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

- For fic reasons, I've been watching the first night of Knebworth 1996, and gosh, the footage is gorgeous. Incredible that they sat on it for almost thirty years. Here's an example:


- Speaking of Oasis, did you know the mangaka of Chainsaw Man also wrote a one-shot about two young female mangakas? And more importantly that the title Look Back is a direct reference to the Oasis song Don't Look Back in Anger? Yes.

- Have a silly video about the Oxford comma, among other punctuation. Really takes it up a notch in the second half.

- Trailer for Dune Part 3!! My perspective of the Villeneuve Dune movies is that the visual spectacle is incredible, but they're a little too self-serious and not weird enough. The books also take themselves very seriously, but make up for it via frequent batshittery. However, I'm definitely interested to see how Villenueve finishes things up, especially since he'd started going off the map by the end of part 2, and part 3 appears to all be taking place in the gap between the end of the first novel and beginning of the second. Here's hoping for lots of Jessica. 🙏🙏🙏

- They cast Jason Momoa's son as Paul and Chani's kid. Let the Paul/Duncan mpreg headcanons begin.

- You can now filter your AO3 bookmarks by wordcount!!

- IDK how it never occurred to me before that the bugging scene in The Matrix would spawn a whole new kink, but it absolutely did, and I stumbled across that corner of deviantart earlier this week. Bless.

- I'm not going to do a whole Oscars postmortem, but horror movies got EIGHT awards, which has got to be an all-time best, including two of the four acting awards. I'm especially happy for Michael B Jordan and Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw.

- Tough week for Buffy fans. I'm relieved that the reboot appears to be DOA; I was going to watch it, but I wasn't hopeful. Meanwhile, sucks about Nicholas Brendon. Losing him and Michelle Tractenberg a year apart, when they were both so young, is fucking rough.

1. Paying based on distance traveled rather than a flat fee per ride doesn’t encourage the perception of public transit as a social equalizer.

2. It’s still public transit.

3. A couple maps to orient on cardinal directions wouldn’t go amiss, though.

Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

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... )

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.

In DC, safe and well-fed on ramen, my friend and I waited for the bus to her place. I looked around in the full night of a city I’ve rarely been to, in a neighborhood I’d never visited, and couldn’t shake an odd feeling.

Then it hit me, and I had to say, “Holy shit.” I’d needed a specific spot for something in a novel, and it’d looked familiar because she’d taken me to a spot just around the corner.

It wasn’t quite deja vu. More likes dream where you know the building already, even though you’ve never been.

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.

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!

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; IIRC, it was silvercat17 who made the tutorial I used to get that set up, but I can't seem to locate it at the moment 😩 I'll edit this post to add in a link if that changes, though! In the mean time, you can check out Dreamwidth's official FAQ entries about how to get it set up 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.

warrington_runcorn_ntdp is a new fan-run community focused on the music of electronic project Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan.

Anyone is free to join, even those who have never listened before! Although if that is you, I'd recommend checking out the project's Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Youtube to get acquainted :D

Discussion on the community will include, but is not limited to, avourite songs/albums/album artwork, physical media, how you discovered the music, recommendations for similar music, etc.

The current rules are pretty standard: no harassment/discrimination against any other Dreamwidth users; no NSFW/explicit content unless it's directly connected to the community's theme; and please keep any posts/comments on topic as much as possible. Anything else can be decided on in the future.

I (oceangrey) am the current only moderator/admin, but if anyone else wants a similar role just message me or comment on the community's pinned post!

withnailandi is a community for everything related to Withnail & I (1987). Fanworks/recommendations, meta/discussions, whatever, all are welcome here! Another related community is withnailandinsfw, for any more explicit fanworks/discussions.

Although not entirely new (made in October 2025) both communities are unused as of yet, due to most of the fandom being on other platforms. Feel free to join whether you're a casual fan, or if it's your favourite film of all time, or if you're somewhere in between!

withnailandi is open for anyone to join, and withnailandinsfw is set to administrator-approved due to the community's content.

Time I would've spent writing this evening was spent on cooking risotto for lunch and filling out tax forms as best I could. I opened the document and poked at it a bit to feel something and say I'd at least poked at it, and that helped me relax from the taxes enough I can think about doing something else with the night. Not much, but something else.

It's probably just going to be a couple days' of Stardew Valley, though.

AO3 Link | Not Alone (300 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Justice League (Franchise)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: J'onn J'onnz & Dinah Lance
Characters: J'onn J'onzz, Dinah Lance
Additional Tags: +Modern Age (1986-Present), Post-Crisis, Triple Drabble
Summary:

After everything with the White Martians and his brother, Dinah is there

Not Alone

The next time J'onn woke, it was no longer Bruce with him, but Dinah. He closed his eyes once more, strangely loathe to have her be the one to see him this reduced.

He knew he would be just as bad with Arthur.

There was an unspoken bond between the three of them, the last of the five original that had faced the Appellaxian warriors, leading to the formation of the Justice League in its original incarnation. For one of them to be reduced nearly to destruction —

"You mean like when Arthur's entire world was brought down around his ears and we nearly lost him to grief-madness? Or when I got myself stupidly caught and died at least twice on the hospital table?"

He had to open his eyes, chagrin among his emotions as he realized the telepathic connection had not been shielded at all. She moved from the chair and got up in the recovery bed with him, careful of the tech monitoring his status.

"You were upset that neither of us reached out, that we locked you out of being able to help us then. And we got the point. We three, we have each other, among the many we've brought in since then.

"Let me in, and Arthur as soon as he gets free, so we can help you recover."

J'onn didn't trust his mind or his voice to express any of what he was feeling, but she reacted, bringing a hand up along one angular cheek as she settled her head on his shoulder.

"You're not broken. You had to make a very harsh, hateful call against a man you shared a genetic pattern with. And you did so at great cost to yourself.

"But you will heal. And we are with you the whole way."