#the more time i spend on here (not tumblr specifically but like youtube and other socials... and also here)

[thewanderingzeppelin]

I'm alive!!!!

[caffeinatedopossum]

I hate that I'm literally chronically online but I don't really have a choice. I'm chronically ill, disabled, have very severe anxiety and agoraphobia. I can't just go touch grass and fix everything. I'm just trying my best to stay sane because that's really all I can do

[sheeezu]

Yes, this is a new account, I just made this. I don't care if people question the authenticity of my post, my experience as a shifter, or whatever I'm about to say.

I don't know how to use Tumblr, nor do I know how to make my post reach people who need it, nor would I be a narcissist and say "you're lucky if you found my post!" I don't mind if this reaches an audience or not, I'm glad to get everything off my chest.

Yes. I've shifted.

I have shifted realities, more times than I can count on my fingers, and that is for a very specific reason, which I'll explain later.

I'm writing this because I'm about to permashift, and no, I won't hear out any antishifters or people who don't like permashifting in general, I don't care about your opinion so don't waste my time.

Before I start, I'd like to say one thing:

I was irrational minded, I lacked belief in myself and shifting. Shifting often times felt like a chore more than a fun activity, and i have to admit, it became an unhealthy habit.

So? Why did I mention this?

Because I had been lurking around shifting communities and I realised everyone feels like this, a very (mentally) painful feeling where the lack of shifts starts acting as your biggest enemy, and the phrase:

"Shifting needs practice!"

Sounds like poison when it comes from an experienced shifter.

Though, is the phrase actually true?

No, not at all.

Shifting does not need practice!!

Here's why:

(BTW, I will explain my "method", no matter if I have time or not. Also, I don't call this reality "Current Reality", instead I call it Void reality, so don't get confused.)

The "practice" you're doing is only affecting your void reality (taking time out of your day, making you constantly think you're in your learning phase, so it doesn't exactly lead to your desired reality, does it?)

Of course, if you view it as a skill, it will in some way act like that, it'll become a skill for you, and you can never succeed on your first, second, third, hundredth try, because in your brain you have registered the fact that shifting is this grand, universal task, and that it is very difficult (because its common sense that you practice difficult things to get good at them)

Practice is a very humane and earthly act, if people have succeeded doing just practice, then good for then, they're right in their own way, but it didn't work for me, and in my opinion it's the worst way to view shifting, and often times it is demotivating, and you'll mess up you're entire journey.

Shifting is not a skill, shifting is a universal law.

I'll become more clear as I explain my journey:

My journey:

I found shifting from a random YouTube video 3 years ago. I might have only said cool and moved along.

A year later something traumatic happened in my life, which shook me so badly I needed an escape.

First of all, I chose astral projecting, but I realised I was too much of a coward to do so.

Then I came towards shifting, first DR was very typical, it was Hogwarts.

Having no knowledge whatsoever in the topics of spirituality, meditation, I went straight to methods, because they were like guides for me, I was very inexperienced, of course, and looked at other people and what they were doing for guidance.

Alice in wonderland method didn't do much, raven method was too uncomfortable (side note, all this raven method does is make you too focused on your void reality, cmon, in your DR are you laying down like a starfish?) And I was having terrible trouble with my intrusive thoughts (which made the floor disappear from under my feet, made the stairs for the stairs method too short to climb or straight up made them dissappear as well)

I didn't have any luck that year, no mini shifts, no lucid dreams, or sleep paralysis. And my DRs never remained constant. They always changed on a daily basis.

I was big on methods, I couldn't realize they never worked for me.

Although, this year of failure led me to finally figure out where I belonged.

A DR made out of scratch, which I spend much effort in putting the pieces of it together.

The DR, which was called "Home reality" really made me feel settled in my journey.

LOA, and the consciousness theory were the leading factors which made me shift.

And don't worry, it isn't what you're tired of being told, I didn't just apply any orthodox definition of LOA and succeeded.

Background to my first shift:

It was a particularly stressful day, I really missed my home.

I was studying at my college (I still am, but...) and I was dreading giving a chemistry test, I did not prepare. In my mind, one thing was constantly looping in my head.

The scenario of the chemistry teacher coming in, and taking the test, and the next day I get it handed back with a big fat zero.

But then I stopped and wondered, having already known about the consciousness theory, so according to it:

"I am constantly letting this thought run in my mind, and constantly letting this reality dictate what happens next."

Basically, I realized what was about to happen next was indirectly in my control, but with my line of thinking, I was letting this reality control it directly.

I stopped, like actually stopped thinking.

And with a blank mind I thought.

"I won't have to take any test today."

And went around telling my classmates this with a confident tone.

The teacher came in, said we'll instead do some practicals in lab.

So the test got cancelled.

Going home, I got excited, i felt powerful.

I decided to apply this to shifting.

Before shifting, I took a nap during the day, (if you're tired your body insists on sleeping, so your mind will get hazy and you will start acting lazy towards your goal)

And after living how I normally would, before bedtime, I listened to some songs, and look at a Pinterest board which reminded me of my home reality.

My method and what happened next:

First phase of shifting:

When I laid down on the bed to start shifting, I first got comfy (for me, if I feel sleepy for some reason, I laid on my back, I can't fall asleep in that position, but if I think ill stay awake until I reach a "detached state" then I sleep on my side, it's comfortable)

I obviously wasn't checking the time, but I spent about 10 minutes getting relaxed, all I do to relax is:

a) look at the blackness (closed eyes, looks like starry skies) and try to believe I'm looking at the milky way.

b) think about my home reality, just faces of my loved ones, and nostalgia inducing images.

c) Affirm, but don't focus entirely on affirming, usually in the back of my mind I'm repeating "I have shifted to my home reality" "I have shifted my senses to my home reality" "I have stopped sensing the void reality" "I am smelling, tasting, feeling, hearing and seeing my home reality" no other fancy affirmations required. (Now that I think about it, you need to affirm NOW because this method has two phases, one where you are shifting, and one where you have shifted, and you are in the 3D, where you are occupying your DR self, their thoughts, and memories, and popular method usually only have one phase, either you are shifting, or have shifted. So my point is if you affirm later and you'll be affirming when you're supposed to be in your DR, and obviously, your DR self won't be spouting out affirmations about shifting to a random reality for no reason.)

During this time, you'll feel tingly all over. It's a good sign.

And you'll feel a certain detachment, like you aren't exactly here, you have no idea what position you're lying in, and where your feet are. (Please, for the love of God do not start counting your feet or get freaked out that you can't feel your leg, you'll come back to the void reality.)

So you can start the next phase.

Middle phase (optional):

To prepare for the next and last phase, you can do this to get ready, or don't (First read the third phase)

This is all about connection to your DR.

Think about memories from your DR, focus on the faces of your loved ones, the way you act, talk, your mannerisms in your DR, or you can simply say affirmations like these one:

My name is ___.

I work as a ___.

My age is ___.

Don't try to imagine vividly or anything, lightly touch upon the basic details of your DR, the construction and foundation of any reality and the person, who has existed there for their entire life.

(That's you!)

Phase three:

Take a sudden, abrupt stop from your stream of thoughts. (Yes intrusive thoughts will still pop up but don't give any importance to them) when you're in a blank state of mind, not longer than 30 seconds, you need to build up to the last step of your shifting method, and journey.

a) start imagining hearing the voices of your loved ones or just any voice, calling your DR name, your nicknames, with different tones. (For example, i heard my name in an angry tone from my father when he was scolding me, I heard my name followed by a laughter when my S/O teased me.)

OK, for me, I started feeling intense, groundshaking symptoms at this moment. Sudden flashing of lights, extreme feeling of floating, and ofcourse, feeling tingliness so much that it felt like pins and needle on my entire body. (I did ignore the symptoms)

b) plan the rest of your day in your DR, which you will be spending.

AGAIN, PLEASE DON'T SAY IT LIKE THIS.

❌️When I reach my DR ❌️ I will have to go to that eye specialist for that appointment.

Instead: (and the more you personalize it, the better)

Ughhh, I have to go to that appointment- this day will suck.

(Don't mind my example, that was the only thing I could think of at the moment)

c) in this reality, you are constantly thinking of something, your thoughts are definitely what constructs this reality, and your current thoughts are affecting your subconscious. (By this point, your subconscious is grounded in your DR, so don't worry about that bastard.)

Now, you're going to start thinking, thoughts which are going on in your DR self's mind, start with one sentence, with which you'll be able to start consciously thinking like your DR self.

And think in the style, tone, and mood of your DR self, and keep the thoughts strictly related to your DR.

Thats it, but what happens afterwards? And what happened to me?

So for me, I started feeling weird while I was thinking.

And I remember I thought this:

"Ugh, I don't want eggs for breakfast."

(I'm not saying this is the key to shifting, at this point, I had covered various topics, including, weather, my upcoming work assignment, and praised my S/O for a good 5 minutes.)

And I started panting, like suddenly I was trying to catch my breath, the room felt bright, so I opened my eyes, and well, I was in my home reality :)

I was delirious for a few second, my S/O was looking at me worriedly, but surprisingly, it didn't even take me a minute to adjust, it felt all so natural and I wasn't scared.

I didn't even feel emotional, at all, and didn't hug my S/O with tears in my eyes, I straight up asked to be served breakfast, incase anyone was wondering.

So that's it.

