#like the fact that TUMBLR (which afaik is one of the only social media sites historically to give the option to make likes private)

[ravenkings]

you know, i used to think it was kind of wack that twitter made likes on accounts public, but the fact that elon's mandated that they be private for ALL ACCOUNTS (without an opt-in feature seemingly) and NOT ONLY THAT but made it impossible to click on the likes ON THE POST ITSELF to see who's liked it is actually so insane to me

[retellingthehobbit]

@pelahnar ahhh thank you!!

I think one of my biggest problems is that, especially early on, I’ve been poorly organized and failed to do the “boring” website organization/maintenance that makes a webcomic actually retain any readers. While some of my chapters get some attention in isolation, people often trouble have finding the rest of them, learning there are others, or following along. Which is my fault really XD.

I once had this mentality that I could just draw the pages, not worry about anything else, and people would figure out how to follow the comic on their own— but that’s not really how things work 😂. Even in my own experience, there are plenty of webcomics I’ve been unable to get into because it was too hard to figure out where they were being posted or how to follow along.

It took me a while to start crossposting to Webtoon and Ao3, and even years after starting to crosspost people still are surprised to learn the comic is on those sites. And I think it’s because I haven’t made that clear enough to people. It also took me far too long to put together a separate Tumblr sideblog distinct from my main blog, and then to have that blog contain a master list of links to the chapters in the pinned post. : P

I definitely need to make a website as a central hub for the comic, the way other artists do with their own comics, but. AHH. 😭. Designing a website is a lot of work. I would either need to spend weeks learning how to do that and putting it together, or Id need to spend at least a few hundred dollars hiring someone to build a website for this personal project that Im not making any money off. I’ve noticed that lots of webcomics I love partner with Hiveworks, which has an internal team that helps build well-formatted websites for artists so they don’t have to do it, but those kinds of partnerships aren’t reallly an option for a copyright-violating fancomic. (And technically, Webtoon can take down my comic for that reason at any time 😂.)

My other option is to use a site like comicfury, which has prebuilt webcomic websites— but comicfury could easily go under, the way similar websites have, and it would kind of defeat the point. The whole purpose of having a website is to have something you “own” that can’t be taken down on a whim; I’d hate to put in all this effort into a Comicfury site and then have it shut down.

(And i’ve tried Wordpress, but afaik their ‘webcomic’ themes are either all extremely outdated or don’t work anymore.)

It’s just so many things to manage? Posting on Webtoon, posting to the image hosting site I use for Ao3 embeds, Ao3 itself, and Tumblr; I have four Tumblr sideblogs; then then also other social media sites like Instagram and Tiktok 😆. Just the process of *uploading* a chapter of this comic takes hours! I’m aware that other people find ways to Automate posting but I haven’t.

Uploading to yet another website would be even more work, and I would only do it if it were my own website; but I can’t make my own website until I learn how or am willing/able to throw lots of money at someone; and anyway, alas that these evil days should be mine. So many things to organize, so many blogs to run!

I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. I need a hiatus, a very long hiatus….

….And when you combine the organizational problems with the fact that my update schedule is very inconsistent, it’s a wonder anyone has figured out how to follow this comic at all 🤣😂🤣🤣 I’m very thankful people are so determined.

One day I will bite the bullet and figure out how to make a website, but until then! My comic will just be around. I doubt it will ever be like a Real Webcomic until I get the organization down and make a Real website, but that’s just life sometimes

….I think some people might believe this fancomic is more popular than it is XD. One or two people have talked to me like this comic is very popular or something but it’s usually more like

Its more popular than a lot of webcomics but I want to stress that (from my side) this feels like a very small operation 😂, especially given the level of time I put into it. I’m not unhappy about that, because I don’t draw this to get popular! I draw it because I want to! I would draw it in a void! And I enjoy having a small enough reader group that I recognize familiar usernames who comment often, can reply to all comments, and can have conversations with individual people and stuff. but it is just a thing.

My point is that I’m not Sansukh or any other (deservedly) Uber-popular hobbit fanfic with thousands of subscribers, I’m still just a little guy, so I do appreciate every comment/share a lot! 😂

[exeggcute]

genuine question, wasnt tumblr already planning the nsfw ban before the app got removed from the app store back in 2018? and im curious as to how twitter gets away with having porn on the ios app while tumblr has to ban tags like "mine". fuck apple and all, im sure they play a huge part in all this, im just confused honestly. how much of this is really on them?

your guess is as good as mine (no idea what their product roadmap looked like back then) but afaik there was never a porn ban in the works before then... you could definitely see tits on the dash up until the 2018 ban (and I mean you definitely still can, technically lol). but also remember that this website changed owners a million times so it's very well possible that some peabrained executive at like yahoo or whatever made a decree that tumblr would become ""family-friendly"" and it never materialized. if there's one thing I've learned in software dev it's that C-level dipshits love to make promises that may never get realized.

it's genuinely not in tumblr's interest to restrict content like this though. think about it: restricting content (especially something as nebulously all-encompassing and popular as "adult" content) restricts your user base, and restricting your user base means less traffic. less traffic means less ads served which means less money, because most ads are paid per impression. unless tumblr thinks they can rebrand themselves with a squeaky-clean image (and they're not stupid, I know they don't think this) there would be no point in enacting a policy like this other than shooting themselves in the foot for no reason. no other social media sites do this willingly. (also the fact it's only applicable to iOS users also really tells you everything you need to know.)

now, when it comes to questions of actual content moderation and bots and shit... that's another matter entirely. and also imo not even relevant to this discussion since it's a whole separate nightmare but I will say that tumblr's content moderation (in terms of "if enough people report a nazi will they actually get banned") seems to be slightly better than average, although the bar is extremely low. but social media in general is plagued with moderation problems and part of it is a labor problem and part of it is stuff I don't want to get too into because I might technically break an NDA lol. but it's a worthwhile, albeit separate, topic to pursue!