#not just on my blog but in the content creator space in general

[suga-kookiemonster]

i'm working on something new, but i feel like tumblr has been super dead these past few months. is anyone here 👀

[tinyfantasminha]

I don't want to keep clogging my blog with vent posts but uh... I guess this is a more general concern/observation

But it's getting real hard to stay motivated in fandom spaces when there's little compensation, and annoying occurrences are more frequent than good ones.

Mainly there's been less engagement/people showing interest in creators and their art (such as sending asks, making comments and reblogging with tags) and MORE parasocial interactions. This goes for both artists and writers.

Over this year I've noticed a vast disinterest within my public in general. Asks about ocs, my art, or just nice simple comments of ''I love your art'' has been getting more and more scarce. My follower number is bigger than 2-3 years ago sure and I get more likes on my posts but they are feeling more like just numbers and statistics than actual people who supposedly like my stuff.

And while people being parasocial with creators has always been a thing, I feel like it's gotten way worse... in general? People sending personal pictures out of the blue in hopes of being validated, unwanted psychological advice or assumptions about the creator without any established connection first ( <- these happened to me in the same week.) ventdump, just insensitive/lacking of common sense comments in general, unreasonable demands (mostly with writers)... I wondered at first if it was just me, but a handful of mutuals/acquaintances who are artists and writers seems to be going through it as well.

It's annoying. It's tough. It's getting exhausting. Creators pour so much of themselves into their work—countless hours, effort, and passion, all to share something meaningful or entertaining with others (and for FREE) The LEAST anyone can do is show respect, even if opinions differ. When a writer posts a fanfic, don't just say ''omg post next chapter!'', when an artist posts a drawing of their favorite character, don't just say ''omg draw (character) next!'' as if they're faceless content machines that are expected to churn out more '''content''' for you without acknowledgment, encouragement, or appreciation.

''I want to support creators but I don't know what to say and I feel intimidated by their talent so I just lurk silently :((('' I swear to you, no creator (at least not the majority) is making up an intimidating persona to discourage you from interacting with them. They WANT your comments. A single ''I love your art/writing/videos'' or even something as silly as ''I want to eat your art'' is enough to keep a creator sighing dreamily for WEEKS. It doesn't have to be deep! It's heartfelt and that's what it matters!! (Just remember to keep it relevant and thoughtful... It takes just a bit of common sense NOT to comment things like ''this looks like (another character)'' or ''this but with (another unrelated ship/character/show)''. No one wants to hear comparisons or unrelated ideas when they’ve poured their soul into something.)

In fact, the ''I like your art but I think you're intimidating'' feels more hurtful than flattering. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong, acting wrong. 💀

If you love that fanfic that changed your brain psyche forever and want to gush about it, go tell the writer. If you loved so much a piece of art that you saved it a million times in your phone and can't stop thinking about it, go tell the artist. Push away the ''they probably won't care about my comment/it won't make a difference'' thoughts. DO IT NOW. You won't know when they might go inactive forever or deactivate. You can't know if that is the last piece they will ever post. Make sure you show appreciation to creators NOW, while they are still here. While they're still not being replaced by AI.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

PINNED POST, FAQ, INFORMATION

Hi, I'm TBSkyen. I make videos on YouTube sometimes. This is my main tumblr blog, the "brand" blog as it were, where I maintain my Social Media Presence™ on this site.

I use the ironic ™ to signal my personal discomfort with the work of being a minor media personality even while I still do that work and make a living off it.

I have a sideblog called @tbposting, mostly for shitposts and reblogs, and in my opinion I have pretty darn good taste in reblogs, so you can follow that if you want. It's also where I'll do random personal posting, microblogging, etc.

This main blog is primarily for 1) answering asks, and 2) posting my Original Content™, usually my main channel videos, as well as the occasional longer essay or critique. Sometimes I'll reblog an interesting or useful thing, or boost a friend's work, but I try to keep the spam to a minimum.

---

About Me

I am a thirtysomething content creator whose primary expertise is character design.

I have a bachelor's degree in English, never finished my master's, did most of a bachelor's degree in history, and that's it. These are my academic qualifications, no more and no less.

My professional experience is primarily being a freelancer and self-employed creator. I spent the better part of a decade working as a commission artist, running webcomics, drawing fanart, and the occasional animation work and not safe for work commissions, and I have at this point a decade of experience and self-study in the subjects I cover. I have also done online community management for, god help me, almost twenty years, so that's a part of my skillset I'll never escape.

I do not have any particular professional creative industry experience, although given what I hear from my professional friends, sometimes that seems like a blessing.

Please maintain a critical distance when engaging with my work. I am a critic. My work is very rarely meant to be taken as authoritative or didactic, and when it is, I will make it clear in my writing. Just because I speak with confidence doesn't mean I am trying to assert objective truth.

---

TAGS (to follow, or filter)

#tbanswers is the tag for every single ask I answer on this blog

#tb reblog is the tag for reblogs

#tb essay is for the occasional longer essay or critical writing

#tbvideos is for my videos and Content™

#tb recommends is for the occasional recommendation of a video essay or other creator

Yes, I know the spaces are inconsistent. It's not on purpose, I just typed them in haphazardly when I started using them and it's stuck.

---

FAQ (before you ask)

Q: Will you ever do a video about ____ ? A: The answer to this question is almost universally "maybe someday, if I have time, and if I feel I have anything worthwhile to say." And the more realistic answer is "no, because I already have far too much on my plate and I have burned myself out too many times." In general, please don't ask me this question, I will most likely not answer it because I have given the same answer a thousand times, but I still feel guilty about not answering them.

Q: Will you continue your series of videos about ____ ? A: Yes! I will continue the let's plays I started, I will finish the Boss Designs series, I will do another What's the Deal With, I will do more shorts about the subjects I've got going on. The main obstacle is, again, my tendency to overload myself.

Q: Do you have a PO box? Can I send you something? A: Not yet, but I'm looking into it. It may be a while before I get it set up.

Q: Do you have merchandise? A: A little bit, yes, at tbskyen.redbubble.com.

Q: What's your opinion on [game/movie/comic/book/etc]? A: I struggle to answer very open, broad questions like this. Most things I have opinions about, I have multiple opinions, and different ones depending on the perspective and specific element in question. I'm much more likely to answer specific, bounded questions.

Q: Can I send you fanart? A: PLEASE. Askbox, tag me on bluesky, send it to my email! I love seeing every piece of it!

Q: Why do you never appear on camera? A: A forest witch cursed me to look not quite but ALMOST like Paul Giamatti in all photos and videos ever taken of me, and his laywers sent me a cease-and-desist.

