#and we here us on tumblr we're some of those numbers

[absolutebl]

Hi ABL!! This is more of a data question then anything but it might not actually be answerable.

How does the world of BL define a successful show? Is it money made on ads revenue? Streams? Trending hashtags??

Granted in North American media I also couldn’t answer this question, but I could gage based on…article reviews or critical acclaim. Or something.

I see soooooo many people saying something flopped or was massively successful, but truly. How on earth are we making those benchmarks?

I figure you might have at least a tiny sliver of insight into how this works! Or at least a key word I can take to google LOL. Thanks as always!!!!!

Hum.

Well for GMMTV et al, it's YT views. So that's easy. We can see those eyeballs outright.

The streaming platforms obfuscate data (that is one of the reasons SAG is still on strike) but we can see things like where it's ranked on their internal leader boards (what's "popular on Viki" for example). How many reviews something has. How many collections and lists it's on. How many people on MDL have it listed as "currently watching"

More key is how much chatter a show is getting. How many comments. But also...

Literally when you do a Google search for that IP:

How are the hit returns?

How many top spots does it hold above the fold on Google main (using private or incognito mode).

Are people blogging about it? Think pieces?

Are there reaction vids?

FMVs?

Reddit chatter?

BTS's?

Interviews with actors?

The amount of fan content generated around an IP tells you a lot about the number of viewers - since it is all a numbers game. Commenters (those who visibly/trackably react to content) are more common than (content) creators. Ghosts (passive consumers) are more common than commenters.

There are those in EntDA working on formulas for predictive fan base numbers sourced in the ratios of these.

Lemme try to explain...

In other words, the fans who create content for IPs (fanfic, art, meta analysis, FMVs, etc...) are the rarest. Those who interact with the content, leave star reviews, comment on the above fan-made content, engage in discourse, leave YT comments, are the second rarest. Those who tend to do nothing more than ... well, ghost (maybe have a subscription, maybe save the vid to a playlist or on MDL, maybe read this on Tumblr but don't react to it). They are the largest contingent but hardest to track.

If we could get a good handle on the first 2, there's usually a predictable ratio that can be drawn for the fan base as a whole, the largest number 3 - ghosts.

For example:

For every 1 creator there are 100 commenters and 1000 ghosts. Something like that. However the nature of this ratio is dependent on venue and vocality of the fan base (often a generational thing). So like, most Kpop stans are vocal, but 4th gen stans tend to be more noisy online, even though 3rd gen groups tend to have bigger overall fan bases. (Superstars, like super hits, are non-viable non-predictive outliers. There can never be another KP, or 2g, and we can't use their numbers to predict anything. Just like Taylor Swift or BTS can't be used to predict/estimate the success of a new pop venture).

back to the BL fandom

Here on Tumblr you can tell what's popular by which ones are getting the most gifsets.

That's how we know Only Friends is out performing Dangerous Romance. (I mean I could check the numbers on YT but I don't really have to.)

Also, I bet you good money Kiseki is garnering more eyeballs than You Are Mine. Again, I can say that with confidence just based on the content that's being created for that IP in this one venue.

On a practical level, in the ET industry, if there is chatter about a BL outside of BL circles (as happened with KP) you know it's gotten HUGE (by BL standards).

The moral of this story, incidentally, is if you like a thing, doesn't matter how shy you are, if you want it to continue, get a second season, whatever, you gotta NOT JUST WATCH IT BUT TALK about it. Online, where careers are made and broken. Squeaky wheel and all that.

Entertainment is about attention. More money is always thrown at the thing getting the most attention.

Just like politics.

Okay, I done now.

[taegularities]

...

[cuephrase]

Most Disliked Robin Results!!

at long last, (some of) the data you've all been waiting for.

for those of you who are new, i put out a questionnaire to gather data in the interest of discovering if my personal hypothesis that knowing someone's #1 Robin tells you nothing really, but knowing their top two, now that gives you insight. i have since closed that questionnaire, and we are in the data crunching stage. in this anon ask, anon was curious which Robin was getting the most dislike votes. i shared the current numbers w/o revealing who was getting which votes, and invited y'all to vote for which Robin you thought was getting the most dislike votes.

these were the results of the prediction poll:

before i share the final results, with 745 responses, a disclaimer:

the data pool is extremely small in the grand scheme of things!! this data cannot be used to make definitive claims about fandom at large. this is simply what we observed from the small group of fans, predominantly from tumblr, who filled out my questionnaire. cool? cool.

for our purposes, a "Stan" is someone who marked X Robin as their #1 fave Robin, and a "Fan" is someone who marked X Robin in their top two. additionally, whenever you see a top two Duo, for example, Dick & Damian, the character mentioned first is that person's #1. so Dick & Damian duos are distinct from Damian & Dick duos!!

for the non-math nerds, the 95% CI*, or 95% Confidence Interval is there to show that if we were to poll a random 745 responders again, from the same communities, we're about 95% sure the true value is somewhere in here range. *this is a bit of a simplification, but uh, i am not a math teacher + google is free. (i thought about finding a snappy youtube vid but as soon as they started talking math i zoned out whoops.)

finally a big, big thank you to @chinajousama and @tevyaa for their data-crunching + formatting!! none of this would have happened nearly as quickly (or successfully) without them!! 🫶

overall dislike

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

the most important takeaway here, imo, is that ~74% do not dislike any Robin. (shoutout to the Jason & Steph Duo who disliked Dick, Tim, and Damian tho, iconic.)

also, it is not at all what tumblr predicted!! tumblr predicted that dick would be least disliked (by virtue of him getting the least votes) and that's...about all that was correct from the prediction poll.

now how does this breakdown depending on Stans/Fans/Duos?

Stans' dislike (Y is responders #1 Robin)

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

"hey!!" you say, "the math is not mathing- if i add up the bottom row i get 774/104%, not 745/100%." correct!! this is because responders were able to dislike more than one Robin.

if we gave the percentages for each row of the very first chart, (the one that lays out how people voted in all the permutations), those percents would add up to 100%. but since we're only breaking it down between the Robins, there's overlap. 14.8% of everyone disliked Tim, that number is true. however, that 14.8% of Tim Dislikers includes people who also disliked other Robins- it's not the percentage of people who exclusively dislike Tim.

tl;dr: it doesn't add up, but the math is right, trust.

"okay, fine, but why don't you have a 95% CI for everyone?" if the sample group was too small to make a prediction (received less than 5 responses), we decided not to give one because there's simply not enough data to give one worth having. tl;dr, if there's a 0.00%* in the 95% CI chart, don't read into those stats too hard!!

Fans' dislike (Y is in responder's top duo)

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

already you can see some differences compared to the Stans' Dislikes- most percentages go up a bit, but a few go down.

now let's see what happens when we look at the breakdown over Duo's Dislike

Duo's dislike

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

note the differences!! for instance, all Jason-first Duos are more likely to dislike Tim than the percentage given for Jason Stans, except for Jason & Tim duos, which duh, but also, Jason & Tim is the second most common Jason-first Duo, making up 25.3% of Jason-first Duos.

also!! Tim fans are the least likely to dislike overall, with 83.2% not disliking any Robin, however, Tim stans, specifically Tim & Dick Duos are the most likely to dislike Damian. (*cough* lingering Red Robin grudge, perhaps? *cough* Tim Stans: i can let a lot of shit go, but that. that i cannot. [i'm a Tim Stan, i'm allowed to tease them, okay?])

another crucial thing to point out here is that the percentages represent how likely Y Duo is to dislike X Robin. this distinction is significant because while it is correct to say that, (based off this data pool), Steph & Damian Duos are the most likely to dislike Tim, it is incorrect to say that most Tim dislikers are Steph & Damian Duos.

