#but omg. to be able to use xkit again....

[joyridingmp3]

i finally have a laptop for the very first time in my life. i finally have enough spare money to be able to splurge on one

[orionsangel86]

I agree with the overly fetished views that fandom seems to have of gay men. As a gay man who’s really short, it’s soooo fuckin weird to have people assume I’m a bottom??? Like, I don’t even know you enough to disclose my sexual life and you’re making? weird? assumptions?? Also, there’s a certain fan artist who shan’t be named who makes a certain shorter character super feminine and it kills me every time

EXACTLY

Urgh I’m sorry fandom makes you feel that way.

I’m gonna put this under a cut as I am about to rant about this topic because it is my biggest gripe within fandom. Don’t read on if you are here for fun happy positive things. Beware fair readers, there be strong potentially offensive opinions and plenty of fandom wank down below...

Fandom is unfortunately filled with CIS het women who like to stereotype and force men into their preconceived internalised misogynistic perceptions that to be short or slender means you are the weak dainty “girl” in the relationship and that’s why whichever character they deem the “girl” is also ALWAYS the “bottom”. It also is the same way fandom tends to muddy the waters between sexual positions top/bottom and BSDM terms dom/sub, where bottoms MUST be submissive as well. Half the time you will see posts talking about character traits which perhaps might indicate a submissive streak, and people will take that to mean that a character is a bottom, when the two do not correlate and it is highly problematic to assume that they do.

It’s so fucking problematic and I don’t think that these (mostly straight cis female) fans realise that by encouraging these harmful stereotypes, they are actually also being totally misogynistic and anti feminist. Women are not all bloody Anastasia Steel’s for christs sake (and don’t get me started on that god awful book/movie series). A women can be tall, broad, muscular, she can be dominant and strong and she can damn well top a man if she wants to.

When it comes to shipping male characters in gay/queer relationships, fandom MUST stop inflicting outdated heterosexual stereotypes on them. It seems like fans find a pairing they like (for instance Dean and Cas) and then immediately have to decide which one of them plays the female role. They then twist and change the characters, their traits, the way they look etc, so that one of them is basically a woman. That character then MUST be the submissive bottom and URGH I HATE IT.

(Making a quick note to say that whilst these particular common stereotypes within fandom are very much a problem, this is not to be confused in any way with fans taking their fave characters and headcanoning them as trans or nb or anything else genderwise which reflects an even more marginalised group and is usually a type of fanwork created by fans who are in fact trans or nb themselves.)

I’m not gonna comment on specific artists, but I tend to block urls of bloggers whose stuff I feel is particularly problematic and I also now have the WONDERFUL post blocker xkit extension OMG it is a GODSEND I highly recommend it. If you keep seeing a post on your dash because everyone is reblogging it even though it is super squicky to you (like for instance an obviously feminised Cas or Dean is squicky for me) you can use the extension to block that particular post so you never have to see it again regardless of how many of your mutuals reblog it. Its amazing!

I know that on this hellsite we like to encourage everyone to be as creative as possible and that everyone is valid and we don’t kinkshame and everything etc etc, and I’m all for that, whatever floats your boat and all that. But there is a line, and the line is when what you are doing becomes offensive to the marginalised groups you are supposedly supporting. Like I really don’t care if you are into tentacle sex or hell, even a furry, but I do care if the only way you can comfortably support a gay ship is to force either of the male characters into a “female” template and give them a “self lubricating asshole”. Like... come on. This is why I hate A/B/O. If you have to force gay men to fit a hetero model, you aren’t supporting gay men, you are fetishising them. You are also probably kinda homophobic.

What I really hate about this stuff is how it always seems to be the problematic stuff like this that blows up and becomes a trend and suddenly everyone is jumping on board and no one is given a second thought to how fucked up it is. WHY IS A/B/O EVEN A THING?!? It started as a J2 beastiality fic like WHY DID IT BECOME SO POPULAR?!

Why is Twist & Shout so bloody popular too? Its not even in character. They aren’t even Dean and Cas! Cas is a pale skinny little TWINK?! WHHHHYYYY? I don’t understand it if you ship Destiel wouldn’t you at least want the characters you are reading about to BE Dean and Cas?!? Don’t get me wrong I love AU fics, but I still want to be able to picture and hear Dean and Cas in the characters being described.

