#might make a dreamwidth account…..

[unnonexistence]

i will be here on tumblr until the bitter end, but if you want to find me on other platforms:

ao3: myriadferns

bluesky: unnonexistence

[houseofwolvess]

im starting the slow browse for tumblr alternatives (just in the event that something happens here) and man. nobody's doing it like tumblr huh

[bisexualbaker]

Finding friends and things to do on Dreamwidth

I made a different post about this at an earlier time, but honestly, I think I can do better now.

Anyway! One of the things that sucks about moving social media and/or blogging platforms is not knowing if there will be enough activity for you at the new place. Be it from old friends, new friends, or interactive communities, there's a lot of ways you could find activity at a new place, but finding at least two of those categories can be tricky in itself.

Luckily, Dreamwidth has a few shortcuts for you already!

Adding new people to your reading page and finding new friends:

addme: Straight up a place to find new "mutuals" on Dreamwidth, with no particular focus; a good place to start!

addme_fandom: Same as above, but with a specific fandom focus! Interested in a particular fandom right now and want more people to talk about it with? Here's a good place to find fellow fans!

fandomcalendar: This is a community dedicated to announcing fandom events, which can include fandom-specific friending memes. (I'll be linking this one again later, as well.)

Getting started on Dreamwidth:

newcomers: A community dedicated specifically to helping Dreamwdth newcomers find their way around on a new site! I believe it was launched around the time Cohost was being shut down, so a lot of the people there now are Cohost "refugees", but it's still a good place to start.

dw_news: The official Dreamwidth news community. I highly recommend following this one and the next one, which will help you keep up with what's going on around Dreamwidth. DW News typically only posts a few times a year, but maybe that'll change if a bunch of new users come by...

dw_maintenance: Keep up with the mechanical goings-on at Dreamwidth! If there's a planned site outage or if DW is updating code, you can find out more here; if there's something funky going on at Dreamwidth but the site is generally still usable, it's also a good place to check.

Things to do on Dreamwidth:

dw_community_promo: The official Dreamwidth community for promoting Dreamwidth communities! People will promote new communities here, as well as events going on in established communities. A good place to find out about new things in general.

followfriday: A place to share links to check out once a week. Did you find a cool community that you want more people to know about? Link it in the comments here!

justcreate: A place where you can talk about things you're working on. There's a weekly check-in/reporting post, but sometimes people also organize body doubling sessions and other productivity-boosting things.

queerly_beloved: An anti-exclusionist queer space to get together and talk about all things queer, including intersectional matters. Hosts a weekly recommendations thread, but more and other content is very welcome!

Fandom things to do on Dreamwidth:

fandomcalendar: I linked this above, and I'm linking it again: Want to know about fandom events that are going on at Dreamwidth? This is a good place to do it! It'll also fill up your reading page in a hurry; you might be surprised at how many events are going on at Dreamwidth, or are at least connected there!

fictional_fans: A community for all fans and fandoms. If you've got a post you want to make about fandom in general, or a specific fandom that doesn't have its own community, this might be a good place to check out.

fandom_on_dw: Pretty much the same as above, honestly, but it's good that there's more than one place that hosts this kind of thing!

Anything else?

Search Interests: Individuals and communities can have lists of things they're "interested in". If more than one person has that thing listed, it may turn into a hyperlink that you can click to find other accounts with! You can also use the Search Interests function pretty much the same way. Simply type "cats" into the search bar, hit enter, and a bunch of accounts that have "cats" listed as an interest will pop up!

The Latest Things Page: Literally the latest things posted publicly anywhere on Dreamwidth. There's a list of commonly used tags at the top, if you want to narrow things down at all, but in the mean time, it can be pretty neat to see what J. Random Dreamwidth User just posted about!

The Explore Tab: Useful links for Dreamwidth in general. In addition to linking to the Latest Things Page, it can take you to a random account, the FAQ page, and more! Worth checking out if you're feeling lost.

And that's all I can think of at the moment! This should help you get started at least, and help fill out your reading page a bit.

If you still have questions or want to do more, you can check out my Dreamwidth 101 tag; I'm also happy to at least try to answer any questions myself. I'm pretty sure I've got a few "Dreamwidth for Tumblrites" guides linked in my Dreamwidth 101 section, if nothing else...

[antimony-medusa]

Do you like DEADLINES? Do you like writing to someone else's prompts, staying away from the stuff they said they DID NOT LIKE? Do you like CHALLENGES?

WELL HAVE I GOT THE ACTIVITY TO YOU.

Ever wanted to save someone's day?

I've been helping out with the big @fiabex exchange, and the final deadline passed last night, and there are— a lot of pinch hits from people who didn't make deadline. A lot of people had a bad October. It took three posts to post them all. All of these gifts have to be fulfilled before the exchange opens.

The reason I am here today though is that there's a segment of MCYT on the pinch hit list, and it's always hard to fill MCYT pinch hits cause there are less MCYT people who do exchanges! So here I offer you the breakdown of the mcyt pinch hits:

PH 72 - needs 3k 2k - fandoms are Dream SMP, SMPEarth, The Mandalorian (TV). You can see all of the requests at https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/Fic_In_A_Box_2024/user/Kryon CLAIMED

PH 77 - needs 1k - fandoms are Dream SMP, 3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series, Hermitcraft SMP, SMPEarth, Hotguy Comics Zine - Various (DFE), Origins SMP. You can see the entire signup at https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/Fic_In_A_Box_2024/user/Odaigahara CLAIMED

PH 102 - needs 1k - fandoms are 3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series, Hermitcraft SMP, Good Omens (TV), Hamlet - Shakespeare. You can see the entire signup at https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/Fic_In_A_Box_2024/user/adlerthetranscender CLAIMED

PH 103 - needs 1k - fandoms are Dream SMP, 3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series, QSMP | Quackity SMP. You can see the entire signup at https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/Fic_In_A_Box_2024/user/amaranthinecanicular CLAIMED

PH 144 - needs 8k - fandoms are QSMP | Quackity SMP. You can see the entire signup at https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/Fic_In_A_Box_2024/user/WhyB (I SPECIFICALLY want to draw attention to this one, cause it's only one fandom so that means they won't hold the exchange for this pinch hit to be filled but it being 8k means the person already turned in that much, so if you know anyone who can help with fitpac or animations family— let them know) CLAIMED

If these have gone out for pinch hit, this means that these people have already delivered a gift of at least this amount, and they need an equivalent gift. The due date is November 13th at Midnight EST— can you get a gift written in that time?