"huh??"

something, something squares and rectangles If you grab a random Steph & Damian Duo responder, they are the most likely out of all the Duo responders to dislike Tim. However, if you were to grab a random Tim Disliker responder, the odds of that responder being a Steph & Damian Duo are pretty low.

by number, Dick & Damian Duos make up the biggest portion of Tim Dislikers (26 out of 110 votes). however, they also make up the biggest portion of responders overall with 92 votes, whereas Steph & Damian only got 22.

(side note, if you're like, whoa but Dick & Jason won the tumblr poll- overall, there were more responders that had Dick and Jason in their top 2, however they were split 82/64 and Dick and Damian was split 92/29. those splits are also super interesting to see, bc some are pretty even and others aren't.)

okay, so what's the takeaway here? repeat after me: everybody 👏hates 👏 Tim!! 👏 loud incorrect buzzer yeah, no so the main takeaway here is that so far, it's looking like there is visible variation depending on a Stan/Fan's Duo compared to Stan/Fan opinion. also, that most Robin fans don't dislike a Robin. you can relax, odds are blorbo is not under attack. unless you're a Tim stan. jk jk, i'm sorry, him having 14.8% dislikability is just hysterical to me, like do you see the social distancing, Jason is the second most disliked and Tim has more than double his numbers LMAO.

especially bc that 14.8% is just like, out of all responders, how likely Tim is to be disliked, right, follow me here, hehe. 110 of 223 dislike votes cast were for Tim, right, so of the dislike votes cast there is a ~49.3% chance that a dislike vote is a dislike Tim vote.

but!! if we condense that 223 (dislike votes cast/remember that 1 responder could dislike multiple) to 194 (the actual number of responders who disliked), then it's 110 out of 194, so if a Robin fan dislikes anyone, there is a ~56.7% that they dislike Tim.

try not to laugh at that, i dare you.

now, as a Tim stan, i think this makes sense because out of all the Robins, Tim has the most on panel interaction with every other Robin compared to the others, so like, if any Robin is going to show up and annoy you, odds are it's Timbo. factor in fanfic trends and uh...look, do i love Tim? yes. (i love them all, but that's beside the point.) do i think he's annoying af. also yes. it's part of the appeal, i mean hot people get it, i mean this data is not shocking to me but it is, clearly, deeply amusing. that being said, you might be under attack, because responders were wayyyy more likely to find a Robin Stan annoying than they were to dislike a Robin hehehe. sorry, sorry, i swear i'm not trying to shart shit. i mean, start shit. that was an honest typo but i'm so tired rn and it's funny so i'm leaving it, forgive me. what are your thoughts? any of this surprising to you, or does it track with your predictions? tysm for participating if you responded to the questionnaire!! and if you didn't, no worries, enjoy the Findings. please remember that the goal of this questionnaire/sharing the Findings is not to grade other fans on whether they're "good"/"bad"- discuss to your heart's content but let's try and keep the wank/bad faith takes to a minimum, yeah? thank youuuuu

also enjoy this at a glance graph!! the bars are error bars, they represent that 95% CI :)

anyways!! i just threw a ton of data at you, if there's anything you would like to see me elaborate on/any questions you have, please feel free to send me an ask and we'll do our best to deliver!! there's truly so much to unpack here.

[miku-earth]

miku.earth update: September 15

Hi all! This is a lil progress update for those interested. In a rush? Here's the cliff notes!

The map site at miku.earth is back: sorry for the delay in fixing it! Check it out: it has six hundred Mikus!

Including the hyuge ol' queue, we've collected over 3,100 mikus!

Representation is important! I've been using some fancy stats to avoid bias. To that end, please help make sure we have a Miku in every African country!

oh hey! you clicked 'keep reading!' well hi! here is your Miku Direct. . The map site, miku.earth, is back!

I ran into a kinda complex issue and it was a whole Thing. I was working on the site the whole time though! Sorry for the delay, and I hope you enjoy now it's back up and running.

This site has six hundred Mikus on the map, and more are added each week. It was recently rebuilt from scratch (fun fact! I am not a web developer) so I hope it is far zippier and less glitchy as before. A mobile-friendly version is coming soon too!

Also: check out the new search feature! In addition to the title, artist name and region(s), it can also search for the categories indigenous and historic!

cw: this video involves moving around a 2D map with some speed. on the site itself site, this only happens when you hit the Enter key.

We've reached more than 3,100 mikus!

Even at its Miku-per-hour speed, the queue will continue until 2025 at least! This is with thanks to an incredible number of contributions, including donations of literal thousands of links.

Thank you so much to @awnowimsad, @worldmikuposter @the-hatsune-miku-trend, @communist-hatsunemiku, @council-of-beetroot, L-A and a whole host of DMers and emailers for helping get this far.

Oh and by the way: over two thirds of the collection are tumblr posts! Given that this was originally a twitter trend… if you know any Twitter users who are into this trend, please reach out. Some napkin math tells me there are at least 10,000 works of art total out there, which is, by the way, surreal. Let's make sure not a single one is lost.

If you're super curious, the collection is public! I have some tools to auto-annotate (I do not want RSI), but be aware the backlog isn't vetted.

Representation is important!

Fun as this trend is, this project was always intended as a serious study into how people represent their own culture through artwork. I'm no anthropologist, but I feel it is important to make sure this collection is respectful and bias-free. If we're to represent the world, we have to avoid underrepresentation!

To that end I've used some fancy statistics to calculate a "representation value" for each country. Here's a table if you're into the stats of it! This info is handy to help me with the queue – especially with tweets as they're a lil more effort than a carefully-tagged reblog. Of course, Indigenous, hyperspecific and low-note Mikus get priority.

And, well, of course you can see on the site there are purple regions for countries still missing a Miku. In particular, please help me make sure every country in Africa is represented.

Thank you for reading!

Phew! That was a lot. If you're still curious, please check the behind-the-scenes and source code. I work in the open! Even if my code is probably messy.

And if you're a programmer, issues and pull requests are welcome! This is actually a static site, so it's purdy easy to develop.

[antifainternational]

10 Years Of Antifa International!!!!!!!!!!

This month, the Antifa International collective celebrates our 10th anniversary! Back in 2014, we saw a need for a crew dedicated to reporting on different anti-fascist actions around the world, who could also come up with ways to support anti-fascists around the globe and promote the tenets of anti-fascism.

We started with two people and a Tumblr blog and have since grown to a collective of ten members in eight different countries, posting on nine social media platforms, where we've put up over 20,000 posts over the last ten years for our 110,000+ followers to have a look at.  

Since 2014, we've also initiated a number of projects we're quite proud of! 