Why was it such a thing in the early seasons to make Cas a girl? (that’s hyperbole obviously but he might as well have been based on some of the early fanfics/fanart I’ve seen and immediately noped out of.) Misha Collins has never looked anything like that! He’s never been feminine looking and just because the dude can pull off a dress doesn’t mean you can force him to suddenly be the cute tiny pale perfect curvy pretty submissive beauty you can’t help but imagine Dean with. If you want that for Dean, ship him with Lisa. Stop forcing Cas into a model that just doesn’t make sense for the character.

This goes for Dean as well of course. The dude may have a thing for pink panties and ballet shoes and taylor swift sure, but can we not feminise him to the point he is unrecognisable as the character please?

I know that a lot of this has routes in YAOI. Something I have generally avoided because quite frankly it disgusts me. I find the whole thing just super uncomfortable and messed up and see it purely as a straight womans fetish. So much of fandom shipping behaviour comes from YAOI and its caused a lot of the toxicity we have seen over the years. I think it has got a lot better in recent years though because the queer community is slowly gaining a monopoly in fandom (imo) and as they (we, I should say, as my bisexual ass has quite clearly had enough of this) become more interested in shipping and fandom culture, we can also start educating those straight fans who might be willing to listen and learn. Maybe one day we can say goodbye to the problematic trends of today, or at least, keep them on the fringes of fandom as more and more people wake up to the fact that they are harmful.

And if that means I never have to look at an image of a short pale “pretty” Cas with womanly hips again, I’ll crack open the prosecco and consider it a win.

[tisfan]

I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently; between the @bannedtogetherbingo2020 kerfluffle and the BLM protests 

(one thing that I’ve been doing recently that seems to annoy the living SHIT out of my fellow White People is correcting “riots” to “protests.” 

“Were you near the riots --” “I did not attend the protests, but I did donate to the medical fund for the man who was injured by removal of the statue on High Street.”

This seems to drive people absolutely batshit, and I will continue to do it. These are not riots and if they have similar characteristics with riots it’s because cops are treating everyone not even like criminals, but like hostile enemy forces.)

Mostly what I’ve been reading about is the difficulty that POC fans have in getting their voices heard in fandom. That the history of fandom is primarily the history of White Fandom. 

(this is long, so there’s more under the cut - I also tell stories A LOT so brace for personal experience asides)

I’ve been thinking about comments I’ve seen by black and brown fans about trying to get away from racist stories on A03. And trying to figure out if there’s a way to give people what they want -- a way to tag posts/topics/writers/ships on a permanent block list. I know I’ve spoken with several fans who have extensive filter scripts when they go looking for a new read and that shit is EXHAUSTING and doesn’t work necessarily on mobile devices.

I, for instance, have QUITE A LOT of stuff blacklisted on tumblr because I find P*nnyW*se the Creepy Teeth Demon to be horrific and I do not want him on my screen. And the movie’s name is IT for fuck’s sake. I can’t blacklist the word “It” and still expect to see any content at all. So, thinking about how much trouble I had keeping PWCTD off my screen gives me some sympathy to how hard it’s got to be to filter out something that people aren’t even tagging! 

I mean, honestly, most of the time that people tag a fic TW: racist, they already KNOW the character is acting in a racist manner and they’re condemning it. When people don’t realize the character is racist, or a word, or a trope is racist (mystical black character, for instance) they don’t tag it as racist because they either don’t know, are unconscious of their own bias, of they don’t care that it’s racist. 

In the same manner, Person A who’s writing fic they know is dub-con will tag it, and Person B who thinks stalking someone and climbing in their window at night is romantic will NOT tag the same scenes as dub-con.

Which doesn’t make it any less jarring when I suddenly run into a fic that I would absolutely count as noncon/dubcon that’s not tagged for it. The intentions of the author don’t matter TO ME at that moment, what matters to me is that I’m trying to breathe while the romantic interest on my eReader is saying “aw, that’s so sweet.”

So, there’s multiple questions that come up for me -- I’m not a computer person, so while the A03 code is available for use, I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I tried. 

Is there a way to tag something from the outside? An overlay or side program (like an Xkit for A03) that would allow people to permanently blacklist certain tags or authors, tropes, etc? I know there are some hosting sites (unfortunately with ads) that basically funnel stuff from A03 to a reader. There was a big kerfluffle about it at the beginning of the year because OMG, someone is making money off my fanfic! protip, no, they weren’t. they were making money off someone else’s desire for a custom skin. The material itself was never leaving A03, it wasn’t stored anywhere else. A03 does not currently have a phone app and they don’t plan to have a phone app.

So, would it be possible for someone to write a phone-app that did a custom filter for the material. Blacklists are certainly possible, right?

