accidently found the funniest take ever which is "those wlw scenes aren't wlw because they have symbolism"

orpheus looked back

in the sunlit garden, holding hands / because i’ve never forgotten our promise, i’ve come all this way at last

Chiho Saito's Illustration Collection artbook is the highest-quality visual media in the Utenaverse. Oversized, single-sided, heavy pages with extremely high quality printing. It is the first artbook I ever scanned.

In 2001, the average screen resolution was 800x600, and I delivered a 1250px wide collection that for a while, took $60 A MONTH to host, because no normal website was hosting images of this ludicrous size. It took my scanner almost an hour to capture a third of each page. I spent months piecing the scans together in Photoshop. It was one of my first true Utena labors of love, and the result is that for decades, these copies have been the definitive copies of Chiho Saito's artwork on the internet. For a very long time, even kinda now, if you see these images, they're probably my scans.

But decades have passed, and I've never been happy with these results, because they couldn't capture the fine details, the paint spills, the sketch beneath poking out, the brilliant use of gradients of dark color to pop the image but drive me insane. What I am finishing up now is a true, archival copy of the artbook. One that delivers such high resolution, that these can print posters larger than the originals, and thanks to some truly brilliant descreening tech, (Thank you Sattva) I've been able to dig up fine details in the work that the printing obscured, but undeniably included.

It's been over 20 years, and it shows. 1250px? Nah, my archive copies are 15,000px wide. I can't wait to finish this and share it with the world. <3

Another idea: Communities on Tumblr

For a while now folks have asked us for better ways to connect with other people who share similar interests. We’re listening, and at Labs we’ve been looking into fulfilling that need, Tumblr style.

Introducing Communities, a new place to connect with others on Tumblr:

Here in Labs, we’re working on big ideas that could transform how Tumblr is used, while keeping that Tumblr vibe alive. You can see one of those ideas above. We’re calling it “Communities”, a new dedicated space on Tumblr for people to share and discuss all the content they love. Communities can cover topics like your favorite show, artist, movie, video game, your school, your board game group, friend group, big or small, whatever you want.

Each Community has their own semi-private safer space away from the regular dashboard where you can interact with other Tumblr users who share the same interests and passions as you. There are moderators and members (you!), rules, and privacy settings. Each community has its own feed of posts from members, separate from your Following and For You feeds. Interactions within community spaces stay there and replies will work more like a traditional comment section. Folks will be able to reblog posts into a community, but not out — at least not yet.

We’re very excited for you to try it, and help define the best path forward. What we have is a prototype to help us validate the idea, but there’s still plenty of questions that need answering. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be reaching out to people across Tumblr, and the internet at large, to try our prototype. Based on the feedback we get, we’ll iterate on the idea to see what resonates best with all of you on Tumblr.

If this sounds interesting, please like, reblog, or reply to this post, and we’ll invite you to beta test this feature when we roll it out to a wider Tumblr audience, as a little perk for following the Labs blog.

Stay tuned for more!

A Tumblr User’s Guide to Dreamwidth

I’m sure by now, some of you may have heard of the site Dreamwidth when some people talk about Livejournal and old sites they wish they had. Maybe you’ve become a bit curious about how this place works or why people are so interested in it anyway. To answer that, I’m going to give you a little primer on Dreamwidth and what you need to know when converting from Tumblr!

So what is Dreamwidth?

Dreamwidth is a Livejournal code fork and like Livejournal it is an old social networking blog. How is that different from Tumblr? Well to clarify, Tumblr is a content aggregation site, not a content creation site. This means that Tumblr’s purpose is to spread things for other people to see, and these things do not even have to be something you made. It is not intended for feedback and communication, it is only intended to be looked at. That’s why any comment and communication features are so lackluster, the creators genuinely did not want it to work like a blog, and they continue to fight that.

Dreamwidth is a blog with features centered around content and comment management. How you use it is up to you, but it is a more or less static site with each post self contained, no reblogs or sharing apart from manually linking to the post themselves and the only things you see on your feed are the blogs and communities you’ve personally added to your watch. The format is best suited for medium to long-posts and posts to start a dialog among people, but that’s not to say it can’t be used for microposts (and there are communities dedicated to that kind of use). Comments are threaded which makes them easy to keep up with, and easy to read.