The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund: it was not too long after we started our collective that we saw an increasing number of anti-fascists around the world calling out for support after encountering an emergency situation resulting from their work. Whether it was court costs, legal defence fees, emergency relocations, or medical expenses - anti-fascists were facing dire consequences for standing up to hate and then would have to do whatever they could to get help dealing with those consequences. Our solution was to start a standing fund that would be devoted to providing emergency aid to anti-fascists facing problems related to their anti-fascist work. We would do whatever we could to fundraise for it on an ongoing basis, and then use the funds to help antifa in trouble. All decisions about how the Defence Fund runs and is used would be made by the people who've contributed a minimum of $20USD to it, via consensus wherever possible and majority vote where consensus was not forthcoming.   Nine years later, the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund has provided nearly $250,000USD to more than 750 anti-fascists in 28 different countries. More than 1500 anti-fascists from around the world have been invited to participate in the Defence Fund by helping to make the decisions about how it is run and what it is used for. To our knowledge, the Defence Fund remains the only project of its kind, devoted to providing emergency support to anti-fascists around the world, but it has inspired similar defence funds.   THIS IS A PROJECT YOU COULD BE INVOLVED IN!  A minimum donation of $20USD will get you invited to participate!   

International Violent Hate Crimes Research Project: from 2017-2022 we tracked media accounts of violent acts motivated by hate or committed by far-right extremists around the world. Over the course of those six years, we documented over 3000 such attacks, in which more than 1800 people were killed and a further 5254 were injured. The Project allowed us to examine trends in the types of attacks being committed; who was being targeted; and where the attacks were taking place, among other things that we wrote about in our annual reports.  Unfortunately, a lack of resources compelled us to discontinue the project in 2023.   

25 July: The International Day of Solidarity with Anti-Fascist Prisoners: July 25th is a day when all anti-fascists are called upon to demonstrate their solidarity with those of us who are locked up behind bars. Taking the baton from NYC Antifa, who started this project, we've set up a website with information and resources about the day, including translations into several different languages and a list of current anti-fascist prisoners. We also maintain a donation page and sell this t-shirt designed by a former anti-fascist prisoner; every July 25th, we pool what was raised and send it directly to current antia prisoners/their families/their support teams.  WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO DO SOMETHING TO MARK JULY 25TH! You'll find some ideas and resources here. If you put anything about the Day on social media, please use the hashtag #j25antifa so others kind find your posts!  

Training for Anti-Fascists: Beginning in 2020, we organized a series of online training and skillshare workshops for anti-fascists on a number of topics, including digital security practices, de-escalation tactics, open source intelligence gathering, intelligence sharing, first aid, self-defence, and far-right radicalization warning signs & intervention strategies. Each session was attended by anti-fascists from around the world, who were able to take what they learned and put it to use in their own communities.  

Anti-Fascist Flags, Shirts, & Stickers: Although these were originally intended as fundraising items for the Defence Fund, the anti-fascist flags, shirts, stickers, and other items we produced soon took on a life of their own. To date, we've distributed hundreds of anti-fascist shirts & flags and nearly 90,000 anti-fascist stickers around the world.  Our Antifa International flags have been spotted in Afrin, Boston, Brooklyn, Kiev, London, the Hauge, the Scottish Highlands, Kobane, L.A., Melbourne, Oakland, Philly, Standing Rock, and Toronto, among other places.  

deathtofascism.com: is the site we've set up as a repository of free, downloadable anti-fascist flyers, reports, and 'zines that anyone can read, print out and give away. If you're tabling an event or show, there is probably a few things there that you'll want to hand out!   

Antifa Shirt of the Month: from 2021 to 2024, we produced a new anti-fascist t-shirt each month as a fundraiser for a different antifa crew somewhere in the world, raising nearly $20,000USD for those crews. You'll find most of those shirts still available at our online store.

We're not telling you all of this to brag (well, OK, we might be bragging a little bit!); rather, we're hoping some of what we've done over the past ten years, as volunteers, without any funding or resources to speak of, will inspire you & your friends to think about what you can do where you are! 

[writingwithcolor]

Hey folks!

It has been a while! Well, we wanted to announce some big things coming your way!

WWC Askbox: Soft Re-Opening

Wednesday, Nov 1, 2023 to Thursday, Nov 30, 2023

In light of the recent attention WWC has received by the writeblr community, and the reception to our Guide to Academic Research—the mods have decided that we will temporarily reopen to your questions and test some important changes to the site! As you may have noticed, we've taken a much-needed break to catch up on our personal lives and restore our inspiration to answer the hundreds of Q&A that we receive. 

Once the submission window is up on Nov 30, we will evaluate how our new system is going, tinker some more, and reopen once again once the construction dust clears.

New Rules and FAQ! 

We are pleased to announce our new and improved Masterpost, which we hope will be a more centralized, more informative resource for those new and returning to WWC. 

Brand-new FAQs, with new answers and content for further reading

Code of Conduct and other etiquette rules

The Ask Tutorial—a guide to writing a good ask that we’ll answer!

Moving forward, all followers are required to go through the masterpost to submit a question so they are aware of the new rules, terms & conditions. 

Read the masterpost here and ask your question!

New Process

We're piloting out our own personal askbox via Google Forms. This will help us streamline the process and keep track of everyone’s questions.

We are also introducing the Deletion Log, a public, anonymous ledger that lets you know if your question (identified by a number code) has been deleted due to a rule violation, and what you can do to resubmit. Check out the Deletion Log here. 

Want to submit an ask? 

The below are topics of asks that we will get to right away, based on the mods who are currently active. 

Black 

Chinese

Colonialism

Iranian/Persian 

Japanese (INCLUDING: Anime fanfic questions! Only Mod Rina will be answering anime questions, and only if she feels that the ask would make for an educational post.)

Jewish

Mixed race

South Asian: Hindu, Indian, Punjabi, Sikh (please remember that when asking about South Asia you must indicate region & time period) 

Taiwanese 

Writing/Publishing industry 

Coming Soon: Writingwithcolor.org

We've made tremendous progress on writingwithcolor.org and are almost ready to show off the more permanent residence of WritingWithColor! However, it'll take a lot of time to fully transfer posts and links. To get the new look and all its benefits to you faster, we plan for a soft launch of the content. This will include back and forth linking between WritingWithColor.org and our home on Tumblr. We'll try to keep things seamless and your viewing experience on Tumblr shouldn't be too interrupted. Launch date is coming soon!

New Mod Applications

We still have some applications from our last call of mods and folks to respond to. So if you haven’t heard back, sorry for the delay, but no worries—we will get back to you as we start shaking the dust off our bones and getting back into Q&A. Once we are ready to invite more mods again, we'll continue our outreach.

A Special Thanks To You All

We want to thank you for your continued support, whether it’s been viewership, spreading the word about us, or sending us a tip that supports our domain and future projects for you all. The whole team really appreciates it. We will keep bringing you our best advice and guides on all things good writing with inclusivity. 

Be well and keep writing!

~WWC

[slayingfiction]

How I push through writing when I don't feel like writing.

Here are some of the techniques that I use to help me write more often or more consistantly when my laziness/depression/anxiety starts to take over.

I watch TV. I don't do it with the purpose of zoning out though. I watch something popular and well-liked such as the LOR or Harry Potter to get new ideas on how I can develop my story and apply their in-depth world-building ideas to help develop mine. Without plagarizing of course!!!!

Zoning out and daydreaming. As I have mentionned before, daydreaming is a huge part of my story outlining and world-building process. I'll stand in the shower, or take a walk and think about how my charcaters would act/react/behave in situations, mundane or not. Doing this gives me a better sense of my characters, and sometimes gives me ideas for scenes I use later on.

