#ANYWAY I keep seeing the little banner at the top of the tumblr dashboard with the advertisment that says icymi in it
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11. Polishing your Post
Publishing your story can be scary because once it’s out in the world, it’s literally out of your hands.
Like editing, preparing your publication can be a little tedious. I assume you want to post your fic to tumblr, so keep in mind that, although you can always edit your post, reblogs from other people can’t be changed later on. So if you have, say, a typo, you can only change it in your original post. You put so much work into your fic, so it’s only natural that you want lots of people to read it. You already made your draft look nice and proper, but you’ll want to do the same for your tumblr post. Here’s a quick rundown of how to make your post more appealing:
First things first: Open a new text post. You should be able to just copy and paste your draft from your writing program; tumblr will usually adopt your draft’s formatting (at least when you copy and paste from Google Docs on your computer!).
Save the post as a draft. As I said before, I suggest you re-read your story again at this point—you’ll be able to see what the post is going to look like once you post it, and you’ll probably find some typos you missed in the editing process. It’s also easier to draft it because you’ll go back and forth fixing and updating your post anyway.
Tag your post properly. You want your post to reach the right people. I’ll go into more detail about tagging here.
Find a good title for your fic. Titles are the first thing a potential reader will see when they stumble upon your fic, so choose them wisely. A good title can be whatever you deem fit, it’s really coming down to personal taste. I recommend going for something that captures the essence of your draft, but using lyrics, titles of songs or poems etc. is always a safe bet.
Place necessary warnings for your story at the top of your post. The same goes for a short description/excerpt of your story. If you cross-post your work to e.g. ao3, you can embed a link, too. If you have a beta reader, make sure to give them a shout-out, too!
Make your post look nice. Maybe add a banner/GIF/divider/etc.. If you haven’t made them yourself, make sure their creators are fine with you using their work before you publish your post and give credits!
Tumblr has a “keep reading” tool—use that either right after your header or after the first couple of sentences of your story. It just looks nicer to have a compact version on your dashboard.
Generally, you want to give your readers a quick overview of what’s to expect in your fic.
Example (forgive the bad handwriting):
Now that you’ve done all that, and you’re happy with your draft and your post…well, it’s time to hit post—and voilá! You’ve just shared your very own fanfic with the world. Good job, I’m so proud of you! ♡
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controversial opinion time I guess but
hey gang? hey, gang. gang, hey. blaming your fans for them not reblogging your content enough (and saying that they’re Directly Responsible For Tumblr Dying) is an extremely passive aggressive, mean thing to do, and also completely ignores so many other reasons as to why engagement has changed on this site and posts don't circulate like they used to.
for one thing, whenever I see these posts, I rarely see the ops acknowledge the HUGE HIT to tumblr's userbase following the 2018 policy change/implementation of tumblr's terrible content filtering algorithm. tumblr lost roughly 1/3 of its engagement (https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-lost-a-third-of-its-users-after-porn-ban/) and countless content creators with it. some of them migrated to twitter and other sites, some of them seem to have straight-up vanished into thin air, and countless others lost their biggest or main userbase with barely any time to shift gears to something else. that's a huge, website-shaking change! but so often in these 'reblogs vs. likes' posts I don't see anyone acknowledging that and it makes me really upset!
you can't talk about the ways tumblr has undoubtedly changed these last few years and NOT address the nsfw ban! it's completely unfair to your fanbases to shift the blame of the biggest displacement of users the site has ever experienced on...the users who had no say in the policy change and reacted accordingly when the site started softbanning everyone, and filtering all sorts of tags from the search function (including important sfw ones, lest we forget The Entire Furry Fandom on tumblr discovering that basic-ass tags like #furry and #anthro were being blocked when the ban rolled around), and making uploading anything vaguely beige-colored a dice roll. tumblr still hasn't recovered from that, and unfortunately probably never will, not without some hail mary of policy changes and overhauls.
