#absolute fucking long post

[bulletbilltime]

Ok I need to vent about "LIKES DO NOTHING" discourse because I have had Thoughts for months now.

These are just feelings without much coherent thought put into them so lmk if I get something wrong. (LONG POST WARNING)

I'm gonna start by saying that I agree with the message that's INTENDED to be spread. Letting people know that reblogs are an important and essential part of Tumblr's ecosystem is good! Tumblr not having (much of, anyway) an algorithm is an important part to emphasize to newcomers of the website. And I know *why* people prefer getting reblogs to likes on their art purely from an exposure angle: reblogs expose the art to more people, who will themselves maybe like it and reblog it to more people.

That being said, the way people act about likes is... genuinely bothersome to me. There's a really fucking weird framing of likes as literally The Worst Thing Ever. Like you're a complete and utter monster for having the gall to show appreciation for their work. And all that really does is make ppl feel guilty about how they curate their blog. "Why would they not reblog the work then, if they like it???" Well there's many reasons! They might not want to share nsfw content to their followers. They might not want to spoil their followers with fanart of the latest episode of a show. They might have specific criteria for reblogging! Maybe they have a family member following them, and they don't want to be outed for liking queer stuff! I don't think anyone particularly owes anyone an explanation for liking only.

"Why not use a side blog to reblog then, if any of the above apply?" Because that blog won't have the followers of that other blog? Why would you want someone to reblog from a dummy account, if that account has nearly nobody following them? That would be defeating the purpose of the reblog in the first place; all you'd get out of it is an extra Note, which makes it functionally indistinguishable from a like.

Now I want to focus on the one thing that annoys me the most about the framing of this discourse: the idea that people only like because they think it'll boost the engagement. This is why I think people say ridiculous stuff like "likes do nothing". Well, let me tell you something. C'mere real close.

LIKES ARE FOR LIKING THINGS.

It's in the NAME! People "like" things to show their appreciation for a piece of art/meme/etc! I highly doubt that people who only like art do so with the delusion that what they actually help the artist get more exposure, even on other social media websites. The average layperson leaves a like to show they enjoyed a post. That's it. They don't think about The Algorithm, they just see post and hit like. That's how people act on other social media websites, and I'd wager even a good chunk of "old-hat" Tumblr users do this too.

Are they in the wrong for doing that? Well I think that varies from person to person, but I personally appreciate any interaction on an art post. Sure, reblogs get more eyes on things, and that's highly valuable to get even more likes, so I absolutely do love getting reblogs, but I'm not about to get mad at every single person who likes without reblogs. I also just think that's a very unhealthy attitude to have about art in general, which leads me to my next point:

The internet as a whole just... sucks for artists. It's an annoying and unfortunate truth, but this feeling of "oh my work doesn't get nearly enough attention as I wish it did"? I've experienced it everywhere I posted content to. Whether that was DeviantArt or Twitter or w/e, it's always been the same thing. I don't tend to accrue a lot of followers for the work I do in general, and that means that my content will only get a handful of engagements, if any at all. And I know a lot of other artists face that issue, and it's because of a very simple fact: THERE IS SO MUCH ART ONLINE. Fact of the matter is, you're gonna be fighting against others for exposure, and luck is basically the only real way people can break out of that initial circle.

And on a similar lane: fanart and memes just get more interaction as a whole because they are more "shareable". Memes are just easy to share because they're funny and very accessible to most people. Fanart isn't as accessible, but it still has a potential audience if your follower base has enough fans in it, or if you're friends with ppl who like similar things to that work. But original art just doesn't have as much of a shareability. You'd think they would be more accessible by virtue of not being tied to a fandom... but because it's not tied to something people can easily search, original art gets decimated in the interactions department, unless you have a pre-existing fanbase.

I don't think this is a problem with an easy solution. And I certainly don't think shaming people is going to be the way, tbh.

But wouldn't this be all the more reason to push back and demand that people to reblog and not just like? Well... on to my next point: The Internet at large has rarely looked kindly upon those who beg for attention and interactions. People literally make fun of calls to actions on YouTube, after all. So I fear people are going to turn on people who post things like "reblogs > likes" and whatnot. I've already noticed a good amount of people beginning to get actively mad towards this sort of attitude, and passive-aggressive polls that are like "do YOU support our reblogs in blue????". I don't think this aggressive reblog shaming trend is going to end well IMO.

