Weird, comics related stuff, and Tumblr

[shapinglight]

Icon not really relevant, but I love the image so much, I have to use it regardless.

Last night, I dreamed I was Spike in the Buffy comics.



This was brought on, I think, by a combination of things. Firstly, I'm currently re-reading Buffy season 10, which I admit, I'm enjoying, and secondly I got involved briefly in a comics-related conversation on one of the fanboards, though it didn't hold my interest long. I made one comment and walked away, even though I hate it when other people do that. ;)

Anyway, in my dream, I started off actually being Spike. I was talking to Comics!Buffy (we were both cartoons even in my dream). She was eating a bowl of strawberry ice cream. I asked her to tell me straight out which she preferred, me or Angel, and she got this guilty look on her face and admitted it was Angel.

Suddenly, I was no longer Spike in the comic. I was me, hurrying to get online and let people know this, so they could steel themselves for the inevitable disappointment and put on a brave face if anyone felt inclined to gloat.

Then I woke up.

Odd. I've never dreamt I was a cartoon before, or that I was Spike. Or even about Spike. The only character from the show I've ever dreamt about is Angel - and even then I think he was more David Boreanaz than Angel.

I've been enjoying the comic, like I said. I do agree with rahirah, though. While I can see BtVS season 7 Buffy possibly becoming season 8/9 Buffy, or BtVS season 7 Buffy possibly becoming season 10 Buffy, I can't for the life of me see season 8/9 Buffy becoming season 10 Buffy.

Oh well.

In other slightly comics-related news (in a very roundabout way, and only because I'm following Cullen Bunn, the writer of the sadly defunct Magneto solo series from Marvel on there), I'm still trying, and failing miserably, to get to grips with Tumblr. bogwitch and quinara said they'd help me work out how to use the site when we meet at Writercon, but I'm supposed to read the FAQ before then. Trouble is, whenever I look at the it it just makes me miserable. I kinda...hate it.

:Gloom:

Also, given how quiet LJ's become, I've suddenly become anxious in case it's not profitable any more and our Russian overlords close the site down altogether. I have so much that I've written on here. Not just fanfics (multiple copies of those exist anyway) but life stuff. I'd hate to lose it. I do import content to Dreamwidth fairly regularly, but that site could also disappear any time. There used to be a program by which you could download a copy of your LJ, entries, comments, the whole thing, to your hard drive. Does it still exist, does anyone know?

ETA: It looks like LJ Archive still exists but that there are loads of problems with it. :(

Comments

[quinara]

Who says you have to read the FAQs, Deb? I still have barely any idea how things work. I tried to figure out how to tag someone the other day and failed, so didn't bother. We will muddle on together!

And shh, I have a load of comments to reply to that I didn't yesterday and now now I must, so I am not here. I have to deal with this inability to process communications when too much comes in at once... I'd be a terrible telephone operator if those still existed and women had to be them.

[shapinglight]

I have to deal with this inability to process communications when too much comes in at once...

I have a similar thing. Fortunately (or not) it doesn't happen that much on LJ these days.

ETA: I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds Tumblr baffling. I wish I didn't actively dislike it as well but, at the moment at least, I sorta do. :(

[the-moonmoth.livejournal.com]

Ladies, if I may offer my services - I've been on tumblr a couple of years now, even though I still prefer LJ. I'm pretty ofay on the workings of one as compared to the other, if you have questions...

[shapinglight]

Thanks very much for the offer. Have to admit, I'm baffled by most things on there so I'll have to make a list.

[rahirah]

This. Also, if you haven't already done so, install the New XKit browser extension. It adds a whole bunch of customizeable tools which make Tumblr almost bearable. (Make sure you get new Xkit, as original Xkit has been abandoned by its developer and is slowly becoming unusable.)

[shapinglight]

The which, the what, the who?

:Is clueless:

[rahirah]

Which web browser do you normally use?

[shapinglight]

Google Chrome. I have Firefox too, but I mostly use Chrome.

[rahirah]

Ok. So you would want to go here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-xkit/inobiceghmpkaklcknpniboilbjmlald?hl=en-US

Hit the "Add to Chrome" button, and it should install automatically. Then go to the Tumblr website, and log in, and more intallation stuff should happen (it's very fast.) You will see a little icon up at the top right of your browser that looks sort of like this: XX and you should get a pop-up asking if you want to customize XKit. You can then take a look at all of the various features it has, install only the ones that look useful, and there you go. You can add or delete features at any time, and it updates automatically when there are changes or bug fixes.