Q: Are you gay/straight/bi/other? A: The decision I've made for myself, at least for this period of my life, is that privacy is precious, and once given up can never be reclaimed on the internet. I am open about being aromantic (not asexual), because it's a sometimes invisible and underdiscussed identity, and I know it would have helped me a lot to see someone speak about it when I was younger.

The rest of it is for me to know, and for you to speculate about, although preferably somewhere I can't see it. I accept that this is a part of being a Personality, but it still feels weird, y'know?

Q: Is it weird if I find your voice kinda hot? A: I've put a lot of work into developing this voice and making it nice to listen to, so that's not weird at all and I find it quite complimentary, thank you.

I generally don't mind people doing flirty/thirsty posting about or at me, just so long as we all understand that 1) you should never give a stranger like me information which could be used to harm you. Nicer-seeming YouTubers than me have turned out to be monsters.

And 2) it will never go beyond playful online flirtiness. I like to fluster my live chat, I'll flirt back in an ask or a post maybe, but I am not flirting with you, or inviting any kind of closer intimacy with you, the person I responded to.

Think of me like a comedian doing crowd-work at a show - you can chat to me in the bar after the show, but when I asked you what you do for work I wasn't looking for a personal connection, I was doing my work as an entertainer. Please no sending me nudes, or propositions, or confession letters in my email inbox. We are strangers, and I am always performing a persona in public.

[wilwheaton]

When you watch The Curse, you are watching two children who were abused and exploited daily during production. No adults protected us.

This was originally published on my blog in August, 2022.

I had a wonderful time at Steel City Comicon this weekend. It was my first time at this particular con, so I didn’t know there was such a huge contingent of horror fans, creators, and vendors who attend.

I love horror, and I was pretty psyched to be in the same place as John Carpenter and Tom Savini, across the street from the Dawn of the Dead mall. Pittsburgh feels like one of the places horror was invented, at least to me.

A number of these horror fans came to see me, and asked me to sign posters and other things from a movie my parents forced me to do when I was 13, called The Curse. I had to tell each of these people that I would not sign anything associated with that movie, because I was abused and exploited during production. The time I spent on that film remains the most traumatizing time of my life, and though I am a 50 year-old man, just typing this now makes my hands shake with remembered fear of a 13 year-old boy who nobody protected, and the absolute fury the 50 year-old man feels toward the people who hurt him.

I told this story in Still Just A Geek, and I’ve talked about it in some podcasts I did on the promo tour, but I’ve never put it out in public like this, in its entirety.

I suspect someone at the publisher would prefer I tease this and hope it drives book sales from people who want to read all of it, but I honestly don’t want to have another weekend like this one where everything is awesome, except the few times people who have no idea (and why should they) put that fucking poster in front of me, and all the fear, abandonment, and trauma come flooding back as I tell them that I won’t sign it, and why.

To their credit, each person was as horrified as they should have been, told me they had no idea (if they didn’t read my book why would they), and quickly put the poster away. They were all understanding. I am grateful for that.

But I really don’t need to tell this story over and over again, so here it is, with a child abuse and exploitation content warning, so I can just tell people to Google it.

After Stand by Me, everything changed. The attention from entertainment journalists, casting directors, and especially teen magazines came pouring in. The movie was a generational hit, beloved by critics and audiences alike, and every single one of us could pick anything to do next.

River’s parents and his agent got him Mosquito Coast, with Harrison Ford, as his next movie. I also auditioned for the role, but I knew even then that River was going to book the job. He was perfect, and I’d have to wait a little bit for my opportunity to come along.

I went on a lot of theatrical auditions after Stand by Me. I had tons of meetings with directors and the heads of casting at every major studio. It was all a very big deal, and I felt like we were all looking for something really special and amazing as my follow-up to Stand by Me.

At some point, a couple of producers contacted my agent with an offer to play one of the leads in an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.” The script was titled The Farm. (It would, of course, be changed when the film was released).

I read it. I did not like it. It was a shitty horror movie, and I saw that right away. It was the sort of thing you rented on Friday when the new release you wanted was already out of the store.

My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

I told my parents I didn’t like it and didn’t want to do it. I clearly recall thinking it was a piece of shit that would hurt my career.

It wasn’t the first thing that had come our way that I wanted to pass on, and every other time, it hadn’t been a very big deal.

Sidebar: I was cast in Twilight Zone: The Movie, in 1983. The film tells four stories, and I was cast as the kid who can wish people into cartoonland. It was a GREAT role, in a movie I still love. (Note that Twilight Zone had four directors. One of them got three people killed. The segment I was cast in was not that one. I mention this because too many people zero in on this to deflect from what this whole thing is actually about.)

But I was CONVINCED by my parochial school teacher that if I worked on The Twilight Zone, which she had determined was satanic, I would go to hell. (This woman and her bullshit played a big role in my conversion to atheism at a young age, but when she told me that, I was all-in on the supernatural story they taught us in religion class.) I was so scared, more scared than I’d ever been to that point in my life, I cried and wailed and begged my parents to not make me do the movie. And I never told them why, because I was afraid my dad would laugh at me for being weak and afraid. My agent tried to talk me into it, and I wouldn’t budge. It’s the only thing I deeply and truly regret passing on, and I really hate I made that choice for such a stupid reason.

Okay. Back to The Curse.

This time, when I told them how much I hated it, they wouldn’t listen to me. My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

That is, until they made me take a meeting with the producers of the movie, in their giant conference room on the top floor of a tall building in Hollywood. All I remember about this place was that it was huge; the table was way too big for the five of us who spread around it, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on three of the walls, but the room was still dark. There was a weird optical illusion in the center of the table, this thing they sold in the Sharper Image catalog, made from two reflective dishes with a hole in the top of one. You placed an object in the bottom of the bottom dish, and it made it look like that object was floating above the whole thing. They had a plastic spider in it. What a strange detail for me to remember, but it’s as clear in my memory as if I were sitting in that room right now.

One man, who I presumed was the executive producer, was European or Middle Eastern (I didn’t know the difference then, he was just Not Like People I Knew), and I was instantly afraid of him. He was intimidating, and seemed like a person who got what he wanted.

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

I don’t remember what they said to me in their pitch or anything other than how uncomfortable and anxious I was to even be in that room. I tried so hard to be grown up and mature, but I — and my parents — was way out of my depth. I’d done one big movie and that was it. We didn’t have my agent with us, who had lots of experience and would have known what questions to ask.