Although i have much to say, I'm tired of writing, but I'm more than willing to answer each and every one of your questions, although I only have 7 hours left till I permashift, I'll remain mostly active till then.

And no, I'm not rereading this to fix my grammar, so just ask if anything confused you.

Ask away.

I'm still not sure if this'll reach anyone or not.

[writingquestionsanswered]

hiya! for writers who are complete beginners, kinda sorta maybe write at a high school level, can't describe to save their lives, have overall bad flow (as in they can't decide what little moments scenes to think up and even write, if they do, they're no good), have been told countless times to write daily and just read more but that doesn't cover the basics or foundations of creative writing, not like they can learn from a book bc they're a hands on learner anyway and p.s they're super broke so can't afford writing classes and no library near them offers free ones ---- aka me :( --- do you have any advice? lol i feel kinda doomed and that maybe writing isn't for me, but I don't wanna get my hopes down!! with the right tools, it's possible.

Free Resources for Learning How to Write

I want to start with addressing why you've been told so often "to write daily and read more" as a way to learn how to write. It's very difficult to learn and excel at a craft if you have no experience with said craft. You can read all the information in the world about how to forge a sword, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to pick up a hunk of metal and be able to forge a beautiful sword. You need to spend a lot of time watching other people forge swords, and spend a lot of time actually practicing each step yourself if you want to get good at it. Writing works the same way. Reading lets you experience what fiction should be, writing lets you practice each step for yourself.

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to read fiction for free. You can borrow books from friends, family members, and members of your community. You can check out books and e-books from your local library if you have one. You can look for Little Free Libraries in your neighborhood. There's also a lot of legally free fiction available online. Project Gutenberg, Planet E-Book, Bartleby, Literature.org, Classic Literature, Classic Short Stories, Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, Library of Short Stories, Levar Burton Reads, and sites like Kobo, Amazon, and Audible often offer freebies of both e-books and audio books.

Other free ways to learn how to write:

1 - Follow bloggers and vloggers and authors on social media who talk about the craft of writing. Some of my favorites are: Joanna Penn/The Creative Penn, K.M. Weiland, Liselle Sambury, Abbie Emmons, Hannah Lee Kidder, Brittany Wang, Alyssa Matesic, Bethany Atazadah, Lindsay Puckett, Alexa Donne, Shaelin Writes, Ellen Brock, The Writing Gals, and Sincerely, Vee.

2 - Follow writing craft blogs here on tumblr: (some suggestions) @writingwithcolor, @howtofightwrite, @heywriters, @cripplecharacters, @lgbtqwriting, @fixyourwritinghabits, @wordsnstuff, @yourbookcouldbegayer, @lizard-is-writing

3 - Watch writing craft videos on YouTube: If there's something specific you want to learn about, say, "how to structure a scene," type it into YouTube and many different videos will pop up that walk you through how to structure a scene. Just look for one that strikes you as appealing!

4 - Look for free writing resources online: many authors (especially indie authors and writing gurus/coaches like Joanna Penn, K.M. Weiland, Bethany Atazadeh, Brittany Wang, and Abbie Emmons) offer free writing resources on their web sites or by signing up for their newsletters. Often you'll see writers participating in free online writing summits/workshops which you can sign up for and either watch the videos live or via video playback that is offered for a short period of time (like 24 hours.)

5 - Do a Google Search: believe it or not, there's not a single thing you could want to learn about writing that you can't find for free on Google. If you want to learn how to improve your grammar, go to Google, type in "tips for improving grammar" and you will get a million articles that will tell you how to do just that. Want to learn how to improve your story's flow? Google "how to improve story flow" and you'll have your answer. You can even search for free worksheets, guides, and workbooks on just about anything you want. "Free character development worksheet" brought back a ton of nice looking free worksheets. "Free worldbuilding workbook" brought up several free workbooks and worksheets to help you with worldbuilding. Everything you could want to know is out there.

And, bonus: you can always read through the posts in my WQA master list to get help with a wide variety of craft and writer-related issues.

Happy learning! ♥

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[lurkingteapot]

Free Thai language learning resources

I’ve been learning Thai for the past 20 months. This list is by no means complete or comprehensive, what works for me doesn’t have to work for you, etc etc. That said: I’ve used most of these and found them useful, I thought you might, too. Have fun!

Youtube channels with free video lessons:

There are tons of wonderful teachers on youtube; this is by no means an exhaustive list. The three channels listed here are comprehensive, long-running, and updated regularly; if you have other favourites, please reblog and append!

Comprehensible Thai is a channel that teaches Thai in Thai, from zero, via the comprehensible input method. They have videos from total beginner through upper intermediate/lower advanced levels available.

Learn Thai with Mod – Mod runs a language school that offers good, structured group classes; she and her co-teachers often upload short videos about specific aspects of Thai. The channel has been around for a long time and they cover a lot of topics, including grammar points.

Thai Lessons by New (Learn Thai one Word one Sentence) – lots of good vocabulary and situational phrases

Other channels I like:

Advanced Thai with Kruu Momm -- one of my favourites, Momm’s a star. Not included in the upper list only because this is definitely more of an intermediate-advanced resource.

Thai with Grace -- I knew of Grace via her polyglot channel and travel vlogs before I realised she also teaches Thai. Fun stuff.

Kat talks Thai -- I believe Kat is more active on instagram (@kattalksthai), but these are still really neat.

Perth Nakhun’s Basic Thai playlist

Honourable mentions because they’re interesting and can be nice supplements (yes, the video titles on these channels tend to be clickbaity, the content is useful, though):

Stu Jay Raj: Stu is a polyglot based in Thailand. His channel is a bit of a mixed bag, but he has a very interesting approach to languages and sometimes does foreign accent reduction / accent analysis sessions on his channel (with consent and participation of those whose speech he dissects).

Thai Talk with Paddy: Paddy is an Australian who learned Thai when he was a volunteer in Thailand, he’s kept it up. Fun things about language learning and culture

Listening comprehension

I’m assuming many folks on here who are interested in Thai already watch some Thai shows (yes I’m stereotyping but also this is tumblr), which means you’re spending time listening to Thai.

If you’re not:

Netflix, Youtube, WeTV, and Viki all have several Thai shows with English subtitles available. The Youtube channel of Thai broadcasting giant GMMTV has English subtitles on nearly all of their uploaded series, some series are also subtitled in languages other than English. one31 is another huge channel; they have English subtitles on some series and some series also have subtitles in Thai. There’s tons more – find a rec list and a Thai show that sounds like you’d enjoy it, chances are you’ll be able to watch it for free, legally, on youtube. You can use the youtube controls (or the ones on netflix) to turn the speed down to 75% —this can make it a lot easier to catch what’s being said. 50% gets so draggy that I personally find it almost harder to understand, but ymmv—give it a shot!

https://lingopolo.org/thai/ has real-life recordings for listening practice; sign-up is required but it’s literally just an e-mail-address, user name and password. Using the site is free.

https://www.activethai.com/ has a section dedicated to learning the tones (under “Overview of Thai Tones”) including a self-test for listening that I found very useful.

Learning to read

I will always, always, ALWAYS recommend learning to read the Thai script. All available romanisations for Thai have drawbacks, and besides, you learned to read English with its “though through thorough tough thought”, you can damn well learn to read Thai. I promise it will help you improve your pronunciation (yes, really) and overall understanding of how the language works.

Learn-to-Read-Thai resources that seem comprehensive and like they should do everything in one:

Anki decks “Read Thai PHASE 1 - The Consonants“, “Read Thai PHASE 2 - Thai Vowels“, “Read Thai PHASE 3 - Consonant Classes” and “Read Thai PHASE 4 - Tone Rules” by Khruu Gaan (ครูกานต์). Anki is probably the most powerful spaced repetition software I have ever used. It’s free on all desktops and android. These decks have sound.

Memrise course “Read Thai: A Complete Guide to Reading Thai“

Other resources I used (In hindsight, I feel like I should’ve picked one resource to learn to read from and stuck with it; I think I was rushing and made things more complicated than need be for myself with my hodgepodge mix-and-match approach. But hey, I can read now.)

https://www.activethai.com/ – the site I started with. Teaches the consonants separated by class and with sound. The only reason this is no longer my top recommendation is that I ended up using this alongside a resource that helped me memorise what the words used to represent the letters actually mean because the site itself didn’t tell me, and I wanted that easy way to have 44 vocabulary words ready as soon as you’re done learning your consonants, and it gives you access to neat mnemonics such as ไก่จิกเด็กตาย(เฎ็กฏาย)บนปากโอ่ง.

The chart on Wikipedia’s English article on the Thai Script

the reference section of Thai-Language.com

In order to better learn to read Thai written in different fonts (modern and handwriting fonts can be tough at first), the Thai Script typographical styles overview on Thai-language.com was a huge help, as was throwing simple phrases things into gdocs and messing around to see how different fonts made them look. This chart from sanukmaak.com also helped.

Speaking and pronunciation

The hardest one for any new language for most folks. For me personally, finding someone who speaks the language and is willing to correct me was an absolute necessity, but I know that’s not always an option. If you’re going it on your own, make sure you check out the resources above for learning to hear the tones and those sounds and sound clusters not present in your own language correctly first.

