#but whats the point of posting art on a blogging website if nobody.... is going to reblog it

[pillarsalt]

hi um

I was? transmasc but recently I’ve been seeing a lot of really misogynistic sexist transphobic stuff from trans community and it’s just been totally accepted, even by other transmascs. It’s been going on for a while but recently there was a murder of a nonbinary afab person and yet the whole trans community here has been silent, instead screaming about a transfem user being banned or something? This isn’t the first time an afab trans persons suffering has been dismissed, but now right after this awful death, i see transfems making posts about how transmascs talking about their oppression are terfs.

I didn’t want to think about it but all i could think about was that it was weird how despite everyone claiming trans men have all this privilege, trans women always come first…they get the most representation, they get the fame the admiration and the opportunities, their voices are always the loudest and their problems always always come first no matter what.

But despite popular belief trans men’s issues aren’t actually less significant, in some cases we suffer far more than trans women especially in regard to sexual violence. Yet we are silenced. We are frequently left poor, we are discriminated against for our sex we are discriminated against for being trans we are discriminated against for being perceived as lesbians. Yet we are made to be silent?

Why are our voices less important than trans women’s?

And all I could think about was that this is how females are treated in every other area.

I don’t know what else to say… I tried so hard not to reach that conclusion because I don’t want to be transmysogynist but I kept coming back to it and I couldn’t find an argument against it. This is how females are treated. This is what male privilege look like. And if trans women have male privilege, then why the fuck am I sitting here letting them talk over me?

I just feel really really angry. Your a blog who I liked your art but I blocked you when I discovered you were a radfem, but I sort of had you in the back of my mind for some reason and now I feel lost and confused, and I don’t think I want to be part of the trans community anymore.

Hey anon, firstly I really appreciate your willingness to have an open discussion with me. This must be weighing on you pretty heavily.

Secondly, holy shit, you're right. While the entire website is treating this user's ban as a national travesty, I haven't seen a single person talking about Nex's murder despite how much they claim to care about trans people. That's really fucking low, and this situation does very much encapsulate the state of misogyny within the trans community.

And you're right, this IS how females are treated in every other area. Throughout history, the suffering and injustice women face is minimized, laughed at, ignored, and when we want to talk about it, we're shut down and told we're making people uncomfortable and our pain isn't that bad. And here we are again, with a female person's death outweighed by a male person's inconvenience.

The denial of sex-based oppression that permeates trans spaces is a blatant lie that can only be held together if nobody is allowed to acknowledge it, and those who do are punished. If the trans community truly stood behind what they say, discussion would be encouraged! The foundation of their movement would be backed up with facts and replicable science! But instead, they'll call you a bigot for pointing out systems of oppression you can see with your own eyes. Because if you do, transwomen's position as Most Oppressed, and therefore the final authority on what's right and wrong, collapses. You are correct when you say that it seems like transwomen always come first; I don't remember who said it first, but just look at magazine covers featuring trans people -- the transwomen are fully clothed CEOs, athletes, movie stars, but transmen mostly get on magazine covers for... being pregnant and half naked. Misogyny is built into every society on earth, and individuals simply calling themselves something else doesn't change that. And when you give male people free reign to be as misogynistic as they want without consequence, they'll grab that opportunity and hold on like their lives depend on it. The way they weaponize transmen's sex against them is indistinguishable from what 'cis' men do to 'cis' women, but if you ever speak out about it, somehow YOU'RE the one hurting THEM. They do not want transmascs to find solidarity with other female people, because then they would have to face the reality of their own place in a patriarchal world, and face the fact that there are experiences exclusive to female people and that we have the right to speak about it. I mean you see shit like this and the motives become completely transparent:

I do find it funny how hard the trans community and their allies work to prevent anyone from hearing what radfems have to say in case they "corrupt" you with mere words. A lot of the time, it's simply listening to transwomen themselves that sparks the feeling of "something's not right here" in your brain. That's what happened with me too. I'll tell you that most of us also used to be proponents of trans activism, many formerly identifying as trans too. You are seeing through manipulation, and I know it's quite shocking to realize. Even when I first started having doubts about trans rhetoric, I thought "well everyone else agrees about this, so I need to shut up and be nice about it even if I don't agree." It's an unpleasant place to be in. The cognitive dissonance is exhausting though, and it becomes impossible to ignore.

The mistreatment of transmasc people in the trans community by transfems is brutal, and It's hard to watch from the outside because I just want to say "Hey, you know you don't have to take this shit, right?" And you really don't. You are not at all a bad person for recognizing the frankly absurd amount of misogyny in the trans community. Feeling lost and confused is shitty, but it's normal for this situation. The best thing you can do is keep observing, keep reading, form your own opinions, and never let anyone tell you to shut up. Above all, prioritize yourself and your mental wellbeing. If you need to remove yourself from gender-related spaces and discussion for a while, that's totally alright. Just know you're not evil or a bigot for not blindly agreeing with everything the trans community has told you. Your opinions and experiences are worthwhile too.

[transformers-earthspark]

Apologies for my recent radio silence. I've had a lot on my mind lately.

This post isn't Earthspark-related at all, but please read it.

I need to take a second on this blog to acknowledge some things going on in the world. I should not have stayed silent on this blog before, but I'm trying to fix that now.

Genocide in Palestine + how you can help Palestinians

You can buy e-sims for people in Gaza here. Anything helps.

Click here daily to help generate funds for Palestine. It's free and takes less than a minute.

Here's a list of where you can donate to help Palestine.

(If there's anything I should add to this section, please let me know.)

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The KOSA bill, what it's going to do if passed, and how you can help prevent it from taking effect

KOSA will essentially erase anonymity from the internet by requiring people to upload their government ID or other form of identification to any social media site, as well as restricting resources and information on LGBT rights, history, racism, and more. This bill will censor the entire internet and destroy privacy while violating First Amendment rights and potentially putting minors in danger.

This also could very well mean the end of Tumblr, and I'm not exaggerating here.

Tomorrow KOSA could be passed in Senate, and from there it will need to pass in the House of Representatives before being signed into law by the president. It's not doomsday yet, but it is a dangerous situation-- and here's what you can do.

StopKOSA.org provides you with a template email to send to your representatives. You can leave it how it is or edit it to say what you want, and then send it from their website.

The website also allows you to call your representatives and gives you a template of what to say.

BadInternetBills.org, run by the same people, takes action against KOSA as well as other bills like EARN IT. At the time of posting this, over 356,000 people have signed this petition.

Additionally there are several petitions on change.org to help stop KOSA. Here are a few of them.

STOP KOSA

STOP THE KOSA

Stop Kosa

Save Humanity, Oppose KOSA

STOP THE KOSA ACT

(Again, please let me know if there's anything I should add.)

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One last thing-- The evolution of AI images and video.

I don't really have anything good to say. AI is evolving fast and changing the world as we know it. We are adapting, but nobody knows how this really is going to end up.

A few quick points:

AI images are not art. That's all. AI "artists" who genuinely claim to have made something of their own just by typing a prompt into a generator will be blocked. (Which has been in my rules for a while, but I still think it needs to be said.)

