#it used to be in reverse chronological order

[ghostzzy]

i hate when websites update.

[slightly-nerdy-rambles]

Robstar Week Day 1: Self Reflection (Prompt: Friends to Lovers)

Howdy y'all, it's Robstar Week! After missing out last year, I knew I had to try and get some sweet sweet Robstar prompts in for this year's week, and here we are! As I've mentioned previously, a few of this week's stories are actually going to be ones I started but never finished last round. More on that later, but this particular prompt is all from this year.

The "friends to lovers" prompt was an interesting one, because what sounds like it should be straightforward becomes a bit odd with the long and winding road of "sort of together but not" that Robin and Starfire went through before finally making their relationship official. I ultimately decided that, rather than take the obvious route of setting this around the end of that road, I would explore one of the earlier turning points in which they seemed to start getting that little bit closer. In the process, I ended up doing a lot of exploration on Starfire's feelings and motivations during "Date with Destiny." That episode has a somewhat frustrating place in the fandom because of how people who take only a surface look at Starfire use it as a basis to assume she's just some crazy jealous girl (despite the fact that Robin is, ya know, completely and openly hating the date with Kitten and she has literally no reason to be jealous). But if you take the time to seriously think about Starfire's character and her experiences around this point in the series, her over-the-top reaction to Kitten becomes absolutely fascinating.

Self Reflection

Starfire stood in front of her bedroom mirror, smoothing out the little wrinkles in her dress and checking her hair to ensure it was properly brushed and styled. She was quite fortunate to have some Earth formalwear for the occasion of this “Junior Prom,” and if she were being honest with herself, she was more than a little pleased for the chance to wear it.

Now, what else did her research into the prom event say she needed? An entry ticket, which Robin had managed to procure for himself on the grounds of being a hero on a mission, so she would simply do the same. An accessory or two to complete her “look,” for which she needed to go back and scrounge a little more in her closet. And preferably a gift for her date. A dead plant for him to wear was traditional, so that could –

Starfire shook her head, her nose wrinkling a little in displeasure. “Robin is not your date,” she reminded herself aloud. She leaned over her arms on the dresser and scowled at her reflection. Why had she even thought that? The whole purpose of this venture, aside from gathering intelligence on Kitten, was to protect Robin from her depredations. Robin and Starfire were not even romantically involved.

The scowl in her reflection softened into a thoughtful frown, and she let her gaze drift to the side and tapped a finger on the dresser’s wood. Earth courting rituals were so very strange, and perhaps that was her problem. From her understanding, humans began “dating” long before they were ready to even consider marriage, and could begin and end such relationships on a whim and almost exclusively without the aid of a sanctioned matchmaker.

Except on occasions like tonight, when this gremplork’s supervillain associate was forcing Robin to join her on an official date-outing that felt uncomfortably similar to a political marriage. As a princess of Tamaran, Starfire was only too familiar with the occasional necessity of such a union, and she had long ago accepted that she may one day need to enter into one for the good of her people. But Robin was no prince nor king, and Killer Moth’s demands were excessive and inane. She was not going to let Kitten take advantage of them.

Starfire’s scowl returned, and she stared deep into the reflection of her own narrowed eyes. “So why does it feel like I am defending my own mate?” she muttered to herself.

What should have been an easy answer was more complicated than she cared to admit, and maybe that part was her own doing. She was well aware that she harbored an attraction to Robin, but she had yet to discern whether he felt the same for her. For such a dear friend, he could be most obtuse at times. Perhaps she should have tried harder to understand.

Starfire sighed and pushed away from her dresser to seek out accessories for her outfit, but her thoughts continued unabated. Until recently, she had mostly been content to consider him a close friend – her best friend, really. It was only practical, not just because she was not sure of his thoughts on the matter but because there was still a chance she would eventually be called back to Tamaran.

Perhaps this change, this new instinct niggling in the back of her mind to claim a mate and defend that claim from rivals, was nothing more than a natural result of her recent Transformation. It was the point at which Tamaraneans reached sexual maturity, after all, and she had anticipated some change in her brain chemistry to go with it. She was sure that had at least something to do with her recent agitation, but at the same time, the bashful attraction that lay behind it had been there for a while.

In all, it seemed as though everything was coming together now to force her to consider what she felt for Robin – truly consider it, not just as a nice thought in the back of her mind but as a serious question of where to go from here. But was this an appropriate time to act on her feelings?