Things to try on your own:

shadowing: Whenever someone on a show utters a sentence you think might be useful, or provide a useful pattern, or something just sounds cool, rewind and try to speak along as they say it, trying to make it sound as close to their pronunciation as you can.

try to record yourself and listen back -- yes, it’s cringe af but it will HELP.

memorising short sentences and phrases: tying back to the section above, there's a ton of youtube videos that is "phrases to use in [situation]" that are great for targeted learning if you're up for it

self talk (cautiously! don't want to cement bad pronunciation habits)

if you’re linguistically inclined: looking up descriptions on how to make a sound correctly sometimes helps, as does watching videos of folks who’ve successfully learned the language.

once you’ve learned to read: find sentences to read somewhere (twitter, a textbook, whatever) and read them into your phone’s dictation engine. See if the software understands you correctly. Adjust as needed until it does.

Websites and apps to find language partners or (paid) tutors

Like any other app where you ‘meet people’, please exercise caution on these.

italki (mainly for finding tutors and teachers, but you can find language partners on the forums)

Preply (web/app) (for finding tutors/teachers)

hellotalk (app only, iOS/android) for finding language partners -- free to use basic features like messaging, voice rooms, etc; has annoying ads

tandem (app only, iOS/android) for finding language partners -- free to use basic features, has ads

any other app or website that’ll let you meet people, like local facebook groups (yes really), instagram, etc

(note: Neither hellotalk nor tandem allow users to sign up without selecting a binary gender. it sucks. I’ve seen people who managed to circumvent this on Hellotalk by signing up via apple ID (? I think), but it’s hearsay and I have not managed to do so myself.)

Books (a book) that are (is) worth spending money on imo

Higbie & Thinsan: Thai Reference Grammar. The Structure of Spoken Thai. Orchid Press: Bangkok, 2002. Yes, it’s ancient in textbook terms. It’s not perfect, but it’s still the best reference grammar for Thai I’ve come across so far, and I use it frequently.

Random bits and bobs

Stu Jay Raj has two videos in particular that I, as a phonetics-and-phonology-loving person, loved and found extremely useful and wished I’d watched before I started to try and learn the script: Thai Vowels for Dummies in 5 Min v2 - A System Impossible to Forget and Thai Bites Extended Edition - Transliterating Thai using IPA. I realise these may be overwhelming and less helpful for people with no prior phonetics or phonology training, but they helped me so much it’d feel amiss not to include them.

Resources I recommend AGAINST using when starting out

drops/hello words -- seems like their Thai courses have been created using machine translation that wasn’t sufficiently proofread. They will assign you nouns in places of the corresponding verb or false cognates, and that’s within the first 10 or so lessons. Might be useful once the level where a learner can tell “ah, yeah, that’s … not right” has been reached? idk.

transcription as generated by google translate: BURN IT WITH FIRE. it’s a transliteration, i.e. 1-to-1 representation of 1 Thai letter = 1 Latin letter (extended), it’s not phonemic, it’s not going to help ANYONE (and those who can make sense of it presumably already read Thai and would be better off with just Thai script). Just. Stop.

Google translate as a dictionary: still shitty but not AS bad as the transcription function. Still, for the love of all that you hold dear, please, save yourself the pain and confusion and just use thai2english or thai-language.com instead.

---

And that’s that from me, friends. Yeeting this into the void before I second-guess myself more. Please append additional resources!

Edited to fix a couple of typos and errors on 2023-06-15

[queenofwhoredom]

Hi, love ur blog its very helpful in understanding my life 😊

Can I ask you what books or others resources do you recommend for learning about those beautiful and interesting topics?

Thank you 🙏����

Hi thank you so much. This blog initially started as a blog to share my reflections after a crazy depressive and stagnant phase lol but I am happy it is helpful though🥰.

I don’t know whether I can recommend a specific book/resource as I feel like the best way to develop a well rounded perspective in life is to get inspired by different ressources that may differ from your comfort zone. I guess remaining curious in life, and open to confront your ideas with new perspectives is pivotal to dissect different kind of belief systems. However, I have to say, no matter how many books and resources we have at our disposal, experience is and will always prevail. I think my most craziest reflections result from real life experiences, by remaining an active participant of my life instead of a consumer of people's reflections. It is cliché though but I think experience is crucial and unfortunately theory can only bring you so far. I have learnt more about life just by being deeply involved in my daily life activities : trying new hobbies, going for walks, meditating, observing nature, spending time with loved ones, installing apps that would give me the possibility to make international friends: like tandem,bumble bff, slowly, Facebook groups, or even here on Tumblr (just stay safe if you ever meet with strangers though lol but it goes without saying), trying new internships, travelling, making new friends, art expos etc etc..

But here are some my favorite resources at the moment:

I think art house movies are a good way to start, art house movies have this specific kind of energy that instantly bring people into a philosophical mode.

Authors: Clarice Lispector, Albert Camus, Clarissa Pinkola, Amélie Nothomb etc etc

Youtube Channels: Hitomi Mochizuki, Karissa Love, Karine Alourde, Claire Nakti. I also love the following channels called "Esoterica" and "Let's talk Religions". I believe learning more about different kind of mystical/philosophical branches will give you more sophisticated insight than any new age video you will ever find.

Books: All about love (Bell Books), the Road less Travelled (Scott Peck) etc..

[liskantope]

Back in late 2020 I made a post which mentioned as a side comment the impression I get from a lot of the more aggressive SJ people that writing/saying a lot (e.g. writing long, nuanced, qualifying, and/or perhaps defensive-sounding responses) is seen as evidence in and of itself of being wrong in the argument, specifically the type of wrong that comes from a position of privilege (I thought a little later I wrote a short post focusing only on this, but I can't seem to find it now). The example in the above-linked post is in the strangely-proportioned screenshot, where someone who is being attacked for not bowing down to the Correct political opinions keeps responding with lengthy, articulate, nuanced comments (which include some acknowledgment of her own weaknesses) and is met only more vehement attacks declaring checkmate explicitly on the grounds that her comments are long. The end of the exchange happens when she leaves a comment raising her eyebrows at being attacked for long-windedness, and the entirety of the response is "...you and your privilege". It's a finale that's stuck with me.

I was reminded of this today when an unexpected spurt of activity showed up on my Tumblr: an activist with whom I got into a contentious exchange well over two years ago for some reason chose now to abruptly reblog a several of my lengthy responses with pithy remarks (okay, plus one which includes a link to her own independent blog post about it which I don't think I'd seen before), and a minor flurry of likes and replies followed. I don't care to reblog any of this now, or even link to it, because my getting into that debate is something I'm really not proud of: the topic is not a hill I want to die on, and I dislike my awkward defensiveness and repeated apologies and semi-retractions. If I'm going to spend time and energy arguing something really controversial, I would rather it be a discussion where I can be really incisive and not catch myself arguing carelessly and sloppily and feel the repeated need to step back and clutter everything with caveats and apologies. But, if you are curious, I was defending a YouTuber I respect from being cancelled for being Problematic, and this exchange happened in spring of 2021.

The one new bit of substantive information for me coming from today's activity is the link to a separate blog post written at the time, which further confirms that there's no point in me continuing to defend that YouTuber to this activist: apparently among the list of things that makes this YouTuber's case worse and confirms their guilt are (1) publishing an earlier video which made all of the exact right points but which (surprise, surprise) got noticed by more people than a written article by a lower-profile person from the Relevant Marginalized Group making essentially the same points, (2) acknowledging that the Relevant Social Justice Cause is a good one and including a link to a fundraiser, and (3) momentarily sighing with a slight look of exasperation when first bringing up the accusation of being Problematic in a video. (Sorry I'm continuing to be vague here.)

Continuing to argue with this activist would be a waste of time, since our rhetorical values and norms are clearly too far apart for us ever to reach each other. Looking at it makes me grateful to have found a part of Tumblr that does share my basic notions of how discussions should work.

But what strikes me most of all is how my lengthiness itself is somehow treated as evidence of my guilt or wrongness or privilege or something. One of my lengthy reblogs got met today with a single sentence mocking it as a "dissertation" and managing to weirdly characterize my thesis without explanation, while another later one got met with "Have you considered just.... never talking again? Because you are not good at it." Again, these little zingers were fired off probably within a few minutes earlier today, in response to things I wrote back in spring of 2021.

That's the exact same kind of back-of-the-hand dismissal that I mentioned above having witnessed done to someone else (with the "...you and your privilege" comment). It reads like "This person talks too much, that's how you know they're in the wrong, so no need to address any of their points, if I smack them with a one-sentence response saying 'Haha that just further confirms you're wrong!' then I win."

And it's like, usually I consider my ability at cognitive empathy to be quite good, but it's hard for me to figure out what the other party is actually thinking in a situation like this: I can sort of get my head around not respecting nuance in certain selective situations and thinking the ability to feel nuance is a sign of privilege or something, but I can't quite figure out how they justify these one-sentence blanket dismissals on the grounds that the other person's comments are too long without imagining that they must be aware on some level that they're just being domineering-in-an-internet-way and deliberately going for a cheap and empty slam-dunk. This isn't very charitable, but honestly I have a hard time understanding such people's motives any other way.

[cleverusernameh]

Might As Well Put 2024 Art Summary Here

et voila

tons of dragons, a few non dragons, and one dinosaur (that's the really hard to see one on the paper sorry :{)

March-May and December dragons are fully viewable on my Youtube channel, as well as the rest of the animation Feburary's singular frame comes from. October and July are fully visible on my ArtFight. As for the others, I'll slide them in here, with baby descriptions and more bonus art, hopefully below the cut (apparently you can manually add these?)

like, i thought this was just some skill seasoned tumblr bumblrs had, inately knowing how much of any given text/images would show up before a given cut. crazy. anyway, arts!