No, in place of my experienced agent, my mother had decided she was going to be my manager, and she tackled the responsibility with an enthusiasm that was only matched by her absolute incompetence and inability to go toe-to-toe with producers the way my agent did. She was outwitted, out-thought, and outmaneuvered at every turn.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

At some point, this man, who is represented in my memory by big Jim Jones sunglasses under dark hair above an open collar, said, “We are offering you a hundred thousand dollars and round-trip travel for your whole family. We will cast your sister, Amy, to play your sister in the movie.”

It all made sense, now. I was only thirteen, but I knew my parents were pushing me so hard because this company was offering me — them, really — more money than I’d ever imagined I’d earn in my life, much less a single job.

I knew that the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, was to say no. There would be other opportunities, and it was stupid to cash myself out of feature films for what I thought was, in the grand scheme of things, not very much money.

It’s incredible to me that I knew all of this. It’s incredible to me that I could see all these things, plainly and clearly, and my parents couldn’t (or, more likely, chose not to).

So after this man made his offer, all the adults in the room ganged up on me, selling me HARD on this movie.

My mother said, “Don’t you want your sister to have the same opportunities you’ve had? Wouldn’t it be fun and exciting to go to Rome? Think of all the history!”

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

I don’t think about this very often, because it’s super upsetting to me. Right now, I’m so angry at my parents for subjecting me and my sister to this entire experience. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In that moment, I felt bullied and trapped. All these adults were talking to me at the same time, and I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted to go home and get out of this room. I just wanted to go be a kid, so I did what I’d learned to do to survive: I gave in and did what my parents wanted.

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

But here’s the thing: when you watch The Curse, you are watching two children, me and my sister, who were abused on a daily basis. The production did not follow a single labor law. They worked us for twelve hours a day, on multiple film units (while I work on First unit, second unit sets up and waits for me. When I should get a break to rest, they send me to Second unit, then to Third unit, then back to First unit. I was 13.) without any breaks, five days a week. I was exhausted the entire time. I was inappropriately touched by two different adults during production. I knew it was wrong, but I was so scared and ashamed, and I felt so unsupported, I didn’t tell anyone. I knew my dad wouldn’t believe me, and my mother would blame me. Anything to keep the production happy, that’s what she did. That was more important to her than the health and safety of her children. The director was coked out of his mind most of the time, incompetent, and so busy fucking or trying to fuck one of the women in the cast, he was worse than useless. He was a fading actor who was cosplaying as a director, as in over his head as my mother. My sister and I were never safe. Instead of harmless atmospheric SFX smoke, they set hay on fire in barrels and blew actual smoke onto the set. They took buckets of talc, broken wood, bits of wallpaper and plaster, and threw it into my face during a scene inside the collapsing house. My sister is in a scene where she goes to get eggs from some chickens, and they attack her. So they hired Lucio Fulci, the Italian horror master, to direct her sequence. His idea, which everyone was totally on board with, was to throw chickens at my sister. Live chickens, live roosters, live birds. Just throw them at a nine-year-old girl. Oh, and then tie them to her arms and legs so they’ll peck her. All of this happened under my mother’s observation, and with her full participation.

Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

If just ONE of the things I can remember happened to someone I loved, I would have grabbed my kids, gone to the airport, and flown home. Fuck those abusive assholes in the production. Let the lawyers sort it all out. Nobody hurts my children and gets away with it.

My mom says she “had some talks” with the producers. She claims that, once, she wouldn’t let us leave the hotel. (God, what a fucking dump that place was. It was just slightly better than a hostel.) I have no memory of that, but honestly the entire experience was so traumatic, I’ve blocked most of it out.

The movie was the commercial and critical failure I knew it would be. My parents spent the money. I don’t know what they spent it on. I got to keep fifteen cents of every dollar, so . . . yay?

My sister and I hardly ever talk about this. I suspect it was as upsetting and traumatic for her as it was for me. I told her I was writing about it, and asked her if she remembered anything. She told me she’d been lied to her whole life about this movie. Our mother let her believe she had been cast on the strength of her audition. “I was excited to work with you,” she said. She reminded me about some stuff I’d blocked out, including a scene where my character’s older brother (played by an actor named Malcolm Danare, who was kind and gentle, and made both of us feel safer when he was around) shoves my character into a pile of cow shit. When it came time to shoot the scene, the mud they’d put together to be the cow shit looked an awful lot like cow shit. When Malcolm pushed me into it, we all found out it was real cow shit. I was FURIOUS. The director had lied to me and had allowed me to have my entire body shoved into an actual pile of actual cow shit. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember he treated me the exact same way my father did whenever I got upset: he laughed at me, told me I was being too sensitive, reminded me that he was the director and he wanted to get a “real” performance out of me, and concluded, “If it bothers you so much, we’ll get you a hepatitis shot,” before he walked away.

My sister also recalled that, after she survived the scene with the chickens, it was the producers’ idea to give her one as a pet.

Okay, let’s unpack that for a quick second: you’ve been traumatized by these birds, so we’re going to give you one as a pet. That you’ll somehow keep in your hotel, and then will somehow get back to America. It will shock you to learn that neither of those things happened.

She remembered, as I do, the huge fight I had with my parents in our kitchen, where I told them I hated the script and I hated the movie. I didn’t want to do it, and I hated that they were making me do it.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

“This is the only film you are being offered,” my mother lied to me. She made me feel like, if I didn’t do this movie, I would never do another movie again in my life. I had to do this movie. As my father bellowed, I had no choice.

Both of my parents denied this argument ever happened. Can I tell you how reassuring it is to know that my sister, who was also there, remembers it the same way I do?

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them.

But one thing she told me, the thing I did not know, the thing that makes me so angry I want to break things, actually managed to make the entire experience even worse than I remembered it.

There’s a scene after her chicken incident where I check up on her in her bedroom. She’s got cuts and bruises, and I guess we talk about it. I don’t remember and I can’t watch the movie because I’m terrified it will give me a PTSD flashback (I’ve had one of those and I recommend avoiding it). Here’s the thing about that scene: she has some cuts on her face, and those cuts are real. They are not makeup.

I’m going to repeat that. My nine-year-old little sister had actual cuts on her face that were placed there by an adult, on purpose.

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them. My sister told me our mother wasn’t in the makeup room when this happened — honestly, it seemed like our mother was strangely and conveniently absent when most of the really terrible things happened to us on the set — and when my sister told her what they’d done, she “lost her shit” at the production. She was pissed, I guess, which is appropriate and surprising. I wonder what would have to have happened for her to put us on a plane and get us home to safety? I mean, her son being abused daily didn’t do it, and her daughter being CUT IN THE FACE ON PURPOSE didn’t do it.

I just . . . I can’t. I can’t understand or comprehend allowing your own children to be physically and emotionally abused. They were literally selling my sister and me to these people, like we were some kind of commodity.

