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suffarustuffaru · 8 months ago

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Scrolling through your blog is such a fun experience, you bring an absolutely great vibe to this fandom and I love it SO MUCH. Could even say you restored my hope in it, since there has been some aspects that made me force myself to leave it, and I hope me bringing one of them up here won't upset anyone.

Now I completely understand if you wish to not answer my ask, but I figured it's worth a shot. So, one of said aspects was a controversy regarding one of the rezero characters that made me feel like you can't mention them without being called names (mostly on tiktok, but other social media also, tho not as much).

Yeah I'm talking about Felix. I'm not transphobic by any means, and I'm fine with people headcannoning whatever they want, but seeing thousands of people calling others transphobic for calling Felix a 'he' made me so unsafe I forced myself to look for other interest. Which is funny since most of the people saying this weren't even part of the fandom. I was wondering if anyone else here had similar situations and just.. how do you deal with it? It seems silly, I know, but feeling like I can't speak about a rather important character from a media I love made me so upset.

No matter how much I tried explaining it, they either dismiss it or say Tappei made him a trans girl without knowing.

Now, if you do decide to answer this and say that Felix indeed may have been 'trans coded' a little bit (Did I used that term correcly? Idk) I'll understand (hell, I would probably agree, you character analysis are great), I'm just upset at the absolute lack of respect for any other way of referring to Felix other then she/her.

(Also in case people don't know, their proof of Felix being a trans girl is the scene from EX1, with the whole calling himself a girl in front of a mirror thing)

Sorry for this is being long and probably messy I just had to get this off my chest.. also I hope I didn't came of as offensive in any way, if I did I'm really sorry.

hi there anon! first of all - aw thank you for your compliments about me and my blog. im super passionate about rezero (though thats probably super clear to anyone whos seen any content i make for a while aljsdlkf) and well. ive been lurking about in this fandom since summer 2020 so i definitely understand having to leave/distance yourself from this fandom because outside of tumblr, the rezero fandom is kind of . well. to put it simply, theres a lot of metaphorical landmines unfortunately!! T^T and admittedly i wouldve left this fandom a lot sooner if i didnt stick to my own corner and curate spaces with other people who were super chill (like lots of people lurking about here on tumblr + rz tumblr in general!!). so i totally understand how you feel anon (and youre not silly for being upset, i promise!), though admittedly im not super super familiar with some rezero spaces (such as rz twitter) bc i 1. dont speak japanese and 2. i try very hard to avoid the negativity whenever possible!! T^T

and also i apologize for taking a while to answer your ask!! you're one of my older asks that kinda got lost in my drafts hah but i also just wanted to like. take extra care with your ask bc its a super important topic. like not just to me (though its definitely important to me) but its important in general. and i really like felix so. <3

a quick disclaimer is that i myself am not transfem. i am however afab and most likely genderqueer!! (im winging it as i go hah.) felix is also not a character id say im as well-versed in yet, but i do like felix a lot and ex1 changed my entire brain chemistry. and ill also be defaulting to he/him pronouns in this post because thats what he uses in canon.

felix is - at the end of the day - a fictional character, and tappei is a cis man who doesnt Entirely write characters like felix through a queer lens. arguably tappei is Self-Aware when he writes characters who are into other characters of the same sex (though the Representation is arguably a little bit questionable at times depending on how you look at it), but when it comes to characters like felix or subaru who have some Gender Stuff going on, it's more nebulous there. i dont know if tappei 100% realizes he's made characters that could be read as Trans/Genderqueer (emphasis on "read as", because i support different interpretations of these characters), but tappei Definitely Is Very Aware that gender and gender presentation and gender roles are super important when it comes to characters like felix, subaru, and crusch.

i think tappeis own perceptions of gender and gender roles do bleed a bit into the text as much as tappei is pretty purposeful with themes surrounding gender in rezero, but rezero itself still has all sorts of identity issues to explore with a lot of its characters and gender is a big part of that!!

so first and foremost im gonna be examining felix the best i can Purely Off Of The Canon Text, though i do like viewing rezero from a queer lens myself (and it is arguably very queer). im gonna talk first about felix and then ill move onto talking about my personal feelings on rezero fandom stuff :o !!

so felix's relationship with his gender is complicated and he Absolutely does not fit into traditional gender roles or gender presentation right now. these are undeniable. and if people headcanon felix as transfem thats totally understandable and valid!! but to say a headcanon is 100% canon and that other interpretations of a character as complex as felix are invalid isnt exactly it. for sure. i mean i myself interpret him as nonbinary haah. but felix's relationship with gender is so so so So complicated that i dont think you could just say hes transfem and then Not Elaborate More.

but regardless of how Exactly you label felix, i think you could possibly say that hes trans coded. tappei, even if he probably doesnt entirely know hes made pretty genderqueer characters, is Aware and Purposeful of how gender affects felix and his perception of himself and his identity and other peoples perception of him and this is brought up Over and Over Again in canon—felix’s gender identity, at the moment, aligns more with femininity in his presentation in every way, though he still perceives himself as masculine. felix’s case is complicated, and while im not entirely sure on this i think you could argue that hes trans coded—“coding” suggests a level of intent when making these characters, and i think that intent is present in some way with tappei. because tappei Knows just how important gender is with felix’s character and you can tell with how often and how Integral it is to felix’s entire character.

(more under the cut) (i do have a habit of being rambley/wordy sometimes if. if you couldnt tell already. but i hope this response is up to your standards!!)

these three analysis posts on felix's relationship with gender have all discussed this topic in-depth before i have, and i 1. really like the rezero content i see from all three of these people and 2. they All have slightly different takes based on the canon we have but also some similar points. because felix is complicated!! of course our takes are probably gonna be a bit different - he's a multifaceted character with such a complex relationship with his gender that it's hard to tell what every single one of his personal feelings on it is (especially when at the moment he hasnt appeared in the main story since arc 5 and he still has a Lot of character development to do). and of course fiction is fiction, we can all take away any sort of meaning from a story like this.

but you know. this is my post so im gonna try to analyze felix right now and say my two cents on what i think of his relationship with gender.

so im gonna try not to retread too much on what liquidstar, sufferu, and gourmet of gluttony have already said about felix (and i think theyre all very smart people with interesting analysis posts and theyve all explained their thoughts pretty well) and instead add on with my own thoughts - theres this felix excerpt from arc 4 wn that i think about sometimes. im gonna put it down here!!

and also important to note—like other people have mentioned, crusch and felix made a “deal” of sorts in the past where crusch takes on felix’s masculinity and felix takes on crusch’s femininity. and also like other people have said—and i myself have said in the past—i do have some mixed feelings on this wkdndn and as i said before also i do wish tappeis feelings on gender bled a little less when theyre Not Integral To The Story. bc i dont think tappei 100% knows hes made trans coded characters, but. anyway yeah so thats the whole deal with crusch felix. and in its own right i think it has So Many Interesting Implications!!

