#on twitter there aren't tags in the same way tumblr has them ... and the same applies to bluesky actually

[iwakuraz]

how do people consider tumblr to be confusing or strange to use whenever twitter exists? I genuinely cannot use twitter it is just so. headache inducing.

[asleepinawell]

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

[horrorshow]

Can you talk about why you think blocking and moving on is a bad thing? I thought it was a way to curate your space and avoid drama

idk maybe i'm too idealistic but fandom is a much more friendlier, welcoming, supportive, creative, engaging, active, diverse and interesting space when it's treated like a community where people are encouraged to participate and talk about their interests and where there's space for niche or more unpopular opinions without these people having to worry about being blocked and feel unwelcome by the majority of the fandom they are in. i can't stand how blocking everyone you disagree with has become the first thing to do.

you say its 'to curate your experience'. but blocking people does not only curate YOUR experience. you're also forcefully curating other users' experiences. and not for the better.

people say 'i will block you for literally anything' and then those same people wonder why engagement is down, why no one sends asks, why no one reblogs, why rarely anyone talks in the tags anymore and why this place feels so dead and boring and quiet. i wonder why!!!!

people treat real people as annoying ads they can dispose of at their whim. but that's not how a fandom or a site like tumblr works. (besides, if you really care about people curating their own experience you wouldn't block people. you can filter and blacklist and never see them again while still granting them the same freedom instead of actively making their experience worse.)

you say its to avoid drama. but seeing a post you dont agree with is not 'drama'. and blocking is not solving anything except for you personally. fandom was more fun when we remembered that every user is a real person you share a space with, and probably some mutuals as well, so you find a way to live with each other. starting with a restraining order seems a bit excessive and is not contributing to anything. it's not that hard to be respectful and tolerate others and acknowledge people have different opinions and interests and still co-exist in peace. its not that hard to be nice to people and try to find common ground with them and interact with the stuff you DO like. you do this in every aspect of your real life, so why not online?

i hear you say: 'but that requires WORK and i don't NEED to do any of that bc i can just block them'.

yeah, you can try to create your own bubble and only hang out with like minded people but you wont EVER fully achieve that (no matter how much you block, social media WILL keep feeding you posts you disagree with bc it makes them money). social media WILL pressure you into an 'us vs. them' mentality where you constantly feel like everything online is a threat or an argument you have to win and where being mean and unnuanced gives you the most notes and where you don't even see, let alone be able to treat, other users as people anymore bc you don't interact with them anymore other than to block or fight them. that's not how i want it to be online. it's not fun to me. and maybe i'm a pessimist but i think it will eventually be the death of online fandom and sites like tumblr. look at the state of twitter right now. DOES blocking give you a better experience in the long run? i doubt that it does. overall, i think it makes people even less tolerable and more vulnerable to hate and fear mongering, and social media an even more hostile place.

it's everything i hate about social media and everything i want to fight against and WILL fight against. i won't pretend my meager contribution will change anything, but i LIKE to just scroll past posts i don't vibe with and not see every argument online as a personal offense. it keeps me curious. most posts aren't that bad when you know the person behind it. i mean, you do you, i'm not gonna say what you should or shouldn't do bc that's up to you, but i recommend it: free yourself of the block button and bring back supportive user communities based on a shared love for the same thing and focus on what you have in common with people, just like you would do in real life. save the block button for the rotten apples who DO keep trying to pick fights and exclude others.

(which is, now that i think about it, probably the main difference: most people see the block button as a neutral way to prevent worse. but. that's only the case on an individual level. and treating everything online as an individual choice to which there are no further consequences, especially if they happen on a larger scale, is already a loss.)

[powdermelonkeg]

Something websites (*cough* Tumblr *cough*) need to learn is that what retains an audience isn't an abundance of new bells and whistles to play with, it's a coherent experience overall.

When someone joins a website, you don't need to grab their attention and hold it. They're already testing the waters. They've agreed to sign up. You've won on that front, and they're there for something specific you already have that they're hoping works well.

What drives them away is frustration.

Frustration, frustration, frustration.

Learning curves are going to be a part of any new website experience; they're something the user comes to terms with, in their own time. But broken or bad features are going to make them jump sites.

On top of that, constantly adding new features makes them feel like all the hard work they've put in to learning what you have isn't worth it; your website looks unstable and your staff looks incompetent, because it gives the impression that you don't know what you're doing.

