#dastardly lemondrops

[corgi-nub]

IDK why I made Ginny look like this in my draft. In my defense, I just watched the part of Ace Attorney with Cody Hackins and I think some of that energy went into how I characterized Ginny lmao

[momo-t-daye]

The Slytherin dorms look out into the Black Lake. Denizens of the Black Lake, thus, can look right in to the Slytherin dorms.

Art to accompany this ficlet I wrote after chatting with @dastardly-lemondrops a few weeks ago; which drew a bit on the scary mermaid post that lives in my brain and the enjoyable mermish sign language headcanon (that I just had to ruin a little bit).

[dastardly-lemondrops]

Those few 18th century lit classes were some of my favorites because that was around the time where the novel emerged in the west and there was:

-A LOT of fanfiction, and you could publish it back then and that was fine, which I think is very cool -People roleplaying their favs by letter. There were two people who wrote eachother letters in character until one of them died. -Plenty of sick nasty fiction that falls into Dead Dove, Do Not Eat territory, and we had to read it for class. Honestly helped me get out of my fear of writing 'problematic fiction' and eventually pushed me to pick up working on Dastardly Lemondrops again--which I had abandoned because I was afraid of being judged for making a snarry comic (lol... to think there was a time I was worried about that...)

[just-a-slytherpuff]

Snape's Snokemon team

Got inspired to design a full Pokemon team for Snape so here we go.

First off is Serperior: the Regal Pokemon. It's a snake, it's royal, what more justification do you need? I think the Half Blood Prince wouldn't be able to resist that sort of combination. Serperior is definitely the Pokemon he claims as his main one for the sake of appearances.

Second is Paras: the Mushroom Pokemon. I figure Snape originally caught this one for the cordyceps mushrooms on its back, which are known for their use in herbal medicine, and then decided to keep it around. Also, @dastardly-lemondrops informed me that Paras in Legends Arceus are bizarrely aggro and that it would be funny if Snape's Paras was like an angry chihuahua.

Third is Watchog: the Lookout Pokemon. I picked this one because it seems like it would be great for helping him search for ingredients while out in the forest. Plus, I think that with Snape's past of being targeted when alone, he'd love a Pokemon that's always on the lookout for him instead. Because of that, Watchog ends up very protective of him, to the point where Snape tends to only call it out when others aren't around.

Fourth is Golduck: the Duck Pokemon. I figure Snape needs a water-type for underwater gathering and Golduck seemed a great fit for that. It regularly scours the lake for interesting ingredients that Snape can add to his potions. Also, Golduck has telepathic abilities that allows it to pass on knowledge to its trainer that I'm sure Snape would love.

Fifth is Delphox: the Fox Pokemon. With the witch and prophecy theming, I thought Delphox was a good pick for Snape, even if he wouldn't exactly like it. Therefore, I've decided that the reason he kept it around is that it's a shiny that just showed up one day and wouldn't leave him alone. It's very insistent on sticking around and he enjoys the prestige of having a shiny so now he just has to deal with this thing looming over his shoulder and starting all his fires for him.

And the final pick is Crobat: the Bat Pokemon. It wouldn't be a Snape team without at least one poison-type, so I figured why not lean into the dungeon bat theme. I've decided he raised this one all the way up from a Zubat, maybe even his first Pokmon. Also, since Crobat is a friendship based evolution, it would give a hint as to his true nature. People who don't remember him having a Zubat assume he got lucky in finding one, and those who do remember his little Zubat assume he got rid of it in exchange for the final evolution.

Also: honorable mentions to Inkay, Polteageist, and Shuckle for being great potential picks that didn't make the cut.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[echoofawind]

I don't like where some of these guidelines are going.

I don't want to see content I didn't sign up for. That's what's made Tumblr stand out from the other platforms. I get to actually curate my feed. I followed some blogs because I wanted to and I don't follow some "popular" blogs because I don't want to.

