#this was for an ask. however tumblr wants me to use some new fangled post editor for asks

[theseathatsparkles]

of all men’s pride i boast

yo i actually wrote something for a change

UraIchi, around 700 words, prompted by looking through Shakespeare’s sonnets

i’m new to the tumblr writing scene, so let me know if anything went wrong with this post ^^

When Ichigo asks out Urahara Kisuke, Urahara responds by laughing. For a long minute, Ichigo stands unmoving, feeling his face heat up as Urahara laughs, and laughs.

And then the laughter stops as quickly as it had started.

"You're serious, aren't you."

Ichigo blinks. Had Urahara really thought... "Well, yeah," he says, maybe a little more irritably than is strictly polite. "Did you really think I was joking, Geta-Boshi?"

Urahara gives Ichigo a searching look that makes Ichigo feel like a particularaly interesting bug under a microscope. "Why would you be serious about that?"

"Because I like you, Geta-Boshi," Ichigo says, now too confused to be mortified. "Why else would I ask you out?"

"Hm," says Urahara, pulling his stupid fan out of nowhere and tapping it against his chin. "I can think of a number of reasons, actually. Perhaps you were looking to catch me off guard as an interrogation tactic or looking for a chance to sneak-attack. Maybe you wanted blackmail material. It's quite likely that you were doing anything other than seriously asking out a murderer!" Urahara's breath comes quick and heavy by the time he finishes, and Ichigo feels something click.

"You're still upset about the Soul Society invasion to save Rukia thing? Because I got over than ages ago.

Urahara flings his hands up and almosts hits Ichigo in the face with the fan. "Upset? Kurosaki-san, you misunderstand. I lead you to your death. I used you as nothing more than a pawn in a game between a heartless genius and a god, Kurosaki-san. You may have forgiven me, but that does not make me a good person.

Ichigo makes an incredulous noise at this, and Urahara's face twists with rarely-shown confusion. "Geta-Boshi, I don't think you're a good person." Urahara opens his mouth to reply, bur Ichigo cuts him off. "However, my life is filled with people like Grimmjow and Kurostuchi and even Zaraki. Comparatively, you're pretty angelic. You did some bad things, but it was for the right reason, and I can't blame you when I would've done the exact same thing. Does that make me a bad person, Urahara?"

Urahara gapes for a moment, and Ichigo feels a little bad. Maybe he pushed too hard. After a moment, though, Urahara smiles faintly - a real smile, not his Humble Shopkeeper smile - and shakes his head.

"Kurosaki-san," he says softly, "never change."

"Wasn't planning on it," Ichigo retorts, though without much venom. "I'm happy the way I am now, thanks."

Urahara bows his head; not quite a bow, but an admission of gratitude. "Kurosaki-san, if I can ask you one thing..." Urahara waits for Ichigo's nod before continuing. "Why do yo want to go out with me? You said you like me, but what is there about me to like?"

Ichigo shrugs. "Who can say why people love each other?" In a moment of sudden daring, he reaches forward and grabs Urahara's fan. "I care about you. Isn't that enough?"

Still looking uncomprehending, Urahara reaches up to adjust his hat. "Yes, of course, but why would you care about me? Inoe-chan has loved you for years, and the lovely Kuchiki-chan -"

"I'm gay," Ichigo says blandly, taking a bit of pleasure from the look of mortified surprise on Urahara's face. "Besides," and he allows himself a small smirk, "'some glory in their birth, some in their skill, some in their wealth, some in their body's force; some in their garments, though new fangled ill; some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse.'"

Ichigo isn't really expecting Urahara to understand the reference, so Ichigo's taken off guard when Urahara looks like he's had an epiphany. "And every humor hath his adjunct pleasure, wherein it finds a joy above the rest; but these particulars are not my measure; all these I better in one general best."

"What the hell," Ichigo says as soon as Urahara closes his mouth. "You know Shakespeare, Geta-Boshi?"

"Do I know Shakespeare?" Urahara rolls his eyes dramatically,  holding a hand against his chest. "Of course I know Shakespeare! I'm no uneducated peasant, Kurosaki-san."

Smiling so hard his face is going numb, Ichigo says, "marry me. As soon as I die and go to Soul Society, find me and marry me."

"Why would you marry me," asks Urahara, but he's also grinning now, and Ichigo takes the prompt to continue for what it is.

"Because," Ichigo says, snapping Urahara's fan open in a single dramatic gesture, "'thy love is better than high birth to me, richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost, of more delight than hawks or horses be."

"'And having thee, of all men's pride I boast,'" Urahara finishes softly, grey eyes sparkling, "'wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take all this away, and me most wretched make.'"

