nothing is real but i&#39;m flying

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marycatelli posting in

book_love

Witch Hat Atelier, Vol. 14 by Kamome Shirahama

The tale continues! Serious spoilers ahead for the earlier works.

( Read more... )

fanweeklymod posting in

Hi all! Since we only have two fills this week, we won't hold a voting round. Instead, feel free to post any last-minute fills you might happen to come up with! Your next challenge will be up at the usual time on Wednesday.

isabrella posting in

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Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Red Wine Supernova - Chappell Roan

m_findlow posting in

Theme Prompt: #293 - Rough seas
Title: Back and forth
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Ianto is having a tough time with their latest assignment.

( Read more... )

teres posting in

Here I am again with some more Dreamwidth tips!
( More technical tips this time. )

badly_knitted posting in

Theme Prompt: #293 – Rough Seas
Title: Not To Be Trusted
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1000
Summary: Jack Harkness grew up as Javic Thane on the Boeshane Peninsula, and like everyone who lived there, he knew how dangerous the sea could be.

( Not To Be Trusted... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

soc_puppet posting in

Buckle in, everyone, this is going to be a long one!

One of the things that has made Tumblr wildly popular with fandom is its unlimited image hosting capacity. Content, Tumblr eventually put limits on, but number of total images (rather than images per post) and size of images? Not so much.

Unfortunately, that's one of the big reasons why Tumblr is basically hemorrhaging money: Because data is expensive, and image data is much more so than text data, mainly because it's a lot more data. That number just goes up with gifs and videos, the former especially being a favorite on Tumblr.

The ways to get money to run a social media site on the internet are basically venture capitol (the investors will want their money back someday, somehow), selling user data (doesn't everyone love ads and hate privacy?), and users directly paying for services (in this economy?).

Dreamwidth started from a foundation of prioritizing privacy and user freedom, and that meant that they compromised on image hosting in order for their users to truly be the main focus of this site. A dedicated user base pays to keep Dreamwidth running, and while there's a price rise on the horizon, we've managed to keep Dreamwidth's doors open with just our own money for sixteen years now.

So what does this have to do with icons? Well, with the limited image hosting options in Dreamwidth's budget, they're one of the main ways we use images at all—and Dreamwidth users make the most of them!

( Hold up; what exactly IS an icon? And what do you mean by 'make the most of them'? )

( How do I get and upload icons? )

Is that it?

Well, it's everything I can think of, at any rate! But you might have questions that I haven't covered. This is a great place to ask them! I may not have the answers, but odds are decent that someone here will be able to point you in the right direction.

One last favor before I go...

Dreamwidth users, if you've got favorite icons, show them off in the comments! I think it would be great to be able to share examples of just how fun and creative we can get with this medium, and this seems like the perfect opportunity 😉 Reply to your own comment if you have more than one, or to other people if the icon fits, so it's not just a mass of top-level comments.

As for any newcomers, if this post gets enough comments, you may get a chance to try out another one of Dreamwidth's features; at 50 comments, comment threads will collapse to keep loading time down and limit data transfer costs. Towards the topmost comment, at the bottom of the comment below which everything gets folded up, there's a clickable option to Expand the thread. This will open up and display all of the comments below that for you! The thread will collapse back down if you click away, though.

If this post doesn't get that many comments but you still want to try it out, I'd recommend checking the latest post at

dw_news. (Incidentally, if you have a Paid account, there's an option to expand all the comment threads at once at the top of the comment section. Pretty neat, yeah?)

Thanks, everyone, and I hope this post was helpful! I'm going to go collapse for a while now 😅

Edit: I've added a clarification about which icons will be kept if you go from a paid account to a free account with more than 15 icons.

lirazel

Fic: boiling over
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Frank Langdon & Samira Mohan
Characters: Samira Mohan, Frank Langdon
Additional Tags: not tagging robby because he doesn’t come off well here, but he’s haunting the narrative, Missing Scene, Post-Episode 10, eldest daughter prodigal son, the kids from robby’s first marriage that he doesn’t care about anymore because he’s got a new family, oh sorry was that snarky?, anyway the senior residents should unionize, let them commiserate over the way robby treats them, my ‘langdon should be the brother of every woman in the ed (except mel)’ agenda, my ‘samira has done nothing wrong and someone needs to acknowledge that’ agenda, another name checked off of langdon’s amends list
Summary:

“How’re you feeling?”