I recommend Glaze for artists who don't want their art being scraped and used for data training. Especially with the recent rumors of an upcoming deal between Tumblr and Midjourney. There's also a similar program called Nightshade (haha, earthspark reference? anyone?🦉) that I haven't tested myself but have heard good things about.

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That's all, I suppose. Reblogs are good, if you don't mind.

Spread the word about KOSA. Contact your representatives. Sign the petitions.

Support Palestine if possible. Donate if you can. If you are unable to donate, make sure to do your daily clicks.

Stay safe and take care of yourselves. ❤️

[blubushie]

https://www.tumblr.com/blubushie/761610902932979712/idk-if-this-is-just-my-experience-but-i-noticed?source=share

my two cents on the "problematic" content thing is that tf2 is one of those media where you can lean into both feel good shit and darker topics simultaneously.

a recipe for a good tf2 fic is over the top gore and ridoculously stupid humourous scenes.

but also, If you're upset about people posting blood and a lil' guts, you picked the wrong fandom. that said, writers should of course use their best judgement and tag things appropriately. yk if someone comes in complaining about blood, there's a notice that says "you might see some shit"

and I don't play anti/pro ship games because the definitions of such things are fucking convoluted and meant to incite riots at this point, I do believe... I guess it sounds ridiculous to say it but I have seen people complain about "the mercenaries would never..." in the past. and it's always left me scratching my head.

and like this is tf2 we are talking about, people are going to die, horribly, which includes our main protagonists. there will be violence, fire, and swearing.

but also, If you're upset about people posting blood and a lil' guts, you picked the wrong fandom.

There's a reason I don't tag for blood on this blog and that's why lmao. I'll tag for gore gore (it's #haemocyanin btw—think viscera and guts and body horror) but I won't tag for blood.

I have seen people complain about "the mercenaries would never..." in the past. and it's always left me scratching my head.

This as well. IIRC at one point someone (either Hale, the Admin, or Miss Pauling, can't recall who) outright states that a few of the mercs are sex offenders. And this can be anything from "got slapped with an indecent exposure charge for pissing in public on a wall while drunk and had to register" to "outright assaulted someone" and we don't know what it is or who it is. And I'd personally rather my mercs not be violent sex offenders, but we also don't know, and I'm not gonna shit on someone or harrass them for exploring that bit of lore and what the circumstances might've been behind it.

It's very ironic to me that the "oh we're all freaks" website draws their line at, like... petplay or something and you can't go any freak beyond that. Now, it can certainly be argued that certain acts aren't in character for certain characters, but people as a whole are also highly nuanced. Someone can frequent a prostitue and then go home to their happy wife and happy little family. An alcoholic sociopath with anger issues can hold down a stable job and be a good friend and a good person—is that also out of character? People are confusing, extremely self-contradicting creatures, and it's fun to get into their heads. We've all got skeletons in our closet. We've all got something problematic about us, or our pasts. No one's hands are really clean—there's always dirt somewhere, it's just a matter of finding it. Stones in glass houses. I think harrassing someone for the fiction they create is bullshit, personally, even if I do find it morally reprehensible and disgusting in my own eyes. Depiction doesn't equal endorsement.

And people are allowed to not want to interact with people who depict or engage with certain things! God knows I have a few of my own that I wouldn't want to interact with. I just don't reckon nobody should be harrassed for it. I don't reckon real people should be harmed over fiction. I can recall a few groups to recent memory who ordered certain works destroyed, who demanded certain things not be talked about or written about or art done of them, and none of them were the good guys.

[baejax-the-great]

ao3 exists, plus it doesnt even matter what terms i search for on tumblr 100% of the time theres fanfiction. literally you can search any words on this website and some kpop guy/ reader fanfics flood the results every single fucking time. plus some of us are not here for fandoms??? your circus/clown analogy is stupid

So I'm incredibly allergic to shrimp-- to the point where if I ate a single shrimp I would die, to the point where I don't really consider shrimp food anymore--and it's the weirdest thing, yesterday i went to Target to buy hair conditioner, and they were selling shrimp. Don't they know it wasn't what I was looking for and I can't eat it anyway? Why would they do this? Totally fucked up of those shrimp catchers to try to poison me like that.

But analogies clearly aren't your thing, so let me break this down for you.

AO3 does indeed exist, but your suggestion that fanfic live there and ONLY there is akin to saying that imgur exists, so nobody should be posting images, whether they be photos or art, on any other website. Twitter exists (sort of), so really nobody should be posting shit posts or hot takes that are fewer than 140 characters or whatever.

Not everyone uses AO3. There is no law saying that if you write fanfic, you must post it on AO3 and nowhere else. There will never be a law that says that, because that's not how the internet works. Tumblr, one of the few social media sites that allows longform blogging, is in fact a great alternative to AO3 for one-shots. It's a little trickier for multi-chapter posts, but I've seen people make it work.

AO3 is not social media. People can't DM there, send asks, make friends, bump their post to the top of the feed (unless they are an asshole who is about to get blocked by half of fandom for pulling that move). Do you like social media? I mean you're here, on tumblr, bothering a total stranger, so you must see some value to it. Guess what--fanfic authors also enjoy being on social media and sharing what they've been up to, including their WIPs.

Things you aren't looking for being part of your searches is literally just life on the internet at all times forever. Earlier this month I was looking for a reference of draped fabric for drawing purposes. I googled 'chiton drawing' (chitons like the ancient Greeks used to wear), and all I got were drawings of molluscs of the genus 'chiton.' Alright, I did a google search for "toga drawing" and learned that there is an anime girl named Toga and people very much enjoy drawing her. Were the artists of the molluscs or the anime girl to blame for me having to slog through a bunch of irrelevant pictures to find one that could help me with my drawing? No. They correctly labeled what they were doing. That's just life.

Seeing fanfic in the tag doesn't harm you. At all. It doesn't matter if you find it cringe, or it's a ship you don't like, or it's xReader. For like ten seconds you looked at words you didn't particularly like, and then you moved on. How is that different from literally any other post on tumblr? I see bad takes and essays I don't care about on this site all the time. It's called scrolling. Again, this will be the case for every website on the internet forever. Are you telling me you read every tweet in your feed? Every reddit post? Sometimes you see irrelevant stuff. I guarantee some of my mutuals have already deemed this long ass post irrelevant and are scrolling on by. What makes fiction that much more abhorrent to you than the rest of the nonsense?

If you really hate seeing fanfic, tumblr has content blocking and tag blocking. You can block the phrase "x Reader." You can block the tag "fanfic." You can block all sorts of things, and if that doesn't work, you can just block the writers whose existence annoys you.

Sorry man, you personally not liking fandom and not using tumblr for it has really no bearing on what everyone else is doing. Like it or not, tumblr is a hub of fandom, and fanfic authors are going to be a part of every fandom on this green earth. Just because you came to the circus in order to admire the pretty fabric used on the tents doesn't mean the performers are in the wrong for doing their thing.

