#as far as I'm concerned most people on tumblr follow so many more blogs

[agendratum]

.

[daydream-the-demon]

No more KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)

I am a minor, and I'm speaking from experience.

Without the internet as it is, I would:

Have committed suicide

Be friendless

Not be able to start my career early

Not be able to share my artwork and writing

Get help

First, LGBTQIA+ concern:

I am part of the LGBTQIA+ community as a young minor. I identify as a genderless AroAce (which is uncommon, but part of the community). Without being able to explain who I was, I would have felt alone, an outcast among girls (as my original gender), and felt like something was wrong with me. And I would not have been able to explain my romantic and sexual attraction. I would have been pretty much forced into a relationship when I will be older, but identifying as AroAce helps me avoid those questions. I could have had the inconvenience of a boyfriend (because what would be gay? I would be forced into a straight relationship). I learned about sex and how to stay safe with it ON THE INTERNET. Along with orientations and genders. There are so many teen pregnancies that fuck up people's possible future careers, all because they didn't know how to practice safe sex or even the possibility of not being attracted to people in the first place!

Second, mental health:

I have Autistic friends, most of them are from the internet. I only know the symptoms and problems with Autism. Without the internet, I could have felt like an outcast between my peers without explanation. Knowing about Autism (and other disabilities and disorders) and its symptoms is a valuable tool, it could help you interact with people with those who have it, or find out if YOU might have it.

I would've committed suicide. I have many friends on the internet. And without them. I would be friendless. Without support. I would've felt lonely. My irl friends rarely text me, so one summer break I almost committed suicide. But at the time I almost committed it, I texted my online friend who lives on the other side of the Earth. And she was there for me when no one else was, when I was sad, and about to kill myself. Without the internet, I would have never met her. And without her, I would have literally died. I now have many wonderful friends on the internet, and they all help me be who I am, and stay here with you, so that I can now speak.

Third, my career:

The reason I have Tumblr, is so that I can show myself. I can post about art, interests, projects, and so on. I can reblog other peoples' art and learn from them. Without Tumblr (and other social media), I would have never been able to put myself out there. Right now I have 35 followers on my main blog, and some other followers on my smaller blogs. I can build a following, so finally when I get a job, I can say "Hey! Look at me: People know me, they like my art, they support me." And support helps. I can start a YouTuber channel and show myself and also get money from it. I can jumpstart my career here.

Thank you. Any questions or clarifications would be appreciated. I am now done speaking from my experience so far, use this however you'd like.

[transandrophobiatruther]

Hey. I know you aren't stated to have posted since November, and you and I never talked as I was just a follower, but I hope you're ok.

Thank you for the concern - I appreciate it a ton.

I've mostly abandoned this blog for a list of reasons. One of the main ones is that in the three years since I've made this blog, some of my opinions have changed, and certainly my approach to things has changed.

I made this as a sort of vent blog as an angry 19 year old, and it blew up in a way I never expected. I regret that I bought into and participated in a lot of infighting, and I regret how I've spoken about transfems and trans women on this blog - especially when my sibling is transfem, and we share so many experiences and have meaningful conversations about our shared experiences in real life.

I've also come to accept that activism isn't something that can be achieved through tumblr, and that my venting was mistaken for activism, and it seems that far too often, arguing online and infighting are also mistaken for activism. I certainly fell into that trap. And I feel a lot of serious guilt - I have more than a few messages in my inbox of people thanking me for helping them discover they're trans.

I don't want to contribute to the belief that being transgender is about suffering. I don't want to feed into the infighting or mislead people into believing that other trans people are out to get them. I don't want anyone to think that it's all about fighting to be heard.

After a while, this all began to take a toll on my mental health. I've unfollowed most of the big blogs that discuss transandrophobia, but not necessarily because I disagree with them. Exposing myself to non-stop conversations about our oppression and to the ways other people were hurting and to brutal discussions of transphobic politics and transandrophobic violence happening in real life put me in a horrible place mentally. Not to mention, following so many blogs of other transmascs constantly engaging in arguments with transandrophobic people fueled my paranoia and made me believe everyone was out to get me/us.

And I'm not an angry 19 year old shouting into the void to be heard anymore. I know there are people who believe me. I know there are people who believe in transandrophobia, who listen to us, who amplify our voices. I know there's a word for our experiences. It's a huge relief to know I'm not alone, and there's a lot of us who are talking about our experiences and the oppression we face.

All trans people face oppression. No group of trans people is more oppressed than any other, and even though we face unique forms of oppression, we all share far more in common than any differences. There's joy in being trans. There's joy in community, there's joy in self discovery, there's joy in having trans siblings and brothers and sisters.

I haven't stopped believing that our experiences are real, but I have stepped back in order to focus on trans joy instead of dwelling on trans suffering.

[hfjonewiki]

Hi! I hope this isn't a strange thing to ask but could you tell me more about ii-critical? I'm writing a research paper on the ii community and I wanna gain more insight to what that part of the fandom was all about.

My main questions are: Why did it exist? Why were you apart of it? What were the posts like? What was the biggest drama? Hell, what platform was it even on??

I wasn't that deep in the OSC when it was up and running (only really got into the community in ~2018) so a lot of community context from that era is lost on me. If you have any other object show oldhead insight for ii you wanna share, please do! I find fandom fascinating and would love to here more stories.

hoooo boy...... cracks knuckles. i went over it a little bit in a previous post but i'll try and give more info this time

(also this should go without saying but please don't try and seek out anyone mentioned or involved its been like 6-7 years since all this happened. also most of us were mentally unstable teenagers hence the. everything)

ii-critical originated as a tumblr blog created by someone named mira (i have no idea if they still go by mira or what their pronouns are now. i'm just gonna stick to they/them for convenience) as a way for them to discuss their criticisms towards the show's writing. the blog was created in mid-to-late 2017, during a time period where "(media) critical" was becoming a common tag. the trend was started by "su critical", a tag created by steven universe fans to discuss the show's faults in response to the show being in a rut of making some VERY dubious decisions (i believe it was started around bismuth's introduction, which was heavily criticized at the time for MANY reasons). the "critical" tags were often created for fandoms who tended to be hostile towards criticism of the media they were based around. the inanimate insanity fandom didn't really have that issue, thankfully. and so, the blog "ii-critical" was born.

at the beginning, the posts were about mira going through an episode beat by beat, and pointing out things they both liked and disliked about it. occasionally, there were posts analyzing a specific character. i'm kind of speeding through the "what were the posts like" section because that is by far the LEAST interesting part of the ii-critical mythos

i found the blog very shortly after its creation. it caught me at a good time, because i was at a point where i was becoming disillusioned with the show (episode 11 was the most recent episode at this point, and i really disliked it due to it being at the peak of ii's melodrama era. the show just felt miserable to watch. s2e11 sucking butt is still an opinion i stand by today Lolzor). mira and i started talking and i was brought on as the blog's other moderator, and i wrote my own analysis posts.