The way to get creators to generate content is to not sensor them. Like dastardly-lemondrops said, lift bans. Art is supposed to be push boundaries. If you're not uncomfortable, are you even trying to open up the space for people to create?

And I don't want more emails or notifications.

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.

[redeemingbaddies]

Tagged by the talented @dastardly-lemondrops Thank you!

[halfbakedsnape]

Going to start a moodboard series inspired by the fanwork Dastardly Lemondrops!! Keep an eye out for mood boards of your favorite characters because I’m going to be posting a new mood board every day! 

[dogpawprints]

And he doesn't let things go easily, okay?

My HP fancomic Dastardly Lemondrops updated!

You can read it here!

[cerise-grenadine]

Hehe thanks for the tag @exlibrisseverus 🐍💚

I haven’t been listening to a lot of music in January so I suppose my top favourites would be the songs I recently put on my phone mostly for Sev fanfiction purposes do not ask

Chariot — Petula Clark (i just love how enthusiastic she is)

Noble Maiden Fair (A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal) — Emma Thompson & Peigi Barker (the lullaby from Brave; I’m obsessed with it, it's sooo pretty)

this piano cover of Arietty’s song (her voice is just so delicate, it's wonderful)

Who's That Girl — Madonna (what's to say, she rocks)

oops edit bc i forgot The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird — Rachel Zegler (super catchy, sweet voice, love the lyrics)

And hmm not quite sure about a #5 at the moment but I recently listened to that album while painting so it will just be my favourite song of all time ever bonus #6 Dante's Prayer by Loreena McKennitt ❤️‍🔥

Tagging @dandelionscarf, @sanctuary-angel @dufferpuffer and @dastardly-lemondrops if you feel like playing :)

✨

music tag game

Top 5 favourite songs right now, tagged by @tolovaj (asnakjnwdkjs thank youuuuuu 💞)

My Love - Sia

Doin' Time - Lana del Rey

Suspirium - Thom Yorke

Warm You - Matty

this:

not a song, it's just perfect, I listen to it all the time.

I'm tagging: @vulnus-sanare, @giosnape, @mitsuki91, @kookooka2, @monarcho-mysticism, @redroses694, @mmad-lover, @shostakobitchh @indihpblog

and everyone who wants to join!

[its-itsjustice-love]

Name Ten Favorite Characters from different things (Books, Movies, and other things) and tag ten people

(1) Severus Snape

(2) Tony Stark

(3) Sardonyx

(4) Sailor Jupiter

(5) Stitch

(6) Derek Morgan

(7) Raven

(8) Doctor McCoy

(9) Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman)

(10) Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp)

[corgi-nub]

while drafting the next chapter, I'm also finishing up this past chapter of Dastardly Lemondrops. I should be finished soon. Got to draw an ekranoplan for this chapter, so that was fun.

[momo-t-daye]

The watchers in the water

The mermaids might be watching, the older students tell the first years.

They speak with their back to the windows, the shadows of fish flitting past.

No!  Don’t look!  That’s very suspicious behavior, my friend.  The light in the water is dim, it is easier for them to see us than for us to see them.

Now, you must learn a few Mermish signs, it is only polite. Bend your fingers this way and then flick your wrist like so to say hello.  Flutter your hand with these fingers curled and these two extended to say goodbye.  Yes, it is difficult, their fingers have more joints than ours and the webbing on their hands helps hold the sign in place. Here is how to spell your name with the syllables their mouths can make. Oh? Their mouths can say your name perfectly? Add a mistake to the name you give them. Just in case they decide to call to you when you're out at night to lure you into the water. Kids, those aren’t the teeth of an herbivore.

Stop staring!  Don’t make that face. They might be watching us right now.

Did you know? Albus Dumbledore speaks Mermish.

Yes, of course that is why you must learn to greet the mermaids at the very least.  Mermaids are very keen to communicate, they’ll usually come up to the window and there we can see them clearly.

Just watch what you tell them, you can’t trust them to keep your secrets, not from the Headmaster.