[crystalkleure]

I'm gonna be real for a minute, I should probably spit out the reason I've had such a hard time posting or interacting here for awhile.

I have DID. I made this blog before I knew I had DID, most of the people following me clicked that button before anyone knew I had DID, and the general public doesn't really know what DID is, much less that it's not anything like the "multiple personality disorder" in the movies.

My system has a huge number of introjects in it. I, me, the alter writing this right now, am an introject. This is actually pretty normal, especially for someone like me, because the nature of my abuse has meant that I have spent most of my life extremely isolated [very against my will], with far more exposure to media like TV shows and games than to real people. You know how the people in your dreams have the faces of real people you've seen at some point, because your brain isn't good at coming up with brand new faces on its own? It's a little like that. For the DID brain to incorporate a trait into an alter, it has to be aware that that trait can even exist, which means it has witnessed it somewhere before, and the deeper human subconscious is not super great at just instinctually telling the difference between a real person and a fabricated depiction of a person, so the DID can snatch traits it has witnessed in both real people and fake people all the same.

Sometimes the DID sees a lot of traits it registers as desirable, useful to survival somehow, etc., all in just one source, be it a real person or a depiction of a person. [Or it sees just ONE trait that it latches onto really hard, and splits an alter just to embody that specific trait it perceives as so important.] And so the system can end up splitting an alter that is nearly identical to the way they have perceived that singular source, meaning that alter can resemble that source person or character extremely closely. This is all done subconsciously and involuntarily, the system has zero control over it, alters have zero control over what they are made out of. An introject does not get to choose their source.

...And on a website full of fandom shit, if you post art you have drawn of yourself, an introject alter, people are going to think that art is depicting your source person/character. And if you say "Actually that's just me," they think you are a roleplayer. Because people don't know what DID is. Even if you say "I have DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder" they can just assume that's some kind of roleplayer lingo, or something irrelevant to the Obvious Roleplay that is happening, or some kind of condition the roleplayer is just choosing to write their played character to have, and won't bother to look it up.

And this causes some extremely unpleasant problems!

People squee-ing over you and talking about wanting to kiss or touch you or ship you with some character [or themself]

People trying to roleplay with you. Usually flirtatiously.

Oh this is a fun one. People thinking you are a roleplayer, and if your source is a character who is under 18 but YOU are an adult [I'm fucking 25 years old, for example, and I will act like it], they will call you a pedophile for "aging up" the character just to roleplay adult things with them. Even if you aren't doing anything sexual, the mere fact that you are being perceived as "aging up" a character will get you side-eyed, because people still think you're being dirty with the character and they figure they just haven't caught you at it.

This one just sucks and is nobody's fault. People who are fans of an introject's source may feel uncomfortable when interacting with that introject, because they worry all the fan shit on their blog will be taken personally by the alter and gross them out. Which, while that's not ever an issue with my system tmk, can kind of happen sometimes with some systems' introjects; even if an introject alter logically knows they aren't their source, they might have difficulties viscerally believing that on a deeper level, and either way it can still cause discomfort when you bump into depictions of someone who looks just like you doing things you would never want to do.

People understanding that you aren't roleplaying yet they still get way too excited and obsessive over you anyway, because they view you as "omg my favourite character...but REAL!!!1!" [Which is both incorrect, and VERY uncomfortable for the introject alter. I am not my source, I have never been my source, I am an entirely different person who happens to resemble my source. Don't try to get close to me based purely on the belief that I am somebody I am not, actually get to know me before you decide whether or not you like me.]

People screenshotting you and putting you on r/fakedisordercringe for everyone to mock and harass, because they don't understand how dissociative disorders actually work and think legitimate shit about them is too weird to possibly be real

People fakeclaiming you in general because "there's no way that's real, real things are not this bizarre" and/or "Yeaahhhh I think you're just schizophrenic/borderline/etc., nevermind that I am not a qualified medical professional, and if I AM, nevermind that you aren't my patient and I don't know enough about you based on your social media presence to actually be able to accurately diagnose you with anything, much less dismiss a diagnosis as insanely complex and covert as DID"

People generally treating you like a weird bug on the sidewalk that a group of middle school kids are taking turns poking with a stick. I don't mind answering respectful questions about dissociative disorders, but shit like "wtf why would you do that, I think that's weird and I am assuming it's intentional and it makes me uncomfy" and "Have you ever tried just Not being crazy?" are not respectful questions.

TL;DR introject alters in fandom spaces get sexually harassed, called pedophiles, and told they're doing something wrong and being inconsiderate for existing [which, again, existing the way they do was not their choice] because "you're weird and that makes me uncomfy :( Can't you just Not?? SURELY you can just Not. Be normal."

Shit sucks. I'm sick of my system getting weird and mean messages every time any of us are open about existing.

[steadfast-unmoving]

the violent threat of erasing someone's existence because they said something you don't agree with is a big reason i care so much about educating and expanding the DIY web. i think it is a vital tool against censorship and wreckerism to own as much as possible of, understand as much as possible of, your own infrastructure to connect with the internet.

over the last few years i've watched as tumblr started to move from (this is a niche use case but bear with) something i could in good faith recommend as a free and easy-to-set-up basis for an art portfolio site to something which is (ugh god i'm going to say it) actively going through Enshittification™️ and employs more and more coercive tactics to remove and paywall any meaningful sense of ownership or expansive/extensible-ness over users' individual blogs

it used to be by default when you shared a link to a post it would go to username.tumblr.com/postid and now it goes to tumblr.com/username/postid which means if you don't manually edit the link to the original formation, it forces whoever clicks on the link to make an account to view what you've shared (user capture)

it used to be free to connect a custom domain to a tumblr blog (which is a vital defense against censorship which means you can migrate to a new service/host without losing "brand recognition" with no economic penalty) and now you have to pay monthly and they want you to buy domains directly from them (i'm not sure if it's actually possible to connect a domain tumblr doesn't own to a blog now – this is the Only reason that when i converted this from a project portfolio to a personal blog that i did not set up that project on a different tumblr account and instead now have a tumblr version and a portfolio site which i self-host – i can't use tumblr as the portfolio because i can't connect the URL for free/at all)

the popups and aggressive prompts to make an account when viewing someone's blog at username.tumblr.com have become so severe that where i can i implement custom CSS to suppress them

when you DO make an account the popups prompting you to pay for ad-free browsing are again, increasingly aggressive

this all points to a pattern where tumblr doesn't see itself as a service, it sees itself as a business which needs to make profit from its users (which makes sense, it's a private company and it's following the same pattern as every other site which is free to use – draw people in with a slick user experience and no downsides, run out of VC money or whatever, start to Need To Make A Profit, make the platform ever more extractive to the point where nobody likes using it but nobody sees anywhere else to go – literally the definition of enshittification)

this is a large selling point for federated social media for me. moving your account but retaining your 'social graph' is a Feature of federated social networking. you can migrate to a new server if your admin makes a decision you don't like without losing ~most of your social connections, you can also choose to set up on a server which has moderation policies in line with what you want to post. you can also set up your own dang server and literally be your own mod/admin if you have a bit of spare cash and technical knowledge (warning: this can get expensive). this is also why i advocate for everyone to own a domain and run their own site, as independently as possible from corporate infrastructure, as if someone has your website bookmarked and your host blacklists you, you can just upload your website somewhere else and point your domain there instead

i would suggest everyone who cares about their tumblr account* export a backup of that data as soon as they can – tumblr provides a feature to do this which retains your media and a record of your social connections. i think it also provides some of it in .html form which you could upload to any web server if you wanted to. i would also suggest everyone owns a domain for a personal homepage, and maybe makes a 'home' online somewhere that's not here – my domain registrar of choice is namecheap and i pay about $15/yr for my main domain. you can get free web hosting in a bunch of places – github pages springs to mind, codeberg also offer this if you don't want it to be owned by microsoft. i think netlify still has a free version. there are options! owning a domain means you're free to move between these options without anyone really noticing anything different. i highly, highly recommend it for anyone who likes blogging freely without living in fear of being censored.