After testing most of her admittedly small collection of jewelry against her dress and finding it ill-suited, Starfire finally settled on a pair of long white gloves instead. Robin had already left to finish his own preparations, and with the late time she would have to procure her ticket and anything else she needed quickly. She was about to head out the door when she paused by the mirror one last time, watching her own contemplative expression as she pondered the stray thought that had led to this time of self-reflection in the first place.

After several moments of consideration, she decided to bring Robin the dead flower after all. She should probably not seek his own affections outright – regardless of everything, attempting such a bold move now would only complicate the mission further – but if nothing else, the show of support might help to lessen Kitten’s ludicrous claim to him. And maybe, for now, that would be enough.

[dashiellqvverty]

911 fic writers be normal about latino characters challenge (impossible, apparently)

[mackmp3]

Just curious!!! A lot of my mutuals use the algorithm and I wondered where you stood! If you used the algo i would tag you in posts i reblog with you in mind more frequently

you reblog posts w/ me in mind...................omg..............

hehe did i miss something you wanted me to see? you cant send me a link on anon still if you like :)

[turtleramen]

sorry for being inactive .too much has been happening . sorry for the enstars, also

[missionlameturtle]

the thing that’s most funny to me about how broken tumblr’s search engine has become is that once upon a time it was actually really reliable

[ravenh37]

Yes! They really do need that. I would like to see my earlier posts but I don't want to scroll for days to get to them!

I wish Tumblr had a “reverse chronological order” function for a blog so I could see what I was about back in 2015. But only for me. The relationship between you and your teenage self should be a confessional situation

[liebemoiplease]

Yeah thanks tumblr for putting a post I have categorised as Do Not Want To See in my For You section

[imaginarypasta]

i just feel like we’re at a point where podcasts can and should be organized by something beyond all episodes in reverse chronological order

[goatsandgangsters]

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

[lilium-in-blue]

📝

[bisexualbaker]

Why do people keep recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative, when Dreamwidth and Tumblr are so different?

To be flat-out honest, it's because Dreamwidth has so many things that Tumblr users say they want, even if it's also lacking a lot of features that Tumblr users have come to love:

Dreamwidth has incredibly lax content hosting rules. I'd say that it's slightly more restrictive than AO3, but only just slightly, and only because AO3's abuse team has been so overwhelmed and over-worked. Otherwise, the hosting policies are pretty similar. You want to go nuts, show nuts? You can do that on Dreamwidth.

In fact, Dreamwidth is so serious about "go nuts, show nuts", it gave up the ability to accept transactions through PayPal in 2009 to protect our ability to do that. (It's also one reason why Dreamwidth doesn't have an app: Dreamwidth will never be beholden to Apple's content rules this way.)

Dreamwidth cares about your privacy; it doesn't sell your data, and barely collects any to begin with. As far as I'm aware, it only collects what it needs to run the site. The owners have also spoken out on behalf of internet privacy many times, and are prepared to put their money where their mouth is.

No ads. Ever. Period. They mean it. Dreamwidth is entirely user funded.

Posts viewed in reverse chronological order; no algorithm, opt-in or otherwise. No algorithm at all. No "For You" or "Suggested" page. You still entirely create and curate your own experience.

The ability to make posts that only your "mutuals", or even only a specific subset of your "mutuals", can see. Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie, Clyde, Butch, and Cassidy? You can do that! Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie and Butch, but Clyde and Cassidy can't see shit? You can do that, too!

The owners have forsworn NFTs and the blockchain in general. Not as big a worry now as it was even a year ago, but still good to know!

We are explicitly the customers of Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth wants to make us happy, so any changes they make (and they do make changes) are made with us in mind, and after exploring as many possibilities as they can.

Dreamwidth is very transparent about their policies and changes. If you want to know why they're making a specific change, or keeping or getting rid of a feature, they will tell you. You don't have to find out ten months later that they're locked into a contract to keep it for a year (cough cough Tumblr Live cough cough).

So those are some things that Tumblr users would probably love about Dreamwidth.

Another reason Dreamwidth keeps being recommended is that a significant portion of the Age 30+ crowd spent a lot of earlier fandom years on a site known as LiveJournal. Dreamwidth may not be much like Tumblr, but it it started out as a code fork of LiveJournal, so it will be very familiar to anyone who spent any time there. Except better.

Finally, we're recommending Dreamwidth because some of the things that Tumblr users want are just... not going to happen on the web as it is now. Image hosting is the big one for this. Maybe in the future, the price of data will be much cheaper, and Dreamwidth will be able to host as much as we all want for a pittance that a fraction of the userbase will happily pay for everyone, but right now that's just not possible.

