#Tumblr is a way better platform to talk about this stuff than twitter so I hope I appear approachable about this kind of thing

[deepseawave]

obsessed w the tags on ur last reblog

Omgg, thank you haha, it was a quality post so I just had to appreciate it in full force 😂❤️

Can‘t believe someone would actually enjoy my yapping :,D

[alltimefail]

ATTENTION DEAD BOYS FANDOM:

We have some unfinished business and a case to solve: The Case of the Curious Cancellation! 💀🔎

Here are the ways you can help (be sure to read until the end).

I'm not sure how many people here on Tumblr are also over on DBDA Twitter, but there have been MANY developments in the last 24 hours and it's important for all of us to be on the same page if we're going to have a chance in hell of saving our show.

First and foremost, we need to get Dead Boy Detectives in the Netflix Top 10 again. This means running it as much as possible. Read about that below:

(SOURCE x)

As the graphic says, the goal is to have it running on a loop constantly, as much as you physically can. Be sure to have some level of volume on or else it won't count. If you're on Twitter be sure to post your rewatch (photos of your tv, commentary, etc.) with the hashtag #ReviveDeadBoyDetectives !!!

Also, there's no better time to do this: the Tweet below brings up a great point! 👍

(SOURCE x)

Second, and easiest thing: KEEP TALKING ABOUT THE SHOW AND CREATING CONTENT ABOUT THE SHOW. Analysis, fics, fanart, shitposts, gif sets, memes, tik tok videos, so on - do not stop! Reblog other people's stuff and talk about it! Give fics kudos, comment, make fic rec lists and post that WIP or sketch! The most important thing to remember is to TAG YOUR POSTS AND CREATIONS. We need to trend!!! On Tumblr make sure you continue tagging your posts as you probably already are (look at my tags on this post if you need help, and remember not to use "DBD" on here because that is another fandom! We use DBDA here). On Twitter you want to use the hashtag #ReviveDeadBoyDetectives for the rewatch and #SaveDeadBoyDetectives is a popular one, too. You can also use #DeadBoyDetectives. Hell, I usually use all three if I can! Hashtag every post you make about Dead Boys, no matter how annoying or "cringe" you may feel. Flood the fucking tag and do not stop.

Third, everyone needs to sign and keep circulating the petition. We've surpassed 5,000 signatures in a day which is fantastic, but we need more. Get everyone you know to sign it; tell them it takes no more than 15 seconds. Be annoying until they do it just to shut you up.

Fourth, request "Dead Boy Detectives Season 2" through Netflix's support website. It's a small thing but if we all do this a couple times a day it will get their attention. They really do vet these suggestions, and an influx of requests for a canceled show will raise eyebrows.

Lastly, if you decide to write Netflix (via email or a letter - their office address has been floating around) please remember to stay concise and professional. Don't curse at them, don't call names. State that you are disappointed with the cancellation of the show, maybe add an anecdote about what it meant to you, and I would even recommend attaching some articles that emphasize people's displeasure with the platform abandoning shows on a whim and Netflix's flippant attitude toward queer shows in particular. Dead Boy Detective Agency on Twitter has retweeted every article on this topic so far, you can find their page here.

You can also use graphics such as the ones below to affirm that the cancellation was unjust.

(Source 1, Source 2)

I know this feels like a lot: know your limits and take care of yourself. Whether you do every single one of these things or just a few of these things, every llittle bit helps!

Even in the worst case scenario where nothing changes, this gesture will mean so much to everyone who made this show. We owe it to the writers, cast, crew, and each other to TRY. We can all agree that this show deserves at least another season and if Netflix isn't going to do it, they need to be open to selling it to someone who will. We cannot keep allowing them to axe these queer and diverse shows with little regard for their customers and their employees, but also because it sets a harmful standard in the industry that is destroying television.

Let's crack this case and bring our agency back! I truly believe in this community!! 💜 We can do this!!

If there are any spelling errors or issues with links let me know! I did this on mobile because I want to mobilize this information as quickly as possible! I'll be adding on to this with new developments and can answer any questions you all might have. Lets save our show!

[cloudmancy]

which is worse: d20 tumblr or d20 twitter?

this is such a funny question. frankly I prefer talking with my existing friends over discord over either of them but here's a breakdown of my experience with them

d20 tumblr

feels like a more isolating experience because of the way tumblr is set up in general as a platform. I follow relatively few people here, so all my interactions are from people engaging with my art (love you mwah) or asking me questions. nearly every time I go into a d20 related tag I regret it

I think frankly I disagree with 90% of the opinions on d20 here but because I don't have to see it I can just post my art and go

feels relatively static like there's not a good way to get everyone talking about a specific transformative fandom thing instead of only what's happening in canon because it's a looser more disconnected community

allows for longer posts and the search system on my own blog is great though. I love directing people to go through my tags or archived art

d20 twitter

incredibly, astonishingly, bad at recognizing jokes for people who are fans of a comedy show

way easier to interact with people which means most of the friends I make are from d20twt...

very easy to get everyone talking about one specific thing (ie fhsonas) because of how interactive Twitter is as a platform and how quickly word spreads

downside of this^ is that every time I express an opinion someone disagrees with they tend to assume that this is a majority opinion rather than like, 3-4 popular gay asian artists speaking their mind? when I complained about fhjy 18 battle on here I got interesting and thoughtful reblogs and everyone kept it respectful meanwhile on twitter people started making vaguetweets about how people who hated the episode were morons. stuff like us joking that oisin's grandma's whole mahjong group got murked getting 200 likes VS people directly shitting on us getting 1.7k likes and people going "wait... people are mad about oisins grandma for REAL?! she was going to kill people !!" getting 2k likes. clearly there is some sort of strange authority people put on your words whether or not you're actually just trying to have fun with your friends

I did talk about this more on twitter but I am not a fan of the CRitterfication of d20twt either. feels like much of the fandom is now watching because they're megafans of the cast rather than for the story which leads to some really big toxic positivity bias and the implication that criticism of the show == direct attack on the crew and therefore on THEM because parasocial attachment. I don't think it helps that for a majority of them d20 is their first big fandom experience aside from like... kpop or tswift because they have not developed a lot of the detachment from canon + not being parasocial + ignoring opinions you don't like if they're not directly addressed at you mechanisms that people who've been around have. sorry I'm not trying to fandom elder or whatever here I'm 21 years old but I think it's incredibly hard for me to interact with people whose entire understanding of canon depend on siobhan thompson's opinions like this

tldr;

d20twt has way less reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. better for making friends. I interact almost entirely with 30-40 of my artist friends. (my) d20tumblr experience is more chill and feels like I'm doing a seminar and people come up to ask me questions afterward. more isolating but easier to do my own thing. I do recognize and am fond of a lot of you but I've made one (1) entire friend who I can talk to off platform and not just see on the dash/my notes and that's just the nature of how tumblr works as a platform (it's terrible for conversations)

[ungrateful-cyborg-moved]

Social media comparison

Alright. I've tried different new/alternative platforms lately in hope to find something I really liked, and there are very promising ones. I didn't try everything, of course, but this is a kind of overview of my journey so far? Or just my thoughts on the matter.

I've tried Pillowfort, Bluesky, Mastodon (didn't last long enough to have much of an opinion, it simply didn't click), Dreamwidth and Cohost (as of today, can't post there yet).

My comparison under the cut:

► I appreciate that they're algorithm free, whether it's because they truly believe in an Internet rid of the most invasive of them or because it's too expensive to implement on a brand new platform or some other reason. Only the future can tell, but for now it's nice.

► Pillowfort: beside the post formatting that I find extremely comfortable, my favourite thing is probably communities. I feel like this is the strongest "pro" in favor of Pillowfort because this is where they truly distinguish themselves from other social media.

