#it would obfuscate the raw numbers a bit and make it harder to see the disparity

[bitchfitch]

Like, it's a bit funny when posts go around claiming Tumblr isn't as good for artists as other sites, or that it's on par with other sites bc artists are more prone to asking for interaction here than elsewhere. bc here's The Thing.

On pure numbers of usual engagement vs audience size (the # of interactions a post gets on average not including any spiders georgs), Tumblr is fucking Fantastic.

Here's how the math shakes out. On average an Account on a social media platform such as insta or twitter in late 2022 can expect around a 1-3% engagements on their posts. If the account has 100 followers 1-3 of those followers will in some way do something with that post, that's 'Like' 'Comment' or whatever the site equivalent of peer to peer sharing is (rebloging or retweeting).

in General a User is more likely to use what ever the lowest effort form of interaction on the site is more often than the higher effort ones, with a tier system of interactions naturally forming

on Tumblr those tiers are likes > reblogs > comments

The average user is more likely to like a post than reblog it and they are more likely to reblog than leave a comment, (we are collecting comments left in the comment tab, tags containing a comment, and reblogs with comment in the same umbrella they require about the same level of user effort but tag comments are technically lower effort than actual comments or rb with comment bc of them being the inside voice as some have put it. )

Those tiers are Really important. because on a more typical site, on an account that isn't specifically using click bait and outrage bait to well bait interactions, you expect a significant disparity between those tiers on the average post. This varries dramatically between sites but it's usually a 10 to 1 between steps when i have to listen to my coworkers talk about engagement for nth fucking hour that day. (Tumblr terms: 10 likes for every 1 reblog, 10 reblogs for every 1 comment, 100 likes for every 1 comment)

So on Tumblr account with (to make the math easier) 10,000 followers you would expect the Average post to have 150 notes (1.5% interaction rate)

Of those 150 notes the break down will normally look like 136 likes, 13 reblogs and a single comment. This post originally only used a 1% interaction rate bc it made the math easier, but with that Very common estimate, a Tumblr post with a hundred notes would have No comments.

Has that been your experience? Do you Commonly see or make posts that do those numbers? I don't. I have about 1.2k followers on this blog and the only posts that get 12 notes or less are personal, non content, or non currated posts. Posts that aren't what my blog is a bout and aren't what people follow this blog for. My actual completed art, when posted at not fuck off o'clock in the morning Very often 50+ notes with the rb to like ratio being closer to 1 rb for every 5 likes.

Beyond that, Tumblr not being heavily dictated by an algorithm and allowing users to use the low effort interactions more than once means posts have a Far longer shelf life. Art i posted over a year ago still gets notes because it was tagged appropriately and has been passed one blog to another giving more people the opportunity to then interact with it.

Having said that, I could Absolutely reach a wider audience and get more number go up juice by using a more algorithmically focused site. If i was willing to bend to the algorithm and Only post what lined up with it. Only made content that appealed to a wide base that could be tagged with the latest hotness and also ran my profile in the most algorithmically pleasing way.

because that what those sites end up doing. They force users and artists especially to conform to the algorithm. If you Want that Coveted 3% interaction rate. or Hell, maybe you want to dream big and get a 5% interaction rate, something some of my coworkers have gotten Actual raises for consistently achieving for clients before. If you want that, you best better be willing to sell your soul to a black box that's unknowable to users On Purpose.

Tumblr is fucking Fantastic for the average artist on a pure numbers front. Partially because there's no algorithm concentrating interactions by fucking with who sees your post and stacking the deck in a way that gets certain Algorithm Friendly content creators atypical interaction rates.

