#had to make a new post even though i disabled something on xkit.

[sckiro]

Munday Meme // @shensheng-aoman​ // accepting.

it got too long but I aint complaining!

😀 ; Do you enjoy your interactions and rp community?

I do. I love each one whether they are short or long. I get really excited when a plot is placed by either me or my rp partner.

😁 ; Have you made any friends since creating your blog?

A few and we chat when we can. I’m happy that they are very open and kind.

😉 ; Are there any ships for your muse that you enjoy, or ships that you would like to see happen?

I mean it’s still in the works. I wanna see more of Genichiro x wolf (sekichiro) and Emma x Wolf. (Dont know a ship name.)

I also would love some crossover ships to happen. It would honestly be cool. (And some of you may know I have been shipping my muses together. Coff.) Also maybe some ships to happen on my Genichiro blog. I will probs reveal a potential ship to a friend of mine. But at the same time, I don’t wanna spoil the surprise.

Also, ships I want doesn’t have to be romantic all the time. I even want the ones that are platonic or hate ship. or you know a friendship that ends.

😳 ; What is something or someone you have always wanted to write with? i.e. a particular plot, a character, etc.

I would like to write many aus because a lot can be done and be fun. I even would like to rp with characters I see in fanart. the recent ones I saw were hanzo(OW) and Amaterasu (okami). I even would like to do some yakuza and stuff. But it really depends on who and what the plot will be. I do my best to be open and have time to sit down and plot.

or just you know kick myself in the ass and throw my muses at friends.

Plots: The one I would love to do is where Wolf’s parents are still alive and he is just a sweet boy. Another would be after Kuro has passed away and he has nothing to do except carve. There are more but I can’t list them right now.

😠 ; Is there anything you dislike about your muse?

Nothing I can think of right now. I love him way too much....

😮 ; What is your favourite thing about your muse?

His dedication to meet his duties no matter what happens to him. His priority is his mission before himself.

Also that he loves sweets.

😍 ; Is there anyone who inspires you or that you look up to?

I can name a few. Like ones who just kept my sanity up and when I needed them. @shensheng-aoman​ ; @akachan-no-kage​ ; @miscreux​ ; @not-draven-draaaven​ ( @lovely-murderous-innerbeast​ i gotta tag your artblog since you’re there more often. c: )

Literally, I am always inspired by you guys and I love you so much. Honestly, it’s not always about rp. like irl things too!

😂 ; What are some similarities between you and your muse?

We quiet boo.

🤔 ; What are some differences between you and your muse?

He is more blunt and honest to a fault. Meanwhile I sugar coat things. I used to be very blunt but you know, being so honest it just hurts people. Like it was mostly advice and opinions but you know, they took offense. Kfksndksdfsjlajkdjf

🐶 ; Do you have any pets?

No. Not personally. My friends have their cats doe. They roam around and require sooooo much attention.

🐼 ; What are some of your favourite hobbies?

I like sewing, drawing, playing video games, listen to podcasts of anything horror.

🦁 ; What is your current big obsession?

Oh boi what is my current obsession……Buying games right now??? Like I need to stop because my wallet cries. But I need to buy these games!

[rannadylin]

So, since the option for @new-xkit-extension users to keep the old dash (with working Xkit extensions) appears to be gone now I’m just gonna start a list both for my own reference and for requests to tumblr staff of the extensions I am now finding it hardest to do without, more or less in order of how much I miss them. Feel free to add your own must-haves! (and the list at https://github.com/new-xkit/XKit/issues/1802 is handy for tracking which extensions in Xkit have already been updated for the new dash...)

[ETA a read more as my list got longer than I expected!]

Read Posts: oh my goodness when I’m catching up in the morning, or in the evenings after work once going back in to work will be a thing, it is so frustrating not to have that dimmed post tell me that I’m all caught up now! How many posts will I obliviously scroll through multiple times before realizing I saw that one the last time I read through my dash? The fact that many posts show up multiple times in reblogs makes it even harder to keep track of where you left off, so the disabling of this extension has thrown my tumblr routine into considerable confusion. I’m either gonna end up rereading everything from the last time I caught up or I’m gonna not catch up all the way because I’ll see a reblog that I know I saw in my previous catch-up session and it’ll actually be someone else’s reblog of the same post so I’ll miss whatever came before it.