the blog was decently successful and didn't actually get that much hate. most people agreed with our criticisms and were, like, normal about the concept of a thing they liked being flawed. at some point we had a decent amount of followers and made the ill-fated decision to create a discord server for the blog. for added context: at the time of the server's creation, mira was 13, and i was 14. we were NOT old enough to be running a public discord server that at least 50+ people ended up joining.

the server had a lot of problems, mainly in regards to the channels. since we were both at the age where you are hormonal and stupid, we decided to make the nsfw channel accessible to everyone, and didn't even ask for people to include their ages in their intros. a concerning amount of people assumed that mira and i were both adults, or at least older teens until we said otherwise. we also had a blacklist and vent channel, which, word of advice, you should NOT have in a public server. shit gets out of hand SO fast. i vividly remember there being at least one guy who posted in the vent channel on a near-daily basis about pretty serious stuff. trust me when i say that people shared some HORRIFIC information in there. also, we had an emoji that was just a drawing of donut from bfdi with his whole cock and balls hanging out because we thought it was funny. i'm pretty sure there wasn't a "please don't post the donut balls emoji in non-nsfw channels" rule anywhere either.

i could go into more detail about various happenings, but that delves too deeply into interpersonal drama that frankly has no business being shared publicly. one of the most concerning things that happened, however, was this one guy who would come in vc, barely say anything, and fuck around with his gun the whole time. and yes, you could hear it. eventually we got reports of him being predatory towards a younger member of the server, and he was banned. i think that was the first thing that made mira and i go, "oh, we might've fucked up". there was also another incident where somebody was leaking information from inside the server (yet another reason why the vent channel was a HORRIBLE idea), and we banned a bunch of inactive people until eventually realizing somebody had stolen the username and pfp of a real user and impersonated them to stay in the server. this whole ordeal lasted like, two weeks. and again!! we were just BARELY no longer preteens at this point!! and we still thought, yeah, we can handle this. we're super capable. at one point we hired two other moderators (one of whom was 14-15, and the other was an actual adult for once. having an adult moderator led to us FINALLY locking the nsfw channel off to minors, since we had somebody who could moderate it for us), but this was towards the end so most of the damage had already been done

i was removed as a moderator on the blog after a large amount of interpersonal nonsense that, again, i'm not going to get into. it was mainly just because i was spending too much time in the server instead of posting on the blog like i was supposed to. a couple weeks later, i was suddenly banned from the server and mira had blocked me on everything. again, interpersonal nonsense and both of us being mentally unstable, not anyone's business. we reconciled a few months after and both apologized for being dumbasses, so we at least ended things on better terms.

another notable thing is that sometimes, crew members would pop in and out of the server, and they were surprisingly chill about the blog's existence. it was mainly justin and sam from what i remember, and resulted in this legendary image:

i don't remember this bit, but at some point taylor may have responded to one of our posts and was Not Nice about it? again, i don't remember this, take it with a grain of salt. but knowing his history with getting into shit with fans for no reason and how it got to the point where it was cited as a reason he was removed from the team, yeah that tracks

talking about ii-critical is strange, because i don't know where to draw the line between "infamous blog from the early days of the tumblr osc", "stupid pointless infighting between teenagers", and "genuinely horrible decisions and moderation that caused real damage". i'm trying to stick to just the first one and giving info about the last one when necessary. i'm aware a lot of this is gonna paint my past self in a VERY unflattering light, but that's who i was and what i did when i was 14 and i just have to accept that.

ii-critical was just a facet of the tumblr osc circa 2017. a lot of what happened can be traced back to larger issues with the fandom, especially when it came to restrictions on nsfw content. remember, this is pre-tumblr porn ban. i knew an ALARMING amount of people who had nsfw blogs, and even posted nsfw art while they were minors. i don't wanna seem like i'm making excuses for fucking up when it came to moderation and keeping our members safe, but it's important to know that the blog and server were very much a product of a specific point in tumblr history. we saw minors casually posting nsfw on a regular basis and thought, "yeah, it should be fine to have the nsfw channel open to everyone, right?" and like i said, we didn't originally require ages upon introduction. people didn't realize how badly we'd fucked up until the damage had already been done.

i could go on about the dozens of other ways i fucked up, but that would start to dive into the interpersonal side of things. i think i covered everything that actually mattered. i don't plan on talking about ii-critical to this extent again any time soon. everyone who both ran and was part of the blog and server have moved on, i don't wanna keep dragging people back to what's probably a very unpleasant period of their lives.

that said, if prompted, i will talk about the 2012-2014 deviantart era + "dark ages" of the osc AT LENGTH if prompted. i swear i have wisdom beyond the shitty blog i ran with my friends as a teenager. you dont even know about the Ball OC Discourse

[unmask-strange-aeons]

I was originally convinced it was strange, but after the blood tubes post I am not that convinced. Those blood tubes are proper blood tubes, and the fact they have no information such as barcodes that go along with it is a bit sus. Most machines cannot run without a barcode, I know some smaller hospitals might run them without barcodes and just paperwork but I'm not too sure.

Also I have never seen blood tubes in just ziplock bags without information (such as test requested). Also putting patient samples in work fridges are a fireable offence (once again this is just where I am in lab sciences). There's a high chance it probably does happen in some areas. Also the fact that they are all lavender tops is odd, as blood tubes are normally sent down clumped as patients not as types of tests. These tubes could also be someone who has a port, I'm aware some people maybe asked to take out some of their blood, but for my own personal experience they tend to be in hep tubes, with a syringe, not a pressure tube.

So it could be some real blood tubes with fake blood in it. Lavender tubes have been in limited supply in some parts of America, but that's not applicable everywhere. Also if you were to be buying blood tubes as a troll to do this you wouldn't bother buying a few of each colour.

I am genuinely a bit worried, I want to be reassured that this is just a funny troll.

So here are a few ideas how this "Blood" situation could come to be.

So lets get the most concerning point put of the way the "blood" situation. There are many substances that can look like blood, and i do generally not belive this to be real blood. Such as red honey and red syrup. Or its real blood they found somewhere. Now you might wonder why would Father Strange go dumster diving for possible blood vials? Because she doesnt, what you need to remember is that father Strange doenst work alone, she has hundrets if not thousands of patreons who would be able to do this. If even only one would find something like this they could just sent a picture of it to Strange.

The next points those vials are something you can buy. We found the exapt same tubes on the internet. They are called //3ml Draw Vacutainer™ Cat no. BD 367838 Blood Tubes K2EDTA with BD Hemogard™// just google them and you will find a packed size 100 for only 20 bucks. Now the labes, everyone can print them. Or you even go as far as to write to the company and request a costome order. Or some patreon found them and sent pictures to Strange.