But wait, you could maybe write 1k, but not the 3k that PH 72 needs— that's fine! We can take it in small bites. You can just tell the mods that you can take 1k (or 2k, or however much you can take) and then the mods will drop the "needs amount" to 2k, and then we're that much closer to everyone having a gift. If 8 people do 1k, we can get WhyB completely covered!

If you can write a gift fast, adhering to someone's Do Not Want list, about the requested characters or worldbuilding prompts, you might be exactly what we need here. We've got Emduo requests! Animations family! DSMP Fiances! Scarian! Fitpac! Cletho! Boat boys! Preyduo! Watchers prompts!

You can take a pinch hit by either commenting on the dreamwidth post where the PH you want is posted here (tell them the pinch hit you want, an email to reach you, how much you want to take, and the Ao3 account you'll be posting from), or emailing the mods at ficinaboxmod@gmail.com— (tell them the pinch hit you want, how much you want to take, and the Ao3 account you'll be posting from, they already have your email, but check the post to see if the PH has been claimed before you email just to save yourself some time).

And if you can't take it, I'd appreciate it if you'd reblog this, cause if we can get this in front of as many eyes as possible that increases the possibility of someone who says "great british bake off beeduo? yeah I can do that", etc!

[dntaed]

I did a bit of research about the 'Tumblr getting shut down' rumour, and while I am not an expert in any of this, I just wanted to make a post for anyone following my account and my dear moots.

**info on this post will be updated systematically.

The rumour sparked because of tumblr staff being fired. Some are saying, this is connected to the tries to make tumblr even more profitable. They want to spend less money on staff, (from what I've read and been informed by others) so in the end the money they get is even more and in turn, even more profitable.

In the article, it said: In Wednesday’s announcement, Mullenweg explained that the newly announced layoffs will allow Automattic to become “more agile and responsive,” “break down silos that have created inefficiencies,” “focus on product quality,” and “ensure a viable financial model for long-term success.”

In automattic's post explaining this situation, they called this an "Restructuring Announcement". CEO Matt Mullenweg shared with Automattic employees the following message: This restructuring will result in an approximately 16% workforce reduction. This process is complex with Automatticians in 90 countries.

Of course, I've heard rumours like these for a lot of apps and they are currently fine and still running. Though, the discussion about all of this is still important. We need to remember profits and investments for tumblr is still important. Tumblr isn't a non-profit like ao3 is. They need the funds investors give, or they go bankrupt. Plus, ao3 is text based, Tumblr isn't. It needs even more funds because of that. So making it dependent on donations isn't going to work.

There are ways to protect yourself. So don't worry. Listen to those with a better understanding of this. One of the best advice I've heard is to be ready to back up your blog.

How to back up your blog?

It might actually be only a rumour and nothing more. (I second this)

The loss they'd have from complete shut down would be MUCH greater that the possible profit loss they have now. Social media sites like these don't get shut down just like this. I genuinely do not believe it will be shut down. The argument brought forward is pretty weak under heavy scrutiny. There's isn't an overall reason for it.

Were to go if you need a similar platform like Tumblr? There are sites like pillowfort, dreamwidth, mastadon, livejournal, (for mature blogs, alot of go to fetlife).

***For my dear moots, I will reblog this soon with my other socials. I love you all dearly and I do not want to contact.

***Again, don't panic. That's the last thing we need.

tags: @minorlyatfault @jjsblueberry @pjxcksonswrd @gibsluv @yintous @corpsedogs

[ds9anonkinkmeme]

Interest check

Hi, just doing an interest check for an idea we have about making a DS9 anon kink meme! A kink meme is an ongoing prompt event where people can anonymously request fics and others can choose to anonymously fill any prompts they feel inspired by.

See below the poll for our initial thoughts on pros and cons and considerations.

On ao3 we could very easily set up a prompt collection open for anyone to add prompts or fill prompts anonymously. But we don’t know how easy it is to maintain momentum on an ao3 prompt collection. Maybe that doesn’t matter and it can be an ephemeral thing until people forget about it and it becomes inactive, and then the next generation of folks in the fandom can start up their own new one in a few years haha. If we do it on ao3, should we make subcollections for individual “seasons” or “rounds” (there would likely be no actual deadlines, it would just be whatever length of time it takes for the list of prompts to get too long and unwieldy to be usable), or should we have people put all the prompts into a single collection that just grows and grows and grows?

On dreamwidth there would be comment threads so there would be a way to anonymously register enthusiasm for a prompt even before it gets written, which seems really good for encouragement and feeding off of each other’s hype. (Dreamwidth might also tell you when new comments are added to the community, unlike prompt collections on ao3?) But we are less familiar with dreamwidth so we aren’t sure there’s enough ds9 fandom hanging out there (or willing to make an account there) to sustain it over there.

Tumblr doesn't seem like an option for a number of reasons (can't post fully anonymously to tumblr except via asks, and having everything be done via asks would make it difficult to organize and connect prompts with fills because to keep them both anon they'd have to be separated, and tumblr is a website with a famously terrible search function).

If a DS9-focused kink meme already exists, we’d love to hear about it! We’ve found a few seemingly inactive ones in our research. But if there’s an active one out there, we could absolutely just pivot to supporting/participating in that, instead of making our own thing and dividing up the fandom’s energies. (Another question we don’t know the answer to: Is it possible/desirable to work on reviving one of those inactive ones, just by encouraging a collective effort to start participating in one again? Or do we think the mods of these inactive ones have abandoned them and might be stressed out to suddenly see new activity?)