No Recommended (or possibly it was Anti-Capitalism): it’s supposed to hide the recommended posts that come from your followed tags and then just show up on your dash as if you were following the OP. At least I think this is the extension that was removing those for me? It’s actually checked on the list linked above so maybe it was a different extension that had this covered. At any rate, the first I realized the “revert to old dashboard” option must have been eliminated was when I started seeing these again, sigh. Now I may just unfollow all my followed tags and see if that stops them from throwing up random blogs I didn’t ask to see.

Shorten Posts: Oh my goodness things are so LONG now. And is the font bigger? Less of each post, especially longer or photo posts, fits on the screen at a time and so it takes longer to get through it. Might have to unfollow blogs as well as my followed tags just to have the time to keep up with what I do follow.

Read More Now: UGH, “Keep reading” links open in a separate tab again. :-( It’s a hassle and RMN made it so much more streamlined.

ETA: When not on the dash but on the dash-style version of my own blog (so tumblr.com/blog/rannadylin that is), clicking the “Keep Reading” opens up like this extension used to? Hm i’ll need to check next time a read more comes up on my dash whether it’s been updated to work there too...

Quick Tags: Looks like if reblogging or making a post from your dash you can no longer use this extension to add tag bundles for quick & easy organization of posts. Oh my goodness. I’m already tired at the thought of typing them all out by hand. (Side note: The Activity page seems to still be untouched by the changes - extensions that apply to it are still working - so if you go to that page first then click the new post icon, you can use the tag bundles. No good for reblogging though, unless you are reblogging a post from your activity page somehow?)

Auto Tagger: Not quite as annoying as the loss of Quick Tags since this one I mostly just used for things like “queue” and “ranna reblogs” on non-original posts and “from the desk of ranna” on original posts, and that’s just one tag to add. But you can be sure I’ll forget to add them most of the time, so there goes that layer of organization (and the option of blocking those tags if you didn’t want to see that portion of content from my blog). 

Cancel that; it looks like this one is still working as I just attempted to reblog something and my auto tag for that showed up!

Er...maybe not, since it just used my original post tag on a reblog instead of the tag that should go on things I reblog.

Tag Tracking+: I mean, this one won’t be necessary if I have to unfollow my tracked tags to make tumblr stop putting posts from the tags on my dash from blogs I don’t follow, but also now it’s not as simple to find those followed tags...so that I can unfollow them...

Header Options: I used this to “Show my blogs on the header” so I had quick links to switch between this, my main blog, and sideblogs like @roleplayers-of-eternity and @pillarspromptsweekly. So that’s just a few extra clicks to do that switching but still it slows things down overall. Heeeey, this one just got updated and looks functional on the new dash now! Huzzah!

Blacklist: Well, the new tumblr has something of the sort built in but I haven’t blacklisted as many things there as I had in Xkit so I’m not entirely sure yet (until I start comparing blacklisted phrases on the posts that are being hidden by whatever) if this one’s still working or if it’s just tumblr’s blacklisting that’s working. I suppose as long as we have one functional version of this it’s fine. (On a third thought, it might be the separate-from-Xkit Tumblr Savior extension that’s working again now? While I had the Xkit “Revert to old dashboard” option switched on I don’t think TS worked with that but maybe it’s been updated for the new dash?)

OK after some cross checking I think it is Tumblr Savior that has the blacklist phrases I’m seeing with a “Content Warning” hiding the post. Not sure if Xkit’s Blacklist is also working but that is quite possible...we’ll see if I can find a post hidden that is only blacklisted there...

ETA: Annnnd I just saw a post blocked with a tag I only had blacklisted in the Xkit Blacklist! So, good, it looks like all versions of blacklist functions are working.

Now for one that wasn’t even an extension, I don’t think: you know how you can hit J to scroll down a post and K to scroll up a post? Well that still works; but previously you could then hit the right arrow key to go to the next page of posts if you don’t have endless scrolling on (or left arrow to go to the previous page if you need to) and it appears those no longer function that way. So farewell to mouse-free dash scrolling, I guess, gonna have to click that Next > button every time manually now.

Also, upon going to my Queue to see if there are extensions broken there that I will miss (e.g. Scroll to Bottom for when you need to quickly find the most recent thing you queued to adjust tags or something), it...isn’t actually showing any of my queued posts? What?

