“I found out that his fans really admired him, not just as a skater, but as a person,” Zarate commented. “In the United States people admire an athlete more for their skills than personality. It was the opposite with Yuzu, so I got really invested.
“It was amazing to see him in person. Seeing him live, I felt that there was this energy in the rink” (…)
“The combination of that, and the beauty of his performance, I just started crying in the middle of the arena. At first I was a little embarrassed, but I looked around and saw that I wasn’t the only one.”
“To me Yuzu’s skating embodies the Japanese aesthetic of grace and beauty, delivered the same way as strength and perseverance. With Yuzu’s skating I see a delicate, elegant, graceful strength.”(…)
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 chances. 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
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 seperately.
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.
You see, back in the days of Livejournal, when people were asked to put their
triggering material behind a cut, people complied without argument! You might
have one or two bad eggs sure, but it didn’t result in such a huge amount of
people harassing one person just because they asked for someone’s post about a
pet spider be put behind a cut.
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.
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.
I post regularly to Dreamwidth, at least once a week, sometimes nearly daily. My blog there is more personal, with lengthier posts than I would have written on Tumblr, and a lot of photos I take in my day-to-day life. I write a lot about writing and fandom.
As we sit on the cusp of changes to the Internet, after your other activities to support Internet freedom, archive your
fandom stuff.
Save the electronic files of your favorite online fandom works. Consider print-outs of your favorite online
material. And save paper
ephemera from fandom events.
Why save? Because you put the effort into a fanwork. Because you may be surprised when a fandom stays alive for years, or gets revived, or when an academic asks to cite your work. Because it’s stupidly hard to find items on Tumblr. Because, lo, in ages past, many fandom archives have risen and fallen, taking favorite fics off the ‘Net. Because it made you happy, makes you remember. Because you never know.
What can
you save?
Fanart
Stories you wrote
Epic comments on stories you wrote
Stories you love that other people wrote
Meta and meta-related discussions
Translations others did of your works
Physical items: paper ephemera, clothing, accessories, art prints and drawings.
Behind the cut…saving from Tumblr and AO3, delving into lost web sites, how to save computer files for the long term, and why I’m glad I saved physical fandom items from 10+ years ago.
I’m going to pull an excerpt directly from it for all my monster writers who are concerned:
“What is still permitted?
Examples of exceptions that are still permitted…
Written content such as erotica, nudity related to political or newsworthy speech, and nudity found in art, such as sculptures and illustrations, are also stuff that can be freely posted on Tumblr.”
GUYS. Writings are FINE.
In addition, blogs aren’t just going to be deleted for being marked as explicit; they’re going to be set to private. Same with any adult content posts. Nothing is just going to be deleted off your page (at this point) and they’re not just going to wipe your blog off the net.
I know this sucks, but there’s still things that you can create here on tumblr. It’s not the best thing in the world, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t the end of NSFW monster blogs as we know it. It’s just going to take some adjustments.
If you needed the info or know someone who does, please show them the actual article. Wild speculation doesn’t help anybody.
Wow, people really don’t reblog on here anymore. I mean, the ratio of likes to reblogs has really changed a lot compared to even a year ago. (This is even on relevant, popular blog posts)
It used to be more even, people would ‘like’ and reblog it right after or put it in a queue. It seems like less and less people are seeing artist’s work and I couldn’t figure out why until I noticed the ‘like’s going up and the reblogs going down. I see more people stealing art and reposting it on Instagram than reblogging these days, and it’s kind of really bad for artists.
This kind of thing is costing a lot of us our livelihoods. Myself, and a ton of other disabled artists rely on reblogs to get commissions, merchandise sales, and Patreons.
Tumblr is a community (sometimes it’s a pornbot community but I mean) and we rely on those in the community to boost our stuff out to those who maybe don’t follow us but would be interested, or those who are looking for an artist to commission and haven’t seen us in the fandom tag yet, or those looking for that exact gift for someone and, hey, I make that.
If this is simply just a matter of the site dying and folks moving to another site, maybe let us know? Because I know that I’m not the only one struggling with this right now, and none of us seem to know what to do about it except keep posting and hope that people deem our art important enough to share on their blogs like they used to.
(Which is getting harder and harder to do when we’re feeling discouraged by the seemingly lack of interest, and, you know, our own personal problems.)
So, if you don’t want your artist’s to disappear or, you know, uh, lose their entire income, please remember reblog.
Well, I’ll be damned. Seriously! I was not prepared for this today! I do not come here for the porn blogs, but I am certainly not comfortable with a site which takes censorship of this kind upon itself. I have nothing on my blog tagged as Adult (because I don’t believe in other people’s version of adult-only). My position is user beware. Take care of your own children and yourself–I am not anyone’s babysitter–OK, not entirely true. I do look after that cute little guy above! But I do not expect anyone else to.
Who is Tumblr even seeking to please with this? I’m slow I guess. I honestly do not know. I have been through all kinds of nonsense of this sort in probably a dozen or more years in fandom but I am never ready when it hits.
I am not hard to find. Probably not leaving instantly as long as some of the people I follow are still here. But I am very unhappy about all this.
Heartofoshun's place 