If you have something to say but don’t want to say it publicly, we also have an anonymous, slightly expanded google form version (that can be found in our pinned post) with space to leave freeform feedback. You can vote in one or both forms of this poll, depending on what you feel like.

We’d very much appreciate reblogs to spread this poll around since we just made this account, but no pressure to do so. We still want your vote in the poll if you’re interested in this idea, even if you don’t want to reblog a post about it. <3

Anyway, if you have any thoughts on this DS9 kink meme idea (or messages of encouragement!!!), please feel free to send them in! <3

[mcytblrholidayexchange]

How To Sign Up To This Gift Exchange

This exchange does signups on Ao3, to help with matching! (Last year it took us 8 days to do it by hand and that's just not sustainable).

Once you are on Ao3, there are two sections, one for your requests (stuff you’re telling people (and the machine) would be a good gift for you), and one for your offers (stuff you’re telling the machine that you can make as a gift for other people). Here’s how you fill them out.

Requests

First you go to the collection that you want. The all-ages one is here, and if you are opting into NSFW (and are over 18), you can go to the 18+ collection! In the sidebar on the left-hand side of the page there is a button for sign-up form, you can press to be taken to the sign-up form.

That brings you to the first page, which looks like this.

Lots of buttons, but don't worry, it's pretty simple once you get the underlying logic!

Let's say I start with 3rd Life. I know I want to opt into pearl gifts, shadowrot, and platonic desert duo. What will that look like?

So I selected the fandom I wanted (3rd Life) and what types of gifts that I was open to. And then I selected the relationships that I'd like as a gift! I could match on any one of these, my gifter might have offered only one relationship in this fandom— but we match on one, so they know which relationship to focus on! And each of those tags is formatted a little differently— the desert duo one the names are connected with a & (so that means i'll get something platonic), the shadowrot one the names are connected with / (so that means I'll get something shippy if my gifter chooses to write that relationship), and the pearl tag is Solo, so that means I could get anything as long as pearl is still the focus! So I have to specify later if I'm okay with shipping or not, or any relationships I don't want.

Additional tags is telling people what kind of holidays I'm open to in my gift— not everybody celebrates the same holidays! For this one I don't want any holidays, so I selected no holidays. And then archive warnings is telling people if I'm okay with archive warnings in my gift— because it's 3rd life I'm okay with graphic depictions of violence, or I'm also okay with no archive warnings in my gift at all! Note that if you select archive warnings that just means you're opting into them as an option, not that your recipient HAS to give them to you. And then we get down to the free text box, where I give my gifter a little more idea of how to make a gift that I'd like. We start with my tumblr, because my gifter has to know how to give me my gift on tumblr eventually! And then a list of likes, stuff to give my gifter some ideas. Mods ask that you include at least a couple likes, and/or some prompts, or link a letter in that letter text box.

What's a letter? Ao3 has a text limit of 5 thousand characters in that box, and sometimes people exceed it because they have detailed prompts— especially if they're requesting lots of different ships as options! You also can't do any formatting unless you code it in HTML. So, if you are running out of space on Ao3, you can write the information for your gifter offsite, on Dreamwidth or Google Docs or a tumblr post! Here is an example from another exchange of what a letter can look like.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are linking a google doc letter, make sure that you are not using an account that has your real name in it. Make a fandom email for it, or host the letter somewhere like tumblr or dreamwidth, where your real identity will not be connected to your fandom identity. And if you link a tumblr, don't change your blog URL or the letter will disappear for people!

Anyways, I'm not doing a letter cause I'm just doing a quick and dirty signup, so I just did some likes and my DNW! You can also add specific prompts if you want (and it's nice for your gifter if you do) but it's not required!

What is a DNW? DNW stands for Do Not Want, and it's anything (anything) that would ruin a gift for you. You can DNW certain characters, crossovers, types of aus, types of content, specific ways of writing or art, quotes from specific people if you're requesting web weaves, specific music if you're okay with playlists, types of endings, specific sounds if you're requesting podfic— the list goes on. I did a short DNW there to make it all fit within the screen, but my normal one is quite long. There will be a thread in the discord where people can compare DNWs to see if there's anything you want to add to yours.

The rule is that as long as you are polite (nothing like "no kid fic because it's creepy to age down characters") and specific (nothing like "no kinks", because that is too broad and subjective of a category for people to try and navigate) and you don't box your gifter into a specific gift (nothing like "nothing that isn't canon compliant fic specifically about the fairy fort burning") then you're good to go! Because I selected a Solo tag I specifically have to tell my gifter if I'm okay with shipping and which ships, so there's a line there about that. You do need to either put down a DNW or say DNW: no restrictions, so that your recipient knows that everything is on the table.

Please make sure that your DNW and your letter link (if you're using a letter) is included on every fandom box. This is for two reasons. 1) we need to make sure your DNW is in a format that locks once it gets sent to your gifter, not somewhere you could still edit it, like tumblr. 2) There is an option to separate up requests by fandom for people who are looking for extra gifts to give, and that means someone might see only one fandom of your request before giving you something. You need to make sure that anyone who sees just one fandom of your request still has all the information necessary to make a gift.

Note: If you are signing up to the 18+ collections, it's a very good idea to include specific NSFW likes and NSFW DNW because people's tastes can vary wildly, and there's nothing worse than someone carefully making you a gift that's exactly the wrong type of thing for you because are into different things. Give your gifter something to work with and a direction to head in!

And then there's the optional tags box. This is for extra holidays! The additional tags are how you tell someone what holidays you're good to have in your gift, and it only allows you to select 20 at once. But if you wanted to select more holidays than that, you can put them down in the optional tags box! Or you can select any additional tags and just do every holiday at once.

And technically, that's three relationships, so I could call it done there! That's the minimum to request, I'm done. But what if I like other fandoms too? How do I add them? Well. There is a button for that.

In that case, I can hit this button, and it brings me up another request box, and I can do this all over again with another fandom! You can go up to 10 fandoms, with a maximum of 20 tags for each.