Everywhere you want to go that hosts a lot of images will either be running lots of ads, selling your data, or both.

Dreamwidth knows how much it costs to host your data, and has budgeted for that. They are hosting within their means, within our means.

Dreamwidth is the closest thing we may ever get to AO3 as a social media platform. One of the co-owners is from, and still in, fandom; she knows our values, because they are also her values. It may as well be the Blogsite Of Our Own.

[reasonsforhope]

Masterpost: Reasons I firmly believe we will beat climate change

Posts are in reverse chronological order (by post date, not article date), mostly taken from my "climate change" tag, which I went through all the way back to the literal beginning of my blog. Will update periodically.

Especially big deal articles/posts are in bold.

Big picture:

Mature trees offer hope in world of rising emissions (x)

Spying from space: How satellites can help identify and rein in a potent climate pollutant (x)

Good news: Tiny urban green spaces can cool cities and save lives (x)

Conservation and economic development go hand in hand, more often than expected (x)

The exponential growth of solar power will change the world (x)

Sun Machines: Solar, an energy that gets cheaper and cheaper, is going to be huge (x)

Wealthy nations finally deliver promised climate aid, as calls for more equitable funding for poor countries grow (x)

For Earth Day 2024, experts are spreading optimism – not doom. Here's why. (x)

Opinion: I’m a Climate Scientist. I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore. (x)

The World’s Forests Are Doing Much Better Than We Think (x)

‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief (x)

Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View (x)

Young Forests Capture Carbon Quicker than Previously Thought (x)

Yes, climate change can be beaten by 2050. Here's how. (x)

Soil improvements could keep planet within 1.5C heating target, research shows (x)

The global treaty to save the ozone layer has also slowed Arctic ice melt (x)

The doomers are wrong about humanity’s future — and its past (x)

Scientists Find Methane is Actually Offsetting 30% of its Own Heating Effect on Planet (x)

Are debt-for-climate swaps finally taking off? (x)

High seas treaty: historic deal to protect international waters finally reached at UN (x)

How Could Positive ‘Tipping Points’ Accelerate Climate Action? (x)

Specific examples:

Environmental Campaigners Celebrate As Labour Ends Tory Ban On New Onshore Wind Projects (x)

Private firms are driving a revolution in solar power in Africa (x)

How the small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu drastically cut plastic pollution (x)

Rewilding sites have seen 400% increase in jobs since 2008, research finds [Scotland] (x)

The American Climate Corps take flight, with most jobs based in the West (x)

Waste Heat Generated from Electronics to Warm Finnish City in Winter Thanks to Groundbreaking Thermal Energy Project (x)

Climate protection is now a human right — and lawsuits will follow [European Union] (x)

A new EU ecocide law ‘marks the end of impunity for environmental criminals’ (x)

Solar hits a renewable energy milestone not seen since WWII [United States] (x)

These are the climate grannies. They’ll do whatever it takes to protect their grandchildren. [United States and Native American Nations] (x)

Century of Tree Planting Stalls the Warming Effects in the Eastern United States, Says Study (x)

Chart: Wind and solar are closing in on fossil fuels in the EU (x)

UK use of gas and coal for electricity at lowest since 1957, figures show (x)

Countries That Generate 100% Renewable Energy Electricity (x)

Indigenous advocacy leads to largest dam removal project in US history [United States and Native American Nations] (x)

India’s clean energy transition is rapidly underway, benefiting the entire world (x)

China is set to shatter its wind and solar target five years early, new report finds (x)

‘Game changing’: spate of US lawsuits calls big oil to account for climate crisis (x)

Largest-ever data set collection shows how coral reefs can survive climate change (x)

The Biggest Climate Bill of Your Life - But What Does It DO? [United States] (x)

Good Climate News: Headline Roundup April 1st through April 15th, 2023 (x)

How agroforestry can restore degraded lands and provide income in the Amazon (x) [Brazil]

Loss of Climate-Crucial Mangrove Forests Has Slowed to Near-Negligable Amount Worldwide, Report Hails (x)

Agroecology schools help communities restore degraded land in Guatemala (x)

Climate adaptation:

Solar-powered generators pull clean drinking water 'from thin air,' aiding communities in need: 'It transforms lives' (x)

‘Sponge’ Cities Combat Urban Flooding by Letting Nature Do the Work [China] (x)