You are floundering. It makes your new users nervous. It makes your old users hesitate to bring anyone else on board. And why should they? Why should they put effort into it if you're going to throw that effort away next Tuesday? Why get used to a UI that you're not going to bother to keep? Why customize anything if you're going to whittle that customization away?

Between that and the broken, unattended features of this site—the tag organization failing, the inability to look up posts word-for-word, the video player either refusing to play or yanking you to the top of the dashboard, images taking forever to load, advertisements blaring at full volume when you scroll past, you have your problem.

You have the reason why your numbers are failing.

It's not that you're not interesting enough.

It's not that you're too difficult to understand.

It's that you aren't improving what you have, yet you keep adding more half-broken things and unwanted copycat features to the pile.

It's that you're losing your identity in pursuit of a hypothetical perfect customer.

It's that you are actively telling your user base that you prefer those hypothetical customers over them. And your user base, your real people who make you happen, are smart enough to know where your priorities lie.

The bulk of this post talks about Tumblr, but other sites have gone the same way. Twitter is dead and its corpse is decaying in the street. Reddit has sabotaged any trust its users had in its management. If you'd like a really old example—I used to use Fanfiction Net. It's not the most intuitive website in the world, but it was the first one I called home.

I used it to host my works. The adware now on it makes it a hassle to navigate. The bots make comment sections and private messages a dread rather than a joy. So I moved on.

I also used to use it to collaborate on stories with my now-roommate. The message limit was 300 a day. When you're writing dialogue between characters, that's nothing.

So I moved on. We started messaging on Facebook. It was better, it didn't have a limit. But then I learned Discord existed, and I could edit messages, make dedicated channels, etc. So I moved on from Facebook to Discord. And Discord had a steep learning curve, especially if you're trying to make your own server rather than contribute to one. But, most importantly, the payoff was worth it.

If Discord changed its layout every other month while I was learning it, and broke how its reactions worked, and kept shifting what it meant to create a channel? If it opted me into servers I didn't sign up for, in hopes of engagement? If its text never formatted correctly, or its search function only went back a day or two?

I would have gone right back to Facebook. Even if it's a more basic experience, basic is always preferable to unstable.

Figure out what you want, websites.

Slow growth, or a gamble?

You're paying for your magic slot machine in users.

[pocket-jack]

Finally... The day has come.

The one that you've been waiting for since... When was it? Tuesday? Tuesday.

It is time...

For

KIKITOBER2024!!!!

You know our boys. You love our boys. In fact you do it so much that you've decided to dedicate ALL of October from 1-st to 31 to doing this challenge.

SO prepare your tablets, notes, AO3 accounts, keyboards and of course... IMAGINATION!

The rules are simple:

You can write, draw, or even cosplay with this event. It doesn't matter what artistic way you'll use, just have fun

No matter what your skill are, you can participate. This event is not made to judge or discriminate. Here we all equal and do something we love

HOWEVER you aren't allowed to use AI. Hard work and passion - that's what is matter in here, not a cheap plagiarism

When posting your artwork use the tag Kikitober2024, that's how everyone can see your work

You can change any prompt with any NSFW prompt, but we know that Tumblr won't allow such artworks in here. So feel free to post them on Twitter

Every tagged artwork will be reposted in this group so you all can see how talented our Kiki artists are. The same will go to the Twitter. If you do not want your work to be reposted, state it in your bio or description to the work

You may skip the day or two. If you don't feel like it or don't what to draw, just take a rest and restore your powers. During this you may focus on the other days or just drink some tea and relax. No one is pushing. The art is something that you do willingly or else where would be the fun in that?

Know there's a whole week for you to prepare, do some drafts and sketches. Take your time, make your plan and meet the October with the Punks! Good luck and stay creative!

[butwhatifidothis]

Harassment is horrible, it's terrible mods in this Discord aren't doing anything.

But on the other hand, what about you? You harassed a person over *fanfiction* ( to the point it's the 4th tag who shows up on your blog ). Yet, all your harassment is still there out of the open. You haven't really seriously apologized, especially to them. You're still quite active on fe3h discourse while he had to remove himself from many public online space.

How is this fair?

You're rightfully upset about harassment towards members of your community, there should be *serious* amends made... But how can you hold double standards like that?