Because here’s the thing; a lot of people who are racist don’t know that they are. Or they don’t care that they are. I have personally had a couple of hard conversations about racism (I’m not even going to call it “unconscious racism” because I am a grown-ass adult capable of reading, so if I act in a racist manner, I’m going to fucking own it. And apologize for it. And try to do better.) in my own work -- whitewashing a character at one point, using a quote from a black woman as a title for a story about Wanda. I’m still not entirely convinced that a Jewish/Romani woman is “white” in any sort of traditional sense. That said, I’m not a POC and I’m going to listen to the person who’s upset because of my usage and not my own feeling of “I don’t really think Wanda counts as white.” This may be partially because WANDA is whitewashed as shit in the MCU and a lot of people in the fandom do not read comics.

That further said, I made the changes as requested and apologized for it in the work/notes. And felt very uncomfortable when some of my white friends said “I’m sorry you had to deal with that.” I’m not sorry I had to deal with it. I wish I hadn’t DONE it, but I am glad that people felt comfortable enough with me to call my on my bullshit and I was able to make corrections and amends.

Still-- All of this boils down to: People are not going to, in good faith, tag their own fic as “don’t read this, I am racist.”  

Everything that gets done on A03 -- which is an Archive -- is voluntary by the author. A03′s policies are pretty much “tag to warn” or “tag that you’re NOT tagging to warn.” The only action A03 takes for inappropriate tagging is to ask the author to update the Warning to match, or choose not to warn. If there’s no compliance, A03 will assign the fic “choose not to warn.” But that’s the extend of their policies.

We all know this history; no censorship. Censorship is a slope that leads to fanwork disappearing. Because here’s another fact: it doesn’t matter what the intention is of censoring a story; that censorship is going to be applied badly. 

So, if A03 was going to ban racist fic, how long do you think it would take before the reporting system was flooded? Even legit reports of racism are going to take a while to read through, judge, contact the author, wait for possibly updates or retractions, and then removal.

A03′s staff are volunteers, and I understand there aren’t very many of them. There are six MILLION works on A03. No one could hope to read them all with a careful enough eye to catch all instances of harmful texts.

And we all know what’s going to happen: it’s easier to delete all stories that get complaints, rather than read them.

So, Fan A gets Fan C’s fic taken down for racial stereotyping and Fan C tells all of her friends, who go on a crusade to report every single one of Fan Q’s fics in retaliation (not because Fan Q did anything “wrong” but because they happened to post a blog about racial stereotyping in fandom) And we’re right back to strikethru.

Yet, censorship is one of those things that makes me very, very nervous. Do I think a white boy who writes a self-insert rape fantasy novella about violating and murdering Zoe Quinn should be allowed a platform? No, I don’t. (And neither did Amazon, who took it down fairly quickly once it was brought to their attention. But that’s only one case, where there are probably thousands of books that are personal attacks and are left merrily alone.)

There are a lot of books on the banned book list. If people thought they could get away with it, those books would be unpublished, unpersoned, black bagged. 

We all know that the rules get applied badly, by the people with the biggest mouths and the loudest complaints. So banning content on A03 does not seem to be the solution.

(Personal story time again, just skip this if you want.)

I came into fandom backward; I was a traditionally published erotica / romance writer first and moved into fandom after the collapse of several small publishing houses for various scandals that I won’t bore you with but you can look here if you want more information. 

Several years ago, I was in an anthology that i was Very Proud of, and I really like the editor I worked with, wanted to work with her again. She sent me a premise for submission that left me cold. Which is to say, she wanted to publish cuckolding stories. 

[x] <-- warning, that link is REALLY harsh and filled with some real WTF moments, from someone who’s pointing out the racism inherent in the system.

Especially when you consider the Mandingo aspects of the fantasy, it’s easy to see why just the existence of it is repulsive.

I declined the invitation to participate because I was deeply uncomfortable with the subject matter. 

I’m not saying that to get praise for my behavior. 

Because when the subject came up again about two or three years ago in some fandom discourse, I sided with my friends who were defending “no censorship, no matter what.”

(End of personal aside.)

Despite my personal feelings about the issue (ew, this is icky and racist and horrible and I would never write it) I still believe that I don’t have the right to say what someone else can write, read, or enjoy.

I’m trying to find the path between “this sort of reading material is harmful and I don’t think it should have a platform,” “this should be heavily tagged to avoid upsetting people,” and “there are people who feel that way about gay, non-christian stories as well.” And what’s more, I’m trying to find it in a way that doesn’t stifle authors’ voices.