Indian Engineers Tackle Water Shortages with Star Wars Tech in Kerala (x)

A green roof or rooftop solar? You can combine them in a biosolar roof — boosting both biodiversity and power output (x)

Global death tolls from natural disasters have actually plummeted over the last century (x)

Los Angeles Just Proved How Spongy a City Can Be (x)

This city turns sewage into drinking water in 24 hours. The concept is catching on [Namibia] (x)

Plants teach their offspring how to adapt to climate change, scientists find (x)

Resurrecting Climate-Resilient Rice in India (x)

Other Masterposts:

Going carbon negative and how we're going to fix global heating (x)

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Tumblr is so intuitive to me that I'm fascinated by people who use algorithms. I was explaining to a Grindr date why I only use Tumblr and I explained that you can opt out of the algorithm and he was like "then what do you look at?" And that question was so crazy to me. What do you mean what do I look at? I look at the people I follow in reverse chronological order. I'm pretty sure that was the default before meta properties and Twitter got algorithms.

[changes]

Tuesday, June 18th, 2024

🌟 New

The first cut of settings for communities is now available. Admins of communities can change the name, tagline, avatar, header image, tags, and description. You can find a link to these settings in the sidebar for your community on desktop, or in the context menu on mobile.

The community invite popup has been given a design refresh, including a counter of how many invites you have left.

Communities now display whether they are public or private in their header.

Community admins can now promote members to moderators. Moderators can delete posts, and we’re still building out the feature, so expect to see things change in the next few weeks!

We’ve updated the blog posts API endpoint to add the options to specify a sort order and an “after” time, to complement the current option to show posts from “before” a specific time. When using “before”, and by default, posts are sorted in reverse-chronological order (“descending”). With “after” and “sort = asc”, you can sort posts from oldest to newest instead, starting at a certain time.

🛠 Fixed

Since secondary blogs cannot post to communities yet, your primary blog will now always be selected when posting to communities.

Certain activity coming from communities, such as mentions in posts and comments, and soon invitations, now count towards your unread activity total.

🚧 Ongoing

We are aware of ads auto-playing audio in the Android app, sometimes quite loudly, and are working on a fix!

🌱 Upcoming

We are working to rename Community Labels to Content Labels across our official clients (Web, iOS, and Android), as well as Community Guidelines to User Guidelines. We hope this change will prevent any potential confusion regarding the relationship between these and Tumblr Communities.

Experiencing an issue? Check for Known Issues and file a Support Request if you have something new. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Wanna support Tumblr directly with some money? Check out the new Supporter badge in TumblrMart!

[owlhousetarot]

Six of Swords: Willow and Amity Begin Reconciling

Upright: Departure, transition, moving on, leaving behind, distance, accepting change, releasing baggage

Reversed: Unfinished business, unresolved tension, trapped, resistance to change, stuck in the past, avoidance

The Six of Swords represents a moment of transition, a movement from one stage of life to the next. The Swords suit deals with matters of the mind, which include one's thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and memory, as well as conflict and communication. The Six of Swords poses the question: what thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs do you want to carry into the future? How will you let your experiences, good or bad, inform the way you live your life going forward?

Amity and Willow certainly have unaddressed baggage at the beginning of Understanding Willow, and both are actively avoiding addressing it: Willow by putting the photo-memories of Amity "out of sight, out of mind," and Amity a bit more drastically by burning herself out of the memories altogether. This of course backfires on her, as the fire spreads to Willow's other memory-photos and damages Willow's actual memory in the process. This serves as a wake-up call for Amity as well as a microcosm of the state of their relationship: she has caused Willow harm, and must address it or lose Willow forever.

Going into Willow's mind and repairing their happy childhood memories reminds Amity what it's like to have a real friend, and having to confront the manifestation of Willow's rage and hurt makes her reconsider her priorities. She isn't fully ready to forsake her parents, nor does she fully cut ties with her friend group, but she apologizes to Willow, promises to treat her better, and swears to protect her from her friends' cruelty.

Willow and Amity both discover that while they can't quite go back to the way things used to be between them, they can't simply bury their past friendship and pretend it didn't exist, either. While damaging Willow's memory was dangerous and irresponsible of Amity, it gave them the opportunity to communicate with each other and decide whether and how to move forward. In the end, Willow decides that she wants to carry her memories of Amity with her into the future, so they have a chance to create new ones together.

Deck Order:

< Previous: Five of Swords | Next: Seven of Swords >

Show Chronology:

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