*in the current context i am mostly talking to trans women here but i think this advice applies to anyone, nobody is not at risk of being banhammered for basically nothing, these things tend to escalate in severity over time

anyway i love trans women and i am so angry about the decisions unfolding here but it's also totally Precedented and Typical for corporate owned online infrastructure and there are things you can do to insulate your social connections and retain backups of the things you make here. ultimately posting here creates value for the corporate platform owners and there are ways to blog which don't do that!

[molluskzone]

i wish the people making whiny posts demanding reblogs from people just admitted to themselves that no, its not about "reach," its about Big Number Feels Good. because if you allowed yourself to confront the fact that you ARE a number chaser then youd have a much better chance at fixing it. and you HAVE to fix it if you want your art output to remain sustainable. numbers will NOT make you satisfied never ever especially not on modern social media. and no its not "just big accounts who dont get it" who know this: the MOST followers ive had on ANY art account of mine since 2014 is 600. and i got maybe 40 likes per post and a handful of comments. thats the best i did in 10 years online and i reached that point in like 2016. haven't gotten near that level of "popularity" since that year because the game changed and i was unwilling to change what *I* wanted to do to please an algorithm.

i understand WANTING people to care about your art. i think itd be weird if someone DIDNT want people to care (at least, out of the people posting their art publicly). but lashing out at the audience not only will NOT get you what you want but it also reflects REALLY badly on you and just makes you sound annoying, mean, and bitter. i honestly hate this and this is the main reason i block people, i have unfollowed people for even just reblogging particularly nasty posts because it rubs me the wrong way SO bad

"people dont reblog because theyre all new users who are too stupid to use the site! you NEED to reblog its just how the site works if you dont like it dont come here" its not up to you to decide what people do on their OWN blogs. people have been complaining about this since at least 2015, and honestly likely before that too (thats just the first time i remember seeing it firsthand). its NOT the "fault" of new users. if people arent reblogging your work... ITS BECAUSE THEY DO NOT WANT IT ON THEIR BLOG. this is not a crime. some people just dont reblog everything they see: and if people DID truly reblog every post they saw (which by these posters logic they SHOULD be doing if they Really care about creators), their accounts would be so cluttered the "reach" wouldn't matter anyways. if they have a blog centered around their OWN work, their followers might bail if all they do is reblog random peoples work they didn't agree to see. THIS IS A VALID AND NORMAL WAY TO USE THIS SITE. i've also seen people suggest making a "reblog dumping blog" so you can give number-crazed artists their precious internet points without reblogging something to your main that you don't want to. this is a genuinely stupid suggestion. again, if the point of reblogs is "for reach," then WHAT purpose would a dumping blog have. nobody is going to follow the dumping blog of the average tumblr user. it wouldn't "reach" ANYbody but the op. not only is this pointless but its also STILL trying to control the actions of random internet users who are causing no harm and just trying to use the website as they please: this is ridiculous and entitled behavior.

"its an INSULT to like a post and not reblog it. youre basically telling the artist their work is shit to their face!" / "likes are useless!" honestly i do not have any sympathy for people who say shit like this because it's just so fucking number-greedy i dont even know what to say. like i said before, there are many reasons a person might not reblog something. its entitled as HELL to demand people do with their blogs what YOU want them to. but to say that likes are useless, or worse than useless? absolutely ridiculous. god forbid people want to express appreciation of a piece even if they dont want to reblog it. i would personally MUCH rather get 20 likes and 0 reblogs on a piece than 0 likes and 0 reblogs. again, targeting and being rude to people trying to express appreciation for your work in simple ways because YOU have a problem with being focused on numbers and because YOU are *choosing* to take it personally is inexcusable

"if you like but dont reblog i will block you! you dont care about artists" perhaps the reason you dont get "enough" attention on your posts is because you are alienating any potential audience by trying to control their use of SITE-WIDE functions. the like button is part of tumblr, it is so weird to me to block people who use it. if you want to block people that is your business but i genuinely dont understand why youre blocking potential followers and people who enjoy your art enough to WANT to click the like button if your goal is to grow your account. you don't have a right to complain about lack of attention if you do this is all i'm saying

"im leaving the site because YOU didnt reblog my work enough! im QUITTING ART FOREVER because nobody reblogged it so if youre reading this its YOUR fault! if artists leave the site its YOUR fault. if you dont reblog work THINK about what youve done. artists are quitting and its ALL YOUR FAULT" this is immature guilt tripping and it boggles my mind that grown adults will make posts like these. i have seen many! if you quit art because you didnt get enough reblogs, that's your own problem. it's probably for the best because focusing on numbers so much that your entire motivation for creating is based around numbers is unhealthy and unsustainable anyways. ill give you a fun fact: the numbers will NEVER be enough if that's all youre focusing on. and even if you get to your "goal", it will NOT be forever. the internet isn't even forever and your social media site could be shut down at any time. you need to find other motivations. and again, this is ANOTHER example of alienating your potential audience: if you care about growth, stop trying to manipulate your audience! stop blaming your audience for your personal problems! if you want to quit, just quit. it's not your audience's fault.

basically: no it's not "reach" or "mutual artist support" you just want numbers. numbers feel good so you want them! admit this. there is no other reason you would feel THIS agitated and aggressive over reblogs. and i have seen some REALLY nasty posts before. it's an unhealthy mindset that it would do you good to unlearn. and honestly: im going to call you a hypocrite if you make ANY posts like this. because there is NO WAY that you as an artist are reblogging every piece of art you see. there is just no way. youre reblogging art that you like enough to share with others. and that is simply not every art piece you see. if you understand this for yourself, then you NEED to accept that this is the case for others: people are not reblogging your work because they do not want to. we all know what the reblog button does. we can all figure out that clicking reblog shares the post with all of your followers and gives the post more chances to be seen and reblogged again and again. WE KNOW. if people arent reblogging your work then they just don't want to. accept it! you need to deal with the fact that not everybody likes your art! work on yourself instead of demanding that others cater to your ego.

