#characterappreciation

[in-tenebris-et-in-solitudine]

I Love Rhaenyra

[animerhythm]

A montage of captivating moments showcasing the charismatic Rintarou Okabe from the STEINS;GATE anime. Take a nostalgic trip down memory lane with this collection of photos depicting his unique personality and adventurous spirit.

[dragonagefanevents]

Starting a Theme/Appreciation Event

A theme week (aka “appreciation week”) invites fans to celebrate a specific topic over a dedicated period of time, which may or may not be a week. Fandom creatives will either highlight existing works that fit the theme of the event or make new art and fic for this purpose. Read more about themed events here.

Themed events are usually run through a dedicated tumblr sideblog. The organizer may come up with prompts for each day of the event and release them ahead of time, but the prompts are usually optional. The organizer commits to monitoring either the event hashtag, or the blog mentions, and reblogging works that are posted by other tumblr users related to the theme.

The organizer must plan the event in advance and make sure there is widespread awareness among their target pool of participants. This usually requires posting prompts early, making a simple graphic or banner, and advertising the upcoming event through friends and fandom groups.

Here is a framework to help build a new Themed Event!

1. Choose your Theme

Theme weeks come in a wide variety of subjects! They may be focused on a single character or relationship, or they may celebrate a broad topic, trope, or franchise entry.

Examples of subjects include:

A specific character ("Dorian" "Cullen" "Morrigan")

An interpretation of a character's sexuality ("Ace Cole" "Sub Solas" "WLW Cassandra")

A type of player character ("Mahariel" "Mage Hawke" "Templar Inquisitor")

A genre ("Romance" "Whump" "Fluff")

A culture or background ("Dalish" "City Elf" "Circle Mage" "Antivan" "Elvhenan" "Templar" "Tranquil")

A ship ("Zevwarden" "Solavellan" "Handers")

❓❓What if the subject already has an event that surrounds it❓❓

Whether there is already a Solavellan-centric exchange, or a Dorian Appreciation Month, we encourage fans to make more. It is nice to try to schedule around other events and avoid overlap, but sometimes this can't be helped. We here at @dragonagefanevents say the more fan events, the merrier! We aren’t in competition with each other: we are catering to our niche interests, schedules, and communities within this fandom. How you portray your advertising and comport yourself may invite criticism, but as always, how you comport yourself is up to you.

2. Choose your Timeline

The majority of theme weeks take place over the course of a week, or a month. Things to consider as you choose your timeline:

How long will you commit to monitoring & reblogging submissions?

How many prompts will you come up with?

How active is the targeted niche of fandom?

How much hype can you build beforehand?

How long are you capable of maintaining the hype?

You may wish to make a poll to figure out what timeline works best for your target participant pool!

3. Choose your Prompts

Most themed weeks/months put out prompts. These are short and vague, to allow the most interpretation and inspiration, and sometimes they are one word.

While prompts are optional, it is recommended that you do have prompts available. Many people will want to create something new for your event and appreciate guidelines or touchstones. It is really fun to see what so many different people will make based on the same prompt.

Appreciation weeks/months without prompts often see lower participation. People often feel uncomfortable promoting old work for a new, current fandom event, and there is an expectation that these events are for prompts! People want to make new things. Many events also do not promote old works! Therefore it can be difficult to advertise your event without prompts to go off of.

Consider: there is a whole genre of tumblr blogs out there (fyeah blogs, or characterappreciation blogs) dedicated to simply reblogging any content about that theme/character/ship/etc. What separates those blogs from a themed event is the prompts and the act of new creation.

Here are some example prompt lists:

▸ Sera Week 2024 ▸ 14 Days of DA Lovers ▸ Dalish Week 2022 ▸ 30 Days of Dorian

4. Put together a Brand

A brand is something that is easily recognized and quickly conveys a concept. Artistic, colorful, labor-intensive? Not necessarily.

Some easy ways to build a brand:

a consistent name that's easy to remember

a hashtag that is logically connected to the name

a consistent visual scheme that can be quickly associated with your name

▸ A Good Name

A good name is short, to the point, and says what you are: "30DaysofDorian" "SubSolasWeek" "SeraAppreciationWeek" - these all do the trick.

If you plan on running your event repeatedly, these kinds of names are enough. If it's just a one-off, consider adding the year to your name, such as "RylenAppreciationWeek2024." Think about it. If you are looking to organize an event these days, chances are fandom in 2015 ran one with that name once and there's a blog camping out on that name forevermore, inactive and dead. Do your fellow fans a favor and make it clear what year you are running the event so that if it's ever abandoned, they can pick up the torch with clarity.

