#making a new thread for my tracker!

[ambercast]

(continued from here with @ofescapisms )

Star lifted her head, huffing. "Some kid is slamming books around. Giving me a damn headache. I thought libraries were supposed to be quiet." She dropped their head into one hand. "Can you like . . . go tell them to stop or something? You work here, right?"

[xflashbastardx]

{ drafts are down to 20, still have things in the inbox, kind of debating if I should empty some of them out or not. It's not that I don't want to answer them so much as it is I feel kinda bad about how long some of them have been sitting there while I wait to be hit with inspo, so it might be better to clear them out and let people send new stuff.

Still, I'd say all in all, not a bad amount of progress over the last day or so

Also btw, if anyone's been waiting on a reply long enough that they no longer want to keep the thread, it's ok to tell me. I'm never gonna get my feelings hurt about dropped threads.}

[the-rat-house]

Since Tumblr can't be damned to make their site Work, a reminder that I have a public thread tracker here that you are free to view! If we have a thread ongoing hat isn't on here, please let me know! On the flip side, if there is a thread on here you want drop, also let me know! I won't be upset, I just want to keep my tracker organized.

[umbral-stigmata-unbound]

@fenrir-limitbreak​ || Cloud and Kadaj Thread from Here

His words were so cruel, and so wrong, and despite Kadaj’s desperate desire to gain Cloud’s support, to finally have him accept who he is and join him, his rage overtook such wishes and feelings and he stepped up on Cloud with a shaky growl in his voice. “Don’t SPEAK of her that way!!”

He made a grunted noise of frustration, stomping to pace around him, like a predator debating if he should eat his meal or tear it apart out of spite.

“She is no threat, she is salvation and transformation this pitiful planet has needed, and you know it!! You’ve seen the corruption, you’ve fought it! ShinRa! Fools! Humanity just keeps choosing new festering sores to tear into...moving from Mako, but what do your allies find now...? Oil? It is the unstable toxicity at this planets core...but Mother..” he gasped his name, as if she were the breath surging into his chest, a smile spreading across his lips. “...Oh, Mother, she’ll change it all..!”

[ctrlsugar]

BACK BY REQUEST : MY PERSONAL SERVER TEMPLATE.

below is a guide for the channels, as well as tips and tricks for using this template and a few recommendations for bots. ( link & image heavy )

NOTE: this is an outdated template, and is not the server i currently use - if you would like to see an updated version of this ( my roleplay group or 1x1 roleplay servers, or others ), please let me know!!

GET THE SERVER | FREE ( tips appreciated !! )

BOT SUGGESTIONS.

tupperbox ( for proxying your muses for discord roleplay )

writerbot ( for writing sprints, goals & prompts )

reminder ( for reminders / birthday updates )

threadtracker ( for tracking threads on discord )

TIPS.

messletters ( for fancy text )

this entire tag by @dayslily ( for discord tips & tricks )

turn on community for the forum features ( linked to tutorial )

WELCOME CENTER.

ooc : updates / generally in large community servers you can subscribe to get updates sent to you personal server, this is a good place to send them. alternatively, you can utilize webhooks to send your tumblr notifications to your discord server in this channel. ( see tutorial here ).

ooc : emails / i use this channel to keep track of my logins for various tumblr blogs and other websites.

ooc : reminders / using a bot, i set this channel to have reminders for various things, such as personal reminders, roleplay to do list and even character & partner birthdays

ooc : todolist / you could use a bot, or just manually update this channel with your current todolist.

ooc : drafts / i will occasional leave drafts to replies here so i can come back for them at a later point

BOTS.

bot : writing / my preferred bot for this is writer bot - linked above, i use this channel to set/check my goals, set up writing sprints, and occasionally get prompts for writing.

bot : tupperbox / i like to set up all my tuppers in privacy, so i find having my own sever with a channel makes it easy to change my avatar and other tupper information quick and also to test them without spamming a group tupper channel. ( tupperbox - linked above )

bot : reminders / i will often set up a channel for reminders because i'm super forgetful and having a reminder bot helps me get to tasks in a timely manner ( when i remember to set up the bot!! lol ) ( reminder bot - linked above )

bot : tracker / i'm not sure if this tracker has the function to work cross server yet, you'd have to check with the makers on their github, but this is great for 1x1 and group servers. ( thread tracker - linked above )

DEVELOPMENT.

dev : names / a channel to store ideas for muse names, etomology, etc

dev : prompts / a channel to store ask memes, character & writing prompts, etc

dev : inspiration / a channel to store character/muse inspiration, photos, videos, posts, even just a list of words/aesthetics, etc

dev : brainstorm / a place to spitball ideas for new muses and/or plots, i like to utilize the voice message feature here and just talk out my ideas so i can listen back to them later when incorporating them into a new muse.

dev : headcanons / a channel to store headcanons ( if utilizing the community feature, you could make this a forum and separate the headcanons into posts for each muse : see image below for example ).

dev : faces / a channel to store resources for you muse face claims, i would store social media posts, photoshoots, gif set links, etc ( if utilizing the community feature, you could make this a forum and separate the faces into posts for each face claim : see image below for example ).

ROLEPLAY.

rp : masterlist / a channel to host your own character masterlist, you can format this however you like, or even use forums - you could link to other channels in the muse category.

rp : plots / a channel to post links and ideas for plots wanted for muses and roleplay groups.

rp : wishlist / a channel to post roleplay wishlist items, links, ideas, etc

rp : promotions / a channel to post links for roleplay promotions either to your own groups or groups that you'd like to keep an eye on.

rp : groups / i use this channel to store the links to my current roleplay groups, links to the main blog, any relevant sideblogs, as well as a list of muses i currently have active within them.

rp : partners / helpful for storing a list of mains (for indies), with names, pronouns, links to rules, muses, etc - or for 1x1 lists of partners.

