org/series/2930166).

open the save page on the web archive.

if the works are all mature/explicit/not rated and/or contain more than two chapter each, don't bother checking "save outlinks". if the series has a large amount of gen/teen works and they're only oneshots and twoshots, check "save outlinks". you'll save time doing this instead of backing each of them up individually, but please verify that the second chapters of the twoshots have indeed been saved.

save the series page. save also the link to the series page: from this one you can then navigate to the works you save within it.

now individually save each of the works within that series that you want to keep (and that you haven't covered in point 6.3) by using points 1-4 of the larger fic-centric tutorial.

i hope this helps!

[monstrouslyobsessed]

stop censoring your tags!

normally, i don't like to write these kinds of posts, but i kept seeing a certain issue on this site—a very worrying issue, that genuinely upset me to a degree.

if you do any of the followings below

all are edited to protect their privacy and are only meant to be used as examples, so please do not look for those responsible!

please stop. i am begging on my knees for you to stop.

the whole point of using trigger warnings (TWs) is for other people to filter them out from their dashboards. what you're doing is putting more burden on your readers to add unnecessary tags to their filter list. you're also running the risk of triggering your followers and viewers.

even if your hashtags are uncensored, there's always a chance of missing one that was already listed in the introduction—especially with the limit of 25 tags. most filter lists i've tested consider what's already in the post too, even if it's untagged.

plus, any accessibility tool the reader may be using (such as screen reader and translator) may not be able to read the censored tags! considering that the (presumably uncensored) hashtags are at the very end of the post, these tools won't read the said hashtags until that point, making any initial warning moot if they are impossible to read or translate.

please keep your TWs as is, without all the excessive censoring.

tumblr is NOT tiktok or facebook. tumblr does not look for your posts to censor them (unless it's imagery) and/or to ban you off the site. as long as it is properly marked as mature, tumblr literally does not care and even said they are okay with any written post being explicit [link]. i am begging you, for the sake of people here, to properly tag your works PLAINLY.

DO NOT DO THESE: #tr!gg3r w4rn1ng, #c10ud$, #𝔭𝔢𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔭𝔲𝔭𝔭𝔶, etc. for the hashtags at the bottom.

these does NOT work with the filter, regardless of where they are in the post.

DO USE THESE: #trigger warning, #clouds, #pet the puppy, etc. even with #tw (ex. #tw pet the puppy) is fine too!

i included a link below which give a more in-depth explanation about how using #tw (insert trigger) is okay.

once again, while i know that tagging trigger warnings as is may seem like something you could get flagged for, it is not. tumblr's tagging system exists so that people can easily filter out content that they are not comfortable with.

by censoring your tags or content, you are actually making it harder for people to navigate through tumblr, as your censored tags or content do not work with the filter.

i encourage you to please think about how your content and tags may negatively affect others when they are censored.

the only exception i know of that would've impacted the visibility of your post(s) is the use of n'sfw due to the widespread abuses via the pron bots (and we all know how wonderful of a job the tumblrs staffs are doing to combat that issue /s). however, that's often easy enough to bypass via using examples such as, 'not safe for work', 'not sfw', 'n/sfw', etc. i personally recommend you to experiment to see which would work the best for you. generally though, they all should be fine/safe to use and be picked up by the accessibility tools at least decently.

additionally, on a still related note, please be consistent with your colors, sizes, and formats in your writing, especially in your heading area with tags and other important notes. we do have readers with vision and sensory issues who would not appreciate reading contents with too many colors and an excessive amount of bold and italics.

simplicity is best. consistency is excellent.

if it's something like the following,

CAUTION: trigger warnings, pet the puppy, handholding, clouds

that is, in my opinion, fine. personally, i'm okay with one or two bolded TW's to especially emphasize the major warnings, but not all of them. everyone have their preferences; however, again, i must stress the importance of simplicity and consistency for easy and smooth reading, especially for most readers, and it helps with accessibility too.

just please don't do what the first screenshot did (red and green texts). the inconsistency in sizing and coloring, like the aforementioned example, makes it hard to read and harder to enjoy.