Communities, in a way, remind me of forums. They're however easier to take in hand since you don't have to deal with as many options and choices. In my opinion, communities on Pillowfort are a bit lacking in functionalities though. I think more tools to easily organize them would help, like a widget or something to link stuff so you can create and animate events within said communities.

(I also feel like Pillowfort would gain from not being dark blue. We have more than enough dark blue websites, and it doesn't go well with the warmth invoked by its name in my opinion, but that's a minor detail and just a matter of taste.)

► Bluesky: basically Twitter but better. No algorithm, for a start. The curated feeds are nice. They're a bit like communities on Pillowfort since they can be moderated but from a non-mod user, it's even easier to post in them: you just have to use the right keyword for your post to appear there. Well, if the mod left it open to all rather than chose to vet who can or cannot post in it. Lots of flexibility and control over your timeline overall.

I don't like the 300 characters limit, however. Never liked it with Twitter either. It's not really conductive to conversations, and the general design tends to make the website feel rather impersonal. It's really more like parallel talking than community building.

Overall I think it's a good tool to promote your (visual) art or website, etc. but not great for hosting conversations past commenting briefly what others are doing. I mean, you can make threads but it'll never be as good as Pillowfort or Tumblr for this.

► Dreamwidth: I'll start with saying that Dreamwidth isn't a social media, it's a journaling platform and I haven't used it much yet. Had in plan to post my headcanons about my muses there and stuff like that so I did spend some time trying to figure out how it works.

First, there is a lot of options to let you have complete control over who can see what. Like, a lot.

You can entirely personalize what your journal will look like. It's a bit easier than having your own website—since I reblogged a post about that yesterday—because you don't start from 0, so it might be a good option if you don't feel comfortable jumping into Notepad++ to start coding. You can just change a thing here and there, or nothing at all, or almost everything. It's pretty old school though, so for those completely unfamiliar with early/pre-web 2.0, it might not look very appealing at first. However, I'd say don't let that stop you! If anything, it's a good opportunity to learn a bit of code without pressure.

You can also create communities, which as you might have guessed is very important to me. When creating one, you can set up whether everyone can join, everyone can ask to join but has to be approved by a community admin or to limit the access to those you have personally invited. Like for your own journal, communities are completely customizable, and Dreamwidth allows adult content.

I'm not sure you can top DW communities in terms of functionalities—aside from making a forum—but it's not as intuitive as Pillowfort (though in exchange you get more customization). You're also more limited regarding image hosting (see here). That said, hosting services exist, many are free, and that's without mentioning that you can post on Twitter and the like and use the picture link in your DW posts. I don't think many will only use Dreamwidth anyway.

► Cohost: I was expecting nothing when I registered earlier today, but this is an overall good surprise: it's Tumblr, but better.

More control of what you see. More user-friendly UI. It's not fucking blue. Adult content allowed. You can change your main blog page and make it private.

The only two downsides I'd mention here would be that you can't customize your blog page appearance and you have to wait for one or two days before being able to post. Although if it means less bots, I'd rather wait.

And this ends my rather non-exhaustive tour of the social media/blogging/journaling platforms. If you catch any mistakes let me know. I didn't dive deep, this was just me sharing my thoughts.

(As far as I know, they all allow adult content and give you tools to not see it if you don't want to.)

[amphibizzy]

bluesky functions among a lot of false positives in all aspects of both moderation and curation. a net is cast, there is bycatch, and those get appealed/manually reviewed. a curation or moderation list should only cover an amount of users their own staff can handle basic vetting and appeals of, and thats generally the case for trusted ones. lower stakes things happen in curation, like say a feed that pulls posts mentioning "hylics" and tagged hylics, accidentally netting posts about Gnosticism and not the funny rpg game. manual removals/exclusions or inverted keywords is the work that must go into it

there are several current attack vectors, for example actively turning stuff like follow4follow trains into honeypots (where the followed account is then rebranded and its followers shamed or put on a list alongside it, worse people nuke-block everyone who follows it) and "mistakes" in untrusted, malicious labels/lists. this is a likely, malicious-user-driven reason why a large pattern of people could be roped into a fast moderation decision which is cleaned up in post there are users who make the platform more functional and there are ppl who make it worse. both have nearly the same tools, which are decently powerful but can be slow to update or have short outages

i wrote too many thought tags and then had even more thoughts so im gonna readmore here. i just wanna be productive in the decision if whether or not u wanna deal with joining and curating bluesky and its all interesting to me. yap yap

example: possible that the child safety bans picked up some people who were maliciously added to certain lists that then get targeted for reports

that but also *POTENTIALLY* some could be the maga ppl making fake trans etc accounts- deliberately infiltrating and trolling and being put on horrible subject lists willingly. there are also certain Harassment Websites who are currently targeting users in mostly alternate ways. it could also straight up just be people finding a list of a kind of person and mass reporting everyone on it

that is happening- just not sure if its part of it. the point is that there is a lot of bad actors

i have LIGHTLY looked into it and am not stating fact, but because of this context i think its is extremely reasonable that the ppl caught up in the bans are mistakes via user-driven malicious action, especially with the appeals that have gone through so far. theres so many things that are just kinda frontline messes that could be taken out of context. I DO NOT DOUBT THAT I COULD BE WRONG so dont be annoying @ me if i am. theres still info i wanna talk about in here but the whole platform is more complicated than the moderation ppl here are used to which ranges from fuck all to some awful shit. even here, a specific recent shitty tumblr ban wave had an extra shit layer of false positives, and i personally saw successful appeals of those.

on top of all of this, bluesky was gaining a million users a day for a bit there (and im shocked its functioning as okay as it is), theres no way any of this is gonna be perfect for awhile, and its going to look bad. but i think its worth continuing to curate if you dont have a need for a platform like bluesky, then no pressure to go there. i do personally consider tumblr and bluesky to be the two peaks rn. insta maybe a lesser if ur already established (but eugh, lol) bluesky is similar to twitter in structure but with easier curation (fully understanding the difference between each type took me a hot minute lol), plus a user driven effort to vibe reset from twitter by pulling away/cutting off combative interactions, muting and blocking instead of butting heads, more and noticeably less hostile interactions everywhere i look.

and imo feeds to organize your own posts is huge, not as easy to pass through like tumblrs archive but far better than nothing. ill b making a few categories of my art into feeds

just hesitate a bit before getting scared away from another basket to put your eggs bcs of some secondhand info. look into it because it could be interesting. bluesky doesnt cut off logged out users (another plus) so you might be able to look into things directly

update from me 10 mins later: i went to take my own advice lol and i found a relevant official statement from one hour ago

[voxofthevoid]

Hello! We haven't really interacted before but I reviewed a Bleach fanfiction of yours a while ago, and I've loved your stories for the fandom! I'm sad that you no longer write for Bleach, but you've shared some amazing work, so thank you for that.

Just wanted to ask if you have any tips on how to connect more with other readers and writers, as it seems your conversations with other people in your fandoms bring a lot of joy and inspiration! While I wrote fanfiction in my teenage years, I felt very much like a fandom hermit back then but I'm coming back to it now many years later and want to actively engage with more people. I've joined some discord servers and am posting much more to twitter and tumblr, but I'm still pretty shy about messaging people privately as I feel like I don't really know what to say. I know it will take time, but any advice on how to get the ball rolling would be much appreciated.

Good luck with the writing!

Hi! I'm very glad you like my Bleach fics, and hey, being missed isn't a bad thing either ❤

(I do have one 80%–finished grimmichi fic that I'll put up on Ao3 soon-ish. The last chapter won't ever be written, but there's still some 28k of fluff and porn that ends on a fairly conclusive note on the emotional end.)

You're right that interacting with my fellow fans is a large part of what makes fandom fun for me. The community aspect of fandom is something that comes up a lot in conversations about why people flock to fandom, why they stay, and why they leave, and although I'm an introvert bordering on a hermit, the social aspects of fandom are its greatest draw. I write because I need to or I'll burst, but I share for the people here with me. That's not an uncommon attitude or experience. YMMV, but many of us want to connect with people who share our interests, and the level of creativity and commitment fandom inspires often thrives in collaboration and community.