there is no problem with asking for reblogs. there is no problem with wanting to grow your account. there is no problem in letting people know why reblogs help artists. there is no problem in encouraging people to comment on or like your work. there IS a problem with being rude and entitled about it though

and for artists whos jobs rely on internet attention: you still don't have a pass to behave this way sorryyy... i understand being numbers-focused if you rely on commission work or ad work. but lashing out at others is STILL never okay even if your income relies on it. if you cannot game the algorithm, that is NOT your audience's fault. you have to learn to play the system if you want to make posting online your job, and if you CANT do this (like so many cant), it is not fair to blame it on the people supporting you for "not doing enough". it is nobody's obligation to make your living for you! if you cant convince people to reblog your work and spread your work based off of the content of your posts, that's a YOU problem. people share what they want to see: if your income relies on shares. make what people want to see. and even then it might not work because of how social media algorithms work. this is the risk you take being an online artists and its NEVER your followers fault for not doing enough.

anyways if u like my work i <3 you if you reblog my work i <3 you i never expect notes on my art so any attention i get is much appreciated and i treasure every compliment i get SO much that i screenshot them all and put them in a google folder so i can look at them forever and ever <3

[trans-xianxian]

crazy to me when people are like "wanting people to reblog your art is a toxic trait" like girl what are you talking about this is a blogging website......

[batslime]

God I finally deleted my main Twitter account and I wish I could do that with Tumblr but it would kill my art blog too 💀💀💀 I would hate to have to completely replicate it on a different account but I may end up doing it lmao

[mask131]

You know, it is quite cool and nice for people to take interesting in minor gods and obscure figures of Greek mythology... but sometimes, when I look at Youtube videos, blog posts, and other websites here and there, I realize things are blown WAY OUT of proportions and some names are given too much importance for what they are.

For example: the allegories. A lot of sources for Greek mythology are poems, hymns and other fables. As a result allegories and personifications are quite common - it is a typical poetic and artistic thing. And yes some allegories do have a STRONG mythological presence, enough to be called gods (case in point Eris, who had no cult, no worship, no religion,  who was clearly an allegory due to her very name being the word for “strife”, yet had such a key role in legends it is impossible to ignore her). But others are just that: allegories. Nobody prayed or made sacrifices to them, nobody depicted them in Ancient Greek art, and they only appear in one or two texts, because they’re just... allegories. If people in the future discover a text written in our days saying “Life is cruel” and start saying “Life was a deity of the ancient American pantheon who was renowned for its cruelty”... No. It is just a turn of phrase. Of course I am exaggerating a bit the comparison, but you see where I’m going.

Same thing with the Titans. I am not speaking about the gods-considered-titans  like Helios, Themis or Hecate, but of the rest. It is true that some of them clearly have a mythological background behind them (notably Hyperion, who clearly has a background strong enough for us to paint a picture of him, despite not being an actual god of the Ancient Greek religion) ; but others titans are treated by people nowadays as if they were of the same importance as the actual gods, when in truth a lot of them are just characters mentioned once in an epic story (often just as a name-drop to tie up genealogies) and never reappear anyhere again ; similarly a lot of people say “he was the titan of X” or “she was the titan of X”. True for a part of the titans, yes, due to them being personifictions of various things - but a lot of the “attributes” given to other titans are actually just stretched-out theory based on a possible interpretation of their name or a symbolism found in their children. Again, what we understand today by “titans” is a mix of actual well-known figures considered gods, and literary figures very obscure that probably only existed in the literary texts they came from. And a lot of the “interpretation” of these titans just seem random or, for me, comes out of nowhere - yet due to being popular they are considered as “facts” when they are not.

For example: the idea that four of the Titan brothers  actually were in charge or related to the four corners of the world. A nice idea I discovered with the Rick Riordan series, very cool. But in actual Greek mythology? Where is there a proof or a hint of this? I could not find any Ancient Greek text or any Ancient Greek art or anything really that actually hints, suggests, or prove that. I know it is written in the “analysis” section of the Theoi.com website, which is a good reference when it comes to finding Greek facts online - yet this “analysis” is not backed up by anything if you look at the rest of the page, and seems to come quite randomly. The whole symbolism of “celestial gods and entities thrown out down in the Tartarus and becoming chthonic ones”, I get it, makes sense. But where does the cardinal directions enter in this whole thing? I am just puzzled

[fayrinferno]

Tagging is exhausting and so is Tumblr, yet I’m still here (and why)

So despite all the crap that has been going on now with Post+ and tumblr trying us again (they won’t stop until there’s noone left but the pornblogs, I guess), I still browse here, enjoy my parts of the community, and like a ton of posts... but very rarely get around actually posting... and when I do, I put like 100 reblogs in the queue, trying to tag stuff, which, ngl, exhausts me. I think I might change that habit I had ever since joining tumblr in... 2013, I think? Crazy.

So unless I have something to say, I’ll just try to hit reblog/queue instead of like. Without tags. I might add them later via the mass post editor. Might not. That’s the only way I can currently ensure some sort of regular activity and presence here, while being super busy and save the actual free time I have for something more creative/productive.

I’d like to stay in touch because I have not yet switched to other platforms as many did and if I was supposed to do my own original posts only, well, it would just be an occasional tumbleweed rolling around the desert. And I mean, once in two months occasional. Nobody cares about that. Well, nobody might care about this either, but felt like saying something to explain the change. This won’t concern my other blogs (that are neglected again, I’m aware), I’ll just try a little experiment here.

So why even continue trying with this hellsite? Well, I could start a twitter account, but tbh, I don’t see it as an alternative for my content and, at this point, I only see my own website as one. I want to continue with the fandom translation, writing, and art as well, and I don’t see myself posting that on twitter, I really don’t. This site had the perfect potential for fandom (plus fandom porn, let’s be honest... regular porn, too, but that’s beside the point). But it never continued to improve and develop as such. Instead, it just puts on parts of shitty supermarket costumes it can afford to try and impersonate some more successful and trendier websites that have long perfected them because, hello, they specialized on them and invested much more effort and resources than tumblr ever could.

Over the years, they tried to add parts of whatever social media site/app was in at the time (now it’s patreon I guess), but they couldn’t embrace what it really is, which is a fandom hellhole full of people nostalgic for livejournal or myspace. I’m not here to become an influencer or to make extra 5 bucks; I’m here because I have a handful of friends and mutuals here that I, huge surprise, don’t want to put behind paywall; because I can still html-edit my profile and pretend it’s a website and still fill my dash with such content as I like instead of being constantly monetized by consuming monetized vomit and weird psyop content attacking me from all sides in what is supposed to be my free time.

Anyway, tl;dr, less tags and more posts from now on.

[choccy-zefirka]

Oooof just had a bit of a reminder of my very first... surreal experience in fandom, and I just want to talk a bit about it to let it go completely.

Many, many years ago, when I was still a fresh-faced mageling learning how to (clumsily) do digital art, I decided to draw a certain videogame character I liked (hereinafter referred to as Character) when they were younger. Now, in-game, Character wears their hair in a certain recognizable way, but I decided that they did not always have the same hairstyle, and drew their younger version a bit differently.

