#and the rest of them would be tags commenting on the contrary commentary

[honestlyvan]

On Tumblr it's pretty common to follow people based on the fact that they're good at curating (ie. you like the things they reblog) as opposed to following the OP of every post you like immediately, because despite the ravaging discoverability on this site has taken, especially on the fandom side, there still are people on here who run fully curatorial blogs and like doing the digging it takes to find the "good posts".

In fact, I feel like the historical presence of both themed and unthemed curatorial blogs on this site is probably the reason it's so reliant on reblogs, and the weakening of their ability to find things is one of the big reasons why posts lose momentum faster now. (The other reason people reblog less is because of the damage a culture of harassment caused to this site's identity, but that's out of scope for this conversation.) It used to be that if a big fandom blog reblogged you, you didn't have to worry about your post getting buried, because their followers and peer network would give you exponentially more notes.

Which isn't to say that you shouldn't follow the OPs of posts you like, but it's often not the most efficient or even the most interesting way to get a dashboard full of interesting things. And if you do want to follow OPs directly, you could be the next highly curatorial blog that gets followed because people like your ability to find the "good posts" and be the one with the "good commentary".

The critical thing here is that follower count isn't actually something that is visible to anyone but yourself, so that's still not exactly "popularity". However, popularity on this site gets you basically nothing other than an inbox you can never empty fully and probably a snide hatedom from people who resent having to see your URL because blocking someone doesn't hide their additions in the threads, and you can't filter out the additions of specific people without hiding the whole thread.

Reblogging is essentially a conversation tool, and has multiple registers. All the "rules" you might hear about when it's okay to add commentary and when you should keep your commentary to the tags are derived from the old way the site used to display your activity. People who have been here for a long time expect certain "manners", even when most of them have forgotten or never knew what the origin of those manners was, but I think because tags and comments are now so embedded into the OP's experience of their own posts, people forget that the middle layer of commentary and curation is what made this site what it was.

So, in my opinion the best way to think about reblogging is not as you talking to the OP -- it's you talking to people who follow you, with the OP just having provided the conversation starter.

People keep telling newcomers that they must reblog posts here because that's the only way to boost a post. And while that isn't not true, it also wildly misrepresents the reblogging culture that Tumblr actually has.

The posts like that keep talking about things as if the OP ("content creator") is someone who needs eyeballs on their work and the rest of us peons ("consumers") owe them the number-go-up an algorithm handles on other sites.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Tumblr isn't a popularity contest (note how you can't see follower count), and it's not structured with creators at the top and audience at the bottom. It's egalitarian, we're all in the same crowd, and yes, some of us have 2 followers and some have twenty bazillion, but no one actually knows which is which.

You reblog a post not as a favour to the glorious yet suffering content mill, but because you want people who look at your blog (all two of them now, all twenty of them once more people look at the notes on the posts you reblog) to see that post in the context of your blog.

Your blog is your space, and you're meant fill it with things that you want seen there. That can be your original posts, reblogs with commentary, or just a collection of things you think are neat.

Reblogs chains are often how people find other people to follow, too. So reblog to show off a post that you like and to attract more people who like the things you like to show off. It's that simple. And it's about you.

And because everyone does this, reblogs posts they want to be seen on their own blog, when people make posts that a lot of other people enjoy, that post blows up and is seen by even more people.

Tumblr's reblog system is a network of people picking something up and going "look at this cool thing I found!". It is not a service to content creators.

[rwdestuffs]

Done dirty: Jaune

Yeah, I’m surprised too.

Let me get this out of the way: I don’t like Jaune. I really can’t stand him. I want the people reading this to know that beforehand to understand on the likely chance that I go on a tangent that make Jaune out to be the devil incarnate. It is merely an aspect of my own opinion that I have, and I have every right to dislike Jaune. Much like how Jaune fans have every right to like him as well. But this post is about how he has been done dirty. Not just by the fans, but by the narrative.

See, Jaune was supposed to be an audience surrogate. Which means he asks the important questions that the audience doesn’t know, so that they can be informed. Unfortunately, the question that is asked is not a good one that was thought of.

“What is Aura?”

Aura is supposed to be an integral part of the world. Jaune stated that his ancestors were great heroes, but he is somehow not knowledgeable in this area. It would make far greater sense if he only knew the basics. Alternatively, there could be a class where the students learn how to use their aura in tactical applications. The concept could be explained there.

Not only that, but it also implies that having aura unlocked isn’t a requirement for addmitence into Beacon. And since Beacon is a school where you learn how to fight monsters, and I presume criminals (given Pyrrha’s comment about it in Volume 1), you’d think that aura unlocked would be a requirement.

