#it was a lot longer than i expected

[valleynix]

it took me a second to gather my thoughts and send the evidence forward, BUT... here is my little analysis on some things i've seen in the castle (or have had mentioned to me) that i thought were interesting

(feel free to correct me if i'm mistaken on something)

the first thing i wanted to mention was how many naked/suggestive lady statues there were

this one in particular was just in her room in the beginning (lesbian), but i believe i counted about eleven different statues with those requirements? four of the masked ones, the same four in the Hall of the Four, and i believe three of those statues pictured above, one of which was in the attic

meanwhile, all the statues of men are clothed or look professionally done (some even looking like Greek busts), but any that were not fully clothed were hidden from sight in some way, be it stored in another, less-trafficked room or kept in a corner, like this one:

tell me that's not some homosexuality

ANYWAY, i also wanted to delve deeper into the flowers we see throughout the castle and perhaps any hidden meaning behind them, at least from what i could see

it was kind of hard to tell what flowers were in this one, but from what i could see:

the purple coneflower seems to represent health and healing, or even strength and well-being. when i talk about the other meanings, you'll see why this would be important

the whitish pink flower in the middle appears to be a pink peony, and this flower is known to represent good luck and prosperity, among other things. peonies in general seem to represent love, honor, happiness wealth, romance, and beauty. this does seem to be a light pink peony, which are often included in wedding bouquets

moving on, we have the obvious red rose, something i'm sure we all know the meaning to by now. if not, red roses represent "newlywed bliss and mutual respect and appreciation between the couple." a little simpler, they often stand for love and romance :)

i couldn't quite tell exactly what that white flower was, but my best guess was the gypsophila, which seems to represent eternal love and innocence, often used in weddings. anyone else noticing a pattern, here?

anyway, next we have what appears to be lavenders sticking out toward the top. these often represent things like "purity, silence, devotion, serenity, grace, and calmness." i'm really starting to see a pattern-

this almost seems like it would be a wedding bouquet, or perhaps a flower arrangement meant to commemorate the act. there are several around the castle, and while i believe these flowers were also in Biohazard in the main house, i just found it interesting, considering Lady Dimitrescu's lesbianism :)

moving on!

i had a bit of a jumpscare with this painting of the man i saw in the wine room, especially when i saw the ring on his finger

but not to worry! after doing a little bit of research, i discovered that the single ring on someone's pinky finger most likely meant they were part of the crime world, and more specifically, the mafia, though that doesn't make much sense here. another source also says that wearing a single ring on your left pinky finger means the person is unmarried, and that made me feel so much better

the man seems to be a hunter of some sort, considering what appears to be bird feet beneath his hand, and for a minute while i was researching and wandering aimlessly around the castle, i wondered if this could be Rednic. it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Rednic smuggles in people, most likely for the wine business, and this man is in a prime spot in the wine room

alas, i don't believe he's anything more than a Dimitrescu ancestor, at best. he has several more paintings of himself in this exact pose around the castle, usually paired with another, older man, and that alone tells me he's likely no one too important, though i would like to know if his placement is intentional or just for decoration

i know Capcom has a tendency to just reuse assets, but i like to overanalyze things for my own enjoyment </3

onto probably my last point, i did want to talk about the ablution room, too, assuming tumblr allows me these images. the funniest thing (in my opinion) is that when i brought up some other sapphic imagery in Castle Dimitrescu, a lot of people reminded me about the ablution room and the puzzle within:

"women are blind to male advances" is a well-known line when we talk about sapphic imagery, and what's even funnier is the violets right below the sign, which are also well-known to represent sapphics. anyone who claims Lady Dimitrescu is not queer is literally lying

especially with this stature, which has been confirmed to represent her. i mean, even look at the height compared to the other woman, as well as the way she's dressed. why are they staring so intently at each other?? plus the wine, the ragged-looking clothes... the symbolism is everywhere

anyways, while this may be a bit of a stretch, i also wanted to point out a few things i noticed before but never really went into detail about previously

we can see in the first image that this seems to be a lounging area? minus the toilet, but the room is big enough for it to house several people, obviously, and that makes sense; ablution just stands for "the act of washing oneself," though it's typically meant in a religious way, i believe? it makes sense, considering, yknow... the cult...