As noted earlier, the Activity page is not yet switched over to “new” tumblr, and it looks like the Inbox isn’t either, so the Outbox extension still works which is great for old folks like me prone to forgetting whether we already sent that ask we meant to send. *ahem* In other words, if the Inbox switches to the new engine or whatever and this extension goes away, UGH.

ETA: Oh and I just noticed as I added some indented bullet points to the list above...they’re all showing up at the first level of indentation, not outline-style like intended, when viewed on the actual dash. Sigh.

On the bright side of the changes, it definitely seems to load faster on the new dash! And as I’m going through my list of Xkit extensions there are several that I see are actually redundant now because their functionality is already a part of the new dash. If Tumblr can incorporate the usability features that we used to have to turn to 3rd party extensions to supply, that’ll be great!

[citrineghost]

A Letter to WordPress

Dear WordPress,

Tumblr has been around for a good while now and many of us have been here since the beginning (or close to it). It’s become something of a comfort and a home base for many. You can understand then why it’s so terrifying and tension-setting when a new owner comes around.

This website has been through a lot of changes, very few of them good in recent years. I want to open up a dialogue from the user base about our feelings and desires surrounding this site, because to so many of us, not only its design and function, but its success and future are a big deal.

Obviously not all of the things I list below will be universal opinions, but I’ll try to outline some of the things I’ve seen the majority of users want. I’ll also throw in some things that are more personal, because I can’t claim to know everything the rest of the users want, but I can tell you where I see obvious problems.

First and foremost, here’s an obvious one. You can’t really go anywhere on Tumblr without knowing: we want the bots and the nazis gone. We need some kind of captcha system for every time someone wants to include a hyperlink in a post or response. Until the staff count gets higher, I would honestly suggest closing down the report system for everything but bots, nazis, and death threats/suicide bait.

Make NSFW content welcome again. Outside of porn bots, the pervasiveness of NSFW content is slim to none. As long as minors and those with ‘NSFW’ blacklisted aren’t seeing the NSFW content, there’s nothing wrong with it being here. A large number of the people posting NSFW content on here are artists who use this content to make a living on commissions. The ban has done nothing but make valuable members of the Tumblr community leave and take their art elsewhere. The focus should be cracking down on anyone who isn’t properly tagging NSFW content with ‘NSFW’. If the focus is put on that, the problem with NSFW content will be null.

Please keep Tumblr unintegrated with other social media. Most users will agree, the anonymity is such a huge part of what draws us to Tumblr. Other people only know what we tell them and it’s very appealing for our real life accounts (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) to be completely separate. When users want to share links to other accounts, they can do so easily with links on their blogs.

Replace ads with either, better, more sensible ads or members content. A large part of the ads on Tumblr make absolutely zero sense just by looking at them. Not to mention, they’re all completely unfit for the user base. I’ve seen weight-loss ads (harmful to the many people on the site recovering from eating disorders) and ads for products most people wouldn’t need or want until their forties. Most of the user base is 13-35, if I had to guess. I can tell you right now, you would make more money and the user base would be much happier if ads were removed in favor of members content. Adding a paid membership that allows users to gain access to new features (rather than restricting what’s already here) would be a huge boost in morale and company income. Use that income to improve the site. Don’t get comfortable making more than the bare minimum in profit until the website is functioning reasonably well. Hint: it’s not right now.

Keep the base functions of Tumblr. Don’t try and get radical, hoping big changes will excite the community. They won’t. We’re creatures of habit and we just want memes, fandom, and relatable nonsense. Keep reblogging, replies, customizable blogs, tags, and likes functionally the same.

Be receptive to bug reports and post change logs so that the community knows that they’re being addressed and fixed.

These are the obvious pleas of the community. Please keep in mind that the heart of Tumblr is in its users and if you ostracize us, there will be nothing left. We love this website and we want to see it thrive as much as anyone. We just don’t want to sacrifice the spirit of the community in the process.

Read more under the cut if you want to see some more of my own personal suggestions. I’d love for other users to sound off in the replies with whether they agree with any of the pleas or suggestions and also give their own!

Okay, so, here are some personal opinions that are by no means the voice of the community. I think they’re pretty sensible, but what do I know?