A certain while later, I got a DM from a fairly big-name fan (and a much, much better artist) asking me to provide them with credit. I was very confused, but eventually, it turned out that the said artist had redesigned Character (albeit as an adult) with a hairstyle similar to what I slapped onto their teen!self (but obviously more sleek and masterfully rendered).

I honestly don't remember how I responded exactly, because I was very nervous and the artist intimidated me with their sheer standing in fandom (they had previously only interacted with me a couple of times, and that was only to point out that some of the aspects of my art/stories were inconsistent with game lore, to which other users eagerly thanked them for 'putting me in my place'). But I think I pointed out that it was a coincidence and I had had a similar idea independently from them. They were insulted, and insisted they had documented proof that the idea was theirs.

Then, other people started coming into my DMs/onto my profile. Telling me to get out of the fandom/off the Internet. Calling me a thief. Some friends of mine who were also on Tumblr (all of this was going down on another website, and I did not even know what Tumblr was back then) told me the artist was vagueblogging about me and how I stole their idea. I also remember someone with a username along the lines of i-collect-callout-posts telling me, 'People are mocking you on their [presumably Tumblr] blogs. For the love of god, just stop making your god-awful art' etc. etc. I don't know if it was related, but at the time I assumed it was.

This was the first time something of this scale happened to me, a modest little nobody beginner artist. I was absolutely mortified. I clearly remember having what I suppose may be described as a panic attack (shortness of breath, feeling disoriented, numbness in the limbs etc.), in the middle of a lecture too (okay, that was entirely my fault for having my phone on my knees instead of taking notes).

For the longest time, I have been really paranoid about my art/fics accidentally coinciding with someone else's. I still get fits of that paranoia today.

But now receiving hate messages like these is a pretty routine occurrence for me. And I know now that the artist in question is vulnerable and marginalized in many ways, and has been a victim of even more vicious hate than I was, and that I was wrong to fear and resent them for what happened. They really must have been genuinely hurt seeing a motif they worked hard on in their art, being essentially parroted by someone much less skilled. Add to that my lower English fluency at the time, which could have well resulted in my defensive arguments coming off as unnecessarily aggressive.

So now I am taking calming breaths, wishing the artist all the best, and reflecting on how much I have grown as a person since then. I should not be bothered by memories of this after so many years have passed, and I refuse to be so.

[thegrinningkitten]

How did you get so popular? I’m trying to grow big as a blog myself, but I can’t really do it. It seems like nobody likes my content.

The short answer is “I draw fanart, and I got very lucky”.

If you want a longer answer, then the brutally honest version of it is...

There are certain obvious rules to what kind of content would get more traction online:

1. Fanart is more popular than original art. The art will be more appealing to the viewer if they can connect to it on an emotional level, and if it’s fanart for a thing they’re already familiar with, the connection is already there. Original art, on the other hand, requires more work on the viewer’s part to establish that connection.

2. Comics are more popular than non-sequential pieces. Ideas are more likely to stick with people than visuals. Unless you have really strong visuals — as in, an art style that really stands out from the rest.

3. One-shot comics are more popular than long, multi-part comics. The reason’s similar to the one in the “fanart vs original art” point: One-shot comics are consumed all at once, while multi-part comics would require the viewer to go back and read them from the beginning to understand what’s going on in later parts.

There are also rules as to the best ways to post and tag your posts on different social media, but there are more than enough tutorials for that online.

While all of this should answer the general “how art blogs get popular” question, if you were actually asking about my experience in particular...

I started posting stuff online sometime around 2005-2006 — that’s when I started drawing too, I think. Had accounts on many message boards and social media websites over the years, but I don’t think there’s much to tell about them.

I first registered on Tumblr around 2010-2011 — and before anyone asks, TheGrinningKitten is my second blog; I did a huge thing where I abandoned all of my old accounts everywhere and started posting online under a new username.

Anyway, the thing is, I’ve been in different fandoms — big and small — for years, ever since I started posting online. My “main fandom” before I finally got into Undertale was Devil May Cry. I’ve spent around three years drawing fanart — and doodle comics — for it and even got a small following because of it. By that I mean that this blog had around 300 followers around November 2015, when I snapped my attention towards UT.

I participated in Fandom Kombat (Russian fandom event) with team Undertale and made some fanarts and stuff which went largely unnoticed by people. Heck, I even made Sans’s Happy Song, which did pretty well on YouTube, but people never made the connection — and even to this day a lot of people are absolutely baffled when I tell them that I made that video.

But then, inspired by CQ’s format for comics, I made this. It got reblogged by someone already popular within the fandom, it got spread around, and the reaction I got was overwhelmingly positive. So I decided to make another silly idea into a comic, and it got even more popular.

Things... kinda snowballed from there.

So, to put things into perspective, it took about 10 years for me (and 4 years for my Tumblr blog) to “get noticed” so to speak. You decide what to make of it. *shrug*

[mittensmorgul]

Can’t everyone use tumblr how they want?

YES!

This site is exactly what people make of it for themselves. That was the exact point of that post. The fact that people reacted negatively to it at all proves my point. Seriously.

I have a number of other anons that are clearly from people who don't actually follow me, and are only here in a reactionary fashion having seen it on someone else's reblog, or else heard about it in passing and decided the best reaction to an ultimately harmless and rather bumbling post was to take personal offense and bring anonymous hate to a stranger on the internet. (and at least one not-anonymous "go kill yourself" type comment on the post itself)

THAT was the point of making that post.

For people who might be new to this fandom or new to tumblr in general (or even for people who have been here for years), your experience here is exactly what you make of it. I haven't seen that sort of vitriolic kneejerk reaction to anything I've written or posted in years. That post touched nerves. So it was a bit of an experiment, and I'm sorry to everyone who experienced any of that negativity second-hand. NOBODY should be made to feel like shit when engaging with something that is supposed to be fun. But I've learned over the years that that's exactly what some people consider fun.

There are new people to this fandom since the absolute free for all of the weeks after November 5th. We all reveled in those weeks before the show collapsed in on itself two weeks later. It was like 15 years worth of Hiatus Blogging followed by... well... some of the worst genuine hurt and disillusionment I've ever experienced or witnessed inflicted on a fandom by a piece of media.

There have to be at least a few people who floated into this fandom during that emotional roller coaster who want to make sense of it all, who were at least curious enough about how a show could've brought the characters to that emotional moment in 15.18 before effectively ignoring it all and burning the entire 15 year narrative to nothing just two episodes later.

Some folks stuck around to dig through the ashes of fandom in search of carrion, and that's fine. Some have zero desire to ever engage with the show or the fandom beyond mocking it for ever having existed at all, and that is also fine! But some folks? They might be wondering why anyone ever saw anything in this narrative to begin with, and they might be interested in knowing that there is this vast collection of information available to them (funny that none of my self-righteous anons even mentioned those, outside of one pointing out that my phrasing introducing that section of links was easily interpreted as condescending... which... yeah... again that was the point, and no I will not edit that language. none of us are free from sin).