RESOURCES.

all of these are pretty self explanatory, you can store resources you use for tumblr and other types of roleplay in these channels, gifs, icons, templates, themes, etc.

ACTIVE MUSES.

muse : name / you can basically store your muse information, biographies, links to blogs, musings, edits, and whatever else you like. ( if utilizing the community feature, you could make this a forum and separate items into posts : see image below for example )

CONNECTIONS.

ship : name • name / similarly to the muse section, you can store your ship dynamic and details here, links to you partner's blog, ship tag, edits, headcanons, etc ( if utilizing the community feature, you could make this a forum and separate items into posts : see image below for example )

[mostlysignssomeportents]

1900s futurism

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

I'm profoundly skeptical of the idea that the future can be predicted, and doubly skeptical that sf writers are any kind of prophet. The former grotesque fatalism (if the future can be predicted, then what we do doesn't matter); the latter is tragicomic hubris.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

That said, few people have been more consistently useful in understanding and anticipating (and yes, building) the future than my friend and colleague Karl Schroeder, whom I've known since I was 16 years old. Karl was the first person I heard say the world "internet." Also: "fractal," "World Wide Web," "ftp," and numerous other touchstones of the future just over the horizon.

Karl is, in fact, a futurist ("foresight consultant") who approaches the work with the same shrewd insight, wild imagination and humility that he brings to his fiction. In a new essay written with both his futurist and sf writer hats on, he nails down the toxic shadow cast by the 20th century sf, or, as he calls it, "The Science Fiction of the 1900s":

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/the-science-fiction-of-the-1900s

Karl starts by describing the odd "double vision" of the future of the 1900s. On the one hand, many of us (myself included) were convinced that nuclear armageddon was inevitable. Unlike the unhinged architects of the nuclear arms-race, realists understood that a nuclear war would effectively end the future. As Einstein put it, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

But the flipside of that certainty that the future would end with the first nuclear strike was the belief that if we could just somehow walk the tightrope over the chasm of nuclear holocaust, we'd emerge in a future worth looking forward to: "a new era of peace and prosperity for all."

Contrast that with the existential dread of today's polycrisis: environmental collapse and political decay up to and including fascism. These aren't the binary proposition of nuclear annihilation vs Utopia – rather, they're a continuum of worse-and-better outcomes of every description. As Karl writes: "It’s not that simple. Our future now is an exhausting spectrum of scenarios, each with its own promise, and its own problems."

For Karl, we have entered a new epoch, but we've dragged in the long-expired way of imagining (and hence creating and navigating) the future with us. What makes this a new epoch? For Karl, it's the kind of future on our horizon. He cites Charles C Mann’s 1491, a superb history of the Americas before Columbus:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107178/1491-second-edition-by-charles-c-mann/9781400032051/readers-guide/

1491 radically reframes "the patchwork of propaganda and inference" that makes up the received narrative of the so-called "New World." It describes a land of flourishing cities, art, science and culture "in the Americas while Rome was just getting its act together." Contact with colonizing Europeans was a disaster for First Nations people, who call this period "The Invasion." It was an epochal break.

Futurism is an inextricably historical discipline. The willingness of some settler-colonialists states to consider this epochal break forces us to reframe our literal place in history, the story of the land under our feet. At its best, this futuro-historical work can begin the long work of reconciliation, as with the Canadian government's promise of $23b in reparations for the First Nations people who were kidnapped as children and sent to murderous "residential schools" before, during and after the Sixties Scoop.

The sf of the 1900s is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. It's a literature that was steered by open fascists like John W Campbell, who explicitly saw the literature as a means of inculcating a societal narrative of the triumph of white, corporate technocracy over all other forms of government:

https://locusmag.com/2019/11/cory-doctorow-jeannette-ng-was-right-john-w-campbell-was-a-fascist/

Karl isn't the first sf writer to try to overturn this orthodoxy – indeed, it was continuously challenged by radicals within the field, as with the New Wave, personified by the likes of Samuel Delany and Judith Merril (who both mentored and introduced Karl and me):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/13/better-to-have-loved/#neofuturians

The cyberpunks took a good hard run at it, too. For plenty of writers (including me), Bruce Sterling and William Gibson's 1981 story "The Gernsback Continuum" was a wake-up call:

http://writing2.richmond.edu/jessid/eng216/gernsback.pdf

Not for nothing, William Gibson has long insisted that his 1984 classic Neuromancer should be read as utopian: after all, it depicts a future in which the inevitable nuclear war only reduces a few cities to radioactive ash, sparing the rest of the planet.

Bruce Sterling once paid me the supreme compliment of describing a 2003 story I wrote about the ways that algorithms will enshittify self-driving cars as "making everybody else in the business look like they live in a dark basement growing on the mulch from old STAR TREK scripts":

https://craphound.com/stories/2005/10/12/human-readable/

Schroeder – along with today's new radical sf writer cohort – wants to fashion a fictional futurism that is fit for this world and its crisis: "in our modern technological society, science fiction tells us what to spend our time and money on." The fact that our mediocre billionaires are mired in the sf of the 1900s means that we're getting some decidedly old-fashioned futures.