i think when it comes down to it, gender presentation IS a bit of a performance, isn't it? like i love to wear dressses and skirts and i love to keep my hair short and wear suits, but you know - these sorts of things tend to be gendered. our gender is often perceived through how we present ourselves, but in recent years gender roles being attached to clothing has gotten a bit less Rigid. but these rigid roles associated with presentation are even more dialed up to Eleven in a medieval world like the rezero fantasy world. and i dont use the word "performance" in a negative way -

what i mean is that when it comes to felix's character, does felix think he's a boy because that's what he's been told? does he think he's a boy because he TRULY sees himself that way, or does he THINK he has to see himself as one? does felix try to present and perform femininity, ie as or like a traditionally feminine girl, purely ONLY for crusch's sake, or is it because felix ALSO WANTS to? what does felix think of gender outside of crusch? who is felix outside of crusch? who is felix outside of tying his entire personality to other people? does felix’s femininity show the “radiance of ferris’ soul” bc of the deal he made with crusch or bc this truly is felix’s soul? these are like the big questions behind his entire character and character arc that would determine in the end how felix identifies in both his gender and In General.

so what is felix's identity at the moment? bc right now, felix is stuck between his feminine self, tied to crusch, a symbol of crusch, tied to his own reliance on crusch and worship of her—and his masculine self, someone broken off from crusch. felix is tied to crusch right now to worrying extents with his obsessive devotion to the point of changing himself to mold into her image, and beyond that, hes still tied to guilt surrounding fourier’s death. gourmet of gluttony puts all of this way way more intelligently than i ever could, but at the end of the day, i think the best narrative decision here would be for felix to accept himself in ALL of his entirety.

healing in rezero is noted to be a kind power, specifically by fourier and fourier saying this right to felix when hes the most talented healer in lugunica, and healing itself is often stereotypically feminine activity. knighthood is stereotypically masculine, and on top of all this, we see in ex1 that biehn argyle twists the power of healing into something grotesque—trying to bring back the dead and revive what cant be revived, which is once again another reoccurring theme in rezero.

how far can “from zero” go? what HAS to stay dead and what can be revived? who is allowed to live? HOW do you live freely? felix is someone born from a horribly abusive and neglectful family who twisted healing magic’s kindness into cruelty, felix is someone who was taken into a family that showed him kindness and now hes desperate to pay them back with everything he has and everything he is, felix is a healer who lashes out when hes cornered and a healer who treasures life and a knight who cant physically fight like the others, felix is someone stuck with the horrible knowledge that he cant save everyone—that some things just Couldnt end better no matter how much he wished for it to.

felix is stuck between all kinds of worlds, and in terms of gender, hes quite literally still stuck between boyhood and manhood in the biological sense—hes purposefully made it so that he hasnt hit puberty yet so he can better pass as feminine. he hasnt Physically Grown past puberty—which is the mark of becoming an adult. and he hates himself in a number of ways, but he also hates himself for failing to be traditionally masculine. his abusive family stole ten years of his life and the torture left him physically weaker, so he cant be strong physically, which is something associated with traditional masculinity. felix is the best healer, a traditionally feminine job and skill, but he cant save everyone. felix becomes more feminine as part of his deal with crusch, but while crusch accepts her femininity and masculinity readily, and while crusch’s memory is erased by gluttony—felix is left behind, alone, still holding onto femininity while not entirely being able to hold onto it while he also cant entirely hold onto the traditional masculinity he expects out of himself. and with arc 3 on, felix feels hes failed both fourier and crusch. the two most important male and female figures in his life.

felix is basically stuck in this liminal space where hes not Enough for himself in literally every direction, and the only way out is to accept every part of himself and move forward by trying to define who he is without other people—his birth family and his found family dont define him. they can shape him, sure, but he has to stop shaping himself to meet them and figure out how to let himself just. Be. and take up a space thats firmly his. from a queer lens, this kind of thing is pretty queer—because to stop being in between worlds, you have to accept everything instead of splitting yourself into halves over and over again. killing or maiming yourself or parts of yourself is no way to live, and felix is Life itself.

and i think regardless of the Exact Labels you could give felix, i think his arc—which is perfectly in line with all of rezeros themes—is inherently about self acceptance and the bridging of the gap and combination of femininity and masculinity. felix is both and identifies, in one way or another, with both, similar to how he loves someone who identifies with both (crusch) and just as hes loved her and fourier. imo it wouldnt be right for felix to choose one or the other in terms of feminine vs masculine—he needs to be the one learning and navigating his honest feelings on both sides bc i think he Yearns to be both. hes a boy who dresses like a girl and its up to him to know if he wants to be a man and/or a woman due to his own internal desire or if parts of that is Only due to external pressures.

and alright now that ive said all my thoughts on felix atm im gonna address the other questions you had in your ask!! note that this is just my opinions and thoughts regarding my own experience in the english fandom, you dont have to agree or anything 👍

but i AM very sorry about your negative experiences in this fandom. T^T people calling other transphobic for using he/him for felix (and also people being transphobic about characters like felix or subaru/natsumi in general) is something ive seen as well. the rezero fandom is sadly very often toxic and Bigoted in a lot of ways (with the exception of rezero tumblr and certain segments of rezero ao3, from what ive seen), which is Ironic for a story thats so clearly about love and self-acceptance, which is also ironic because arguably tappei and otsuka and the rezero marketing team (i Love the female characters in rezero but theres just so much sexualized or vaguely sexist merch/moments that dont add to the story, you know? kind of just. misses the point of their characters sometimes.) sort of contribute to it a little bit as much as tappei does do some really great things with his writing.

rezero is the first fandom ive been active in but its definitely not the first ive ever been in, and ive been in some insane fandoms before. like i said earlier though, i think i just cope by curating my experience to what i like, yknow? liking posts i enjoy, looking at stuff i enjoy, etc :O !! fandom is a hobby so i try not to look at negative stuff when i can help it wkdnd. which im sure youre aware about already but i always have to keep reminding myself of this bc places like rezero reddit or twitter get pretty rough!! but its really helped me just following artists and creators i like, enjoying their content, chatting with cool people i vibe with, rezero tumblr being the chillest rezero space in the whole fandom, and its also helped me a lot making rezero content of my own—like this whole blog!! its really shocked me how much people seem to value my thoughts enough to ask me things frequently but i appreciate it pfft. and i hope you guys like reading my posts!!

but yeah like. curate, curate, curate. it helps a LOT and it gets me excited to experience rezero not only by myself you know? not that i didnt have fun by myself but its its own level of fun finally finding spaces to have fun with others!! and i LOVE finding beautiful fanart!! chef’s kiss. and trying to be the change i want to see is satisfying on its own :,) i want to post random shit about rezero, so i post it. i want to make fanart for fun and share it. i want to brute force people into loving otto more so i ottopost (dont worry, i still hate him bc true otto fans also hate him at the same time <3 /lh). i want more queer rezero content so i try to make some more!! brings more personal power i think and its very fun!! and it helps with lessening the quiet despair of fandom toxicity ;-;; (which is something ive done many times and will continue to do sometimes so i feel your pain 🫂) and i promise theres cool people in the fandom 👍 i may reply late to asks or dms but im ALWAYS down to talk about rezero things its so fun 👍👍

and its really really hard sometimes to deal with fandom toxicity especially if its forcefully knocking at your door—definitely dont force yourself to stay or look at things if you cant, bc thats totally understandable!! and i myself have been harassed a little in the past. but definitely having some sort of coping—the block button, backing out of things you dont agree with or like, lots and lots of curating, etc—helps me a lot. and i think mental health wise i feel much better trying to look on the bright side of things!! its MY hobby goddammit!! ill fight people subaru-style if they try to poison it!! and however long anyone reading this decides to spend with rezero and rezero tumblr—you are welcome here 👍

but yes my very Long rambling aside - i hope this post somewhat helped you!! felix is a very important character that i like very much and need to learn more about and i have Many Feelings on the english side of this fandom, but im very grateful to all the cool people ive met over the years here for sure!! :o

also ill probably post the finished version soon but if youve read this far here is a sneak peak of felix art i did recently (just as a reward for once again reading all of my Endless Yapping)👍👍