I haven't followed the discourse closely because it's so awful, why are you all so hateful? Because you just seems like one of the "bad guy" in this story along with Raxis and the other. I'm not saying you're the same, but you're not really better than those you criticize either, and the same apply for the other blog who participed in your harassment... It's just horrible all around. You're all drowning in a cesspool of toxicity and it's making you all worst people than you actually are.

I hope you, and people around you, will at least receive amend over the harm caused to them. I hope you stop receiving troll, death threat and any other type of hate message you probably still receive. But I hope you'll sincerely recognize your faults and fully amend to them too.

Look, I know you probably mean some kind of well and that you likely spent a long time thinking over this message, so I'm going to lay it out as simply as I can:

I have never once interacted with Cap'n himself, and I have repeatedly told anyone reading my posts to do the same. This is unlike the people who have harassed me and others, who went out of their way to make sure we saw what they were saying about us. This includes publicly admitting to using alts to go around our blocks of them so that they can keep interacting with us directly

Very quickly into critiquing Cap'n's work, a primary focus became pointing out the problematic rhetoric he was spreading with his incredibly influential, incredibly popular fanfic. This includes the justification of holding racist rhetoric, the anti-miscegenation rhetoric, the infantilization of women, the demonization of men, the justification of imperialism, and more, all which appear very quickly into the story and stay prominent throughout the story. The people who have harassed me and others, meanwhile, either deny this rhetoric exists in their circles or outright hold this rhetoric themselves. This includes the use and defense of genocide apologetics.

This post is the first time I have talked about Cap'n in over a year, and the last time I posted any notes on his fic was over a year and a half ago. This is unlike the people who have harassed me and others, who have engaged in harassing behaviors as recently as this week (as of Aug 18 2024).

It has been explicitly said by those close to Cap'n that my notes, while upsetting him, had no part in him leaning away from social media more, unlike what you say here. This is unlike the people who have harassed me and others, who have driven off multiple people from social media and have openly patted themselves on the back for doing so, justifying their harassment by saying the people they've harassed off social media deserved it.

I have kept my critiques strictly on this Tumblr, as have most of the people who have talked about Cap'n's fic. This is unlike the people who have harassed me and others, who have spread their harassment on places such as Twitter, Reddit, and TVTropes.

I have refrained from ever accusing Cap'n of ever holding any bigoted views himself, and have made it a repeated point to say that his problematic writing is far more likely due to ignorance of the subjects involved rather than outright malice. This is unlike the people who have harassed me and others, who have accused many of us as people of being sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. based off of nothing. This includes accusing at least one of us of actual crimes against actual people with no proof and on multiple sites such as the popular and public Edelgard Discord and on Reddit.

People who said they were in contact with Cap'n (as in, mods of the Discord server that Cap'n was once in, the same server that has the mod that uses genocide apologetics) have been told that I was willing to remove parts of my notes that he found too attacking or harsh, and they've been told that I would outright remove all of my posts regarding Cap'n period if he would talk to me directly and we could discuss the implications and rhetoric he had accidentally written into his story. While I do understand him not wanting to do the latter (as it involves directly talking to me), he hadn't even done the former (which does not involve directly talking to me and only involves relaying messages through his friends). And with all of the above on top of that, it gives me the impression that he feels less like "this person is harassing me and that is giving my anxiety" and more "this person is critiquing me and I don't like that." While he has every right to feel the latter, we aren't going to sit here and say that's the same as the former.

So, nonnie, to answer why I am "hateful," as you put it: I don't like stories that unironically say being two races mean you don't belong to either race being influential in a fandom, as a mixed-race woman. I don't like stories that have characters of color only be used as props for the author's favorite little white girl to be influential in fandom, as a person of color. I don't like stories saying that women just want to go back to being innocent pure little girls and not be the wilted tainted flowers they are now to be influential in a fandom, as a woman. I don't like stories that lay the blame of all the world's suffering on the shoulders of a race of people who've barely survived a genocide to be influential in a fandom, as a person with a modicum of knowledge on where that rhetoric inevitably leads to. I don't like stories saying that men who don't bow down to women will almost certainly become rapist pigs or otherwise terrorizing monsters to be influential in a fandom, as someone who rejects sexism of all forms. I don't like stories that liken the violent conquests of imperialism to the blooming of flowers, or that say that imperialism is the only way for the "good" culture to help everyone - actual, genuine rhetoric used to justify actual, genuine imperialism - to be influential in a fandom, as someone who has read any history book ever.