Even with my idea of an overlay, that’s putting the burden on the people most affected-- someone would have to rate stories as “racist” or “not racist” (and even then, it’s seldom that clear cut. Microaggressions abound.) and the people best capable of doing that would be readers of color. Which hardly seems productive. Or fair. 

“Don’t like; don’t read” is often the calling card of fandom writers. I’ve said it myself. That’s what the fucking back button is for. But when I say it, I mean “I don’t want to hear your wank about Tony Stark in my inbox” not “I don’t want to be called out for racism when I wrote a story.”

https://ggmadeit.com/blog/why-i-cant-just-knit-the-story-of-a-black-knitter-during-civil-unrest/ -- I’m including this link because this piece really made me think. I can’t ever put down being a woman. I can’t read or watch horribly misogynistic work without being upset, and I have trouble sitting in the room with my male friends who insist on watching it and want to say “it’s only a movie.”

Being black is part of someone’s life. It can’t be erased just because it’s not convenient. Just because it interrupts your good time. It shouldn’t be put aside because “it’s just a story.”

As fans, we have to do better.

We all know what it’s like to be pushed out, to be made second best, to be asked when we’re going to get a real hobby, when are you going to grow up, why did you spend money on that merch? So we need to reach further. 

I don’t have answers. And even if I did, I’m not the one who needs to give them. What I need to do is listen to the people who have answers and HELP THEM get what they need.

We need to do better. We need to BE better.

[yutadori]

hi hello! yessss i’m so glad yuki has kakeru TT their bickering is so funny and those SOFT yuki smiles like my heart just ahhhh!! & kyo and tohru are soso soft like w/ them realizing their feelings and the play!! omg i love them! yes kono oto tomare i liked a lot!! and it looks cute but don’t be fooled bc it’s a sport anime in disguise and it’ll come for your heart :’)) ahhh yes shirayukihime!! i watched it a few months back and i love it!!

i want to read the manga but haven’t gotten around to finding where to read it yet :( oooh i haven’t heard of those manga but they look cool from what i’ve seen you post! i always love to see you talk abt shows and everything~ your waves are so nice ^^ and yes!! i DID get to go to the bbt place finally! and it was so goood but now i wanna go again soon haha i have the things to make it at home but i cannot figure out how to get the ice right w/out watering it down??sdfshj

but ooh have you tried making anything else recently? summer’s almost over idk how that happened? i did get to go to the beach a few times! and the one i go to it’s cool bc there’s only ever like four?? other cars there and at low tide you can go suuuper far out bc sandbars!! but i’m ready for cooler weather now :)) i hope you’re doing ok w/ everything going on?!! it’s crazy hearing abt the west coast rn.. pls stay safe + take care!! 💖💖💖 - xkit anon

AAAA HELLO ANON LOVE!!!!! i missed you a lot omg thank you for being patient with my replies like always!!! <3 

omggg yessss please they’re such a funny pair i love them SO MUCH!!! dynamics like theirs are my fave omg and i feel like they are so good for each other )): kakeru bringing out yuki’s more genuine personality with his chaoticness is my fave LOL and omg i KNOW yuki’s soft genuine smiles are like . wow . this is the happiness you deserve, im so happy for you omg T___T  omg kyoru YEAH!!! omg at first i didnt really get the hype with them but as we slowly progressed through the series i was like oh okay i get it now they’re really soft T__T omg when kyo realized that he loves tohru.... goodbye that was a lot gfdgdfgdf

omg wait i think i’ve heard of kono oto tomare!! 0: ohhh wait i bookmarked it some time ago... hm i think i may try picking it up soon! unsure if right now is a good time because for some reason, i havent been able to get into anything new like i’ve picked up and dropped around 5 shows in the past two weeks or so, its really annoying T___T also thank you for the sad warning gsgfdgf f how do sports anime always end up being SAD PLEASE )))):

ooohh i have a few manga sites that i use! i’d say the one i like the most is mangadex! there arent any/many ads even on mobile and it’s v neat and easy to navigate! i think there’s also mangareader/net and manganelo! i hope they work well for you if you decide to use them !!