But what if you really really REALLY like rats smp and there are 30 tags in the tag set and you want them all?

Two options. One is that instead of putting in relationship tags one by one, you hit the any relationship button.

That will match you to any relationship in the tag set. That doesn't mean any tag on Ao3, but it does mean any tag that's been nominated into the tag set, and we keep the tag nominations open so people can get in their last-minute ships. If you select this one, keep an eye on the tag set to make sure that nobody nominates something that's a hard no for you.

Option two is that you hit the button for another request, and then you just do Rats SMP again, with different tags! You can request the same fandom more than once, with different tags— so you can do a request for your shippy tags and one for your platonic ones, or one for your family tags and one for your non-family ones, or one for desert duo and one for convex, or any other way you want to split it up! As long as you go over the minimum of three relationships requested, you've filled out a valid request! Request ten different fandoms or the same one ten times— it'll work.

Offers

And then we scroll down a little bit to the offers page. Let's take a look at it!

So this is telling the machine the type of gift you are open to making, and making sure you're matchable to someone else's request that will look like the one we just did. You've gotta give the machine the information in a way it'll understand so it can whirr away and give you a match to someone who requested the type of stuff you like to make. So how is this done? I did 3rd life again for the fandom, and the type of gift I can make is fic, so I selected fic for the gift type.

I only need a minimum of three relationships for the relationships, but there's more stuff that'll write than I wanted as a gift, so I have a bunch of relationships in there! I could match on any one of them, so I make sure to offer just relationships I'm confident I can write. Like with the requests, / means a romantic (or sexual, if you are in the 18+ collection) relationship, and & means platonic. Solo: means I can bring any relationships I want into the fic as long as the focus is on the person in the tag and my recipient hasn't DNWed those characters.

When it comes to holidays I COULD go down the list and select everything, but it's easier to just select any additional tag, and that'll make sure I'm matchable no matter what holidays someone selects! I figure that I can do my research on different holidays, and maybe ask for a beta reader to help out if I match on a holiday I'm not used to!

On archive warnings I select no archive warnings apply and graphic depictions of violence, and that means I'm matchable to people who selected either one of those.

And Optional tags is for overflow holidays, but I already selected any holidays, so I'm good to go! This is a complete signup! I can submit it now!

But what if I want to offer other fandoms too? There's rats SMP, there's Hermitcraft, I'm still a DSMP fan—

You can add up to ten fandoms, and same as with requests, you can go up to either 20 tags or "any tag (in the tag set)" for each fandom.

And then you scroll down to the bottom and hit submit, and that's it, you're officially signed up!

Editing and etc

You can go back and edit and tweak your signup any time you want until signups close— remove ships, add them, add prompts, edit your DNW— it's all editable until midnight EST on the 17th of November, when signups close and lock for us to run matching on.

The matching requires:

1 match on fandom

1 match on character (gift type)

1 match on relationship

1 match on additional tags (holidays)

1 match on warnings

So you will be assigned to someone where you have at least one tag in common in all of those categories�� a fandom you selected, a gift type you can make, a relationship you said you can do, a holiday you opted into, and a level of archive warnings you said you were good with. The system tries to match you with more tags, but sometimes there are edge cases and you only match on one tag. No matter what is on your recipient's signup, you only have to make one gift, and you only have to make a gift with the tags you signed up with— if someone requested major character death and no warnings apply and you offered no warnings apply, you just can focus in on no warnings apply. Your requests are public, so that people can give bonus gifts if they want to and so that we can pinch-hit your requests if necessary (and so your recipient can see what you requested), but your offers are private (only the mods see them). Make sure you only request things which you are okay having public, or speak to the mods about setting up a sock account.

Signing up gives mods access to your Ao3 email (it's how we send you your assignment), so make sure the email attached to your AO3 account is one that a) you check regularly, and b) are comfortable with exchange mods seeing. You can verify your email here: archiveofourown.org/users/[your ao3 name here]/change_email If for some reason we can’t find a way to give you an assignment (say you only offered ships that nobody was requesting), mods will ask you to make more offers until we can give you an assignment. If we can't give you an assignment— there's nobody in the whole exchange you could make a gift for— you will not be able to continue in the exchange. If we can’t assign you to someone (either you are requesting things nobody offered or the matching just didn't work out to cover you), you will be an initial pinch hit, and someone will opt in to take you on as an extra assignment. Initial pinch hits are normal and expected in an exchange of this size, don't panic if you see yourself as one of them. If there is someone in the exchange that you don’t want to match with (for any reason ranging from "we have each other blocked on tumblr" to "we give each other gifts a lot and we want to give gifts to other people this time"), contact the mods through the ticket system and we’ll hand-adjust the matches. We can only do this before matches go out— if you match to someone you can't create for you'll have to drop your assignment and send it to pinch hits, which we would like to avoid happening if at all possible. Please make sure you send us any Do Not Match requests before signups close!

[abeautifulblog]

gremble is on dreamwidth

Hopefully this latest round of panic over the imminent demise of tumblr is yet another false alarm, but in case it's not, I am hedging my bets and making accounts at a couple of the other sites that fandom might wind up migrating to.

Anyway, LET'S DREAMWIDTH LIKE IT'S 2008, BAYBEE

(I'm probably not going to use it unless/until tumblr goes down, but if any of y'all following me want to share your account too, I'll try to add you (?) on there)

[thaliendir]

sheogorath ~ domains of madness and psyche

crosspost from dreamwidth . dreamwidth version have proper links to various UESP pages , and format nicer ! but work hard on this one and would like to be share-able , so please enjoy this tumblrise version . :)

most well document domain of sheogorath is madness , but kossai believe even this is more than initially seem . would like to propose this domain include literal madness , psyche in general , and cultural madness .

literal madness

literal madness encompass anything which is identifiable symptom or illness , as people would term . even this is cultural category to some extent - ideas of what is normal and sane differ even between cultures . regardless , these traits would exist even if people did not categorise and outcast , specifically with roots in actual variations in mental health , stability of psyche , and otherwise .