January - Fantasy Creature ft. Gay People

Fantasy creature on left for Book Series #2 I Want to Write (coincidentally where the gays come from as well). The fantasy creature is based off of dinosaurs, essentially. Nice and feathery, with actual ears and such. Actually, I developed it from a Picrew played so, shoutout to StaticStray's Monster Picrew.

The gay people are there, and are some of my most beloved right now.

June - Big Birthday Bdragon

Made this for my friend's birthday around the same time I was whipping up my commissions sheet (you can also see it there, and also maybe think about commissioning me for something pretty please?). I designed him (Thundertalon) with the same mentality I do with all my "humans into dragons" drawings: how do I put these aspects of this specific person into a dragon? Favorite color, eye color, spines mimicking hair, and any other general key features are adapted as well as I can into dragon form.

I also made another fullbody dragon the same day because I didn't realize two of my friends had the same birthday until the day of, so needless to say, one of them got more sauce than the other.

So here's Snowdrop, Leaf/Night hybrid:

July - The Rest of ArtFight

I put up half of my attacks/defenses earlier, but not all of them, so here they are:

These characters belong to wackygeluga, Natural_Disaster, allergies.

August - Doodle of DND Character + More Gay People

school means being crazy busy, so finding good stuff i made (digitally) during the school months was a bit harder. this is just a headshot of a DND character I played as for two sessions. He is a thinly veiled Dan from Dan Vs. I miss him.

Also one night I traced a base I found on Pintrest, and accidentally ate so hard and I can't hide it anymore:

literally why

September - Design Doodle and oh... oh wait that's sans undertale

Moons forbid I try to give my characters an alternate outfit lest they become sans undertale. This is Edward, one of the gay people from earlier. His book takes place in 2016, so if he were to ever wear this in the story, I will definitely make Terrence say something about it.

Wait, he wouldn't know what Undertale is.

...

COMMENT DOWN BELOW TO MAKE A CAMEO IN A TWO SECOND SCENE IN A BOOK THAT WILL CERTAINLY DEFINITELY COME OUT

November - Maize Birthday Piece

I don't talk enough about my OCs on here, nor show them off. But like, every (other) year, I do a little art for them on the birthday I made up for them. November 4th is the birthday of Maize Bliss. (pronounced "may-zee"; yes I'm sorry, but not enough to change it until forced to at gunpoint). Here's just a random cool shot of her activating her healing powers to fix those internal organs or something. I also used markers on this, and as someone much more familiar with crayons and pencils as art mediums, this was a fun experiment to do.

And that's about it---except for these sillies I made in the middle of animating for something else:

that's my cat Pumpkin. I love her.

Anyhow, see you next year, and now for me to spend 6 hours filling in the appropriate tags and then some fun ones on top of that.

[eossa]

How I'd Make Tumblr More Profitable

Yes, this is going to be controversial, since I know nothing about the behind-the-scenes spending, economics, and all that jazz. But I've been on Tumblr for long enough to have a rough idea of the userbase wants - which is what positions Tumblr in a niche other sites don't really utilize. Most of the points I list here are about improving the experience of existing users, as keeping users might be harder for tumblr than attracting new ones.

Please note that this posts reflects my personal opinions and some stuff I've seen people complain about it. Do not attack me over anything I've written here, it's not worth my time and I will resort to blocking if I'm being bothered. Constructive criticism is fine and encouraged!

[under the cut because this got quite long] [last updated 20th July 2023]

Features to Add

Block posts. Xkit has/had this feature, it was great. Sometimes I just don't want to see a specific post, and others probably agree with that.

Send asks and replies from sideblogs. Would literally make a lot of things easier and better.

Delete individual reblog additions from a post. Sometimes, you have a post where there is one"relevant" addition, multiple "irrelevant" additions ("yes!", "[repeated phrase in bold]", "this is a must reblog"), before there is a "relevant" addition again. But right now, you can only remove all reblog additions, not just individual ones. I feel like this would be a neat feature.

Direct blocking of anon hate which also tracks the IP and blocks the associated account(s). No rights for cowards, that's all I'll say.

Features to Bring Back

Reblog chains. Prev tags are the backbone of lots of interactions on here. If I click on someone's username in a reblog chain, I want to see that post on their blog, not their blog starting from the newest post. The loss of this feature is one of the things people constantly complain about in the replies of @changes.

Several text formatting options. As a theme maker, it would be nice to have proper preformatted text again - it makes code so much more legible. Other formatting options I miss are marked/highlighted text and text lines, which are really helpful to visually break apart passages of text.

Features to Ditch

Tumblr Live. There I've said it. If I want to see stuff like that, I have TikTok, IG Reels, Pinterest Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Twitter also has something like this. It's oversaturated, and aparently there are still enough cyber security concerns that it's not even accessible outside of the US and Canada.

Ads in lightboxes. Especially on mobile, there are already more than enough ads on the feed, no need to add more nested inside other elements.

Features that Make Money

Pay for NSFW. If this site allowed full nudity etc. again but hid it behind a paywall, we'd kill two birds with one stone: The site would probably still be allowed on the App Store, and the money influx would be huge. The userbase would also increase again.

(If Tumblr Live is kept.) Pay to snooze Tumblr Live permanently. It's the most complained about thing in changes' replies, so I feel like people would pay on a subscription base just to not see TL anymore.

Pay to increase limits. 250 posts per day is the maximum that can be posted - and there are people hitting those limits. If there was an option to buy a higher limit (500p/d, 750p/d, etc.), people might generally use it. Like those add-on charges for mobile data. Same goes for posts in the queue, posts in drafts, images in a photoset and so on.

Pay to pin posts at the top of a tag or search result. Ebay Kleinanzeigen has this neat feature where you can push your small ads to the top of a search query so that more people can see it. This could be a cool feature to try, as it would work in a more content-aware way than Blaze does.

Pay to buy inactive URLs. There are some really cool usernames on here that are taken by blogs that haven't updated for 5+ years and only have one post (or none at all), and I feel like it would be neat to be able to buy one of these cool usernames attached to an empty account. To make sure that usernames attached to redirect or something else don't get bought, tumblr should send an e-mail to the username owner - if the user doesn't react to that for 3 months, the usernames changed owners. [added 13th July 2023]

Existing Features to Improve

NPF posts. I feel like a combination of legacy and NPF would be neat. Think selecting a main element like in the legacy editor (e.g. video, image, audio) and then adding a caption that can add different content types like NPF does. Or at least create a better overview over NPF variables and release the full base code with documentation to make things easier for the web designers on here. There are more issues with the NPF format but I won't list everything people dislike about it here.

Block people. The block feature should make sure that the person being blocked doesn't see any posts made by the person they were blocked by, even if those posts were reblogged by another user. Also, like IG does, there should be an option to block either just a specific blog or the IP address attached to block side-blogs and other accounts of that user.

Color palettes. The color palette options for the dashboard are generally a nice idea but I think it would be better if there was a dropdown menu to choose a palette from rather than having to click through all the different options. For example, if I want to go from Cement (light mode) to Dark mode, I have to click through 10 options until I reach Dark again. There has to be an easier way. [added 20th July 2023]

Other Improvements Needed

Nuke spam bots. Users are reporting all the spam bots, yet, it doesn't seem like they are dwindling in numbers. Also - at least this is how it's being perceived by the userbase - tumblr isn't doing enough on their end to reduce spam bots. This is definitely something that needs to be fixed.

End hateful and criminal activities. It's the year 2023, yet there are still outright N*zis, violent tr*nsphobes, literal p*dophiles, and other people committing to the daily bit of hate speech and other illegal activities (fraud too considering all those fake GoFundMe sites) on this website. I'm not saying free speech should be banned but there is a bright red line between what is free spech and what is hate speech (or should get you jailed considering fraud and p*dophilia).

A through-out, perhaps even interactive, beginner tutorial. "The site is too complicated to use for new users!" – then explain how it works in easy terms, with examples, images, and videos. Every other application or web app has walk-throughs, just do the same here.

Improved ad relevancy. The ads I see on tumblr are usually so out-of touch with the userbase, and many of them feel like the sort of stuff you see on a spam-ridden torrenting site. I feel like increasing the relevancy of ads to what the users usually blog about would cause a higher click-rate and turn-over-rate than the current ads do.

Summary

There is probably more I could add, but that's it for now. Should I make any later additions directly to this post, I will mention it to prevent misunderstandings. If you have any ideas or constructive criticism, let me hear about it in the replies or reblogs of this post.

[vacantgodling]

Writeblr Interview

On the Tumblr Writing Community

How long have you had your writing Tumblr/Writeblr?

been on tumblr in some way since like 2013. been on writeblr specifically since like 2020-2021... ish?

What led you to create it?

ended up leaving twitter (back when it was still twitter) around the time the pandemic happened. i wanted to get back into tumblr because i'd been focusing mostly on twitter for awhile and the yeehan community/my old friends kinda weren't doing shit for me so i wanted to focus more on my original stuff. so i ended up making a writeblr when i heard that was a thing.