lastly, please tag your works properly! a friend of mine was understandably upset when they ran into a content with an untagged trigger. the whole point of tagging is to allow everyone to curate their internet experience. it's considered extremely rude not to tag your works appropriately, especially with major trigger warnings. if it contains non/con, tag it. if it includes in/cest, tag it.

please. be kind to your readers and tag your works properly and clearly.

that is all.

thank you.

other useful links for tags

https://bihelel.tumblr.com/post/627963320709906432/how-to-properly-tag-trigger-warnings the in-depth explanation of tagging system https://trigger-warnings.tumblr.com/tags/ it is not a *complete* list of common TW's, but it's still a good handy guide to have on hand and it's pretty comprehensive.

[jiraisupportgroup]

♡ Budget / Expenses Spreadsheet ♡ (Customizable)

Hi guys!!! I've gotten a few asks about budgeting and handling money better — a post on that is in the works now — but I figured I would share the budgeting/expenses Google sheet that I made and have been using for about two years.

This is a link to the spreadsheet & under the "read more" I'll kind of go into detail about what it is, how to use it, and how to customize it to fit your needs.

I like using Google Docs because it's easy to access on both phone and computer so regardless of where you are you can quickly open it up and note down if you spend something or see how much you have left to spend on something. (I'll make a follow-up post at some point going over the process of making a reasonable budget and all that good stuff a little bit later, this post is really just about what the document is and how to use it ^-^)

You need to make your own copy of the spreadsheet so that you can start to edit and use it! When you open up the document click on "File" then select "Make a Copy"

2. Now that you have your own copy let's look at the "Monthly Expenses" part of the document.

This is the main part - your monthly expenses. I have it broken down into different categories so I can see how much money I'm spending on what, and notice if I'm spending too much on something. DO NOT EDIT THE COLOURED BOXES. Those are auto-updating, so you don't want to edit them or they won't auto-update anymore.

The monthly expenses table pulls data from this table down towards the bottom of the spreadsheet. This is where you can note down anything you spend money on. You have a drop-down menu to select what category the purchase falls under, what payment method you used, the total, and any notes about the purchase. The document will automatically add up any values for a category and put the total into the table at the top - that way you don't have to do any math at all its awesome.

CHANGING CATEGORY NAMES (please pay attention to this since if you change category names without following these steps it will not work anymore) You need to change the category name in 3 different places.

1- Change the name on the "Monthy Expenses" table 2- Change the name in the formatting code in the "actual" part of the "monthly expenses table" When you click on the value under the "actual" part of the monthly expenses table you should see something that looks like "=SUMIF(E36:E1002, "Eating Out", G36:G1002)" then just change "Eating Out" to whatever your preferred category name is.

3- Change the name in the drop-down options of the daily purchases part of the document When you click on the dropdown menu, click the edit button. That will open the menu on the right-hand side of the screen, scroll down and change whichever category name you want to edit to the preferred category name.

Make sure that it is spelled the SAME WAY in all 3 of these places or it will not work properly!! I also made a short video showing how I would change the category "nicotine" to "fashion" to show you how it's done:

Once you've done that everything should auto-update properly, and the spending chart will update with the new name as well no need to edit the pie chart at all.

And this pie chart will automatically update to show you a visual of how much money you're spending on what (comparatively).

If you want to change the category names of the payment methods those you can just change in the drop-down edit menu - the names of those do not affect anything so you can change their names, add new ones, delete ones, whatever you want to do and you don't have to worry about anything else getting messed up.

3. The monthly income table is just tracking what your projected income vs. actual income was for the month

again, don't type in the coloured boxes, they will automatically update. I mostly use this as a sort of starting point for planning my budget so that I can sort of see how much money I expect to have for the month so I can plan around that number. This doesn't affect anything else in the document, so if you don't like it you can honestly delete it.