How to get that sense of community is a trickier matter though. You're already in Discord servers, which seems to be the main fandom social space(s) these days. You're also on social media platforms where people can reach out to you or vice versa. So that's the basics covered. After that, it's largely a matter of organically developing relationships. But I do understand the hesitance to just roll up into someone's DMs; even though I have no issues with people popping up in my DMs, I also find it harder to initiate.

Plus, I've found that some sort of existing rapport gives you a better foundation when you do take the step into private exchanges. This can be Ao3 comment sections, Tumblr notes, or Discord group chat spaces. I tend to avoid Discord servers these days, but back when I had more tolerance for group chats, the people I met there often became closer friends. Mostly though, my pocket friends are people I met via Ao3 and, less frequently, Tumblr—fellow authors and readers in a specific fandom.

I know my regulars, here and on Ao3, and I've been a regular many times. Discussions in comments usually start out limited to the specific fic, but they can also include general fandom/canon stuff or even personal talk. Many times, you build a degree of familiarity with a person that way, and if the conversation moves to more private channels, you already have a shared base to build further conversation on.

So my best advice to find friends and like-minded fandom folks is to be active in Ao3 comments and Tumblr notes (...and whatever the corresponding thing is over on Xitter):

Reply to the comments on your stories and try to really engage with what your readers are saying. This is very much a personal preference, but the reason I try to reply with more than a generic "thanks" for longer, more in-depth comments is that, like I said above, nerding out with fellow fans is a huge part of why I love fandom. If people are already expressing interest in your story and you have a shared interest in canon, there's a lot of room there for fun conversations, even if they never go beyond one-off exchanges.

Comment on stories you like, and if you find specific authors you really love, let them know without reservations what you like about their takes and why you like them. One of my favorite commenting methods when I'm well and truly in love with something is to read everything once, then reread and leave longass comments on every chapter/fic. It's time-intensive, but I've never seen the effort go unappreciated. I've also been on the receiving end of this many times, and that's how several of my fandom friendships were born; one of my closest friends is someone I virtually kidnapped because I loved their tags on my JJK fic posts so much.

The above habits can be applied to Tumblr/Twitter too. Plus, there are plenty of people on such sites who engage deeply with fandom outside of fic writing. Be loud and proud about what you love. Sending a DM is an intimidating step, and not everyone will be receptive anyway, but most people welcome encouragement and appreciation. There are a lot of people I'm friendly with and fond of whom I've never interacted with directly, only via Tumble notes or asks.

I think all of this narrows down to being pretty generous when it comes to expressing your love for fandom and fellow fans. Won't always work out for various reasons, but as long as you're having fun, it's not wasted effort or time.

[farfallasims]

hi☺️ when u we’re first starting up ur simblr how did u get ur posts more noticed?? I’m using tags and reposting my posts but nothings happening, I’m not sure whether to just wait a few days but like, this is harder than it seems bro

Hi!

Before I give tips and tricks in what I noticed helped me, let me emphasize that I didn't go into this community trying to be really noticed, especially at the extent I have been. I just wanted to post my stuff and enjoy a community I've always loved watching from the sidelines. So, I guess that helped me not set up expectations of wanting to be noticed, I just posted stuff I loved and people liked it. But I will give you some ideas that I noticed helped me grow!

Be Interactive

If you are not engaging on other people's posts whether it is commenting, reblogging, or even liking stuff in general, you won't gain peers in the community. I'm not saying go comment on every post you see, but if you genuinely like something, let that creator know. No one likes someone who posts and ghosts, we love seeing the personality of the creator shine through.

2. Be Active

I joined the community back in February of 2023 and I have posted every. single. day. NOW, I am not saying do that, but I can 100% promise that being heavily active is a great way at building your own community. People love consistency and they love building a relationship with said creator. If you are posting once a week, the likelihood of anyone seeing your stuff is very slim.

3. Quality over Quantity

Yes, this does backtrack on the previous tip, but people love quality posts. They appreciate the time and effort that goes into it. I have all the programs I use listed in my FAQ to ensure better quality.

4. Drop Your Expectations

Like I said for myself, I didn't join the community wanting nor expecting to gain the following I did. Yes, I knew I'd get some attention, but I'm talking like 2 thousand people or so, and I would still be so happy if that were the case for me!

By going into this with that expectation, it set me up to never really feel that frustration of wondering why no one is seeing my posts or why I get so little likes. I was so grateful for the 45 notes I got on my first ever post and I didn't expect it either. I remember telling my boyfriend how geeked out I was over it!

Lower your expectations, it simply leads to less frustration.

5. Utilize Other Social Media Platforms

Twitter has been a huge growing platform for me, and I personally love it (if you stay out of drama), because you can get to learn so much about your favorite creators, and some can even become your friends.

I have made so many friends through joining the Sims Community on Twitter, and it has been such a great way to push my content and bring those people I meet there to my Tumblr. This also applies to other platforms such as Instagram and TikTok!

6. Have Fun

Post what you love, enjoy other peoples content, and just have a good time. We are all rooting for each other and we all want to see each other bloom on this platform, so please remember that.

I hope these tips & tricks help you and anyone else in the community x

[9w1ft]

Hi 9. I hope you are well. Your blog has been a balm for my soul in dark times, read your comments full of confidence it's like fresh air.

I would like to ask if recently or in the past, you have received unpleasant comments saying that we are wrong in what we believe in addition to adding insults, etc. How have you learned to deal with it and if at any point have they hurt you emotionally?

aw heyy thanks for saying that!

oh yeah over the years i’ve had my share of flack and insults in my inbox or maybe i’ve had an altercation here or there, and sometimes you can put a bandaid on and go about your day but usually it’s still a cut you can feel. i guess the tl;dr: would be, i think that over the years ive learned to find the right blend of environment and outlook that sets me up to have it hurt less. also i think being able to contextualize hate dismantles its power greatly.

the big thing that youve got to have the ability to laugh at yourself. this is such a wild situation to be in! embrace it. a little self deprecation goes a long way. if you let go of the need to be understood by everyone and you recognize how wild of a situation it is that we are in, and if you can laugh about it, it cures most things imo.

next you have to keep the context of the hate in mind. a lot of things i’ve had said to me just dont hurt because i know the people saying them just don’t understand what they’re talking about 😆 maybe this comes with time.. like maybe if you hang around long enough it will click, but people from different parts of the fandom are speaking from completely different languages of meaning and beliefs and so i’ll see a comment and just be like wow that’s so fascinating how this person got compelled to compose that and say it with their whole chest. couldn’t be me!

another thing is just, it has a lot to do with where we are at and what i believe or what other like minded people do. to us, we have kiiinda already reached a kaylor win condition. i know people would disagree and i get why, but to me, in the grand scheme of things, i don’t feel the need to argue or defend because we’re already there. we’ve already made it! all the rest is a bonus to me. and so what this outlook does is it makes any hate seem really really quaint. like don’t care if rude people don’t understand. why would they deserved to? 😆 they should stay right where they are.

i think hate can hurt more when you at a point where you are less confident of what you think or if you want to listen to everyone and make sense of everyone as a way to uphold ‘fairness’ or a sense of a greater community but, when you are around long enough and get a better sense of each groups’ different motivations, you come to realize that your good intentions to involve and convince everyone is a bit of a fool’s errand because at the tops of each group is a core that will never move from their position. in the end it’s just more about a personal journey, i think. and i think usually you pick a lane or a group and just stick to it and most of the drama feels different because when you stop feeling the need to litigate, hate becomes confrontation for confrontation’s sake, and then the hate stops being about you, and you can see it as a part of a bigger thing.

also one key thing… i think it’s eons easier to avoid everyday conflict on places like tumblr than on twitter. it’s easier to curate what you have on your blog and its not a very public facing platform so things are more quiet and don’t spread to the general public. this filters out a ton. and there’s less eyes on your stuff and like people can screenshot and bitch on their own space but it’s not a quote tweet so you don’t really have this sense if you’re being talked about. you can block and even block individual IP’s, or on the flip side you can monitor activity on statcounter and see patterns of where messages come from and it kind of dismantles the mystique of them. tumblr makes it a lot easier to just do your thing. it’s not always in your face. and i would have a different persona and talk differently if i was on a different platform.

and i think people in general are better at staying in their lane here than on other platforms. over the years we have all sort of found our pockets and in general we stay in them, i think! so the stuff i do get is just always worded and delivered in the same way so i know its from the same people so it’s a little bit like kramer popping in on any given episode of seinfeld. it’s just part of the routine at this point 😆

[unspeakablehorror]

Where to Find Me

Date Created: 7/20/2023 Last Update: 9/1/2023

Edit on 9/1/2023: Added a link to my personal website to the Fanworks section as well, since my fanfic can be found there.