Ichigo nods. "Don't make me wretched, Urahara," he says, and Urahara snorts. "Come on. I'll even pay for dinner."

"If you insist," says Urahara. "And of course, if you will go out with me, you must call me Kisuke."

"Okay Kisuke," says Ichigo, and all is right with the world.

#uraichi #sparkles writes #urahara kisuke #ichigo kurosaki #romance i guess

[green-blooded-computer]

A Guide to RPing on Tumblr

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately, so here’s my complete walkthrough on how to create a Tumblr RP blog. 

If you’d rather view on a Google Doc, here’s a link.

Enjoy.

Create Blog

Howdy, so the first thing you’ll have to do is click ‘register’ and make yourself a blog. You also have the choice of making a sideblog instead. I’m a person who likes to have this separated, so if you are only thinking of playing a couple characters, this might be the way to go for you. Here’s the difference between main/side blogs (taken from Tumblr’s help center):

Choose any url for now (we’ll talk about that later), and go to the next section.

Please note: When you make a new blog, it won’t show up in the search/people’s notifications for a bit of time (a day or so). Make sure you validate your email address asap. 

Get xKit

If you haven’t installed xKit, I highly suggest it. Go to their blog here, and get it for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Opera.

What is it? A little toolkit to make Tumblr easier to use.

When you install it, it’ll pop up on your top bar thing next to the lightning bolt like this:

It’s that thing with the x’s on it.

When you click the x’s this pops up:

Brill.

You can click ‘Get Extensions’ at the bottom and basically choose whatever you want, but may I recommend the following:

1) Editable Reblogs allows you to edit reblogs. Right. This is good because when you are replying to RP threads they tend to get rather long. Some advice that was given to me when I started: when you add your reply, delete everything before your partner’s last reply. So you should have your partner’s post and your post and that’s all. You just click ‘reblog’ and it pops up like normal, except now there’s this little guy:

If you click that, it will make everything in your reblog box editable.

2) One-Click Postage gives you a little box if you hover over the reblog button. It lets you reblog, queue, draft, tag, and add replies right from that page. You can even choose which blog (main/side) you want it to go to.  It looks like this:

The rest I will just say play around with! They are easy to add and take away.

Decide what kind of blog you want.

Multimuse Vs. Single muse: 

Do you want to play one character or a bunch of them? If you choose one character, your blog icon and theme will presumably feature that character or something to do with them. If you choose to focus on one, you should have info about your character available on your blog somewhere. If you choose to have more than one muse, you’ll need a list of the characters you offer and some info about them. 

When choosing a url for a multimuse, choose something that encompasses the spirit of you and your characters.

When choosing a url for a single muse, I go for quotes, nicknames, something about where they are from, what they like, their name, etc. Note: if you have dashes in your url (like mine @strings-have-been-cut) these won’t work with tags. People will have to turn them into separate words or one big word.

I do not have a multimuse, but I have seen them done all sorts of ways. Some people offer characters from all different fandoms, some are just one fandom, one genre, OCs, canons, a mixture...you can do what you like. 

If your blog is not affiliated with any sort of organized game, this is referred to as ‘independent’ often shortened to ‘idie’. 

Your blog description should mention which kind it is. For example: a sci-fi multimuse blog; a Star Trek OC blog; an indie Bill S. Preston Esq. from Bill and Ted RP blog. Details help sometimes. 

Canon Character Vs. Original Character

If you decide to make a canon character, make sure you have it clear somewhere where they are from! Canon characters can be canon divergent (your own version), they can crossover into other fandoms, they can be exactly as they are in your favourite book/show/movie/podcast...each version of a canon is unique and lovely.

If you decide to make an original character, make sure you give plenty of info about them! You want to tell people what fandom they fit into or if they are fandomless. ‘About’ pages are really important for OCs because there is no fanbase for them (yet!).

What should be in your description?

When someone clicks your blog, they will first see a dash preview sort of thing. It shows a description and a small header, along with the posts you’ve made. This description also shows up somewhere on your actual blog and on the top of the page on mobile view. It’s a great spot to give all the info about your blog real quick. I always include the following:

What is it? (Independent Data from Star Trek RP blog)

Age restrictions (21+)

Who you will RP with (mutuals only is called ‘private’ and choosing who you follow back is called ‘selective’.)

Mun’s name (played by [insert your name])

Possibly a link to your about/rules for easy access on desktop and mobile. I’ll talk about this more below. I call this ‘navigation’, but it varies. Note: if you edit your icon/dash header, any html links seem to go away. I’ve needed to go back into the theme customizer and add them back in. To add a link to your description, go into your customizer, go to the description section, and add the html as follows:

<a href=”url goes here”>link text goes here</a>

So mine is: <a href=”https://data-all-in-one.carrd.co”>Indie Data from Star Trek blog.</a>

The description for my Data blog reads: ‘Indie Data from Star Trek RP blog. Click here for navigation. 21+. Private/selective. Played by Fool.