I've seen some pretty ageist shit regarding content engagement as well that tries to paint younger users as just Not Getting how tumblr functions vs. other social media sites like instagram and twitter, and on top of that just showcasing a really uncomfortable disconnect/animosity towards new users whose only crime is being younger than op and also more experienced with other social media platforms, it also is just. it's really unkind? it's super rude? how can you call your followers too clueless to know how reblogging works and then expect them to support your content via reblogging and not feel like you're insulting them until they give you the result you want?
moreover, lots of young/new tumblr users get the gist of tumblr's controls and get it very quickly! technology literacy is becoming more and more a part of everyday life for everyone, and if you really think that a teenager can't understand that reblogging puts a thing on their follower's dashboards, one of the main functionalities of the site (and also very similar to twitter, one of tumblr's main competitors), I really don't know what to say. sometimes people just straight-up don't want to reblog stuff to their blogs, and that's okay.
there's also a tendency to ignore the ways that blogging on tumblr has changed as its userbase has became more well-versed in its functions and, frankly, a portion of the userbase has grown up on this site. when I first started blogging on here, I was 17, I didn't use tags, I commented unrelated (and frankly sometimes really regrettably rude) replies directly onto artist's posts, and I basically just reblogged whatever I vaguely liked, and a lot of things I didn't totally get but thought Looked Cool/Funny so I reblogged anyways.
and that's fine, that's pretty par for the course of being young on the internet and doing whatever you want and having a good time (barring the rudeness, being respectful to people is the ideal), but as time went on my interests changed, my time spent online changed (I went from highschool to college to a full-time job that limits my time on social media), and I began engaging with tumblr's content differently. I made sideblogs for interests and content themes I didn't want on my main blog, I started liking stuff and then going back through my likes to reblog posts later, and generally speaking my number of posts a day dropped and I stopped being able to catch up on my dashboard every single day. and I'm sure my experience isn't unique for some other people on here.
a lot of the tumblr users I've known for a while just don't have the same level of intensity in fandoms like we did years back, not because of any malice or selfish, content-hogging intent, but because our priorities have changed. I definitely miss a lot of things about years past on tumblr when fandoms were booming and new Big Name Creators were cropping up all the time, and to be fair that's still happening on parts of the site if you know where to look! it's just different now. time has passed. people have changed!
that isn't to be defeatist and say that we can't show up for content we enjoy and reblog it, but instead that people can feel differently about stuff they used to adore, and be more particular about one thing or another they reblog, and straight-up miss stuff that they would have really liked but just didn't catch up on for a myriad of reasons. and that's also okay. engagement on tumblr is really, really tied up in personal preferences, and sometimes it feels like it does that more than most other social media sites. this is kind of the wild west of internet presences and everyone operates differently on here as a result.
and probably the most touchy point of all: no one is obligated to give you validation on the internet. no one. not even if they've read all of your fanfics you've worked really fucking hard on for forever and a day, or your comics that you've spent months, years, a lifetime researching and creating, or your beautifully, painstakingly timed and masked fan videos. they can absolutely consume any of these, and more, and they're still not obligated to reblog your work or promote you. it's not fair, yes, and it's completely understandable and super relatable to want recognition for the work you've done and the ways you've brightened other people's lives, but online most of your fans are still total strangers to you, and trying to control the behavior of total strangers because you’re owed their acknowledgement isn’t a healthy mindset to have.
and you can say that any fan of yours stops being a fan after they drop you for you lashing out at them for not unquestioningly giving you space on their blogs like you're owed, but being upset at being accused of bad behavior for what amounts to not wanting to reblog something this time around and changing your opinions based off of that is also a very understandable thing to do.
and that isn't because of any sort of innate cruelty, or pointed attack towards you. it's just because there is always a disconnect between the creator and the creation, and some people will never bridge that gap and engage with you more, or build a parasocial relationship with you, or seek out ways to support you. and plenty of others will do the exact opposite! it's a total dice roll because you're dealing with a lot more people than you realize scrolling past your content, and every person is different, and some of them don't fully understand how reblogs help a creator, and some of them do but just don't want that content on their feed, and none of them are inherently bad people for that.