Change back the color. I hate this saturated navy color and I’m pretty sure a lot of others do too. I’m part of the disabled community and I know and have seen people saying that these extremely contrasted colors that were added are making their Tumblr experience worse. It gives people headaches due to light sensitivity and, frankly, it’s ugly. If you’d like to cater to those who are visually impaired/colorblind, that’s fantastic! Do so with an account setting that turns on higher contrast mode or adds patterns to things to make them distinguishable.

Add an option to blog suggestions and posts that have shown up on your dash from followed tags that says “Stop Suggesting This.” I’ve been suggested a number of blogs that I’m not interested in following. I don’t want to block the user, but I do want some different suggestions and for those blogs to stop showing up in suggestions. I’m also tired of seeing the same post twenty times from a tag I follow. There is currently an option that says “This particular posts sucks.” While I think that was a great attempt at catering to the community, I don’t want to use it because my intuition says that there’s a negative connotation. Does me saying the post sucks make it show up less for other people? Does it lose popularity? I can’t tell. The only thing I know is that I don’t want to say that a good post sucks just to make it quit showing up on my dash.

Implement some of the features that XKit uses. I would bet at least a quarter, if not more, of Tumblr users use XKit to make using Tumblr less painful. That shouldn’t be the case. Tumblr should have these functionality options available in dashboard settings.

A very hot take here that many might disagree with: Make notes viewable more like mobile has them. As it is, it’s hard to tell which ones I’ve seen on desktop. It can be tricky on mobile too, honestly, but it’s easier than on desktop. I would also heavily suggest making the unseen notifications darker so that they stand out and making a button to indicate that you’ve seen them.

Keep the dash, messages, notes, and profile as separate processes similar to how mobile has it. The trek all the way down the damn dashboard is a long one. I want to be able to see notes and messages in full size without losing my dash progress. When I switch back I want to be right where I was. I understand if this one isn’t possible or practical. It was just something I like about mobile over desktop but I’m aware that they’re two different beasts with different capabilities.

As far as the aforementioned members features, I do have some ideas, but I can’t guarantee they’re the best the user base has to offer. I’m sure others could think of better. Anyway, some things I’ve thought of are groups/clubs, digital currency, and separate dashboards. So, as it stands, You can have multiple blogs on one account. People can follow them separately. That’s fantastic. What would also be nice though, is being allowed to make separate dashboards. This would probably take up another chunk of server space, so I understand if it isn’t feasible right now, but I would jot it down. The ability to separate shitposts, aesthetic imagery, fandom content, and NSFW would be amazing. If you follow a huge number of blogs, like me, you could even make a friends dash so that you don’t miss your friends’ posts. It would just be a matter of allowing people to add and name their new dashboards. Then, when they go to follow people, it prompts them to choose what dash their content goes to. You could even simplify it by making the follow button default to the main dash, but adding a little dropdown arrow beside it. You could then choose which dash to add them to from a list. Below are some bad paint-drawn concept drawings.

Anyway, I hope this has all been helpful in some way. I’m fairly certain that WordPress will never actually read this, but it was cathartic to write and I hope it will be cathartic for someone else to read.

Sincerely, birb-ghost

[cosmosogler]

hi guys! i had REAL BAD dreams!! so i got up late!

actually i woke up earlier than my alarm (i hadn’t been able to fall asleep until after 2, and i woke up around 9-ish?) and i ended up laying on my back staring up at the ceiling fan for a while. just watching it go. it reminds me that i am in my own home, which i pay for with my own money, and which i live in. sprawled out staring up at the ceiling fan. 

i got up and poked around. didn’t really feel like doing anything. i finally made up lunch and biked over to the department around 12. i had lunch and then went to the drc at 1:15 in the rain. the appointment was... productive. we talked about my accommodations. i’ll be looking at testing help next.

i got screened for a learning disability. based on my answers, the new helper person came to the conclusion that i have depression.

that reminds me. i have two appointments tomorrow, one on friday, one on monday, one next tuesday, and one next wednesday. I CAN’T KEEP DOING THIS!!!!!!