For Karl, Musk is a poster-child for this profoundly conservative, backwards-looking vision: "He’s fighting the intellectual battles of the last century, a 1900s hero dropped into the 2000s with an unlimited budget to reshape the future to fit the era he’s from." Musk's obsessions – "Space flight. Settling Mars. Cyberpunk-style brain-computer interfaces. Artificial Intelligence. Self-driving electric cars. Humanoid robots." – are 1900s science fiction.

Ironically, much of this fiction labels itself "hard sf," despite the fact that interstellar travel is utter fantasy – as is mass-scale, near-term interplanetary civilization:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

Karl wants "a future for the 2000s." He points to some efforts to make this happen, like Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph anthology, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/hieroglyph-ed-finnkathryn-cramer

The "Hieroglyph" is Stephenson's shorthand for a recognizable, tangible, meme-able gizmo or other touchstone for a 2000s-era vision of the future – a replacement for jetpacks and flying cars. Karl's story for the anthology, "Degrees of Freedom," focuses on an abstraction (governance: "the single most important thing humanity can focus its creative energies on right now"), and by Karl's own admission, it's not quite the hieroglyph Stephenson was looking for.

But Karl did come up with a hieroglyph in a later work, the "deodands" of 2019's Stealing Worlds – a software agent "that believes it is some natural system, such as a river or forest, and acts in its own self-interest, that being the preservation and thriving of that natural system":

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/18/karl-schroeders-stealing-worlds-visionary-science-fiction-of-a-way-through-the-climate-and-inequality-crises/

(My own contribution to Hieroglyph was very gadget heavy – "The Man Who Sold the Moon," about autonomous lunar 3D printers. It won the Sturgeon Award):

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/

I've been impressed with Karl since the day I met him in 1987. There's no one whose thoughts on the future I'm more interested in hearing. I don't think that's a coincidence, either: Karl is an autodidact who was raised by a Mennonite TV repairman – the first TV repair shop in the Canadian prairies. If you want to understand the future, try being raised by someone who takes that kind of deliberate approach to which technology to adopt, and how.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

[blindfoldcd]

BLOG UPDATE.

1.) This coming work weekend (Wednesday and Thursday), I'm going to be cleaning up my blog. This includes softblocking my long list of following/followers. If we are mutuals and you are still interested in roleplaying, please LIKE THIS POST. Comment if you have sideblogs so I know who not to softblock/unfollow. Just feeling overwhelmed and cluttered and I want to curate my dash better to save it for rps with my friends.

2.) After that, this blog will be newly labeled as MUTUALS ONLY. Rules and pinned will be updated to reflect this change.

3.) I'll be making a thread tracker and proper interest check posts for me to keep track of things and find potential new friends and partners.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.

[ambercast]

(continued from here with @ofescapisms )

Mads finally looked up from his phone, making a face when he saw it was one of the cops. "This whole place stinks of unnatural shit. Maybe it one day will miraculously start working. You don't know." He set the phone on the counter next to him, though, screen-down. "Can I help you?" they asked then with absolute condescension.

[saingirl101]

Okay had some time and shitposts to really think about the finale of FHJY

I literally have rewritten this post several times thats how complex it feels.

Spoilers under the cut

First off I love that potential threads are hanging in the air particularly for adaine and kristen.

Character wise kristen ironically could have been the most complete storyline after FHSophY however with how Ally played her this season i think narratively she is the bad kid who absolutely needs a continuation for her story - tracker, bucky, her messy enemiess beebees ship, her parents, the whole buddy/bobby dawn thing, FUCKING KALINA, like the way brennan ended the season its like he's T-ing up another narratively perfect season for kristen.

Fabian, our darling boy makes several strides in improving himself and several steps back in other ways. I for one would die from laughter while he deals with having a GF, his mom, step father and grandpapa all living in the same house with a new elf baby (and also potentially stepsibling Fig).

Adaine - godamn what a fantastic narrative season as well, her confidence this season was so hot and siobhan continues to just be a dream TTRPG player. Like she's been killing it with her character decisions, impeccable comedic timing, and knowledge of the game out of the park for literally the past year and half.

Riz, like my god, such a perfect season for him and getting to see his character growth as well. He's also literally the hottest he's ever been and while I am sad he is aroace so i cannot make an OC to smooch him, he's just so fucking ool it doesn't even matter. ALSO RIZ YOU HAVE MULTIPLE QUEER PEOPLE ON YOUR TEAM YOU CAN DEFINITELY TELL THEM YOU ARE AROACE KING.

Gorgug, wow what a fucking season. Zac always kills it with his characters but besides the bit in freshman year I don't know that I ever clicked with gorgug as much as I did this season. He also had an amazing arc all those nat 20s in the last stand, the nat 20s to get them the academic help while he took on four years of school in one year, using his aertificer stuff to help take down his literal nemesis and the person whose put him down for years.

And now we come to fig and my controversial opinion. I still feel like despite them trying to T-up this possibly being emily's fairwell from playing fig I don't feel like narratively it makes sense. theres just still so much in the air and I would love to see her relationship with ankarna grow and blossom. Also despite the talk theres just so much left unresolved between her and sandra lynn. That said I'll be sad but understand if emily plays another character if they do ever make FHseniorY. THAT SAID, BRENNAN YOU OWE ME A SEASON OF GILEAR SHENNANIGANS. FIG DID SAY SHE MIGHT MOVE INTO SEACASTER MANOR, LET HER PULL LOONEY TOONS SHENNAIGANS TO PREVENT FABIAN FROM MURDER THEIR NEW SIBLING.