Edit on 8/7/2023: Added a second website that's for archiving fanworks and other stuff I like to 'My Websites'.

EDIT on 7/21/2023: The @ symbol was automatically redirecting (or attempting to redirect) the second part of the pillowfort, dreamwidth, and cohost urls to tumblr accounts, so I got rid of these in all the links.

NOTE: I HAVE STOPPED REGULARLY CHECKING TUMBLR.

The interface of this site has become nearly intolerable for me, and it's become clear to me over the intervening years that Mullenweg is committed to making it progressively worse. So if you've wondered if the reason I've stopped commenting on your posts has anything to do with you, let me assure you, it's not. It's not you. It's not me, either. It's Tumblr. I logged out like maybe a week ago? And it's been amazing? I can live my life again? Miss you all, though.

So anyone who knows me (or has looked through this blog carefully enough) knows I haven't been on here since 2018. But it's been a few years, so now it's time to update my 'Where to Find Me' post! Since there have been several notable changes, and because I wanted to change how this post was structured a bit, it felt easier to me to just make a new post rather than editing the old.

My Websites

Unspeakablehorror's Site - I'll be keeping copies of my fanfic here, recipes, assorted essays, and other things of interest to me here. I will also archive select works from others on this site (with the creator's permission).

New Old Web - This is my website where I talk about how the web is crashing and burning and think about how we can make it not crash and burn. I'm still building it up, but I hope I can add lots more thoughts here.

Main Social Media

I currently feel that I use Pillowfort the most and Dreamwidth the second most. Something my main social media sites both have in common? They don't take venture capital. They're also great for longform writing and conversations.

unspeakablehorror at Pillowfort - Like if Tumblr and LiveJournal had a baby. I love the way this site handles commenting, reblogs, post edits, and privacy. And I love the communities feature. I'm the mod of 3 different Star Wars comms on here: Andor, Sith Empire, and Star Wars-The Sacred Texts.

unspeakablehorror at Dreamwidth - LiveJournal but better. Interface is a bit retro but I absolutely love the tag cloud. Every social media should have tag clouds. Dreamwidth has so many customization features. Also this site has my favorite setup for privacy options. And I love the communities feature on here. I'm the mod of the Sith of Korriban comm here.

Secondary Social Media

unspeakablehorror at Mastodon (fandom.ink instance) - I am on Mastodon, too, which is similar to Twitter with respect to the character count limitations, but has many exciting ideas, like using a protocol for social media that allows accounts on different servers to seamlessly interact with each other (as long as the server isn’t blocked for incompatible rules). It also incorporates the idea of decentralization in a very intriguing way and is entirely non-profit.

unspeakablehorror at cohost.org - Yeah, I'm here too. I don't currently use this account as much, but I do check the site from time to time and I've made a few posts here. I'd be here more often if any of my friends used this platform, but I don't prefer the interface, which is too much like Tumblr for my taste. Basically this is Tumblr if the interface wasn't total garbage, lol. I think I clash with some of the core principles of this site somewhat, and the only way to delete your page is by emailing the site owners, but at least it doesn't have ads or take venture capital. This site is what happens when some furries with coding and design skills are given a bunch of $$$ to make a social media site.

You can also PM me if you want to inquire about other ways to contact me or discuss anything else. I might be a little slow to answer Tumblr PMs, but I'll try to log in from time to time to check for them. Hopefully Tumblr doesn't end up breaking that, too, lol.

Fanworks

I am actually in the process of decentralizing my fic storage! Currently using a combination of social media posts for my oneshots and external storage links to store pdfs and epubs of my longfic. These can be found by examining my 'About me' in my bio on Pillowfort and my profile on Dreamwidth. My eventual goal is to also have my own website to store my fic on.

Unspeakablehorror's Site - I'll be keeping copies of my fanfic here, among other things.

Fanfic on Pillowfort - Access all my fic from Pillowfort!

Fanfic on Dreamwidth - Access all my fic from Dreamwidth!

unspeakablehorror at AO3 - Ah, I hope AO3 can work out their, uh, severe organizational issues, but in the meantime, I'm uncertain how much presence I'm going to have on this site.

unspeakablehorror at ffnet - This site is awful. The ads alone cause me psychological damage. Probably going to have to phase out posting here.

Well, that's all. Time for me to take my leave of this ball pit!

[kai-ni]

This is gonna be a hot ass take, but don't post art to Ao3. It's not what Ao3 is for, and it's scummy to writers who put their work out there.

And I'm not talking about fics with artwork embedded, that's fine. I'm not even talking about comics, because those involve writing and if they're ongoing I can see why they could work there. I'm talking about people that make a 'work' on Ao3 that's just an embedded image (or a collection of embedded fanart) and nothing else, 0 word count.

Ao3 is the ONLY platform FOR writers. You physically can't post longfic on twitter (I mean maybe in a bazillion tweets, but really?) buttt you can post art on twitter all you want. You can post writing on other sites like tumblr, etc (deviantart? does anyone use it anymore? you shouldn't. anyway) but that's not really what people are LOOKING for on those platforms, and writers will ALWAYS be overshadowed by artists on those platforms because art is easier to consume faster, and anyone scrolling the tags there can scroll past art, appreciate it, like/reblog it in a second rather than taking the commitment to read something (that may take hours to consume) and THEN coming back to like/reblog it/otherwise interact with it.

That's kinda just the nature of writing vs art, and it is what it is.

But people come to Ao3 SPECIFICALLY for writing. It's the ONE platform (I mean barring older stuff like ff.net that's pretty much defunct) where people go specifically looking for writing to consume.

'Okay I get it Kai, but one person putting art on Ao3 doesn't hurt anyone or take away from the writers on there, they're all... there.'

Alas, it does.

In a much smaller fandom I wrote in, one of my more successful fics was on the first page of search results for that fandom when sorted by hits (which is the most popular way to sort 'em and really the only way older fics are found), up until a popular fan artist posted a work on Ao3 that was just a collection of embedded fanart pieces (that they'd already posted on twitter and had been seen there and were very popular) and that very quickly knocked my work off the first page of hits. So, my work was seen less because that artist just decided to repost to a platform primarily for writers. Yea, you're gonna bet that upset me.

'Kai you're just jealous their art was better than your writing'

'Kay not gonna deny it probably was. But their art had already been seen/was really popular on another platform that I, as a writer, didn't even have access to. Doesn't feel great for them to come into the writer's space and also then overshadow. Because again, art is easier to consume. it's always gonna be, that's the POINT of having a site like Ao3 where writers can shine. Fine fine, call me cranky for being bumped, but I wouldn't have cared at all if it were by another fic.