No!  Don’t let them know that you know they could talk to him!  That will only raise their suspicions and his.  You must never let them know we know they’re watching us.

No! You can’t just ignore them, that sort of rudeness will look suspicious too.  The mermaids will follow you from the Common Room to your dormitory and watch you from the dark water every night. You don’t want them scratching at the windows and singing your name for attention, do you?

Use their signs to talk to them, we don't want them trying to learn how to read our lips. Yes, they might know how already, but if they don't you shouldn't give them any ideas or incentive to learn.

You can ask them for advice, they love giving advice almost as much as they enjoy watching us, but you really shouldn’t take their advice.  They’ll report you right away if you do and frankly I would too.  Cannibalism is frowned on, children, there are tidier ways to get over heartbreak, poor grades, and a loss on the Quidditch pitch.

Ah, yes, I know they’re at the window now, I know you can see them watching us.  You can see fifteen of them?  Twenty?  There will be more out of sight.

Do not look at their teeth!  That’s very rude and will attract their attention.  They can and will remember your face.  Stay calm!

Now, hold your left hand down like so and take your right hand, bend these two fingers like this, and move the right hand around slowly from the mouth to your left hand.  Good, now you are telling them you ate a big meal.

We will teach you Mermish sign, children, it is very important that you be polite and not attract suspicion. Just be careful what you do when they might be watching you and always be careful what you tell the mermaids.

Because, you know, we’re all watching you too.

__________

Because drawing fish staring at Snape from the windows is fun and I had a fun time chatting with @dastardly-lemondrops about the potential for/perceived possibility of near constant surveillance at Hogwarts (and specifically the Slytherin dorms), and because I also like the idea of Slytherin students using a signed language to communicate with mermaids (...and because I also like scary mermaids), I tossed together a fast ficlet.

...and because the thought of Slytherin students being paranoid that the mermaids might be spying on them in their Common Room/dorms for Dumbledore (even if he wasn't! Like, it does not matter what Dumbles is doing because he COULD talk to the mermaids and asking if he is would only lead him to doing so) would have made Hogwarts seem even less safe for Severus as a student (since the Marauders with their map and invisibility cloak could find and torment him everywhere else in the castle)

[dastardly-lemondrops]

Also I made the layout of Eileen’s house in Dastardly Lemondrops for reference. I didn’t put any real effort into the outside of the house because I just needed a reliable floorplan for drawing it reliably and not having a lot of huge inconsistancies. This isn’t the house I’m playing in because it’s huge and expensive as is. Just made it in the free build mode.

[dastardlylemondrops]

My hp fancomic Dastardly Lemondrops has updated!

Read it here

[snapeloveposts]

Trans Snape Week 2020 - Prompts and Schedule!

What you have all been waiting for! While Snapetober continues to rock on, Trans Snape Week is just around the corner. I am SO excited to see what you all will create!

Schedule

Trans Snape Week will run for eight days — from November 16, 2020, to November 23, 2020.

Prompts

Day 1: Reflection

Day 2: Shopping

Day 3: Hair

Day 4: New Beginnings

Day 5: Name

Day 6: Passion

Day 7: Revolution

Day 8: Peace

These prompts were created by the fabulous creative @dastardly-lemondrops! :)

Guidelines

Trans AND cis folks are absolutely encouraged to participate in the fest! In the coming weeks, I’ll post some resources on writing trans experiences from a variety of sources and angles, but feel free to do research on your own, too!

There will also be opportunities to have your works sensitivity-read (or, erm, sensitivity-viewed). I (@snapescapades) am glad to check over anything you’re not sure about, at any stage.

If you are interested in having your work read/viewed in advance, message me or any of the folks who comment below.

If you are interested in being a sensitivity reader, message me privately if you’d like to remain anonymous, or reply below if you’d like to be public.

Stay tuned for more resources coming soon! Meanwhile, get those brains turning! :)

[madeofbees]

@dastardly-lemondrops knows what’s up

What's your sexuality

stupid