this can thus include just about any trait that fall outside these cultural bounds of sanity , but some prominent examples across shivering isles would be :

severe anxiety and paranoia

hyperfixation and obsession

communication difficulty and non-clarity

delusions of all stripes

compulsions

impulse control issues , violent impulses especially notable around isles

depressive and suicidal tendencies

and so this list could go on .

worth note that by and large , residents of shivering isles consider these traits and madnesses to be wonderful gifts and blessings - the blessings of sheogorath is book which detail some of this , that different madnesses have apparent purpose and make lives better , not worse . someone who obsessively write in blatantly unreal languages is not sick or worthy of pity , but dig for beautiful secrets , and might some day find something profound , so profound as to even change world . even if that never happen , might still find nice things to say and share along journey .

and yeah , in reality these kind of approaches might hurt some people rather than help - mind is hugely complex , and everyone have different needs , triggers , and lines to draw . but most of these people seem happy to embrace , even if madness is not necessarily fun , beautiful , or profound . sheogorath look at this madness with love - there is nothing morally wrong with madness , there is nothing about these people that need to fix . only people who need fix is those who believe madness is ailment to fix .

----

psyche in general

as well as above traits of literal madness , emotions , identity , and memories all fall under influence as well , to make for domain of psyche . the blessings of sheogorath again give suggestion to this : "For Our Lord Sheogorath, without Whom all Thought would be linear and all Feeling would be fleeting."

perhaps there is truth here - that everyone would know only here and now , and care for nothing , if not for sheogorath . where jyggalag seek perfect order and conformity , such that even servants and knights all empty husks , sheogorath breathe life into each individual psyche , whether end up sane or mad .

one entry in myths of sheogorath concern wizard ravate , who seek out power from sheogorath - and promise to drive men mad , should sheogorath grant . sheogorath accept , but only if ravate first survive 3 days in shivering isles , sane . ravate inevitably succumb to paranoia , certain that sheogorath set traps everywhere ... yet sheogorath did nothing at all , simply set stage for psyche to turn on self . ravate then turn to serve sheogorath , with claim that sheogorath is already within everyone . while this is myth in-universe and might not be reflective of any specific historical account , think this still serve viewpoint that sheogorath is not just madness , but very psyche , and that at least some people in-universe see this way too .

in curio folio vol vii (18+) , sheogorath explain gambolpuddy have ability to free one from inhibitions and expectations , and take on aspects of identity from whoever last touch . while this book is not official in-game book , douglas goodall go on to say book clarify this as no one pick up on power of gambolpuddy in reference to ra'gruzgob - orcish man who proudly proclaim self to be khajiit . still , result might not always be madness necessarily , but rather change of self perception and identity , where classification of madness is incidental .

there is also case of memory wand , sheogorathean artifact which introduce in legends . while story of talym rend might be on somewhat shaky ground due to inconsistency with shivering isles timeline , this artifact can still serve point that out of universe , there may be intent for sheogorath hold domain over all aspects of psyche .

after all , in all of these cases - how could sheogorath inflict madness if not also responsible for all of psyche ? of course in times past , people often understand madness as some kind of curse , possession , unholy will , or otherwise - but these days , better understand that anyone at all can be subject to various madnesses . what separate people is not ability or inability to become mad , but whether or not life prompt these madnesses at some point . even genetics only serve as one factor - for example , after enough stress , anyone can experience psychosis . there is no one fundamentally above madness , nor is anyone mad fundamentally below others .

-----

cultural madness

as well as literal psyche and variations therein , sheogorath very well might encompass cultural madness ... or else writers have some cruel implications to answer for indeed . regardless , madness is cultural as much as literal - groups of privilege can get away with much more than groups of marginalisation , and what is sick behaviour for one is healthy expectation for another . 

real world have reflections of this in drapetomania and oppositional defiant disorder . drapetomania punish black slaves for desires of freedom , and oppositional defiant disorder punish developmentally disabled and especially DD people of colour for distrust of authority or difficulties in " compliance " . while drapetomania is long gone , ODD is still diagnosis , and still easily ruin lives . that is another rant for another time , however : back on track .

point is , these cultural madnesses still literal variations - but not necessarily in mental health or stability of psyche . three residents of shivering isles in particular catch attention here : dredhwen , dumag gro-bonk , and sontaire .

dredhwen have what seem to be extreme narcolepsy - unable to stay awake , drift in and out of consciousness , never seem to be able to hold for long . these days understand narcolepsy to be neurological sleep disorder , but how dredhwen talk and present - especially if ever speak of hallucinations - would pin for madness .

dumag gro-bonk is gay , that is literally all . would flirtatious straight men receive this same mad treatment ? probably not . similarly , sontaire is honestly just into BDSM with high sex drive - and so coincidentally happen to be woman . this give reason to think that sheogorath shelter not for literal madness , but because people cast out under pretense of madness . histories of these characters entirely unknown , but perhaps to defy purpose of marriage and sex was madness for dumag gro-bonk , while to defy expectations as demure and sexless was madness for sontaire .

in this sense , shivering isles also house people whose communities may term as sexual deviants , people with neurological conditions , developmental disabilities , and anyone else who realistically might get label and treatment of madmen . not all will seek out isles , of course , but isles will be open to such people who choose .

[magpiefngrl]

fandom bucket list

I'd written a fandom bucket list several years ago on dreamwidth but that account's gone now and I can't remember much of what was on it. I did want to write a Dead Dove fic, which i have done now, so that's one item crossed off the list. But as I'm chilling in bed this Sunday morning and thinking about my rl bucket list, as you do, I thought about making a fandom one too and sharing it with yous.

There's not much on it on account of having achieved some of the things I'd wanted (see Dead Dove above) and because real life doesn't allow me the time to fangirl as much as I used to.

Magpie's Fandom Bucket List as of 2025

To collaborate on a fic with another writer. This is the hardest and the most unlikely.

To write a fic for Yuletide.

To write a fic for a ship that has no other works on AO3.

To have a fanlore account as an author.

To post 100 works on AO3. (This is also unlikely.)