▸ Graphics

1-3 colors; choose 1-2 fonts, in bold and normal font weight; choose, at most, 1 detailed image/screencap/motif. If you go overboard visually, it is easy to become cluttered.

It's nice to make a banner, either for your own blog header, or to also be used by people posting their works. Keep in mind the basic principles of graphic design, which you can always look up; the most basic rules related to typography are summarized in the image below (source).

In your banner it should be clear: The Theme and The Timeframe

Your prompts should be available as plaintext in a post, but in order to actually catch people's attention as they scroll, it is best practice to make a simple graphic that contains your prompts. If you have a week of prompts, 7 prompts can easily fit on one graphic. If you have a whole month, it's recommended to split into more than one. The concern is that cramming 30 prompts into one graphic on tumblr will render them very small to people just scrolling by; if you break them up into two or three images, then (depending on some savvy organization in the post body itself) the prompts will all be visible at once at a good size.

Make sure your font is legible! It may be tempting to use a fancy swirly archaic font, but your goal is swift legibility for people scrolling by, and these decorative fonts never succeed.

If you are laying text over an image, it's a good idea to fade the background image out a bit. This can be done by changing the opacity, or by laying a semitransparent layer of color (or black or white) on top of the image, below your text. Contrast between your font and the background is important for legibility.

5. Begin Advertising

With your blog, name, hashtag, prompts, timeline, and graphics ready to go, it is time to start building hype. While it's fun for some people to make things on the fly in response to those prompts during that timeframe, you will get the best participation if you give people a chance to start creating things ahead of time. For a theme week, at least a month head start is usually adequate for interested parties. For a theme month with 30 days of prompts, at least two months leeway (minimum) will make sure you get participation. More time of course lets people make more, and more involved, work for your appreciation event.

▸ Make your blog known.

Start reblogging fan content related to your theme! For example, a Dorian theme event might go through and reblog fanart, gif sets, fanfiction and fan meta about Dorian. As you reblog from people in fandom, they will see your blog name and come take a look.

▸ Share the date and prompts.

Make a post with a clear title stating what the event is, your eye-catching but clean graphic, and the written version of those prompts + a description of the event. You may want to paraphrase an explanation from this post to educate new fans who may not know about theme weeks/months and creation events.

When you tag your posts, make sure you use very relevant tags. Tag spamming is frowned upon (tagging every single dragon age character, for example, when your event is focused on vivienne only, is annoying when you pop up in the main tag for those other characters). Only the first handful of tags on your post will catalogue it in the main tag on tumblr for discovery. Choose wisely! #dragon age #dragon age (origins, 2, or inquisition) #character name are always good places to start, as well as #dragon age fanfiction #dragon age fanart

Reblog your posts often! Self-reblogs are encouraged and widely tolerated in order to get word out there. Everyone understands. If you post once and never reblog it, you are failing to put your information in front of the eyes who may not have been awake when you posted it, or those who have a particularly cluttered dashboard. Self-reblog!! It's allowed!

▸ Make your rules clear.

You may want to combine this with your prompt post, or you may wish to keep them separate. Either way, be very clear about what content warnings you require (some events will not reblog NSFW, some will as long as it's tagged), whether you allow old works to be -re-advertised or not, and any other restrictions or requirements you fancy. Make sure that you are clear about what period of time you will be monitoring mentions/tags for new works to reblog, and when you will stop.

6. Run your Event

When the day arrives, make a kickoff post! What you include in this post is up to you. Generally hosts will reiterate the directions of how to mention/tag the works in order to catch your attention, and either link to or include the prompts themselves.

From then on, for the duration of the event, make sure to check the blog mentions, as well as the general tumblr tag you encouraged people to use for the event. Reblog the new works as consistently as you can.

7. Wrap Up

Congratulations! The final day has ended and your event is complete. You will want to thank participants. You will want to link to easy ways to peruse the new works - usually something like "check out https://myappreciationblog.tumblr.com/tagged/appreciationweek2024 " or something similar. If you opened an AO3 collection for themed works, make sure to link that. Basically, if anyone is late to the party, make it easier for them to enjoy the buffet you helped organize.

Pat yourself on the back for an event well-run. You may choose to run more in the future, keep the blog as a simple appreciation space, or retire from running events for a while. Whether your event was exploding with new works or resulted in only a handful, it doesn't matter. You made a little space on tumblr to appreciate this theme, and it didn't exist before. :) And that's what this is all about.