4. Savings and Debts trackers

Again, these aren't tied to anything else in the document so you can delete them if you like. I mostly use these to see whether my savings are going up or down, and keep track of how much money I owe to other people T-T. One note I will make is that the debts tracker does not take interest into account so I honestly just manually update it every month. (It is not a very extensive tracker, and if you need to manage debt there are honestly better ways to do it than this, I just kind of have it in here as a visual for myself).

If you run into any issues or have any trouble formatting / customizing the document feel free to shoot me a DM or an ask and I will help you out!

And again, post about budgeting and fiscal responsibility and all that jazz coming later, but for now try it and see if you like it! See if you can log every purchase you make for a week! That way you'll be able to start seeing what you tend to spend your money on the most, and how much money you spend, and then we can kind of build a budget later on with that in mind ^-^

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗ I hope it's helpful! ˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

[arom-antix]

Hey, just wanted to reach out to say that I found you pointing out and calling this person was really great and you shouldn't have apologized. It was incredibly true what you said, and to be honest it seems out of touch with the reality of a great deal of the japanese fandom, the nuances and their culture. Also, it was as you pointed out, extreme and may I say rude. I want to mention too that the way it was written, as if entitled of the knowledge and the 'explanation' made it all worse in context of the 'fucked up'. The original poster always gets away by using the 'well-written academic'' statement of their 'metas' as an excuse to do or say and make everyone else agree and if not, uses victim narrative and discourses exactly selecting wording for people to agree on it or feel bad.

I don't know if they tagging you in the way they did made you reblog and apologizing/backing up, but no one thought bad about you pointing it out. On the contrary, a lot of people had been bullied and discriminated by this person when they called them out/disagreed going onto lenghts of sending their friends to harass people, and the other persons can't even defend themselves because they are effectively blocked. To quite a few people in the fandom has been done, even accusing them as 'acephobes' (when they're not) or even Nazis by spreading lies. So yeah, I just wanted to say that. I think you were right to call them out publicly.

Thank you very much for this ask. To be completely honest I agree with everything you said here and don't actually feel bad about pointing anything out. I mainly apologised because I didn't want any potentially poor phrasing from my side to cause unnecessary hostility and because I myself have gripes with this person's behaviour but didn't want to cause a scene.

My honest opinion is that they have a serious issue with taking accountability for their own mistakes and highly overestimate their own intellect. If you're reading this, @thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai, sorry if I seem harsh, but it's true. I saw your post lamenting how you're the only academic meta writer / fan in the fandom and I didn't interact then because I honestly do not care enough to start that drama but with the information Blonndiec has just given me, I think it's necessary that someone calls you out.

You're not an academic. You're not beyond the mental capabilities of other fans. You're actually incredibly childish in your metas and analyses and I am not kidding when I say that I was halfheartedly writing essays more academic than every analysis I've seen from you when I was barely a teenager. I don't know how old you are and I frankly don't care. You're not as clever as you think you are.

Also, don't think I didn't notice that you didn't reblog my correction (link here to my correction and here to their "response" for those who didn't see that exchange) of your post so that you could control what your followers saw of the exchange. You're the opposite of an academic. You control information to tailor the narrative, you don't cite your sources properly if at all, you don't format your posts in anything close to how an academic analysis would be, you make unbased claims, you reference posts and canon material without in any way indicating where that information is from, you reference your own (equally unacademic) metas and your conclusions from them without indicating what post it's from or that it's your own theory this new one is based on and instead present it as a common fact, and I could go on and on and on. Your posts are also riddled with logical fallacies and you talk in absolutes and opinions when there's no canon basis to claim such things. I'm sorry, but that's not academic in the slightest.

To be clear, you don't have to be an academic to post on the Internet. You don't have to be anything at all. You could up front be a genuine idiot with no remorse and that's fine. But when you claim to be an academic and also put down the rest of the fandom for not being on your level, you have to be able to back that up. It'd still make you sound like a prick but at least your arrogance would have a basis. It currently does not.