#rezero #re:zero #felix argyle #ferris argyle #ask #once again gonna say that im not transfem so im not exactly 100% leading authority on this probably but these were just my two cents yeah!!#hope you have a good day/evening/night anon :3 ty for the ask! sorry i took a while to answer but i hope this made sense :D #felix <3 the character of all time fr i love him #my art

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goodluckclove · 6 months ago

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So apparently when I drink enough to start posing real questions (such as "what spec fiction author would be the most fun to party with"), my body reacts poorly and I end up with insomnia. I've been lying in bed for about four and a half hours just pondering before I realized I'm an adult and I can just change locations.

I'm in the living room now. Bob seems happy for the attention. And I'd like to share my central ponder of the night, centered around how much of a bummer it is that like most of the online queer centered spaces I've seen consist of rampant in-fighting.

Stay with me here. Seriously this is a long one I'm very tired.

I'm not coming from some nonsense centrist place of no conflict ever. I just feel like so much queer conversation I see is either vague blanket support, or a massive thread that somehow starts in the middle of an argument. And as someone who is not necessarily old, but definitely not active online, this is super isolating.

I think it's a really interesting anthropological concept that as queer culture develops it becomes more niche and simultaneously more vague. That's cool. The downside is that I am now the human embodiment of that Griffin Mcelroy meme about not knowing what something is and being too afraid to ask. And every time I see someone who is clearly super passionate about some queer take, I really want to ask why they think what they do or how they came to that conclusion, but holy shit that feels dangerous.

Like it's not an immediate invalidation to ask why. More modern queer identities are so varied there's a very good chance two people experiencing the same circumstances might have two radically different reasons and ways to get there. I am at the point where I no longer think anyone can speak for our collective queer experience unless they use the broadest of terms. I'm genuinely just grieving that we're immediately giving each other shit over variations instead of getting together and comparing notes.

Oh but Google is free - fuck off. Like straight up. That shit flies for the surface level information and it's crazy to me that more people don't acknowledge that. Google is free for people who think there's only one intersex variation. Google is free for people who really want to know if scissoring is real. At this point in society there are multiple generations of queer people (or people in general) with multiple senses of online validity. Someone who grew up in the 90s might trust a more traditional source for information rather than a google doc or Tumblr post or reddit thread or tiktok, and by that logic they aren't really going to be convinced by any Googling they do for a lot of new cultural shifts.

Like I was a teen with shit opinions. I was snarky about "transtrenders" who used neopronouns. Not online or to anyone - I wasn't a complete dipshit - but I definitely thought it. If I posted about it online I'd say all the regular arguments and the opposing side would say all their regular arguments and we'd block each other and accomplish nothing.

Which would be a massive shame because one of my shining qualities is my ability to admit when I'm wrong. There's a much better alternate reality in which I did post about how people who think you don't need dysphoria to be trans are cringe, and some kind trans person asked why I thought that. Because then I'd say something like because everyone wants to be trans that doesn't mean you're just allowed to say you are.

And then they'd probably be like yeah maybe you should talk to more people about this and consider where you're coming from, saving me like ten years of gatekeeping myself from my own identity.

Like I tried the Googling thing for something niche that I'm curious about. I learned about aplatonicism recently and was like huh. New info. But every post I see in the aplatonic tag is already angry about being aplatonic so I'm not about to take space with my own curiosity.

But after scrolling a Reddit thread I am more confused than ever. I don't know what a squish is, friends. I mean, I know the definition - but my brain doesn't think of human relationships like that. People were talking about having friends that they love but they don't have squish love or friend love, also aplatonic describes some autistic people, also also aplatonic is a word specifically used for aromantic people who don't want QPRs. I don't think any of this is wrong. I do think that it is so much information that it cancels out in my brain, and now I kind of just think aplatonic is a word that means things sometimes. And that's not what I want.

I'm being self indulgent because I don't think anyone is reading this far and I'm feeling relaxed because I took an Adderall earlier today and I feel like I can actually think for the first time in months. I want to ask some aplatonic people what they think "friend love" is supposed to be compared to what they feel for their friends, if they have them. If they don't have a need for friends, I am very curious to know what they think about the friend list function on virtually every social media website and game. Like this is not a bit. I've been awake in bed for almost five hours and it occurred to me that might be a bummer. Maybe some people use them out of convenience, but I think it would be interesting to meet a person who's so staunch in their philosophy that they just don't. I feel like there's probably a lot of aplatonic people who are like just straight up not online and don't even know that's their vibe.

I want to ask some loveless aros what they consider to be positive emotions or motivations in their lives. Like I'm so full of love for virtually anything that the concept of not having that emotion across the board makes me wonder if something else fills the space. Like do loveless aros love ideas? Do they love their hobbies? I don't think aromantics are sociopaths at all, I've just seen people who both say that loveless is reclaiming a slur and also defining a lack of love and I'd like to know more about both.

I saw a post on my feed about how anyone should be allowed to get gender affirming surgery even if they aren't trans. I don't disagree. That argument has honestly never occured to me and I really wish I could've asked why someone would want that. Because "a cis man might want a vagina" is valid, but doesn't fly in terms of actual logistics. You have to make so many appointments and wait for so long and answer so many questions. I'm aware my opinion on this is heavily biased by being Agender and actively ridding my body of as many secondary sexual characteristics as quickly as possible. I am not immune to the propaganda of my own identity. I would just like to have an in-depth conversation with a cis man that wants a vagina and ask why and also if they think it's worth the maintenance. Because, like, there IS maintenance.

I'm not doing it to judge. If this hypothetical man is like "yeah I know I'd have to keep up with the upkeep and maybe wear hormone patches from now on, but structurally it makes sense for my view of my own manhood", I'd be like "that's really interesting, I considered adding a penis to my architecture but then decided that it would probably be a sensory nightmare for me. I'm surprised so many cis men can ride a bike."

And then maybe he'd say "where do you think cis men put their pensises when they ride a bike?" To which I would say "I don't know the mechanics of a penis and at this point the thought of learning in which direction I'd have to stick my hypothetical one makes me anxious."

And then he'd kind of scoff bemusedly, and we'd go out together for banh mis.

I think at this point in my rant I'm realizing that my major issue here is that the world as a whole is not friendly to genuine curiosity. I also get triggered by hate bait, and it bothers me that I can't pull the subject of the cringe fuel aside and be like what are you doing? Like, not judgementally. I want you to explain to me what you are doing and why it's important to you.