Work on writing related projects. These work well at keeping me distracted while still being productive on my writing goals. Example, I have one story I am working now, I made a new language (alphabet and numbers included) to include as a cool and fun component for the book. So, at times when I don't wan't to write, I continue creating the dictionary (very fun, 8/10 would recommend). Also, for the same book, my characters don't work off the Georigian calendar and 24 hour clock, so I've been working at creating a new calendar (harder than it seems, 2.5/10 dont recommend). These are side projects that help my story, without having to write.

Reading. You saw this one coming, I know. Reading is great, especially when you're editing, your writing style will unconsciously change to be more similar the author you were just reading. Also, most importantly, I'll be reading and think, "this story is really good, but you know what story I like even better? Mine." then change to writing.

This one is my biggest life saver!! I learnt about a year ago that sometimes I'll get bored of writing a story, and have difficulty keeping on track. That's why I finished my first book in 2016 and just started editing the first draft last week. The solution for me was to work on multiple projects at once, because it was much harder to be bored of multiple stories. I stick to 2, but will sometimes add a third. This is easy for me, because I have a list of over a dozen series I want to write. Don't abandon one project for another, use them as a distraction/ motivation for each other, so you're always furthering at least one project. I've never heard someone say, "oh no, i accidentally worked on this other writing project for three months instead of the other writing project I was doing. Dammit." No, we're just happy we have written something. Be sure to have well outlined story lines before starting, don't just start writing randomly or you'll reach a point where you don't know where to go from there.

Author/ writer projects. Maybe this is building a following, or community to share your projects and engage with. Tumblr, Insta, Reddit, whatever it is. My hope this year is to start up my website to offer publishing services (editing, graphic design, short writing courses) and build a following as a writer. (See what I did there? Never a bad time to self-promote ;) ) Having your own projects like this will help you in the future when you're going to try to publish and sell your books!

Talk with friends and a writing community. Never underestimate the passion that will burn inside you when talking about your story, or when others are talking about theirs. Surrounding yourself with a positive writing community can be the best thing for you as a writer.

Write or read (your story) every day. I'm not going to be one of those people that say you need to write 1000 words a day, that's a lot. But maybe try for 100? That could maybe only take 5 minutes, and at the end of the year that's still over 36 thousand words of a novel. Or just read your story, and I've always found it helped me get in the creative mood.

Make a playlist of songs that remind you of your characters, your story, or just puts you in the mood to write. Then play it ONLY when you're having trouble writing. Playing it while writing will not help, you'll get annoyed with the songs.

Just really can't do it today? That's okay, take a break. You deserve it. There's always tomorrow.

Does anyone else have ways they push themselves to keep writing? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Writing!

[r-is-typing]

hi there! welcome back to tumblr!

could I please request a spencer reid x reader where the reader is the newest member of the bau but gets kidnapped on a case? thank you!

p.s. extra points if the reader loves puzzles and books!

decipher | s.r

summary: in which the newest member of the bau gets taken request: hi there! welcome back to tumblr! could I please request a spencer reid x reader where the reader is the newest member of the bau but gets kidnapped on a case? thank you! p.s. extra points if the reader loves puzzles and books! pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader category: angst with a happy ending content warnings: mentions of violence, kidnapping, really anything mentioned in criminal minds word count: 1.6k+ send in your requests here!

Y/N groaned, walking into the small room that the BAU was using in Delaware's local police station while they were there for a case. "What's wrong, pretty girl?" Derek raised a curious brow.

Y/N looked at the evidence board. "I just don't see what we're missing! It's been four days now, and we're no closer than when we got here to solving this."

Spencer looked up from his reading. "I've been reading for a while and can't decipher these puzzles." The tall man stood up, walking to a board they had with various puzzles tacked onto it. The Unsub had left pieces of paper at every crime scene with different variations of codes that seemed like coordinates of some kind. "43 11 51 15 44 23 15 32" "31 15 44 43 35 31 11 54" "23 15 31 35 32 15" Y/N stared intensely at the numbers, trying to get anything to tell her what they meant. "Okay, maybe we need to go over the profile again. What's the deal with this guy?" JJ started to speak. "Well, the guy's a narcissist first, but.. he could be devolving. He was skilled the first few kills, but this last one... we found mistakes, he slipped up. So, does that mean his clues will too?" Spencer stood next to Y/N. "It very well could, but until we figure out the code..." Hotch finished his sentence. "There's nothing we can do. The best thing to do right now is go back to the hotel and rest, we can come back tomorrow with fresh minds. That's an order." Y/N told the team she'd catch up, she was just going to go to the restroom, so they left and headed to the hotel. She watched them leave and as soon as they left her eye sight, she ran back into the boardroom. She needed to figure out this code. People's lives depended on it. Y/N began looking everywhere online possible to lead her to what kind of code this was. "Agent L/N?" An officer stuck their head into the room, making Y/N look up. "We've just received another note... There seems to have been one we missed in our initial sweep." Y/N jumped up quick taking the note from the officer. "Thank you."

Y/N opened the note and was met with something she wasn't expecting. Another code but at the bottom, it said "Tap tap tap". Y/N widened her eyes. Why didn't she think of tap code? It was brilliant. Y/N spent the next fifteen minutes solving each of the puzzles she got. She went to the board writing next to each decipher.

"43 11 51 15 44 23 15 32" -> "save them" "31 15 44 43 35 31 11 54" -> "let's play" "23 15 31 35 32 15" -> "help me" and then the newest cipher:

"11 12 11 33 14 34 33 15 14 23 34 45 43 15 31 24 12 42 11 42 54" -> "abandoned house library" Y/N gasped, running out of the police station and hopping into the vehicle the team left for her, heading to this abandoned house that they had thought they cleared the day before. "I knew it.." Y/N mumbled to herself, pulling in front of the house. Y/N quickly ran into the house, gun pointing in front of her. She swung to the right, hearing a noise but ultimately nothing. "I just knew you'd fall for my trap. The last note was just for you, Agent. Those girls aren't here, but you however..." A voice from behind her spoke, hitting her over the head with a chunk of wood before she could turn and shoot him. Y/N fell to the floor, knocking unconscious . The Unsub smirked, picking her up over his shoulder and carrying her out to his truck, driving away quickly before anyone would be able to find them.

The next day, the team arrived to the station early. "Anyone hear from Y/N? I didn't see her at the hotel this morning." Emily asked, looking around. This made the team share a look of confusion. "Excuse me? What time did Agent L/N leave last night?" JJ asked one of the officers. "Well, shortly after I gave her a note that was delivered here, she ran out of here quicker than I could even see with my own eyes. I figured she was just sick or somethin'." The officer told the team. "Guys..." Spencer looked at the board with the ciphers, noting a new one pinned, along with their deciphers right next to them. "I think the Unsub knew Y/N was here alone and lured her.. She was able to figure out the cipher. It's tap code."

Hotch looked at Reid. "Who would be smart enough to understand tap code?" Reid scrambled to get his phone out of his pocket. "Garcia," He started as she picked up the phone. "Out of the list of possible suspects we had, cross match those with anyone who recently got out of prison." Typing could be heard on the other end of the phone. "Uh, there's two. Robert Smart and Henry David. Henry got out just two weeks ago, and Robert got out two days ago."

Hotch begins to speak, but was interrupted by Penelope. "Sending Henry's address and work now to your cells. Her majesty out." A click was heard and Penelope's voice was gone.