This was a tough conversation. My sister’s experience with our parents is very different from mine. My sister and I love each other. We’re close. I know it’s hard for her to hear that her brother, who she loves, was so abused by her parents, who she also loves. I was really grateful she made the time to talk to me about it, and grateful the experience wasn’t as horrible for her as it was for me.

As we were finishing our call, Amy also remembered one man, a young Italian named Luka, who was our driver for the movie. I haven’t thought about him in thirty years, but I can see his face now. He was kind, he was friendly, he taught us how to kick a soccer ball, and in the middle of an abusive, torturous experience, he stood out as a kind and gentle man. I mention him because she remembered him, which made me remember him, and goddammit I want at least one small part of this thing to not be awful.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares.

Ultimately, as I predicted and feared, this piece of shit movie cashed me out of respectable films forever. I got offers for movies, but they were always mindless comedies or exploitative horror films. They were never the serious dramas I wanted to work in after Stand by Me. The industry looked at me and River, wondering if one or both of us would become a breakout star. They quickly saw that River was doing real acting work, and I was in this piece of shit. For River, Stand by Me was a beginning. For me, it would turn out to be pretty much everything, at least as far as film goes.

There are thousands of reasons film careers do and don’t take off. Maybe mine wouldn’t have taken off anyway. Clearly, it’s not where my life ended up, and I’m super okay with that now. But when all of this happened, it hurt and haunted me.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares. Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

This annotation is the last thing I wrote before I turned this manuscript in, because opening these wounds is hard and painful. I put it off as long as I could, and I feel like I’m still holding back, because just this small glimpse of the experience has taken me a week to write. I can’t imagine trying to go back and unpack the whole thing. (Note that is not in the book: I’ve made an EMDR appointment to work on this because the nightmares have come back after the weekend).

Fuck The Curse, and fuck every single person who exploited and hurt two beautiful children to make it. You all participated in child abuse, and you all knew better. Shame on all of you. I hope this follows you to the end of your life. I hope that living with what you did to innocent children has been as hard for you as it has been for me, because you deserve no less.

[artsekey]

I really hate how ads have taken over the internet. On one hand, I know that hosting a website costs money, right? And ad revenue is one of the simplest ways for free-to-use websites to cover their operating costs.

My question is-- and I would genuinely love an answer-- is this ever going to stop? Tumblr ran for a long time without ads. So did Youtube. I know that the cost of hosting so much media has gone up, but there are a lot of users on these websites that make the content that drives people to use the service that don't see any of the money generated by this revenue. On Youtube, there's at least a way for creators to make some money from what they do. For most, it isn't much, but the opportunity is there. On Tumblr, well... the ability to convert the visibility of my blog into any financial gain practically nonexistent, though they did at one point promise that users would be able to make money from ads run on their blogs (whatever happened to that, Staff?).

"You can pay to avoid seeing ads!" Tumblr says, as if the views on my main blog alone over the past few years have not generated more than enough ad revenue to cover the price they're asking me to pay, the person who is actively making content that brings eyes to their ads.

I'm not mad at Tumblr for hosting ads. I get that it has to happen because it's the easiest way to keep the site free, and honestly, I imagine Tumblr's staunch opposition to monetization has been a real obstacle for the team building Tumblr. But at the same time, it feels like yet another small concession in the usability of the site. I'm tired of ads that auto-play with blaring audio while I'm scrolling. I'm tired of adds that, if I touch them while trying to scroll past them, take me to an external site. Outside of tumblr, I'm tired of looking for information online only to get a webpage that's 95% ads and otherwise illegible. Hell, I recently got an ad on Discord. Was it unobtrusive? Maybe. But it was there, for the first time, and I know that won't be the end.

I know the first reply I'm going to get on this is "use adblock", and yes, that's a solution, but think about how much the landscape for media has changed in just ten years.

Popular forums are basically gone outside of reddit.

Youtube, without Red, is ad hell. You can't watch more than 3-4 minutes of video without getting sent to marketing hell.

Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter-- it's terrible. I firmly believe they've manufactured a worse experience through the implementation of ads to convince you to buy into their premium services.

Just Check out this video of Penguinz0 trying to watch a video on a third-party site.

There's discussion of putting ads into video games.

Remember when games didn't include micro-transactions? Blizzard is charging $70 for one mythic skin. You could almost buy Overwatch 1 twice-over at that price-point.

Influencers make a living by making their lives into advertisements.

Youtube has retaliated against users using ad-block on non-chrome browsers by artificially inflating the load times of it's videos.

What can we do about this? I imagine companies see it as an infinite money hack; users can't stop companies from hosting ads, and the action they could take to voice their displeasure-- leaving the site, using other competitive services-- has been all but obliterated thanks to the homogeneity of popular social media outlets. If someone is truly so incensed about ads, well-- it isn't like they have to engage with them, right? They can enroll in a cheap, auto-renewing service to get rid of ads entirely. Well, wait, the price of premium might just have to go up. Don't worry, it's auto-renewing! You won't even notice it. Oh, no, it's got to go up again, you won't even notice it.

There's no incentive for them to cap this behavior, and no way for us as users to pressure them to do so. We create these spaces; we fill them with color, art, activism, community, and the companies that ride on the tailcoat of the spaces we create tell us to give them more. What comes next?

[allilcat]

Ive been noticing an increase amount of Dreamtwt refugees, and let me preface with saying: Welcome!!! Genuinely, we lovingly welcome you to this happy lil community.

That being said, Tumblr is confusing, between the big etiquette book and the interface that hasn’t changed since 2008 there is a lot to learn. So this is my little attempt to a welcome guide tailored to our lil dream community! Feel free to add your own recommendations and stuff.

Tumblr is a Blogging site, a goog ol relic from ye olden days, your ‘profile’ is your blog, and you can put anything you like on there! However, please do change your avatar and background, we have a massive bot issue here and we tend to auto block someone with a standard avatar.

The main tags for the dream team are as follows: - just their entire usernames, but, those do get hooped up in controversy from time to time. -Dreamblr for the content creator dream

-Dreblr, for C!Dream

-404blr for CC George

-pandasblr for CC Sapnap

-Dtblr for the Dream team

PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING: #Dream, that’s for people actually posting about their dreams, and #myct as it is mostly used for general MYCT stuff, we prefer to stick to our own spaces.

‘how do I find people?’ you go to any of these tags, find someone you vibe with and click ‘follow’. The algorithm here sucks, and we don’t advice the ‘for you’ page.

On that note, the ‘like’ button is useless, use reblog instead! If you like someone’s hot take, art or stupid shit post, REBLOG. Its how we keep our fandom alive and active here :D

When you reblog you usually keep your comments in the tags, one only really uses the comment section when they DON’T want to reblog. (usually because of le discourse).