I don't think it'll convince me every time, but I'm pretty sure I'd be like "ah, okay. Makes sense." And then move on with a greater understanding of the growth of humanity.

And also we can get banh mis.

I really want a bahn mi but I can't bike to get one or else my guts will fall out. Gender affirming surgery is a mistake for the sole reason that it prevents me from yummy Vietnamese sandwiches.

Kidding. I'm kidding, not having a uterus anymore has been pretty cool.

The sun came up.

Fuck.

#clove rambles #hot takes i guess #this one is a long and winding road #im so thirsty but my water is in my room #and i dont want to wake up wife #rip

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coolingrosa · 5 months ago

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Came back from school to see my question got answered ^^ And now instead of studying for my exams which are this week I will be doing this instead >:3

When i say they feel distant i mean like they seem to argue alot like when Error was refusing to help watch Killer Nightmare felt the need to guilt trip (idk if thats the right word) him in order to get him to help. It doesnt feel like they trust each other very much based on this interaction alone. Even at the two arguments, I noticed that Nightmare was continually provoking Error.

Few other questions: I remember reading another question and the end of ur answer was smth like "Killer clings to Nightmare and Cross clings to Error" I wonder if thats still canon cuz idk when you answered👀

How will Error be related to the gang like will he just be someone who hangs around them or smth? Will he make more appearances in future chapters?

Unrelated to RoseVerse but what is ur otp and other fav ships, what about your fav character from the undertale aus. ( I think u can tell who is my fav character from my questions cant believe my pookie didnt win Tumblr sexyman)

Also you got any tips for drawing and writing and some resources with which u learned and would recommend? Thanks in advance :) I will tell you once more how much i love your work. If you ever get burnt out, please remember its okay to take a break. I wish you the best for college. Sorry if this was a bit long. Love from India <333

-From the one person who said you were the reason that they said started writing and drawing on stream

1. Unfortunately, yeah, even if they are close by technically, it doesn’t mean they are heathy. They are kinda like childhood friends who have grown into different people but still cling out of convenience and remaining love. If they met as adults, they wouldn’t get along, but they have history to them. They know how to push each other’s buttons, and since they have no one else to fight with without the fear of losing them, they target one another. That’s where their trust comes in, as they are the only people on the whole multiverse that they have. Sure, they are passing friends with Reaper, especially Error, but neither trust him enough to be themselves. They both know the other will never leave, so both can be utter assholes to one another, and taunt to get it out of their systems. It’s not healthy and it’s built upon their grief and subconscious blame towards each other and themselves after losing Ink.

They are in a bitter stage of their lives right now. One day, they’ll get back to who they use to be. For now, there’s only hints thru Killer’s perspective.

2. Error and Cross are parallels to Nightmare and Killer, and that’s all I can rlly say until Cross’s chapters. But yes, that’s still canon.

3. Error will have full chapters dedicated to him in the future! He’s not officially apart of the bad sanses, and is more of an ally to Nightmare as he doesn’t care for the other bad sanses besides Cross and Horror (who don’t come in until much later)

4. LOL I LOVE ERROR TOO! I’ve made jokes about how he’s my husband and I even jokingly got a body pillow of him to match with best friend irl mil_leon on tiktok. He will win this year….trust…

However, he isn’t my favorite! My favorite is core frisk, and ppl used to call me that as a joke and as a nickname!

I have four OTPS, actually. BlackCoffee (reaper and Ccino), ColorKiller (rainbowknife), Errormare, and Drink. Shockingly, Errormare isn’t my favorite. DRINK is. I absolutely adore Drink with everything in me and if I ever see art of it I will kick my feet, and scream with joy. I have multiple analyses about them just IN MY DOCS bout how perfect they are for one another but that’s the story for another day.

Some others I really enjoy tho are BloodMoon (Geno and Nightmare), Crink, Horrorfarm, lowkey Dustswap BUT IN A VERY SPECIFIC WAY AND NOT IN THE OLD FANDOM WAY THWY HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO BE GOOD GUYS PPL JUST WRITE IT SUPER WEIRD, CrossxKiller (only bc my gf and I relate to them!), and Driller!

5. I really recommend binge watching ginjanijaowo and their speedpaints and character design videos! June taught me a LOT about character design and watching them draw inspires me a lot. I also suggest doing ugly arm up sketches before each important project to get the rust off! Don’t limit urself to only one anatomy technique- as I’ve tried every single one in existence and still developed my own. Drawing is all about finding what works for YOU and sometimes, the big popular artists techniques just won’t. Like… doing the gesture line is a very important part of the process….that I will never do LOL

However, giving art advice is tricky as it’s easier to focus on one aspect you want help on so the artist ur asking can focus their advice better! Like asking about anatomy, drawing heads, animatics, story boarding, etc! I wouldn’t mind doing any tutorials for those types of questions!

6. And thank you so much <333 I’m glad I could inspire you to make amazing things, and I really hope I’m able to stream again. Unfortunately, as I type this, my roommates are watching a movie on full volume and it’s bleeding thru the door, so until I can find time…with them gone LOL I cannot @_@ I’m trying tho!! I miss interacting with you all

#undertale #undertaleau #undertale multiverse #roseverse #cooling rosa answers silly stuff #RoseVerse lore questions

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gachagon · 18 days ago

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my last post about this, but Tiktok was full of nice users. Everywhere else people are so fucking mean, rude, judgemental. You can't even ask questions on other websites without people just straight up calling you stupid for asking the question. Being an asshole to people has become cool even on Tumblr.

I'm afraid to post my art and creations on other platforms because I know it'll either get ignored outright or it'll be found, mocked, ripped apart, and trashed on for not being perfect.

Instagram is full of bullies, Facebook is full of actual robots who post nothing but AI generated art or old people (and my family members), Youtube has shafted digital artists years ago, Deviant Art is dead, and Pinterest has become nothing but AI generated slop and stolen content (that came from tiktok videos mind you)

There's Tumblr, but unless the people who follow you care about your art it'll never leave your own dash. So yeah i'm really gonna miss tiktok in the week its gone. I'll probably go back to watching longer form content, reading books, getting back into art I suppose.