omg thank you im glad you dont mind seeing those posts !! T___T i miss rambling about shows and stuff.. i havent been able to get into anything new which has been :// i think the only thing i’m really into right now is jujutsu kaisen?? but idk i think the coffee i had the other day awakened somethnig in me and i’ve just been thinking and talking about my ocs for the past few days gfsgdfgfdgf 

oooohhh yay im so happy you got to go to the bbt place!!! ^__^ and omg making bbt at home that sounds so exciting yesss (~: awww i get what you mean i think my friend had the same problem )): i never really used ice and usually just left it in the fridge so maybe you could try that if the ice ratio doesn’t work out?? 0: 

aaa actually i havent cooked anything in a while, ive just been eating take out that my brother brings home or eating what my mom cooks whenever shes home gfdgfdg BUT omg actually i was watching some cooking videos the other week and i got some ingredients to make onigiri, since they seem relatively easy to make!! :3 im not sure when ill be making those but im really excited for it hehe ^__^ how about you?? :3

aaaa i knowww omg i was so sad about summer ending, i cant believe it was over so fast like that )): i really miss it, esp since it’s sooooo cold nowwwww T___T and with daylight savings, it starts to get dark at like... four pm which is SO SAD ))): i know it can get pretty cold on the east coast so i hope you’ve been able to stay warm recently!! <3 oh and im glad you were able to go one last time before summer ended and that there werent many people !! <3

and thank youuuu so much for thinking about me awww im T___T omg it was so WILD like . fires in california are normal esp in summer (unfortunately...) because of how HOT and dry it gets here but it was even worse this year because i believe it was worsened by a gender reveal party which was -___- esp bc as far as what i know, the people who started it were california residents and it’s like.. if you live here you know.... that california is susceptible to fires esp in the summer so it was ://// but it was wild because where i live we’ve never really been too affected by the fires??? like if you drove and looked at some mountains from farrrr away or something you could sometimes see the fires depending (help does this make sense gfdgf) but ??? this time i actually ?? smelled ashes from the inside of my house..... with our windows open.... and at first i thought it was just me but my brother said when he went out he’d seen ashes and i was just like ?!?! because i don’t think it’s been that bad before in our area (at least not for a Long Time) but yeah anyway gfdsgfdg thankfully??? the effects of the fire in our area didnt last for too long !! and we got our first rain last week !!! gfdgfdgfd

but yesss thank you for checking in i really appreciate your kind words love!! <3 how have you been doing yourself and what have you been up to?? i hope you’ve been doing well and staying warm!! <3 take care and stay safe!!! 💖💖💖

[aequilibriium]

justanotherdayinthefirstorder replied to your post “OOC: OMG it’s happening again. I’m getting notes from a post that...”

//Do you have xkit? You'll be able to block a post using that.

OOC: I do, but won’t I keep getting the notes on mobile either way?

[buffyisms-archive]

Below are a list of extensions and how to use them to help you RP on Tumblr. Some of them pertain to help you write (grammer, ect.), some of them make your dash easier to manage, some help organize, some do other things! I use all of these in my everyday RPing and it seriously helps things so much. This has a huge portion on Xkit and all the Xkit extensions that are super helplful. The Xkit is at the bottom of the post, because Xkit is the most popular and well known. P.S. One thing I’ve struggled with is organizing and running multiple blogs on seperate accounts, so there will be quite a bit that will help you with that. P.P.S. I have posted this on my archived blog so it is better for viewing a long post than it is on my current theme.

SESSION BOX

Omg session box is MUST HAVE FOR RUNNING MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS. If you have ever wanted to be logged on to multiple accounts in the same browser, dude this is amazing. You can have one tab be one blog, and another tab be the other. Download it for Chrome here

STAY FOCUSED

is a chrome app that can make you stay focused on writing. It will block distracting websites. How I use it is when I need to do drafts, I will set it to block all websites except tumblr.com/blog/buffyisms/drafts (obvs replace buffyisms with your own url), it will even block the tumblr dash mode. You can set it for a time of day or a certain ammount of time. Download for Chrome

AUTO TEXT EXPANDER

is a chrome app that lets you type shortcuts and it will replace them with longer things. I find this extremely useful for QUICKLY TAGGING THINGS. I talk about different ways to quickly tag in my Xkit secotion below, but honestly I find this so much easier. It stores more and has more freedom. It is so useful if you use fancy tags, or if you have tons of character tags to remember. For example if I type ism in the tag box it will automatically replace it with ( & ⁱ'ᵐ ⁿᵒᵗ ᵗᵃˡᵏⁱⁿᵍ ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ˢˡᵃʸᵉʳ. ⁱ'ᵐ ᵗᵃˡᵏⁱⁿᵍ ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ ᵇᵘᶠᶠʸ | ɪꜱᴍꜱ. )

WORD COUNTER

is an app that you can highlight a bit of text and right click and hit word counter and it will tell you how many words are in it. This is good if you want to match your partners reply and make sure yours ins’t too short, or long, or whatever. For example this paragraph has59 words. Download for chrome

NEW XKIT. AKA the HOLY FUCKIN’ GRAIL of tumblr roleplaying. Since Xkit has like five million things on it, I will be listing the Xkit extensions that help me with roleplaying, what they do, and how to use them. Seriously Xkit is God, and if you RP on a desktop/laptop I would HIGHLY recommend getting Xkit. First off all, you can download Xkit here for google chrome, they have Xkit for firefox as well. IMPORTANT: DOWNLOAD NEW XKIT NOT THE REGULAR XKIT AS IT DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE. YOU CAN’T HAVE BOTH AT ONCE. ONLY HAVE NEW XKIT INSTALLED.