Send people asks! People love to chit chat, you can do it anonymously! Tell that one artist youd love to have their brain for lunch! Engage with everyone! We love discussion and open communication here. (prob since there is no real word limit to posts)

Tumblr has developed a nice ‘block liberally, no need to make a fus’ culture. You can block someone for any reason, and it really isn’t a big deal.

On the Tumblr is more relaxed note, we tend to be more relaxed on CC boundaries, since most CC’s do not use twitter. If you don’t like people breaking CC boundaries, even in places where they cant see it, follow the advice above and blockkkkk!!!

Please spell out words! Don’t censor triggering words at it can fuck with people’s filter settings, by censoring these words you put people in more risk.  

Now for some technical advice: Most tumblrina’s turn on ‘hide likes and follower count’ . Any blog can have 4 people following it or 4000, we like to keep it mysterious.

Also turn of ‘best content first’- once again, the algorithm is not to be trusted.

Furthermore, you can really personalize your Tumblr experience and please do! Under ‘account’ you can find many options to filter the content you see, make use of it, for your mental health sake.

[befemininenow]

Remembering VikkiPNKcaptions (aka PrincessVikkiPNK)

Between the first half of 2022 until May 2024, there was a caption blog named VikkiPNKcaptions and it went on to become one of the most influential feminization caption blogs of the new generation. From starting as just another sissy blog, she had a change of heart and reverted to identifying as a femme blog. She went on to amass over 17,000 followers, though the amount of people who loved and shared her posts through reblogs and unofficial reposts were significantly higher.

Then, somewhere in the middle of this month, her main blog was gone! Meanwhile, her other account is also missing content. I am not sure what happened, but I am pretty sure it was deleted by Tumblr. For what reason why it was deleted remains a mystery. I wanted to bring awareness or find an answer or two because it seems that the only one that brought it up was ggs-trans-inspo, another amazing caption creator from the same time period. I only found out about it just two days ago after I got my computer fixed and was thrown off as to why I was missing one account from my “Following” list. I still find it unbelievable she’s gone. I’m not sure if she’s coming back or if she will be taking a hiatus, but for now, let’s keep her legacy alive by sharing her captions and thanking her for the amazing support and influence she has played on changing feminization captions for the new generation.

P.S. Seriously, Tumblr? First, you delete trans blogs like Alltr, flag affirming posts, and censor blogs as NSFW, even though there’s hardly any NSFW content. Then, you play it off like there’s no problem going on and later proceed to make a post acknowledging and denouncing anti-LGBTQ sentiment without doing any action. Now, you decide to take down trans artwork from Paxiti and caption blogs like VikkiPNK because you still haven’t took action on investigating the obvious transphobia going on in your HQ. I’m very sick and tired of this crap going on because this is one of our few safe spaces left and we can’t even enjoy it because of transphobes and trolls attacking us. Rant over.

[jonathan-cranes-mistress-of-fear]

I don't understand why so many people are pushing oc in people throats, I for example don't like reading about oc, they often terrible, made without theme and so on.... But seems that Scarecrow tag and Jonathan Crane tag are bombarded with them everyday ....

They're not though???

OCs are very much disliked in the fandom, and I for one fully support showing them off and will try to reblog their content now and again. I had an OC in the past and tumblr's general distaste and love for anon hate drove me to hide it. I don't want that for a younger crowd of up and coming creators. Nothing is wrong is OCs. They're a perfectly acceptable way to be creative and warm yourself up the idea of writing your own stories and worlds. Most if not ALL popular media is literally fanfic of other media, and that includes them putting in OCs. I would even be so bold to say Scarecrow, in his first ever appearance, was JUST a batman OC. We're lucky he got popular.

The Scarecrow tag sees way more Cillian Muprhy mistagging (aka peaky binders content tagged as Jonathan Crane) than OCs. And I check that tag multiple times a day. And who says OCs are terrible? The internet lies. You just haven't given them a chance. And also, why can't they be terrible? My first ever drawings and writings for this blog were terrible and nobody told me to stop creating. They encouraged me!!

Finally, tumblr and xkit (anyone else still use that? just me?) both have blocking options. Tumblr is a space you curate. If you are seeing content you don't like and not blocking it/unfollowing than that's on you. Not me. Not the OCs. You.

I apologize if any of this sounds snappy, but I'm not gonna take it from an anon and never will I stop supporting this community, ALL of this community.

[therealslimshakespeare]

Hello my darlings,

Ok so, workday and all this isn’t going to be as well thought out as I would like it to be. Go ahead and come for my phasing if need be but just try to read me as you always do, with the kindest intent.🥰

As creator of the content on this blog, the intellectual owner of all stories and characters therein 🤓 I have both the right and responsibility to moderate this blog as well. For that reason I’m making this post instead of answering every ask currently in my inbox. It’s not meant as a slight to your personal message and opinion if it goes unanswered, rather a way of being able to give all such a more heartfelt response.

Right here and now.

That ask…understandably raised a load of concern, caused bafflement and even, I surmise, hurt. When reading it I personally was more than a little unsure about reposting it at all due to some of it that was just plain…alarming? But I chose to. And I appreciate that all of yall have been kind enough to give me the benefit of the doubt for doing so…I did post it in hopes that I could shift this incessant comparison over and out for good. For some of the newcomers, perhaps this is a new phenomenon. But back in spring it was almost constant and it’s the opposite of what I’d like in regard to my OC’s. I had hopes it was done for. So I replied to this one, which was a bit of a throwback in general. I didn’t agree, but I replied in hopes of trying to refocus this whole viewpoint on the girls.

Didn’t really achieve that, tho. Or if I did, it certainly had the cost of making this space more than a little upset- understandably so. Which, while I love my OC’s- I love their readers even more, so I want to be loving and as good a guardian of this space’s wellbeing as I can.

And so, as moderator, I’m gonna go ahead and take that one down, it’s not adding much and it’s in fact hurting a good bit and maybe doing so will prevent others from feeling the same. Because, of course, I would never want to spread hurt, ever. I obviously, previously and repeatedly have disagreed with the sentiments expressed in that ask so in respect of how many indigenous fans my girl Lu has, we’re gonna exercise our moderating powers and take that one down.

Now, I know that doesn’t mean the discussion or sentiment is gone- just poof, all fixed! however, it’s the best I can do since I trust and hope that yall do understand my own position on this and that in reposting any ask I am by that action inherently publishing other’s opinions not necessarily reflective of my own.

Just wishing to steer all these discussions into kinder but also wise and aware channels.