Samira looks up to see Langdon coming through the door of the breakroom, pulling it closed behind him.

“I’m fine,” she says, aiming for wry, though it comes out more terse than she’d hoped.

“By which you mean ‘kind of tingly but also wrung-out’?” Her surprise must show on her face, because he shrugs as he sits down at the chair across the table from her. “I have some experience with panic attacks.”

“You?” It doesn’t fit with how she thinks of him, easy confidence that tilts over into cockiness more than it should. But then, she’s never known him well.

lirazel

Title: no-fault
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Melissa “Mel” King/Frank Langdon, Abby Langdon & Frank Langdon, Melissa “Mel” King & Abby Langdon
Characters: Abby Langdon, Frank Langdon, Melissa “Mel” King
Additional Tags: Future Fic, POV Outsider, abby does not deserve this but at least she’s going to get some amusement out of it, ‘just friends’ huh?
Summary:

She tosses the plastic bottle into the buggy just as Tanner says, “…and Mel says that ponies aren’t baby horses, they’re something different. A baby horse is called a colt.”

“That’s right,” Abby says automatically, the words snagging on long-buried memories of Saddle Club and Misty of Chincoteague. And then, a delayed second later: “Who’s Mel?”

Because she usually does listen when he talks, and she thought she knew the names of all of his friends and all of his friends’ siblings and that she and Frank have both trained him well enough that he wouldn’t call an adult by their first name without some kind of title in front of it. But she definitely doesn’t remember hearing about a Mel before. A new kid in class? Or, God, a character from one of the more annoying shows he and Penny watch, the kind whose shrillness and obnoxious flashing make Abby flee the room?

She absolutely isn’t expecting the explanation Tanner gives.

“Daddy’s friend.”

The buggy jerks to a stop, the broken wheel—there’s always a broken wheel—dragging across the linoleum. Penny giggles at the sound it makes, but Abby doesn’t hear her, her mind suddenly gone blank.

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ysabetwordsmith posting in

getting_started

soc_puppet has posted "Finding Friends and Things to Do on Dreamwidth" and "Uploading Images to Dreamwidth" on

newcomers.

Current Mood: busy

soc_puppet posting in

This is a reproduction of a post I already made on Tumblr, but with that platform's future once again uncertain, I figured it'd be good to copy over here, as well.

Together with figuring out what to even post, one of the things that sucks about moving social media and/or blogging platforms is not knowing if there will be enough activity for you at the new place. Be it from old friends, new friends, or interactive communities, there’s a lot of ways you could find activity at a new place, but finding at least two of those categories can be tricky in itself.

Luckily, Dreamwidth has a few shortcuts for you already!

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

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

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

findingfriends: Similar to the addme communities but with a more in-depth approach, including things like posting style and what sort of interactions you’re looking for. Takes more brain power than the addme comms, but I imagine that the connections result in a higher level of compatibility.

Newcomers' Introduction and Friending Meme: A very in-depth adding meme, hosted by

newcomers! Includes a spot near the top for other platforms you're on, so it might be useful for finding Tumblr mutuals.

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

Getting started on Dreamwidth:

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

the_great_tumblr_purge: A community dedicated specifically to Tumblr refugees, started around the time of the new content restrictions in 2018. If you've got questions specific to being former Tumblr user, this might be a good place to ask them, though Newcomers is also happy to help.

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

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

dw_advocacy: Want to know more about how Dreamwidth is fighting for our rights? Follow this community to keep tabs on what bad bills Dreamwidth and NetChoice are battling, and if there's anything you can do to help!

Things to do on Dreamwidth:

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

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

ysabetwordsmith, shares a themed post every week with posts, events, and communities related to said theme.

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

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

allbingo: Do you like filling out bingo cards for just about anything? This community is for all things bingo cards, fandom related and otherwise! Put together a bingo card for making mood themes, post topics, or even bird watching (featuring your local feathered friends), and share your results!