The team ran out of the station, half of the team splitting up. "Well, he wouldn't take her to his work..." Derek called Garcia again, asking about any abandoned buildings, or anything in that area that would be the perfect spot to keep someone.

"It seems like his parents had owned a storage unit but the storage company itself went bankrupt last year, so there's just a whole bunch of abandoned storage units. His..." Penelope pauses, typing more. "is number 378."

Derek does a quick u-turn, speeding towards the storage unit. "Why would she go off without us?" Spencer looked at Derek and then Rossi. "Kid, she probably wasn't expecting this. I mean, it seemed perfect that we had just talked about him devolving and then he gives a precise location." Rossi puts a comforting hand on Reid's shoulder, comforting him as much as he could.

The three jumped out of the SUV as they arrived at the abandoned area. Spencer rushed ahead of them, his gun held steady, in case of any surprises as they walked slowly.

367, 371, 375 Finally, they found Unit 378 and looked at each other, nodding before lifting the storage and finding Henry and Y/N. Henry held a gun to her head as she stared directly at the three men ahead of her. "You take one more step, and she's dead!" Henry screams. Spencer tensed. "You don't want to do that, Henry." He raised his hands, putting his gun back in his holster. "We know what your mom did to you, okay? You shouldn't have had to go through that."

Henry's eyes flashed with anger as he cried. "She left me! Abandoned me as if I was nothing!" Y/N kept eye contact with Spencer. "Henry, it's alright, we're going to get you help. Just put down the gun, okay?" Spencer slowly took a step, seeing Henry's guard starting to come down. "If you put the gun down, we can help you. We can tell the judge you cooperated with us." Y/N spoke, not breaking eye contact with Spencer who stared at Henry.

Henry's hand dropped the gun as he dropped to the ground and cried. Derek ran over, cuffing him. "Henry David, you're being arrested for the murder of three women, kidnapping, and the assault of an FBI agent. You have the right to remain silent-" Morgan's voice cut off as he walked out of the storage, Rossi in tow.

Spencer rushed over to Y/N, untying her and helping her to her feet. Y/N was quick to hug him as she cried. "I'm so sorry. I really thought.." Spencer shushed her, walking her out of the storage unit where JJ, Hotch, and Emily stood waiting for her. "You're okay!" JJ ran over and embraced the girl.

"Hotch, I-"

Hotch shook his head. "As much as what you did was careless, you were smart with your actions. If it wasn't for your smart thinking and logic, we wouldn't have been able to decipher the code."

Y/N nodded to Hotch, then looked up at Spencer. "I didn't mean to worry everyone.." The girl pouted. Spencer just rubbed her shoulder. "I know, but you're okay now, that's what matters."

Y/N looked up at him. "I knew you guys would come for me once you saw the cipher, but I honestly thought I was going to die in there... which got me thinking."

Spencer looked at her in confusion. "Do you wanna do something when we get back to Quantico?" Y/N asked, a tint of red painted across her face.

"Like a..?"

"Yes, genius. Like a date. I've got to repay my knight in shining blue vest somehow as a token of my appreciation for saving me."

Spencer nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I'd, uh, I"d like that." Y/N smiled. "Perfect." She quickly walked to JJ and Emily after. Spencer looked over to Derek who had clearly witnessed the exchange, a large smirk sprawled across his face.

"Shut up." Spencer mumbled to him, shuffling past him quickly. He then stopped, realizing what she had said. "Knight in shining blue vest?"

r is typing... thank you so much for the request and the warm welcome back! i hoep you enjoy, i loved writing this! :) r is signing off...

[birdofmay]

Talking about a discourse that doesn't even exist on Tumblr

On Tumblr, us higher support needs nonverbal/nonspeaking people often had 2 possible scenarios to deal with:

1. People ignore us and our opinion because our writing isn't "proper" English, and they make fun of us or comment on our writing style.

2. People think we're faking because our writing is good.

I couldn't care less about scenario number 2. And luckily I'm not affected by scenario number 1.

But what happens now is that somebody tries to discuss a Twitter discourse that simply doesn't exist here on Tumblr: Nonverbal/nonspeaking people with severe or profound autism and/or severe or profound intellectual disability who use FC to run their blogs.

This isn't happening.

Nobody on here (except maybe 1 person, but even there I'm not sure) has profound autism. Severe yes, there are some. But we don't use FC to run our blogs. Nobody on here (except maybe 1 person) has a profound ID. Severe yeah, maybe. But most people with ID are mild or moderate. And none of them use FC to run their blog.

So what happens now is scenario number 3:

3. People (or rather 1 online troll) think that what we write is facilitated and not our own words.

Especially those of us who have severe autism and/or ID. This is worse than scenario number 1 or 2. Especially because there's no way to disprove it. The better our grammar, the higher the probability that somebody else wrote our posts; at least to this online troll.

So whenever you encounter someone who says that what we write is facilitated and/or written by someone else: Don't believe them. Yes, sometimes people write something for us, but we can always check if we agree with what's been written.

I've heard of the FC problem where caregivers wrote something for the nonverbal/nonspeaking person, and it always was about how great FC was, etc. I think this was on Twitter and on individual blogs somewhere on the internet. But this isn't happening on Tumblr. Nobody with severe autism and/or severe or profound ID uses FC to run their blog on Tumblr.

It's basically "Yelling into the void".

Edit:

Since this post reached people who aren't aware of what was going on lately:

FC is short for Facilitated Communication. It's a method for people who can't speak and struggle greatly with other communication methods, such as writing, signing, or using an AAC device.

There's nothing wrong with people helping someone to run their blog; I, too, sometimes need help to run my blog. There's also nothing wrong with people writing posts or messages for someone. This post was only to inform others that nobody on Tumblr uses FC full time to run their blog. Because this is what this troll believes. She basically complains about something that's not the case.

[fandom-free-bingo]

Fandom-Free Bingo - Bug Edition!

WE'RE BAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

Yes hello, your favourite mod team is back in commision! Apologies for the absence, our laptop charging port decided to opt out of existing. But we're here with October edition, and it's one we're partial to... We did consider doing a spooky edition, but there's a few of those around, and October is the birthday of our very own Bug - partner to some, friend to all - and as the folks who organise this event, we're doing that instead, because it's up to us. 😇

So without further ado, and with gratitude for your patience...

WELCOME TO BUG EDITION.

- Turnaround time is hopefully no longer than a week. If you've been waiting longer than this, please feel free to reach out! - Feel free to interpret the prompts however you wish - the world is your oyster! <3 - No restriction to one prompt per fic/chapter.  - You can merge this event with others, so long as the other event permits this.  - Please mark rating clearly, and use CW where applicable. Posts not adequately marked will not be reblogged. We love you folks, and all the work you produce, but we get a lot of reblogs and have lives outside the event - we don't always have the time to be chasing down ratings or fandoms ;-; - Use the tags #FandomFreeBingo and #Fandom Free Bingo: Bug Edition, and tag @fandom-free-bingo on tumblr for a reblog - don't forget to also add in the pairing/characters, rating, the fandom and the warnings in the tags please <3  - The ninth event (Bug Edition) sign ups will run until October 31st, 2024. Feel free to post after this date, however - works will be reblogged until September 30th, 2025, and the Ao3 collection will be open indefinitely.  - A maximum of TWO cards per participant. - This season we are offering BOTH 5x5 and 3x3 cards - please let us know which you would like!    - All media forms, fandoms and original works are welcome!  - You can request square changes twice (of any number), for up to a week after the card is issued.  - Be respectful to other participants.  - Be kind to us!  - Ao3 collection can be found here!