The reasons artists ask for reblogs and interactions here more is because it's Way easier to see and Feel the disparity inherent to a social media platform. Partially because likes don't significantly benefit the artist beyond giving them the warm fuzzies, at best it'll bump the post out of reverse chronological order on the dashboards of people who have best stuff first still turned on or who use the for you tab

It's Absolutely better to reblog folks work. It is a Massive help for smaller creators who are trying to grow their audiences because we can't use the algorithm to our advantage here. There isn't one to exploit, there's no combination of tags and posting time or text in the post that'll trick some ones and zeros into dumping it on a million peoples' dashes without paying actual money to promote the post to an almost random selection of users. So creators are completely reliant on their followers to spread their work, and that makes a Phenomenal interaction rate Feel bad because theres no layer of obfuscation between the users and how their content proliferates, there's no invisible hand pushing the scale one way or another.

anyways it was like 4 am when i started writing this, it is now almost 6am I'm not fucking checking or editing this, Source. Me. guy who has to work at a marketing company bc ' obnoxious and reclusive wizard ' isn't """"'a viable career'"""" anymore.

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Tell Me Where To Find Shelter – Converting Alice's VTMB Stats To Fallout Ones

So! I'm on a kick of combining Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines and Fallout 4 into one universe, for the purposes of shipping my Sole Survivor!Victor with my Malkavian!Alice. And since the story takes place in the Fallout 4 nuclear apocalypse, we have to do a few things to get our Alice properly settled in this verse. One of them? Convert her Bloodlines character sheet into something that can fit with the Fallout 4 system!

Now Fallout as a whole uses the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system to stat up characters – everyone has the seven core attributes of Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck, ranked from 1 to 10. How Perks and Skills are handled varies from game to game, but in Fallout 4 we have a Perk "tree" of sorts that is linked to your special stats – each stat has various perks that can be accessed as you level it up, and those perks often have levels of their own (for example, the "Locksmith" perk is available at Perception 4, and it has 4 levels, allowing you to pick harder and harder locks, and eventually stopping your bobby pins from breaking). You earn XP doing various things in the world (completing quests gives the most, but you also earn plenty from just crafting stuff, building things in settlements, finding new locations, being charismatic, and killing enemies) to level up, and at each level up, you earn a "Perk Point," where you can choose a new Perk (so long as you have the appropriate stats), upgrade an existing Perk (again, as long as you meet requirements), or even just boost the seven core raw stats (opening up more Perks).

Bloodlines, on the other hand, uses a variation on the standard World of Darkness TTRPG character sheet, where characters have nine Attributes (the raw power of the character, subdivided into three categories – Physical has Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina; Social has Charisma, Manipulation, and Appearance; and Mental has Perception, Intelligence, Wits) and twelve Abilities (learned skills, also subdivided into three categories – Talents has Brawl, Dodge, Intimidation, and Subterfuge; Skills has Firearms, Melee, Security, Stealth; and Knowledges has Computers, Finance, Investigation, and Scholarship). Attributes are ranked 1 to 5; Abilities 0 to 5. These combine to form Feats, which cover things like how good you are at various kinds of combat, if you're good at sneaking around and lockpicking, if you're good at persuading or seducing people, etc. There's also three Disciplines each clan gets as magical abilities – Malkavians have Auspex (see auras, get bonuses to certain stats), Obfuscate (turn invisible), and Dementation (inflict debilitating mental effects on others). You don't level up, but just earn straight XP for each quest you complete, which is spent on increasing Attributes, Abilities, or Disciplines at increasing costs.

Okay, so how do we bash these together into something that makes sense for Alice? Well, let's start by looking at her Attributes, Abilities, and Feats from Bloodlines. Since she's supposed to have gone through the whole game by the time she meets Victor, we'll use her stats from the end of my playthrough. We'll also use the "raw" stats – that is, not boosted by special items she picked up through the course of the game. That gives us:

Attributes:

Physical: Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 4

Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 1, Appearance 2

Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 4, Wits 3

Abilities:

Talents: Brawl 3, Dodge 3, Intimidation 1, Subterfuge 0

Skills: Firearms 5, Melee 5, Security 4, Stealth 4

Knowledges: Computers 5, Finance 3, Investigation 2, Scholarship 5

Feats:

Combat: Unarmed 7, Melee 9, Ranged 9, Defense 6

Covert: Lockpicking 8, Sneaking 8, Hacking 8, Inspection 8, Research 9

Public: Haggle 4, Intimidate 5, Persuasion 8, Seduction 2

Soak: Bashing 4, Lethal 0, Aggravated 0

So there's a couple of Attributes that can be immediately slotted into the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system – Strength, Charisma, Perception, and Intelligence appear in both. However, we can't just put in the raw numbers – remember, S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats rank from 1 to 10, while WoD Attributes only rank from 1 to 5. In order to get a more accurate picture, we'll need to double Alice's Bloodlines stats in those four categories (so Strength goes from 4 in the Bloodlines stats to 8 in the Fallout 4 ones). As for the stats that don't have an immediate match:

Dexterity covers the same sort of stuff Agility does, so Alice's score in the former can be transferred to the latter

Similarly, Stamina can map onto Endurance

Manipulation is used mainly for the "haggle" feat in Bloodlines – this is probably best covered by the "Cap Collector" perk in Fallout 4, which similarly improves vendor prices

Appearance, like the above, is used for the "seduction" feat in Bloodlines – that's best translated into the "Black Widow/Ladykiller" perk (since Alice is cis-female, "Black Widow" would be used for her)

Wits, to continue the trend, is used for upping defense in combat and the "hacking" feat – seems like it would grant one the "Hacker" perk in response

Luck has no direct counterpart in the Bloodlines Attributes – but given that the Bloodlines Fledgling starts out lucky enough to survive their illegal embrace, and generally ends lucky enough to become a powerful player in Los Angeles vampire politics, or powerful enough to strike out on their own without a faction's help (as Alice did), I think it's safe to assume it's high!

So let's say that, as of her appearance in "Tell Me Where To Find Shelter," Alice's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats are:

Strength: 8

Perception: 8

Endurance: 8

Charisma: 6

Intelligence: 8

Agility: 8

Luck: 10

Yes, this is not something you could get in the character creator at the beginning of the game – but this is Alice after the end of Bloodlines, I think we can assume she's leveled up quite a bit! And yes, I'm giving her Luck 10 because – well, let's face it, she survived a LOT of shit and got REALLY powerful REALLY fast. Safe to assume Luck is currently on her side!

So we've got her S.P.E.C.I.A.L. – now, what about Perks? Well, from the Bloodlines Attributes that didn't map onto anything in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. categories, we already have three: "Black Widow" (makes it easier to charm and kill men); "Cap Collector" (makes prices more favorable in buying and selling with vendors); and "Hacker" (allows you to hack terminals). Looking at her Bloodlines Feats seems to be the best way to determine which other Perks she should have, since they're what she knows combined with her raw base power. By category:

Combat: Alice is really good at both melee and ranged (aka gun) combat, with decent unarmed and defense. Making things slightly more difficult, though, is that Fallout 4 has different perks for different kinds of guns. Making things slightly easier is the fact that I played Alice as primarily a melee build – she knows how to use guns, and I certainly made good use of them in certain fights, but she and I both felt more comfortable with a good sledgehammer or sword. Give her "Iron Fist" for her potential as a good unarmed combatant, the strongest version of "Big Leagues" for her ability with a good melee weapon, and "Steady Aim" for her gunplay. "Gunslinger" covers non-automatic pistols, which I believe are the kind I ended up using most often for her; "Rifleman" covers things like rifles and shotguns – and she was using that Dragon's Breath shotgun a LOT in her final boss fights, so pop those on for her too!