[shapinglight]

Okay, I've done that. It was very simple. Thank you. Mind you, I have no idea which features will be useful because I haven't a clue what any of them do. ;)

For instance, now I've installed a few features how do I actually use them? Are they sort of integral to my Tumblr now, or do I have to go somewhere and click on something when I want to use them?

[rahirah]

They're integral to your Tumblr now. For example, if you installed the one that gets rid of recommended blogs, you just won't see recommended blogs or posts on your dashboard any longer. Or the one that gives you the ability to save the tags when you reblog something appears as a pop-up box when you hover your mouse over the regular reblog icon.

I've found it's easiest to just install one or two at a time, figure out what they do, and only then install something else. If you don't like or don't use something, you can uninstall at will.

[shapinglight]

Okay, thanks for that. I was thinking the installation hadn't worked properly.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

Also, again: what? Features? I don't understand...

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Well...) In case you feel lost, here are some XKit features that I find useful. (They are not enabled bu default, you should download them via XKit's "Get Extensions" Tab).
Blacklist - probably the main reason why people install XKit. Allows to create blacklist and whitelist, that hides (in case of blacklist) or highlights (in case of whitelist) posts with the specified words. Note, that it reacts on the word anywhere in the post, not just in tags. You can even hide posts from specific user, adding their username to the blacklist. The fastest way to add words to the blacklist is using Alt + B hotkey.
Bookmarker and Post Archiver - two separate extensions with the very similar function - make bookmarks of a post from your dashboard. Post Archiver in theory should be able to save your bookmarks to cloud, but surrenly this function seems to be broken.
Limit People - Hides the consecutive posts from the same user. Extremely helpful, if you happen to follow people who reblog like a machine gun. By default cut off limit is set to 3, but you can change it to any other number.
Mass+ - allows to select multiple posts, when you view your blog on the dashbord.
Drafts+ - some additional options for Drafts folder.
Enchanced Queue - some additional options for your post Queue (shuffle button, for instance).
Outbox - Outbox for all your sent ask messages. (Yepp, tumblr doesn't have this function by default.)
Post Block - Hides post from your dashbord forever, even in reblogs. (Standart Tumblr "Ignore" button doesn't hide reblogs.)
Profiler - Allows to see some basic info about other tumblr users, including if they are following you or not. (Yepp, tumblr has no means to check it quickly otherwise.)
Read Posts - dims read posts. Use it if you scroll your dashbord to read everything and want to know where all unread posts end.
Reblog Yourself - makes you able to reblog your own posts from the dashboard.
Separator - Long separator line between read and unread posts on your dasbord (if "dim read posts" function wasn't enough for you).
Reply Viewer - allows to see a quick overview of all replies added to any post on your dashboard. Extremely usefil uf you want to track a discussion.
Tag Replacer - allows renaming (ok, replacing) of tags. (Yepp, otherwise the only way you can do it is edit all tagged posts one by one.)
Tag Viewer - allows to see a quick overview of all tags added to any post on your dashboard. It's a quick way to see all the comments people add as tags.
Search likes - in case you use "Like" button as a bookmark.
Shorten posts - automatically adds cut to all longer posts, in case you HATE scrolling.
Timestamps - adds a timestamp to all posts.
User Menus+ - adds some useful functions to the user menu (the thing that pops up when you hover the mouse on person's avatar\nickname on your dashbord). Amount of functions depends on the additional XKit features you installed. (For instance, if you installed "View on Dash", it will be availble here, too.)
View My Tags - shows all your recently used tags.
View on Dash - adds the button that allows to view any tumblr post on your dash. Extremely useful 1) for reading text posts from the blogs with the terrible fonts/color scheme; 2) for finding the original source of the reblogged post, that you found on the blog that doesn't show source links.

[shapinglight]

Thanks for that. Some of those look very useful (though in general the site still makes me want to sit down and have a good weep).

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know the feeling. And no matter whet you install, it still remains not suited for discussions.

[shapinglight]

:(

I don't know why people go from LJ to there. If they start off there, fair enough.

:is old and crusty:

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of pretty pictures there. And cats. Lots of cats. We should probably post more cats on LJ to see if it helps.

[shapinglight]

Heh! True.

I have a cat icon. Or sort of.

[yourlibrarian]

I admit I haven't been downloading my content either, although I have continued to import regularly to DW. It's true that any site could disappear in time, although some sites may continue to exist and host their content far longer than we'd expect (such as MySpace).