That’s more of a tangent on Beacon as a school than it is about Jaune, so let’s move on.

Jaune cheated his way into the school. And this presents a problem in the sense that he for some reason expected that sleeping in class and not studying outside of class would make him a skilled hero?- He comes off as entitled because of how he worded it.

It really just feels like he thought that just attending Beacon would give him the skills he wanted. And then he sort of… bemoans that he isn’t as good as the rest of his friends?- Y’know, the ones who actually earned their right to attend the school?- Those friends.

Jaune put not only himself in danger with this stunt, but also his team!- He never attended any kind of combat school, nor did he partake in the entrance exam that Nora, Ren, Blake, Qrow, Raven, and likely a few others had to do to prove himself. He is risking his team’s reputation and the lives of others with his lack of experience and training. For fuck’s sake!- CARDIN made it in on legitimate terms!

Contrary to popular belief, Jaune is not endangering only himself, he is endangering the rest of his team. His lack of ability and experience means that his team not only have to protect themselves (and civilians if the case calls for it), but also Jaune. Because again, he lacks the experience, training, and willingness to get better. The only ‘reason’ he decides to accept Pyrrha’s help later in the volume is because he got an ego boost (that Pyrrha helped him out with), and while yes, he did feel like a jerk for how he treated her earlier, it wasn’t until he emasculated Cardin (again, with Pyrrha’s anonymous help) that he finally decided that maybe just maybe, he’d need some training.

Volume 2 also pushed Jaune to the forefront. As I’m sure a lot of people are aware, a common touchy topic in the good ol’ rwde tag is that Jaune kept asking Weiss out numerous times. I can understand being sympathetic with Jaune the first time. Rejection is hard, but them’s the breaks. It was when he repeatedly asking her out (despite her saying ‘no’) that it got irritating. Not only that, but both the fans and Weiss VA, Kara believed that Weiss should “Give Jaune a Chance.”- Which, no. Absolutely not. I don’t know in what world where “No” means “Try again later” but I’m pretty sure that this isn’t that world. The narrative seems more content in making Weiss be in the wrong for daring to have some autonomy and rejecting Jaune instead of… pointing out that Jaune was harassing her. And at the end of the prom arc, Jaune gets to dance with Pyrrha. He didn’t really learn a lesson on respecting women after all that, he just……… got to dance with Pyrrha.

Also Jaune gets his first solo victory at the end of Volume 2!- He flails his sword around, and downs an ursa through sheer luck!

Volume 3 actually toned down Jaune quite a bit, so I won’t put much here. He acts like a human being, and suffers through some intense stuff. But we enter a hard spot here:

Pyrrha’s death.

See, up until Volume 4 rolled around, Pyrrha’s death was sort of like… Schrodinger’s Cat. She was both fridged only for Jaune’s development and at the same time, not fridged for only Jaune’s development.

There was a lot of speculation about what would happen. How would Ruby react to it?- How would Ren and Nora react to it?- How would Yang, Weiss, or Blake react to it?- How would everyone react to it?

The answer is: We don’t get to see. Jaune is the only one who gets to react to Pyrrha’s death. Jaune and only Jaune. Which presents a problem as he is taking away from other’s development and reactions to Pyrrha’s death. He not only calls the area that Ren saw his village get slaughtered in “creepy”

Jaune is right to be angry here. And while he is wrong for being angry solely at Qrow (He seems to have no issues with Ozpin in Volume 5), he is still right that they forced the choice upon Pyrrha. As a person of great power once said:

So yeah. Jaune has every right to be angry at Qrow, but earlier in the Volume, when RNJR was fighting Tyrian, Jaune looked away when Tyrian was about to attack Ruby.

This is the same guy who charged a Nevermore weaponless to try to save Pyrrha, right?- Jaune’s lack of consistency in this scene ultimately got him more hate from the rwde tag (And I will include myself in that, as I was guilty of it too), but again: where is the consistency?

I get that Jaune was outmatched there, but for him to go from “I’ve gotta stop this grimm from hurting my friend! I may not have my weapons, but I’ll try my best!” to “I have my weapons, but what’s the point in trying to take this guy on?- He’ll just beat me anyways.” is jarring. And this isn’t even mentioning that he earlier said,

Way to say that in front of the girl who saw two of her friends die right in front of her and two orphans who saw an entire village get slaughtered in front of a grimm. How many of your family members did you lose again?

Look, Jaune came off as really insensitive in that scene, and it will be undoubtedly something that the rwde tag will rag on for years to come.