I haven't personally seen the discussions that Blonndiec is referencing and I'm not going to claim anything definitive (because that would be unacademic of me, take notes) but if what they're saying is true and did happen as described, which I have empirical, if anecdotal, evidence to believe could very well be (a friend of mine has personally been blocked by you after they criticised you without actually mentioning your name which I of course can't prove is the reason for the block but the timing is awfully convenient), you should know that you should be ashamed of yourself.

If there's context missing, feel free to enlighten me and call out any incorrect accusations. You have every right to defend yourself. However, I encourage you to cite your sources since you're such an academic. If you don't, then it's just your word against Blonndiec and anyone else who might comment's word and that doesn't prove anything. Don't misunderstand, acephobia and nazi rhetoric should absolutely be called out but only if it's actually happening. False accusations can ruin lives. I hope you know that.

I'm not a fan of calling people out publicly and, again, thank you for this ask, Blonndiec. But considering many of the issues I've personally seen and those I've been informed of by second hand sources were posted publically, I don't really feel bad about calling this out. I could do a full breakdown of just the insulting "academic" comments alone and how there's no academia to be found in said academic metas and, Samurai, if you give me reason to, I will show exactly what I mean point by point (and academically just to give you an example of even low level academia).

If you respond to this, do it in a reblog. That's what a real academic would do. If I'm wrong and you can prove it, you'd have no reason to not show my post in your rebuttal. If I'm right, you'd have every reason to be upfront about your mistakes and how you intend to rectify them. There's nothing wrong with being wrong but there's a lot wrong with refusing to admit to it in a way that lets others peer review you (academic thing, look it up) and come to their own conclusions about the situation. That's what you did when you just @'ed me instead of reblogging my response. A true academic wouldn't hide a peer review. You'd know that if you were one.

I swing in many academic spaces and yet that doesn't make me any kind of expert and I don't claim to be one because I'm not. But since you want to be one so badly, reblog this with a response and show us all how smart you are. I'm dying to know what your academic take on this is.

[saturnianoracle]

How to learn real astrology: what it is and is not

As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.

It is VITAL that if you want to understand astrology properly, you come in with an open mind and forget everything you think you know. Especially, remove yoruself from the belief that astrology is some occultic mystical spiritual practice, and/or that it is solely some psychological tool.

I used to be quite the hater of astrology. None of it 'resonated', and it seemed like wishy washy hippie shit. In lockdown, astrology stuff kept coming onto my feed, and some of it made sense, but most still did not. I then initially wanted to debunk astrology. But when I properly stated looking into it, the deeper I went the more accurate it started to become. Equally, parts still remained highly inaccurate. But this was due to a mismatch of how 'influencers' out there synthesised and understood the traditional foundations of astrology and modern information. Thus, I committed myself to truly understanding astrology, and my life has significantly improved for it and I've only just started.

As an introductory post to what astrology really is, I have formatted it into the following sections: i. the problem with pop culture astrology, ii, the history of astrology, iii. how astrology works, and iv. where meaning in astrology comes from.

The problem with pop culture astrology

This is the type of astrology we see in newspaper horoscopes, online articles, tiktok viral posts, instagram horoscopes, etc.

This is borne out of the allure astrology holds for desperate individuals seeking an easy and quick answer to their life problems, and using it as a form of confirmation bias for hating their ex (for example). But this misuse of astrology will undoubtedly hit for most people, due to the barnum effect, but is ultimately inaccurate and those who think it true have now misleadingly correlated the pop culture reasons for why X happened to what astrology is.

The new moon in your 7th house is not a sign that your crush will leave his partner for you. Being a gemini sun does not mean you are a two faced, loyal-less individual. Having your sun sign the same as their venus sign does not mean you two are compatible. And so on and so forth.

Here are some key things to understand about astrology:

✎ Stop using co-star, and those websites which give you your astrology information like this:

-> This does not tell you anything remotely significant aside from standard archetypal and superifical meanings of having a sun in Sagittarius or whatever (which you might not even 'relate' to, because of a multitude of other factors this does not show). Your chart instead, should, at the very least look like this:

-> Even better, make a chart and add in decans, asteroids, and considers more aspects. Viewing your birth chart like this is essential for gaining a better understanding. Aspects are what brings everything in your chart together to give it more significant and individualised meaning, the houses and the angles are also explicitly identifiable this way. Also, always make sure your chart is in whole sign houses, I will make a post on this later on why, but you will have to go to settings for this as popculture astrology has made placidus the default (as well as other inaccurate takes).