[thedoctornumber11]

Permanent Starter Call 3.0

Liking this means

1. You’d at some point like a starter.  Everyone who likes this will get a starter at some point, even if it’s not right away.  If you can’t like, feel free to comment or reblog instead.  Just make sure I know what muse and blog!  Please only interact if you are an RPer with an RP blog.

2. You don’t mind being tagged in random starters at any point.  Once one thread comes to a conclusion, there’s a good chance I’ll tag you in a new one randomly.  Or just when I feel like it.  Who knows.

3. You don’t mind me sending you random asks and memes and headcannons and general OOC conversation.

4. You acknowledge that I enjoy being sent ask memes and I have no problem with people tagging me in random starters.  It also means you’ve read my rules and sent me the thing saying you’ve done so.

5. We can just generally be best friends because you liked this.  I’ll probably send you ooc messages just to say hello a lot and in general you don’t mind me sending you lots of stuff!

This basically goes on forever and ever.  At any point I can randomly tag you in a starter, send you a meme, a message to start conversation, etc.  One might call this more of a friendship call than a permanent starter call, but permanent starter call works too!  It’s kind of the same as those interest trackers you see, except I find those a bit confusing and this easier.

[belovedcorvidarchive2024]

I'm moving this blog, officially!

Cora's blog is too busy to be a sideblog, and my primary is beyond a point where I feel comfortable just resurrecting it (hah) as is. So I'm going to be remaking with this one as my primary. Eden, who I still love very many will be a sideblog to Cora's and urls should stay the same unless something horrendous happens the moment I swap over.

( PS if you're OC friendly you should go visit my spooky boy at @malpractising he's OP focused there but I'm mentally flexible and want to throw him at people OTL )

But! With that this place is going to be even more of a mess as I get myself re-situated. Here's some things I'm doing!

Clearing my Inbox! This is what I'm doing right now - I'm going to finish what I can in there. Anything I answer can carry on if you like, will just be doing that on my new blog. Because of this, I'm going to not reblog any more memes until I move.

Harassing everyone individually to the best of my ability about what they want to keep! My first post will likely be a really big thread tracker OTL

Making a proper thread tracking sheet where I can see everything in detail and keep things organised (or die try).

That's roughly the plan! Thank you for being patient with me and my revolving door of illness. OTL If you could, I'd appreciate it the most of all if you'd give me a shout if there are things you'd like to carry on with, either right on this post or as a DM / Disco message. I'm going to be picking through my last couple months or so of notes to generate a list but the chances of me missing something is real because it's me.

[gothamsaved]

` ＊ PERMANENT INTERACTION CALL.

To keep this as short as I can — as someone with bad anxiety but a stronger want to start poking Mutuals more, I figured putting something like this out there helps a ton to know who is alright with me being a friendly pest. It’s meant to reassure me people are alright with me kicking their doors in with my muses.

` ＊ INTERACTING WITH THIS POST LETS ME KNOW YOU’RE OKAY WITH THE FOLLOWING …

↳ You’re alright with me sending you *Askmemes as soon as I see they’ve been reblogged along with sending the occasional *Unprompted Ask or *Surprise Short Starter. Sometimes they’ll just be Bruce commenting on ongoing threads — think dash-commentary style. Others are just *IC / OOC Questions. Basically this just gives me permission to be a menace to your inbox without feeling guilty.

↳ You’re alright with me replying to any *Open Starters I spot, even if we already have one or more threads ongoing. Just a heads up I will aim to keep these short since they’re usually spontaneous threads done for fun. If they happen to get longer? I’m here for it!

↳ You’re alright with me tagging you in *Dashgames when I do come across them. Along with tag you in *Musings, Aesthetics &&. *Muse Song Posts if they remind me of your muse &&. our interactions.

↳ Piggy backing off the last point, there are no promises made, but if it’s alright that I make the occasional *Edit through *Gifsets of your muse or our muses dynamic, *Aesthetic Edit Posts or *Web Weavings. Even the occasional *Drawing / Doodle. Chances are, if I’m inspired or invested enough &&. have the time to spare, I do enjoy doing these for close Mutuals!

↳ You’re alright with me making *Headcanon Posts as our muses dynamics develop through ongoing interactions. This is a recent thing I’m trying to start doing more of, where I make headcanon *Directories for muses on my end to better keep track &&. document HC’s. I heavily value developing bonds between me &&. my writing partners muses so if it is alright with Mutuals that their muse is *mentioned in posts like this?

Please let me know in a comment or DMs! Usually I will ask permission to write these out beforehand.

↳ You’re alright with me giving you my *Discord so we can talk more OOC to chat or to discuss ideas &&. our current threads / plot possible future ones. I struggle with this, but I would really love to discuss headcanons more when they crop up, along with just getting more used to screeching to partners about how much I loved recent replies. Just a warning is I am a little shy &&. my social battery can vary between extra outgoing to having no energy to respond back, so as long as that’s alright! I am making grabby hands!

＊ Please note that interacting with this post also gives you permission to do any of these things right back. If you want me to do only some of these things but not others, please, feel free to comment in the notes or let me know in private.

↳ Lastly, if you have yet to fill out my *Interest Tracker — I highly urge you to so I know how best to approach you in the future along with what dynamics you’re interested in pursuing! It’s not mandatory but it helps so so much.

The purpose of this post is simply meant to reassure that there is a shared interest in interacting more in the future, mainly for my own anxiety since I do struggle a lot with pushing myself to poke new folks without feeling like I’m being a bit of a bother. It’s usually why I rely heavily on starter calls &&. inbox calls so I have that known permission to toss my muses people’s way.