anyway, so we've got the castle's bathing room, probably for the maids, all things considered. the second picture features what appears to be some sort of menstruation chair? someone actually pointed this out to me because i had no idea what it was, but considering the noblewomen inhabitants' diet... hm. yeah. it's an easy way to sate their thirst, i suppose, if that's what it's used for

next are the sinks, which i believe may be a bit of a stretch with this theory, but hear me out:

see how one of those sinks has lipstick on it? i never really noticed before, but it does have the exact same casing on it as Lady Dimitrescu's, and hers is special made... it makes me wonder if one sink is specifically hers and if the ablution room is also a sort of blood or feeding room, and that's why she has that there. she would probably need to fix herself up after a feeding or even other activities, assuming she even mingled with the help to begin with

at first, i wondered if the other sink was supposed to be specifically someone else's, perhaps the woman we see all over the castle? but i don't think that makes much sense, and maybe they're both just for general use. considering the blood in the bath and the way it's smeared across the floor, i assume someone was bathing in it and couldn't clean it all up before the events of Village

i'm likely just talking out of my ass for most of this, but it was fun to look into things and do some research :3 probably won't do this again because Nerves™️, and also because i know most of this is probably just reused assets, but oh, well. i had fun, and hopefully you had fun reading :D

[unikorpi]

Fae animation practice

[kiwibrain]

This bit of dialogue did something to my brain, i just had to draw it :^)

[tsukinoshinjiu]

A little something I did over on twitter :)

[tempo-takoyaki]

Happy (belated) New Year 2024!

[basementloser]

I would've loved an episode in which Danny and Dash switch bodies.

I imagine it happens because Dash is talking to Kwan about how cool Phantom is or something, and at some point he says "Man, I wish I was Danny Phantom!"

Of course Desiree hears this, she appears before him ("So you have wished it, so shall it be!"), and the next day Dash wakes up in Danny's body. Danny Fenton's body. In Danny's room.

At this point he's pretty familiar with Desiree, and he assumes she just heard him wrong, befause Fenton and Phantom do sound alike. ("Huh, how weird! How has no one noticed this before?" We hear Wes screaming in the distance as Dash makes this observation.)

But there is no way in hell that a puny little nerd like Fenton could be Dash's hero, so something must've gone wrong. He decides to find Desiree and correct his wish.

-

Meanwhile, Danny (to his horror) wakes up in Dash's body.

He assumes he overshadowed him for some reason, but when he tries to leave, he finds out he doesn't have his powers. He also doesn't feel Dash's presence in the body.

"I know i asked for a growth spurt, but not like this!"

This isn't good.

-

Dash makes his way downstairs, and is immediately greeted by Jack Fenton, who has a million chores for him.

"Come on, Danno! Those ghosts I fished out of the ghost zone with the Fenton Ghost Fisher™️ aren't gonna put themselves back!"

Before he can object he is pushed into the lab and has to fight a couple of ectopusses. This goes very badly at first, until Dash remembers the bit of ghost hunting training Danny gave him and his classmates, when they had to rescue their parents from that big pirate ship.

As soon as he's done, exhausted on the floor (Damn, Fenton really needs to work out more!), he hears Jack yelling down the stairs.

"Son, don't forget to change the ecto filtrator! You don't want Amity Park to blow up, do ya?"

More dangerous chores keep getting added for longer than Dash thought was humanly possible.

(At some point Jack gave him some fudge, which helped.)

How does Fenton live like this???

-

We switch back over to Danny, who is now looking around Dash's room. He already knew about the cute pink teddy bear collection, but he didn't expect to find what can only be described as a fan shrine to Phantom.

There are newspaper articles, pictures, merch ("Wait I have merch? How come i didn't know that? Who is selling Phantom merch?" it's Tucker), and a poster.

(the b-story of this episode is Sam & Tucker running a Phantom merch line, and trying to stop the Box Ghost from stealing all the boxes of merch.)

Danny keeps looking around Dash's room, and finding out more about him through his stuff.

At some point he finds Dash's diary. He contemplates if he should read it or not, but in the end he decides that since Dash is always such a jerk to him, he doesn't care about morals and reads it.