✎ Sun sign is astrology is fake, no matter how much you think it resonates with you it is the wrong footing to base your understanding of astrology off of. Astrology is extremely complex, one thing might resonate for one person and not for another, because of house placements, condition of the planet, aspects to the planet, etc. Consequently, all basic and simplified delineations of a chart are unhelpful and will put you on the wrong footing for future proper readings you might wish to do. This is how astrology can be so inaccurate.

��� Astrology is not about resonating. Although, this is a part of how we can test astrology, it is linked far too much with resonating with personality. Your birth chart is not a map of who you are specifically, we evolve all the time (as the universe, so the soul), it is a map of your entire life. It is a map of the sky and its energies the minute you were born. Some things you think you do not resonate with is because those energies have not yet played out in your life.

✎ Astrology is not a psychological tool, although it can give us insight into psychology when used and understood properly. Again, it is the blueprint of our life.

✎ Astrology is not spiritual. It is not a belief system, either. Although, one can use astrology to advance their spiritual practices.

✎ Free will exists. I will likely go into this in another post but the energies of our bith chart, solar return chart, profection year, progressed charts, transits etc, are merely indications of how things are likely to unfold. The energies are malleable within their themes' ambit, and it is up to us to decide how we choose to interpret what is/will happen and what to do with that information. A transit might indicate difficulty in a law suit, ok, how can I mitigate that then? What other charts, energies, and transits can I use? If I did not know of this then I would not know how to alter my behaviour to yield a better results, even if it might not mean a completely opposite result.

✎ Your natal chart will not show you everything. There are relocated charts, progressed charts, solar return charts, profection years, etc. All this goes into a holistic assessment. Your natal chart, however, will always remain the anchor of it all.

A brief history

Astrology is not some woo-woo, spiritual, new age, belief system. Astrology's history and use goes back to the Babylonians. It used to be intertwined with astronomy; Galielo and Kepler, for example, were simultaneously astrologers and practised it widely (even as court astrologers). People in positions of power have always consulted astrologers to time events, in the modern era many Royal families, celebrities, and politicans still consult astrologers. Carl Jung, JP Morgan, Nancy Reagan, and Roosevelt are examples of this. Of course, it might be argued that just because famous people have used/use astrology does not give it any more credit to which I say: ok please read my post below pls and ty xo.

Astrology's history has been relatively tumultuous, however. I have condensed this timeline from an article I found below:

- Astrology was a widely accepted practice but, in Europe, after the fall of the Roman empire and much of Europe, it fell into decline along with other disicplines. - The middle ages saw a renaissance of intellectualism with a particular focus on science and thus the astronomy part of it. This was largely due to the Church who viewed astrology as divination and going against free will. - However, in other parts of the world astrology was still a crucial element of daily life, and those in power would use astrologers to time events. - Astrology did re-enter the curriculum, though, in the 14th century, with a focus on being used for medical astrology in part due to the recently available Hippocratic Corpus. These texts were crucial to advancing our understanding of medicine, but Hippocrates emphasised that "a physician without knowledge of astrology has no right to call himself a physician". Astrologer still had a healthy dose of criticism back then, though. - Astrology was a major field of study in universities in Europe, well ingrained in daily life. - It died out in the 17th century, mostly due to the increasing emphasis on science being increasingly and misleadingly viewed as separate from astrology, the church, and astrologers falling into disrepute due to political involvement. - Its resurgence in the 19th century saw an oversimplified, and largely 'spiritualised' version of astrologer. This is because this period also saw an increased interest in the occult and mystic. - Since becoming conflated, astrology has become even further diluted, but this is not to say that every new discovery has been wrong; modern interpretation is crucial to informing the bigger picture of astrology and how we can utilise it. But it is vital to be critical and separate it from pop culture nonsense, aimed at lost and desperate people looking for quick answers and confirmation bias, and have some media literacy.