Then again I admit to feeling somewhat ambivalent about the value of my account. For one thing, the changes at Imageshack mean that scores of posts more than 2 years old lost their embedded images, making them pointless since I don't even know what they might have contained now.

I also thought, once AO3 accepted meta content, that I might go back and upload those posts there but I doubt anyone would bother reading them. I think I only have a few dozen but the one document I do have there (which was uploaded when I was helping to test the site) has, I suspect, never been read even though it's in the SPN fandom which is still quite active.

I might still do so anyway, just because I'm somewhat curious to read them all again.

[rahirah]

Aw, please do upload them to AO3. I hate the idea of all that old stuff just disappearing.

[shapinglight]

I have a lot of posts with images that have vanished too, but there are a lot of things I've written - reviews of episodes, this that and the other - that I would be sad to lose.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

If LJ ever does disappear, you might be able to find your posts on the Wayback Machine (http://archive.org/web/web.php).

And I often use icons because I love them even if they don't seem appropriate. ;-)

[shapinglight]

And I often use icons because I love them even if they don't seem appropriate. ;-)

That's another thing about Tumblr. No one uses icons (or only teeny weeny ones that aren't worth bothering with). I love my icon collection and would be very sad not be able to use it.

:Sigh: I'm a hopeless dinosaur, aren't I?

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

Not at all, or if you are then so am I. I've had the exact same feeling about social media sites that provide space for only one icon.

[shapinglight]

A03 is the same, though of course you can upload story art, etc.

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is one hell of a dream! :P

I've tried tumblr so many times and hated it every single one :( But then I go through the tags anyway, to find gifsets... so... IDK.

[shapinglight]

You know, I don't even know how to find things on there with tags. I suppose I should try to learn that at least.

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

I just use the url, like (for instance :P) https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/spuffy I think there's a way for registered users to track a tag which makes puts it on your "dash" (home page) as well. Which is I guess why tracking your own username to see what other people are saying about you seems to be such a common practice (but... whaaa...)

[shapinglight]

I think I read some posts recently where people were using the Spuffy tag to spread their dislike of the 'ship. That seems a bit mean.

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

tumblr tags suck. I'm sure it's partly just mean people, but also just the whole system works against people having good relationships with each other.

Unlike on LJ, where tags are for archiving your own content so that you and other people can read about a particular subject, tags on tumblr are both archival tools and actually seem to function as the equivalent of a community on LJ. Meaning that if two users use the same word in a different way, they will often get into a fight over who has more "right" to that tag, because a tag being used in two different ways makes its community function useless to both groups. For instance, I remember a while ago a polynesian tumblr user getting extremely angry at polyamorous people who were tagging stuff about their love lives with "poly", because it was "invading" the tag that polynesian people wanted to use to talk about their heritage, and the person in question felt that the polynesian community should have "dibs" on the tag, and obviously the polyamorous people felt differently, etc.

So I think tumblr just exacerbates character and ship wars because content talking about a character/ship in a negative way that, in LJ days, would have stayed on a single person's journal and likely only be read and commented upon by people who agree with it already, now ends up "in the tag" for that character or ship, which is usually full of mainly people who like it. I assume that lots of spuffy-bashing also goes on on LJ, I just don't see it, because it's easy here to avoid the kind of content that you're not interested in.

This is kind of tangential to the issue, but the famously rigid language- and content-policing that goes on between users on tumblr is something that in my opinion has also arisen out of the fact that tumblr does make it so damn difficult to avoid coming across the kind of content you don't want to see. i don't really know how they can fix that, besides the tag blacklisting available with add-on services like xkit, which is kind of a band-aid solution offered by a third party, not the website itself (which, WTF) to what for me was a fundamental enough problem that I decided not to use the platform altogether.

[shapinglight]

Thanks for that information. I had some idea that people were using tags in Tumblr in a way that annoyed other people, but I had no idea of the mechanics of it, or how the problem had arisen.

Back in the day, there were plenty of people bashing Spuffy on LJ. That's very limited now, unless it goes on a lot still in locked posts. I only know one unlocked LJ where you could be pretty sure of seeing some Spuffy bashing. But even so, for the most part, Spuffy 'shippers would just stay away from it and let the LJ owner do their thing.

This wasn't always so, of course (and here I am talking to you as if you're new to LJ, when you could have been here for years, for forgive me if that's the case). Also back in the day, if you made an open post stating something contentious, you could be pretty certain lots of people would come along to argue the toss.

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

That is very interesting! I guess that's the thing-- staying away and letting the LJ owner do their thing is normal behaviour on LJ, much more than on tumblr. At least that is my impression.