Dreamwidth is, above all else, a site dedicated to freedom of expression and is one of the few places left that genuinely cares about that.

Dreamwidth Terms You Should Know

Cutting You’ll see this term used a lot, and it’s a really huge important feature of the blog. Cutting is like the ‘read more’ feature you can find on tumblr. The difference is that you can choose exactly which portion of the entry is behind a cut and which one isn’t. You can also have more than one cut if you like! This is especially useful for long, informative posts to help people jump to the exact spot they want.

Cuts can also have their own titles, so you can inform people briefly of what’s behind the cut in the link itself. Good knowledge of how cuts work is super important and super helpful! https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=88

Access Filters A term you’ll see show up when composing an entry is what access filter is applied to the post you’re about to make, (sometimes this is referred to as ‘locking’ the post). When you create a post you are given the choice to either make the entry public, make it available to only those who have general access to your blog or choose a specific access filter which you have a pre-determined group of people on a list that are the only ones permitted to see those posts. You can set up as many access filters as you want and change them at any time, and none of the members are notified of these changes so you don’t need to worry about that when making changes. You can even make a post entirely private so that only you can see it, and you can modify the access settings on any entry at any time. https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=21 https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=22

Paid Accounts Unlike tumblr, Dreamwidth does have paid accounts. The entire site is ad-free and they support themselves entirely on those people that purchase paid accounts. The free accounts give you more than you need to enjoy and interact with the site, but paid accounts give you extra features such as the ability to add custom mood icons, journal customization options and more user pics. https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=4

Sticky Posts You can sticky an entry on your Dreamwidth, this can be useful to use as a means of introducing people to your journal and what to expect. https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=199

General Dreamwidth Etiquette

Tags You will find that on Dreamwidth no one ‘talks in tags’. This is because each journal keeps a record of every single tag used on a page both yourself and everyone else can see and has a limit to the total amount of tags you can use. Tags in Dreamwidth are seen as a means of organization, not as a means of subtext, you’ll have to add the subtext in text formatting separately. You can of course, edit and delete any of the tags in the list at any time so you’re never stuck with the tags you’ve used if you ever change your mind.

Images While this is a holdover from the old days when bandwidth was not as accessible as it is now, generally speaking, images posted are kept around 800px in width if posted without a cut. This is to prevent stretching and just general friends page tidy-ness. Similarly, when posting several images, they are either done by way of small thumbnails, or they are posted behind a cut.

Cutting It is seen common etiquette to cut overly-long entries or entries that contain a large number of images, or entries that could contain sensitive information. This was both to keep the friend reading list trim and tidy, as well as warn people before they read potentially triggering material or something just generally distressing (especially in the case of images). Of course it may be worth it to set up an access group if you find yourself talking about a subject some of your audience has conflict with but cuts are always a good choice when you’re not quite sure.

Response Speed As a note, Dreamwidth and other blogging systems are naturally slower than Tumblr. This is not a bad thing! But don’t be surprised if some people don’t comment on an entry till a week later. People on Dreamwidth are far more likely to pay attention to entries and read all their backlog so there isn’t a need to constantly remind or repost the same thing. Dreamwidth generally slower pace can be jarring to some people, but you’ll find it has it’s own benefits even if it doesn’t offer instant gratification.

Comment Subjects You’ll notice when replying to an entry there will be an option to add a subject to your comment, this is not a requirement, only an option. In general, this is rarely used and can sometimes be considered disruptive if it is filled out without serving any specific purpose. Ways it is more often used are for specific community activities, specific content warnings, meta data or something otherwise specific to the format. Be aware that comment subjects work similarly to email subjects in such that replying to any comment with content in the subject line will copy the subject line into your own comment with “re:” prefacing it.

Userpics Many of you have not grown up with the ability to change the icon you can use at any time but it’s something that’s been an essential part of communication with DW and other lj-likes. All accounts get 15 userpics that you can use on your account, they’re 100x100 images and you can choose between any of them when you make a post or comment. They can be used to display mood, expressions, fandoms, events, in-jokes, all sorts of things and can be used to help convey tone or mood in the post/comment you’re trying to make. It’s not perfect by any means, but thoughtful userpic choices can help a lot in trying to convey what you want when text alone can be difficult to interpret.