Reading the diary, Danny starts to feel kinda bad, because in the entries Dash actually seems human. He's insecure, and he actually struggles with a lot. He's afraid to talk about what he's going through.

His parents are very absent, and the A-listers kicked Valerie out when her life wasn't perfect anymore. He doesn't want that to happen to him.

(I personally headcanon Dash as an extremely closeted gay guy with a lot of internalised homophobia, who hasn't stopped trying to convince himself that he's straight, but his struggles could be about anything.)

After reading all that, Danny starts to feel kinda bad for him.

-

Over the course of the day ghosts keep showing up to fight or talk to Fenton, and Dash is incredibly confused by this. Also Danny must have a weird cold or something, because he's been exhaling cold air at random all day.

"I AM THE BOX GHO- Hey! Wait! Why are you running away? You never run away. You always trap me in your cylindrical contraption of doOoOoOm!" (The Box Ghost is wearing a Phantom t-shirt, and is holding a box full of other Phantom merch. After Dash runs away, Sam and Tucker appear, chasing the Box Ghost through the street, trying to get the merch back.)

Later Johnny 13 shows up to fight, because he and Kitty broke up for the 4th time this week, and he wants to let out some steam. "Shouldn't you change for our fight, kid?" Change into what? Wait he wanted to fight, right? Dash puts on his gym uniform, and boxing gloves. Johnny looks at him weird, but doesn't question it. They have a little boxing match in the backyard.

Youngblood came by to play astronauts with him, and was very disappointed that Danny didn't fly up to space with him. (Wait didn't that dead kid kidnap Dash's parents??! Also why in the hell does he think Fenton has the ability to fly?????!! And breathe(!) in space?!!!)

After finishing what seems like a billion ghost related chores (and dealing with way too many ghosts), Dash finally manages to get out of the Fenton house, and starts to look for Desiree.

-

Danny walks out of Dash's room, and runs into Dash's dad. He opens his mouth, but he doesn't seem to care about what he's going to say. "Son I am so incredibly disappointed in you." the dad starts, then continues to list all the reasons he is a huge disappointment who should try harder. "Those weird little bears in your closet!" and "Why don't you have a girlfriend yet?"

The whole interaction is horrible, and makes Danny appreciate his own parents (weird as they may be) so much.

Dash's mom also berates him about being a disappointment, because they found his Phantom collection ("He is a GHOST, Dash! He's dangerous!"), and because his grades are so low. ("What do you mean tutor? Just study harder!")

They threaten to take Pookie away if he doesn't get his shit together.

-

At some point Danny has deduced that this body situation must be some ghost bullshit, and he decides to go to Fentonworks.

Then he runs into Dash in his body, and they have a little spiderman moment

After the internal shock and "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY BODY GET OUT!"s have gone around, Dash tells Danny what happened.

Danny informs Dash that most of Desiree's wishes become permanent after 24 hours. They decide to team up to get Desiree to undo this wish before that happens.

It's noted that Dash didn't say the word "puny" or any other insult, when he says "I really don't wanna stay in your body.".

We see a compilation of Danny and Dash searching Amity Park for Desiree, and other wishes she has granted. They fight off a couple of small ghost things together.

(during this compilation we see Sam and Tucker chasing the Box Ghost around. "How is he this hard to catch?? We've done this millions of times already!!!" -"Well maybe if you didn't drop the fucking thermos!")

After the fight, Dash sighs and says "Man, I had no idea how difficult your life is, Fenton. I've only been living it a day and it sucks."

they have a little heart to heart, and Dash sincerely apologises for bullying Danny so much.

"why did you want to be Phantom anyway? I assume his life isn't that easy either." Danny says.

"I dunno, man. I just thought it would be cool to be, y'know, going ghost."

White rings appear around Dash. He turns into Phantom.

they have another moment like this:

"WHAT THE FUCK!"

"WHAT THE FUCK!"

"I"M- I- YOU- YOU'RE PHANTOM??!!!"

"NO! YES! NO TIME! FIGHT HER!!!"

Because of course, this is the moment that Desiree appears, and starts fighting them.

"I dont know how!!!"