We all are thinking that Strange is like us. But she isnt. She has 1 million followers on youtube and hundrets if not thausands of Patreons, what for us could be a very different task she could just outsource give the project to others. And in the price situation, the Patreons are paying her money. And she has youtube revenue. She may not be the richest Person on the earth but we cannot underestimate her resources. Not only her money but also her manpower. She isnt alone. There are hundrets of people following the muppet, do i say all of them are Patreons? No, but it wouldnt be too far fetched to say that many are. This also gives her a good oppertunity to create more Tumblr blogs and have them interect with her Muppet persona, we know that the muppet has stated that "his" roommates have tumblr blogs, and i am very sure we will see them in the future. She isnt like us. She has the money and the manpower to pull this off. Who else on tumblr would have the resources and the motivation to this? To create the ultimate Tumblr fake story. Something so big it streches all the way from tumblr to Tik tok. No one.

@strange-aeons is @the-muppet-joker, pass it on.

[swords-of-a-soilder]

Bless you for compiling what’s going on with that ex-bird app. It’s been genuinely insightful for me to understand the thoughts of the kinds of people behind those accounts.

That person trying to cancel creators for associating with Forever (and probably advocating for his lore to be excised from the server) saying “but I can’t possibly give up guapoduo, it’s My Hyperfixation” is very telling. Hypocrisy specifically in the context of “separating the art from the artist” isn’t something I’ve seen before, shockingly, so I guess I get to add that to my Social Media Discourse Bingo. (I had an online friend in 2016 who I was terrified to talk about my interests with because I didn’t know what angry punk teenagers on tumblr had deemed “evil and disgusting”, and even SHE stopped listening to some of her favorite metal bands when she learned they were homophobic, and had absolute turmoil when she learned that David Bowie might have allegedly slept with an underage groupie in the 70s. Her constant, unpredictable rage at seemingly random pieces of media was awful for my mental health, but at least she wasn’t a genuine hypocrite.)

Also that tone of “I’ve had good memories here… but I just can’t handle it anymore.” It sounds like someone whose meaningful but soul-crushing work has finally broken them, almost sounding like someone I knew at the frontline worker job I had mid-pandemic who missed her own birthday three years in a row, got repetitive stress injuries, and then got passed over for a promotion that was given to someone who did a fraction of the work. But the “God willing, I’ll never come back” was followed by “I’m 13” …damn, I got whiplash so hard that I astral projected into a universe where things made sense for a second. Because of course kids don’t have a complex view of other countries’ political systems or cultural pressures. Or the nuances of personal change and redemption. Or that sometimes people are just not online for a few days. And of course a 13-year-old doesn’t understand how dumb and petty they look by trying to ruin other peoples’ careers in the name of Activism (tm) while having a fandom portmanteau username.

“I didn’t want it to come to this but… I’m going to delete twitter!” I hope so, but more for their own sake, honestly. I actually have less anger towards most of them now. Many are kids with a false sense of grandiosity that makes them believe they are the ultimate moral authority, but have very little understanding of how messy people or societies can be. I just hope they can learn one day, and look back on who they are now and cringe. (And then many years after that, have the grace to forgive themselves.)

Oof, sorry for the wall of text.

I’m still not over the whole situation with Forever. I miss his energy, and his accent, and his silly bits with Richas that always dragged on too long, and N.I.N.H.O. (and everything it represented), and how different he and Cellbit are but how they understood each other WAY too well, and how he tried to make people who didn’t log onto the server as often still feel welcome and wanted, and how happy he got when anyone non-Brazilian even tried to speak a little bit of Portuguese. (I was learning, but I’ve barely touched it since.) I won’t lie, it’s affected me far more than I thought it would.

I miss Forever. Thank you for your blog being a little space where that’s okay.

I'm honestly a little worried for the kid (s), not in a "oh I just want the best for" fake bs way just a little concerned tbh. I still don't like them but I don't hate them either, they're a kid.

But at the same time I'm worried for their well being, they have like 5,000 follower on their main Twitter and 28 on curious cat (which is apprantly high for that app )

That's 5000 people (teens or not) waiting for you to tell them how to feel that can't be good for their mental state, not for a 13 yr old kid.

Most of their life was spent learning about the world and their still learning, these are the ages where you're worried about the sun blowing up.

You haven't seen how awful the world can be yet, You haven't seen how much worst it could get you haven't learned calculus yet!

To you the world is only these 13 years and you think if you don't act now everything will be over.

I get it, I had that fear too, most people grown into it and realize just how shitty it can get an settle in choosing their own battles and not letting It consume them, because no one had time for that anymore.

You want to experience the most out of live while you can and the older you get the easier it is to balance.

To me it looks like one of those situation where you'll look back and think "I wish I enojyed my childhood."

Because 5000 people waiting for you to tell them who to bash, 28 people prasing your while admitting they use to hate you.

It can't be good. And if they were to read this they'd probably say "oh you don't actually care you just want to shit on me."

And like, yeah I don't care, but am I saying all this because I want to shit on them? no I'm just pointing out concerns.

Apart from that I fully agree with anon.

[aseriesofunfortunatejan]

For anyone who hasn't been hating on art reposters for the last 15 years like I have - we are all at risk of falling for a repost every now and then. People are paying a lot of attention to AI art nowadays, but art reposters are still thriving.

On tumblr, the best you can do to avoid that is nip it in the bud: meaning, if you're looking through a tag for fanart or any art for that matter, I advise that you:

Always look at the tags. Many art reposters don't use the tags that artists would obviously use. (I'm that careful that I won't even name them; look at the tags. Is this person just Posting An Image or publishing their work to their personal blog? Do the other artists in the tag use tags that this person, for some reason, didn't?)

After noticing the first bullet point, look at their blog description. Some art reposters will mention that they just post "random anime images". Obvious tell. Most artists mention that they're an artist somewhere in their description, so if they don't mention it, make sure to move on to the next bullet point. (But just not mentioning they're an artist, by itself, isn't enough proof.)

Look at the art on their profile. Most art reposters just repost Any art. Is the artstyle completely different from post to post? Like "there's no way the same person is drawing in all these different styles"? There you have it.

It's usually extremely obvious from their profile. Once I'm looking at the blog, I don't think I've stumbled on a case with plausible deniability in years. It's either "obviously someone's fucking artblog" or "not even trying, just thinks it's normal to repost drawings they found on Google Images."

If you can warn other people in the replies, try that. This way even if some people reblog it, some of their followers will see it at least. If their replies are locked... Blocking and moving on might be the best action here: nipping it in the bud, as far as I'm concerned, means "not reblogging it to your blog where people won't see the only red flag that were the tags".

(What if you really liked the drawing...? Try looking up the image on SauceNAO. If it's from pixiv, deviantArt or Twitter, you should be able to find it with no issue. If SauceNAO can't find it, you can also try Reverse Google Image search, but I consider that a last ditch attempt, because you're a lot more likely to find 10 Pinterest reposts than the original.)