'You can sort out works with 0 words you know'

Yea, sure. Does everyone just visiting Ao3 know how to do that? And again, that's not the default. If you just click on the fandom without doing anything, it doesn't.

Now imagine you're not on the first page, and still had a work in that fandom and your work was on page 10 or whatever for that fandom (again it was a small one). You're now on page 11. Very few people have the patience to search that far back, and now you aren't been seen at all because you got bumped by a popular artist. This isn't something that happens on twitter or other platforms - everyone's bound by the silly algorithm / time on twitter, and time on tumblr. it's a LEVEL playing field. it isn't really on Ao3. Yes, there's sort by 'most recent' and that's all fair, but by hits, kudos etc isn't.

So yes, when those sort functions are taken into consideration, artists posting on Ao3 really do hurt writers, and take space away from them, make smaller writers less seen, etc. It sucks.

There's plenty of other places to post your art. I know, there's fewer places to post NSFW works now and get feedback on them (unfortunately) but Ao3 doesn't even host the images anyway... you have to upload them somewhere else! there are other options. Don't take space from writers because sites like tumblr aren't good for NSFW anymore.

Again this is gonna be a super hot take, but that's how I feel and I lose respect for artists real quick when they do this. No shade, I'm not trying to call anyone out, this isn't specifically directed at anyone, just something that I've seen repeatedly and has been milling around in my head for years now. Disagree if you like, but I'm not looking to get into fights in the rbs so.

[bigskydreaming]

Sometimes when I'm writing Lilith I have to stop and think about the fact that despite how long her character has been around, she's so rarely used and so wildly and arbitrarily recharacterized each and everytime she is, she doesn't really HAVE an existent long-running characterization. At least not so much as she has half a dozen wildly unrelated character traits haphazardly packed together in a tight enough huddle that they can all fit under her signature cloak and hood.

Not that her hood and cloak are iconic because of any particular narrative or character element, so as to be clear. Lil's pretty much associated with that look for no real reason other than: they gave her a cloak and hood in the 90s', because. Like. It was the 90s'. They kinda just...did stuff like that in the 90s'.

Look, the truth is for as much as a ton of us all throw 'it was the 90s' and 'what do you expect, we're talking about a comic from the 90s' and other variations of 'Man. LOL. Marvel and DC in the 90s, am I right guys?' every which way on any and every social media platform ever, as though like, that really does just sum it all up and yup, we sure did say something with that string of four words we put together there, all by ourselves....

Like, the thing about that is its one of those things you kinda just SAY for lack of any better way to put into words what it is you mean by that, even while knowing full well that there's like, pretty much NO chance that for any given 9 out of 10 other people you come across throwing similar phrases around twitter or tumblr.....like, they're more than likely not going to be picturing anything all THAT close to whatever first pops into YOUR head when you "It was the 90s" about a comic book and leave it at that.

Its really actually very hard to put into words what I'm getting at here, other than to just say....."comics in the 90s" is one of those utterly useless phrases that everyone says and yet doesn't actually mean anything at all because no two people actually mean the same thing when they say that and this is a thing that everyone who says that is very aware of......

But at the exact same time, "comics in the 90s" is one of the most accurate and easily understood and related to phrases that everyone says while knowing they don't actually have any idea what the other person is picturing but that doesn't matter because we still know that somehow, some sense of what we actually DO mean is making it across the great communication divide between brains and our wavelengths are syncing. We both nod. Yeah dude. You get it.

What does dude get? You don't actually know, even though you literally just said that dude got it and you were being SINCERE, you truly meant that you genuinely believed that on some level, in some sense, dude did still in fact get it. Even while at the exact same time you yourself haven't the slightest confidence that if some sci-fi gizmo were to beam down from Star Trek heaven or whatever and make it possible to pluck the precise thoughts and images your "comics in the 90s" conversation with Dude conjured in his mind and then put all that on screen alongside four other options....there was still like, a random one in five chance of you somehow picking the right one out of that lineup, and it honestly would have fuck all to do with any particular specifics that came up in your earlier conversation.

Comics in the 90s. It means absolutely nothing while somehow still communicating certain ideas and impressions and sentiments pretty clearly, but not clearly in the sense that any two people have anywhere close to an actual CLEAR idea of what someone else means, but still somehow clearly enough that like. You nod, appeased because Successful Communication was somehow still achieved even if in no form actually accepted or understood as actual useful or accurate communication.

So just so you know, if the phrase comics in the 90s or a 90s comic book doesn't actually mean anything to you because you werent reading comics then, and you havent read 90s comics at any point since then in a way that keeps books from that decade and that decade only lumped together in some kind of strange, awkward cohabitation space and identifies them all as being part of a shared set that's not really based on overlapping or similar characters or genres or themes or messages or settings or writers or premises or tropes, just.....Vibes. Vibes only....

Well. The one thing I can tell you about comics in the 90s and when people talk about comics from the 90s....is that one thing you're always gonna hear a lot of people say about a lot of different books and different narrative choices made within those books.....is just: Idk, really. It was just the 90s, y'know. They did stuff like that.

You will hear it offered up a lot in a way where context will reasonably lead you to conclude that the above explanation is being put forth as a likely explanation for why a specific character choice or narrative choice or editorial choice was made in a particular comic written at some point in the 90s.

You would be absolutely valid in feeling an urge to check for hidden cameras and for the host of some kind of internet prank show to pop out when you see people nod sagely in response to this proferred explanation as though they accept it as an actual explanation that actually did explain something somehow and that they feel that the initial question was in fact accurately or even adequately answered by this explanation.

Just know that you have not actually entered the Twilight Zone, and also, no one is intentionally trying to gaslight you. A conversation did happen there, an exchange of ideas and impressions was communicated, and as incomprehensible as that might probably seem a lot of the time, unfortunately its unlikely any participant of that conversation will be able to clarify further and actually break down what was communicated and how.

We genuinely, truly don't know, is the thing. When I say: "Lilith Clay's pivotal turning point from her earlier characterizations and depictions pre-90s to the mysteriously cloaked floating cipher figure she's existed as ever since the 90s occurred somewhere in the 90s, and this radical shift in how she was portrayed CAN be pointed out as a being a clear demarkation point between the two vastly different versions of Lilith, and cited as the point in time where this point here, this place in time here, this is when Lilith stopped being associated with the stuff she'd been previously associated with and brought to mind in the forms that she'd previously been illustrated in....."

Like all of that is pretty clear and self-evident enough.

But when I continue on from there to say:

"And I can point you to WHEN the change happened and show clear before and after evidence that proves that this is in fact where the seismic character shift occurred, I can even say if Lilith hadn't been used in the 90s and just gone into comic book Limbo and only brought back at some point after the 90s, there's a strong chance she would not have ever ended up as altered as she was by that decade, and she'd be a lot more visibly and narratively recognizable as the character she'd been pre-90s."

And this leads someone to ask the very understandably relevant followup question: "Okay so WHY did that big a change occur though? What were the reasons given for such a dramatic shift, what was said in the stories and by the characters and the writers to explain or justify why Lilith just one day started showing up to Superhero Meetings in ominous trying super hard to be Spooky and Mysterious Garb also I'm Omen now, call me Omen, Lilith is dead, long live the Omen, but not the creepy little kid from the movie because fuck that kid, I still hate kids, that part hasn't changed..."

This is when the communication breakdown occurs.

Because here is the point where all I can do is shrug and super helpfully inform you that I have absolutely no idea what most of the characters thought about the switch from Original Recipe Lilith to "So Apparently This is Still Lilith, Guys, Any Questions For Her? Seriously? Nobody?"

Like, nobody knows is the thing. No explanation was ever actually given in story. Nobody ever really treated this in story as noteworthy enough TO comment on even though the differences are night and day. Everyone just rolled with it and never stopped and at some point it just....became that thing where we were like oh okay, I see. Cool. Cool cool cool. This is just. New Lilith because Reasons and we're never actually going to get or hear or learn those reasons because like. There were never actually any real reasons and that's why no writers ever felt that these changes needed to be discussed or acknowledged within the pages of the comics either because well. That would imply that there actually WERE Reasons to be found somewhere, thereby insinuating that somebody should probably go and find out who knows what they are so they can share them with the class actually.