But reblogs are the life source of Tumblr, right? If people don't want to reblog... then won't that kill the site? Well... I guess that's the tricky spot: for artists that need commissions to make a living, there's a genuine reason for wanting art to be shared. Exposure translates to commissions for them. And if they can't get exposure, they'll have to turn towards other means of making a living. And if a lot of artists have to stop making art or leave Tumblr... then yeah that would suck for the site. Like, don't get me wrong, as annoyed as I am towards how weirdly petty these posts are, I understand why they're made. And I'm all for encouraging more support to artists, but this ain't it y'all.

So how can we promote supporting artists without shaming? Well... here's some suggestions:

Let's stop this weird culture around shaming likes. This isn't getting anywhere and it's only gonna make people turn away from interacting with art at all. Can you imagine if YouTubers started getting angry at people who don't leave a like or subscribe? Like, genuinely making passive aggressive posts and videos about them? That would be wack, right? So let's not be like that.

Second, I think that emphasizing the GOOD that reblogs can do should be encouraged. Examples: "Reblogs get more eyes on art! If you really like an artist's content, reblog it and it might lead to that artist getting more followers! If you reblog, you're doing your part in helping an artist get exposure!" People want to feel like they're doing a good thing, so help them see the good that reblogging does, rather than lecturing on the evils of not doing so.

Third... do your part! Go look for artists who don't have a lot of interactions, and reblog their work! Spending your energy interacting with fellow artists, making connections, and supporting each other's work is going to do so much more in the long run than trying to fight a losing battle with General Internet Apathy. Besides, a reblog from asspissballs69 isn't going to have nearly as much of an impact as a reblog from someone who actually has a following. Tumblr doesn't have algorithms, but follower counts do still matter even if we can't see them.

Fourth, if we wish to actually change the hearts and minds of "Serial Likers", we need to actually understand why people like in the first place. One point I can think of is that people who come in from other social media may be afraid to spam their followers with things they like. I think that's absolutely an aspect of Tumblr that doesn't really carry over as well to other websites, and putting more emphasis on that should be done. Personally, this was my biggest obstacle to embracing reblogging fanart. So I think having more empathy and understanding of the issue, and addressing concerns these people may have would go a long way in helping us make the case for reblogging.

If you've read this far, thanks for engaging with this rambly post! If you have objections to the arguments I make, feel free to reply but BE CIVIL and constructive. I *will* block people who get aggressive or read in bad faith.

[doctorguilty]

bruh people ID'd the estrolabs person it's a known neo-nazi

People figured it out by matching domain registry stuff and the fact that his name was connected to the paypal account being used on his site

[dukeofthomas]

Here's my controversial opinion; if you're trying to write Bruce as a non-abusive, good parent, you should also write him respecting his kids' privacy, boundaries, and not stalking&surveying them.

[trans-androgyne]

When discussing things like privilege and oppression, people seem to have one of two ideas about transmasculinity depending on what suits them best at the moment. They either picture a passing masculine trans man or a femme-presenting non-binary person. Both of these prototypes are skinny and White and relatively palatable to the general public. They find it easy to paint both as basically having cis privilege anyway, just wanting to play up their oppression to make people feel bad for them or excuse their (trans)misogyny. They’ll call the former a misogynistic dangerous Aiden and the latter a basically cis theyfab. There’s no room at all for people like me, people on T but still perceived as a butch lesbian. Closeted transmascs. Intersex transmascs. Multigender transmascs. Gnc transmascs who’ll wear a beard and a dress, but are allegedly exempt from experiencing transmisogyny. And yet even those two prototypes still get discriminated against, assaulted, and killed in cold blood. But that must have been despite their male/cis privilege.

It’s funny that those narratives are so dominant. Have you considered you’re seeing transmascs as privileged because you’re only hearing from the most privileged transmascs? That the handful of skinny White transmasc youtubers and musicians and celebrities you can name only got that far because they fit the picture? But invisibility is a privilege, so I guess the rest of us should shut up and be grateful.

[sollucets]

ray -> mew // sand -> ray, or: projecting

+1: the difference

[acheemient]

R.I.P. Achievement Hunter

2008 - 2023

It was fun while it lasted.

[chesthighwater]

guy who wants to be emperor SO FUCKING BAD but isn't and has to actively conspire to get there. guy who is in cahoots with him and refers to him as emperor/your highness/my lord/other unearned royal titles in private- perhaps as a show of loyalty, or ingratiation, or certainty in their mutual success, or just 5d chess manipulation. and also it is a sex thing i mean you get me you see my vision

[homoeroticgrappling]

He ain't slick, I saw what it said before he edited it

I will now be overthinking about this until Saturday

[iwoulddieforienzo]

Something really great about the persona 2 cast is that they all individually fucking SUCK to talk to casually. Every single one of them. They are all infuriating. We have:

Tatsuya, who will stare at you blankly if you try to initiate conversation (IS) and will dip without saying a word afterward (EP)

Batsuya, who will scoff and brush you off/otherwise act dismissive

Eikichi, who might honestly be the best to talk to in the IS crew and that is not saying much, who WILL talk extremely loudly over you (probably not on purpose?) and will not be paying particularly close attention to the conversation beyond whatever he wants to say (gets points for talking about his gf. gets points taken away for constantly talking about his gf)

Lisa, who will automatically assume bad faith and will be rude to you the entire conversation unless you manage to defuse her temper (good luck)

Jun, who is uncommunicative at BEST and requires an encyclopedic knowledge of flowers, metaphor and body language just to get a HINT on what he’s thinking, and who will be extremely polite but completely unhelpful. If you tried asking him what he wants for dinner I guarantee it will be the longest 30 minutes of your life as he goes “oh I have no opinion :) whatever you want. :))” EXCEPT HE DOES HAVE OPINIONS. He has SO MANY OPINIONS. He is Expecting you to be able to pick up on his “obvious” clues. He will be passive aggressive if you don’t. (Jun babygirl you suck so bad I love u)

Maya, who is a delight but will very quickly become grating if you try to talk to her about anything serious as she hits you with the white suburban mom's "how to live a happy, healthy life" lifecoach slogans. You can’t even mention, like, stepping in a puddle or something without her hitting you with the positivity beam.

Yukino is great actually. 10/10. She’s fabulous we love her. Incredible conversationalist, chill and fun and easy to get along with. But she’s from Persona One, she doesn’t Count.

Ulala, who WILL bring up her relationship problems in every conversation within 10 minutes at least once. Any longer and she will start talking about Maya.

Do I even need to explain Baofu. Have you seen him.

And finally, Katsuya, who is a cop and a kiss ass and Very Obvious about these things. Also he can't talk to women. He can barely talk to men. Help Him.

And yet they all work wonderfully as a group. They are so annoying I love them

[an-internet-introvert]

I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow to a dash of

[lightkrets312]

to the people who write summaries and wikis with thorough breakdowns of all the lore and media for a series that breaks it up into 20 different formats: you are doing fantastic work, may it remain intact and accessible well into the future, I owe you my life

to the people that decide splitting your series into 20 different media formats with critical lore in most/all of them is a good idea:

ARCHIVE YOUR SHIT IMMEDIATELY, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING.

[hammity-hammer]

steve harrington realizing that he’s got no purpose if he’s not protecting the people he loves from outer-dimensional beings, and has a minor (read: major) spiral about it post-vecna & the party fixing everything. he’s just a regular ole 20 something with no purpose— his friends are all in school, except eddie, who managed to pick up an apprenticeship as an electrician; putting all of that wire knowledge to use (just not in cars, he hasn’t hotwired one since 1986 and he’d like to keep it that way si vous plais) and making the rich houses have even cooler guts than they deserve.

the kids end up graduating (their first tries) and heading as one little pack to the same school (don’t ask me which, i’m a college drop out) and steve, eddie, and rob end up staying just outside of indy. rob finished school early, because of course she did, and she found that she may have a knack for hanging around high schoolers, so why not teach them how to become polyglots like she is?

steve still doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing— he bartends at a little club in the gayborhood, because they went there so often that the bartenders just kind of pushed him into it, and don’t get him wrong— mixing drinks and flirting all night is super fun, but it also… is kind of depressing? even if he gets to be around people like him and see them happy— he knows that a lot of alcohol and drugs causes that happiness and he wants so badly for his people to be out and proud and not murdered for it. but he can’t do that,, so he does the next best thing.

he talks with one of the regulars, andy, who owns a little tattoo shop on the corner, and andy invites him to come check it out. so he does the next day he’s free, and holy fucking christ. tattoos aren’t his thing— at least not on himself, but on other people they’re gorgeous. and they’re painful, but you’re turning the pain into art and you get to live with it in your skin and look at it and think about the fact that you’re here and you made it and you fucking survived. and people purposefully put scars into their bodies? and not in the i-battled-literal-other-dimensional-beings-and-won kind of way, or the i-battled-my-personal-demons-and-won kind of way, which both are things he’s dealt with so fucking intimately— but in the i-will-decorate-this-flesh-prison-and-make-it-a-castle kind of way, and that’s fucking beautiful. queer people taking their bodies and making them into art with ink and hot metal and needles and the love that they have for each other and the passion and the fucking spite at the world that keeps them going and making their presences KNOWN.

and maybe he gets some piercings while he’s there— it’s fascinating and feels so weird and freeing when the needle punctures his flesh and the jewelry goes in— and now he’s got a shiny little ring hanging through his earlobe; his nostril; his lip.