Xoxo, I love you all. And remember- it takes guts to be gentle and kind 💋

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

(Content “warning”, of sorts: unlike most of my posts, this isn’t intended as positivity or advice, it’s just a stream-of-consciousness piece of writing that I wanted to share) 

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

Every now and then, I receive a message like “Share this with your 5 favorite bloggers and ask them to share 5 fun facts about themselves” or get tagged in a post like “Share your favorite movie, song and book, and then tag your friends to do the same”. I read them, I smile and appreciate feeling included in those little games, and I log off without replying - and then I turn around and go „Oh, yeah, I guess I run a somewhat popular blog but people don’t really care about me, you know? I just, like, monologue to people about stuff and sometimes they read it but I as a person do not matter to anyone. I could be replaced by some robot and nobody would notice or even care.” 

As I’m typing this, I think that I could try to turn this into some general positivity and/or advice: on how people with a low self-esteem tend to dismiss signals that other people think highly of them, or on how small „meaningless“ connections like some random internet stranger just thinking of you while forwarding a chain message aren’t so small or meaningless at all, or maybe on how “lonely” can sometimes become a self-identity that stands in our way of connecting to others. 

Or I could talk about how part of the reason I just briefly smile at these messages but do not reply to them is the (re-) emergence of the queerphobic, false rhetoric that “queer adults are much more likely to be pedophiles, so all of them should be treated like suspects at all times“ (statistically not true, btw, but since when do people care about facts when they could just share inflammatory lies?) and all the ways it makes it hard to be a queer content creator with a young audience (and also to just be a queer human being at this point). And how even typing this makes me worry someone will twist all this into me asking minors for comfort and if maybe I should rephrase it, and now I’m thinking how this need to constantly self-censor ourselves fucks with our mental health and contributes to the loneliness epidemic among queer men. But this is getting too heavy and I’m running out of space in this letter. 

Yeah, I could write about any of these things now. I could monologue about it and someone would read it and they might even comment “good point OP” and I would read that and smile. And for a brief moment, we would connect. The same way two strangers connect when one lets the other cut in line at the supermarket and the other says thankyou and they never even look at each other and this small moment will be forgotten in no time but for a brief second it made the world a touch kinder, and it means nothing and it means everything. 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[yeehaw-rody]

(OOC: SIG FANS. You need to calm the FUCK down.

(⚠️PLEASE REPOST THIS SO MORE PEOPLE SEE IT.⚠️)

I can’t believe I’m doing this again, but it has come to my attention that some of you guys are being complete sick freaks, and it needs to STOP.

Some of you guys are harassing creators on this app/site and many others.

This started (as far as I know) way back with the “IDrawNsfwForALiving” (or however the account was named before.) account on here, harassing sig creators (MOST, if not all, being minors) and sending them nsfw art, spamming their notifs and being generally creepy to said creators. I and a few close friends of mine were affected by this and it made us sick.

Then, the second thing that caught my attention, was the harassment to a blog that one of my close friends created, due to the anons being extremely disrespectful and rude to them.

I’m starting to notice a common theme around here, with SIG fans and harassment. It’s annoying, tiring and outright disrespectful to the creators and fans who just want to enjoy the games and fanwork the community makes.

Now, it has come to my attention that SOME of you are harassing creators in their Tumblr DMs. Let me remind you, sending explicit content of ANY kind (SH, NSFW, ETC) is gross and unwanted,

ESPECIALLY IF THE PERSON YOU’RE SENDING IT TO, IS A MINOR.

This type of behaviour is unacceptable, and I hope you realize that not only this is causing the creators great distress, it is also ILLEGAL.

Source.

(The rules may bend slightly per country, state or province, but it’s mostly the same.)

If this is YOU sending this kind of stuff to my friends or other SIG creators, (Or any creator in general.) please see yourself out. This is NOT a safe space for you.

To those who are experiencing this currently, please report and block the accounts doing these activities. Talk to a trusted person if you can about it. Don’t be silent. Call them out.

(I’m using whatever tags I can to get this across. SPREAD THE WORD.)

[rpfshippingpolls]

Do you ship it?- RPF edition!

Heya gamers- do you like rpf? If so, send in a ship and we’ll see what others think!

Inspired by @do-you-ship-it-polls but not associated with them!

Also check out @new-proshipping-polls!

RULES

NO DISCOURSE REGARDING RPF ITSELF. If you don’t like rpf, please just block this blog and move on with your day. I won’t engage in any discourse, but any hate sent to me will be deleted and anyone being a dick in the notes of a poll will be blocked. This is meant to be a positive space

This should go without saying but nothing pedophilic or involving minors in general. Also, no incest (I’m personally uncomfortable with it but if you ship it yall are fine idc)

Originally I had a rule about no ultra-pieces of shit but then I started getting a lot of Stalin yaoi so honestly no rules anymore. I’ll decline things that make me personally uncomfortable tho

Regarding MCYT ships: I’ll be polling based on the content creators and NOT the characterized versions they play. If you ship the content creators, then send them my way! But if you just ship the characters, then don’t submit them here

I literally always screw up when getting pictures or writing names btw sorry gang

I don’t have discord so if you submit an image that’s a discord link odds are I probably won’t be able to access it, so I’d rather you use other image sources. If you really want to use that image and can’t find another way, just dm it to me.

Also: the key word in “real person fiction” is “fiction.” In the end, we all need to acknowledge that these ships aren’t real (and if the people in question are together irl, understand that their relationship is different than how it is in your head). These are fictionalized versions of celebrities and we shouldn’t intrude on their personal lives by harassing them or their loved ones- especially their partners. No matter what side of the argument you’re on for rpf, just be civil and respectful and we’ll all be fine!

SUBMISSIONS

And here’s the google sheet for this blog! Submissions in green have been posted, submissions in grey are posts that have been queued, submissions in yellow are ones with an image link I can’t access so are on hold, and submissions in red are ones I’ve rejected for any reason (the last column is one I’ve added to explain why). This is manually updated by me, so don’t expect this to be accurate 100% of the time.

[mookymilksims]

I was accused of being a drama queen and told I should be blocked for starting drama, while the person who said that didn’t even bother to block me themselves.

Then, I started noticing a lot of people who had liked the shady posts about me a month ago suddenly hearting my posts again.

At first, I thought maybe something had happened behind the scenes, causing people to reconsider, even though I’ve been minding my own business and going back to my usual content—without talking about the situation, even privately.

Then, a post I made did pretty well for someone like me, and I saw this narrative being spun around that same time.

I actually planned to spare you all the details because I think this community has a huge misogyny problem that nobody really cares to address, and I wanted the focus to remain on respecting my work, not fueling more drama.