And thus, in the end, the literal only explanation I CAN ever offer for anyone who asks why Lilith went from who she was back in the 80s to who she's been ever since the 90s, what was the purpose, the point, did editorial mandate the character be revamped, was there a storyline all of that was originally meant TO lead into that just never happened, etc, etc, etc....

"Nope. Nothing like that. The answer to your question 'what the fuck was up with all the changes to Lilith in the 90s, what was the reason any of it happened in the first place' is as far as I or anyone else I know has ever been able to tell....is just....

"I mean, it was the 90s. Comics in the 90s kinda just.....did stuff like that and that's really the only way to say it. Lilith stopped being Lilith and became New Lilith and I would love to tell you that somewhere, someone has an actual reason for that or can speak to the thought process that put all of those changes into play and say whose idea it was and why they felt it was a good one, but like. Honestly? It was just the 90s. Like, the decade itself, or the anthropomorphized zeitgeist of 90s comics, lol. Its That Dude's fault, They did it. They killed Original Recipe Lilith. She's dead and we got this Other Lilith instead and it wasn't even because one of the many, MANY dramatically continuity-altering Crisis events happened, because this was nowhere near any of that and also that might actually make way too much sense and allow for a satisfactory explanation and there will be NONE of that here!"

But yeah. So that's what happened to Lilith. The 90s happened to her, it did it, like, the whole decade itself, and the absolutely, obnoxiously HILARIOUS part of it all is after all of that, ultimately the simplest way to ever answer the same question in the future would be to again just say "Idk, honestly. It was just the 90s, yknow?" and leave it at that.....

And no matter how little sense it might make if you're not in the iykyk portion of the audience for this part........tbh, most other fans I know who were reading comics in the 90s and have their own particular associations with that decade and its influence on comics, no matter what they are in contrast to my own or how much or how little overlap exists between our impressions...

I can say "The 90s happened," and shrug and for as little as that actually offers in terms of explanation, most 90s comics readers will just blink at that, take it at face value and go "Bummer. We lost some good ones that decade."

And that's the story of the non-answer for Why Is Lilith Like This Now Tho and how its actually just "The 90s did it" and for all that this is a nonsense answer that shouldn't convey anything because it doesn't actually say or explain anything, it still somehow happens to be not just the correct answer but the only answer, and most readers from them can hear that and think yeah that tracks. I get it.

And they do and I hate that because I AM NOT A FAN OF COMMUNICATION THAT DOESN'T ACTUALLY COMMUNICATE OR MAKE ANY SENSE ESPECIALLY IF DESPITE HOW MUCH I HATE THAT I STILL SOMEHOW END UP AGREEING THAT NO BUT IT DOES MAKE SENSE AND COMMUNICATE POINTS WELL. I CANT TELL YOU HOW OR WHY BUT IT DOES STILL WORK.

Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Comics in the 90s, you have so much to answer for.

Like I genuinely hate everything about everything I just said in this post so fucking much, you have no idea.

Also I genuinely stand by everything I just said in this post. I know its ridiculous, and brain-breaking and makes no sense and I don't get it and neither should you. There's nothing to get. Its just also that it does make sense and I do get it and I get it if you don't get it but for those of you who do get it, like. Yeah, you get it.

If it helps at all, I can promise you that nobody is more annoyed about all of this than I am. It literally makes me want to fight the 90s. Like, the actual decade. I want to find it in like, idk, some appropriately weird liminal Twilight Space like idk a Denny's at 2 am on February 29th or what the fuck ever and just be like hey, The 90s, literally what the fuck. We need to talk. Why were you like that. Did you even TRY not being like that? Who hurt you?

fanklfhnklahfklahflahklkhflakhflahflafahlf

[jovenshires]

I feel like the real problem with the shourtney isn't the weirdo (affectionate) tumblr side but stuff like tiktok. Bc with almost every other ship it is only weirdo tumblr kind of people that treat it as ficition but with shourtney there are so many normies that are doing truther shit.

Tiktok is so so so so bad. There is a tiktok with half million views analyzing courtney and shayne selfies and account of their family to "prove" that they are a couple.

They scare me.

I am not part of either group but if you a weirdo tumblr shourtney shipper just know that when people complain about shourtney "shippers" they are talking about the second group of people mostly.

(sorry for so many people using your inbox to do ship "discourse" haha, I am doing too but feel free to ignore and delete this if you don't want to talk about it anymore)

okay so to start off - totally agree with you that it's not really tumblr that's the problem. i will say i don't go into the sh/ourtney tag (bc. not my monkeys not my circus) but at least as far as the mutuals i have that do ship sh/ourtney, they're super chill about it! as we do, they treat the dynamic as purely fiction, they don't ya know. harass anyone.

i (and i say this thankfully) am not REALLY on smoshtok. i get the occasional smosh men or angela thirst edits and that is About it. but i will say this: you all know i am totally against tinhatting in all senses of the word. i try to stay as far away from those sides of every social media platform. so i'm with you, that shit is nasty.

but even after all that - i saw that tiktok. multiple friends sent me that tiktok. i didn't like it or anything or engage with it on purpose but i saw it. and then i found out later that they were both tagged in it, as was the official smosh account. my brother in christ i truly wish i'd never seen it. i think its one thing to look at a picture and be like 'omg they're so cute here' but another thing to compile it as evidence and throw it back in their faces. at that point, it feels like forcibly outing an aspect of their life that they clearly either do not want to or cannot discuss. they are still people with a right to privacy. rpf is just that - fiction. this is something different and i hope they one day have the clarity to see that.

tbh i really appreciate your input; you worded it much better than i did!! this is what i was talking about when i said that this epidemic isn't a huge thing here on tumblr, and i think a lot of that is in part bc the cast isn't here for us to interact with. the official smosh blog has been dead for years and as far as i know (?) none of the cast uses tumblr anymore. i was thinking more of the instagram, tiktok, and some twitter fans. (twitter is a mixed bag though and i won't get into that here. ever.) 9 times out of 10 i am Not talking about tumblr fans when i critique shipping at large. (that is to say not always. we can always work on ourselves and grow as a community. i, myself, am always learning and growing.)

anyway! i wanted to publish this ask, because i think it's very succinct and touches on a subject that i think was very valuable to this discussion (re: tinhatting). this ask is totally fine and did not cross a line in any way and i genuinely appreciate the thought you put into sending it!! that being said - this is probably the last ask i will publish on the subject. though i adore you all and i want you to feel free to speak your piece, frankly, i would also like to maintain my peace knnfnfk i do think that these discussions are important and worthwhile but that being said. i am just one lil guy.

[joonberriess]

hi! a muslim here!