[ashleycodes]

SOMETHING HOLY V7 (not for sale)

back from the dead like that piece of glitter you swear you vacuumed up last week... something holy! which of course means that 7 months after re-opening, i had to make a new skin for it. this skin includes: - full custom html templates (including custom forum structure) - skin color changes for the main and mini profile & templates that will change accent colors based on the account that’s posting them, as well as the whole skin - last poster avatar on the board index and topic rows - light/dark mode - fizzyelf's auto thread tracker - the love and joy of me finishing my first "from scratch" skin for myself in almost 4 years

[princessmacedon]

{ OOC: housekeeping!

it's been a while since i did one of these and i have a great big mess to clean up ASDFDSD so! threads below the cut, and if i missed something please let me know!

UPDATED:

per suggestion of the newsletter, mun pages ( 🐦 ) ( 🐈‍⬛ ) now have guidelines

both maria and katarina's supports pages have been brought up to date!

threads + thread tracker nonsense below!!

here's my thread tracker! currently, it should contain all of my active threads, excepting those from the ethereal ball and as always, please don't feel as though you need to rush! (especially those of you whose threads i just replied to while fixing my shit AHSDHSDFHSD) this is for my organizational sake HAHA ; i'm glad to continue any and all threads, but if you're not feeling one anymore that's fine too >vo)v

MARIA

Waiting on me:

something old, something new -- @ventusanimae

spirit of healing -- @ashenprofessor

what my cover shows -- @knighteclipsed

all things precious -- @reddragonprincess

red riding hood's basket -- @justices-blade

wondrous tails -- @carefreemonk

with those who favor fire -- @arcelerity

objects in mirror -- @raikuroji

three lions walk out of a field (BOEL) -- @pirrhyc @sharpscion

paperwork perils -- @magictome

land and heavens near -- @lycianlynx

solace in the abyss -- @justices-blade

Waiting on partner:

an end to the song -- @arcstral

sun's shine -- @lycianlynx

shadows in the moonlight -- @hresvelged

birds chasing cats -- @aubins

not dead yet -- @alliberacio

from winter's close emerging -- @hermidetta

i do believe in fairies! -- @nagaficat

KATARINA

Waiting on me:

seeds of hope -- @arcaeda

a blanket of white, unbroken -- @knighteclipsed

a mystery in monochrome -- @gentlenekomata

the road that we walk -- @unsungblade

a day in (un)kingly shoes -- @arcstral

Waiting on partner:

uprooting wallflowers -- @unsungblade

a fleeting fata morgana -- @nabataprophet

cat cat kitty cat -- @unsungblade

cooking by the book -- @amitieos

sham of a prince -- @hosannan

gallowed halls -- @princepsumbra

a night and day we'll never see -- @ulircursed

the mega bonk technique -- @sharpscion

the name of a villain -- @indevouement

TBD:

penpal randomizer -- @gauldheri

ETHEREAL BALL INTERACTIONS

with @cursedbluebird : i'm planning on tacking on an extra reply and have it fade to black if that's alright? :o marianne is so sweet though, thank you for sending her my way!! <3 <3

with @pirrhyc : while i do love lobbing the hot potato around ASDFSDFSDG i think i'll call it there?! but i really enjoyed their little exchange!! :pleading: :boom:

with @frauleindermorgen : i'm definitely down to make this into a mini thread :] unless i misunderstood aDSDDSFHF

ALL MASKS: maria was mask 22! if you'd like to play out the rest of a masquerade thread, i'm down! ^^)7

as always, if you need to contact me for anything, feel free to do so through here or discord!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Everything advertised on social media is overpriced junk

In “Behavioral Advertising and Consumer Welfare: An Empirical Investigation,” a trio of business researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Pamplin College investigate the difference between the goods purchased through highly targeted online ads and just plain web-searches, and conclude social media ads push overpriced junk:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4398428

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/08/late-stage-sea-monkeys/#jeremys-razors

Specifically, stuff that’s pushed to you via targeted ads costs an average of 10 percent more, and it significantly more likely to come from a vendor with a poor rating from the Better Business Bureau. This may seem trivial and obvious, but it’s got profound implications for media, commercial surveillance, and the future of the internet.

Writing in the New York Times, Julia Angwin — a legendary, muckraking data journalist — breaks down those implications. Angwin builds a case study around Jeremy’s Razors, a business that advertises itself as a “woke-free” shaving solution for manly men:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/opinion/online-advertising-privacy-data-surveillance-consumer-quality.html

Jeremy’s Razors spends a fucking fortune on ads. According to Facebook’s Ad Library, the company spent $800,000 on FB ads in March, targeting fathers of school-age kids who like Hershey’s, ultimate fighting, hunting or Johnny Cash:

https://pluralistic.net/jeremys-targeting

Anti-woke razors are an objectively, hilariously stupid idea, but that’s not the point here. The point is that Jeremy’s has to spend $800K/month to reach its customers, which means that it either has to accept $800K less in profits, or make it up by charging more and/or skimping on quality.

Targeted advertising is incredibly expensive, and incredibly lucrative — for the ad-tech platforms that sit between creative workers and media companies on one side, and audiences on the other. In order to target ads, ad-tech companies have to collect deep, nonconsensual dossiers on every internet user, full of personal, sensitive and potentially compromising information.

The switch to targeted ads was part of the enshittification cycle, whereby companies like Facebook and Google lured in end-users by offering high-quality services — Facebook showed you the things the people you asked to hear from posted, and Google returned the best search results it could find.

Eventually, those users became locked in. Once all our friends were on Facebook, we held each other hostage, each unable to leave because the others were there. Google used its access to the capital markets to snuff out any rival search companies, spending tens of billions every year to be the default on Apple devices, for example.