XInbox What it does: Enables you to tag answer posts before you post them. This is amazing, and necessary if you use any kind of tagging system at all. Delete multiple asks in the mass editor mode. This is good if you are cleaning out your inbox or if tumblr fucks up and gives you multiple of the same ask someone sent you Tags usernames automatically aka it will tag any answer you publish with the askers username. This makes it so they can find it in their tracked url tag. Tags anonymous posts with a tag of your choosing if you have a certain tag for anons. Tags answer posts with a tag of your choosing if you have an answered tag. If you have different tags for ooc and ic asks I wouldn’t use this feature.

One click postage This is my favorite feature and I literally can’t be on tumblr without this anymore. In short what this does is create a hover pop up over any reblog button on dash so you can reblog straight from dash. You can use keyboard shortcuts to queue, draft, ect. Buttons to straight post reblog, queue, or draft post Creates a green already reblogged button to let you know that you may have already reblogged that post. Remove caption option and a box to replace caption

Tweaks This comes with every Xkit and is a huge list of any tweaks Xkit can give you. P.S. There are tons of tweaks and i’m not gonna list them all, just the ones that I use to help me RP. Wrap Tags so you can read all the tags someone uses on a post without it getting cut off. Show new post icons on secondary pages aka your blog page, your queue, your drafts, ect. You can create a new post from anywhere. Always show the move to top button on queue aka any post can be immediately moved to the top of the queue. Show the mass post editor and blog setting button

Anti Capitalism Gets rid of ads, which is amazing because none of us want them.

Blacklist This is a must have for anyone with triggers. This doesn’t just block tagged things, but it go through the text of a post for your trigger words. It has two options one is a warning for trigger word posts and the other will just not show them.

Editable Reblogs This is a MUST HAVE. This allows you to once again be able to cut posts, because no one likes a dash that has 32094380x replies and takes up the whole dash. Just click a little button and you can edit any part of a post. Including you’re partners reply, you’re previous reply. Also good for those little survey things so you can actually fill them in, or bold them, or whatever.

Notification Block This will block notifications from you’re activity page on a certain post. (Note: only works on the actual activity page and not the activity pop up.) If you’re like me and you make tons of ask box memes or little guides just like this one, you totally need this one. If you have a post that has become popular and ruined your activity so you can’t see the activity you actually need to see to RP, this will make it so it does not appear on you’re activity page if someone reblogs your post. This goes without saying, but don’t use this on thread posts that ya know, you actually need to see when someone reblogs it. Example, if this guide right here becomes popular I can make it so it doesn’t mess up my activity page. (although i’m posting it on my archive blog because my current blog has a theme that would make this harder to see). HUGE NOTE: To get this to work right you should have GO TO DASH installed (that I will talk about soon). So to get this to work, pull up the post on YOUR OWN BLOG and click the little hand. This will take it to the post on your dash. At the bottom with all the other buttons, there will be a button with a hand and a lightening bolt. Click this to stop all notifications for that certain post.

Outbox This saved your sent asks. It saves the last 50 of them. It saves both things you send people and private replies. Super good if you need to reference something with plotting or if you can’t remember if you sent that person the same meme.

Post Archiver This is a totally underrated Xkit extension. It is amazing if you have multiple RP accounts. It is also good for tons of other things too. So pretty much you can ‘save’ any post into the xkit archive popup. If you see a post you don’t want to reblog or queue yet, but don’t want taking up your drafts, you can click the button with a down arrow at the bottom of it and save it to Xkit’s Archiver. With multiple blogs I use this if I see a musing post or a meme that doesn’t work for the blog i’m on but I would love to use it for my other blog. You can have categories you can save to that helps organize your archived posts. I’ll have a category that will say ‘Buffy memes and musings’ and when I log on to Buffy I can view them and reblog them on her. This is also amazing to save resources. Any guides or anything you can use later on, save to the archiver and view them any time.