The beginning of the fight is very awkward, with Dash not knowing how Danny's powers work, and Danny not being used to fighting Desiree without his powers.

Eventually they get the hang of it, with Danny telling Dash how to activate and use certain powers in the moment, and they defeat Desiree.

All the wishes get undone, and they suck her up into a thermos.

After that, they talk about Danny being Phantom. Danny tells Dash the story of how he died got his powers, and Dash shares some of his secrets with Danny so they're "even". (it's some stuff that wasn't in Dash's diary. Danny doesn't mention that he read that, but that can be conflict in a later episode)

They aren't friends yet, but it's a start. Now that he walked a mile in Danny's shoes, Dash feels so bad about bullying him all those years, and he starts to question his life choices. (start of a Dash redemption arc i guess). He promises to stop bullying in general, and help out Danny however he can. (He also promises to not tell anyone about Danny's secret identity.)

(The episode ends with Sam and Tucker, having finally caught the Box Ghost, only to realise that in the chase/fight all the merch got way too messed up to sell, so it was all for nothing. Tucker throws the thermos down in frustration, the Box Ghost gets free, grabs the Phantom shirt he wore earlier, yells "BEWARE!" and flies off. Sam sighs and gets ready to start chasing him again, but Tucker stops her. "I give up. Let him have the fucking shirt.")

[serpentface]

Faiza performing the Kagnoma Odo (pretty literally 'lion dance'), a weapons dance and one of the more important ritual duties of Odonii priestesses. A relatively new addition to this traditional dance involves the musket as the primary weapon, which is fired mid-twirl into the ground at the climax of the dance. Faiza is experiencing an 'oh fuck' moment because her shot is more than ideally diagonal, but she’s being so cool with it.

This is a wholly ceremonial performance at the onset of the pilgrimage, performed in full regalia and lion skin (of the small, semi-domesticated strain) but no armor. It’s also distinctly a display of political allegiance between the powerful and beloved Odonii priesthood (and its loyal military) with the increasingly reviled and destabilized imperial family, with Faiza prominently wearing a bracelet of the royal serpent, which was gifted (along with the musket) by the usoma Stavis Amanti himself (Usoma is the Wardi word for king, which has been retained in the context of emperors).

The Kagnoma Odo is the ultimate demonstration of the Odonii as an embodiment of the Lion Face of God and living vessel of military might and sovereignty, demonstrating her fitness and proficiency with weapons and as a spiritual unifier for soldiers. It is accompanied by drumming and occurs in stages, running through the three keymost weapons used in war- the spear, the sword, and the musket. The musket is of the most significance, given the weapon has developed a particular esteem as the ultimate embodiment of might and superiority. Assistants (almost always other priestesses, occasionally high ranking soldiers) load and prime the musket to be fired at the climax of the dance, where it is shot into the ground as the priestess leaps out of range of the shot. The firing signals the end of the dance and the rite itself.

While not the utmost exemplar of trigger discipline, only fully inducted and senior (and therefore very thoroughly trained) Odonii are permitted to perform the dance, and injuries during actual performances are quite rare (though are known to occur during training, more than a few Odonii have burns and wounds on their feet).

The most important renditions of this dance are performed upon declarations of war and before battles (in this case, generally done in full armor along with the lion pelt). It is also done during some trainings (while a dance, it is carefully choreographed to include naturalistic maneuvers of the weapons involved and helps soldiers limber up and learn to move their weapons). It is regarded as an impressive and motivating sight and a morale booster, and, seen at a distance, potentially intimidating to enemies.

A special variant of this dance is performed as means of fully incarnating the Odomache, which is done in full nudity with the body covered in the blood of the freshly sacrificed lion and cloaked in its raw pelt (the lion has become the corpse of Odomache in the moment of death, as part of its recreation of God's sacrifice). Her public, full nude appearance once (and only once) in this act is what allows the Lion Face of God to incarnate within her. Those in attendance see the spiritually vulnerable, naked human body obscured with the sanctified and deified blood and cloaked in the sanctified and deified skin. It is a merger of the contradictions of mortality and divinity, the boundaries between the two indistinct in flickering firelight and the flash of musketfire. She is witnessed by her people, dangling in between humanity and divinity and leading them in dance, and and is thus transformed.