- i just want to make one thing clear to this anon who thinks they have the right to talk to you like that on an app that doesn’t even give a single fuck about this type of shit bc if you want to make people aware of what’s going on you do it on platforms where people actually stop scrolling and read what certain people have to say instead of being full of fictional story’s for other people to read as a hobby or to get away from their personal lives.

i as a muslim can openly say that palestine isn’t the only country where genocide happens which means if this anon cared so much about us (muslims getting slaughtered to death) than they should do their research right and go look up what happens in china to uyghur muslims and all the other countries. basically what im saying is in short;

yes, what happened or still happens in palestine is demonic and cruel to our society but remember that there are still people out there which we never heard their voices before bc the world is concerned about 1 country instead of being concerned with every human being that goes to this type of stuff no matter what color, religion or identity they have so gtfo this app and go somewhere where people are ready to hear you out and would like to help you cause ain’t no way in hell we gonna suddenly care about the shit that happens to my people on tumblr mf this app is full of smut,porn, art, people expressing their feelings etc wtf u expect us to do on here?

sorry but i can’t just take these people srs again i hope you don’t feel obligated to do anything just bc someone tried to be „funny“ when this is your page and you go by your own rules and everyone has to either respect that or foh. love you, stay safe 💗

thank you lovely, you said it perfectly! it’s not that we don’t want to talk about it but tumblr is a dying app for one, TWO it censors the dumbest things ever so imagine me trying to post a video of a baby being found under rubble or the air strikes?? like wouldn’t y’all agree that moving to apps where you can get more media coverage like twitter and instagram is better??? where twitter won’t censor these atrocities so that the world is forced to see and open their eyes? but does that mean I won’t post and remind you guys on here what’s happening? NO, just bc im more active on twitter doesn’t mean I won’t bring it up here either!!!

but rn the genocide in Palestine is FARRR more severe when you consider the fact that the entire US alone supports Israel and keeps funding their genocide, which is why people are more focused on Palestine! BUT it doesn’t take away that there are other countries going thru the same thing. which is why we are their voices and we need to bring everything to light so that the world can see these atrocities.

FREE PALESTINE 🇵🇸 , FREE SUDAN 🇸🇩 , FREE HAITI 🇭🇹 , FREE CONGO 🇨🇩 FREE WEST PAPÚA

[shivasdarknight]

one thing that frustrates me still is how quickly people on this platform handwave instances of suppression on platforms like tiktok and twitter when it's been a well documented problem. it's been documented since youtube and y'all believe it because the white people got hit, but the second it occurs on a platform built predominantly by a non-white userbase (eg: twitter prior to the facebook and tumblr migrations, black twitter Built Twitter) suddenly it's "your content just sucks". tiktokers only seemed to be believed when it was visibly autistic users that were also white, but black tiktokers who range from every background from dance content to political stuff or just artists get suppressed constantly and their stuff "just sucks" now, huh? it's not real and it "just sucks"? trans women get suppressed on tumblr, but tumblr has no censorship? the site that removed all instances of gaza and palestine from the trending pages?

like, look at this fucking comment section that reminded me of this

we got a black woman explaining the UN ruling about Gaza (the video can be found here), and these are the comments. Why are these the comments.

It's almost like TikTok so heavily suppresses content by black creators or anything that explicitly names Gaza or Palestine or even just 🇵🇸 that in order for information about the situation to even get out to people, intentionally wrong tags and comments have to be used. The 🍉 and 🫒 emojis are used a lot too, and now there's talk of using 🦋 for Congo due to that being suppressed, too.

"What's your favourite color?" and all of these recipe comments are engagement bait and ways to put this on things like baking tiktok or craftsy tiktok spaces. Because anything that looks like Palestine gets suppressed and drowned out. Comments that want to talk about this have to be vague like the one from Anim, and further down they were talking about recipes with watermelons because gee what has the watermelon represented since the 70s with regards to suppression of information? 🤔

I've watched as activists I follow get so heavily suppressed that by the time I finally see them again, the entire comment section is just "where were you, I thought you died". And you can see them go from ~20k per video down to 800 out of nowhere on an account with 100k+ subscribers. It's been proven countless times on tiktok (like the black woman who wore blonde wigs and did a valley girl accent on wednesdays to see if she could prove a point about her algorithmic success and found that all of her wednesday videos did MUCH better than her usual content when the only difference was the wig and accent - more so when a white person was actually on screen), on twitter, on youtube (do y'all not remember nerdcity's entire study on what keywords get you demonetized?), and even here on tumblr. But why do you only believe it when it's a white creator on a predominantly white platform that gets hit, and not the dozens of black creators that get suppressed just for being visibly black on screen on apps that were In Effect built by their black userbases?

[animehouse-moe]

Time really flies, huh. And here I was just thinking that I wasn't feeling like talking about today's Frieren episode, but still wanted something to chat about.

So I'll talk about this for some fun as I look back on what's already a year.

It's kind of crazy that Twitter's just been in a complete state of disrepair for so long. Truthfully, I didn't expect it to last this long, nor do I really think that Elon has much time left. But I was wrong before, so I'm probably wrong again.

Anyways, in the past year, I've really found my passion for anime and manga to grow and develop much more thanks to Tumblr. Getting more space, and better organized tools to express my thoughts has really done a lot for how I approach these things.

When I first started out I was always just doing a sort of play by play of my thoughts on an episode or volume. "I really liked this moment, but then they went here and did this before doing this which I didn't like", that kind of thing.

Of course, I was better than that by the time I got to Tumblr, but I feel like since that November a year ago now, I've gotten even more efficient with my thoughts, even better at breaking apart what I like about something.

And I really, really enjoy being able to see that progress. I want to share all the cool and good pieces of something, and be able to point out why I don't like something or it's not good, so making so much progress just feels really good.

Another thing that I've really enjoyed about Tumblr is that I don't feel the need to post about things that I don't want to. Case and point, I didn't really feel like I had anything to add to today's Frieren episode (aside from gorgeous walk cycles), and I don't feel the pressure to do that so that I can continue being active and involved. I'm a part of the community and hobby, not the other way around. Being on Tumblr where discoverability is far more fine tuned than on Twitter where it's "did you post as soon as possible and use enough sensational words?" just makes it far easier to not worry about "falling behind". If I wanted, I could post a week late about the episode and still feel good about it versus how I'd approach doing that on Twitter. And then there's the whole blue thing which has just completely kneecapped the platform.

It's also made me take a look at how I express myself and my interest in the hobby. I would have never really properly considered making videos on the subject (hence why I write so much), but here I am with a TikTok account, and even making a pass at a YouTube video. All because Tumblr's allowed me to better express and explore my interest in the hobby and community.

It's all very cool stuff, and I very much appreciate the platform for affording me these experiences, and the confusingly large following I have on this account. I'm really not well versed in Tumblr stuff (even after a year, I know. I'm not super big on social media, truthfully), so I have no idea how many followers is considered "a lot" on here.

Also, for those still reading, I'll be doing something a little fun over on Twitter next week. This is just a heads up, but I'll be sharing the information here as well for people that may or may not be interested.

[quill-of-thoth]

The Years When I Wrote Stuff

So it’s the wake of the year 2022 and as of two months from now it will be two years since I spent a significant amount of time writing anything. I watched The Glass Onion last night and I want to write a mystery so badly that my stomach hurts, but also I want to go home and time travel is not an option. Feel free to skip the introspection but I miss Livejournal, and I thought other people also waiting for a dead year to be buried who have also tried to make stuff during the last eternity might find this a little cathartic.

I spent my morning rereading some stuff I previously wrote, back in college, approximately a decade ago, and it’s... good? In ways that I didn’t expect, given a whole host of personal factors like ten years experience, the fact that some of what I wrote then was fanfic for a very small and insular writing and reading community and not actually fanfic of a property that exists*, and that what I remember as communitywide engagement is an average of five unique commenters per chapter. (*People who never lived on Live Journal: there were several of these sorts of emergent meta fandoms, long before Goncharov. I was in a handful of them. One of them was the Sims 2 legacy challenge community, where there is no canon, everyone is trying to win points on a spreadsheet while playing a completely different game, and people just straight up borrowed each other’s characters to write combination screenshot and text stories about. It was considered flattery to do it if you could write your way out of a paper bag. Or if your forum threads / livejournal entries got enough engagement to be equal to or more ‘popular’ than the original author. Other metafandoms involved sporking [critical reading of another work with jokes worked in], and meta-fanfic like protectors of the plot continuum.) So, what did I have in twenty mumbleteen that let me write, and do it pretty well for my level of skill at the time? 