To meet (more) fandom pals.

Tagging a few people to see what their bucket lists might look like, purely out of insatiable curiosity (no pressure, tho!): @wolfpants @citrusses @hoko-onchi-writes @lqtraintracks @sitp-recs @thehoneybeet @julcheninred @lettersbyelise @wholahoop @nerdherderette @tenthousandyearsx

[courtkossai]

dreamwidth is fun because kossai get to make cute little pixels of face which then attach to posts with no effort because of mood themes :3

( mood themes do require paid account time to actually set up , but some neat public use ones exist , and kossai might try hand at one of those too ! )

[bisexualbaker]

Guess who just finished a six month art project? 😃

Behold, the fruits of my labor: A complete Dreamwidth (and similar site) custom mood theme!

(For complete image descriptions of individual moods, see the Rat Moods tag on my Dreamwidth account and click through the posts. Sorry for the extra complications, but it is not possible to fit every description in under four thousand characters.)

An explanation: Dreamwidth and similar sites, like its "parent" site LiveJournal, have an option to add "moods" from a drop-down list to every post you make. Dreamwidth itself hosts a number of default mood themes, but if you have a paid account, you have the option of using a custom mood theme with images you choose. I've wanted to make one with pet rats for years, and this year I finally did something about it: I started the Dreamwidth community "Mood Theme in a Year", with the goal of completing an entire custom mood theme between January 1st and December 31st.

...I may have rushed ahead a bit 😅

Rat lovers may be interested to see some of the natural behaviors I've included here, though I've also gone "off-script" and included quite a few more anthropomorphic behaviors as well. You might also be interested to discover how some of the moods relate to each other!

I plan to make this mood theme available for general public use in the near future! I do want to make a few alternates first; I already have three other skin tone variations for Touched (a black hooded dumbo rat being touched on the head by a person's finger), but I want to make a variation of each of them with ring splints; I also want to do a variation of Intimidated (a trembling gray rat with a calico cat sneaking up on it) and Rushed (that same rat running away from the cat's swiping paw) with an owl instead.

So yeah! That's something I've been working on recently. I had a total blast making it, and I'm super pleased with how it turned out 🐭💗

(@rat-detector, do you think that your followers might perhaps like to see these...?)

[coraniaid]

Felt briefly tempted again this week to try to start being more active on Dreamwidth (instead of just using it as a place for keeping secondary back-ups of some of my longer Tumblr text posts). The thing that puts me off though is the same thing that stopped me adopting Dreamwidth back in 2023. And it's not the lack of gifs or the slightly clunky interface or the general feeling that I've gone back in time about fifteen years (I actually rather like that last one). It's the Reading page.

I mean, as I understand it, the equivalent of following somebody's blog on Tumblr on Dreamwidth is subscribing to somebody's journal. If you do that, the journal is added to your "Reading page", and on this page can follow all the posts you're subscribing to in reverse chronological order just like a Tumblr dash (or the older versions of Twitter, or whatever else). Which is fine and good and useful, except: you're not the only person who can see your Reading page. Everyone else can see it too. There is a big link to it on the top of your home page, and even if you could hide that somehow the page would still be easily accessible by going to the url [you].dreamwidth.org/read.

It's certainly possible I'm missing something here -- I hope I am, actually, which is why I'm posting this; if there's a way to follow people on Dreamwidth without advertising that to the world I'd love to know it -- but this just feels so weird to me as a design choice. Posts advocating for Dreamwidth on here always talk about how the site has really good privacy settings and you can choose exactly who gets to see your posts. But you can't subscribe to another account without everyone in the world knowing about it?

Sure, on Tumblr it's possible to make the blogs you're following visible to other people if you want to do so. But in my experience most people don't do that, and in any case there is always the option to turn this feature off. Somebody involving in designing Tumblr understood that who I follow might not be something I want everybody with an internet connection to know. But, unless I'm missing something (which, again, I hope I am), Dreamwidth ... doesn't. And I don't really understand why not.

[be-compromised]

Secret Santa 2024 Sign Ups Explained

Hi All and welcome to Secret Santa 2024! 

This is a Clint Barton and/or Natasha Romanoff end of year fic exchange where matching is based on prompts and everything is anonymous until the author reveals at the end. You don't need to be a member of the be_compromised community to take part, however almost all of the exchange will be taking place on AO3, so you will need an AO3 account; if you don't have one and would like an invite code please contact a mod. Prompt Choices is the one element that will be done on dreamwidth.

Whilst this is labelled a 'Secret Santa' as it takes place in the run up to Christmas, fics do NOT have to be related to Christmas, New Year, winter etc. We welcome celebrations of other holidays and no theme at all. However we understand if you would rather not take part due to the labelling. We wish you all a happy holiday season <3

TIMELINE

SIGN UP: from now until 16:00 GMT Monday 14 October. CHOICES POST: will go up as soon as possible and be available until 16:00 GMT Sunday 20 October. ASSIGNMENTS SENT OUT: we aim to have these to you within the following few days. (If all participants make their choices earlier, then we'll aim to get assignments out earlier!) SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 16:00 GMT Monday 9 December. (This is to allow time for pinch hitting if/where needed.) GIFT POSTING/REVEALS: Dependent on if participants submit on time / any pinch hit requirements, we aim to reveal gifts somewhere between 16 to 19 December. AUTHOR REVEALS: We aim to reveal authors 22 to 24 December, giving readers some time to read gifts before we do this.

Read on for information on how to take part, or go to AO3.

HOW TO TAKE PART IN THE EXCHANGE:

1) SIGN UP HERE AT AO3.

In the REQUEST section in 'Details/Description' you must include: at least 4 prompts and no more than 6. These can be anything! From a one word prompt like 'kisses' to a specific AU idea. Past Secret Santa prompts (such as 2023 here) or promptathon prompts (2024 here) may be helpful if you get stuck. If you really don't mind what gift you receive then please feel free to say so, but you MUST leave at least 4 prompts for your giftee to have something to work with.