I seriously recommend checking the person's blog if you have doubts. Just judging from the art itself isn't enough and may make you dismiss some amazing artists who haven't built a following yet.

[immobiliter]

SHIPPING INFO. Answer the following for your muse(s) so people know how shipping works on your blog.

What’s your OTP for your Muse(s)?

so i have way too many muses on this blog to really categorise every pairing that i ship for them, but i will echo ventium's answer and say that my otps are what i currently ship with my rp partners. this is particularly the case for me because, while i love a good "canon" ship ( as in, the characters actually get to interact within their canon even if you have to read romantic or sexual context into them ), a lot of the ships i write are crossover ships between two muses who would never have cause or reason to interact within their canon. that means i rarely enter into them knowing that they will have a romantic endgame, so i have no real preconceived otps as it were. i also tend to be quite picky about ships more generally speaking, it can take a lot for a ship in a tv show or book or movie to actually grab me, and i think this is because romance in general doesn't really do much for me on a personal level lmao.

What are you willing to RP when it comes to shipping?

i'm honestly up for most things, barring the obvious no-gos. although if the dynamic is more toxic in nature ( which, again, i'm not opposed to ), it does make me pickier when it comes to shipping. certain muses of mine are pretty incapable of developing romantic or sexual bonds ( or even friendships for that matter ) without a degree of toxicity or challenge involved and that therefore makes them lower priority/more selective in terms of who i would choose to ship them with.

How large does the age gap have to be to make it uncomfortable?

this is hard to answer in a general sense because it's very specific to the individual muse and ship ? as far as i am concerned, as long as it's not shipping a minor with an adult, and it is a ship that makes sense for the characters and can justify in that respect, age differences aren't a big deal. i have muses who are 18 who i would only ship with others of a similar age, i have muses who are in their 30s and may date those a lil older/younger than them, and i have muses who are hundreds of years old or immortal who fall for a human. context and the nature of the individual character is very important.

Are you selective when shipping?

yes, i am picky about what i ship and who i ship it with. there has to be chemistry not just between the two muses but between writers as well — we have to vibe well, plotting and talking behind the scenes cannot feel like a chore or like it's forced, and i'm also someone who will very rarely engage in that tumblr favoured pastime of yelling constantly in dms about ships. i like to get excited about ships and characters, i like to talk about them ( and talking about them usually does encourage me to write them ), but at my own pace. i have a lot of muses and therefore a lot of ships ( plus y'know i have a life outside of tumblr too, we all do ), so i like to know that my rp partner and i can take our time developing them, can talk in dms at our own pace with no pressure to write everything for them all the time, and that if neither of us reply to any threads or answer any memes for months at a time, we're both okay with it. i have shipping partners who i talk to most days, i have shipping partners who i send plotting walls to once every so often ( u know who u are lmao ), and i have shipping partners who i talk to about pretty much anything other than our actual ships that we write once in a blue moon lmaooo. but my point is it's all very chilled and laid back and that's how i approach everything when it comes to tumblr these days. if it takes 6+ months or 2+ years for two muses to kiss, that's all good with me! it makes the end result even more satisfying. i think for that reason, too, i prefer shipping partners who are willing to enter into that long-term commitment. if you are one of those people who will jump straight in with a ship and then move on within a few weeks to the next muse/ship, i don't think we'll mesh that well.

i will say though that usually once you pass that vibe check as a shipping partner, i am much more likely to immediately say yes if you suggest another ship to me lmao. if i know that i can ship one pairing with you, chances are i will ship all the things with you.

How far do steamy moments have to go before they’re considered NSFW?

anything that goes beyond the realms of foreplay/as soon as clothing starts to come off/when more intimate touching and kissing occurs, really. i honestly don't write smut all that often, but i will usually start to tag with a "nsfw ish" tag first to indicate that's where a thread is going before i tag something as nsfw.

Who are other muses you ship your muse with?

this varies depending on muse. i do have some characters that i have specific ships for ( though it's not something i tend to publicise on the dash ), while there are other characters that i don't even write for the purposes of shipping ( meaning that any shipping that occurs with them is either accidental or the result of extensive plotting or talking behind the scenes ).

Does one have to ask to ship with you?

yes, for the most part. i write many flirtatious characters who will shamelessly flirt with muses they come across but i never intend this to be an initiation of a ship ( and i'm sure others who write Those sorts of muses would agree ), so the best way is to simply ask me — especially if we've written them a little and you're getting that vibe. i will always endeavour to reach out to rp partners when i can feel a ship brewing or if i have an idea for one that i wish to pitch, and i encourage others to do that to me in return.

How often do you like to ship?

this is a hard question because it always depends what i'm in the mood for ? i enjoy ships, but they're not all i wish to write on tumblr dot com. i'm fortunate that with a multimuse full of all different flavours of muses, i can usually find something to satisfy that writing itch whenever it flares up lmao.

Are you multiship?

yes, in the sense that none of my active muses are really single-ship, and if i have caveats to shipping with them they're always noted on the muse's page. i don't like to limit myself to single-shipping unless the muse in question is a private one that i just write for one writing partner lmao. i also don't tend to ship with duplicates once i have found one that i click with — this is never something that i ask for anyone to reciprocate, it's just how my brain works.

Are you ship obsessed or ship more-or-less?

i'm really not ship obsessed at all lmao, hence why i consider myself pretty picky ( and the reason why i tend to have lots of different shippy dynamics ongoing is mainly because i ship multiple pairings with the same 6 or 7 people lmao ). you know what i am obsessed with though? platonic expressions of devotion. few things can truly hit me like a well developed friendship ( robin & steve from st ), or a platonic bond that transcends all attempts to define it ( neuvillette & furina ). i think tumblr sleeps on those sorts of dynamics soo much, and so when they do come along for me they end up being extra special.

What is your favorite ship in your current fandom?

honestly this may be a cop-out answer, but all of the ships that i currently have ongoing. i love them all in their own way, they all contribute something to my portrayals and to my blog and writing style and i appreciate everyone who writes a ship with me of any kind, even the platonic and familial ones.

Finally, how does one ship with you?

talk to me! i tend to prefer that our characters have interacted at least a little first, but i'm also not opposed to a pitch of two characters who you think might work well together! communication is key :')

Tagged by: @apocryphis & @delusionaid ( thank you!! ) Tagging: i've seen this go around my dash and therefore don't know who has or hasn't done this yet, so if you see this you are tagged! do the thing! tag me!!!

[geekalogian]

Please feel free to ignore this if it's too personal, but I was wondering if you have any advice for figuring out your sexuality while being demisexual? I've followed you since the ouat days and I relate to a lot of stuff you said when you came back to the blog. I've just felt like it's hard to figure out since it takes forever for me to develop crushes and get to a place where I even want to pursue a romantic relationship. I also grew up in a religious household/went to religious school so there's a whole extra layer of stuff to deal with there. Again, absolutely no pressure at all to answer, and I hope you have a great weekend!

