Wednesday Reading Meme March 19 2025
Mar. 19th, 2025 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishOff topic but anyone who uses tumblr - do you have a sense of the current etiquette around crediting someone who made a gif you want to use in a post? Is just doing '
username' on the post cool? (comment brought to you by a shockingly unpleasant interaction I had with someone on my literal first post in years - they were definitely an asshole but I want to check if they were correct and an asshole or just an asshole)
What I've Read
When the Dead Tree Flowers by Blackkat – https://archiveofourown.org/works/47341819
This is a Star Wars Clone Wars AU focused on minor EU character Granta Omega, who has the complicated power of being invisible in the Force. For this incredibly useful power, he’s kidnapped and held on Kamino and a batch of clones are made using his DNA. This fic takes place just as he escapes, realizes it’s the Domino squad, and goes to find them. Blackkat does great work on establishing just how damaged Granta was by his childhood as a tool of his father’s revenge, and builds a fascinating set of relationships between Granta and his clone children – family for a group of clones who never expected to have a parent who cared, found family for Granta adopting the clones who helped him in captivity, and there’s a hint of a romance with one clone…. The story is 170K and stops at a good place but clearly doesn’t actually finish the plot Blackkat has in mind.
You Wired Me Awake by
thefourthvine https://archiveofourown.org/works/63881242
Star Trek alternate original series movies AU – Jim Kirk is a werewolf at the end of his leash. (lol) He’s sentenced to The Academy, which puts supernatural creatures like him to good use, but only if they bow and scrape and never aim for anything ambitious in life. Spock is a vampire. This fic has them conspiring to handle things that human society would prefer they not touch, and it’s so so much fun. Imagine if Kirk and Spock had to conspire against evil Star Trek for the good of the world! TheFourthVine shifts all the tech to magic, but keeps it hard and complex and interesting. Part 1 of a series, this fic is complete but the series is not.
Fingers Crossed That I’m Something You’ll Keep by
thefourthvine https://archiveofourown.org/works/55775611
It (movies Muschietti) Alternate Universe – Everybody lives
I do not go to this fandom! I have neither read the book nor seen the movie, and yet, here I am, enjoying this strange traumatized man become a school admin and fall in love with a dickish traumatized parent. This might be canon compliant or not but it’s mostly extremely cute.
What I’m Reading
City of Lies by Sam Hawke – 38% - I am technically re-reading this but have no actual knowledge of the book’s plot. Did I finish this?
In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan – 40% ish
Male Order – Unwrapping Masculinity -edited b y Rowena Chapman
What I’ll Read Next
The Route of Ice and Salt (gay and dracula and boats)
Worn: A People’s History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser
Empire of Gold
Madness of Angels Kate Griffin
City of Lies
The Memory Librarian
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 09:03 am (UTC)I'm sorry someone was rude about it, though. One of my least favorite things about ths internet is the tendency to *not* give people the benefit of the doubt.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 11:27 am (UTC)(Sorry, it turns out the specifics make this a saga and I'm still kinda hurt about it.)
So, background on the way tumblrs gif embedder thing works is, that you can use it to natively include a specific gif from a specific tumblr post by url, ONLY if it is the exact first gif on the post. (It's much easier to find a random gif by keyword, which is what I have used it for in the past.)
IF you can do html coding there is a work around apparently for getting the tumblr tool to give you the exact gif you want from anywhere in a post. (I didn't know that, or how to use that feature, and I still don't actually think I can manage it since it requires some html work I can't do (yet).)
So, anyhoo, I saw a cool gifset from someone I don't know, talked about it with a friend, and I made a post! Which, I don't generally do - I mostly reblog. First original post a few years!
So I did what I *thought* was an okay compromise with the gif. I reposted the gif by downloading it and re-uploading it (not ideal) and I credited the original gif maker via an "'@' username". I thought that was okay - the creator gets credit, I get to use the exact gif that inspired my thought process.
Then someone I have never talked to showed up in the comments on my post. They were asking me to change it and included a whole tutorial about how to edit a post to give credit to the original gif creator using the native gif editor and html. And like, that's technically possible, if you know some html- the process was like 7+ steps. Which seems like asking a lot, when the "@"username option is right there?
Anyhoo, technical elements aside, while the post was up and I was at work, this commenter also got rude to an extremely nice friend of mine in the comments on this post. Since my friend is well known and famous for being incredibly welcoming and nice in this corner of fandom, and this stranger was being rude to them, I immediately blocked them for being an asshole.
(I eventually found out this commenter made a call out post about me??? Called me a thief! and posted screenshots of their comments where they edit out how they were rude to my friend! And directly messaged the gif maker (who was CREDITED on my original post), to tell them I'd stolen their gifs?? So I ended up deleting the whole post and re making it with a video clip from YouTube bc life is too short. Again, I never spoke to this person - they were on my post being an ass, so instant block.)
So, I am now in a state of confusion - this information about gif crediting via this multiple step process came to me from a real jerk!