Once we were locked in, the tech giants made life worse for us in order to make life better for media companies and advertisers. Facebook violated its promise to be the privacy-centric alternative to Myspace, where our data would never be harvested; it switched on mass surveillance and created cheap, accurate ad-targeting:

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876?ln=en

Google fulfilled the prophecy in its founding technical document, the Pagerank paper: “advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” They, too, offered cheap, highly targeted ads:

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Facebook and Google weren’t just kind to advertisers — they also gave media companies and creative workers a great deal, funneling vast quantities of traffic to both. Facebook did this by cramming media content into the feeds of people who hadn’t asked to see it, displacing the friends’ posts they had asked to see. Google did it by upranking media posts in search results.

Then we came to the final stage of the enshittification cycle: having hooked both end-users and business customers, Facebook and Google withdrew the surpluses from both groups and handed them to their own shareholders. Advertising costs went up. The share of ad income paid to media companies went down. Users got more ads in their feeds and search results.

Facebook and Google illegally colluded to rig the ad-market with a program called Jedi Blue that let the companies steal from both advertisers and media companies:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/11/google-meta-jedi-blue-eu-uk-antitrust-probes/

Apple blocked Facebook’s surveillance on its mobile devices, but increased its own surveillance of Iphone and Ipad users in order to target ads to them, even when those users explicitly opted out of spying:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Today, we live in the enshittification end-times, red of tooth and claw, where media companies’ revenues are dwindling and advertisers’ costs are soaring, and the tech giants are raking in hundreds of billions, firing hundreds of thousands of workers, and pissing away tens of billions on stock buybacks:

https://doctorow.medium.com/mass-tech-worker-layoffs-and-the-soft-landing-1ddbb442e608

As Angwin points out, in the era before behavioral advertising, Jeremy’s might have bought an ad in Deer & Deer Hunting or another magazine that caters to he-man types who don’t want woke razors; the same is true for all products and publications. Before mass, non-consensual surveillance, ads were based on content and context, not on the reader’s prior behavior.

There’s no reason that ads today couldn’t return to that regime. Contextual ads operate without surveillance, using the same “real-time bidding” mechanism to place ads based on the content of the article and some basic parameters about the user (rough location based on IP address, time of day, device type):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#contextual-ads

Context ads perform about as well as behavioral ads — but they have a radically different power-structure. No media company will ever know as much about a given user as an ad-tech giant practicing dragnet surveillance and buying purchase, location and finance data from data-brokers. But no ad-tech giant knows as much about the context and content of an article as the media company that published it.

Context ads are, by definition, centered on the media company or creative worker whose work they appear alongside of. They are much harder for tech giants to enshittify, because enshittification requires lock-in and it’s hard to lock in a publication who knows better than anyone what they’re publishing and what it means.

We should ban surveillance advertising. Period. Companies should not be allowed to collect our data without our meaningful opt-in consent, and if that was the standard, there would be no data-collection:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/22/myob/#adtech-considered-harmful

Remember when Apple created an opt out button for tracking, more than 94 percent of users clicked it (the people who clicked “yes” to “can Facebook spy on you?” were either Facebook employees, or confused):

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

Ad-targeting enables a host of evils, like paid political disinformation. It also leads to more expensive, lower-quality goods. “A Raw Deal For Consumers,” Sumit Sharma’s new Consumer Reports paper, catalogs the many other costs imposed on Americans due to the lack of tech regulation:

https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/A-Raw-Deal-for-US-Consumers_March-2023.pdf

Sharma describes the benefits that Europeans will shortly enjoy thanks to the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, from lower prices to more privacy to more choice, from cloud gaming on mobile devices to competing app stores.

However, both the EU and the US — as well as Canada and Australia — have focused their news industry legislating on misguided “link taxes,” where tech giants are required to pay license fees to link to and excerpt the news. This is an approach grounded in the mistaken idea that tech giants are stealing media companies’ content — when really, tech giants are stealing their money:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/18/news-isnt-secret/#bid-shading

Creating a new pseudocopyright to control who can discuss the news is a terrible idea, one that will make the media companies beholden to the tech giants at a time when we desperately need deep, critical reporting on the tech sector. In Canada, where Bill C-18 is the latest link tax proposal in the running to become law, we’re already seeing that conflict of interest come into play.

As Jesse Brown and Paula Simons — a veteran reporter turned senator — discuss on the latest Canadaland podcast, the Toronto Star’s sharp and well-reported critical series on the tech giants died a swift and unexplained death immediately after the Star began receiving license fees for tech users’ links and excerpts from its reporting:

https://www.canadaland.com/paula-simons-bill-c-18/

Meanwhile, in Australia, the proposed “news bargaining code” stampeded the tech giants into agreeing to enter into “voluntary” negotiations with the media companies, allowing Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp to claim the lion’s share of the money, and then conduct layoffs across its newsrooms.

While in France, the link tax depends on publishers integrating with Google Showcase, a product that makes Google more money from news content and makes news publishers more dependent on Google:

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-competition-authority-greenlights-google-pledges-over-paying-news-publishers/

A link tax only pays for so long as the tech giants remain dominant and continue to extract the massive profits that make them capable of paying the tax. But legislative action to fix the ad-tech markets, like Senator Mike Lee’s ad-tech breakup bill (cosponsored by both Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!) would shift power to publishers, and with it, money:

https://www.lee.senate.gov/2023/3/the-america-act

With ad-tech intermediaries scooping up 50% or more of every advertising dollar, there is plenty of potential to save news without the need for a link tax. If unrigging the ad-tech market drops the platforms’ share of advertising dollars to a more reasonable 10%, then the advertisers and publishers could split the remainder, with advertisers spending 20% less and publishers netting 20% more.