I'm far from an expert on this, but I definitely know how difficult this stage of life can be. All I can really do is just tell you my experiences and hope something resonates! Like most people growing up in evangelical spaces, I just assumed that I was straight and cis. What else would I be? I fell in love and got married, and then dealt with the fallout of a waning emotional connection changing my relationship with sex entirely. I got crushes whenever I'd be connecting with somebody (GUY somebodies. With the ladies I'd just, y'know, be completely obsessed with their well-being and how shitty every guy was to them and how they deserved someone SO MUCH BETTER, not like I was saying me, obviously, I'm straight. . . .) and beat myself up internally for not being emotionally faithful to my spouse. When I came out as demi, my spouse definitely did not understand, but attempted to be supportive. I tried explaining my experience of demisexuality to him many a time, and he'd basically say "I get that that makes sense to you, but that's completely alien to me and I have no way to really relate to it." I didn't really hit a point where I understood myself until getting locked in my house for roughly three years for self-reflection (read: COVID and losing my ministry job, ending with me being a housewife for three full years). I had very intense crushes on roughly three of my friends at the same time, two of whom were women, and I was finally able to really understand those as crushes because I knew the guy one of them was dating and he was genuinely wonderful to her. So my concern over her well-being wasn't just "I wish she were dating somebody better," it was "I wish I was able to make her life better. Me, specifically. And maybe kiss her. a bit." I was able to trace that backwards through my life and reflect on other times I'd had similar feelings about women in my life, and recognize that I'm bi as hell. This was also the point in my life when I realized that I'm polyamorous, because I recognized that my desire for multiple romantic connections had very little to do with dissatisfaction in my current relationship, or a desire to move on (although that was coming--BELIEVE ME, THE WRITING WAS ON THE WALL I JUST COULDN'T READ YET), it was just my desire to share that kind of love with more than one person. Again, recognizing those things and doing a lot of research enabled me to reflect on the thread of continuity through my whole life, and just recognize what had already been there. That was also very much my discovery of being genderfluid, but that's a WHOLE OTHER STORY and this post is already bonkers long. So I guess my advice is this: Be reflective. Think about the ways you've felt close to people. Recognize that in some cases, crushes on differently-gendered people feel different from one another (some people don't have that experience, obviously, I think that tends to be a large distinction between bi and pan persons, but that's how it's been for me). Read blogs--I wouldn't know how hella gay I am without tumblr itself being a font of information in my mid-20s. Rely on trustworthy friends who know and understand you--I was fortunate to have a really great friend group that supported me (and lovingly bullied me) through my own coming-out process. When I came out as bi to them, a dear friend said "Ronnie, I'm gonna say some shit now....IS THIS NEWS??? I THOUGHT WE ALL KNEW AND YOU JUST MOSTLY HAD A PREFERENCE FOR DUDES. WHAT? YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE BI?????" It was pretty funny and great, tbh. I hope the very best for you, and that you get the time and resources to be authentically yourself. I am still very much a person of faith and I believe wholeheartedly that God loves the person they made you to be, as well as the you that exists now, and there is nothing to fear from learning more about yourself <3

[tears-of-amber]

Hi there! I just wondered if I could ask you a question about paganism. I have never been a religious person, but I have always been "spiritual", if that makes sense, and everything I've seen that you've posted/reblogged has intrigued me and made me want to look into paganism as a religion for myself. Do you have any book recs or website recs for someone like me? Who knows absolutely nothing about it but is definitely intrigued? :3 Thank you so much, have a great day! (Also, I'm really sorry if I got any terms wrong here dhjdsfsdhfg)

Hi there! Ok, so as far as paganism is concerned it really depends on what type of paganism you’re interested in :) so I’ll give you recommendations for the type I’m most familiar with (aka Norse paganism).

A great website for learning about Norse Paganism that has a lot of different prayers for the gods and ideas for offerings and devotional acts is linked right here:

Blogs you should definitely follow if you want lots of amazing takes on the Norse gods and goddesses are @notthesomefather and @broomsick as well as @freyjas-light . All these blogs are great because they aren’t run by white supremacists or assholes of that sort. Unfortunately that is something you will have to be wary of if you want to explore this type of paganism.

Books you should read! Ok, so ill recommend the best book to begin with (in my personal opinion) is the D’Aulaires Book Of Norse Myths. It’s beautifully illustrated and gives you a general retelling of the Norse myths. I like it cause it’s simple and approachable (more than diving straight into the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda which are the ultimate oldest sources we have fir the myths being told in full). But feel free to read the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda too! I also love the way Neil Gaiman writes about the gods and goddesses and their many stories in his book “Norse Mythology”! You can tell he really did his research.

As for getting started with Norse paganism, here is my MAIN tip. It can and will feel overwhelming so instead of starting off diving right into deity worship with a bunch of different gods and goddesses, acquaint yourself with their stories and really journal and contemplate which one you could learn the most from in your life. Which ones do you feel most interested in? Unlike most of tumblr and pagan places online, you do not need a god or goddess to reach out to you first. That rarely happens despite how many people claim it to occur. Hope this helps! Dm me if you want any other answers! -Velvet Rose

[vaicomcas]

On Bitterness

cw: very long and cringey self-reflection of an unrepentant, dean critical, spn critical bitter Cas fan. It's actually kind of funny how melodramatic I am.

I once read a post that said, if you hate the show so much, why are you on tumblr writing post after post about it, go away leave us who love it alone. Or, the very fact that you keep going on is the validation of how great the show is. Or, that's a miserable way to engage with media. Or, please only focus on what you like rather than what you hate and "make the fandom better ". Or, do you even know how to consume media, just ignore what you dislike. I see this type of post periodically. I follow few active blogs so I'm sure I only see a fraction of them.

Some of it seems fair enough. To say "I hate the show so much" is an oversimplification because I am obviously consumed by my love for Castiel, and the show created Castiel. Also a lot of the ideas/writing/visuals are brilliant (although quite a lot not so much--but of course, it's easy to criticize and hard to create something that went on for so long). Lots of amazing actors of course. The skills and quality are of course there. But does that validate the show? I say no.

I honestly hate a lot of the overall narrative and underlying values of the show. And I have come to hate the Winchesters, espeically Dean, because of the type of men they stand for--reflecting my own experience and bias, no doubt. Just like how anybody "consumes media": from their own perspective.