#tiktok ban

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golden--goofball · 2 months ago

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Asking anonymous solely because I don’t want to be attacked my antis on my main,,, I’m not exactly proship (personally I just think the whole shipping discussion is kinda weird and honestly a lot of proship people and antis agree on things but just constantly use extremes- from my own experiences Anti’s are more guilty of this but I can understand some of them) but I’m chill with people being proship and shipping whatever

Just curious how do you deal with the constant slander on people who are proship? I feel like Tumblr is one of the better websites in this sense but like- Honestly I’m low-key kinda worried of getting involved in the discourse because I’m not really “against” problematic ships themselves :,)

You’re very cool for dealing with all of that (and keeping your anons open for the most part-)

—

Also kind of funny PSA but I recently got an anon ask being like “… hey- I don’t know if you know but one of your mutuals (that you obviously interact with fairly frequently)… is a proshipper!!1!” Which, I mean it wasn’t outright rude (I think) so I’m not particularly upset or anything but I just find it so funny because that mutual has proship in their bio and posts about shipping discourse very frequently? Like huh,,, my mutual who reblogs proship content and has admitted being one more times than I can count is a “proshipper” you say..? Wow Anon.. really? No way…. /silly

(But I am low-key kinda worried if that Anon wasn’t a mutual or someone who I interact with often, and will immediately jump to the conclusion that I must be proship and by their logic an absolute scum bag,,, oh well it is what it is lol)

honestly yeah, tumblr is pretty tame. tiktok, however, is fucking DEPLORABLE. it's a struggle over there, man 😔😔😔. i will say i also think shipcourse is pretty dumb sometimes, but i'll be damned if i'm gonna stay neutral on that shit lol.

honestly, dealing with the hate is a lot harder on me than i let show. but i always keep it in my mind that i have friends who can help me in private, and in public i can let the haters think they don't get to me so that they shut up and fuck off lmao.

also i must admit i actually don't always leave anons on lol. i have a limit of 3 hate anons and then i turn them off for like a week to get em to go away.

that's really funny honestly. there's been a group of people (who've hated me for LONG before i came out as profic lmao) going around telling everyone who so much as views one of my posts the DARK EVIL TRUTH about how i…am anti-harassment over fiction. sometimes if someone refuses to cut me off after finding out, they start pulling them into it as well in order to further push them to drop me in order to clear their own name. craziest part is, it's worked a couple of times. that's when shit gets really hard. BUT i'm still alive. so clearly it WASN'T HARD ENOUGH ‼️‼️‼️💪💪💪💥💥💥💥

i wouldn't worry about them, anyone with half a mind (aka, worthy enough to be taking up space in your brain) wouldn't think that way in the first place. it may be hard, but trust me, the people worthy of staying with you will do so. though this may sound cruel of me, it's honestly the nicest way to put it

the trash will take itself out.

#asks!

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issuesdolly · 8 months ago

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VERY sad recent personal experience- need to vent

hey folks.... I had to vent to the empty Tumblr space about a very upsetting/confusing recent experience. I have a TikTok where I make JD/Korn related content as well as vids of myself about my life and some comedy stuff of me.

Well, few months ago, a guy found my videos and followed me and seemed to care deeply about the health advocacy videos I put up regarding my terminal + chronic pain illness. He invited me to speak with him and after seeing him on vid + in person, he looked VERY VERY SIMILAR to Jonathan Davis in his 30s... as well as being a huge JD/Korn fan. So yeah him 36 me 33.... living nearby each other. He could even do some good JD vocal immitations when we'd be singing along to the songs together and stuff lol. So.... y'all can imagine how that made me feel lol.

He told me for months he thought I'm beautiful... that he likes me and wanted to get into a relationship. I was pretty much blown away. I was like "seriously????" cuz... it felt like a dream or something haha. I explain over and over again about my failing health and educated him on all that is wrong with me.. testing him....and he was still supportive saying he accepts that that's where it's at for me and still wants to be with me. When I'd had worse flairups he said lovely things like "I wish I could take your pain away," and I would say stuff like "you do... as much as anyone can." Which was true. I was falling for him for sure.

We started spending more time together and he started talking about wanting to hook up. Obviously, I wanted that more than ANYTHING IN THE WORLD HAHA. But... I got scared saying "you are extremely attractive to me but I'm afraid to just hook up.... I'd like to get to know you better first??" because believe it or not... as pervy as I am in my writing, I'm VERY careful in my real life where my physical safety/men are concerned. And where my heart is concerned.

BECAUSE this guy was SO good looking I had to think "I wonder how many women/people he's trying this with????" Him being single and wanting to spend his life with a dying lady seemed too good to be true. He also spends a lot of time out with friends and going to concerts and clubs while I'm bedridden so I had to wonder what he's really up to when I'm not around. Basically I was being appropriately skeptical. And also didn't want to get heartbroken if he saw the vulnerability of my situation knowing I'm very sick/depressed and he reminds me of JD.

I admitted I'm VERY attracted to him and definitely want to fuck him lol.... but want to be careful and spend more time with him before getting into that.

Obviously after I wasn't moving "fast" enough... the JD- lookalike guy has kinda stopped responding to my messages or caring as much. He went from bombarding me with conversation to ghosting for days. Which obviously means he never cared about my health problems + life in the first place. I've been pretty devastated...Since obviously my fondest hope before death would be to meet someone awesome who REMINDS me of Jonathan or the things I like about Jonathan (or at least appreciates his music).. Feeling STUPID and pretty heartbroken. I was with one man for 10 years and that relationship ended this February but what has transpired now has actually cut me deeper than the end of my 10-year relationship.

Also this JD look alike guy has been the ODDEST experience of my life too BTW.

NOT even kidding that dude:

-came out of nowhere.. messaged me

-pursued ME not the other way around

- looked JUST like Jonathan besides dreads but he has long black hair, thick rim black glasses, same height/build/facial hair and how he had it cut. I even asked friends and family showing them pics like "AM I NUTS OR DOES HE LOOK LIKE JONATHAN????" and they were like "he could be a fucking impersonator of early 2000s JD . WTF no you're not nuts"

And yeah this dude spent months acting like he cared about me saying stuff like "I'm always here for you... you can always reach out to me...." "Anyone who loved you would never leave you due to poor health and I accept your health problems and still REALLY like you and want to be with you" or "I'm grateful you're in the world don't give up." FML.

#jd korn #jonathan davis #jon davis #jonathan davis korn

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astridthevalkyrie · 1 year ago

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do you actually agree that fics depicting child r*pe should be allowed? do you not think that having media as that so accessible can de damaging? like i’m actually seriously asking not trying to give attitude

sorry i just pulled an all nighter so if this sounds incoherent it's because i haven't slept for the past 22 hours. thank you for seriously asking and not giving attitude lol

it's not about what i think should or shouldn't be allowed. fics depicting that aren't exactly my cup of tea. i don't read them, i don't write them. but authors are going to write dark content, whether that be fanfic authors or published ones. i've written dark stuff that might be totally fine with one person, but not fine with another. your local library might have stuff that makes the worst of ao3 look tame. dark content has existed and will always exist. the problem is, as that post put it, is saying authors can't or aren't allowed to write disgusting things means that now anything anyone dislikes can be labeled a disgusting thing. the slippery slope of authoritarianism.

there are published books that i would never ever want a child to accidentally happen upon, but it is the job of their parents to monitor what their kids are getting access to, the job of the librarians or booksellers to organize things in a way where it's not just open and easy for kids to read. the same thing applies with fics, it's parents' jobs to monitor their child's internet activity, and saying that children can access something is not a good enough reason to say that it means that the writer should never have brought it into existence.

fic writers have a responsibility to tag their fics and if you see someone incorrectly tagging (if you're on ao3 PLEASE be aware that "no archive warnings apply" is very very different from "author chose not to use archive warnings") or it's purposely misleading to get people to click and be traumatized, then yeah, in that case, it's absolutely the author's fault. send in a report!