[butterflyqueeen]

Holy moly!!😱 . . It’s been so so long since I drew traditional last haha😅😂 For a character appreciation challenge I drew Sphintus Carmen!!❤️ #fanart #magilabyrinthofmagic #sphintus #sphintuscarmen #magi #characterappreciation #artchallenge Materials used: My sketch pad, a sketch pencil (2B), a random black pen, @derwent_academychile pencils and jasart pencils [image description: A half body drawing. Sphintus Carmen with his golden snake around his neck] https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs9qO6NBTkO/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1xeqmg149it1u

[authornylak]

Ohhh happy Mondayyyyy!🤪 . For my final #PUSHbyNylaK #CharacterAppreciation post, I give you the gorgeous and sweet-as-pie Jessica Lockwood 💁🏼‍♀️💕 AKA Ben's other half. . We've talked about Ben and Ryan a lot, but what do we know about Jess? Other than the fact that she got pregnant in high school and has loved Ben since she was 17. . I'll share a little and tell you she's a truly selfless woman, but she doesn't take shit from anyone. And she's a wonderful wife and mother. Is there more? You bet there is! 😳😏 . For any further details, you'll have to check out PUSH, live in 6 days! 🥀 https://www.instagram.com/p/B2Mrb3MgIg5/?igshid=s3om2ej6pgn2

[artisticforge]

Once again decided to draw Kikie again by @creativewolfgirl239. #art #artistoninstagram #instaart #instaartist #drawing #sketch #pencil #traditional #illustration #pencil #character #fanart #characterappreciation https://www.instagram.com/p/B1kiZESFHl5/?igshid=od3bcubelq78

[krystalroser-blog]

Top Art & Expression Sets for Sep 12th, 2017

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[slytherinfantasy]

Neville Longbottom appreciation post 🗡️ There is so much I can say about this character, due to him being my favourite throughout the book and film series. The underdog, the character who I relate to the most ♥️💚 A part of me still wishes he was the person who killed Bellatrix. - - - #nevillelongbottom #appriciationpost #characterappreciation #harrypotterbooks #harrypottermovies #harrypotterseries #harrypotterforever #harrypotterfandom #wizardingworldofharrypotter #wizardingworld #dumbledoresarmy #nevillewand #gryffindor #gryffindorpride #slytherin #ravenclaw #hufflepuff #herbology #bookstagram #booktube #harrypotteryoutuber #sundaymotivation #sunday #sundayvibes https://www.instagram.com/slytherinfantasy22/p/Bv9Y2MrBugR/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=10umugwpr1lvi

[ghafahey]

Hello and welcome to the MDZS Womxn Appreciation Weeks!

From June 28th until August 1st we would like to celebrate the womxn of Mo Dao Zu Shi and all its adaptions and invite you to create and share in the love through all kinds of fanworks.

Kicking off the first week will be #characterappreciation.

Stay tuned for the info post on Saturday and visit @mdzswomxn to find out more about the themes & the rules. We hope to see you there!

[kenia2905]

Top Art & Expression Sets for Sep 12th, 2017

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[craftygeminicreation]

A Persephone Schreave (nee Bia) Appreciation Set

A Persephone Schreave (nee Bia) Appreciation Set by trulydear featuring mens shirts ❤ liked on Polyvore

[seasidecollectibles]

A Persephone Schreave (nee Bia) Appreciation Set by trulydear featuring mens summer shirts ❤ liked on Polyvore

[millajauregui1d]

Top Art & Expression Sets for Sep 12th, 2017

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Top Art & Expression Sets for Sep 12th, 2017 by polyvore ❤ liked on polyvore.com

[samsocks1996]

Another 2014 character of mine I adopted, her name is Sugar Pop. #characterappreciation #character #adoptedcharacter #commissionexample #Cat #feline #fluffy #chibi #2014character #illustration #commissionsopen https://www.instagram.com/p/CK-JmC1j1L2/?igshid=9hokr391keju

[authornylak]

Another #CharacterAppreciation post for #PUSHbyNylaK 🥀 . This one is dedicated to Ben Lockwood. Husband, father, former high school football quarterback, now living his regular, suburban Dad life, running his company while his daughter, Hailey, is off at school. . Everything in Ben's life is structured and ordinary. And he likes it that way. At least he tries to... Until Hailey brings her new boyfriend home for Thanksgiving weekend and things get a little... out of control.😈 . Will Ben be able to restore the order to his now jumbled life? Or will he embrace the chaos... And Ryan. 🔥 . Find out in 12 days when PUSH goes LIVE! Preorder yours today with the link in my bio🥀 https://www.instagram.com/p/B19QtaTg6jW/?igshid=3unp3wkxa9aw

[rikafofo]

Top Art & Expression Sets for Sep 12th, 2017

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Top Art & Expression Sets for Sep 12th, 2017 by polyvore ❤ liked on polyvore.com