I'm not saying creators have to be perfectly kind and civil and praise their fans all the time, but when you engage with your followers like it's a battle where you have to keep devising new ways to get them to share your content, it just comes across as super disingenuous, and people cop to that very fast.
it also, frankly, can make longtime fans who reblog your work regularly feel like their interest doesn't matter, and wasn't good enough, and that then it really is their fault that other people (other STRANGERS ON THE INTERNET) don't engage with your content the way you wanted them to. you don't owe them perfection, but that doesn't mean it isn't still an unkind thing to do.
so like. what can we do about this?
asking users to reblog your work is totally fine and can help! calls to action work more than nothing at all. it's possible to be respectful when asking people to reblog your work without also guilt-tripping them with "likes < reblogs" banners and passive aggressive tags/comments. generally speaking guilt is a really shitty motivational tool, and tends to breed more resentment than actual outcomes people want. like this post for example! I wouldn't have sat down and typed this all out if I didn't resent the hell out of being told I'm, personally, the reason tumblr is demonstrably not an ideal website for building a fanbase anymore. if I had that much power over this website I would have given the whole thing to the xkit team years ago and reveled in a functional website instead.
changing the way you post content might help! every site has its ideal posting days, times, and reasons for why some are ideal for one site and not another. doing a little research (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/) will yield some potentially helpful tips and tricks that might result in a post reaching more people. utilizing tumblr's search function is also important, and understanding the limits of the tag function (ie. only the first 5 tags of a post are used for tag searches) can help change one's habits to something a little more effective. this is why I tend to leave my tag babbling until after the main fandom/category tags on my posts, so that tumblr's jankass search has a better shot, haha
broadening your online presence can definitely help! this is by far the most terrifying option since it involves branching out onto other social media platforms, some of which really don't lend themselves to whatever fandom/content one produces, so like the other two above it's only a suggestion.
I keep coming back to twitter and instagram, but that's mainly because they're the two other powerhouses of social media right now, though admittedly they only really cater towards visual media (and mainly imagery, not longer video pieces), and they have their own weird quirks to learn and jank to deal with. but given how precarious tumblr's status has become in some ways, trying to build a presence on multiple sites means that you reach more people across the internet, and also means that if tumblr does yet another website-shattering policy change, your eggs aren't all in one basket.
of course these options aren't foolproof, and won't work for everyone in some cases or not at all for others, but my main point in all this is this: tumblr has irrevocably changed, its userbase has changed, and we are limited in the ways we can directly influence it, but there are still options. I'm by far not a social media expert, but then again none of the posts I've seen so far were made by social media experts either, so I honestly don't feel too bad for throwing my hat into the ring while we're all thrashing about in confusion
y'all aren't wrong that things have changed, but I'm begging you to have some compassion and to try not to turn the relationship between creators and consumers of content into a battleground, especially when a lot of the influences on these changes are things entirely outside of any of our's direct control.
also because it makes y'all sound exactly like this:
#long post#site engagement#a big long pissy rant because I am so goddamned tired y'all#especially because I can't escape these Hot Takes because none of them are tagged consistently#and new ones keep cropping up all the time#it's like whack-a-mole#every post I block sprouts another a few months later#tone doesn't carry through the internet very well but rest assured when I see shit like this#paired with people's screenshots of their like/reblog ratios#and it turning into a 'u think those notes are small check this out' party I get#really goddamned fed up with it#this is of course not comprehensive and mainly just me whingeing @ the whingeing but sometimes u just gotta
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Wander
Summary: An unusual Companion provides hope for the next life Notes: I started playing Journey this month and absolutely fell in love with the game. I was inspired to write this piece after viewing a post by @xxkaibutsukoxx on Tumblr, which I will link to here and at the end of the fic. The two characters are inserts of my partner and me. I hope you enjoy the fic! Link to the post: https://xxkaibutsukoxx.tumblr.com/post/148790807072/video-here-if-you-want-to-watch-with-music I’ve placed the actual fic under the cut so I won’t clog up anyone’s dashboard:
I had walked these paths dozens of times before with various companions. Most were friendly and wanted to play and interact. Others disappeared partway through our Journey. A few taught me where to find treasures and secrets. They helped me discover all the glyphs and teach those that came after them. Discovering all the glyphs led me to earn the white robes, the Guide robes. Robes I wear with great honor and pride; for helping others brings me joy and great satisfaction.