What’s your favorite thing about the Writeblr community?

how we really do just be on here talking about our blorbos and having a good time. its nice to have a place to escape with people who also get the importance of not being connected to reality at all times.

Is there anything you’d like to see more of on your dash?

i feel like ask games have kind of died down compared to how they were a few years ago so it'd be nice to make a resurgance of that.

What tips/advice do you have for someone who made a Writeblr today?

honestly just post what makes you happy and actually interact with other people. just trying to promote your own stuff doesn't really work (unless you're an artist tbh) but interacting with other people and making posts talking about what you're making with enthusiasm instead of the "woe is me idk how to talk about my wips but i hope someone will talk with me... :((" like bro idk just talk about it. have a good time. you don't have to follow for follow or follow someone just bc they're a writeblr either i kinda hate that shit. like only follow me if you're actually interested in my shit and vice versa. but that's just a pet peeve. tumblr isn't twitter we are about having a good time here not about promo.

WIP it Good

Which Works-in-Progress (WIPs) or writing projects are you noodling about, lately?

that's a funny way to put this. rn its mostly been tcol just because i've been on a worldbuilding history kick because i've been cramming my brain full of a fucking alternate history youtube channel that my brain is mildly hyperfixated on. but my brain kinda flip flops around to any of my main wips when its convenient.

How long have you been working on them?

tcol's a wip i've had since i was 12 so like. pff 14 years at this point? jesus it sounds so old when i put it like that. paramour just had its 3 year anniversary on 6/19. vdtrt i've also had since 12. btaf is a couple of months old. like. maybe 2 months old lmao.

Do you remember what inspired them/what got you started?

tcol -> the video game etrian odyssey, lotr, history (in general) paramour -> there's so many influences frfr. but the original start was crimson peak and wanting to make something like that but also beauty and the beast and goth lit or whatever vdtrt -> percy jackson btaf -> twilight, but specifically the bella pregnancy arc

How much time, in your best estimation, do you spend thinking about them?

literally all day every day in some capacity

When someone asks the dreaded, “What do you write about,” question, what do you usually say?

"fantasy" i don't really talk to people about my writing at all in general irl anymore tho. just sets up for annoyance and disappointment.

What do you want to say (if it’s different from what you do say)?

"fantasy" like. i really don't like people knowing about my wips esp if i don't think they have the bandwidth to appreciate them. not to sound uppity but like ik the people who i'm around and the shit that intrigues them is just worlds away from what i'm writing whether it be because its fantasy, because it's horror, or because it's queer.

Let’s Rotate Blorbos

Name any characters you created.

so as of counting (and not counting the plethora of flesh blood recently added to tcol) i've got 419 characters and counting. this also doesn't include any of the ocs i have with my partner which is a decent amount. i'll just stick with the mcs of the main wips. so those would be:

hyacinthus, amon, darren, sjaak, biscella, azelie, piper, forte, deux, san, clear

Who’s the most unhinged?

least to most hinged of this list:

SJAAK -> amon -> san -> piper -> hya -> clear -> deux -> biscella -> azelie -> darren -> forte

Who comes the most naturally for you to write?

hya and amon are the easiest to write because i've written them the most. darren is a close second but not first because his whole thing about not using adverbs really trips me up.

Do you ever cringe at them?

nah. i don't cringe at them. i disdain at them. but not really cringe. i get really bad secondhand embarrassment so i don't tend to make characters that make me have that actually cringe reaction.

How much control do you feel you have over your characters?

kinda a weird question for me but tbh i feel like its sort of a 50-50 situation. i tend to make characters firstly out of some utility (aka i need a character to fulfill this role in the plot) and then as i develop them its like the two of us become collaborators on writing the story together. sometimes characters can be a bit stubborn about what they do or don't tell me about their backstories (hya is notorious for this) but for the most part they can't really "hide" things from me or wholly not do what i want them to do. a lot of times i'm going to put them in a situation anyway, they just need to tell me how they'll react to it. if any of that makes sense.

Do you enjoy people asking questions about your characters?

of course :) i sound kind of dead in this questionaire because i'm at work ready to kms. but, sending me asks or talking to me on discord/tumblr messages about any of my idiots is always loved

On Writeblr Engagement

What makes you want to follow another Writeblr account?

i look at the vibes of the account, who they are, if they have an intro and what kind of wips they're writing. i mostly only follow people if i see that their wips interest me. some exceptions can be made, ie: if they interact with a lot of my stuff first and we become friendly and i'm not following them i'll follow after the fact and then get invested in whatever they're doing. but on initial contact i like to see who you are and if your wips are interesting to me.

What makes you decide against following?

wips don't interest me or have things in their wips/in their sphere of focus that i just don't care about or aren't really my cup of tea. like let's say someone puts in their wip/personal intro that they hate fantasy. i write fantasy all the time. so like. probably not gonna follow you. that kind of thing.

Do you interact with non-mutuals often?

not often? i wouldn't mind it bc i actually don't follow that many people (always under 100) but this is bc i can't keep up with people that much and i want to make sure i properly give attention to others if i'm going to be invested in them. but like. i enjoy talking to people about my shit so like. /shrug. i have way more followers than i follow which is why i mentioned i hate when people follow me just bc i'm another writeblr lol. i'd much rather you follow me because you have interest in Me but like, i can't control people frfr.

Do your mutuals’ characters occupy space in your noodle?

yeah! that's why i try to keep who i follow kind of in lower ranges. i have bad memory and it takes me awhile to warm up to people, but when i follow someone its because i want to be friendly and get invested in what they do. so like, i try to do that. i'm not the best but i do try.

[aesethewitch]

#OcculTea - Conclusions

What are some topics of conversation I’d like to see more of in our community?

I do think that there’s a lack of intermediate to advanced content in the public eye. And I understand why, of course. Beginners find posts they don’t understand and ask a million basic questions: “How do I raise energy?” “Should I cast a circle first?” “If I don’t have this ingredient, what can I substitute? But I don’t have that either, what about this?”

And if they don’t get answers, or if the wrong person finds a post that speaks just a little too authoritatively, they get pissed. Tumblr’s hatemail game is, indeed, unreal. It’s hard sometimes to want to publish something personal or talk about something that the General Audience might disagree with or that’s more advanced than what can usually be found out there.

It would require beginners to recognize when something isn’t really for them (yet). It would also require people to give the benefit of the doubt and actually read a whole post before jumping to the replies or into the poster’s ask box to complain about their wording or tone or “how could you leave out such and such specific detail” or other annoying, disrespectful nonsense like that. Alas, this is the piss on the poor website.

What are my community needs?

My top priorities in a community are somewhere to ask questions, somewhere to have casual, low-stakes conversations, and somewhere to share and vet resources (books, PDFs, shops, materials, websites, blogs, etc.). I sometimes fall off the face of the earth and go hermit-mode for mental health reasons, so communities that require constant participation and look down on declining invitations are no-gos for me.

For the most part, I do think my community needs are being met! I wish I had an in-person place to go, hang out, buy or make things, and just exist as a witch without worrying about conforming to love-and-light ideals and/or cultural appropriation. I’ve been thinking about starting meet-ups at our local library, but the idea of no one showing is… well, it sucks and is scary. So. We’ll see how that goes.

Where would I like to be held and supported?

It really depends.

In this space (Tumblr), the greatest supports are reblogs. Liking a post does little for me in terms of exposure and connection. A reblog spreads my work to new eyes while also showing me that yes, the thing I’ve written is useful in some way. Replies are also good, but reblogs are really where it’s at.

Direct interaction with my work encourages me to write and publish more. I stopped putting up my research into digital divination (which has continued, by the way) because it wasn’t getting any notes. To me, that says that no one’s reading it. If no one’s reading it, I shouldn’t spend so much time cleaning up my notes for presentation, because that’s time I could use better elsewhere on work that will get attention and perhaps pay the bills.

Which kinda sucks! Research into theory and the history of these niche topics are very much passion projects of mine. I’ve got all sorts of notes dissecting Pick-A-Card tarot culture and clickbait tarot YouTube/TikTok videos that may never see the light of day, because it just… doesn’t get noticed. No one cares. I care, obviously, and that’s why I’m still doing it for myself. I’d love to share it, but… again, who cares, aside from me?

Basically, just… interact with stuff, lmao. Tip if you can, still interact if you can't. If you enjoy someone’s work, reblog it. Likes do nothing for creators on this platform. And as someone who relies on this platform to spread my business, reblogs really do make all the difference. (PS: Everyone who has ever recommended my services to someone else, either here or elsewhere, is literally an angel. Word of mouth does more for small businesses than any amount of advertising I could possibly do. You’ve got no idea. Ily.)

Where do I feel like I’m not truly being seen by my community?

I get a lot of attention for my free tarot stuff that I do every Friday. And that’s fair. People love a freebie. There’s a whole subculture of tarot readers here on Tumblr who just do different kinds of free readings for people, often for fun.

But again, the stuff I’m actually proud of tends to get less notes than the throwaway shitposts. It’s rough. I have a feeling that all the hours I’m sinking into writing out these questions and editing the posts will go to waste.

How can we help each other in removing the external peer pressure and grow in community?

Be the change you want to see. Here on Tumblr, there’s a sort of fear surrounding judgment. In the interest of never being judged, receiving hate, or otherwise being “called out,” we avoid publishing work that’s anything close to controversial. Even if it isn’t controversy, if something isn’t being talked about, it’s scary to be the first one to break into the topic. Because what if it’s terrible to talk about?