Tumblr hasn't "changed." It was always this way. This site is not a monolith. Fandom is not a monolith. Even smaller groups within fandom aren't monoliths. Things that are considered "tumblr standard etiquette" do not exist across this entire website. And even within the supernatural fandom, and even within the tumblr-destiel-portion of the fandom there aren't "rules" dictating how you interact with anyone. Well, the one specific rule we should all be able to agree on is that you don't bring hate to real actual human beings, and yet...

There has ALWAYS been the option to engage with fandom here on whatever level an individual chooses. And that hasn't really changed since the finale aired. Anyone who thinks that Tumblr or the fandom has "evolved" or "changed" has likely just fallen in with a different fandom bubble then they'd existed within before. None of the bubbles have actually popped or disappeared. But which one you experience is entirely your own choice. You curate your experience here.

That was the point, illustrated by the vast array of comments I actually got on that post, structured with a little bit of everything including "tumblr mom from 2014." Everything pisses some people off, you know? Even the perception that some stranger on the internet might dare to lay down an arbitrary "rule" that zero people actually have to follow. See what I mean?

Because if any of the people who kneejerked at it actually followed me, or knew me at all, they wouldn't have kneejerked. They would've seen the point.

So your experience is what you make of it here. There are resources for people actually interested in engaging with the narrative or the fandom or the history of it. People mock "tumblr moms" or "fandom moms" all the time, but there wouldn't ~be~ a fandom without the people who actually build those resources. I.e. adults with the time, money, and personal investment in actually sustaining the fandom, instead of running around with torches trying to burn it down at every new whiff of perceived ~drama~ to latch on to.

For example, all of the scripts we've been acquiring and sharing with the entire fandom free of charge. I know that the fandom bubbles who seize on those scripts like hungry vultures to cough back up out of context "gotcha" posts postulating whatever theory of the differences between script and screen will dredge up the most drama or outrage in their fandom bubble... they haven't even considered how those scripts were acquired and made available to them. To them, they are "leaks." They are gifts that fell out of the sky and landed in their laps. There isn't even the barest curiosity about their origins or relevance beyond whatever social nourishment they derive by making up stuff and spouting it out with unearned authority. It's sad. But if that's how they enjoy the fandom, it's nice to remind them that none of the fandom they cannibalize would exist without the rest of us, too.

Yes, even the people you disagree with. Even the people who ship the things you find disgusting or repulsive. Even people who have an entirely different experience to your own. Even the people who are only here for those gotcha posts.

Fandom is not by nature a nihilistic shitshow, or no fandom would survive the amount of drama the 1% try to bring to it. Here have a fanlore article about this phenomenon. Right now, in Supernatural fandom, it feels like more than 1%, but I promise it really is only 1%. They're just really loud. There's actually other avenues to participatory fandom available to anyone who chooses to find them. Parts of this vast fandom that aren't focused on that 1% of reactionary leg-chewing at every turn. None of them are (as the linked article confirms) truly 100% free of unnecessary drama or bad behavior (including ME, I mean I MADE THAT POST!), but on tumblr you can curate your own experience. Fandom actually can be fun without burning down the thing you claim to be a fan of, or attacking other real human people for having the audacity to exist on the internet in a way you might believe is out of touch or pathetic. Seriously, nobody deserves to experience that from anyone over a fucking television show. Like seriously, take a step back and examine your life and your choices at that point.

Tumblr was exactly the same as a fandom community when I joined as it is now. Throughout my entire time here, I've curated my own personal experience to exactly what I derive the most personal satisfaction from. During that time I have had numerous friends and mutuals lament that their personal experience had become so toxic, but they were afraid to trim those blogs from their dash for fear of having no content left to engage with at all. For years there have been follow lists and blog recs and people desperate to find a more "peaceful and fun" fandom experience. People grow exhausted and embittered when their entire experience of fandom is an emotionally draining drama train. It's like pandemic doom scrolling, but for the thing that should be a respite from that sort of mindset, something that's supposed to be entertainment. The show did enough to us all, we don't have to turn around and re-inflict it on each other day in and day out on tumblr dot com.

So if even one person saw my post and thought well shit maybe I actually want to engage with a wider swath of fandom and see what's there, after seven months of post-finale drama, this whole other region of fandom is still here, still being the curators of the archives, the creators of stories and art and meta and gifs and videos and actually caring about it all that will keep this fandom going long after the current round of exhausting drama inevitably plays itself out.

The amount of in-group language in the negative replies I got was unsurprising. It's like folks are living in an alternate universe that doesn't mesh at all with what I experience on this exact same hellsite. Almost like we exist in entirely different bubbles of fandom, with entirely different purposes for existing at all. Everyone on this hellsite gets to pick which bubble (or bubbles) to take up residence in. Some people simply forget that their personal bubble isn't the universal defining experience of this site. Unfortunately, I doubt my little disruption to their bubbles will actually make any of them see that, but you anon... I think you did.

You are highly encouraged to engage with fandom EXACTLY THE WAY YOU CHOOSE. You have the ultimate power in controlling your entire experience here. Tumblr and Supernatural Fandom on tumblr is not Just One Thing that everyone who wants to participate in must conform to one specific code of ethics or behavior to be part of. And that NOBODY has the right to tell anyone else they're doing it wrong (including ME! I am 100% including myself in this!).

It's not MY job to dictate how anyone else experiences this fandom, as much as it was not the job of the people who reblogged my post (which I did not personally shove into their eyeballs with a demand for compliance... how did any of those people even *find* my post?) solely to tell me how *I* need to change how I experience the fandom, you see? Don'tcha love hypocrisy!

But the point was made for those who care, and a lot of people got to update their block lists (I still don't block anyone, as I said I curated my fandom space here and generally don't follow folks that don't personally make me happy and enrich my life by engaging with their content. However other people choose to engage with *my* content (any of it, going back nearly 50k posts over the last decade) is their business entirely. Sometimes I just feel the need to draw out people who are all too eager to expose their own whole asses in public. Mission accomplished.

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

Thanks for tagging me @joshriku I adore reading your rambles then getting the excuse to do my own rambling 😌💖

why did you choose your url?

honestly my logic for going about this was that at the time I made this blog, I was incredibly into the sea salt trio, and felt that the twilight road to nightfall was specifically the path for Nobodies to walk. And since I wanted a url that somehow expressed my love for the sea salts in a subtle way, it seemed like the perfect fit. And it still is, considering I’ve never changed it [save maybe once for a halloween joke]

do you have any sideblogs?

yes! They’re incredibly inactive though @theworldofpokespe @thewonderfulwitchofthewest

do you have a queue tag?

#maybe talking about the book will cheer queue up — I only use it sometimes

why did you start your blog in the first place?

I needed people to scream about kh at, especially during the pre-kh3 era. My irl friends just weren’t having it

why did you choose this profile picture?

The perfect coalescence of what my url looks like and who lives inside my head rent free

why did you choose this header?

I think the art is lovely. And I gotta cope with khux somehow

whats your post with the most notes?

To this day, I still find it funny that it’s this one

how many mutuals do you have?

15 maybe? A good amount

how many followers do you have?