but if a person as an adult sees warnings, registers them, reads the fic that has exactly those warnings, and then proceeds to say the author shouldn't have written it....it's just so much effort for a mistake on the reader's part. fic is about making yourself happy. why are you reading things that make you upset?

i was 13 or 14 when i joined tumblr. i was 10 or 11 when i started reading fanfic. at that time i barely saw minors dni stuff. i read smut, including dark fics and art that absolutely left me scared to sleep at night. not once did i ever tell the author they were at fault for writing it. i knew what i was about to read. i knew what i was consuming. it was on me and me alone (and i suppose my parents for not monitoring my internet activity). i have two younger sisters who both read and write fic. they weren't online for ff.net and they don't go on wattpad. their fanfic experience is almost entirely ao3 and the first thing they do when they go into a character or fandom tag is take out tags they don't like.

and i'm not naive. they have both most certainly read fics that they shouldn't have read. teenagers always do. i obviously did. very few teens see a minors dni and actually just stop reading the fic. but again—if the author has done their due diligence, on sites that are not meant for kids (tumblr and ao3 both), sites where freaks were promised to be allowed to be freaks, they are not responsible for minors who come into their space.

so that's one part of the argument. the other is the debate over whether writing fictional dark content makes someone as bad as actually participating in that dark content. this is an age old debate. the first time it got really big after i joined tumblr was around the time voltron 2016 came out, when people were being called pedos for shipping shiro and keith. it's gotten much worse since tiktok has become a thing. there are other people who have talked about this and explained it better than me, you can delve into the tags for "anti" or "anti anti" or "proship/antiship" or whatever it's called now.

but calling someone who ships, say, eren and levi in aot, a pedophile, is absolutely off the walls insane. first off, a loooot of people shipping age gap or adult/minor relationships are very likely to be minors themselves. secondly, it absolutely diminishes the meaning of the word. it's the same thing with incest. i've seen people say that shipping characters who are best friends is the same as incest. it's.......not. and you might think, well, yeah, that one's ridiculous, but the stuff that i'm arguing against are legitimate. and i get it. but like i said before, slippery slope. people equating someone's fictional interests to them as a person spells a very bad future for fandom.

i think a lot of this started when people were like "oh your ship is just the character you relate to and the character you have a crush on." and i'm begging people to realize that is not the case at all. a ship can be that, but it can also be "their color palettes compliment each other." it can be "they never interacted but i think they'd be interesting to see together." it can be "oh that makes a hot pair." it can be "oh this would make both characters miserable and i love it muwahahaha."

so just. please reserve the word pedophile for real-life-harming-children-and-minors pedophiles. not for people who write about fictional characters engaging in morally dubious or criminal acts. they are not the same level of crime. i think people need a reminder about why pedophilia is bad—it's because it harms children and minors, not because it disgusts us. and incest is an even more tricky subject when it comes to fiction so i'm not going to delve into it, but in the same vein, fictional incest ≠ actual incest.

i wish i had blogs to recommend that could explain this better, but you're better off just going through the tags (and anything you can find on fandom and specifically fanfic history) because my brain is super fried. and since i am not an expert i'd like to not answer more questions about this, i'm a bit too old and tired for the anti vs anti anti debate, thanks. i hope this helped 👍🏽

#ao3 #tw rape #tw child sa #tw incest #fanfiction

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jayflrt · 7 months ago

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hii akka !!! thanks for the tips and i hope to follow. actually whenever i see some youtube videos, most of them use didgital planners like notion, good notes (?) and some aesthetic apps like those.

and i thought i could do like them but figured out that written ones are best that planning digitally, hehe. but i still remember how people romanticised having digi notes, digi planners and etc. omg i used to cry why i didnt have those. but i realised things which are available for me are the best 😊

i want to ask a few things about these enha writers who are literal teenagers 😭 they write about suggestive content and say they dont write smut. i hope i am not wrong with knowing the meaning of suggestive which means leading or making them thinking in a sexual way right?? or suggesting them to do something like that?? and then they say they are literally minors and nsfw blogs, dni !!!!

and the way the (most) enha writers romanticise the term 'aesthetic' so much like using small texts, aesthetic pictures and aesthetic layouts. its like so hard to find their about me or rules or masterlist 😭😭 like why do they use small text, i cant see shit.

i wonder who started like having aesthetic blogs and made new writers create like that. its so burdensome to do something here and you get criticism of how your blog should be.

and these enha writers– i never saw them appreciating enhypen, be it about jay's whodunit solo and going to glay's concert and performing and nor did they appreciate sunghoon on becoming hince's new ambassador.

i am not saying it's necessary as a fan but atleast during the bare minimum for them. and the amount of smut content i see on tumblr about enhypen is 😠 so much. everything they do, people here sexualize them.

i still remember when i first came on tumblr, 2021?? the 01 and 02z werent even 20 istg, i see smut about them everywhere and now wonie is 20, and they be like "lets goo!! he's 20" and im afraid for riki these day.

i just dont want these stupid people and standards to become popular. wherever i see, its smut, suggestive content written by minors and those small text and aesthetic layouts.

i hope someone agrees with me, and i am ready to get cancelled to rant like this. come over to me, i want opinions from people who stay silent about situations like these, especially writing smut or suggestive content.

— 🦔 anon

hihi 🦔 anon!!! sorry for the late reply, i got so busy for a bit 🥲 but omg i use goodnotes and notion too but i don't think mine are as aesthetic as the people i've seen on tiktok on stuff 🤧 i remember i took an architecture class and made my notes really nice for like the first week and after that it was back to regular note taking LOL but yeah i prefer writing stuff down in a physical planner because i feel so satisfied when i cross out a task 😌

tbh i haven't been reading much on tumblr lately but in my understanding (which i also answered in the previous ask), suggestive is an implication of sexual content but not explicit sexual content, but i also think people use it just for writing like makeout sessions or smthn like that 😵��💫 at least that's what i think idk if things are different !!

omg i remember when people on twitter used to make their carrds so elaborate and i'd be spending 5 minutes just trying to get to their dni list because there was a whole minigame to get to the actual information 😭 i get what you mean tho! i think people are free to customize their blogs however they like but can also be mindful that some things aren't exactly reader-friendly, especially for people who rely on screen readers

oh yes honestly there is a LOT of smut content that goes around for barely legal members and it is a little concerning how people jump to sexualize idols 😵‍💫 as for appreciating enha, i give more people the benefit of the doubt on that because i personally use tumblr more as a creative outlet and talk about enha more on twitter, so i assume others do the same if they don't talk about enha on their blogs

honestly i'm not surprised that smut is such a big genre on tumblr (not only tumblr but most if not all fanfic spaces) because a lot of people crave intimacy but do so in private because most people are in sexually repressed societies. it's the same reason why porn is one of the top searches on the internet and why romance and erotica are becoming the top genres for published books. BUT with that being said i do agree that sometimes that creative freedom is abused with how some people jumped to sexualize maknae line as soon as they were of legal age :/

#💌 : love notes #🦔 anon

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spindrifters · 2 years ago

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Hello! Ok so I’m here to tell you that I’m obsessed with wolfstar and have read so much so far but I’ve never read a harry potter book.