anyway after i got back i really struggled to do any studying. i got through one day of notes in stat mech, which is like 20 minutes’ worth of reading. it took me two and a half hours. what else was i even doing? i don’t remember. i installed xkit at some point hoping it would fix my broken ass activity feed, but it didn’t. i still can’t see 80% of the activity on the comic page in the feed. and stuff keeps disappearing after i’ve seen it too which makes the numbers even lower.

i came home and was too tired to make any dinner. i eventually got up and put something in the microwave. and... hmm. i cleaned the bathroom a little bit, which i had been putting off. i put off a lot of chores this weekend that i’ve been getting to very slowly.

i also finished two things for the comic! i cannot post either of them yet, so they are sitting on top of the huge “draft” post pile. but it’s nice to have them out of the way. it’s the avatar image i’m going to switch to next, and a notebook reference picture for the new character that’ll be showing up in the next part of the story. i have two more digital pictures i want to finish before the end of july. one’s got a thumbnail and i like how it looks, i just need to actually draw the picture. the other one i don’t quite know what i want yet. 

ummm let’s see. i think that’s about it. i wish i could stop having awful dreams. last night there was a running theme of “i am minding my own business / trying to solve a problem when people who are supposed to be helping me decide to put me in severe danger or just kind of be assholes.” 

i don’t remember how often i write about this here, but i’m a little disappointed at how many people have told me they’re gonna read the comic and then haven’t. when i offered to show keegan the other week he directly asked for a link and told me he would tell me what he thought. that was over a week ago. harrison’s bff zoe never got to it and he’s been nagging her after she said she was really interested. apparently he showed her one of my pictures (that made me panic at the time) and zoe didn’t say anything to me about it but according to harrison she gave it a “glowing review” to him. natalie last spoke to me over two weeks ago now, and even then she hadn’t looked past the first four pages a week before that last message. 

at least taylor said “when it’s done” which is easier to take as an indirect “no.” i wish people would do what they say they are doing. 

i don’t know what i’m doing wrong. i don’t know why SO MANY PEOPLE in my life make commitments they don’t keep. i can’t even go out and have fun with my friends because they commit to going to the bar or whatever and then when the time comes they aren’t even around. keegan asks if we want to play smash at a certain time and then when we say yes, he goes home a half hour before we were supposed to start.

i wish harrison wasn’t the ONLY PERSON who actually kept his commitments. i feel walled in. i hate having just one, like, actual friend in my community. i just wanna go to the movies sometimes, you know? 

my classmates keep making huge plans the day before they want to go out. i’m a little upset that one guy asked to go to the beach this weekend the day before he wanted to leave and he still got people to go along. i don’t know if those plans fell through or not though- they didn’t post any pictures. my plans fell through and i made them weeks in advance specifically scheduled so that the most people could go.

it’s hard for me to gather up the resources to attend this stuff when i only know about it the day before, though. i went to soham’s... that was like 50-60 minutes of biking total and i was so tired the next day, and they didn’t actually make enough food so i biked home hungry all the way up the hill for 3 miles... 

ehh i’m whining. i should stop. i don’t understand why it hurts so bad. it makes me feel like i don’t matter.

it makes me feel like i don’t matter to the people i care about. who i thought cared about me. 

i’ve been getting that feeling a lot lately. with the department leaving me out in the cold when i thought i was on really good terms with some of the people who made kind of nasty comments to me... friends who say they’ll hang out or look at my art and then don’t. i hope i’m not asking for too big a time commitment. i thought playing video games wasn’t that bad. but we haven’t done that in months now and i put so much effort into repairing / replacing the controllers for smash. i put that together just so it would be easier to play and no one wants to. i don’t know what to do. i don’t know how to matter more to these people that i care about.

i know that makes me an annoying tryhard. i know. i just want friends so bad. i want my classmates, these people i’ve known for a year and who i care about, to have a good time and not be miserable because of our workload. i bring in candy, i bring in games, i fix the controllers... i know i can’t ASK them to hang out, i can’t pressure them, but i keep hoping maybe they’ll want to do something or spend time with me. AND THEY SAY YES! AND THEY MAKE PLANS! and then they don’t keep them. they change their minds at the last minute.

i’m relieved that my money is back in place, for the most part... like i have a definite course of action there. but i still feel so lonely and miserable. even online i feel too shy to really reach out to more than one person at a time, and trying to talk a lot doesn’t necessarily mean we become friends.