[shortbreadly]

well barbie and blitzo’s interactions killed me just as i expected, but i just want to talk about this:

we can see that barbie’s mad at blitzo for whatever reason, but something about this scene feels off to me. and i think i’ve pinpointed why

blitzo is no stranger to people being mad at him, in fact it happens in most episodes. of course some people‘s feelings mean more to him, such as maybe m+m, stolas or even fizzarolli, but he doesn’t shy away from defending himself and speaking his mind to even them. he always has some shit to say, and always sticks up for himself in his own blitzo way

but with barbie he doesn’t, he just stares at her with that sad little look of regret on his face. even in this scene:

blitzo recoils away from barbie. doesn’t defend himself. doesn’t argue with her. just recoils.

blitzo obviously feels shame and regret over whatever has happened between him and barbie, otherwise he would’ve stuck up for himself. however i also think he views barbie as completely innocent and out of the wrong regarding whatever happened, instead possibly blaming himself, due to one thing:

barbie was never in blitzo’s bad trip. striker, fizz, verosika, moxxie and stolas were, but not barbie. all of these people he views negatively (or has previously viewed somewhat negatively in moxxie’s and stolas’ case) but barbie is no where to be seen. obviously something has happened in the past with her as with the others, but unlike them he can’t bring himself to hate her for it

edit: just gonna throw it out there that blitzo recoils when barbie presses their mother’s choker. make of that what you will

[medusas-daughter]

I had to block so many Alicent stans bulldozing my posts lately but I need to vent. Yes, Alicent is a product of her father, yes her marriage to Viserys was traumatic, yes the way her council and her own son are treating her is awful.

Here's why I don't have a shred of empathy for her: she chose, actively, of her own volition, not manipulated by her father or husband, not pushed to it by whatever trauma, to slutshame Rhaenyra over and over, and chose, actively, to raise her sons to believe they are better than women simply because they're men. That is a choice. Don't tell me she was protecting her children because Rhaenyra would have killed them when she became queen. Rhaenyra said in front of all of ther father's council that she wanted her son and Alicent's daughter to marry. She wanted to bind both families even more. Kinslaying is a curse that Rhaenyra would have no reason to invoke if they hadn't stolen her crown. All those arguments of Rhaenyra hating her brothers stem from nothing. She literally ignored them 99% of the time, they're the ones who were obsessed with her and her kids because of Alicent's poison. Rhaenyra just saw her brothers as kids. If she hated them she wouldn't have let her sons near them. Alicent chose to torment Rhaenyra to the point where her sons only call their sister "the whore of Dragonstone" and that is not something that was imposed on her by a flawed system, that was a choice on her part.

She also chose to abuse Rhaenyra's sons for their birth. Bigotry against bastards still exists to this day. There are countries where bastards weren't allowed a last name until the last couple decades, that's how recent it is, GRRM didn't invent that. And that's just the legal repercussions, the social ones are worse. I don't take that hate lightly. Alicent chose to remind the whole of the Red Keep over and over to keep calling those children bastards. She made them feel unsafe in their own home. She chose to make her sons hate their nephews and torment them for being bastards. That was a choice that wasn't pushed on her, she did that all on her own.

I have been slutshamed and abused by women like Alicent my whole life. And guess what, the patriarchy those women suffered under? We're all suffering under it. Some of us chose not to take it out on other women. And some of us chose to pander to the man and uphold the patriarchy like it's their life's purpose. Is Alicent a complex nuanced character? I would argue yes actually. She was a victim of certain circumstances and guilty of others. She's quite realistic. She's every right wing woman I've ever met. And no I don't have empathy. She made her bed. She can die in it for all I care.

Also, I don't hate her anymore than I hate the rest of the greens. I'm just angrier at her because a man calling his ex a whore is like a dime a dozen there's so many of them. A woman calling another woman a whore? That stings. That hurts a lot more than anything a man could say.

[itsnicsalad]

doodles bc i miss drawing things that are rendered lol

[the-pianist-from-accumula-town]

🥤The OC Café🥤

Want a choccy milk?

In order from left to right!