Post Block This is amazing if a post people reblog keeps on appearing on your dash and you don’t wnat to see it anymore. Pretty much makes it so you don’t have to see the post anymore

Quick Tags Dear God, this is another one of my life savers. This adds buttons to when you reblog or post a post, both in reblog from dash and normal reblog, to add tags that you choose. I will say that this only adds 30 tag bundles. But each tag bundle can contain tons of tags. Some people will add tons of tags to a bundle and delete the ones they don’t use. For me that’s too much. But to each their own. I use this for quick tagging musings, memes, character photos, promos, ooc posts, ect. With the click of a button it’s already tags. Amazing if you use fancy tags, or can’t remember all your tags.

Reblog Yourself Literally you can reblog yourself. Good for rebloggin your self promos

Tag Tracking Shows tags in sidebar to track. Essential for tracking your url tag and group verse tags.

View My Tags Another amazing thing to help you tag everything. You can use instead of or with quick tags. This shows you your most recent fifty tags. and you can search for certain ones. Because it does most recent tags, if you use this I would do frequent tag drops.

Bookmarker Adds a little line divider on your dash from the last thing you read. Great for lurking on the dash, it will tell you that you had already read (or sometimes havent read but last time you refreshed the dash) below that line.

Old Sidebar Returns tumblrs old sidebar. I love this because you can easily get to you posts, queue, drafts, ect.

Tag Replacer Must have if you redo your tags. You can put in your old tag and it will find everything tagged with that and automatically replace that tag with your new one. Amazing for redoing tags and maintaining blog organization.

Auto Tagger I use this to automatically tag certain kinds of posts. I.e. it will tag all queue posts with my queue tag, or all audio or video with a tag you have for those kind of posts.

Find Inactives Omg essential for cleaning your dash. it can find blogs that have been inactive for an ammount of months that you set. Unfortunately it can’t unfollow them for you, but finding them is like 3/4 of the battle! This will keep your following number to the people that are active on your dash

Enhanced Queue Totally freakin essential for anyone that uses the queue for anything, ‘specially if you queue replies. My favorite feature is shuffle queue. If you queue up a bunch of gif sets from a blog but don’t want them to come out one after another, or queue up replies but don’t want them all stacked up, you can shuffle the queue. Note: It will only shuffle the posts you have loaded. If you want the whole queue shuffled, scroll down until the end of the queue is loaded. On that note, if you have a large queue but don’t want some of your replies to end up coming out two weeks later, when you queue up your replies, only load one or two more times and then shuffle. That will keep them still in the front. Just don’t shuffle the whole thing after or it will redo that.

Hermes Underrated GOD of xkit. If you ever scroll through your dash for a long time, you will notice things starting to lag and it’s so freakin’ frustrating. This is because your browser still has to remember and keep loaded those posts from the start of your dash. Hermes makes all the posts you have already seen blank, so your browser doesn’t take as much memory to remember them and lessens dash lag.

Mass Deleter This will delete all your current drafts or likes. Now for the drafts, I don’t find that useful unless you are legit clearing out everything. I wish there was a way to toggle the draft button off because tbh it’s a scary button. But it has a confirmation pop up so don’t worry! On the other hand I love the delete all current likes. It keeps my likes more clean.

Shorten Posts Do long posts bother you on your dash? Whether they are memes or other peoples replies or whatever. But you don’t want them to completely disappear, because hey! you might need them. You can set a set pixel length and all posts will be shorten to that. You can click a button to expand the post to it’s original if you want to read the whole thing.

WEBSITES TO HELP YOU WITH THEME STUFF

Pictaculous you can upload your theme background or sidebar pictures and it will give you a color scheme to use on your blog

Screenfly is a site you can view your blog on different screen sizes to make sure it looks good on all screens. Includes ipad and mobile phones too.

Subtle Patterns by toptal has tons of subtle backgrounds that work with tiled backgrounds. Great for pop ups, or your theme background, or graphics, or really so much.

WEBSITES TO HELP WITH WRITING STUFF

Tone Analyzer is so freakin’ cool. Paste your writing or replies in, and it will tell you what emotions you emote in it. Not just which ones, but the percentage of each, and which phrases, sentences that have those certain emotions. It is just so freakin’ cool PS if you’re an angst queen like me, it’s just gonna say sad most of the time lmfao.

Grammerly is a google chrome app that can help you correct your grammer way better than the autopmatic spell corrector.

Readable is a website that you can paste your writing into and it will analyze it and tell you cliches you have, or if your sentences are too long, ect.

