flying north again

Every once in a while I get dragged back to this site at random and having not regularly browsed it since about 2014/15 I feel like I have totally forgotten how to navigate the community xD Let alone just deal with the apparently few times over interface changes that have taken place since this place used to be my social media home… 

WHAT ARE THE VIBES HERE THESE DAYS? Who’s still around? What do I need to know about Tumblr in 2022…?

I fear I am forgetting more.

The longer I wander, the farther from my own nexus I roam, the less I know the direction from which it is that I came. Memories of my own workshop seem like fable–a table, strewn with rusted tools, a thick and smoke-scented curtain, flapping over the draughty window, a floor of skeletal panels over packed yet shifting earth.

A fantasy? I live now in a fog and but for my own writings I cannot say if the recollections I hold now yet ring true. I read and reread to retrace my own steps, but I have not been diligent enough, and the possibility of my own hand betraying me seems ever more likely still.

Day and night come in cycles so quick I can no longer accurately discern one from the next. I count passing season by how the threads of my coat unravel, my fingers cracked and sooty with weather.

So many days have I traversed the forest that the very notion of sound has abandoned me, and without viewing my own facade it is unclear whether I even still have ears upon my head, or if the whole of me has morphed into a shapeless wraith without my knowing.

It would make little difference.

A wraith in mind may as well be one in body.

(This site is slowly dying. Perhaps the last post I’ll make here!

Curious about the site Royal Road, so I’ll probably try reposting there o/)

magnus-dia:

celticpyro:

kingdomheartsnyctophiliac:

habeenki:

rb this with how long you’ve been on tumblr and what ur blog was initally about vs what’s it about now

people who made blogs before 2012 are the Ancient Gods talked about in fantasy

I’ve been here since 2013 (I think) and this WAS mostly a discourse blog but now this is where I thirstpost about Cu Chulainn.

2011, jojo’s, avengers, and supermodels

09/10, had a pretty pictures blog, and my personal blog was always just about me

(via babylongoggles)

Toyhouse Codes

In light of the Great Tumblr Exodus, I’m offering up some of my many invite codes for Toyhou.se!

In case anyone isn’t familiar with it, it’s an OC sharing and discussion site, like Charahub but with more features! It’s good for hosting references, profiles, are, and writing for your OCs, and there’s new features constantly!

The site is still technically in beta, so there are a lot of bugs and slowdowns, but the staff is responsive and the community is pretty chill.

So yeah, if anyone is interested, feel free to send me an ask! (Not on anon though, of course)

[Disclaimer/Terms: You might see some folks saying that you need to trade for or purchase codes - not so! By extension, do not trade or resell any codes you might receive from me! Also please try to use received codes within a week, or it will be gifted to someone else.]

(Feel free to reblog this, also! I only have a finite number but I’m happy to give out some while I have them.)

PSA: Stuff You Maybe Didn’t Realize You Can Back Up To AO3, And How To Tag it

olderthannetfic:

destinationtoast:

inu-fiction:

Tumblr seems to be in potential death throes or at least, incredibly volatile and unreliable lately, but we’ve done some pretty good and informative work on canon analysis and reference guides so I was looking for ways to back it up without losing it…and the solution became obvious to me:

Archive of Our Own, aka AO3. 

“What?” you might ask if you are less familiar with their TOS. “Isn’t that just a fanfic archive??”

No! It’s a fanWORK archive. It is an archive for fanworks in general! “Fanwork” is a broad term that encompasses a lot of things, but it doesn’t just include fanfic and fanart, vids etc; it also includes “fannish” essays and articles that fall under what’s often called “meta” (from the word for “beyond” or “above”, referencing that it goes beyond the original exact text)! The defining factor of whether Archive of Our Own is the appropriate place to post it is not whether or not it’s a fictional expansion of canon (fanfic), though that is definitely included - no, it’s literally just “is this a work by a ‘fan’ intended for other ‘fannish’ folks/of ‘fannish’ interest?” 

The articles we’ve written as a handy reference to the period-appropriate Japanese clothing worn by Inuyasha characters?  The analyses of characters? The delineations of concrete canon (the original work) vs common “fanon” (common misconceptions within the fandom)? Even the discussion of broader cultural, historical, and geographic context that applies to the series and many potential fanworks? 

All of those are fannish nonfiction!

Which means they absolutely can (and will) have a home on AO3, and I encourage anybody who is wanting to back up similar works of “fannish interest” - ranging from research they’ve done for a fic, to character analyses and headcanons - to use AO3 for it, because it’s a stable, smooth-running platform that is ad-free and unlike tumblr, is run by a nonprofit (The OTW) that itself is run by and for the benefit of, fellow fans. 

Of course, that begs the question of how to tag your work if you do cross-post it, eh? So on that note, here’s a quick run-down of tags we’re finding useful and applicable, which I’ve figured out through a combination of trial and error and actually asking a tag wrangler (shoutout to @wrangletangle for their invaluable help!):

First, the Very Broad:

- “ Nonfiction ”. This helps separate it from fanfic on the archive, so people who aren’t looking for anything but fanfic are less likely to have to skim past it, whereas people looking for exactly that content are more likely to find it.