Fandom things to do on Dreamwidth:

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

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

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

Anything else?

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

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

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

Most Useful Communities list, as curated by

ysabetwordsmith; this has a lot of other options that I either didn't know about, or didn't feel like I had room to include; this post is already longer than I like to go without a cut tag or two 😅

The comments on the Newcomers' mirror of this post: People in both of these communities are pretty helpful, and that includes sharing their own suggestions in the comments! If you have something specific you're looking for, you might even ask for help here; who knows, we might just have a good lead for you! (Feel free to ask here as well!)

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

fanweeklymod posting in

Challenge 293:
ROUGH SEAS

The ocean might be beautiful, but it isn’t safe.

Maybe there’s a storm rolling in, whipping the waves into peaks that tower higher than ships while ominous clouds gather overhead. Maybe the tide’s going out, pulling the waves along the shoreline into treacherous riptides. Maybe there’s something lurking in the depths, stirring up the surface. Whatever it is, right now, the seas are rough.

How do your characters handle it? Are they skilled sailors or swimmers, risking the waves easily? Or would they rather stay on shore and watch?

Write a story about rough seas.

BONUS GOAL: “Never turn your back on the sea.”

If your submission features this line, it will earn an extra point to be tallied in voting!

Challenge ends Monday, March 23 at 9:00PM EST.

• Post submissions as new entries using the template in the profile
• Tag this week's entries as: [#] submission, 293 – rough seas
• If you have questions about this challenge, please ask them here

fanweeklymod posting in

Here are this week's votes tallied, and below the cut are our winners for Challenge #292 – Daydreaming!

( This week's finalists are... )

Total Challenge Words Written: 3332

Congratulations to both of you, and thank you to everyone who took the time to cast their votes!

autobotscoutriella will be making this week’s banners, so keep an eye out for those next week.

You may now post your Challenge 292 entries to any additional communities, blogs, archives or sites as you'd like! We also have a FandomWeekly AO3 Collection if you'd like to add your stories there!

soc_puppet posting in

Hello again! With Tumblr's latest brush with implosion, it seems the tutorial writing bug has bitten me again. Today, I'm finally going to talk about uploading and sharing images on Dreamwidth!

Dreamwidth has given all users a certain amount of image storage to use: Free users get 500 MB, Paid users get 1.5 GB, and Premium Paid users get 3 GB.

There's two ways to upload images directly to Dreamwidth.

The first option has a fair number of steps, but it's the one I know the most about and the one I'm best able to help with.

( Option One )

The second option is to post an image by email, which I have to admit I haven't tried myself yet.

For Option Two, the first thing you need to know here is that it's possible to post to Dreamwidth by email;

silvercat17 wrote the tutorial I used to set it up, but you can also use Dreamwidth's official FAQ entries about it over here. If you post an entry by email, you can attach an image as a file to the email, and it will automatically be uploaded to Dreamwidth and included in the post! It won't necessarily have any particular title or description included, though, so you may want to visit Manage Images to edit that.

And those are the basics of uploading images to Dreamwidth! Culturally, Dreamwidth users tend to either share larger images as a thumbnail, or to put them under a cut (Dreamwidth's "Read More"), but otherwise this should cover what you need to know.

But maybe I'm wrong about that! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments of this post, and I'll do my best to clear things up (and then edit the post to include the information). You can also check Dreamwidth's official Media FAQ and see if your question is answered there.

Edit: With thanks to

teres for the help!

I'd also like to note that you can share images on Dreamwidth that are hosted elsewhere, but not all image hosting sites have the same positive attitude that Dreamwidth does about NSFW art. If you do a lot of art and not all of it is NSFW, you may decide to host your SFW art elsewhere, and save your Dreamwidth storage for the stuff you can't host elsewhere.

maevedarcy posting in

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marycatelli posting in

book_love

The Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers by Matt Bird

A how-to-write book. Despite the title, mostly for TV and movie writers, down to and including explaining that a prose writer has it easier.

Nevertheless, some useful ideas, particularly about irony, such as the character's flaw should be a flip-side of a strength to add reason to not want to fix it. None of the jargon was impenetrable.

xwyndx posting in