I was not less depressed: the year that I wrote 48k of cathartic mystery investigation that I still like was not a good one, personally, and the year before it was definitely top three worst. I also wasn’t just astronomically talented at the time: I was concurrently writing a non-fanfic attempt at a novel that has fully earned its position in the mental compost bin. (The physical location is somewhere in a folder within a folder on a thumb drive, probably labeled “junk” and “old junk” respectively.) 

I was not less busy: on top of classes I was writing a thesis that was so bad, the singular time any other living human mentioned they’d read it after I graduated, I blurted out “Oh god WHY?” (I got that job anyway.) In contrast since the beginning of the pandemic I have been unemployed off and on and not exactly super busy otherwise. I may have been doing a less overwhelming amount of the work of living, since I was living in dorms at the time, but... (checks my apartment) I think I’d better not investigate how much work of living is technically getting done around here.  I honestly think the major difference has been community. Don’t get me wrong, I like tumblr. I like twitter too. There is not a lack of people joyfully engaged in making stuff and talking to each other about it on either platform. We are (probably, at least in my case) a little cooler about it too: twitter’s villain of the week and the eternal problem of internet harassment aside, the dominance of short form and mostly public posting has made a lot more people than I remember aware that joining secret locked fandom groups devoted to hating specific members of your community is a bad thing and not a badge of acceptance into the Big Name Fan inner circle. Also, the first time Diane Duane turned up to my livejournal I acted like an embarrassingly star-struck teenager. Given that I was an embarrassingly star-struck teenager and have since managed to have actual conversations with published authors, I think I may have matured some. But with shorter, faster posts, and an internet economy that is increasingly about advertising, and single streams of information, we’ve definitely lost an aspect of the previous writing and fannish community. Not just the ability to off topic chat in a forum or a comments section with days or weeks between replies instead of wading through the discord, or community reading lists instead of reblogs and quote tweets, or spending hours uploading photos and gifs to new third party hosting sites and re-linking them every time free hosting got discontinued. From my perspective here on Tumblr we seem to have lost a huge amount of support for each other’s projects. Let me explain: back in the days of Livejournal there was fandom, meta fandoms, and original work. The three nations lived in harmony until - okay, technically they weren’t three nations, because we were a bunch of individual people doing a bunch of different things and even if you didn’t tag for shit, if you stuck around and commented enough you met other people. You would get invested in one of their projects, or they would get invested in yours. Most importantly, you would talk about things in the comments section. If you went looking for book reviews you would go to the comments for more recommendations. You’d also get arguments between people you’d never met, essays written by someone who appeared to be commenting on the mirrorverse version of the post you’d just read, and a decent number of bots. But you would be at the party talking about your favorite movies, the novel you were writing, and your thesis in the corners with photos of someone’s cat, instead of shouting across the width of the internet. You can still DM people, yes I know. You can still, if you’re too experienced to be embarrassed by being perceived like @seeingteacupsindragons and I, have a loud personal conversation in public via reblogs and tagging other people. It can even be a relatively private conversation if you’re deep enough into twitter replies or you’re only notable to a few dozen or few hundred people who only follow you in case you have more confessions to make about your former feral gremlin exploits back in the years when you wrote things. I can’t imagine writing the usual fandom disclaimer of “don’t own: don’t like don’t read” the way I used to during a spork or analysis. I legitimately once advertised the story that kicked off this round of introspection with “I obviously don’t own [book series we were dissecting to see why we hated it] because if I did you guys wouldn’t love me anymore.” Not just because it’s assuming my audience has strong feelings about me (easy to assume when there are seven of them and they loyally keysmash every chapter,) but because the firehose of social media feels very impersonal. Not on a caring about other people personally level, but on a level where, outside of fandoms, which aren’t built as sturdily as they used to be, it seems a little absurd to assume people care about your ongoing projects.  I’m not saying prior fandom iterations were better. Fandom problems and blog and social media problems have always been the same community building problems dressed up in different posting limits. Human nature has always been that of miscommunication, self interest, and sarcastic asides no matter how low you can sink the stakes. People have always struggled to organize community in the face of corporate censorship, societal bigotry, and Russian government takedown bots.** I’m saying that the things that used to go hand in hand with fandom, like your own oc’s and the ability to spend six months in a fandom and come out with a writing group passionately keysmashing over each other’s original characters and original stories are much, much harder to find than they used to be.  (**The bots are not always russian but false DMCA reports and the other apparatus of modern internet bot problems is not by any means new. And the eventual deathblow of Livejournal was struck by Russia. For more information I’m afraid you’ll have to google it all, due to me failing to locate any of the tumblr posts that filled me in on specifics long after the fact, on the very same day I successfully found my old Livejournal story I had forgotten the time of via a string of related tags. Irony, it turns out, cannot die.) AO3 and tumblr have kept fandom going, arguably stronger than ever, and it’s not like metafandom has died, given that it hasn’t even been two months since a critical mass of tumblr users decided to collaboratively write a summary of a movie based on a pair of bootleg shoes. I’m almost guaranteed to get more “interaction” with this post than my average original story in livejournal days.  But goddamn it, I miss the comments section. I miss replying to people demanding to know what was coming next with cutesy replies like “well you see, next chapter, [redacted] will [spoiler].” I miss having to break five thousand word conversations into multiple comments and the accompanying ability to trade theories and refute assumptions point by point without either flooding the dash or having to shove it all behind a readmore. (I miss customizeable readmores and the ability to put up a summary to click on or make a cryptic comment about the plot. Upon reflection, I don’t miss breaking up comments, I miss having collapsible threads to discuss specific points of speculation.) Most of all, I miss the semi-private space where people overwhelmingly were not shy about saying “hey, this reminds me of some things in my original story, you want to read some?” and where the link you received when you said yes ended either with you giving out a polite comment about the similarity to the original conversation and ‘I might not keep up with it, but good luck!’ or falling madly in love with someone else’s blorbo. I’ve tried to recapture the magic here and elsewhere, but as lovely as most people in writeblr are there is just so much advertising that it hasn’t worked for me, as a vehicle of actually talking to people about writing. Without a word written of the actual story there’s a moodboard and a playlist and a near-constant feeling of talking to yourself in front of a microphone. We all might want to publish this some day: have two paragraphs and an entire tag of endlessly recycled promotional material about the aesthetic. Everything is a pitch contest and the rules of engagement are written down in a completely different post: above all else act professional. Well, professional enough. You can be a clown and you can be a jerk but you cannot just hang out and expect that everyone will get their own turn to talk about their OC’s, regardless of whether you’re seriously hoping to publish or not. I’d love to talk about the process and art of writing again with people I only sort of know, instead of only doing it in DM’s with my oldest friends. I’d love to drag my OC’s out of the metaphorical compost bin and tell you that I don’t currently have a WIP that is anything like ready for public consumption, much less publication, but that if you watched Glass Onion last night and cried over the idea that you can’t have justice for the ones you love and you can’t bring them back but you can damn well be sure their work was not in vain, you’d love them. They’re my children and they’re my self, they live in my brain and they’re in love and better yet they’re best friends who will never, ever loose each other. Whether that’s to the slow diaspora of having to move across the country to make a living or finding that a dumbass billionaire pulled the plug on the liminal space where they gather. They’re part of a family of orphans and outcasts and they’re the spiritual descendants of a lot of people who taught me a lot about community. They know way more than me about how to help the friends who are suffering yet another pointless accident and wring some kind of catharsis out of a world that has not stopped ending in a thousand different ways since before any of us were born, and it’s only partly because one of them can literally do magic. Mostly it’s because when you write for five people who all hated the idea that resistance to the cruelties of the world is pointless even in fiction the exact same way you can actually give them a single webpage where justice exists, the people who are supposed to keep people safe care more about that than maintaining their structural power, and rich assholes who ruin people’s lives are the ones who go to jail. Now if only my perfect, (but not too perfect) darling, useless daughters would bring me a plot so I could actually use the sadness and anger for something. Even if no one ever reads it.