And I don't like how all of this and more have clearly been normalized in big 3H fandom circles and how this has led to multiple people getting harassed, in no small part due to Cap'n's influence on the fandom at large.

I'm sorry if Cap'n doesn't like me pointing out the bigotry he had engraved throughout his story, and I'm sorry if I'm not going to be convinced that me doing that is the same as people's deliberate and long-standing attempts to chase people out of the fandom for saying they don't like Edelgard in the one way they allow anyone to like her, and I'm sorry that me calling out the racism people are engaging in and are hiding behind the shield of "discourse" seems to bother you so much, but I think I've explained why I'm not exactly that sorry well enough. Hope this answers your question <3

[hermitcraftx]

I agree with your post about hermit fans in regard to things being very popular. I’ve seen more people being angry and annoyed about scarian in the last six months than people celebrating it. Not tagging shipping is shit but it’s better than harassing people. I don’t know what was put in the water but something changed drastically and I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s seen it.

IT'S FUCKING INSANE! This fandom used to be so positive and welcoming and overall way more pleasant than some... other MCYT fandoms, but now??? I can't log on without seeing untagged negative interpretations in the main tags, can't express an opinion without getting anons calling me heterosexual sympathizers and hoping that I die, everyone has turned their back on everything that used to make this fandom really... fun? Like, I don't tag ON MY BLOG, but usually I don't maintag my shipping posts, and if I do, I tag the ship name so people can filter it.... I don't maintag duo names. What the fuck happened to make everyone so- miserable. Anons are probably going to be permanently off for me, too many people comfortable with their opinions and not comfortable with mine and desperately needing to tell me that.

And like- look. I get not liking interpretations. Personally I'm not a fan of the Double Life cheating arc because of how abusive and out of character people made Grian be, and I had to avoid ao3 for a bit because of that and filter the fucking tags. Same thing with found family dynamics. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it "overrated and popular" and just because you don't like something doesn't make it immoral or unethical either!!! People have to make everything a moral standpoint nowadays and it's really exhausting-

But that's a tirade. All over all the confessions blogs there's "scarian is overrated" despite Grian having nearly 10mil subscribers and most of them being on YouTube and considering all the hermits friends or family truthing them. Yes, there is more shipping than before- that's because Hermitcraft season 8 made it very obvious that the people on the SMP and the people IRL are very different, and it's no longer considered RPF. None of the real hermits died via moon explosion, ZombieCleo often says she's doing "lore", they make different skins, even GRIAN acknowledges that he's acting and playing a part with the permit office. Despite all that, there's STILL wars on shipping and people insisting that we're shipping real people, I fought this war on the DSMP side of things and it's SO TIRING.

DND podcast listeners, do you ship the people playing the characters? NO!!!!! Unless you do, in which case, have fun with that. I don't really care about RPF and I filtered the tags for it a long time ago, so maybe they do do that.

Every other day I see "Third life is overrated" "Last life is overrated" (LAST LIFE IS OFTEN THE LEAST FAVORITE SEASON I SEE PEOPLE SAY!), "the life series is overrated" "the cactus ring is fucking stupid" "they left the desert but we didn't" "no, THIS interpretation of scarian is bad and wrong" and like... guys. Guys. Fandom is supposed to be fun. It is not supposed to be a full time job. It is not supposed to be moral or ethical and you shouldn't feel the need to police shit. Jesus Christ, every other month there's a new fad that tumblr users flock to and once it's over everyone goes "EWWW THAT WAS LAME AND OVERRATED AND I NEVER LIKED IT ANYWAY" like.... I promise you cannibalism as an allegory for love is not mainstream you are just on Tumblr.

Like Good God. If it's so bad here go to Twitter. I'm sick of all the complaining and misery and hatred and I miss when things were fun- people are so scared of being cliche that they don't want to write things that they enjoy. Where are the coffee shop aus???? Where are the fun silly things??? Where are the 100k grimdark fics with worldbuilding??? Wheres the 500k fics that aren't even about the same characters anymore but that we love just the same??? Where are the forums and people talking to each other in comments and meeting each other that way??? Where are the roleplay servers?????? What are you all doing??????

People are scared of being judged. They want to do what everyone else is doing. They don't want to be cringe or cliche and every day I see a "cringe culture is dead" post and then someone making fun of another part of fandom, an antithesis to their previous statement. They don't want to be late to things, either. Who cares if Last Life was a couple years ago? Draw the fanart anyway!