Covert: Alice is great at lockpicking, sneaking, hacking, finding things (though admittedly this is artificially bumped due to her being a Malkavian), and looking things up. We've already determined she'd have the "Hacker" trait, so we can now assume she has it at the highest level. She also gets "Locksmith" at the highest level. "Sneak" – well, this is an interesting one, as she's good at it, but she also has the Obfuscate ability, which I used a LOT, so. . . We'll give it to her at Rank 2 for now. "Fortune Finder" and "Scrounger" both feel appropriate as well, as does "Awareness" for figuring out what people are weak to (this overlaps with her ability to see auras using Auspex – think of it as her version of V.A.T.S.!).

Public: Alice is okay at haggling and intimidating, surprisingly good at persuading, and pretty crap at seducing. We've given her "Black Widow" as it's the only perk Appearance was good for that I could see, but we'll keep it at the lowest level as seduction isn't really her style. (She's just pretty enough to distract people!) The same applies to "Cap Collector." Weirdly enough, her base Charisma stat locks her out of stuff like "Intimidation" and "Wasteland Whisperer" – but she's also been staked in a basement for about as long as Victor's been frozen, so probably she needs time to come to grip with the post-apocalyptic world! Rather than any specific Charisma-based perk, she's probably just got a background higher chance of winning speech checks.

Soak: This is an interesting category, because this one primarily relies on the armor you have. However, having good Stamina helps defend against Bashing, which is bullet and blunt melee weapon damage. Alice has a bit of that, so a level or two in "Toughness" seems appropriate.

In addition, I think she should have "Strong Back" (being a video game character with an invisible inventory that allows her to carry a decent amount of stuff; there are some pretty strict limits, though, so I'd only give her level one); "Lifegiver" (vampires and video game characters are both harder to kill than normal humans, and vampires DO auto-mend themselves in the original game); "Night Person" (. . .she's a vampire); and "Aquagirl" (again, vampire – no need to breathe!). So the final stats and perks would be:

Strength: 8 – Perks "Iron Fist" (Rank 1), "Big Leagues" (Rank 5), "Strong Back" (Rank 1), "Steady Aim" (Rank 2)

Perception: 8 – Perks "Rifleman" (Rank 2), "Awareness" (Rank 1), "Locksmith" (Rank 4), "Night Person" (Rank 3)

Endurance: 8 – Perks "Toughness" (Rank 2), "Lifegiver" (Rank 3), "Aquagirl" (Rank 1)

Charisma: 6 – Perks "Cap Collector" (Rank 1), "Black Widow" (Rank 1)

Intelligence: 8 – Perks "Hacker" (Rank 4)

Agility: 8 – Perks "Gunslinger" (Rank 2), "Sneak" (Rank 2)

Luck: 10 – Perks "Fortune Finder" (Rank 3), "Scrounger" (Rank 3)

That just leaves Alice's Discplines, which – being magical effects – are kind of hard to quantify in Fallout 4's soft sci-fi setting. However:

Auspex is pretty much covered by the "Awareness" perk – Alice never leveled it far, and as I stated, seeing the auras of various creatures to determine what they are is not that dissimilar from V.A.T.S.

Obfuscate is the ability to turn invisible to the human eye – Alice mastered this. We can treat this as if Alice always has a Stealth Boy on her, but she has to be above a certain HP threshold to use it, and it gradually drains HP as it’s used.

Dementation is the ability to inflict various hallucinations and delusions on people – Alice was always iffy about this, but got as good as "Vision of Death," which can actually kill a single person from fear. Lesser effects can temporarily distract a person with uncontrollable laughing or crying, or inflict hallucinations on a group that decreases their combat abilities. It also gives you special dialogue options to get people to do what you want, which is the one effect I think I could put into the game. We'd need to code up a special Perk for the other stuff!

And that about does it! How I think my endgame Malkavian!Alice would look under the Fallout 4 stats! Whew, that took longer than I thought. . . (And I still want to go ahead and steal a certain "Bloodsucker" Perk from Fallout 76. . . "Cannibal" just doesn't really fit with Alice's physiology.)