But now, a whole month later, I see the same narrative being pushed again, so let's just clear this up once and for all and move on, yeah?

First of all, this is a bad look. Are you mad because you got blocked? Mad you think I needed you to reblog me immediately? Mad that people took one side of the story but you refuse to share yours because it "doesn’t matter"? Mad that I blocked you before the incident even happened a month ago?

The ccfinds blog in question has never reblogged my work.

For weeks, I tagged them on many of my posts, and they still never reblogged. One of those posts still have the tags on them, as I pointed out over a month ago.

That same blog consistently missed my tags, but never missed the tags of white creators who uploaded the same day as me.

The ccfinds blog has a history of ignoring small creators in general, but especially small creators of color.

It’s funny how they only seem to “find” the tags of small creators of color once those posts have gained enough notes on their own, without any help from the ccfinds blog.

Then, suddenly, they reblog it.

And, suddenly, after I called them out, this blog started reblogging small creators of color a lot faster about a month ago. So much so, it was noticed by the same creators of color this cc finds blog typically ignores. (To make this even clearer: they were suddenly reblogging small creators of color more frequently to make it look like they aren't racist.)

I didn’t even realize this until I asked other small creators of color about it.

This is already KNOWN about you in creator spaces behind the scenes.

So, if you don’t like me, AND despite suddenly reblogging small creators of color (who you typically ignore), you still never reblogged me.

Never. Not once.

After I publicly addressed this, you messaged me claiming you went looking for my tags but couldn’t find them. Well, of course—you couldn’t find them because I had already blocked you.

I only need to be told once that you typically ignore poc. After realizing you were intentionally ignoring me, then poc telling me, you typically ignore them unless their posts do well without you, it's literally all I needed to know.

Let me be clear: I don’t know why you think I should continue tagging you when:

You never reblogged me,

This pattern spanned weeks and several posts,

You were actively reblogging other creators (white creators, to be specific) who uploaded the same day as me.

It’s not about doing it “immediately.” Everyone else I tag gets to it within a week or two, sometimes even days. This was never about timing—it’s the total absence.

The pattern was clear. I noticed it because it was consistent.

I used your tag because it fit my work—it’s an xto3 conversion, and you’re an xto3conversion finds blog, right?

But here’s the thing: other ccfinds blogs? They reblog EVERYONE’S work regardless of popularity. That’s why I respect them the most—they meant it when they said they wanted to support creators.

Your blog doesn’t feel like that. It feels like a table people can’t sit at if the host doesn’t like them. And this isn’t just my experience—other small creators, especially creators of color, have noticed this too.

And as for BelleKenobi... publicly “wondering” what you did wrong, but privately ignoring my message?

A whole month later?

What happened to “touching grass,” sis?

You’re this disgruntled a whole month later?

I directly asked you about it after you made that post—told you to say it with your whole chest—but you ignored it. So why are you acting like you’re still wondering what you did wrong now?

Is this not you ducking me?

You’re wondering. You’re curious. It’s a month later, and you’re still confused. But you had all this time to respond.

Really seems like you’re just acting confused publicly to protect your image.

You see, I cleared you a month ago. I apologized publicly and privately. Then you ran off and made that passive-aggressive post.

Despite knowing you’re still a bully, despite still associating with other bullies in this community, and even after harassing people and laughing about it in a Discord server for everyone to see, I still cleared you from that situation.

Because it was not your blog.

But then you made that shady post, and people saw the real you.

You can’t put that on me because, again, I cleared you from the drama. You inserted yourself back into it when you made that passive-aggressive post.

Even if people didn’t know you to be passive-aggressive or a bully before, they certainly thought so after that post.

You could’ve just kept quiet, or even publicly accepted the apology. Played it off like you were confused—but you messed up your own optics with that post.

Then I wouldn’t have had to mention to everyone that you’ve been a mean girl in this space. You could’ve kept your innocence, but you didn’t.

I was going to let it slide.

I could’ve said, “you’re not the blog, but you’re still a bully, so I don’t care”—but I have something called integrity.

A bully is going to bully, and you would've slipped up anyway.

Everyone would’ve seen it for themselves, whether I said something or not.

Which you did immediately after my apology, by the way.

Now, a whole month later, you're being a hypocrite to the oh-so-kind advice you gave me before?

Chat, is this "touching grass"???

Both of you do not like me. You didn’t before I called this out, you didn’t during, and you don’t now.

So why are you crying about being blocked by someone you don’t like and have never supported?

Does this have anything to do with the fact I’m not canceled? That people didn’t block me in solidarity? That you and all your friends have to like each other's posts now to make it look like you’re still popping? That I still have a YouTube channel and an amazing Discord server? That people still fuck with me? That you no longer have access to me? That I put up a boundary? That I block people who clearly do not like me?

Here’s my advice: block people who don’t like you, instead of searching them up to see if you’re blocked. Then you’ll gain the same peace of mind I have.

[greattooth-clangen]

There’s something lurking in the brush…

Hello! Welcome to my second Clangen blog! I’m trying something a bit different here, so sorry if it seems at all weird!!!

Basic idea:

This story mainly follows Riverbreak, a Thrushclan she-cat whom, alongside 4 others, established The Valley Optimist mission. The mission’s goal is to prove safety within the notoriously dangerous grass valley below the clans’ mountain home, said to house a monstrous beast dubbed “The Greattooth”. Though, Riverbreak’s true hope with the Optimists is to re-find all the unfairly exiled cats from the clans, who had been sent to perish in the Greattooth’s jaws. All seems well for the optimists, until tragedy hits the clans, and the only reasonable blame falls on the four’s heads.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: There will be a lot of bl0od and stuff, d4ad cats, child/kit d4ath, yk… this may not be the best to read if that is a sensitivity!!! They may also be some storylines regarding toxic relationships, a lot of murder (for some reason my clangen is just senselessly violent), terminality, and uh yeah.

Links:

READ FROM THE START HERE!!!

COMICFURY LINK

Elongated lore explanation:

The setting of this storyline takes place in Pleistocene North America. I tried my best to align the period from which animals show up, though let me know if any species end up time/location switching by accident! Domestic cats obviously aren’t supposed to be in this time period, and the clans are, to an extent, aware of this fact.

By word of legends passed down through generations, cats once walked among forests of concrete and safety, and were looked after by a higher being, of whom were named the Ancients (twolegs). For a long time, cats were content in life, but the Ancients’ numbers quickly outgrew what the world could sustain, and soon, all walks of life reaped the consequences.