You are also welcome to include in the 'Details/Description' section: - a Yes Please note: a brief list of things you like that aren't as specific as a prompt, such as a preference for the comics or film, sexy times, female friendships, hurt/comfort etc. Your gift giver isn’t obliged to use them, but it can help give them some ideas. - a No Thank You note: anything that you really do not want, such as character death, angst, fluff, anything that might be triggering for you etc. Feel free to specify if some things are just a rather not and some are no-way, not-ever.

Matching will be based on the information from the 'Details/Description' section ONLY. Optional: you can use 'Ratings', 'Archive Warnings' and 'Categories' to list all those that you would be comfortable receiving. You can use 'Characters', 'Relationships', and 'Tags' to select things that you like (from all canonical AO3 tags). As above, your gift giver is not obliged to consider or use these, but it may help them with ideas.

In the OFFER section the only thing you need to complete is the 'Details/Description' with: - I'd Rather Not: things that you don’t really like to create or feel uncomfortable with, anything you don’t feel confident in writing or a genre that isn’t your strength. As we have also been running this exchange for a while, also if there are any people you've written for a lot of times before that you'd rather not write for again this year. - Absolutely Not: Things that are an absolute no for you, such as anything triggering, character death, things that you will not do.

2) The prompts and any additional notes you included in the 'Details/Description' section for your REQUEST will be anonymised and posted to the community dreamwidth. You MUST reply in a comment to that Choices Post (comments will only be visible to the mods) with your top three picks of which requests you’d like to create for. You don't need a dreamwidth account to do this; you can comment using OpenID or anonymously, however please remember to include your AO3 handle in your comment so we know who you are! (More information will be available in the Choices Post.) This will be available as soon as possible following the closing of sign ups until 16:00 GMT Sunday 20 October. (If all participants comment earlier we will try to get matching and assignments out faster.)

3) Your prompt choices will be used by the mods to do manually match participants in the exchange. We can't guarantee that you’ll get your choices, but we’ll do our best keep to your choices as much as possible! Where there are any issues with matching or where participants have not commented to the prompt choices post as in (2) we will use your OFFER notes to help with matching and avoid your 'Absolutely Nots'. (In rare cases you may get a request that has something it in from your ‘rather not’ section that you can ignore, because the request has other prompts in it or because it’s not a deal breaker for the requester, but these are things that we will make sure you don’t get in your assignment if we can absolutely help it.)

4) Assignments will be sent out and you'll have until 16:00 GMT Monday 9 Decemberto submit your gifts (which aims to cover our usual 'midnight on the Sunday whatever your timezone).

5) We will reveal gifts in the week leading up to Christmas (aiming for 16 to 19 December; exact dates to be confirmed depending on any pinch hit requirements) and authors will be revealed the weekend before Christmas (aiming for 22 to 24 December).

You can also sign up as a pinch hitter for this event as well as or instead of taking part in the main exchange on dreamwidth here.

And/or you can volunteer to be a beta reader in the community discord Writing Help channel, create clintasha graphics and art to inspire and keep us going, and cheerlead - what would fandom be without cheerleaders?! We LOVE comments and encouragement and all the great stuff that makes this comm the place it is <3

RULES:

1) We're a community for fans of Clint Barton aka Hawkeye and Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, individually as well as paired together as friends, partners, lovers, spouses, or any combination. We welcome all things Marvel, including other characters and pairings (and threesomes or moresomes). For this exchange, at least ONE of your prompts MUST focus on Clint/Natasha or Clint & Natasha, OR be a generic prompt to enable everyone who takes part to have a prompt they know that they can fill. All gifts should include Clint and/or Natasha in some capacity.

2) Fics must be a MINIMUM of 1,000 words and should be no more than 10,000 words.

3) Please treat everyone with respect. This includes no character bashing or ship wars. (Saying what you like: yes. Disparaging what other people like: no.) Bigotry will not be tolerated. Our community is a positive fandom space.

4) No plagarism. For the purposes of this exchange, we also ask that you do not use AI or chatbots to create fics. We are interested in what YOU create, and in what YOU put your time and effort into.

5) As we're a community primarily focussed on fictional characters, we ask you please not to post any Real Person Fanfiction.

6) All fics must include a rating and either appropriate AO3 warnings OR choose not to warn if/as applicable.

7) This is an anonymous exchange, so don’t reveal who your giftee is until after the reveals! Please feel free to let people know that you're taking part, however please don't link to a gift letter, share your prompts, post your gift elsewhere, identify yourself in an author note, or otherwise reveal yourself until the author reveals at the end of the exchange. For people who have taken part in our annual exchange before, a reminder to please make sure your request/prompts are different to in previous years to keep things anonymous!

ANY QUESTIONS?

We will maintain an FAQ on AO3 for this exchange. If you would like to ask any questions we've not already thought of or to contact a mod you have a few options:

1) For anonymous queries: reply to this post. All comments will be screened to keep you and your question anonymous. Mods will not be able to reply to your comment without unscreening it, so please include how you would prefer us to reply and the relevant contact information. This could be as a dreamwidth private message, a message on discord, or an email address. We will keep an eye on comments to this post throughout the exchange.

2) For general queries that wouldn't reveal your offer/request information and that you're comfortable sharing: reply to the general Questions/Comments/Chat thread at the top of the comments in this post. All comments in this thread will be unscreened. (This needs to be done manually by the mods, so bear with us.)

3) To contact a mod directly: the best place to find a mod for Secret Santa is in a reply to this post or to @ or private message one of us on the community discord. You can also message the be_compromised tumblr account or message one of us on any platform that you spot us, although that may take a little longer for us to see. Your mods are @inkvoices @cloud--atlas (aka franztastsich on dreamwidth) and @quidnunc-life (aka gsparkle on dreamwidth and discord).

Happy writing!