Sign up here!

@thebigbangblogproject

[roguestorm]

How To Start Reading Marvel Comics

Okay, so let's say you're a fan of the Marvel movies or games or you just saw Spider-Verse and you want to know how to start reading comics. Hi, welcome! This is one method of getting into comics; it is not the only one. We're going to be heavily relying on digital comics for this one, so if you prefer reading on paper, this might not be for you.

Step One: Pick a Character

This should be easy! Pick a character whose comics you want to read. It doesn't have to be your favorite character of all time; it just needs to be a character you're interested in getting to know a little better. A character is going to work better for this particular method than a team will, although there are plenty of team reading guides if you really want them.

Let's say, for the sake of example, that you just watched the Moon Knight Disney+ series and you want to read some stuff about Moon Knight.

Step Two: Find a Reading List

The very technically advanced way to do this is to Google "[Character] Reading List" or "[Character] Recommended Reading." For Moon Knight, Marvel has an official one that pops up right away.

The official ones are good places to start, but IMO, the best ones are usually from tumblr or Reddit. Comic fans can be very intense, but we also know more about the material than anyone, including Marvel. :) Here's one for Moon Knight.)

Step Three: Understanding the Reading List

Comic names are formatted one of two ways. You might see someone say Moon Knight (vol 7) or Moon Knight (2014). These refer to the same series of comics. They mean that the title of the series is Moon Knight, that it is the 7th series published under that title, and that it started publication in 2014. Moon Knight (vol 1) is Moon Knight (1980), because it's the first run of comics called Moon Knight and it started publication in 1980.

So, how do you know? That's where the wiki comes in. marvel.fandom.com is my best friend. So, when you type "Moon Knight vol 7" into the search bar, it brings up this page. See how it says (2014-2015) at the top? That's how you know that Moon Knight (vol 7) is Moon Knight (2014).

Step Four: Accessing Comics

Now we have to get the comics. We have a number of options:

For digital comics:

Buying digital comics. You can do this on Amazon or Marvel.com. However, this gets expensive real fast - for example, Moon Knight (1980) has 38 issues, and each of those costs $1.99. That's almost $80, just for volume 1.

Marvel Unlimited subscription. This is not a bad deal TBH. It's $10 a month, and they have quite an extensive catalogue. The only problem is that the site takes forever to load and is not easily searchable. Usually, I'll type into Google the name of the exact comic I want to access (e.g. "Moon Knight (1980) #1") and then click on the marvel.com link that comes up.

Piracy. This is the easiest and cheapest option, and thus the most popular. I'm not going to link any sites, but ask a friend or Google and you'll find one easily enough.

Physical comics are also an option, but they are more complicated. Groups of issues are collected in trade paperback collections, but finding which collections contain which issues can be a bit more of a hassle. And then buying those collections can get pricey very quickly.

If you like physical comics and have a public library card, I'd recommend checking out what they have on their shelves. On a Marvel comic, you want to look at the back cover, usually in the lower right-hand corner, and it will tell you which issues are in the comic (e.g. "Collects Moon Knight (2014) #1-6"). You might find some things that were on your reading list, or you might find some comics you'd never have read otherwise. A lot of public libraries (at least in the US) have a larger comic book collection than you'd expect.

Step Five: Have Fun and Be Yourself!

The most important thing to remember is that you are supposed to be having fun. There might be some frustration if you're not used to reading visual media (I know I wasn't), but it should overall be fun. If a comic feels like a slog, you don't have to read it! Maybe you and the person who made the reading list just have different taste. Try a different comic. Try a different character.

Also, remember that it's okay to be confused. You might be jumping around a little bit and so you might not know everything that's going on. This is kind of the perpetual state of reading comics. If you want to double-check the wiki or ask your friendly neighborhood comics blogger, that's totally fine.

[incorrectbatfam]

Alrighty, I'd like to take a minute to address something that's been cropping up recently, which is stuff like this:

I've been getting an increasing number of asks and comments like the one above (I've deleted the Ao3 comments and turned on moderation). Normally, they don't bug me, but when I keep getting them over and over it kinda feels like a moth buzzing around my room that I can't keep ignoring.

Basically, some people have been wondering if I use an AI to create my posts and fics as they are becoming more common.

Let me state for the record: I don't, nor will I ever.

Without getting into the rabbit hole of my personal opinion on using AI for creative works, I started posting consistently for the DC/Batfam fandom on Tumblr and Ao3 in 2018 and 2020 respectively. Many popular programs came out post-pandemic, such as Sudowrite in 2021 and ChatGPT in 2022.

I don't blame folks who may think that, though. Incorrect quotes already tread on thin ice when it comes to some people not perceiving them as actual fan content—tale as old as time. Coupled with that, I often answer asks with an easily digestible format and write fics on a time crunch that aren't planned out in great detail. I'm fully aware the quality is somewhere in the middle. (This isn't inviting people to tell me I'm amazing and transformed their lives—I'm here to give people a quick chuckle as they go about their day.)

The issue is all of this is now within the capabilities of AI and it's getting harder to differentiate, which in turn is altering our expectations of each other. You can't draw characters with wonky anatomy, you have to get every feature right or you're using a generator. You can't post a drabble with bad grammar and overplayed tropes, you have to be the next Great American Novelist or you're relying on an algorithm. Fan creators—who are doing this for free, keep in mind—are being held to increasingly higher standards just to prove they are genuine.

Some of you are probably thinking, "it's just fandom, quit making a big deal." The thing is though, fandoms are built on people with different abilities creating for the love of it. This isn't to deride those who use AI as a tool—you do you, it is a hobby in the end. However, when we ascribe mediocrity to inauthenticity, we're reinforcing the notion that if you can't be perfect, you shouldn't bother trying. It's frustrating and frankly has no business in our community.

[earhartsease]

because we host a nonbinary support group, we often get sent requests to share surveys for someone's college course or whatever, and we filter them by filling them out ourselves first, to check for any awfulness (you'd be amazed or not at the assumptions, especially the number of surveys who forget not everyone has genders or who fail to imclude nonbinary or intersex experience)

anyway one of them has raised an interesting question, on which we have Opinions:

what does "post transition" mean to you?

our own personal view on this is that living in a society that can't/won't fully accept the existence of trans and/or nonbinary and/or intersex people as fully normal, can anyone really experience their transition as over?

we're sure that there are people who do feel they're "post transition" (those we've talked to or read about mostly seem to be binary trans people just getting on with their lives as women or men), but we suspect the vast majority of people are left with a difficult cocktail of having to mask some of the time for safety/inclusion/acceptance, and who have to live forever with a certain level of internalised dysphoria imposed on us by our society's distaste at our existence (and sometimes full on legal denial of our existence - speaking as an agender person in the UK who has no legal status except that accorded to trans women/men even though we are neither, and we can't apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate because it doesn't recognise our absence of gender at all, etc)

we personally went through a physical and social transition whose medical part was finished a decade ago (no genders were involved, but these days we are usually presumed to be a woman due to physical changes) and we're just on hormones now, but we find it very hard to imagine feeling like it's all done and we're living as an agender person with whatever "a female-coded 62 year old body" even means and it's simply accepted, we're simply accepted - and until that happens, we feel permanently in transition

so we're interested to hear from other people here about how you relate to this question (we're not sure how to ask this, we can't get our head around this as a poll, it would be too coarse grained) - what does "post transition" mean to you if you're someone who plans to transition, is transitioning, or has transitioned as much as you wish to/are able to?

this being tumblr, we're expecting a very broad probability field of responses!

edited to add: and of course some people use hormones and/or surgery and/or other appearance/social change things but don't use the language of transition at all

[tfp-is-prime]

🔊 Calendar and Prime Day Event!