Desperate for a solution, and with new advances, the ancients engineered a rift through to new (though we know them as old) lands, and they settled, bringing their feline subjects alongside them. For some time, life went on, but with this newfound land, the ancients grew greedy, and their new home one more began to wither. At the sight of it, the Stars, the creators and protectors of all space and time, grew furious at the animals. This world was not theirs to destroy, and when the ancients refused to back away, the Stars wiped them off the map. The cats never saw their lords again.

At the fall of their former superiors, the crestfallen housecats were left to fend for their own. Many split off into clusters and colonies, spreading far, far out from each other in hopes to rebuild. One clutter came to the Highpeaks, and settled down forming a clan on and beneath each of the five along its outer rim: Wishclan on the Easternmost peak, with an expansive lake on their territory -Bloomclan to the west border of Wishclan, with a boggish, forested landscape - Thrushclan in the centre of the five, with tundras and a camp towering above their peak’s great cliffs - Wolverineclan to the west of Thrushclan, their territory a mix of Tundra and expansive pine forests - and Lionclan at the Westernmost peak, hunting and weaving their way through water-carved caves and abandoned Beastclaw (Ground Sloth) burrows, building a life almost entirely beneath the surface.

Seeing the error and destruction of their former lords’ constant consumption, the clans firmly turned away from their old ways of life, swearing never to take more than the earth could provide, and never to recieve without giving back to the world that sustained them. They devoted themselves entirely to the Stars - to Starclan.

Other info:

Moons here are going to vary in length and quality from time to time, depending on how important/eventful a moon is. They may also be spaced out into episodes or parts instead of single uploads (example: moon 0)

If you’re referring to me (the author/OP), feel free to use the name Nana :D

Character asks WILL be a part of how I convey the plot cuz I just like drawing them and it makes my job easier PLEASE ASK THE CHARACTERS STUFF PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE

I don’t really have a set end for this. I have conclusions to arcs, but not the story as a whole, so endings may be a bit messy.

This has no set schedule, uploads will honestly only really happen when I have the time for it and motivation.

[pedgito]

attention, to all creators/writers within the ppcu community,

I wanted to do something fun for my 15k milestone.....so, this may make no sense at all—but I'm going to try to convey this as easily as I can so that it somewhat makes sense. I'm looking to make a masterlist for within the community of people who both write and create for Pedro Pascal, in any form. The only requirements are that you do create within the space in the ways listed below:

ie. fic writing, gif makers, icon makers, original art, shop owners (for anything specific to pedro in any form), and if you're unsure just send me an ask!

I'm going to leave this specific post up and reblog it until the final day just so everyone has a chance to see it and join if they would like. I'm going to keep this form open for anyone who considers themselves within those parameters until the 31st of December, that way I can have this masterlist up at the start of the year! I'll include some more information of what you can expect when being added to this list under the read more!

Essentially, this will give anyone who wants to be on the masterlist the ability to do it on their own terms! I wanted to create a post (or two) that will allow people to browse freely and easily to find certain content for specific characters—whether it be writing or general content like gifs, ect. These will never be deleted and will always have a space on my blog for people to go search if they want!

The form needs to be filled out in full and I will contact you if I need any further information, but please tried to be as sure as you can when filling it out. So spelling, ect.

An example of how it will look in the post (minus the /)

P

@/pedgito — writer/gifmaker

Pedro Pascal

Joel Miller

Javier Pena

Recommended place to start: (can insert a link to your masterlist/favorite fic you've written/favorite gifset/edit/art, or just anything you think describes your blog (or you) well)

AO3: if applicable, will be linked here

And then so on.

This masterlist post and/or thread, will remain as a main link on my blog description through the month of January for people to be able to access whenever they would like!

[justgallifreyanthings]

Sorry if this is random but I saw this and thought of you. The BBC/doctor who website just posted an official gallifreyan translator which looks to be Sherman’s gallifreyan. I know you had opinions about them using Sherman’s gallifreyan on the doctors screwdriver because the bbc didn’t make it or credit the person who made it. Do you have thoughts about the translator?

*gestures vaguely toward my blog* haha yeah

this has, in fact, been driving me loudly insane the entire day! tl;dr i think it's basically plagiarism and it makes me really really mad. what follows is an extended rant, and i apologize in advance about that!

in case anyone else has not been keeping up with this, the Doctor Who team released an "official gallifreyan translator" today, the output of which bears a strong resemblance to Sherman's Circular Gallifreyan, the fanmade system created by Loren Sherman (he/they) in 2011 and developed over the years by them, Annie "Skribe of Sirkles", and the general gallifreyan fan community.

the DWlator does not follow the Sherman's Circular ruleset exactly, but it has clearly taken inspiration from Sherman's Circular, as it uses the same basic structure for creating words and sentences, and the letters use the same stem/decorator system. despite this, Loren is still not credited anywhere on the translator site, nor has the DW team mentioned them in any of their social media posts.

it's an unbelievably shitty, lazy, disingenuous thing for the DW team to do. they really couldn't come up with their own gallifreyan system? they had to stoop to stealing a fan's creation, without even reaching out for permission or acknowledgement? i'm absolutely certain the DW team is going to profit off of their DWlator system; Loren will not see a penny of that, even though it's THEIR system being used, their contribution to the community being exploited.

and if the DW team wanted to put out a translator, there are so many translators that already exist! the GTH does basically exactly what the DWlator does, right down to the way dots and lines are displayed - why not try to strike a deal with the creator of the GTH? why not work with the community, instead of exploiting our work and then ignoring us?

Loren and Skribe of Sirkles are unwilling to seek legal recourse about this: Loren because their goal has never been to have sole ownership of the system, and Skribe of Sirkles because being a gallifreyan artist is her full-time job and she doesn't want to jeopardize her career. i understand their perspectives, and i'm certainly not a big enough player on the field to have a say that means much, but as someone who has been in fandom spaces for decades, i am TERRIFIED of the legal precedent being set here.

i know a lot of folks in the discord server are not quite as "doom and gloom" as i am. Skribe of Sirkles, for instance, is reaching out to the BBC to say "we're excited you're using the system, and we would love to work with you as an offering of goodwill." but i'm not ready to go that far. to me, this is just another, more egregious expansion of the BBC's long history of stealing fan content.

as a corollary, i'm also quite worried that the differences between Sherman's Circular and the DWlator system mean that a lot of fans who've gotten tattoos in Sherman's Circular are going to look at the DWlator output and say "wait a second. my tattoo doesn't look like this. what the hell? did i get ripped off?" loads of people on twitter are already going "but i got the fan system tattooed, and now it doesn't mean anything :("

in fact, the DWlator is not backwards compatible with any other "Gallifreyan" DW has ever put out in the past - including Ncuti's sonic screwdriver lmfao. so even by THEIR OWN RULESET, Ncuti's screwdriver is illegible. absolutely comical.