And in Volume 5, he’s sidleined again. A bit anyways. Jaune gets semblance training alongside Ruby’s silver eye hand-to-hand combat training while Ren and Nora……… don’t need to at all. Look, if the reason behind Ruby’s hand-to-hand training is so that there’s a way for her to survive if she’s disarmed, then Ren needs a way to survive if he ever encounters a person who could match his speed or shrug off his attacks. And like I mentioned earlier, Jaune has no beef with Ozpin. Where was his rant about what they forced upon Pyrrha then?- Did Ozpin give the same spiel that Qrow gave too? Tangent aside, he does provide some interesting commentary, and has some unique dialogue with Weiss and Yang. As a Yang fan, and Jaune detractor, I do like the point where she refers to him as “vomit boy.” While it felt forced, it was a jab at Jaune, and given how sparsely those jabs are in the canon show are, I’ll take it.

And the Haven fight, oh boy! was I waiting for this.

Jaune starts it.

Now, I have no issues with Jaune starting the fight. It’s a human emotion that he gets to have, and he is staring down the person who murdered his partner. The problem is that he isn’t punished for it. Like I said plenty of times before, Yang had human emotions when she charged Adam, and she got punished for it. And then there’s the fact that he takes on Cinder.

See, Jaune really doesn’t have much narrative reason to take on Cinder. Had he been there for Pyrrha’s death or had he accidentally gotten in the way and caused Pyrrha’s death (like it was in the original notes), then Jaune’s rivalry would be justified. Unfortunately, the narrative never set up a Jaune vs. Cinder rivalry, and it hurts the story. Cinder was foiled by Ruby in the first episode, and the Volume 2 opening showed Cinder and Ruby fighting. Plus, there’s the fact that CInder got two of Ruby’s friends killed right in front of her, as well as Cinder’s seething hatred for Ruby in Volumes 4 and 5. Jaune was never a factor in any of those, and he had no right to take on Cinder in a narrative sense.

And then after saying to the sociopath that he doesn’t matter and that it is his friends that do, Weiss gets impaled. And we only really see Jaune reacting first. Where is Yang’s reaction?- I understand that Ruby was knocked out by that point, but couldn’t have she also screamed out her name when she woke up?- Jaune is the only one to scream out her name.

(Thank God that he didn’t say “I can’t lose anyone else…”)

But can we talk about how this is becoming a trend?- Female characters being harmed or killed just so that Jaune can develop?- I highly doubt that Ruby, Yang, Ren, Nora, Qrow, or even Oscar are going to develop from this, and there’s no reason that Cinder couldn’t have targeted Ruby (for narrative reasons, as well as her own established grudge), Ren (who is stated to be a glass cannon, and has far less bad blood than with Jaune than Weiss), or Nora (who hasn’t gotten much of a backstory yet, and would actually get the audience scared that she might die). Yeah, two of these characters I suggested are also female, but they have better reasons to get impaled than Weiss (who had to be massively nerfed just so that the fight with Vernal would be a total stomp).

The hardest part about all this are the people who constantly defend Jaune’s every action.

“He’s just following his dreams of trying to become a hero!”

- By endangering people?- Why couldn’t he ask his parents to enroll him in a combat school or something?

“He’s a teenage boy. They tend to ask people out and not get the hint!”

- That’s an explanation. Not an excuse.

“He’s honoring Pyrrha’s memory by merging it with his stuff!”

- So I guess mama and papa Nikos don’t matter then, huh?

Nobody is saying that Jaune isn’t allowed to have emotions. But when the best defense you can muster is along the lines of “Is he supposed to just stand around, show no emotions, and do nothing like [insert relevant character here]?”- Then it just shows that they want only Jaune to act and react like a human, and not anyone else.

I’m fairly certain that some of people who defended Jaune starting the fight also overlap with some of the people who berated Yang for wanting to save Blake.

Jaune has had a major arc in pretty much every volume except for Volume 3. Which is a bad sign when Ruby has only gotten one, and it barely lasted half as long as Jaune’s first character arc that he also got in Volume 1.

His initial isn’t even in the title. He never once got a trailer. There’s no reason for him to be at the forefront of events and being the only one to react to the events that happen.

It’s not necessarily that Jaune gets development, it’s more that other characters DON’T get to develop because that honor goes to Jaune. Jaune gets to act human, but he is never treated like a human. He is never called out for his actions, and he is always met with defenders in the FNDM despite other characters being met with belittlement for doing similar actions (need I bring up Yang’s belittlement for trying to save Blake again?).

Jaune’s lack of proper treatment and constant spotlight hogging is what makes him a poor character.