Behold! More episodes for your summer festivities! Grab a cube of Energon, kick back in root mode, and enjoy the show. 😎 ~

S1E18: “Metal Attraction,” Tuesday, July 9, 2024

S1E19: “Rock Bottom,” Tuesday, July 16, 2024 S1E20: "Partners," Tuesday, July 23, 2024

(Next Episode: September 2024) Each episode will “go live” at 12:30pm PT / 1:30pm MT / 2:30pm CT / 3:30pm ET. DECEPTICONS, ATTACK! There will be a short hiatus between July 23rd and September 10th, but as always, this blog will still be active!

ALSO—

In other news, July 16-17 this year happens to be conveniently dubbed ✨"Prime Day"✨ by a certain corporation. We are not affiliated with them in any way...but we do love the idea of having an unofficial holiday to celebrate TFP and Optimus Prime! So, we looked at the day, and transformed it 😉

Here's our lowkey event:

If you draw artwork, compose a moodboard, or edit a meme of Optimus Prime, we will select a random entry and pin that to the top of our blog through the hiatus!

RULES (any entries that do not correspond to the following rules will not be considered for the random drawing):

- Art / moodboard / meme must be SFW and Optimus-centric - AI generations are not valid for entry - Photography counts as art! If you have an Optimus toy / figure / plushie you want to show off with a fun background, now's the moment you've been waiting for. (Just make sure you don't doxx yourself in any way through your photos. Thanks!) - Any iteration of Optimus Prime is welcome! (It does not have to be TFP, but if you go with TFP and your creation isn't chosen to be pinned, there will be a chance your art might find our Friday Spotlight later!) - Remember that TFP-is-Prime is "real-time spoiler-free" for new viewers who are just finding the show now! That means that if your work includes aspects from episodes not yet on the blog, we won't be able to reblog it until that episode "releases" during the rerun. Please keep that in mind! (You can reference "Metal Attraction," "Rock Bottom," and "Partners," however, since those episodes will all be out before the Prime Day entry is pinned.) - If you want to draw an epic battle shot, keep the energon spill / robogore / etc. no crazier than canon-typical TFP violence.

- There is no "your art must be this good to pass" rule; just make it if you want to! Transformers are hard to draw but give it your best! All skill levels are welcome. - Tag your creation with #tfprimeday2024 so we can find your post! Only Tumblr entries will be considered (for reblogging purposes) but you're welcome to post what you make to other platforms! - Post your work during July 16-17! After the 17th, the event closes (so that we have time to draw a random number from all the entries before the hiatus). - We'll shoot you a ✅ in the replies once we see your post to let you know you've entered the drawing! (If for some reason we miss it and you don't see a ✅ by the 22nd, then you can @ this blog in the replies.) ~

Depending on how many entries we see during the two days, it might take some time for us to compile all of them for random selection. Thanks for your patience! If it so happens that a crazy number of participants swoops in, we might also split the entries into categories (drawings / moodboards / memes / etc.) and select one from each, granting each one time to shine on this blog. We're not sure how many people will participate, so stay tuned as we play by ear.

Again, this is a very lowkey event. Many fandom events occur in July, so we understand if this is a bit last minute. However, if this sounds like fun, and you wanna go for it, we'd love to see what you all make in celebration of (Optimus) Prime Day! Feel free to send us asks if you have any questions not answered here!

[horriblegoosefest]

The goose is almost here!!! 🪿

Rummage around in those folders you haven’t opened in years, dust off the cobwebs, and bring some life back to your most abandoned works. You said you’d come back to it again one day, but the days turned to years, and – what’s that I hear?

H-O-N-K, we will finish a wip today! 

H-O-N-K, write it or I won't go away! 

What is the horrible goose fest?

The horrible goose fest is borne from the many cries for accountability from fandom creators and the wish that someone hound them (or honk at them) into finishing their wips. This is a partnered fest in which one partner (creator) commits to finishing a work-in-progress and one partner (goose) commits to providing dedicated accountability. 

Great, how does it work? 

There are no prompts in this fest. It's designed to help you finish those languishing drafts and build relationships with other folks in the fandom. You can sign up as a creator and/or a goose. If signing up as a creator, you are committing to finishing an existing work-in-progress (fic, art, podfic, translation) that is not affiliated with other current fest collections or prompts/self-prompts (wips from past fest drops are fine!) If your work-in-progress is already posted to ao3, we will ask you to hide it by adding it to a private collection for the duration of the fest; it will be revealed with everyone's works during the posting period. Creators will upload their finished works to the fest’s ao3 collection. 

If you sign up as a goose, you are committing to frequent check-ins with your creator to help them finish their work in progress. This will involve ongoing discussions with your creator about their progress and deadlines. You're not expected to alpha or beta their work. Think of yourself as a particularly tenacious cheerleader. You are also committing to writing a thoughtful rec of the work upon its completion, which will be posted on tumblr.

How do I sign up?

All participants will sign up by filling out a form on airtable. You can choose your own partner to sign up with, or be paired with a partner by the mods. Participants must be 18+. Due to modly time constraints, we will be capping the number of fic sign-ups at 35. There will be no limit for art or podfic.

If signing up to be paired with a partner, sign up forms will be used to help the mods best match pairs. All HP fandom ships and characters are welcome. Creators will detail their wip plans and accountability needs. Gooses will detail their accountability style and preferred time/frequency commitment – how often and for how long can you check in, are you strict or more of a softie, what strategies and advice can you provide your creator? The form will also have a space for geese and creators to share ship preferences and squicks. We will try our best to match compatible creator/goose pairs, but as with any paired fest, you'll also need to be open, flexible, and friendly.

Can I sign up as both?

Sure! But be aware of the time commitment of both roles and be mindful of what you can realistically handle. Your partner is counting on you! 

What if there are more geese than creators? Or more creators than geese?

If we have an imbalance, and you are a good fit for more than one creator/goose, you may be assigned more than one participant to work with. We will do our best to take into account your time commitment and preferences, so please let us know in the sign up if you are willing to be paired more than once! For fairness reasons, if you are a creator assigned two geese, the two geese will collaborate on a single rec of your work at the end of the fest. You are always welcome to assemble your own team of additional cheerleaders if you’d like <3

If I'm a goose, do I have to be horrible?

The title is jokey. We're not really encouraging anyone to be unkind. Think of a goose as an accountability partner. We're hearing from lots of creators that deadlines and kind but firm expectations are what really get them across the finish line. Goosing is a big job, but in the end we're all rewarded with more works to enjoy! 

What if there’s an issue with my pairing?

To avoid this as much as possible, we encourage folks to sign up as an already-formed pair. Prior to matching, we will share a list of the participants who have signed up. Feel free to use this to form your own pairs. We will be running a discord to facilitate participants getting to know each other. Please remember to be kind, and if someone’s wip really catches your eye, don’t be afraid to reach out - they may be eyeing you!