I am not looking for reassurance or validation. I don't accept it when I read that people like me are consuming or engaging with media wrong. I don't make any personal criticism of writers or producers (I try not to even know who they are most of the time, though it's impossible). I don't go out of my way to argue with or upset people I disagree with. I tag myself clearly and people can block me. I paid for my DVDs. Within these confines of what my conscience requires, I can consume media however I want. So what if what I share on tumblr is not "positive". I read rage-filled posts about Cas from 2, 4, 7 or more years ago from bitter Cas fans who came before me, and these posts are what I came to the internet for: they made me feel less alone. Yet, there are simply not enough of them. I post to let my own rage out, and to add to this particular voice so others like me can also find it and feel less alone.

I do ask myself all the time: why don't I just let the bitterness go for my own mental health? Like they say condescendingly, "it's a miserable way to engage with media". (what a loser you are is what this means.) They say to be bitter is like drinking poison in order to kill your enemy. I don't dispute that. Yeah it is miserable. Yeah it's truly not healthy. Yeah it infects my outlook in real life too. Can't I just focus on the positive like so many people seem to be able to do? Isn't there so much, so much positive about Castiel?

I can't. Being miserable is the only way for me to love Cas. Only in the first two seasons was he genuinely celebrated (to a degree and not nearly enough), followed by relentless reduction and sidelining of him. I should clarify: it's not his suffering and his pain in the plot per se that depresses and angers me. It's the slander, the subjugation, and the enslavement of his brilliance to serve the main characters who can't hold a candle to him. My kind of love for Castiel means that it would be an insult to not feel sad and outraged about him. There is not even a grain of "positivity" in that show that is uncontaminated with the injustice done to his character. As far as I am concerned, nobody on earth deserves to be happy because of what was done to Castiel, because it could never be undone. (this is hyperbole, of course. I don't actually want to make other people unhappy unless they want company in misery. That's why I put heavy warning on the bitterest of my posts.)

I'm aware of how melodramatic I am about a TV show character. I am aware all of it is written to elicit reactions, all of it is artifice, and I am picking and choosing what I love and hate about it. I am aware there are real social injustices that deserve my outrage a lot more. The thing is I have never cared about fictional characters. It is unfathomable why I chose this sickness of taking Castiel seriously, as real flesh and blood and grace and spirit being in a half-real half-fake universe. If I allow myself to be objective, if I allow myself to acknowledge that he is not real (rather, just the sum of a series of often inconsistent writing and production decisions by a large heterogeneous mixture of people) in order to get away from the misery, I would then also have no reason to care about him at all. And that's unacceptable, at least for now. I dread the day, possibly not far away now, when I will wake up from this dream.

Back to part of why I keep thinking and writing about the show when I am so bitter about it. Something occurred to me. The show didn't just create Castiel out of thin air. The show's underlying universe came from the wellspring of the Abrahamic religions and related lore and a lot of the characters/stories are taken directly from the bible. Yet, it made God and its world order, including heaven and angels, corrupt and evil and ultimately vanquished.

I am not criticizing the show about making God evil. But If the show gets to trash its source material, in fact subverting its source material being the cornerstone of the show, then why can't I?

I am "canon parallel".

[rabbitindisguise]

I think honestly the most frustrating thing is that there's no other truly free blogging website with as much cross-user interaction as tumblr (tumblr positive, if cranky, rant)

what I mean is when I tried to find a replacement tumblr, my options were cohost (close, but not the same, and not nearly as active), wordpress (completely divorced from any integrated community), boba boards (does not currently exist as far as I'm concerned because I can't get an account!), mastodon (more like twitter than anything else and and not nearly as user friendly as tumblr). Dreamwidth comes close but again, it's just not the same- you can't reblog and add additions and the image quality is very bad last I checked. Neocities gets real close but again, it's just not integrated enough.

And it's like, this is why there is no competition and that's why people just won't leave. This is literally the best fandom website, it's better than pinterest, it's better than youtube, it's better than any dedicated music platform/art platform/photography hosting website for people who want to do more than one thing at a time. It's basically the cellphone of social media. You can do music. You can do video. You can do embeds and uploads. You can interact with literally broken parts of the website (deleted users, posts, glitches, etc). You can curate moodboards. You can posts photos of your pets. You can live blog, you can embed links, you can add summaries and excerpts, customize the text with lists and colors. It's a lot less functionality in any one feature than other places, but other places require $$$ for a quarter of what tumblr does half functional. It works for photographers, musicians, authors, bloggers, artists, fans of anything, people interested in STEM and anything that uses hyperlinked citation, crafters and other people who sell/use/share digital products like patterns, coders, etc. Those groups exist everywhere on social media, but nowhere else can you independently host full length blog posts, high quality images, and videos with as many users as tumblr has. At least none that I'm aware of.

You can ~build a following~ on tumblr, but most importantly you can like . . . find stuff you like? Easily? Just find one mildly interesting blog and find out who they reblog from and who reblogs from them and you suddenly have access to thousands of people who share similar interests and are using the site regularly.

If they really sincerely want more users, pausing in place (and improving features like they had been) and pivoting the marketing strategy it might actually work. It's just a matter of where to put the ads and what kinds of things to say in them. "Premium" website services that charge 10, 20, 35 dollars a month for what tumblr does for free would be gutted by tumblrs new indie shop features. Squarespace, ghost or whatever it's called, ko-fi, linktree, medium, shopify, etc would all be chipped away at very easily, while the other big name social media websites wouldn't. "Small business? Want a sleek minimalist shop experience? Personalized updates? Tumblr might be for you!" Or "self pub author? join hundreds of authors online talking about their creative process and sharing updates on their work! No character limit!" Or "tired of complicated server management? hate fixing bugs and code? try tumblr." Like jesus it's just that they don't actually understand what's actually available because they don't seem to get why so many different people use it. They're trying to turn a swiss army knife into a spatula and wondering why people keep telling them it isn't going to work :/

i get the point of the polls informally showing that the vast majority of tumblr users have been here for years and barely anyone is new. the problem is that the suits don't look at that kind of data and go "ah, we understand. the majority of our users are oldheads who want things to stay the same. we misunderstood our audience." they absolutely have hard numbers on these things. they surely know most active users have been here forever. but they look at these stats and go "wow, our growth rate really IS shit. we're still relying on an ever-dwindling pool of users who have been here since they were teenagers in the early 2010s. we need to be working even harder to make this place appeal to new users"

the higher ups and investors on sites like this want infinite growth forever. this is why they keep changing the layout to make it look like other, more popular sites, even though we hate it. this is why they try out shit like tumblr live that doesn't appeal to the established core userbase in the slightest. it's not for us. it's also not for the ~5% of active users (if the poll going around is to be believed) who signed up within the last year. no, they're chasing after the hundreds of millions of people who use twitter and the BILLIONS of people who use tiktok, hoping to appeal to them and make tumblr more popular again

this is, of course, deeply stupid. nobody is leaving tiktok to hop on tumblr live. they already have tiktok. and we're on tumblr because we like tumblr, not because we want it to morph into something else. but i'm sure automattic's got venture capital investors breathing down their necks going "why isn't tumblr more like twitter or tiktok or facebook or instagram or" etc. etc., and so here we are

[cazort]

Now and then I see posts on Tumblr or other social media from people who are struggling to make rent or pay other basic, essential living expenses, asking for donations. Often the posts are being reblogged or shared by people I follow.