Carrie Caramel - by Yours Truly @the-pianist-from-accumula-town ❤️ (Runs the café and hosts this event!)

Colt Cattlemen - by @thelone-copper (Colt's farm provided the milk for the Choccy milk. Thanks, Colt!)

Robbie Robs - by @clownsuu (Silly little beetle. Almost depleted choccy milk supplies all by himself.)

More under cut!👇

Skittles - by @saxophonelover1160 (BABY. SMOL. One of my faves 10/10 would draw them again)

Ida - by @stormcellarwitch (Enjoys her choccy milk with a nice book)

(don't have a name for this next one so I'll call him) Bee - by @lexieshomee (Look at him buzzing around happily!)

Poppet - by @cupophrogs (The embodiment of that one "Sitting in a sofa the wrong way" meme)

Dusty Bunny - by clownsuu (again! Can't get enough of his characters!)

Molly Moon - by @glitch-pep (She found herself a nice pillow❤️)

Andre Macaw - by @dottyorange (I modified the feathers and legs to resemble Poppy's, hope that's ok. We need more animal OCs I love them)

Gnostica Discreet - by @moth-lover-not-mother (Dancing to the music with her bestie!)

Berry Beloved - by @shadytreelucy-blog (According to her description chart she had to be dragged out of her lab to join the fun, and honestly? Mood.)

[gay-little-izzet]

I would absolutely love to see your take on a Hades style Elspeth!

Here goes! I know I brought it up, but it’s my first time trying this style so I don’t think it’s quuuite there yet. I still like how this came out!

Even if it means I’m still exploring the style, I wanted to draw Elspeth first, because of the whole escaping Erebos schtick. I could totally see her as the protagonist of a Hades sort of game (that’s why I didn’t draw her with a weapon—I figured since she has multiple, she’d need a weaponless pose)

I know it’s not perfect, but I really had fun trying to replicate this art style 😅

[kimdokjas]

wait wait, what’s the change tumblr did to the reblog chains ? 🥲🥲🥲 I’m so lost

okay so basically, let's say you see a post on your dash

before the update, if you clicked on a url, you could do 3 things:

view that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A)

view the previous reblog on the blog A reblogged it from (B)

view the original post on op's blog (C)

however, staff recently implemented an update where clicking on a url no longer takes you to that specific post. now, clicking on a url just takes you to the blog itself.

this means that you now get 5 things:

view ONLY that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A) -> changed location near header. also, you will now ONLY see that post and nothing else

view ONLY the original post on op's blog (C) -> changed location near header. you will only see that post and nothing else. and ONLY if the op hasn't deleted it, otherwise it just shows an error

view the blog of the person you follow (D)

view the blog of the person D reblogged it from (F) -> option B no longer exists

view the blog of the op (E)

you might be thinking: "cool! i get more options so that's good, right?" well, no.

there are SEVERAL things wrong with this and it goes beyond the prev tags issue

1) first of all, it's counterintuitive that A and C changed locations to the area near the header, especially if your userbase was already used to the previous functions. it just seems like horrible UX design to me but let's put that aside for now.

2) as you can see, option B which allowed you to see the previous reblog of a post no longer exists.

now, if you click on the previous url, you will just be taken to their entire blog. you can no longer view the post itself.

someone asked staff about this, and they replied in this post that the change was INTENTIONAL and if you want to view the previous reblog you would have to "go through the notes view".

to borrow what someone else said:

basically, this update just killed the prev tags culture in one fell swoop.

(sure, you can still use it to reply directly to the person you're reblogging from, but it's now literally useless to use "prev tags" for everyone else involved. sure, you can choose to copy tags or peer review them, but again, if people will have to copy them then the less people are likely to use them, and not every prev lends itself to peer-reviewing imo)

now, listen. i know not everyone likes the prev tags culture, but it just seems like such a poorly-thought decision to kill a culture that like... half of your entire userbase uses (see this poll as a quick reference) and that's UNIQUE to your site and sets you apart from other social media.

but it's also not even just prev tags. let's say you want to remove an annoying addition on a post's reblog chain? you can no longer do that.