[postplus-protest]

Okay! So, management “clarified” yesterday’s post by saying that the chronological dash (algorithm free!) isn’t going anywhere. With that being said, there’s still a lot of concerning stuff and major disconnect between management/staff/users going on. Management is still looking for ways to make tumblr the next big thing and to turn a profit. Which, can’t say I blame them cause bills need to be paid, but enshittification in the spirit of Twitter/TikTok/Reddit/meta isn’t the way to go. Management has also known to be a liar sometimes so keep that in mind.

A lot of people are asking me about protests. What we’re dealing with isn’t something that can be solved with log offs. Right now the things I really really really recommend you do is to go into your settings, export/backup your blog for your own use later. Also, set up and then link a Carrd to your current tumblr with links to any other socials (I’ve got personal livejournal and dreamwidth accounts ready to go) you might use to keep in touch with friends/mutuals. That way if tumblr goes down and/or there’s a mass exodus, you’ll be easier to find.

I want tumblr to stay around for as long as possible. Yet, I don’t want tumblr to just another TikTok clone. The hellsite is going through some awkward and frustrating growing pains that I hope doesn’t bring down the house of cards.

Until something else happens, this is what’s going on.

[anghraine]

Dealing with images on Dreamwidth

Okay, one more Dreamwidth post!

DW is geared around text posts and currently handles images rather awkwardly. But it does actually have image hosting capabilities, though the space isn't unlimited (I've never come near to maxing it out). I was thinking about that and figured I could make a post over here about how I back up images to Dreamwidth, and then post them using the Rich Text Editor.

I tried to explain what I do as clearly as I could, but the detail might make it sound more complex and difficult than it really is. I'm sorry if so! But here goes:

Step 1: Go to the main page at www.dreamwidth.org. It should look something like this:

Step 2: Click the red button in the upper-right to log in. Once you do, the main page should look something like this:

Step 3: If you look below the Dreamwidth logo, you'll see five categories of things you can do. You want the first category, "Create." Click on it and select "Upload Images" from the drop-down list. I've put a blue circle around it in the picture below:

Step 4: Upload your picture!

The picture above is the standard "Upload Images" screen. From here, you can click the link to "View all your images" to see everything you've uploaded, and I think "manage your images" lets you adjust titles and descriptions of the images and such. But what you want is the "Browse" button. It'll take you to your computer files and you can upload the picture or pictures you want.

Let's suppose I want to upload two pictures from Baldur's Gate 3:

and

Okay. So after I click "Browse", find the right folder on my computer, and use CTRL+click to select both of these pictures (you can also upload pictures one-by-one if you wish), the space below the "Browse" button will show the pictures you've uploaded. It should look something like this:

There they are! You can give the pictures names in the "Title" boxes, but if you want the file names saved, make sure you click the "Save descriptions" button below the pictures (circled in blue below):

At this point (much faster than it sounds like), you've uploaded the pictures to your account where you can look at every picture or file you've ever uploaded to Dreamwidth. That's cool, but they're not actually in a post yet.

Step 5: Make a new post.

In a new tab, open Dreamwidth (www.dreamwidth.org) again. It's important that this is in a different tab and you don't navigate away from the one your pictures are showing on.

You should see the "Post" button in the upper right of the main page, below your username. I've circled it in blue here:

Click on "Post."

That'll take you to the Create Post page where you actually put things on your blog.

I'm currently trying out the beta version of this page that's going to get applied pretty soon, so the style looks a little different here than in standard Dreamwidth. I figured I'd use the beta version because a) it's what people will see in the future, and b) we're going to use the old Rich Text Editor that is the same in both styles.

The Rich Text Editor has a blue rectangle around it and a blue arrow pointing at it in the picture above.

Let's narrow in on the Rich Text Editor. Like in any post, you can just start typing into the Rich Text Editor, if you want words at all. So here I typed a little explanation for the BG3 pictures and put the cursor where I want the pictures to show up.

You can see that there's a bar of options above what I've typed, with buttons that let you bold, italicize, underline, etc. We want a button further on—the square button with a yellow background that looks like a tiny landscape of mountains and sunshine. I've put a blue circle around it on the screenshot below:

Step 6: Add your pictures!

Clicking on the little landscape button will open a box where you can paste the URL of any image you want to put in your Dreamwidth post. The image doesn't have to be hosted on Dreamwidth—you could paste a link to a picture on Tumblr or whatever—but it'll be more stable if it is, so that's what we're doing.

It looks like this:

Since we already uploaded our pictures to Dreamwidth in the earlier steps, we just need the URLs for the pictures. There's a pretty easy way to see what it is.

Step 7: Copy-paste the URL.

Click back to the tab with your newly uploaded pictures. There will be a code at the bottom of each one. In our case, it looks like this:

It might look a bit intimidating if you're not used to code, but you can ignore the most of it. You just want that little part that begins with https and ends with .jpg.

Copy the URL (I've put a blue box around it above) and click back to the Create Post tab. The "Image Properties" box from Step 6 should still be up.

Paste the URL into the top box that says "URL." I've surrounded the correct box with a red rectangle in this picture:

Hit the "OK" button at the bottom and:

You'll see tiny boxes around the frame. Those will go away if you click anywhere other than the picture; they're for adjusting the size.

Step 8: Adjust the picture if you want

You know how Tumblr automatically stretches/shrinks pictures to make them fit? Dreamwidth just leaves them the way they are, so if your original picture is very big, it will look very big, and if it's small, it will look small. But you can adjust the picture yourself.

Maybe my picture of Shadowheart seems really big compared to the text and I want it smaller. I'll click on the tiny box in the upper-left corner of the picture (that one simply because it's the most convenient) and drag it inwards until the picture is the size I want.

And there she is!

BTW: No matter what size you make a picture look in your post, once it is posted, you can always right-click with your mouse and say "open image in new tab" to see it in its real size.

Here's a real post I made with a picture of Shadowheart I'd slightly shrunk in the Dreamwidth editor:

But if I right-click on the image and tell it to open in another tab, you can see that the saved picture is actually full-size:

So feel free to adjust your picture in the post however you want; it won't change the version you originally uploaded to Dreamwidth.

I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but that's how I get images uploaded to Dreamwidth and then embedded in Dreamwidth posts!