When you see something you don’t understand or disagree with, don’t instantly jump into OP’s replies or ask box with vitriol or basic questions. Try to find resources first. Check their tags; maybe they’ve talked about that topic before and have a more basic or detailed explanation on the topic somewhere.

Unless it’s actively harmful (bigotry, appropriation, etc.), if you can’t respectfully interact with someone’s post, leave it alone. The important thing to remember is that we don’t need to (and perhaps shouldn’t) form opinions on absolutely everything we see. Some things aren’t for us, and that’s okay. I see things I disagree with and dislike all the time as I peruse the witchcraft tags. Just scroll.

The other part of this is acknowledging that some people just aren’t going to learn how to act right. They just aren’t. We, as a community, need to learn how to ignore those people. There’s an age-old adage that I think we need to bring back into the public eye: Don’t feed the trolls.

How can we, as a community, come together more with constructive criticism without it seeming shady/passive aggressive?

The absolute first step is to learn the difference between hatemail, constructive criticism, and being fucking rude. Tone can be hard for some folks, especially when written out, but it’s critical that you either learn how to decipher it or find people who can help you do so if you’re not able to do it yourself before making assumptions about someone’s meaning.

Hatemail is direct nastiness written and designed to make someone feel bad about themselves, their work, their circle, their practice, or something else. The idea is to make the receiver uncomfortable. This would include attacks on someone’s character. This category includes sending people slurs, telling people they’re stupid for believing something, demanding that someone prove their worth, and unsolicited and harsh criticisms of the work being put out.

Constructive criticism is intended to improve the content you’re seeing. That’s what makes it constructive. It’s respectful to ask the OP if they’re open to receiving constructive criticism before sending it. This category includes helpful notes on content, correcting misinformation, pointing out problems in the language used, and structure of the post in question. For example, I’ve received constructive criticism that my posts tend to be very long-winded. And, I mean, yeah — that’s a fair criticism. But I like writing long posts, so that’s unlikely to change. However, I can include shorter posts in the mix to diversify and appeal to different audiences.

The prime example of someone being plain fucking rude is adding inane, off-topic, judgy comments in a reblog of an innocuous post or send unsolicited, long-winded trauma dumps to someone’s inbox. This could also apply to giving unsolicited advice or speaking in a condescending manner. For example, assuming someone knows less than you and handing out “advice” as though it’s gospel without checking to see whether they would or wouldn’t know that information/practice differently than you. This category refers to the people who aren’t (purposely) sending hate, but their words absolutely come off that way. I find rudeness comes from a lack of self-awareness and consideration for other people. These are the folks that when you tell them to fuck off, they get very offended and don’t understand why you’re reacting badly.

The key is reading comprehension, critical thinking, and compassion. Before you send an ask, reply/reblog, or DM them, try to see where the OP is coming from. What’s their culture, what’s their background, how new are they to their path, why are they posting about the thing they’re posting, etc.? Have you read their post correctly? Are you projecting any kind of expectations or assumptions onto the OP or their post that aren’t actually being stated there?

Will what you say hurt their feelings? Has the OP stated that they’re open to feedback? If not, should you ask them first? Will the OP suffer in some way or cause harm if you don’t reach out to them about the thing you want to tell them? Are you reaching out simply to have something to say, or are you actually adding to the conversation?

If more folks come into conversations with kindness and genuine curiosity, leaving their egos, assumptions, and impulses to be “on the same level” or “better than” other practitioners aside, better interactions happen. Just… don’t be an asshole. Think before you speak. Consider the consequences of what you say before hitting send. So on and so forth.

Consider a class or guide on providing constructive criticism. Creative writing or other literary courses and guides go over this kind of thing extensively.

How can we, as a community, do better when we do receive criticism/feedback?

Remember that, in general, even unsolicited criticism is rarely about you as a person. It is sometimes, but even that can be useful. The only times I would say you ought to throw out criticism entirely is when it veers into hatemail territory. You don’t owe hateful bitches anything, least of all your time.

But in the case of actual feedback, even if it’s not worded the best or if it arrives out of the blue, it’s important to at least read it and take it into consideration.

Take a step back. Take a breath. The knee-jerk reaction to defend yourself is a powerful one. Let the sting of criticism sink in, and do whatever you need to do to soothe it.

Then, read it again. Parse what the person is actually saying. No matter how they’re saying it, what is their actual problem? Is it something you can change? Is it something you’re willing to change? Even if not, is it something you can take into account for the future?

Constructive criticism, when given and received in a positive way, can create some really beautiful moments of understanding and growth. Consider, again, a class or guide on constructive criticism. When they talk about giving it, they also talk about receiving and using it. It really is a life-changing sort of lesson.

As for dealing with hatemail, fuck ‘em. Delete that shit, block the asshole, and don’t look back.

Who are some community members I look up to that are reliable resources and aspirations?

Ohohohohoho, spotlight time!

It isn’t something I can really direct people toward, since it’s a private Discord server, but I’m part of a group of practitioners who are constantly supporting each other. We ask questions, give advice, chat about projects, and just generally lift each other up all the time. That server is, by far, the greatest resource I’ve got right now. It’s a very small community of friends whose passions are diverse and incredibly interesting. The amount of learning and collaboration that goes on… man. I really do love it. (If you’re in that server, and you read this: Hi, I appreciate you! (: )

Now, let’s tag some people (going down my following list):

@elminx — Minx is amazing. The recipe experiments, the astrology insights, the clever techniques… She’s got something for everybody.

@fernthewhimsical — Two words: rainbowmancy and hopepunk. Seriously, go to Fern’s blog and go through the witchcraft tag. So much good stuff.

@jasper-pagan-witch — Our very own TBR and Blogs Georg. I very much recommend checking out their sideblog @jasper-book-stash for brief book reviews.

@coinandcandle — Click through Coin’s pinned post for all sorts of goodies, including deep dives on deities.

@breelandwalker — Tumblr’s resident witchstorian! Check out her podcast, Hex Positive, for beginner-friendly, funny, informative content that ranges from spell techniques to the history of witchcraft.

@windvexer — Chicken answers questions of all sorts! We share the gift (curse?) of verbosity. Their answers are detailed and informative, and I aspire to that level of coherency in my rambling.

@stagkingswife — Silly! Hat! Theory! Stag’s views on spirit work literally changed my whole mind about godspousing and what makes a deity a deity. Legitimately.

@asksecularwitch — Spells Georg. THE secular witch. An icon whose gumption I respect above all others.

And… I’m so sure there are others I’m forgetting about. [gestures] All of my mutuals are lovely, follow them and throw money at their respective Ko-Fi and Patreon pages. (:

Off of Tumblr, I tend toward YouTube’s witch ecosystem. A few people I follow there are The Green Witch, the Witch of Wonderlust, Mint Faery, and Hearth Witch. Again, there are more, but these are the channels I follow most closely for their content!

Final thoughts?

This was fun to put together! I won’t directly tag anyone to respond with their own answers, because… well, this has been a beast of a project that’s taken several days to type out and more to edit. But if you’re a witchy content creator here on Tumblr, please feel free to check out the list of questions and post your own answers!

Replies, reblogs, and asks on any or all of the topics covered in this post series are very much welcome.

This is the final part of a series! Click here to view the masterpost to see all #OcculTea posts in this series. Replies, reblogs, and asks on any or all of the topics covered in this post series are very much welcome.

[discotreque]

Personal log, Stardate fuck this shit

So I’ve had this little Tumblr since November 2017. It’s my “processing feelings about Star Trek” blog, obvs. I did not expect nearly a thousand people—okay, dozens of people and hundreds of bots, lbr—would end up reading my feelings about Star Trek.

Well, here we are. And the thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever had this many feelings about Star Trek. I don’t mean since Nov. ’17. I mean since 1991.

You’ve been warned.

Last week—and I mean the one we literally just had—was the worst week of my entire life. Instant winner! That’s right: worse than the week I got divorced, worse than Christmas-to-New Year’s 2002, worse than the third week of high school. I’m not going to process those feelings in public—it’s not 2002 anymore—but, unfortunately, that’s important context for the rest of this.

More important context: TNG specifically was my comfort blanket throughout a “let’s call it difficult” childhood. I’ve loved that starship and that crew for over 30 years. When I’ve been at rock bottom, not totally sure I’m going to survive whatever bullshit is in front of me, I put on an episode, or an interview with the cast on YouTube or something, and things feel infinitesimally more okay.

At this point in my life, they’re the best and only family I’ve got. The bridge of that fictional starship feels more like home to me than anywhere I’ve ever lived. I don’t consider myself superior to, or even separate from, any brand-new fan who discovered Trek yesterday—honestly, I prefer their energy—it just hits differently for me, you know? I can’t be rational about it.

Anyhow. This season of Picard. What a ride, right? A stupidly plotted, stupidly slow ride to a disappointingly obvious conclusion, if I’m going to be harsh about it. But I don’t actually care if it sucks. I’m 90% here for space-family feels and 10% here for Seven of Nine: Leather Jacket MILF Edition, and that’s about it.

And… like… fuck. Fucking shit, y’all. My heart and soul have been pulverized to powder for non-Star Trek reasons since last Sunday. I’ve been feeling like I just got kicked in the stomach for about 170 hours straight. I have never had a stable life; I have never felt so destabilized. Basically everything sucks 47 different kinds of ass, and it’s not going to stop sucking those asses for a long, long time.