What should be on this blog?

In my experience, you need a couple of pages on your blog to get you started:

About the character - basically a biography

Rules - so people know what you are about

About the mun - so people can know about the person they are writing with

Possibly a link to your ‘ask memes’ tag - see below.

These can be organized however you like, but people tend to look for a few specific things.

About the Character

This should read like a biography. Back in the day, we used to call them ‘character apps’ and they had all your basic info about the character. Sometimes this section contains a subsection called ‘verses’ in which the mun spells out what universes they exist in. Say I had an AU where Data owns an arcade in San Francisco in the 80’s. I’d list that as one of his ‘verses’. This is extremely important for OCs, but very helpful for canons too. 

Data has four: TNG era, TNG movie era, AU where he lives after Nemesis, AU where he’s around during Star Trek: Picard. I gave a little info about both. 

Rules

Rules are usually organized into the things people are looking for before they start playing with you. Some good info to include: 

Mun age

Your policy on adult content

How you deal with tagging triggers

Your policy on following back

Your policy on writing with mutuals vs. anyone

Do you allow personal blogs (non RP blogs) to follow you?

How fast do you reply?

How does your tagging system work?

How do you deal with shipping? 

Here is a link to my usual Rules page for reference. Remember, it’s not wrong if it’s different than mine!

Note: People will look for how old you are. Many people in the RPC are adults, and they want to write with people their own age. If your age is not posted somewhere clearly, they may not follow you back. 

About the Mun 

This is really just a little blurb about you. Some people include their age here. Some people include links to their other blogs. Some people include their Discord info, as that’s really popular right now. It’s just nice to know who you are writing with.

It’s important to note that there are different ways to present all of these blogs. Some people have them as pages on their Tumblr blog itself, some people put all of this (Bio, About, Rules, etc) in a Google Doc and link it, some people use Carrd.co - there are a ton of ways. A friend of mine did this amazing post about some options out there. I personally go for Carrd.co, seeing as I am on mobile a lot and I find it very helpful, but it’s up to you. 

Now I have a blog with all the info. How do I get started?

Well there are a few things you can do to get yourself out there.

Make yourself a promo. It’s basically an advertisement for your blog. If you aren’t good at graphics, you can head to an RP Resource blog and see if they have any you can use with their permission. You can also just post a picture with some info. For me, the info on this promo matches that of my blog description - I want people to know what I’m all about as soon as they look at it. Then you can tag for your appropriate fandom RP. Your mutuals will likely reblog to help spread the word. Yay.

Find a directory for your RPC by searching in the search. This will allow you to a) reblog your info and be listen in a place where people can find you and b) allow you to find others in your RPC in an organized way. Then you can go through, find people you think you’d like to follow, and follow them. 

Make a starter or plotter call. This is, again, just a picture or graphic and some information about it. Here is one I made for Data specifically asking for Picard threads:

I asked for a specific universe and a specific character here. I also put all relative tags in case someone is just searching Tumblr (although I think it’s more for the people who follow me). Here’s a simpler one I made for B-4 that’s a lot more open. 

They don’t have to be super fancy. 

When people see a starter call, they can like your post. This is a quick an easy way to let you know they are interested in a thread. 

4. Ask Memes. Asks are invaluable. There are whole blogs dedicated to ask memes that you can post to your blog, and these can be really easy ways for people to come up with plot ideas or just to read some of your writing. I always keep a link on my blog to everything tagged ‘ask meme’ so if people want to find a meme they have choices!

It seems like there’s a certain aesthetic on these new fangled RP blogs. Do I have to do that?

No! But you can, if you want. If you aren’t good at coding and graphics, there are a lot of RP resource sites that can help you. (Can I recommend this one?) It is nice to have things like a face claim, a nice looking promo, a cool theme, etc. but at the end of the day, we all just want to write and have fun.

Advice?

Look, I’ve only been RPing on Tumblr for a couple of months and I am by NO MEANS an expert. I have gotten all of this knowledge through the help of friends and nice strangers willing to answer questions for me. Here are a few things I have picked up:

Respect people’s rules - We are all shy and all have our own thing going on. If someone says they’re uncomfortable doing one thing, just like...don’t do it.

Talk to other people - Don’t ignore the mun! Unless they really want you to. It’s better to ask questions, compliment writing, talk about your plots and stuff...it’s so much harder than trying to figure out what the other person feels/wants.