For all my previous companions, this one stuck out to me. They switched between being completely silent despite my inquiries; to singing nonstop for minutes at a time. As we progressed along our way, they started to talk more. They didn’t seem to mind when I showed them something they may not have known about. I grew proud as their scarf got longer with each new symbol. They always gave a small thanks when I showed them our history. Taking a seemingly keen interest in the scenes revealed.
Their markings were those of someone’s first rebirth or second journey. I made sure to show them some of my favorite spots. As well as the best places to have a bit of fun. It felt even more special to share it with them. Almost like I was seeing them for the first time once again. The most memorable was also the first time I got a genuinely different response from them. It was at the end of the Memory Passage before the last slide.
We sat there side by side in the amber glow for several minutes. I was half afraid they had left, disappearing into the sand like others before. However, much to my delight, when I stood to continue our journey, they stood with me. They flew into the air giving off several full melodious notes. When they landed next to me again, I gave a beep and a twirl. I bounced once into the air and towards the slopes.
Together we jumped off the cliff, back down the slope. We slid down the slope in unison as the light faded, and the sand dimmed. Flying off the edge together, I gave off a single burst of song, knowing we both knew what was coming next. Their returning call was the last thing I saw before we plunged underground.
As a Guide, I made sure to steer them away from the Guardians. I knew not how their previous passing faired, but I knew this time they’d be safer. I was also determined to have fun with them. We flew around blue-lit tunnels as much as their scarf would allow and danced amongst the jellyfish. They drug me into a game of hide-and-seek as they weaved among the seaweed. We sang joyously as we played and found each other.
Once we reached where the first Guardian awoke, I fell back into my position. The harder I tried to be the sensible Guide, the more they tried to drag me back out of it. Whether it was flying dangerously close to a Guardian, causing me to let out a series of rapid notes and urge them away. Suddenly backtracking and disappearing from view, making me urgently look for them. Or even flying through arches from the ancient structures. Those made me the fondest as I would discover them sitting up there patiently. I could detect the smug tone to their chirp upon standing from meditation.
We made it to the Sanctuary with our scarves intact; my heart was pounding, unlike even my first trip past. We ascended the tower gleefully as I continued to show them secrets. There was something about the yellow weightlessness that really made them brighten. I showed them the secret history scene, and they played amongst the banners. I couldn’t help but watch them glide between the pillars with ease. They took a great interest in the giant cloth creature, riding them around twice before departing. The extraordinary creature hidden at the bottom held their attention for several minutes as they investigated it.
Standing before the snow, this time around was new. I wasn’t curious like I was my first journey. Nor was I apathetic like so many times before. I wasn’t even apprehension about the impending trials. Looking beside me at my companion, I was filled with excitement for the trek ahead. I was looking forward to seeing what they would do as we tried not to freeze. I wondered what game they would drag me into, what dance they would do. I was eager to see how they reacted to what was beyond the snow.
As we journeyed forward, I hadn’t known to anticipate just how strong my reactions would be. The Fire Pit was comforting and welcoming. We sat there for a long moment enjoying the warmth and each other’s company. The Windy Path made me far more nervous than they ever had before. I felt my heart stop when my companion was blown off the bridge, not restarting until I had dropped after them to see they were well. They had chirped reassuringly and circled around me to show they were well.
Moving through the Guardians’ area was harrowing. Even though we bypassed a large chunk to reach a far off history scene. Reemerging back onto the path, a Guardian spotted us. As a Guide, I jumped in front of it to shield my companion. Said companion didn’t say anything until we were back in safety. They then proceeded to berate me and show how scared they were by reenacting what happened. I let them speak, but I was firm in my opinion that it was my job to protect and guide them.