So, how does astrology work?

: ̗̀➛ Astrology has NOTHING to do with the physical constellations. Astrology is based on the signs on the ecliptic (the path of the sun amongst the constellations, which is the plane of the earth's orbit).

: ̗̀➛ The equator has 15 constellations, and the ecliptic has 13. So why do we have 12 zodiac signs? This is because babylonians divided the ecliptic into 12 equal segments of 30 degrees each thousands of years ago. The ecliptic was divided into SIGNS. 12 constellations were just used to identify where in the sky each sign would be, at the time for ease of astronomical mapping/calculation - it is merely symbolic. This is why Opphiuchus is not the 13th Zodiac SIGN, although it is a constellation (and has always been known).

: ̗̀➛ Another reason why they are not based off the physical constellations is because the actual size of the constellations vary massively in size. Below is a representation of this:

: ̗̀➛ As you can see, Virgo, for instance is huge, and on a literal view overlaps into the next segment because the constellations do not all equally fit a 30 degree division. Yet, we do not give scorpio like 5 days for its season, because the physical constellation does not dictate anything meaningful.

This gives us the tropical zodiac, which is to do with the earth's seasons:

: ̗̀➛ The solstices are therefore reference points for Capricorn and Cancer (tropic of capricorn and tropic of cancer), not the constellations themselves. Accordingly, the spring equinox is marked by Aries (with the sun entering the segment of Aries at 0 degrees until 29), and the autumn equinox by Libra.

: ̗̀➛ The precession of the equinoxes, are therefore irrelevant to astrology (and this is why vedic/sidereal is, in my opinion inaccurate). The slow change of the direction of the earth's axial tilt, over around 26000 years, cause a precession of the equinoxes. This means, the segment of the sky that used to be identified by the Aries constellation from the earth's position at the time, is now looking at Pisces. But as we know, astrology has nothing to do with the physical location of the constellations. Vedic astrologers use sidereal positioning, aka taking into account the precession of the equinoxes, yet they still divide the ecliptic in the same way. This causes problems, leading to many branches in vedic because few agree on where aries actually even starts. But, I will write an extension of this segment in a future post on tropical vs vedic/sidereal astrology.

Where does astrological meaning come from?

As explained above, constellations do not give us meaning, the planets in the signs do (of which the signs' names just derive from where the constellations were at the time, i.e. are merely symbolic).

Astrology operates in a heliocentric context, in that its setting is derived from the solstices (as the sun is what gives us life) and the ecliptic etc, but is geocentric in function in that the meaning comes from how the celestial bodies going through the signs affect us on earth; it is all about OUR relation to the planets, not constellations.

Returning to the quote above (as above so below...), what happens up up there reflects its energies down on us below. For thousands of millenia, astrologers have developed an accurate pattern recognition framework which aligns with the maths and astronomy. This was done using the ephemeris, which tracked the trajectory of celestial bodies against the context of worldly (mundane), or natal events. Eventually, this knowledge could be used for predictions, (to understand transits, or for electional and horary astrology), by utilising the knowledge of how the trajectories of the planets and their interactions with eachother in what sign and house affected what.

Why does it affect us? Well, all the things that happen above us radiate energies. But when I talk about energies, I do not mean it in some spiritual sense, it is quite literal. Everything has frequencies. As mentioned above, astrologers, since the Bablyonian times, have studied these patterns and created an objective framework to align with it. Physical energies or not there is direct causation. The moon for instance, affects the tides on the planet because of its gravitational pull. We are 70% water, there is little reason to deny that the moon cannot affect us either (it does). Perhaps you might understand your broken leg as because of being hit by a car. But astrology can assess the chart of the event, and transits to your own chart to provide further explanation of why you got hit by a car in the first place, and why it caused a broken leg etc. Subsequently, the energies of what happens above relate to the themes found in planets, signs, houses, aspects, asteroids etc - but these energies are not set in stone as explained above.