So it fucking goes. None of that other shit killed me. I’m not going down now.

But. Or maybe and? In the middle of this waking nightmare, I got to come home. The LCARS. The aggressively flat lighting. The carpet. My family.

I used to sit so close to the TV when Next Gen was on. When I was like 8 or 9 years old. I wanted to be there, so badly. To be completely honest with you, I still do.

And I get to spend one more hour there. I get to watch my space family be together again, be awesome again, watch them save the day from the beautiful beige bridge of the USS Enterprise-D one last time.

Now. This week. When I need it more than ever. A glass of ice water in hell.

What a gift.

[theonevoice]

Hey! I saw your reblog of the tumblr ask culture so here I am :) your art is amazing. I love it. I particularly appreciate the fastidious (in the good sense of the word) way you research tiny details to add to your good omens fanart (like the clock from the Mir space station you put in that fanart of Crowley with the Hozier song). Since you do a lot of digital art and you mentioned you're an "amateur" fanartist: which is more comfortable for you, screenless drawing tablets or the ones with screens? And which one would you recommend as a "starter kit"? I'm trying to get more consistent with my drawing and I sketch a lot on paper, but find that having the color palette that a digital tool offers would probably motivate me slightly more, still I can't decide which would be best, at a beginner's level.

Hey!!! Yes, hello!

Thank you so much, I love reaserching those details, they are one of my favourite parts of the process: it makes me feel for a brief moment like I'm part of the amazing GO set/costume designers crew, sorting through all possible inspirations until I find the perfect one!

As for drawing tablets: I tried both, I had a screenless Wacom Bamboo (it was a million years ago, they don't even sell it anymore), then for almost ten years I didn't draw at all, and now I am using a Huion Kamvas 13, and I guess it's a different experience for every artist, but as far as I can tell, they are two totally different things. It's not like you start with a screenless tablet as a beginner and then "upgrade" to one with a screen as you get better: it's more a matter of what kind of art you are trying to do, and how your eye-brain-hand connection is wired. I struggled so much with the Bamboo that I ended up not using it, so even if it was cheaper (probably like 90 euros in 2005 or 2006), I wasted money on it. While the Kamvas was more expensive but it was such a gamechanger that the amount I paid (I think around 300 euros in 2018) almost feels like a steal now, compared to the enjoyment of using it and the improvement that is allowing me to make.

For me, personally, the possibility to sketch directly in colors was *the* big turning point: I struggle with lineart, my brain doesn't "see" an image until it has values and colors, so that changed everything for me.

(Fun/weird fact: when I got the Kamvas I didn't think I would ever use it for drawing, I bought it because at the time I was doing a lot of editorial proofreading and where I live proofreading is done with a very specific set of symbols and signs that you cannot "type", so you either print everything and do the thing by hand or you get a tablet of some sort that allows you to draw them directly on the pdf - and the rest is history)

I may be biased, but I think one of the Huion Kamvas series (there are several sizes) could be a great tool: they cost a fraction of what Wacom equivalents would cost you, they work great, and they also give you a lot of stuff (mine came with its own stand, a stand for the stylus with a dozen extra tips, and a glove - all things that other brands would sell you separately).

But regardless of the brand, the best advice I can give you is this: don't look for a "starter" tool, look for the tool that makes you want to use it. If you enjoy using it, you will spend more time drawing, and that inevitably will make you improve. Go to a store that allows you to test them, if you have the opportunity, or look for comparative reviews on YouTube (that's whay I did): it will help you find the thing that makes you think "oh, that one looks like a lot of fun". If you buy a tool that "sounds" entry-level just because you feel like you should get an entry-level tool you may end up with a thing that is frustrating and annoying to use, and that won't help you at all.

How on earth did I write so much?!? I hope there is something useful in there! Bye!!

[camgirlsurvivalguide]

First and foremost, I’ve released my most highly requested guide as of late, which is how to get started live streaming on Twitch. You can find it listed on the Camgirl Survival Guide Etsy page over here:

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1402368236/the-camgirls-guide-to-twitch-sfw?ref=listing_published_alert

The Etsy listing includes a 40 page detailed breakdown of everything from Twitch-specific terminology, how to get started using Streamlabs (and customize the absolute fuck out of your stream) and how to use Twitch as a platform in general. It discusses whether or not it can be “worth it” for a NSFW creator to spend time and energy on the platform, and as usual, includes a transparent look at my own cost and income on Twitch compared to what I put into and received out of streaming on MFC. Essentially it’s a fucking chungus of a guide.  

As per usual, though, since I haven’t figured out how to shut the fuck up, I’ll be including a ramble about the topic here on the Survival Guide. If you’re looking for step by step instruction and a very detailed and technical walkthrough, buy the guide. Yes, I know it’s $100. It took me like four million hours to put together and the process of learning the site itself took me over a year, so it’s expensive. Is the information something you absolutely will not find elsewhere? Of course not. A vast amount of knowledge about beginning on Twitch exists everywhere from Reddit to YouTube and beyond - but this walkthrough includes information specifically focused on a SWers experience on Twitch, making it somewhat unique, I think. 

But for the Tumblr edition ... let’s get into some general discussion of the whole MFC to OF to Twitch pipeline. 

As mentioned frequently here on the CGS blog, I left MFC in 2019. I was burnt out. No matter how I reworked my approach, I couldn’t find a way to make streaming on MFC itself enjoyable for me anymore. I liked spending time with my regulars but had grown so sick and fucking tired of spanking myself for tokens that the drive to generate income had dwindled down to nothing, but my expectations for that income stayed the same. Essentially I wanted to make camgirl money without having to actually ... camgirl. I knew my regulars were buying tokens to spend elsewhere and I felt personally owed income from them, even if I wasn’t teasing or doing handbras with any real frequency anymore. 

I’ve talked about this before, but expectation truly had become the thief of joy for me - and I think it had become the thief of joy for my regulars even outside of my room specifically. I imagine that from a member’s perspective, MFC was becoming less and less of a hangout space and more of a financial responsibility, especially if they wanted to show up “publicly”. The number of times I’d heard of members making different accounts so as not to carry their main account’s tipping reputation with them was enlightening. The highest contributing tippers were expected to continue being the highest contributing tippers, and the pressure to maintain those expectations sometimes became so costly that they just stopped showing up at all. As much as I told myself any amount of tip was better than no tip, I can’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed when one of my usual whales wasn’t dropping stacks on me when they came in, even though I was well aware I wasn’t performing like I used to. 

My own dedication to the experience sunk, but my expectations stayed the same. I became bitter and jaded. I fell victim to the habit of lurking rooms I knew my regulars spent money in to watch them support someone other than me, which perpetuated my bitterness even more. Even though I preach a lot of positive shit, I was not walking my own talk in the slightest. In light of all of this, I retired. 

The timing was perfect for me specifically because I had just crawled onto OF a few months prior, which had me set up just in time for the pandemic boom when it occurred in early 2020. The relief was immense; I no longer had to perform NSFW in real time or even talk to another living human being out loud at all, sometimes for days on end. Great! Camgirl money without being a camgirl. Besides, making videos and taking photos was so much easier (oh god, if only I had known), and occasionally messaging people one on one took me less time than live streaming (again - fuck, that didn’t last long, did it?). It was the perfect solution to staying safe financially while recovering from burnout. 

Truly, it was. The break let me unwind. OF was easier, and the income was greater and faster than I’d ever known on MFC. I went from making $6,000 a month (roughly) for 30+ hours of streaming to making $20,000 a month for what I’d considered to be less overall time in shooting and editing content. It was what I needed and then some. 

So why on earth did I find myself nostalgic for MFC a few years later? 

While OF took the majority of the social element out of the picture, it also largely left me lonely and bored. I like messaging my OF besties just as much as the next creator does, but it just isn’t the same as entertaining a room of chatters. I became a camgirl because I liked chatrooms. I had been in chatroom spaces since I was a teen, and as an adult creator, MFC gave me everything I already liked about the internet with added income. I felt like I had friends: real friends, both members and other camgirls alike. I created my own communities out of the larger industry. 

This aspect wasn’t something I realized I was truly missing until I started up on Twitch. I didn’t start Twitch streaming with any income expectation in mind. During the pandemic I became obsessed with Animal Crossing and was spending the majority of my time (when I wasn’t shooting for OF) gaming alone, so I figured I may as well game with an audience. As soon as my usual audience showed up again, I felt a surge of good fucking vibes. It was nice to see the same usernames, to make the same weird jokes and to have that same “good time” feel all without having to do the shit I grew to hate doing over on MFC. 

Does Twitch pay the bills? Absolutely not. It does not pay the bills. It pays some bills, but no where near the amount of bills it would need to pay in order for me to transition over to Twitch full time. It is absolutely not camgirl style money. Despite this, I fucking love Twitch. I think dropping the expectations component made my Twitch streams fun for me and my viewers alike. People contribute when they can, and they know I’m not watching their usernames like some hungry hawk waiting to be fed. 

All in all, I am an internet gremlin, and as introverted as I am, I still need human interaction. Digital human interaction is still my favourite. Being a live streamer in that specific live stream format - me, talking out loud, my chat, talking via text - is comfortable and familiar and extremely natural to me. The boost in my overall wellbeing that I get from Twitch streaming is helping me feel human again, in ways that OF just doesn’t cultivate. 