That said, we know this might be stressful for some, so we are happy to pair you. If you have any concerns with regards to matching, or at any point throughout the fest, please reach out to us. Our goal is to make the fest a safe space for all participants in accordance with our expectations below. 

Speaking of kindness, what are the other expectations in this fest?

We ask that participants generally abide by sals, kink-tomato, and dldr, but also, in recognition of the ways these rules have been used to silence poc voices in fandom, you may be asked to tag content beyond ao3's major trigger warnings or the fandom typical disclosure of sexual acts and violence, such as racist tropes/triggers. Refusal to tag sensitive content may result in your fic being pulled from the fest. If you have questions about what kinds of content we'll ask you to tag or want a sensitivity read for your content, please contact the mods, we really are happy to help!

There will be email check-ins throughout the fest. Make sure to add our email, horriblegoosefest@gmail.com, to your contacts to ensure you receive these communications. Please only reply via email, not via tumblr, discord or any other messaging service. Please send any questions about the fest to horriblegoosefest@gmail.com or #mod-help channel in the fest discord (do not contact individual mods). 

We will post small (optional) challenges and games to participate in during the fest to hype everyone up. These will be posted in the discord server and on tumblr, so make sure you join the server and follow @horriblegoosefest on tumblr! 

Submission info:

There is no word count minimum but we do ask that you submit one fic, artwork, or podfic. Fics should be beta-read. Remember that geese are not required to beta (although they can if they'd like to). Podfics and translations must have either blanket permission or consent from the original authors to be included in the fest.

Works can be submitted in any language. There will be a space on the sign up form to let us know what language you intend to post. If our mod team is not fluent in your chosen posting language we will contact you to discuss options to help us make sure works are beta read and tagged according to fest guidelines. You may be asked to include a disclaimer that the mods are unable to guarantee comprehensive tagging. 

Creators will submit works to an ao3 collection and the following header information should be emailed to the mods. Multi-chapter works will be revealed on a single posting day. As the fest deadline nears, geese will write a celebratory rec of their creator’s work, which will be posted to tumblr. We are happy to provide guidance on writing a rec if you need it.

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[heywriters]

how to make a tumblr post (and get notes!)

Have never seen any post discuss these exact things, so i'm sharing my insights with y'all*

Use images. They don't have to be good or spectacular like this extremely coherent thing I just made. They just need to catch the eye break up dashboard monotony.

The gif search feature is an unreliable wild card at best and a NSFW eye gouge at worst, but it gives credit to the op of the gif

If you're an artist your whole post is your images, so skip to the links and tags section of this post because the rest won't help much.

-> Image Descriptions

When making a post that contains images, hover over an image and click the meatballs icon in the lower right corner of the image. Click "update description" to add a description. It isn't always necessary, but it is very courteous for a variety of accessibility reasons.

-> Text

Break up your text. Run-on sentences are standard here, lack of punctuation too, you can really do whatever you want, but avoid massive blocks of text. unless you've got a really incendiary opening line and the entire center of that granite chunk of text is actually comedy gold, hard-hitting tumblr journalism, or one of those zany confessional posts that can be followed up by the drive thru meme

break up

your text.

and go light on the ALL CAPS. save it for emphasis or when you're feeling very unhinged or saRcAStiC y'know how that goes, i don't need to explain it. this site has a very dry tone to its posts so caps are rare. also periods

Bullet points and numbered posts are good and fine. The "Chat" post option is used less often these days, but different groups found uses for it so it sticks around.

Titles Matter

they help break up text and put people at ease. they are best for informative, mature posts but can make you look like a square in more relaxed conversations. sometimes they are also great for emphasis in a comedic sh*tpost (censorship is entirely up to you, btw. you don't have to censor much on tumblr except titties and genitals).

Tumblr automatically shortens long posts now, but etiquette asks that you tag #long post if you want to avoid clogging up someone's dash. It don't matter too much though, this is the "color of the sky" site, so get used to posts being too long

That being said "READ MORE" is a fantastic feature. Use it when you want some level of privacy like "hey, only click below if you want to hear about my problems" or "click below to read my 18+ fanfic." Read more is also great in case you want to delete something forever. If a reblogged post has a read more, but op deleted the og post, that content is gone (readmore has to be on the og post at time of posting for this to work, btw; edits to og post do not span all reblogs)

the other bells and whistles like colored font or italics are helpful in improving text, but we don't really rely on them. every mode of looking at this site alters those aspects somehow so we often ignore them

-> Links

Hint: People don't want to click links. We don't know where they're taking us. Most of us are on our phone and don't want to open another tab or leave the app to go on the browser. We're cozy here on Tumblr and do not wish to be whisked away (unless it's a rickroll)

Don't leave the link thumbnail to do all the work, like so

add a little sneak peak info, maybe your favorite line from the article or a reason why it's important for people to know the info on the other side of that link. Sell it!

When you're adding a link into a list, i.e. no large thumbnail just a line of text leading you to another site, try not to copy/paste the link as is

"https://......"

No one wants to click on that it's gross and scary. It's screams "meh, i'll click later if i feel like it." If the build up to the link is too good to resist ("if you want to save the orphaned puppies here's the link") then that http mess is sufficient.

Otherwise, dress your links up a little by including the title or a description of what the link goes to:

Or, if it's an informal post where you're just popping info in to back up whatever insane thing you just said, just write something like "link here" or "(x)" and hyperlink it.

-> Tags

artists, writers, and other creators: leave a tag on your creative content that makes it easy for blog visitors to see it all at once. e.g. "My work" and we click on that while on your blog and see only your works

You can have up to thirty tags on any post. All will make your post show up in searches and followed tags (it used to be only the first five tags that got you traction). However,

Please. Do not tag everything you can possibly imagine being relevant to your post because

It's called tag spam and it's against TOS

Everyone here hates that

No one is going to check all those tags ever. Someone might search one five years from now and accidentally find your post hanging out in the ether and they'll still ignore it.

Your imagination is wicked tiny because I guarantee the perfect tag is going to be something indecipherable and seemingly niche.

Follow popular tags (or at least be aware of them)

If yours is an off-the-cuff post and you don't have time to find out what a niche group is into then wing it, sure, idc. this is also the shitposting site do whatever you want

Don't put your hate in the fan tags. This is the unapologetically-like-dumb-things site and your negativity is not wanted. You can still complain, just avoid tagging to get the attention of the fans of whatever you're complaining about. That enables pvp and even nonfans will know you deserve the backlash

-> Audio & Video

clickable by nature because we all love noise and moving images so there's no special way to share posts like this. just post them with good tags and maybe a one-liner, and they'll sell themselves

Tip: it's nice to add descriptions to these too but it isn't common

Protip: if the audio is the best part of the video (e.g. a baby burps REALLY loudly and it's hilarious) please caption or tag "Unmute!"

-> mkay bye

that's all i can think of right now. will update later if i remember something

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*this is year eleven of my time on tumbles and i studied marketing in college for like six of those years and have been applying that bupkis to tumblr ever since. every post i see that gets no traction and every lovely artist that goes nowhere on here bothers me so deeply and i sincerely want y'all to succeed <3 <3

+ If you find this helpful and want to support my blog, I have a ko-fi!

+ If you're concerned about my mental health from being on Tumblr so long and want to contribute to my "get better" fund, I have a ko-fi!