I feel ambivalent about these posts, and I feel this way even if I assume that the people are being 100% honest and not lying about their financial trouble or otherwise scamming people. And I often feel very uncomfortable with the way people talk about and circulate these posts.

I always care about the people in the posts, and want to help.

But I have this fear that the people are not actually making good decisions in the long-run, and that if I and others keep giving them cash, it's gonna encourage them to say in a bad situation that is draining their money, and that the money being sent to them isn't actually helping anything and is just reinforcing systems of exploitation. Some evidence I see for this is that a lot of people who ask for money in this way will do it repeatedly. I've seen some blogs where it's like, an old, established blog, but the person will post something like that every month over a period of several months, and it's like, is this a good thing that people keep giving you money? This is clearly not a one-time crisis, but rather, an ongoing situation that has become chronic.

And I start to ask questions:

If someone is renting from a bad, exploitative landlord, am I just funneling money into the hands of that landlord? Am I enabling or rewarding exploitation?

If someone lives in a high-cost-of-living metro area, am I just pumping money into the economy of a metro area where the rich soak up all of the money?

If the person has a large amount of high-interest-rate debt like credit card debt, am I just paying money to service their debt, basically giving my money to a bank? Or worse, to a payday loan company or other aggressive predatory lenders?

If the person has high expenditures on food and basic daily supplies because they live paycheck-to-paycheck and buy things in small unit prices, am I just paying money to become profits for exploitative businesses like dollar stores, that sell deceptively-priced items with small unit sizes to look cheaper than they actually are?

Am I really donating money to help you get by? Or has the system of exploitation just recruited you to exploit others? When I give money to you, I'm just being exploited by your landlord, your bank, and the businesses that have roped you into spending at them. They're now exploiting me, profiting from me.

And I wonder if others ask these questions. Sometimes it seems like no one else is really asking them. And I'm not talking about far-right types who just don't give a shit about the poor. I'm talking about the people who really care, the people who are reblogging these posts. People who are concerned about wealth inequality.

In these situations, if a person can't make ends meet, they need to take action in their own life. I can't solve their problems by giving them money. Maybe they need to find a place to live that is cheaper and has a better landlord. Maybe they need to move into a different city, town, or metro area with a lower cost-of-living. Maybe they need to restructure their debt, refinancing, consolidating, or negotiating it to cancel some of it. Maybe they need to get credit counseling (which is often available for free.) Maybe they need to find new stores to shop at. Maybe they need a financial cushion so that they can start buying items in larger quantities to get lower unit prices. I'm not saying every one of these options is available to all people. But I bet at least one option is available to most people, and probably two or more to many.

I love helping people and I am always more than willing to help advise people about this stuff. Also, after giving people advice about this stuff, I often become more willing to help people by either giving them money or loaning them money.

I also feel like the amount which I can help people through advice is massive. Like I'm well off but I'm not super well off. I just can't donate hundreds of dollars to every post I see, even if I knew the money would help, I just don't have that kind of money. But I've been able to give my friends advice in ways that has helped them to save and build thousands of dollars in wealth.

However I have found that an overwhelming majority of times, when I've reached out to people who ask for money, and asked if I can help them with financial advice, finding ways to improve their life and save money and build wealth, 99% of the time people aren't interested.

And like, I just can't donate to these people. And that reinforces that it would be a bad decision for me to donate to these people. I'm not really helping them, I'm just enabling them.

I'm not saying to blame the poor for being poor. But some of these people aren't even poor, they're just really bad money managers. Like I can't even count how many times I have seen people asking for amounts of money to pay rent, when the amount of rent they pay is higher than an amount I've ever paid. When I've gotten to know people well, I've realized that a huge amount of people who complain about being poor and not having enough to make ends meet, make more money than I do and some of them make more money than I ever have.

And this all makes me really uncomfortable. It's like, I want to help everyone, I care about everyone, but I refuse to subsidize people's bad habits and I especially refuse to subsidize the exploitation of others by predatory lenders, landlords, and unscrupulous businesses.

And so much of these donation posts seem to be feeding right into those systems of exploitation.

I wish people could both ask for money, and respond to those asking for money, with greater awareness of these things.

I also wish there was less emphasis on just funneling money into stuff and more emphasis in deeper, more sustainable ways of helping people. Stuff like helping people networking to find better, cheaper places to live, or better-paying jobs. I want more emphasis on financial literacy and frugality and how to shop effectively, how to manage relationships with banks and lenders, how to pay off debt, negotiate, consolidate, restructure debt. I want to see posts raising money to help people pay off high-interest-rate debt after they already carried off a clever consolidation of debt with the guidance of people like me. And I then want to come back to these people a few years later and help them open retirement accounts or save for down-payments on a home they can own.

I know this is a tough pill to swallow for some people but this is what I want and this is how I operate. This is who I am.

[spurnedadulthood]

hello, could you please set your queue to every 6 or 12 hours? to have it go off every hour is clogging my dash. not to be rude your message could be read in an unfavorable light the way you point out that only three muses connected with kensuke while you go and take your partners for granted. it was borderline passive aggressive if not downright guilt trip and it might not be your intention. i’m sure you are a wonderful person with many ideas if given the chance and it might be the wording in that post. i wish you the best of luck

First of all, I apologize for clogging your dash, but at the same time, you could always just unfollow if it bothered you that much? Like, due to the fact differing timezones is a thing, I wanted to ensure more people see my post so they can decide from there whether or not they want to unfollow/block me.

Second of all, I've been gone for a long while, so like I already said, everyone I was writing with either broke mutuals with me during my absence, became inactive, deactivated, or retired from the RPC entirely, so I don't know what you want me to say? Besides, I think you're overestimating how large my writing pool is, because not only is it rare for my threads to ever advance past two notes, it's not as though I had people clamoring to write with me; in fact, getting more interactions on here has often been akin to pulling teeth for the last two years and I'm not joking when I say the last notif I ever got was in February 2, so I have no idea what 'roleplay partners' I managed to take for granted, when really, it's the other way around.

I mean, you can say 'lack of activity doesn't reflect interest' all you want, but besides my own reblogs, my activity page literally shows two other notifs, and I can't even scroll down it... because nothing past it exists, and most of my followers I do have are inactive, because again, I have not been here.

Like, the whole reason I ended up vanishing from Kensuke's blog to begin with was because I was disheartened by how hardly anyone interacted with him and that has sadly been a reoccurring thing that happens again and again. Seriously, not only do the starters I write for people tend not to get replied to, I frequently get flaky muns essentially wasting my time and getting my hopes up for interactions... so when you consider how Kensuke is a character from a very niche series, how unwelcoming the RPC is towards characters from less than mainstream fandoms, and how dead tumblr RP has recently been, it's only natural for him to only have three bonds at best...