I’m at the point where I don’t really care about people knowing so 3500+ but in reality probably like 500 or so active blogs. How I manage to amass this many people over the years is beyond me

how many people do you follow?

266 great blogs but sadly a lot are inactive. I keep following them as a relic of how much I adore their old posts and/or out of respect for our friendship

have you ever made a shitpost?

HAH! when have I NOT?

how often do you use tumblr?

Every other day, if I’m in the mood. It used to be every day for hours straight. I definitely feel like I have a healthier relationship with this website now

have you ever had an argument or a fight with another blog?

I can vaguely remember one? Not so much of a fight and more of just me and others trying to explain to someone that they were being mean-spirited and problematic

how do you feel about “you have to reblog this” posts?

I simply won’t unless I want to 💜

do you like tag games?

hell yeah, I love talking about myself

do you like ask games?

hell yeah, I love talking about myself

which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

I don’t think, I know egberts is tumblr famous. And I know a lot of my kh mutuals are pretty much famous within the kh community :)

do you have any crushes on any mutuals?

I find that kind of weird tbh, like.....I love my mutuals but I also don’t Know them, save for 1-2 of them (and 1 of those 2 is my literal gf so lol). Non-serious or platonic crushes are valid though, we fall in love with people every day without realizing it, but most of the time it’s really not that deep

These questions are so good and fun, I think anybody who wants to answer these should go for it. And ramble to your heart’s content!!

[blindrapture]

(”A Decade,” a post for the blog What is the Fear Mythos?)

Today is February 14th, 2021. Today is the birthday of our mythos's primary founder, CuteWithoutThe. On Cute's sixteenth birthday, they began organizing the Fear Mythos, getting into contact with the other two founders, alliterator and LizardBite, and planning some of the first stories. Because of this, it is tradition to consider the anniversary of the Fear Mythos to "begin" on February 14th.

Two weeks later, on the last day of the month, Cute posted a thread on TVTropes officially laying out the plans and inviting participation. While by this point we still were not even called "the Fear Mythos," it is tradition to consider the anniversary of our mythos to "end" on February 28th.

Again, today is February 14th, 2021. Cute's sixteenth birthday was ten years ago.

The Fear Mythos is turning ten years old.

Now, in practice, this might not mean much out of the ordinary. Members of the community generally collaborate for the "Fearniversary" in writing an anniversary tournament blog, and this year that is definitely a thing, this is a nice celebration. Getting to an anniversary at all is a cause worth celebrating.

But ten years, wow. There probably is a lot that can be said, in a sentimental sense. Our mythos has seen a lot of blogs over these ten years. We've seen some vlogs too. And we've even seen some games and musical outputs. There have been physical books, podcasts, communities on various websites; there have been busy years, quiet years, and years in between. People have come and gone, the popular monsters to be used in our stories have changed back and forth, and.. well, ten years have passed and yet this mythos does not die.

I have to acknowledge that not one of our three founders has been active in the mythos for some time. I, DJay, am the "oldest" member still sticking around, and even then I'm not that active, not even in my own stories. For some, this is an appeal of our community: It's quiet, a place to read stories and throw ideas around. I did oversee an overhaul several years ago with the express purpose of "futureproofing" our central concepts, the hope being that, no matter how quiet our community became, the ideas would stick around. For better or for worse, the quiet is something for which we were prepared.

I bring this up because something about a "tenth anniversary" feels like the sort of Big Deal that may bring about a change in activity. It's probably the significance inherent in a double-digit number. That's a very human thing. (Like, seriously, very human. The number 10 is only significant to us because we operate under base-10 assumptions, and those are predicated on the number of fingers we have. But I don't need to tell you any of this, not on the surface of what this post is about.) A group that has persisted for a decade has relative age, and age is associated with experience, experience with knowledge, knowledge with a social fertility that "could go Big with just the right input." All of which is to say: Ten is a very different age for a single human than it is for a group of fiction writers.

We have been quiet. Next, we might try something else. That's a scary idea in and of itself, isn't it? A good creepy story: The Day The Mythos Went Big.

I'm playing around, here. The Fearniversary is a communal event, like a damn two-week festival; this is the most appropriate time to dress ourselves up in masks and pretend to be what we haven't yet been, to turn our thoughts to the stars and dream big, to hit upon emotional changes which take us resolutely into the new year renewed and ready for what it may bring.

The Fear Mythos, you see, is yours. Our monsters, the Fears, are legally considered "Creative Commons Attribution," meaning you can do whatever you want with them so long as there's even an implicit acknowledgement of the greater mythos's existence. This is worth spelling out, even to veterans, because it's a strength that's easy to overlook. We can't always guarantee you an immediate active audience, but we can promise you this: Place. You and your creations have a place here, here where not even a decade has erased us, here where the future can still grow, here at the online intersection between fiction and reality. You are free to take our creations as a model to build your world, experiment, see what becomes.

I know. I'm wordy, and if I have any points I'm trying to make they don't consistently come across. Yet still, this mythos has given me place as well. When I've had nobody else, this mythos has been there for me for ten years. Without it, I wouldn't have published two books, written three rock albums, made dozens of surprisingly close online friends, and been exposed to media that has in tangible ways changed my life. I'm maybe a little too close to this mythos to make a proper grand statement in overview, which would be more appropriate for this celebratory post, but I can speak emotive, I can light a signal to confirm to the world that we're still going. To a degree, I can speak both to and for our community in saying: We have known activity, and we have known rest, and somehow out of the ambiguous murk in between the two we have found our Voice persists.

Those of you who are only now finding us, you've got so much to see. Those of you who are sticking around, you're in for a treat.

Another thing I'm doing here is clumsily segueing into another subject: seven years ago, on our third Fearniversary, LizardBite privately proposed setting up a semi-"official" ARG in celebration. (You know the kind: Codes hidden across the web that, when solved, lead down rabbit holes to even more codes, accompanied by some sort of story.) alliterator and I took up the suggestion and spent some time planning behind the scenes. I sought out the consultation of CuteWithoutThe, as well as mythos veterans The Visitor, Omega, and Squeek, in order to work out a setting of lore and game mechanics which would be both ethically appropriate and compelling. This proved fruitful, and when we launched the ARG our players uncovered novellas, audio logs, myths, and art (contributed by the likes of The Visitor, Logic, Wiratomkinder, and alliterator). The subforum on which their efforts were contained still exists, though you may need an account to see it. The ARG went on hiatus two years later, and it has been dormant ever since.

Those who currently frequent the discord community may know that I have been digging the old plans back up, that I intend on bringing the ARG back. It was my intent to bring it back in time for this Fearniversary. I, uh, may still be able to do so in time for the 28th of February, but I am not going to push it, as the content I have under works demands rigorous iteration and testing. I bring this up in this post because it is, by its nature, relevant to celebrations of our mythos, and this news is relevant to this Fearniversary in particular.

So. To conclude.

Happy Fearniversary 2021! We're celebrating a decade of the Fear Mythos!

and

As soon as it is ready, you will know: Nine is God is coming back. New players will be welcome.