however, i feel like this is the most important point:

regardless of how you may feel about the prev tags culture, the pure UI aspect of it should remain

what i mean by this is: even if you don't like prev tags, simply 1) being able to access the reblog chain, and 2) clicking on a post and actually have it take you to their BLOG (and not just a page with that one single post) is literally essential navigation.

this update threatens to drive down user engagement (which is already critically low) by making it harder to navigate. which is actually another point:

3) even if you click on A and C now to view those specific posts, it's NOT the same as it used to be.

before, you could view the reblog directly on the blog. so you could just scroll down and see the other posts leading up to it. now, you will be taken to a page where you will ONLY see that post and nothing else.

but also, you can no longer easily navigate other people's blogs.

you know how sometimes you would see like 50 notifications of someone going through an entire tag on your blog? that's going to happen a lot less, i'm afraid.

let's suppose you want to go to op's blog because they're an artist and you want to see more of their art. so you click on C and see that the tag they use for posts with their art is "#my art"

cool! before, you could just click on that tag and immediately view ALL of their art as long as the posts have that tag.

but now, if you click on that tag, it will take you to the ENTIRE tumblr tag with literally all the posts that everyone in the history of time has tagged with that specific tag.

now, to do the same thing that just took 2 clicks before, you would have to: click on C to view the post -> look for the tag you want to navigate -> click E to view their whole blog -> scroll and look for a post that just so happens to have that tag (the search function is literally useless) and hope to god that there's a recent one or you'll have to scroll for ages or simply give up -> if you happen to find it, click on that tag to navigate their posts.

you see how this is counterproductive, right? you see how this can literally drive down engagement with content creators, right?

if you make people's blogs harder to navigate, you will literally drive down the number of likes and reblogs on their posts, which have already been steadily declining for years now.

4) options D and E to view the blogs and not the posts are literally useless because you could already access other people's blogs before. you just had to click on their url to view their blogs starting from that specific post AND you could choose to just refresh it to view their newest posts.

either way, the change just seems completely unnecessary. and again, it's not just about the prev tags culture but about basic UI.

so what can we do about it?

i normally don't advocate for flooding staff with messages but i do feel like this is one of the worst updates staff has ever done (and that's saying something) and something needs to change.

even if they don't retcon the entire update, that's fine, but staff could at least add the option to view the reblog chain as a different feature (maybe even opt-in) for example. there are better ways to go about this than just axing an entire existing feature.

also, this same issue that makes it harder to navigate blogs needs to change. i feel like content creators will be especially affected by this unless this changes because you can no longer easily navigate their tags, so it will inevitably drive down engagement.

so please, contact staff and let them know we want a change.

you can contact support here!

here's a template for a possible message you could send, but feel free to edit it. (under category you can choose "Feedback")

Hi, I would like to politely request a change to the recent update that affects the reblog chain of posts. Regardless of the "prev tags" culture itself, the UI aspect of being able to view the reblog chain of a post is essential for navigation on this website. Even adding it as a separate, opt-in feature would be a huge help. Additionally, clicking on a post and then on one of the tags now takes you to the entire tumblr tag instead of the tag on that blog, which makes it harder to navigate blogs. Both of these issues have the potential to drive down user engagement by actively making it harder to navigate Tumblr, but especially for content creators. I hope you can do something to address these issues as soon as possible. Thanks in advance and have a nice day.

also, if you can and/or want, reblogs are appreciated to help spread the word!

that's pretty much the gist of the issue from what i've seen, but if anyone else has anything to add or a different way we could contact staff to make ourselves heard, please feel free to let me know!

TLDR: it's not just about prev tags, this update affects basic functionality and content creators as well

Update Sept 07, 2024: this issue was "fixed" a few months back, although with some caveats / downgrades. You can check out this post for how to view the reblog chain, but all the other issues addressed in this post still remain.

[fistfuloflightning]

I’ll never get there, but if I put the work in, maybe I’ll get close enough that I can chase just behind perfection — and have a front-row seat as you achieve it.

Chapter 20, Cultivate by @neonghostcat

[kamabokobun]

All of the evolutions for the cnidarian trio have now been posted!!! Thank you all for waiting, for enjoying, and for all of your kind words!!!

[four-cats-in-a-trenchcoat]

The Nightmare and the Paranoid >>>>