(And... I got into fandom about five years ago (although I lost my old LJ username, so this account is new) but I definitely would not have been of an appropriate age to have watched BtVS when it first aired, so I was not around for the early days of this fandom :P)

[shapinglight]

I guess that's the thing-- staying away and letting the LJ owner do their thing is normal behaviour on LJ, much more than on tumblr. At least that is my impression.

It is now, but that could just as well be because everyone on LJ has heard it all before. ;)

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

True! Well in that case, glad to be here now :D

[shapinglight]

;)

It does get a bit quiet sometimes (often, in fact), but I can't say I miss some of the awful rows that used to happen.

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Imo, tag workin as a community has some pros, too. Like, it's way easier to discover people with similar interests or be noticed by them.
LJ is extremely unfriendly in this aspect (I don't mean people, I mean platform). If you are a noob unfaimilar with the concept of thematic comms, you are doomed to die alone in your dark and lonely personal LJ. And even if you discover the right communities, it will take at least several months (or more likely - about a year) to get connected with other people.
LJ could benefit from some global discovery system, like the one Tumblr has. (Though it would be wise if there was the way to separate global and individual blog tags; or have some sort of "tag wrlangler" moderators like the ones on AO3.)

[shapinglight]

Like, it's way easier to discover people with similar interests or be noticed by them.

There is that, it's true.

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

That is a good point! I mean, I guess it's telling that I still check the tag despite not using the site-- when the tags are working correctly, they're an excellent way to discover people and content in a low-pressure (?) way. But I also like checking the tags (more than I liked having my own dashboard) because I don't particularly mind reading ship hate-- I guess I've been in fandom a short enough time to still just find it vaguely amusing-- so I suppose it depends on your tolerance for coming across that kind of stuff.

[shapinglight]

You know, I haven't the faintest clue how you check tags on Tumblr.

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Some ways to do it:
1) type something like tumblr.com/tagged/buffy-the-vampire-slayer into address bar.
2) click on any tag from the post on your dashboard.It will take you to the global tag page.
You can track tags, but all that tracking does is adding the tag to your "quick select" menu in the search bar, so you won't have to type it manually every time you want to check it.

[shapinglight]

Thanks. If I can ever summon even the ghost of any enthusiasm, I'll give it a try. ;)

[chasingdemons.livejournal.com]

I have been forced to learn at least a tiny bit about Tumblr because we are posting the Sunnydale Harold there. The more I learn about it, the more I am amazed at what an awful program it is. It reinforces how great, actually, LJ is as a social media site. Why don't people realize that? The only thing I suppose LJ doesn't have is the ability to reblog. But honestly, everyone on Tumblr is re-blogging, re-blogging, re-blogging so they can get other people to follow them. So the upshot is that everyone is re-blogging every piece of crap they see. I only follow a few people, and my "dashboard " is full of stupid stuff that I have to continuously scroll through.

Sigh. Whoever designed Tumblr did a really bad job. I am waiting for the next wonderful site that will drive everyone away from Tumblr. Wish they would just come to LJ though.

By the way, I'm wondering if your dream was influenced by your work on the Angel/Spike story.

[shapinglight]

I have been forced to learn at least a tiny bit about Tumblr because we are posting the Sunnydale Harold there.

Yes, I noticed that. I even, for a panicked moment, thought the Herald had moved there permanently.

It reinforces how great, actually, LJ is as a social media site. Why don't people realize that?

I think people have just got a bit lazy. They don't want to write stuff, they just want to look at pretty pictures. I know some people do write long posts on there, but I personally hate the way someone can take your post and scrawl their comments all over it. Way more difficult to have a coherent conversation than in the comments threads on LJ. Unless I'm misunderstanding how it works, which wouldn't surprise me.

As for reblogging, I believe there is a sort of reblog function on LJ, but it wasn't popular. People thought of it as other people stealing their posts.

Sigh. Whoever designed Tumblr did a really bad job. I am waiting for the next wonderful site that will drive everyone away from Tumblr.

There's bound to be something, but it could well be even more graphics oriented.

Wish they would just come to LJ though.

Me too.

By the way, I'm wondering if your dream was influenced by your work on the Angel/Spike story.

That could well come into it, but I think it's more likely it's me re-reading the comics.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

You want LJ Book to back up your journal: http://www.ljbook.com/

I think I am learning a lot about Tumblr too (or I will when I bother to actually read all the above!)

[shapinglight]

Thanks for that. I'd forgotten about LJ book.