Ask questions - I’m a 6th grade teacher, and I get a million and fuckton questions every minute usually. It’s been eye-opening, because now I’m all about asking questions about everything all the time. I think knowledge is amazing. People know all different things, and the most logical way to be a productive society is to share knowledge (that’s one of the main teachings of Surak) so ask some questions! Hell, ask me some questions! Reach out to someone who seems nice!

Okay, that’s all. Good luck!

#RPG #RPC #RP Resource #RP Guide

[wedontcareaboutyourbinary]

comphet is a lesbian exclusive term. other sexualities can use coercive heterosexuality though. but no one except lesbians can use comphet, that term is very important in lesbian culture and other sexualities do not have the same relationship to it.i just wanted to let you know that it's not appropriate to use compulsory heterosexuality as a term if you're not a lesbian and it's also rude to associate that term with TERFs as saying that implies all lesbians are TERFs when that is not the case.

this is the same anon who just sent an ask on comphet) also i’d like to point out i’m not a lesbian (i’m a gay trans guy) so take what i said with a grain of salt. i don’t intend to talk over lesbians, i just wanted to make that known. also if you’re not a lesbian and youve felt pressured by heterosexual society to be het youre probably experiencing some form of internalized homo/pan/biphobia

“comphet is a lesbian exclusive term. other sexualities can use coercive heterosexuality though” in spite of your attempt to not talk over lesbians, I can assure you that, as was pointed out in the posts on this subject, coercive heterosexuality is literally just an alternative term to comp het to distance it from terf associations.

I got both the fact that “comp het” has terf origins and that “coercive hete” is the alternative to distance it from those origins from literal, actual lesbians like in this post, as well as the fact I have the ability to google. Adrienne Rich was the coiner of the term, and the fact that she was transmisogynistic has been pointed out multiple times.

I don’t think I or anyone else on this blog would ever say that it’s good to be wary of lesbians. All non-straight, non-cis identities, but lesbians especially, have a strong history of being painted as predatory, and therefore it’s entirely reasonable for someone to wonder if, when someone is wary of lesbians, if it might be motivated by lesbophobia. However, never once have I or any other mods claimed otherwise.

So, short version: Saying “compulsory heterosexuality” was coined by someone who was a TERF or at the very minimum found their ideology acceptable is historically accurate (and if you’re saying pointing out any TERF influence ever is lesbophobia, then consider you may possibly need to re-prioritize here), and coercive heterosexuality is literally an alternative to compulsory heterosexuality. Seriously. That’s the only way I’ve ever seen it be used. So if you’re saying “one term is used for lesbians, the other is for other people!” Your entire argument is kind of standing on a weak knee already.

In this post, what was being discussed was primarily the phenomenon grouped under coercive heterosexuality, and the fact that while these phenomenon are typically framed as being almost lesbian-exclusive, that someone can still experience the effects of heterosexism grouped under coercive het, and it be due to another orientation they experience; that extremely similar effects of coercive het manifest in people who aren’t straight but who also aren’t lesbians. I never outright advocated for other people to start using the term- I think heterosexism functions fine. 

But one is left to wonder that, if those phenomenon can be experienced by other people, why is it just the term itself that others aren’t allowed to use? From what I can find, “compulsory heterosexuality” has also been talked about in relation to gay men and other non-lesbian identities since at least 2003 in Academia, perhaps longer in casual contexts. I’ve also found actual lesbians speak on the topic, primarily about how coercive het affects bi women by googling and using tumblr’s tags function (one of the posts explicitly mentions bi women, the other is in the bi tag so i’m left to assume it’s meant to include bi women as well). So there’s that.

This was me explaining and interpreting another post another mod reblogged at request. That person does not have an about so I cannot check to see, but for now I’m going to operate under the assumption that if they were making a post on intersectionality and how the term “comp het” ignores it, that they are a part of groups that have a right to speak on that intersectionality.

(Of course, the lesbian community is not a monolith of thought. Not everyone is going to agree with every point on this post, but, it’s clear that from the sources cited here, and what I’ve been able to find, what the blog has stated aren’t some new fangled attempt to steal lesbian terminology, and rather the things discussed on here have been around for quite awhile, and have also been pointed out by lesbians, which is the group that primarily uses the term “comp het” or “coercive het”)

Sidenote: Please be aware that speaking authoritatively on a subject and then tossing in one “take this with a grain of salt” does not negate the fact that you’re still trying to speak authoritatively on the subject. Sources are always suggested when you send an ask like this (unless you are drawing off of personal experience with a term, experience, etc. to make your argument in a conversation where yours is relevant, because there are some conversations in which personal experience and perspective can be highly important).

-Mod Sully

#Anonymous