he learns that piercings take time and effort and care and that he has to treat himself with love to be able to heal— and that he is deserving of that love and care and dedication, especially from himself.

he keeps going back, maybe not always to get stabbed, but to watch others have it done. to see how different people’s anatomy takes different piercings, how he can’t have a piercing through his cheeks because he bites them too much when he’s anxious, but the girl that just left got both of hers done and they looked good. they fit her face, like little shiny dimples.

eventually, the piercer, killie, asks steve when he’s going to help them with their needles and their piercings— and he doesn’t know how to react because he hadn’t even thought about it and yet… maybe he could help other people fall in love with themselves and their bodies and help turn them into art one day

maybe he could be a pretty boy with his scars and his metal and his missing chunks and his polos and his jeans and his sneakers.

[thefreakandthehair]

I’m just here trying to sleep after a long week (I know it’s only Wednesday but I am stressed and I wanted to quit my job on Monday so it’s a long week) and I’m thinking about Dustin’s birthday. Specifically his seventeenth. And maybe it’s not on the exact day, but around there, and it hits him out of nowhere

He’s the same age Steve was when a bunch of kids were shoved at him and he was told to keep them safe. He’s the same age Steve was when he almost died doing that multiple times on the same night. He’s the same age Steve was and he doesn’t think he’s even remotely prepared to handle a group of kids and doesn’t think he could have been brave enough to fight a bunch of demodogs or billy when he was spitting mad and then gotten up and gone into the tunnels afterwards.

And he looks at Steve now, more mellow, softer around the edges, with friends his own age and his bitching far more playful and affectionate with them, with his glasses and his failing hearing and sometimes anger because of those things but no regrets.

He looks at him and wants to cry because he doesn’t know how Steve did it. He doesn’t know how Steve was so brave and strong then when he was arguably still sort of an asshole and didn’t even know them aside from knowing who they were. Because that night was the first night they’d even spoken, but Steve had jumped right back in despite how they all knew he’d tried to pretend it never happened.

He looks at his brother and doesn’t understand how he’d so easily been there for them back then because trying to imagine himself in his place it just makes him feel overwhelming panic.

Because that’s when it hits

Steve was a kid too. He was just a kid, but he’d seemed like an adult to him, had carried himself with the confidence of adulthood even when Dustin knew now that it was bravado.

He thinks about the year before, when Steve had fought his first monster and been even younger. And maybe he wasn’t the youngest, that was Erica’s privilege, but he’d still been a kid and they’d all forgotten that because it was Steve, who took on the mantle of protector and carried it like a badge of honor even now.

And he hugs him, of course he does, and when they talk, they both cry a little, because Steve can finally admit how he’d felt back then, how he’d felt so out of his depth but didn’t want the kids to see his fear because he needed to be brave

Just lots of sappy thoughts about childhood and loss and moving on knowing that you were allowed to be scared when you thought you couldn’t

KAT YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW. I'M SCREAMING AND CRYING! I'm gonna lose my MIND. I'm gonna climb the WALLS. I'm gonna FLY into the SUN! this is SO IMPORTANT to me now, I'm never going to not think about this, this is critical to their relationship now and I'm never going to see it any other way.

if you write it, I'll podfic it. I swear, this just flipped some switch in my brain, I'm obsessed.

[pandaspwnz]

I was 19 when Inquisition came out, and the Solavellan romance affected me in a way no video game romance had before or since, not only with how much it emotionally destroyed me (crestwood and trespasser it is on sight), but also with how much I absolutely fell in love with Solas' character and his dynamic with Lavellan, and for how long afterwards I stayed fixated on them with 0 breaks.

So anyway, I finished Veilguard yesterday and

[bananonbinary]

as a certified Diagnosed Autist(TM) i cannot stress enough that i am not only pro- self-diagnosis, but also pretty anti- legal medical diagnosis. it is, at best, a cruel hoop we have to jump through so privileged people will deign to give us what we need. don't fucking do that shit unless you have to, it was disgustingly expensive, fucking humiliating, infantilizing, and dehumanizing, and would probably actively cause problems in my life if i didn't have some really good allistic (-passing) people in my corner and also wasn't so fucking disabled that it mostly doesn't matter.

literally get that diagnosis if you need it for job/school accessibility shit or SSI or whatever, and otherwise dont tell the government SHIT about yourself. there is zero good reason for them to want that information. that's between you and the people you want in your life.

[dizzybizz]

😀 i love setting out to draw 1 character multiple times but ending up drawing multiple characters 1 time instead 😀 i love it so much 😀