Ultimately, it is disappointingly small-minded to think that there is nothing 'greater' than the physical reality we tether ourselves to. We are in fact part of something bigger; and again I do not mean this in some culty spiritual hippy sense. It is literally a fact, the world and cosmos at large is so vast, mysterious, and beautiful, how could anyone deny the interconnected web we are all collectively a part of. We might never fully understand the mechanisms of the universe, but what we can do is use the information we do have to make use of it and help inform us on how to live better lives. The fact there is something 'greater' inherent in our lives, connecting everything, which is objectively difficult to truly grasp, is not a reason to reject it. A lot of people who are averse to astrology (which used to be me) are those who pride themselves on rationality and objectivity, yet are restricting themselves to a very particular interpretation of what rationality and objectivity means.

With all this said, I hope it has helped someone understand and appreciate astrology better. There is such a fascinating rich and deep history to it, spanning various cultures and eras, making it difficult to at least not enjoy learning about even if one still chooses to not practise it. I would like to reiterate, however, that to truly embrace astrology and its millenia of knowledge, evidence, and practice behind it, one must divorce its concept from pop culture astrology.

[canon-in-too-deep]

Free Pride and Prejudice Typeset (Illustrated)

*Collapses.* It is done. I present to you, Pride and Prejudice! By Jane Austen, and Illustrated by Hugh Thomson! Use it for reading, bookbinding, or whathaveyou, the unimposed pdf is sized for half letter (letter folio). And oh god this one was tedious uh, fun to do! All the illustrations are included in this typeset, PLUS all the dropcaps! See below the break for more interior shots, and details about making it. Edit: I FORGOT THE LINK! Here it is: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S2wl_PuxCupofnDpqGuk7VjMHYFMWC6g?usp=sharing Also, as always, please leave credit if you use this typeset! It is free for personal use, just consider leaving a like/reblog if you can, and follow this blog for more free typesets!

So I kept the title page simple for this typeset, since there's so many beautiful illustrations going on by Hugh Thomson. Just look at this! There's even an illustration for List of Illustrations!

...the list was it's own pain, and a lot of the illustrations had to be manually added in 😅 Twas a fun morning of cross referencing pictures and page numbers. I really loved the drop caps in this book, so I had to make sure to include them all! Each one was unique, and there's a ton of fun detail in these drawings, but the pic quality in the scans was a little rough. Here's hoping they translate okay in the pdf.

I just really love how this one turned out overall. I tried to have most of the illustrations at the largest size I could fit within my margins so that they could be properly admired. The original peacock version is so gorgeous, and of course Austen's writing is always an absolute joy to read. Anyway, here's hoping this typeset was helpful for folks!

Any errors, feel free to let me know! There was a lot of lines and files that needed to be manually placed and formatted, so some stuff might have gotten bumped around as I adjusted. If you've made it this far, thanks for stopping by!

[blamseastore]

All in one download + discord link

Hey guys!

So, there are lot of different places you can download EA’s store content. The purpose of how I do it was to give you the option to pick and choose the items you want. Everything is individualized, but since I’ve finished the majority of the work, there’s been a lot of asks for an easy way to download everything in one go. I’ve slowly been uploading bulk versions of each set, but that’s not exactly what you’re all asking for right?

This is the best compromise I found. My store content folder looks like this:

(FORGOTTEN is what I call the limited sets that you can’t find on the store anymore. ie: Dr Pepper sets)

I have merged every piece of store content I’ve uploaded in these 6 huge files (the biggest is 2GB) with the separated folder for content that also needs to standalone to work properly. 

THIS works for me. BUT

It doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. I’ve decided to share these, but I cannot guarantee this format will work for you and I will not be uploading a different set up. I will not be helping you troubleshoot problems associated to this - you download and use at your own risk.

Here is the google drive folder containing the files: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SuQohFbSvOPXEFVzGRbmr7UwlEVlgIYj?usp=sharing

You’ll find the 6 files and folder to put in your Mods/Packages.