Passing a federal privacy law would end surveillance advertising at the stroke of a pen, shifting the market to context ads that let publishers, not platforms, call the shots. As an added bonus, the law would stop Tiktok from spying on Americans, and also end Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft’s spying to boot:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories

Mandating competition in app stores — as the Europeans are poised to do — would kill Google and Apple’s 30% “app store tax” — the percentage they rake off of every transaction from every app on Android and Ios. Drop that down to the 2–5% that the credit cards charge, and every media outlet’s revenue-per-subscriber would jump by 25%.

Add to that an end-to-end rule for tech giants requiring them to deliver updates from willing receivers to willing senders, so every newsletter you subscribed to would stay out of your spam folder and every post by every media company or creator you followed would show up in your feed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

That would make it impossible for tech giants to use the sleazy enshittification gambit of forcing creative workers and media companies to pay to “boost” their content (or pay $8/month for a blue tick) just to get it in front of the people who asked to see it:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

The point of enshittification is that it’s bad for everyone except the shareholders of tech monopolists. Jeremy’s Razors are bad, winning a 2.7 star rating out of five:

https://www.facebook.com/JeremysRazors/reviews

The company charges more for these substandard razors, and you are more likely to find out about them, because of targeted, behavioral ads. These ads starve media companies and creative workers and make social media and search results terrible.

A link tax is predicated on the idea that we need Big Tech to stay big, and to dribble a few crumbs for media companies, compromising their ability to report on their deep-pocketed beneficiaries, in a way that advantages the biggest media companies and leaves small, local and independent press in the cold.

By contrast, a privacy law, ad-tech breakups, app-store competition and end-to-end delivery would shatter the power of Big Tech and shift power to users, creative workers and media companies. These are solutions that don’t just keep working if Big Tech goes away — they actually hasten that demise! What’s more, they work just as well for big companies as they do for independents.

Whether you’re the New York Times or you’re an ex-Times reporter who’s quit your job and now crowdfunds to cover your local school board and town council meetings, shifting control and the share of income is will benefit you, whether or not Big Tech is still in the picture.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

Image: freeimageslive.co.uk (modified) http://www.freeimageslive.co.uk/free_stock_image/using-mobile-phone-jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

[Image ID: A man's hand holds a mobile phone. Its screen displays an Instagram ad. The ad has been replaced with a slice of a vintage comic book 'small ads' page.]

[magpiesmemes]

|| Magpie's Tumblr RP guide ||

So it's been a while since I made one of these but with the shut down of omegle, more people are joining the site to rp, I figured I'd explain some of the basics.

Now none of these are necessary, you can just do as you do but these are some of the 'norms' here on tumblr currently. They may change and evolve over time, they've done so countless times in my time on tumblr but here's this for now for those who might find it useful!! Please feel free to offer feedback on this, I struggle with giving instructions so I've tried to make it as clear as possible but my brain isn't the best with this kind of thing. I will correct anything that needs correcting and add things as time goes on, so please do check back if you request an explanation/addition to something as I will try to add it asap.

Last updated: 29/11/23

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BASICS

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Basic Etiquette

Don't reblog roleplays that aren't yours, often this will mess up peoples thread trackers and it's a nightmare.

Rather than reblog asks to continue them as roleplays, make a new post and link the ask in that post. This avoids blog clutter for both parties.

ALWAYS read peoples rules and about pages. No exceptions.

No one is obliged to write their character purely as they are in canon. Canon divergence, au, or just additional headcanons for canon characters is very common. Do not make issue with someone just because their writing for a character doesn't fit with how you see them. It's their character, just don't write with them if you don't like how they write them. Simple as that.

Don't godmod. This means don't take control of a persons character unless otherwise instructed by the other writer, do not assume attacks immediately hit/injure/kill their character without prior planning for such a thing. You can write the attack, just don't assume it lands. This also applies to your character being aware of things - just because YOU know something, doesn't mean your character does.

Mun does not equal muse. Many people play villains because they're fun, don't assume that these people share the viewpoints of such characters just because they're writing them. The RPC would be painfully boring without some villain muses to stir the pot!!

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xkit rewritten

The absolute saviour of tumblr rp when you're on pc, unfortunately I don't believe it's available on the phone app but it's super useful for pc users. For chrome you can find it in the chrome extensions, I'm sure it's available similarly for other browsers. The functions on xkit that specifically benefit rp are: clean feed (for blacklisting any content you don't want to see), mutual checker, tag tracking+ and trim reblogs. Any others are entirely up to your discretion whether you want to use them or not. To use 'trim reblogs' the post must be in your drafts or posted, then you can use the little scissor tool at the bottom of the post to snip off older replies and avoid posts becoming excessively long.

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Settings

So if you're like me and want a chronological timeline for those you follow? Here's how to do that. Go into account settings. Not the blog settings to edit how that looks, you want the settings that has your account info, dashboard preferences, ect. Click 'Dashboard', which should be on the right hand side menu on your screen if you're using pc. Optional: Enable 'Show timestamps' so you can see how old posts are. I find this useful as it ensures I'm not responding to something that is 5 years old lmfao. Scroll down and turn off 'Best stuff first'. This should make your 'Following' tab chronological, ensuring you see whenever people you follow are posting.