Q&A

Can I make multiple journals on the same account? No. While this is a feature many RPers would like, and it has been talked about, there is no system that creates Parent/Child journal accounts. If you want a second journal, you would have to make a whole new account, and log in and log out whenever you want to change.

Can I reblog other people’s entries? No. Everyone’s blog and posts are static, there is no way to share another’s post on your own blog other than manually linking their post.

How can I meet people if I can’t reblog? Meeting people on Dreamwidth does take more work, it’s not as easy to stumble across new blogs casually in the day without putting effort into it. Communities are a large social component of Dreamwidth and there are communities for just about any fandom, hobby, craft type and even small niches, and you can start your own communities at any time. There is also an ‘interest’ section in every user profile, which can be used to help find people of similar interests. And then there’s always meeting people through friends of friends in the comments of one’s entires. This post in particular has a much more through break down on socialization and how to find people https://bisexualbaker.tumblr.com/post/147873750806/how-the-heck-do-i-find-cool-stuff-and-people-on

Where can I host my images? This is of course, the biggest pitfall in Dreamwidth. As it stands right now, there is a small image hosting option however it only can store up to 500MB in size. For anything significant you would have to use a service like Imgur, Flickr, Sta.sh, or other storage option. https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=248

Hopefully this has provided the base amount of information you may need to start a Dreamwidth account. It’s very different from Tumblr in the way it’s used but it’s not completely different, but it’s not intended to be a 'replacement’, it’s just another service you can use if it fits your needs. Personally, I’m of the opinion that everyone needs at least one quite, static place they can hash out their thoughts on without fear of making a mistake, and Dreamwidth is very good for that kind of thing.

Apparently DW is making a comeback since tumblr is back on its bullshit. If you’ve never been there, this is a nice primer. tl;dr: it’s free, it’s old, but its stable and does have image hosting (though not as extensive or easy to use as tumblr). And yes, it sucks on mobile.

romanticise your body

your trans body

your disabled body

your fat body

everything about yourself that you've been told to hate

love yourself in spite of it

the way you exist is amazing

why the

the

why the long f

Hey friends. Do this:

This probably took this person 3 seconds to do but it immediately told me that they liked my story enough to come back and read it again and they liked it again the second time.

Your favorite writers Do Not Know that you think about their stories after you read them. I generally assume that my stories make people happy for the few minutes they’re reading and then they never think about it again. To know that that’s not the case and that someone has returned just makes my little heart swell with joy.

I needed this today. If you’re the person who left this comment (or if you’ve ever commented on any of my writing) I love you.

Well this is the most popular post I’ve ever done by an order of magnitude…

The best part has been the people putting tags on their reblogs along the lines of “I’m totally going to do this now” and “I didn’t think authors would like something this simple but I can do this” and authors saying how much this type of comment also means to them.

The second best part was the person who went and read Worship because of this post and then commented on it.

An interesting part has been seeing what a kind of popular post does to your notifications.

I’m really glad this post took off, especially if it means a few more authors get this kind of comment.

Yes, please do this!

Yes! If I see this in any of my fics, I’d be delighted!

I love it when people do this ❤️ I always worry my fics are forgettable

Even just a few emojis will do the trick! 🥰

wyll is the only sane person in my party

Starting off with a slightly... Classical depiction.

Those of you who've been following my main and other accounts already know this but I've been ostriching in Good Omens for a while now, so a few of these will be heavily themed.

If that's not what you're into, block #good omens and that should take care of it.

u guys know sexuality gender and the way u feel attraction can change right. u know you can put labels on and off right. nothing is solid swim a little if you like etc

normalize saying "it was a phase, mom". in a way that doesn't take away that it was real.

this should go without saying but this is also especially true if you identified as ace and then suddenly you're head over heels in sexy romantic love. or if you were bi and then are suddenly feeling hetero feelings only. there's nothing shameful about that. maybe it was real, maybe you we're figuring things out - that's for you to know only.