Which leads me to really take a hard look at how objectifying the OF experience can be. I don’t know if it’s just me or if I’ve misstepped along the way in my approach to OF, but I’ve started to really feel like a content factory or some perpetually sexual creature, always at the ready to receive lewd messages from individual after individual. I like making lewd content - I really do - but producing well over a hundred videos a year to maintain my income is ... overkill. It’s beating the process to death. I used to make maybe one video and photoset a month on MFC. Now I expect myself to make multiple sets per week at the least. My highest earning months I’m putting out new content every single fucking day. 

We all know the pandemic boom is over. Anyone on OF that isn’t being run by management knows it’s harder to make a dollar now than it was two years ago. In a feast or famine industry, we know how to handle famine - but the only way through it (if we want to maintain the same sort of income) is to push three times as hard. With consistently restrictive SFW social media platforms making advertising an absolute nightmare, we also have to fully send it with respect to marketing, too. 

I’m looking burnout in the face. It’s starting to feel like MFC all over again. I want OF income without actually doing OF work, at least not to the degree that I’ve done it in the past. 

As contradictory as it sounds ... this is why Twitch streaming is helping me. I need balance. I need a space where I feel like a complex human being so that I can make space to exude the sexuality that makes me money on OF, and I need hobbies so I can keep my wellbeing level enough to put in work elsewhere. 

All that said, I can’t deny the fact that my history with MFC makes it challenging not be an entitled brat over on Twitch. Sometimes I tell myself I’d be better off putting my 80+ hours of stream time a month back onto MFC. I’ve toyed with the idea, but still haven’t returned to being a camgirl simply because adding more NSFW to my already NSFW-laden schedule wouldn’t help me in the long run, at least not emotionally. 

My advice to anyone wanting to start on Twitch would be to ask yourself why you’re getting into it, and then to drop your income expectations to the floor. Like, grab a shovel and dig a spot for the bar to go, because it’s low. I stream on Twitch for fun. It’s sort of the first actual hobby I’ve had in years, while still maintaining some sort of income and the possibility for increased income over time, all while staying well within my boundaries. I wrestled with the time contribution element of Twitch streaming a lot (going back to that “I should just go back to MFC” thought process) - but the bottom line is that I’m allowed to have hobbies. As long as I’m financially safe and still making OF work to support my life, doing something that I like is okay. It’s more than okay. It’s necessary for life to feel fulfilling. Not every aspect of my life needs to be making me tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Maybe I’ll blow up on Twitch. Maybe Twitch will get to a point where it pays the bills, and I can transition into making OF content when inspiration strikes rather than forcing myself to come up with new ideas (or just keep working with the same formula). In some ways, though ... I kind of hope it doesn’t. I like being a small streamer, because the whole point of me streaming is to cultivate a little community and have a good time with them. My following is growing over time, but the community aspect is staying very much intact. Plus, now I have girls in my community???? Like actual other women that like hanging out in my streams?? What a concept. It’s pretty fun to shake it up a bit in that respect. 

Anyway, snag the Etsy guide if you want to make the startup process for Twitch immensely easier on yourself. Having all the information you need consolidated into one place will make beginning on Twitch significantly less painful than it could be otherwise. Like, I really wish I had something like this when I started, which is the whole reason I made the damn thing. 

As always,

Happy Hustling.

xoxo, Ashley Tea

[toplesstopics]

First of all, if you're even seeing this, congrats on somehow making it through the broken-ass mess that is Tumblr. Even with "show mature content" enabled, I can't type in my own blog name in the search field and get it to show up. I presume you typed toplesstopics.tumblr.com directly into your browser's URL field--if you actually stumbled in here another way, please let me know!

Basically, years and years ago, I used to use tumblr quite a bit. Then game the great porn-pocalypse, shortly after the Yahoo! merger, when tumblr started to ban everything under the sun as "sexually explicit nudity," even fanart of Pikachu and a photo of a folded-up carpet.

Then in late 2022, Tumblr announced that they're allowing NSFW content again--but with one very large caveat: anything with any hint of "nudity," which of course thanks to the patriarchy includes "female looking nipples" but not "male looking nipples," requires the "Mature - sexual themes" tag (no tag just for nudity...only "sexual themes," because again, America, puritans, patriarchy, etc--"all female nipples are nudity, and all nudity is sexual"

Worse yet, Tumblr has always been a buggy, broken mess, and remains so today. No matter how many times I try, what browser I use, etc, trying to attach the "mature - sexual themes" category to any of my posts DOES NOT WORK, it always reverts back to "for everyone," and once I post it, I get a warning from Tumblr that "They decided my post needed a mature - sexual themes category added," and if I keep trying to post female nipples without this tag, my blog will be suspended--totally ignoring the fact that I'M TRYING TO ATTACH THE CATEGORY, BUT IT DOESN'T EVEN WORK?!

Worst of all, same as on Youtube, Instagram, and all other mainstream pro-patriarchy websites--because I've had so many past posts banned/removed, my account name is on every algorithmic blacklist known to man (specifically man, not just all humans) and so all my posts get shadowbanned--they simply won't show up on timelines, or in search results. The ONLY way to see ANY of my posts, censored or not, even text posts, is to go DIRECTLY to toplesstopics.tumblr.org EVERY TIME.

Thus, I may include posts here now and again for when I start a livestream, post a new video, etc, but I will not actively use it outside of this, because there is no point. Only longtime fans dedicated enough to make a point of going directly to my blog page will ever see them, so why bother?

I invite you to go to my website at www.toplesstopics.org/contact to find the most recent list of as-yet-unbanned social media accounts, listed from least faschy to most. As haters exploit algorithms to false-report everything I post, regardless of what's in that post, I have to constantly remake accounts and start all over. It's super fun and not a waste of time at all, but if I don't do this, then no one can ever find my content. And I ain't spending 20+ hours creating each video just to hear my own self talk.

So yeah if you're seeing this and you actually want to see more of my content, don't just look for it on tumblr. This website is, like all the other patriarchal mainstream websites, a hunk of sexist broken shit, and I would not rely on "the algorithms" to show you content that doesn't make them more money, like advertisements and white nationalist rhetoric. See you elsewhere!

[skitskatdacat63]

okay, i don't know why, but i have ALWAYS been like you described. i have so many movies, TV shows, books, podcasts, songs, etc that i want to experience but do i? nope, just put on another F1 race, please. i don't know if it's fear of the unknown (hello, flood of unexpected emotions!) or not wanting to challenge myself or also wanting to watch F1 and F1 just wins out, but here we are. i suspect it's part of my OCD? or some other ND thing that hasn't been diagnosed in me yet??

in fact prolly the only reason i watch F1 is bc i watch it with my sister. it is a lot easier to do new stuff with someone else...which deludes me into believing that if i just got a partner, we could open the floodgates and watch everything i haven't seen together, but lord knows it don't work that way 😑 in any case, i don't know what's wrong with us, but you're not alone!

I'm glad I'm not the only one!! 💕💕

(Reply ramble under the cut cause I wrote more than I expected)

I think I just struggle to start anything new or to finish anything. I totally agree with what you said about it being the fear of unexpected emotions/the unknown! Like for race seasons for example, I just spent a significant amount of time immersed in 2005 which is a specific set of information(you know: rules, strategy, drivers, etc.), so to start a new season would be a completely different set of info. As I said in my earlier tags, some part of me likes the anticipation more and also I always get way too hyper about things and that energy is overwhelming 😓 And I also feel like I have a fear about how much time I'm going to spend(which is stupid because I'll spend like way too much time aimlessly scrolling for the same amnt of time it'd take to watch a race.) Like the idea of specifically putting aside two hours to do only one thing is stressful to me, which is why I often used to like watching races when I literally couldn't do anything else(waiting for a class.) But now I'm stuck back in the cycle of not wanting to start something new, even if 2009 isnt exactly new because I've watched a lot of racing at this point, but still new enough to me that it's hard to convince my brain to start it. Like once I get into the groove of things, I can float through and enjoy myself, it's just that beginning barrier that's hard to get through.

I also definitely agree with having to watch it with someone else. I either have to binge watch things super quickly or watch them with other people, if not, I'll just end up never starting it or abandoning it. I think it's because it's really nice to be able to discuss your thoughts and feelings abt it with another person and not just be stuck with a million thoughts bouncing around your head(which is why I tend to make posts and then rant in the tags LOL)

I think thats why ive been able to get into F1 to such an extent and why it's been so fun for me. It's a live experience(with a strict time constraint, i.e. you can only watch it right here, right now) where there's a bunch of people watching and interacting. I love tumblr during a race weekend so much, I don't think I'd be obsessed with it as much if not for the ability to see everyone's reactions and interact back with them. I think that's why I struggle to start old seasons, because it's literally just me obsessing alone in my room and I can't talk about it to the extent that I can with the current season. Watching F1 as it goes along in a current season is just a perfect experience I guess, because the schedule pushes me along and I don't really have to rely on myself to keep going.

But yeah who knows!! Brain just being brain as always I guess, but it is annoying that it prevents us from doing things we want to do! But I will say, still, its so stupid that I procrastinate over watching 10 minute long YouTube vids LMAO, like pls I get the hesitation with a 2 hour race, 2 hour movie or 100k fic but, 10 minutes, seriously brain???