But it might still be accurate information,just with jerk stank on it.
Fandom etiquette being a thing in flux, I figured I would ask here, where people are largely nice if you don't know how to do something.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 11:55 am (UTC)So, background on the way tumblrs gif embedder thing works is, that you can use it to natively include a specific gif from a specific tumblr post by url, ONLY if it is the exact first gif on the post. (It's much easier to find a random gif by keyword, which is what I have used it for in the past.)
I think my head actually spun reading that. What? It just seems easier not to use the .gif tool.
So I did what I *thought* was an okay compromise with the gif. I reposted the gif by downloading it and re-uploading it (not ideal) and I credited the original gif maker via an "'@' username". I thought that was okay - the creator gets credit, I get to use the exact gif that inspired my thought process.
Sounds reasonable.
Anyhoo, technical elements aside, while the post was up and I was at work, this commenter also got rude to an extremely nice friend of mine in the comments on this post. Since my friend is well known and famous for being incredibly welcoming and nice in this corner of fandom, and this stranger was being rude to them, I immediately blocked them for being an asshole.
I don't blame you at all.
As you know, I saw that post they made. Geez. Doesn't sound like they were as nice as they claim to have been.
But it might still be accurate information,just with jerk stank on it.
I have read similar things, but put much more nicely, so I think you're right. Here's the thing too - not everyone knows HTML. I really don't see what's wrong with crediting the way you did. Maybe we're both missing something.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 12:08 pm (UTC)And the comments jerk could immediately tell that I had used someone's gifs, because they literally went and found that person to tell them. The crediting system I used worked, bc they used it for evil. :D
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 12:26 pm (UTC)And the comments jerk could immediately tell that I had used someone's gifs, because they literally went and found that person to tell them. The crediting system I used worked, bc they used it for evil. :D
Ha. Yeah. Do they not see themselves?
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 02:10 pm (UTC)I didn't even know that. I usually just post text, embedded links and embedded YouTube videos. But the technique you used sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Also, don't forget that we (on Tumblr) are the queer, autistic website, so a few people might have extreme reactions to certain things for reasons that we don't know (maybe they were called out about it by somebody else and are continuing the calling-out cycle?). Try not to take it personally. *hugs*
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 03:45 pm (UTC)The technical element was new, tho, so I was just intrigued - and the conversation on DW tend to be more to my taste. I did learn a lot more about how gifs on tumblr work via this whole thing!
The jerk in question is a gif maker themselves - so I really do have sympathy, it's a really nice contribution to a fandom and people do forget to credit, but uh... less sympathy if the thing they're doing is publically shaming people who did give credit in a form they don't like.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 05:10 pm (UTC)I think the only thing I would've done differently from what you did is drop the original gif creator an ask and say you want to use x gif in a post, with credit, and would that be cool? most people I think would say yes, go ahead. what other people then get up in arms about is *their* problem and the block button is free to use.
I made a gif maybe once and posted to tumblr where it then automatically entered the built-in tumblr gif tool system, which means that maybe once a year I get a random notification that somebody used my gif in a post via that built-in gif tool system. every time I'm like ??? what??? (because I always forget that I made that one gif once upon a time and then get confused that somebody wants to use it.) makes me wonder if the people who uploaded popular gifs get a lot of notifications about it... but also if any gifs one uploads to tumblr enters the built-in tool system then there is just no policing who then uses them, you know? and that method comment-jerk describes with all the html steps - literally never heard of it.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 05:18 pm (UTC)ME TOO
I think the only thing I would've done differently from what you did is drop the original gif creator an ask and say you want to use x gif in a post, with credit, and would that be cool? most people I think would say yes, go ahead. what other people then get up in arms about is *their* problem and the block button is free to use.
This is so reasonable!
I made a gif maybe once and posted to tumblr where it then automatically entered the built-in tumblr gif tool system, which means that maybe once a year I get a random notification that somebody used my gif in a post via that built-in gif tool system. every time I'm like ??? what??? (because I always forget that I made that one gif once upon a time and then get confused that somebody wants to use it.) makes me wonder if the people who uploaded popular gifs get a lot of notifications about it... but also if any gifs one uploads to tumblr enters the built-in tool system then there is just no policing who then uses them, you know? and that method comment-jerk describes with all the html steps - literally never heard of it.
It appears (again, limited knowledge here) that this is precisely what they were aiming for - they wanted me to use the gif thru the tumblr attribution system so the original gif maker would get that notification. And I think I would, if I could figure out how to do it without quite as much HTML steps, but I didn't know it at the time.
And, well, back in the days of LJ, doing that (using a link to an image rather than downloading and hosting it yourself) would have been called 'hot linking' and was frowned on bc it would eat the hosting bandwidth for the original poster.... so it would have been a dick move not that long ago.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 12:10 pm (UTC)My first call out post, at my late age!
no subject
Date: 2025-03-20 12:17 pm (UTC)