- while “Meta” and “Essay” and even “Information” are all sometimes used for the kinds of nonfiction and analytical works we post, I’ve been told “ Meta Essay ” is the advisable specific tag for such works. This would apply to character analyses, reference guides to canon, and even reference guides to real-world things that are reflected in the canon (such as our articles on Japanese clothing as worn by the characters).  The other three tags are usable, and I’ve been using them as well to cover my bases, but they’ll also tend to bring up content such as “essay format” fanfic or fanfic with titles with those words in them - something that does not happen with “Meta Essay”.

- I’ve also found by poking around in suggested tags, that “ Fanwork Research & Reference Guides ” is consistently used (even by casual users) for: nonfiction fannish works relating to analyses of canon materials; analyses of and meta on fandom-specific or fanwork-specific tropes; information on or guides to writing real-world stuff that applies to or is reflected in specific fandoms’ media (e.g. articles on period-appropriate culture-specific costuming and how to describe it); and expanded background materials for specific fans’ fanworks (such as how a given AU’s worldbuilding is supposed to be set up) that didn’t fit within the narrative proper and is separated out as a reference for interested readers.

Basically, if it’s an original fan-made reference for something specific to one or more fanworks, or a research aid for writing certain things applicable to fanworks or fannish interests in general, then it can fall under that latter tag. 

- You should also mark it with any appropriate fandom(s) in the “Fandom” field. Just like you would for a fanfic, because of course, the work is specifically relevant to fans of X canon, right?


If it discusses sensitive topics, or particular characters, etc., you should probably tag for those. E.g. “death” or “mental illness”, “Kagome Higurashi”, etc. 

Additionally, if you are backing it up from a Tumblr you may wish to add:

- “ Archived From Tumblr “ and/or “ Cross-Posted From Tumblr ” to reference the original place of publication, for works originally posted to tumblr. (I advise this if only because someday, there might not be “tumblr” as we know it, and someone might be specifically looking for content that was originally on it, you never know)

- “ Archived From [blog name] Blog ”; this marks it as an archived work from a specific blog. And yes, I recommend adding the word “blog” in there for clarity- Wrangletangle was actually delighted that I bothered to tag our first archived work with “Archived From Inu-Fiction Blog” because being EXTREMLY specific about things like that is super helpful to the tag wranglers on AO3, who have to decide how to categorize/”syn” (synonym) various new tags from alphabetized lists without context of the original posting right in front of them.  In other words, including the name AND the word “blog” in it, helps them categorize the tag on the back end without having to spend extra time googling what the heck “[Insert Name Here]” was originally. 

Overall, you should be as specific and clear as possible, but those tags/tag formats should prove useful in tagging it correctly should you choose to put fannish essays and articles up on AO3 :)


Oh, and protip sidebar for those posting, especially works that are more than plain text: you can make archiving things quicker and easier for yourself, but remember to plan ahead for tumblr’s potential demise/disabling/service interruptions.

The good news: You can literally copy and paste the ENTIRE text of a tumblr post from say, an “edit” window, on tumblr, straight into AO3′s Rich Text Format editor, and it will preserve pretty much all or almost all of the formatting - such as bold, italics, embedded links, etc!

But the bad news: keep in mind that while AO3 allows for embedded images and it WILL transfer those embedded images with a quick copy-paste like that, AO3 itself doesn’t host the images for embedding; those are still external images. This means that whether or not they continue to load/display for users, depends entirely on whether the file is still on the original external server! As I quickly discovered, in the case of posts copied from the Edit window of a tumblr post, the images will still point to the copies of the images ON tumblr’s servers.

What this means is that you should back up (save copies elsewhere of) any embedded images that you consider vital to such posts, in case you need to upload them elsewhere and fiddle with where the external image is being pulled from, later. 

Personally, I’m doing that AND adding image descriptions underneath them, just to be on the safe side (and in fairness, this makes it more accessible to people who cannot view the images anyway, such as sight-impaired people who use screen readers or people who have images set to not automatically display on their browser, so it’s win-win)

Thanks for this helpful guide! I haven’t used some of these tags so far for the fandom stats work I’ve cross-posted to AO3, but that’s because I didn’t know about them. Great ideas! :)

I keep meaning to mass archive my Toastystats work to AO3, but I am always stymied by image hosting when trying to overcome inertia and do so. It takes time to repost all the images to external hosting (like imgur). So thus far I’ve only done it for a few major analyses, and even in some of those cases, the images are hosted on Tumblr. But I should finally get around to it. At least I’ve exported my Toastystats side blog recently, so most of my stuff should be preserved if anything should happen. But maybe this holiday break I’ll finally make more progress.

I second all of this!

I’ve also found that AO3 is the best way for me to distribute my vids. I do have to host them elsewhere, but AO3 gives me a consistent URL and a way to have useful headers with fandom/ship/etc. even if I switch hosting a hundred times.

(via dreamerinsilico)

I’ve already posted about this a few times before, but if anyone who follows me is still around here and is moving to Twitter, please give me a follow over there! It’s been my primary platform for the past few years and the best way to keep in touch:

https://twitter.com/petitscygnes