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Blog Design

Try to make sure you have a header and an icon for your blog, you can set those using the 'blog settings' tab. Even if there's no picture of your character themselves, try to use an image that captures their vibe - this advice is for both the icon and the header tbh. While not having one isn't bad, it will make people less likely to follow back or perhaps even block you! Often iconless/headerless blogs are spam bots and everyone loathes those.

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Meanings of words commonly used by RP accounts:

Mutuals - Your mutuals or 'moots' are those following you that you follow back. Private - This means that the blog only interacts with Mutuals. Selective/semi-selective - Won't roleplay with everyone, they'll rp with people based on their own preference. Thread - A single rp storyline. Verses - Different timelines of characters. Eg. Kidverse, fantasyverse, ect. Mun/Mundane - You! The writer of the blog! Muse/Muses - Character/s you're writing. Faceclaim - The 'actor' of your muse, whether canon or otherwise. Who do you imagine playing them when writing or whose icons would you use for them.

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Tagging

When writing with someone it's a good idea to put their username in the tags at the very least, this allows them to find your threads easier. ie: '#magpiesmemes' would be used by others if they were to write with this blog.

Making tags for individual threads is also useful, meaning you can find specific rps far quicker. They don't have to be fancy but some people do like to make fancy ones. A nice simple one would be 'Thread: Threadname'.

Also having tags for specific verses is a good idea, indicating to your rp partner what timeline they're writing it. Something like '#kidverse' will do the job but you also can make those fancy.

Having a tag for rp memes you've reposted is a good idea also, meaning it's easier to find if someone wants to send you something. '#memes' does the job just fine.

Lastly, if you're a multimuse then having character tags is a good idea, indicating to people what character they're writing with. Something like '#charactername' is fine but again, any tag can be fancied up to your likings.

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Pinned Post

Having a pinned post at the top of your blog has become fairly standard practice in the rp scene these days. Usually this has your important links on it (rules/muse pages) and some explanation of what kind of blog yours is. For example: 'This is a Private, selective blog for charactername from fandom/an oc. Written by mun. [Ruleslink] - [Muselink]' This would work as a simple rudimentary introduction for people checking out your blog. You can pin a post by selecting the three dots in the top right on it after it is posted, ensuring it's the first thing people see when looking at your blog. This is mine, for example but it needn't be so indepth. I just have zero chill. If you're writing on a sideblog then it's best to also have a pinned post on your main account with a link leading to your roleplay account. That way people will know that you're a roleplayer looking to write if you follow them - and also they may follow the link to check out your stuff!

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Making Rules/Muse pages

These are important to indicate to people what you will or won't write, your personal writing preferences, ect. Many people won't rp with people who don't have these as it means they can't be sure of boundaries. People often use a post to do this, linking it in their pinned post to ensure people can find it. [Tutorial on how to link posts here]. That's the simplest way. You can also make a google doc or even make a carrd instead, linking them for people to refer to for this information. Alternatively you can use your pinned post and simply list it there - though there is risk of it cluttering your page if you have many muses. To avoid that, you can use a 'read more' such as the one this post was under. Make a new paragraph and various options come up, you want the one that looks like two straight lines with a squiggly line between them. [This icon].

Things to have on your rule page:

- Things you won't roleplay/triggers. - What is your stance on shipping (do you autoship with people who rp your muses partner or do you prefer chemistry first, ect.) - Writing length preference. Do you prefer short simple threads, paragraphs or more novella style? - Do you use icons? Do you prefer your partner would use/not use icons? Same questions with text formatting. - Tagging requests. Are there things you want to avoid on your dash using xkit's blacklist?

Things to have on your muse/about page:

- Basic description of who your character is, it's best to write it as if you're explaining them to someone who hasn't seen what they're from - even if they're a popular canon character. - If they're an oc with a universe of their own, a basic explanation of that universe would be useful but isn't really necessary if you can't/don't want to. - A picture reference of some kind is also useful, if possible. - A description of the verses you write them in. For example: 'Kidverse - This verse is set when my character is aged whatever and this is a short description of what they're like in that particular verse.'

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Advertising Your Blog

One of the many ways people advertise their blogs is by posting self promos. These are usually edited images with a little blog tagline, links to important pages and a short description of your blog. Here's an example of my own. Including tags of the fandoms you write in/write with is a good way to try and draw attention your way. Alternatively, if you're limited in your image making/editing skills you can make a simple post, perhaps with an icon or gif to draw attention. Explain your blog, what you write, who you're looking to write with, ect. Make sure to include tags so people can see it!

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More To Do?

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Okay, so you've got the basics down, now what? Well, there's a lot you can do to make your blog more functional and/or appealing.

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Thread Tracking

So you've got a roleplay but you're scared you'll forget to reply? I recommend RPThreadTracker. There's a how-to use it on the site faq and it's a lifesaver in keeping track of your threads tbh.

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Icons

Though not necessary, you can find icons to use usually by searching the 'charactername icons' or 'faceclaim icons' right here on tumblr, be sure to follow peoples instructions for using them though. Some people will want a like/reblog for their use.

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Formatting

Many people, like myself, use some form of text formatting when writing. Some of the usual ones are small text, like the one I'm writing in now. That's done either by using 'ctrl+shift+-', 'ctrl+-' or you can use this:

while highlighting text. This tool also allows you to colour your text, italicise, ect. Play around with it in your own time to see what works for you. Some other useful keyboard shortcuts:

'Ctrl+b' - Bolds highlighted selection 'Ctrl+i' - Italicises highlighted selection 'Ctrl+z' - Undo, good for if you've accidentally erased text you didn't mean to erase.