I’ve obviously known about hp for decades but the size of the series intimidated me. A year ago I decided to watch the movies (the books were too big a commitment at the time) and I really enjoyed them. I remember instantly falling in love with professor Lupin then by the end of Prisoner of Azkaban having the biggest crush on Sirius Black, but I never thought of the two of them together for some reason. (Although now that I think back, I remember being unsettled by the presence of remadora)

My golden trio phase only lasted weeks before I found myself on marauders tiktok and I heard about wolfstar. For some reason it just instantly made SO MUCH sense and from there I jumped head first into fan fiction.

I never felt that I was lacking any info about these characters and their personalities, even after I came to tumblr and met people who have read the books. Maybe I got lucky and read the right fics first?

I tried picking up the books to read but I honestly couldn’t be bothered to finish one when there were a thousand fics focused on my favorite characters waiting for me.

But now that I see your shock at how can someone ship wolfstar without having read the books, I’m intrigued to give them another shot.

hello!

I mean I feel like all I can really do here is say yes, read the books!! there's so much there that the movies left out!! especially in book three, which is (in @soloorganaas' words) an accidental love letter to sirius and remus, both together and individually.

but also, I'm now just fascinated in all of these ways people came to and are interacting in fandom that literally. never occurred to me before. maybe. idk. maybe it's because as a writer I'm like.... right so you can have information about characters and their personalities, but the ways in which they actually exist in context is something else entirely? and for me, personally, I so so hated the movies that I don't consider them canon because I don't at all agree with their interpretation of the original text. also they feel wildly incoherent -- I have no idea how you could watch them and know what's going on without having read the books, but also maybe that's just because I've read the books and know how much richness is missing there. but also I definitely had friends watch the movies without reading the books and they did not understand what was happening so. ymmv on that.

but also! I think I've always known there are people in fandom who had only seen the films, so... yeah idk I'm still working this all out! because at first the idea of people writing fic based on someone else's canon interpretation in their fic did not compute. but I always see fanfiction as inherently folkloric, and isn't that just what folklore sort of does anyway? hm. much to think about.

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anti-ao3 · 11 months ago

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the “hilarious” thing is that that’s not even the real definition of a dog whistle. that’s just something someone on tik tok probably made up

anyways if you need the actual definition “dog whistling” is a tactic used most frequently by white supremacist groups and other scumbags where they turn seemingly innocuous terms into euphemisms, known as dog whistles, for things their ideology considers an issue (e.g. “globalist bankers” as a term meaning jews). this allows them to have a veneer of respectability when talking to normal people who disapprove of genocide, but it gets the name “dog whistling” from how, if you are familiar with dog whistles and point them out, they’ll act like you’re just paranoid and pretend they don’t know what you’re talking about when you try to explain the euphemism, the metaphor being they blew a dog whistle (higher than the human ear can hear, as you probably know) and then made fun of the dog for freaking out

sorry if you knew all of this already but sometimes the Exposition Fairy in me jumps out

i already knew what dog whistle meant thanks to tumblr (and i remember reading it somewhere else), i just looked it up again bc i wanted to be sure i was using the term correctly. i didn't know about the full metaphor, though!

but yeah, that one question about a "narcissist" dog whistling came up... then i read the text and it came from tiktok. that person DEFINITELY made it up lmao

thanks for the ask!

#asks #and don't worry i have my exposition fairy with me as well #ableism tw #resources

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preserve-or-raze · 2 years ago

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hey so @staff the reason we’re worried about you forcing an algorithmically generated dashboard is because you are surrounded by sites who do that. literally every other site is doing that. this is the only site that doesn’t force users to interact with a “for you” page. you’ve got one, it’s just not mandatory.

the reason twitter and reddit users came to tumblr is bc we’re different here. their home sites decided to modernize and fucked their userbases to do it. the following excerpt is full of bad ideologies that kill the whole appeal of tumblr as a platform

“creators, like everyone on tumblr” what the hell do you MEAN like everyone?? everyone on tumblr is a creator. that’s the whole fucking point isn’t it? that’s why they’re called blogs? because every user has a website all their own that they curate to present themselves to the world. which leads me further. tumblr doesn’t really have creators the way you’ve used the term here. tumblr isn’t about creators and consumers like instagram and tiktok. tumblr is about conversations and show-and-tells. it’s about showing neat stuff to your buddies and some creative people making things and sharing them. you need to reframe users in the corporate mind as sharers, not creators.

“engagement on a post” yeah the only people looking for engagement are folks who don’t understand the culture that’s grown on tumblr over 15 years. (see trend: “this has 10k notes. to me.” “pLEASE GOD NO!”) tumblr’s draw is a place that fosters hanging out with friends. people get nervous when their posts “breach containment.” we’d rather have relatively few interactions with people like us (mutuals) than millions of notes from fuck knows who.

“being successful on tumblr” what the filthy fresh fuck are you talking about??? this is the most egregious error in this new way of thinking. tumblr is the best social media around because there’s no competition. everyone is sick to the back teeth of the comparison game and disingenuous clout-chasing. that’s why the hidden follower/following count is so brilliant. tumblr isn’t about numbers. no one worth anything on tumblr makes posts sponsored by third parties because tumblr isn’t about making users money. i get that tumblr has costs and business gotta business, but my point is that while instafluencers are trying to sell you LED strips and tiktokkers want you to buy yoga pants and twits urge you to invest in crypto, tumblr folks are just offering fursona commissions. and on the fame front, celebrity doesn’t really exist on tumblr. it’s just girls being bros. there’s some well-known urls that have viral posts that have been cross-posted to the four corners of cyberspace, but even still no one bats an eye when recognizable users respond to someone you’ve never heard of. because notoriety has never been the goal for tumblr users. there’s virtually no celebrity on tumblr. fame, sure—but not celebrity.

“should never feel like a punishing experience” well, success on tumblr would be defined by the average user as having a good time. the way you make that feel punishing is to force users into systems and flows that they do not like. the way to make it rewarding is an in-depth explanation of tumblr’s current culture and functionalities. tagging posts, following users, blocking users, searching for tags (@staff fix the fucking search feature), how to tag posts, when to reblog vs reply, how and why to like posts, tagging your posts, changing your dash to be newest first, that there’s no expiration date on posts like you can reblog even if it’s a decade later, TAGGING your POSTS, using xkit (or w/e) on desktop, implementing themes for your blogs, changing headers and pfps so we know you aren’t a bot, TAGGING YOUR FUCKING POSTS. teach people how to use this site and not only will they use it, they’ll feel like an important part of this community—which has infinitely more retaining power.

now look. i love tumblr. it’s the only social media i’ve got left. but it’s basically the only thing keeping me on the internet and i’ve got a whole host of reasons to leave altogether. i think a lot of folks share my current enthusiasm and looming trepidation over tumblr’s future. staff, we love it here, but you’ll find very few of your veterans, your core userbase, those of us who taught the former twits and redditors how this hellsite worked, us with the institutional knowledge, the ones who have the most grace to give you — very few of us will stick around if you try to model our tumblr after the image of these hostile platforms claiming to be user-centered social medias.

also, for the love of all that’s sacred, @staff, please fix the fucking search feature.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience.