OTHER USEFUL/COOL WEBSITES TO HELP WITH RP

CopyPasteCharacter is great for all those symbols that you might need for anything. It has like all of them and by clicking on them you automatically copy them.

Aestheticizer this is great for any kind of fancy script. Put in words or sentences and it will convert them into any kind of fancy text. This is awesome if you use the new fancy tags trend because then you don’t have to copy and paste every character.

Discord is pretty much an online alternative to skype. Create a chat group and invite people and just chat ooc or ic!

Evernote is a notebook organizing website that I use to help me keep track of EVERYTHING. Tag names, things I owe, plot ideas, everything!

[tonystarktogo]

thank god for xkit cause i had part two in my outbox: 2/2 then he started wondering if there was something wrong with him. also the moment someone proposisoned him or even groped him during parties or in clubs, tony would freak out internally. he realized that he's really scared and kinda repulsed by sex. and that probably meant that he started feeling even more alone - because who would want to enter a relationship with someone who doesn't want to have sex?

OMG the angst potential! I love it! Thank god this wasn’t lost because that really would’ve been a shame!! 

(And here’s part 1 for everyone else: ½ i may not be able to talk to you about non-abstinent ace!Tony, because i’m the other kind of ace, but i can talk to you about the tony who is kinda scared of sex, if you want? :D like, just imagine teenage!tony who has no idea that asexuality exists. and who has never been interested in sex or making out. he probably just thought that he hasn’t met the right person yet. but then everyone around him was getting into relationships and having sex and he never wanted any of that.)

So I read this beautiful headcanon and was like “Just the other day I wrote this adorably fluffy story, so maybe this time I add a little hurt first and then I’ll do it again!” :) And my muse had no time for my shit because ahahahaha how about no.

This is pure angst. I’m so sorry.

Tony already had enough self-worth issues before he realises this particular truth about himself and learning he doesn’t want sex doesn’t help at all. Because everyone wants it. Movies, books, conversations, jokes, sex is everywhere, no matter how implicit, and it makes Tony feel more isolated than ever before, like there is this collective insider joke he just doesn’t get.

Sometimes - though, admittedly, rarely because communicating his emotions has never been something he’s been good at - Tony tries to talk about this. Mostly with Rhodey, who’s safe in a way the rest of the world isn’t. The problem is he lacks the words to describe what he feels and the courage to explain what he thinks the problem might be and though he knows even his best friend can’t read his mind, he still can’t bring himself to actually say it. What’s there to say anyways? I’m broken? I think sex is disgusting?

Instead Tony does what he always does, self-destructive being his middle name. He pushes. He goes out too often and too long, drinks way too much, says yes too often and no not nearly enough, puts himself into uncomfortable and downright terrifying situations. It’ll go away, he thinks and downs another drink. You’ll just have to get used to it, he convinces himself and pretends like the haze swallows the sick feeling in his stomach.

It doesn’t.

It doesn’t go away. He doesn’t get used to it. It doesn’t get better.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Rhodey whispers after a particularly bad night, gently carding through Tony’s sweat-drenched hair. He doesn’t remember a lot of the last few hours, but he probably owes Rhodey a lot more at an answer at this point, and anyways, it’s not like he can keep the words imprisoned any longer, he’s too tired and his thoughts are muddy and slippery, and he just-

“I hate sex.”

He passes out.

Things don’t get better. Not really, not for a long time. Tony doesn’t know how to fix this, himself, perhaps too focused on fixing the wrong thing from the start, Rhodey doesn’t know how to help or even what’s wrong and things just stay where ever it is they are.

Tony gets a girlfriend. It’s different, this time, because he knows her name. It’s Jemilia. He doesn’t know if he likes her, but she doesn’t push, barely even touches him and he loves that. He still feels nervous every time they meet, heart in his throat because every time he thinks this is it, she’s going to kiss him now, but it doesn’t happen. They break up because the only person worse at communication than Tony is Jemilia. He keeps her number saved in his phone, because she doesn’t save him, but she becomes a turning point. 

He stops partying. Stops having casual sex. Dates. Sticks with those who want to wait with sex until marriage, those who doesn’t look at him in ways that make his stomach turn, those that earn Rhodey’s approval.

But. There is still the guilt of using them like this, the heavy weight of things he still can��t bring himself to say, the self-hatred, it’s all still there. He simply buries them deep within himself, until he looks into a mirror and believes the smile he sees. 

He waits for someone to call him out on it but nobody does.

You know how sometimes you start your writing in a dark place so the comfort in the end is even sweeter and then it gets darker and darker and the comfort does just .not. come? *hides behind blanket fort*