ADDITIONALLY, you’ll find a folder containing all the store content lots that you have to place in your Library folder.

FINALLY, you’ll find a folder containing all my .world files with a ReadMe.txt explaining where they go depending on where you got the game.

Everything has been compressed using https://www.7-zip.org/ because I have limited google drive storage.

ENJOY

I have been uploading everything on discord, if you have it, come say hi! It’s easier to help you troubleshoot any issues you have and others might have experienced the same thing. There are no broken links on discord either because unlike tumblr and blogger, it doesn’t have it out for me.

https://discord.gg/fTFw9xVj2d

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I read your post about not letting kudos and hits upset us. I try to think this way but I'm curious about something else. I've written many fanfics for my fandom and they're all "flop". I don't mind that honestly. But then some writers have written only one fic about the ship I do and and it gets hundreds of kudos. How do some writers achieve that when I'm doing the same and it doesn't get the same response. What else can I do?

I’m afraid I can’t give you a definite answer about what you should do or why this person’s work is more popular, but what I can give you are some advice and, from my experience, some reasons that might explain why other’s works receive more hits and kudos.

start with why other writers’ works are more popular when it’s the same characters, same ship, same fandom. there are various factors at play that might be it;

maybe the person already has large audience base prior to their posting about the fandom you’re in, I know a few authors who already have these sorts of loyal readers that would read any work the authors posted even if they (the readers) were not in that fandom.

maybe someone, anyone, decided share the link to this person’s work on Tumblr or Twitter (X) or any social media platform, and it kind of became viral, thus it drew in lots and lots of readers. it could take just one person, didn’t necessarily have to be the author themself, to share the link among the fandom as a recommendation, or maybe a screenshot of one sentence from the fic that they liked, what happened next is that the replies were filled with people asking for the link.

tags and summary are important factors when people are looking for a fic to read. so maybe this person’s work is tagged with the content people were looking for? maybe their summary grabbed people’s attention or curiosity?

these are just what I can think of over the top of my head.

as for what you can do to gain more readers, I’ve never seen your work so the advice I can give will be a general one; I believe the trick lies in summary, tags as well as the format of one’s work.

when it comes to AO3 (I assume it’s your platform?), tags and summary are the main things people use to determine whether or not they want to click on the fic.

tag your content properly, what characters or pairings it’s about, as well as what the readers will find upon reading your work (you don’t have to spoil it, only the general tags that will give your readers an idea of what they’re in for).

summaries are just as important. there are no “rules” obviously, and I’m not telling you or any writers what to do. though a little advice that I personally take is that you use this little summary section AO3 gives you to do anything to make sure it stands out and that people will see it and want to click on it. that means leave “author’s note” out of the summary section. folks, AO3 summary is the first glimpse into the fic itself that people will see prior to clicking on it, most of the time, people look at the summary to see the author’s writing style and if what’s written, plotwise, grabs their interest. personally, when I see an author use “summary” as a place to write “author’s note”, chances are, I will scroll past that fic as I am interested in what the fic is about, not what the author has to say about their opinion on said fic or their personal life or anything (there’s an author’s note section for that) and if I can’t get a glimpse of what the plot is about or what the author’s writing style is from the summary section, then I won’t click on it, and will look for other fic that can get me interested instead.

moving on to fic format, again, I am not telling anyone what to do here. this is only a suggestion, an advice I’ve learned and want to share: when you write your fic, make sure to use line and paragraph spacing. if your 10k word long fic is one long block of text with no paragraph break, chances are, people will back away from it entirely. also, if it’s two different characters talking with dialogues, don’t put all of their dialogues in one paragraph. for instance, a paragraph for character A’s dialogue, then another separate paragraph for character B’s dialogue and so on.

and I think that’s it for my advice? however, I’ll say this again that the secret to truly enjoying your role as a fanfic writer is that you only focus on yourself. write whatever you want for yourself. it doesn’t matter if this person’s work is more popular, because fanfics and fandoms aren’t a competition. you are your main audience. just have fun creating the stories you want to create for you.