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content.

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up.

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant.

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are.

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds.

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs.

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread.

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads.

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed.

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it.

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages.

Test what the right daily push notification limit is.

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users.

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

#@staff #Tumblr™#tumblr dot com #hellsite dot tumblr dot com #@staff fix the fucking search feature #rb

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m1ckeyb3rry · 4 months ago

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AHJSJSJS TUMBLRS A BITCH BUT YOU DONT NEED TO APOLOGIZE ITS NOT YOUR FAULT i was also getting some things done i just took a quick break and saw Jeirin’s post LMAO (epic crossover fr HAHA) so i didn’t have the time to notice but also even if i did id probably assume you were just touching grass (which you were LMAOOO)

L is now trademarked by otoya yup he doesn’t have any Ls in his name so he had to make up for it elsewhere (haha Lswhere I’ll shut up now)

SUHSJSSH WAIT OK GOOD I wasn’t sure if it was a shitty kid bully teasing or like a cute friend teasing it’s good that it wasn’t bullying though because if anything it is a rather cute nickname I just didn’t know if you had trauma from it SHSHSHSH

Ah 2022 jjk era….yk back then I definitely would’ve been like “NOOO DONT END SOON” now I’m like “yeah fucking finally” it had its good run back then now it’s fr just kinda insane also it’s actually so sad that at some point I ended up just full on saving the TikTok’s I knew I needed to reference back to later on just in case they disappeared forever SHSBSNS I have so many random

tutorials saved on there too like I’m not losing this hack

- Karasu anon

HAHA sometimes i do see your asks but i’m like “i know i’m going to write a super lengthy response to this so let me save it for later” LMAOAOA like i know for a fact i’m going to ramble and have to whip out my ipad for it meanwhile i can post my silly two sentence thoughts and responses to comments in five seconds on my phone so i’ll be active just not answering-asks-active if that makes sense HAHAH but yeah idk why tumblr does that with longer asks especially it just freaks out 😭 maybe one day they will resolve it…

LSWHERE PLS no yeah it’s his letter honestly he’s lowkey chill i think he would find it funny that we slander him sm…idk how to describe it i just have this hunch that if he knew he’d think it’s his rizz at work or smth

yeahhh i never got mad i thought it was so cute as a nickname!! pls i was too mean to be bullied…i was rlly shy as a little kid so i got bullied when i was like really young?? not like making fun of me bullied but forced to do stuff by my “friends” because i didn’t want to hurt their feelings by saying no 😭 but i got new friends and ended up moving for middle school anyways!! and at that point i had developed the most villainous mouth ever i was actually lowkey evil with some of my quips BUT only to people who deserved it so like it cancelled out 😩 mostly everyone liked me so it was def meant as an endearment thing like aww cutie pie mouse mira hehe especially because that was back when the guys were just starting to hit their growth spurts and they loved to do anything to show off that they were now 5’7 instead of 5’3 so they’d pat me on the head after singing the little song LMAOAOOA icl looking back it’s lowkey unreal but then again what in the mira lore isn’t

REALLLL 2022 jjk era was so diff i also thought back then that the manga would go on for much longer so it was a diff vibe?? tbh i still can’t believe it already ended tbh i feel like it had such a short runtime for a manga…like attack on titan i know ran from before 2013 (because that’s when s1 of the anime came out so it would’ve had to have been before) and the manga ended in 2021 and that’s not to mention the ones like one piece that have been going on FOREVER ofc idt jjk should’ve gone on for quite that long but it def could’ve done with some extra time i think 😩 did you see that gege straight up released a new character LKSDJFH like what even

no that’s so real half of my saved tik toks are edits and the other half are makeup tutorials…ngl i never use them though because the only makeup i can ever do is a tiny bit of pencil liner, mascara, blush, OCCASIONALLY highlight if it’s smth super important/a special event, and some color on my lips!! so like all of the foundation/contour hacks are very useless for me and same with the eyeshadow tutorials but that doesn’t stop me from watching and saving HAHAH

#answered asks

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imaginearyparties · 2 years ago

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a message for new users:

tumblr isn't like a lot of sites you're used to. if you're younger than i am (and it seems like a good deal of you are) you're probably used to social media sites that throw anything at you to get your attention. sites with algorithms that show you stuff they think you want to see. sites with verification and visible follower counts, so that you can see who is important. sites where you're expected to consume content, and not necessarily to create it. those sites are fun, and it's totally valid that you've learned to engage with them in the ways that you have. but it's not like that here.

a lot of you might be too young to remember when blogs were a mainstay of the internet. basically, people had their own little website where they posted stuff they made (usually writing), often centered around a specific topic or theme. so like, cooking blogs, poetry blogs, parenting blogs, etc. tumblr came about as a way to combine the individual expression of a blog with some of the more social aspects of social media. this way, you could post your own stuff to your blog, but you could also collect cool stuff you liked by reblogging. and then your blog was this cool hybrid of stuff you made and stuff you liked. and you could go find the cool stuff again, because it was on your blog.

you see, tumblr wasn't built for users to be audience members. tumblr was built for creators, and eventually became really well known for the way it cultivated communities. especially fan communities. part of why this worked well is because almost everyone participated. people shared their thoughts and cool stuff they made, they reblogged stuff they liked, maybe even added on to it or talked about why they liked it so much. when we talk about 2014 tumblr and how cool it was, (it wasn't but, y'know, nostalgia), part of that was how a lot of us were teenagers and young people on a site that let us make friends and build communities, where we could completely cultivate our own experience.

being on tumblr without participating in tumblr is kind of like having your camera and microphone off on a zoom call. yeah, we see that you're here. maybe you like a post sometimes, sort of like using the zoom thumbs up. but you're basically a ghost. and it's sad, because we want to hang out in cool little communities, but it feels like we're talking to a sea of faceless voids who don't respond.

when current users say that they want to scare off twitter and tiktok users, or people who make stuff complain about the lack of reblogs or comments, this is why. we're losing the communal aspect of tumblr that made it so great. more and more, users have no profile picture, blank blog titles, and are private or have no posts. they like posts instead of reblogging them. they don't engage. they're audience members. they're blank zoom squares. you feel like you're talking to no one, and it's sad.

so i beg of you, please engage. please reblog that story you liked, and tell the author the one line that made you squeal in the text of the reblog. please reblog that cool gifset you saw, and tell op that the colors are pretty. please reblog that cool art and let the artist know that you wish you could get it tattooed. and, above all, please make your own posts. talk about the weather today, write that story that's been in your head for a few weeks, make fan art of characters from two different shows making out, say something so weird it ends up screenshotted in a "cryptid vibes"pinterest board. send an ask to a user who's been around a while and ask them about the skeleton wars.

this is one of the only spaces left that isn't selling you something, that isn't trying to keep your eyes on it by any means necessary. this is one of the only spaces left that doesn't want you to be an audience member. so please, don't kill this space by refusing to take part in it.

welcome to tumblr. i hope you get the most out of being here that you can.

#how to tumblr #new to tumblr #new account #new user #hello tumblr #twitterpocalypse #long post #sorry but nobody will read it if i add a cut

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