I mean, you might not like it, but it's the factual truth? And I'm not the type to really sugarcoat things, so as far as I'm concerned, actions speak louder than words; therefore, I don't really get the sense many are still interested in Kensuke as a muse. In fact, maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm genuinely confused on how it's guilt-tripping/passive-aggressiveness when I say that as a result of a lot of people moving on from tumblr roleplay (whether it's because they deactivated or retired from the RPC) and people I've been writing with understandably blocking me, Kensuke no longer has a lot of muses left that have a bond with him... so if people end up taking that the wrong way, then I don't know what to tell them, other than the fact I have legit been gone for a long time, so not many of my old roleplay partners are still around?

Either way, I do not appreciate the fact you didn't even bother to address this privately with me and forced me to unnecessarily post this on the dash where everyone could potentially see, so until further notice, I'm disabling the anonymous function... because I really would not prefer dragging this out longer than it has to be dragged out. I will, however, do as you request and space out my queue to post every 6 hours, but next time, please message me privately if you have any concerns.

[thefirstknife]

@ceo-of-sloppy-men Reblogging an 8 months year old post where a notorious harasser and asshole of the Destiny community is "calling me out for being toxic" without actually having anything to accuse me of is :/ . I'm replying to it because I got a notif when you reblogged since I'm the OP of that post (clearing that up to not get accused of stalking your blog or something).

I debunked spartanlocke's shitty claims in this post. Curious about how you got to this post, but not surprised you're reblogging something from 8 months ago that's riddled with lies and inaccuracies (given that you've started this drama by lying and refusing to simply take the L and the advice that my friend gave you in a fully transparent approach from his blog). Most of the receipts for Jem are in that post, but there's more and so many people can verify them. Most recently extremely egregious crap she has done is making a police brutality joke and posting it in the main tag. :/

In regards to your explanatory post, it could've been so good if not for the following:

I am very curious to find out whose job is to protect minors in online spaces from predators if not the job of the adults using that space. Protecting minors is literally a job for adults. You're saying that you don't want predators on your blog and that's great. The problem is that language like the above is telling them that your blog is a safe space for them. When you say "minors will look at it anyway and minors are interested in and know what sex is anyway" you're literally signalling to MAPs and predators that their behaviour is okay. And if any minor is following you, you're telling the minor that being predated on is okay. Even if you say "MAPs DNI." Standing by that we shouldn't "tiptoe around certain topics" and that "we can't stop minors from clicking anyway" is giving predators an excuse. I don't know how else to explain this to you.

It takes more than slapping a "DNI" on your blog to make sure gross people won't interact with you. It's an extremely harmful way of thinking, both for you and your followers, especially given that you've said you're under 21 which means you're still very young. Minors do all sorts of stupid shit and it's on adults to teach them how to do better and to protect them from adults that want to harm them. This is a genuine piece of advice from the bottom of my heart and from experience. This line of thinking can be and is exploited by gross people.

I've also seen your additional post since I got a notification for your reblog about deciding to use the nsfw tag from now on. Yes, I am happy and I am glad that you chose to do so. The "nsft" (not safe for tumblr) tag is not blocked on any devices, and I've also been told that "nsfw" tag is not blocked anymore either. I'd use "nsft" just to be safe from potential shadow-blocking, but I think "nsfw" is fine as well. It's up to you.

Not sure what that bit about "fake activism" was about given that you've reblogged a post from my friend with my addition about racist terms for Drifter. Which means that you're aware of how fandoms can be bigoted and bad. This isn't any different.

As far as I'm concerned, the drama is over. I believe you when you say you don't support this. I urge people to also believe you, though I can't demand that people change their minds about being uncomfortable. I don't care if you think I'm a bad annoying person, but I do genuinely care about making sure gross people don't think it's safe on your blog, for your safety. A "DNI" is not going to stop them. I 100% urge all of my followers and you and all of your followers to be careful online. Maybe it sounds like I'm an annoying parent, but gross people are extremely good at weaseling their way into spaces with most vulnerable people.

[yvesdot]

I'm going to be the five-year-old lone voice to the contrary and say... it's always this way! I hear a "does writeblr seem less active lately?" every few months. This as, of course, writeblr maintains its top 10 spot in Tumblr's Communities list year after year after year. So, why does writeblr so often feel dead?

If you're following, say, twenty writeblrs, and one does each of the following:

deletes their blog because writing was a phase they're out of

deletes their blog because they're merging the content with their main blog

goes on temporary hiatus

goes on permanent hiatus (especially accidentally)

changes their icon and URL such that you accidentally unfollow them

changes what they blog about such that you purposefully unfollow them

doesn't post often, because they only post original fiction

doesn't post often, because they're not as into writing

has a drastically different time zone from you

has the same time zone, but uses Tumblr completely differently

...you might see, on any given day, only ten writeblrs on your dash!

That's just the nature of writing. People can't drop original writing daily, and most people aren't obsessive about The Discoursethetic of Writing. It's a difficult hobby to really sit down and do consistently, let alone also dedicate an entire separate blog to. Most people do not get invested in blogging-about-writing on a daily basis permanently. It is far more common, in my experience, for a blog to eventually go on extended hiatus than it is for it to stick around. I maintain this blog consistently, but very few of the people who were around when I got here are still here in the same way. I am a professional writer-- meaning, I get paid to do it-- so Tumblr is my professional social media. I'm not surprised most people can't dedicate that much time to what is often a thankless, effortful, and time-consuming hobby. (It's also, as others said, mid-"Holiday Season" and post-NaNo and mid-COVID and etc.)

Tumblr has many fandom circles, though, and there's likely a group of active writers right next door to you whom you haven't met yet. I'd never seen you around before, but Tumblr delivered me this post on Explore: Hello! Nice to meet you! So, the good news is that this problem is easy to solve. I follow the #writeblr intro tag, tag writeblrs in my activity for tag games, participate in events, chat in the Welcome to Writeblr server, and try to be loud when I like something. You can also always make a new writeblr intro/promo post and openly state that your dash is dry. Right now the Twitter Exodus is lending us a lot of new blood! If you keep reaching out, you'll build a circle that can last even when some of the fringes fall off.

I also want to add that, since I've just spent thirty minutes typing this out and I'll undoubtedly link back to it when future people pose the same question, I love everyone who asks this. I love the concern and support shown for other writers. I love seeing people express care for those around them. I think it's incredible that you're asking in the first place, and I'm so glad to see the response you're getting. I hope you've found some new folks this way!

Does writeblr seem quieter lately for others? I’ve never been “popular,” so I’m used to notes being small, but even other writer mutuals I’ve barely seen get active.