I knew they weren’t happy, but we continued on anyway. Occasionally my companion would pause to gripe at me. Soon enough, we reached the frozen seaweed. It seemed like they were either too cold to play this time or were still too upset to play. Either way, they didn’t speak again until we were in the next canyon. They circled me twice before slipping into a meditative pose. Confused but willing to comply, I sat with them. We were close enough that our symbols glowed upon our chests, and their scarf didn’t lose power despite the chill.
Eventually, they got back up, and we continued upon our merry way. It was then that I realized exactly where we were and what was ahead. My heart sank, and I slowed down to put off what was coming. They noticed I wasn’t keeping up and slowed down to match my pace. Our symbols glowing and our closeness providing little warmth. They asked me what was wrong with a single chirp, but by that point, we had reached the Wasteland.
I stopped in my tracks and stared at what was to come next. As they had been nearly this entire time, my companion stood next to me. They chirped lowly once. Twice. Three times before, I beeped back. They gave me one last big note before plunging past the gates. I was quick to follow, unwilling to let them go alone. Reluctant to let them out of my sight.
We sang back and forth to each other, none stop. We sang as the wind blew us sideways. We sang as the wind blew us backward. We sang as the wind blew our scarves away, our magic. We sang as it got harder to move. We sang as it got harder to breathe. We sang as our notes got lost in the gale. We sang even as we couldn’t hear each other anymore. We sang until we couldn’t.
We fell. Together. Side by side.
As the Ancestors came and spoke to me, rejuvenated me. All that was on my mind was seeing my companion again. Wondering if they were okay. If the Ancestors had already revived them. I was filled as much by the Ancestor’s magic as I was by the determination to see them again as I flew off. The Guardians did not frighten me, nor did I try to avoid them as I had in the past. I had one goal and one goal only. I was going to reach that ball of power, and I was going to see my companion again.
White filled my vision as I reach the ball of power. Once the light cleared and I could move again, I sang as loudly as I could. I held my breath as I waited for a reply. I was scared that by some fluke, the Ancestor’s hadn’t revived my companion. Or that perhaps they had faded away once they had reached the ball of power. My head filled with wilder what-ifs as time wore on with no reply.
In the end, my companion never replied to that call. Instead, they took a flying charge at me, knocking me said ways. The pure joy I felt at that moment is still indescribable to this day. I sang out my delight before circling around them excitedly. We danced around each other, before shooting forward in unison. I knew they were going to love this place!
We sang and twirled around each other as we reached ever higher. There were a couple of times they would dart off in a specific direction, and I would go chasing after them. We’d always pause at the arches if we’d lost the other for a moment. Though we were quick to continue our play afterward. For the first time, someone actually joined me on the giant clothe creature. Together we rode it nearly all the way to top.
When we reached the top, we took a minute to meditate together. Before us stood the end of our journey, yet neither of us wanted to go. My companion stood up and began running around the sand. It seemed like they were precise with their movements. Curious, I stood up to see what they were doing. They continued for a beat before sitting down like they had finished. I discovered that they had drawn a picture of a lotus flower.
Inspired by their drawing, I tried my hand at it as well. I moved to the other side of the clearing and began my work. It was a bit difficult for me to visualize how to draw a rose, but I think I got my message across. My companion seemed to approve as they sang and spun around me. That just led to me revolving around them, and we both got dizzy.
For some reason, seeing our drawings next to each other eased my reluctance. I knew they wouldn’t be there the next time I passed through. The next time didn’t seem to matter then as they were there then. I would have the memory of our flowers, the memory of them, each time I reached this clearing.
With that thought in my heart, we walked towards the light in unison. We walked into the light together.
Unknown to me at the time, two lights shot from the mountain that day. Other Travellers watched as the twin lights danced together. Twirling their way back from whence they came, back to the beginning. At the last moment, one whisked away from the other.
All I know is that when I awoke for my next life it was with a new symbol. There was a black lotus flower on the back of my head. A sign of my profound connection to my companion. A bold reminder of our time together and a bold hope for our next meeting.
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