I'm scared. Maybe I'm just old, but every post I see I notice that I get maybe a 10th in reblogs of what I do in likes, and I don't even post my art or fics to this site. Every post is like that. More and more people only like posts and they die, unseen, by everyone. More and more people misuse archive of our own's functions, treating it like it has some algorithm, when it doesn't, and it never has and hopefully never will. I see fic reuploads to "gain traction" (not how it works) and people reaching out to find RP partners (breaking TOS) and all sorts of other shit on both sites and it fucking horrifies me. I'm not even that old- I'm eighteen, and I can already tell how fandom has changed for the worst for everyone. Fandom used to be a community. Not consumption.

It's just... sad. Old fandom had PLENTY of fucking problems, and we have problems here too, but at least the positives outweighed the negatives. It's so... mean here, now. Even the happy things are mean-spirited. People treat it as if certain people have invaded this fandom space, spreading horrible opinions and ruining it for everyone, but the truth is is that shipping is always going to be a thing. It's a foundation of fandom- fandom started with housewives in the 1950s writing Star Trek fanfiction. You can never get rid of shipping. You can just interact with what you want to interact with and leave others to mind their own business.

[theworldremixed]

Fic Masterpost

I figured it's about time I did this. I mean they're all on AO3, but I figured having a Tumblr masterpost might put things in perspective as regards how much I've actually written lmao. Here we go.

Disclaimer: I mean, my writing is pretty mediocre, but I honestly find that the fandom space had to be filled out somewhat, so I started writing fic.

EarthMix

This is the pairing I've begun writing fic for again, so I have the most fics for EM.

Now unlocked. I don't think Joong is looking around for fic anymore, and certainly not on Tumblr. There are tons of unlocked fic in the tag, too, so there 'ya go!

The Stars, Our Witness 'Verse

The universe that started it all, partly as a way to archive EM activity before I became a fan, and partly as a way to stave off my delulu.

The Stars, Our Witness

Rating: E/NC17 Chapters: 16 (finished) Summary: They’re scared to cross boundaries. What happens when the lines blur? Tags: slow burn, friends to lovers, FWB, "canon rewrite" (in the sense of IRL being "canon" Warnings: divorce era. 'Nuff said.

2. supernova

Rating: E/NC17 Chapters: One-shot Summary: the same versions of 🌏 and 🪐 as in TSOW, but basically D/s pwp. Tags: pre-negotiated D/s; still a whole lot of longing.

3. of longing and loudness

Rating: E/NC17 Chapters: One-shot Summary: Oneshot set in the The Stars, Our Witness (TSOW) 'verse, and a reactionary fic post-LOL 2024. Tags: engaged!EarthMix

4. Beneath the Sunrise (in progress)

Rating: M (for now, but knowing me, this might go up) Chapters: 2 (so far, out of a slated 10) Summary: EarthMix get outed. They deal with the consequences. Tags: married!EarthMix, social media elements, bullying

General EarthMix fic

Mostly one-shots written as a reaction to a post, among other things.

laissez-faire

Rating: M Chapters: one-shot Summary: featuring Earth's obsession with mix's grey sofa Tags: engaged!EarthMix; domesticity

long distance

Rating: E/NC17 Chapters: one-shot Summary: of short reunions and busy schedules (lol honestly this has zero plot. I just missed them when they were in Japan for Happy Weekend, so I wrote a fic) Tags: PWP, quickie.

so here's the situation

Rating: E/NC17 Chapters: one-shot Summary: ~situationship~EarthMix (written after the Vivi interview had been released, and after they went on a museum simulation Van Gogh date literally the day after) Tags: situationship; we're dating but aren't together

househusbandry

Rating: G Chapters: one-shot Summary: Dreame gets EarthMix as endorsers for their vacuum. Why are they everyone's Favorite Married(TM) Couple? Tags: domesticity Note: This was written on my Notes app in like, 10 minutes, so the link is to my Twitter post to that fic.

in pari delicto (in progress; converting to prose)

OK so let me just write an author's note here. This is an unfinished Twitter social media AU because I would be writing about a topic I knew very, very well: law school. Now, I'm inclined to transform the fic to prose and transfer it to AO3 because I have no patience for the whole edit-edit concepts of socmed AUs and I honestly respect anyone who's done it. That said, I will likely continue this once I finish Beneath the Sunrise, or simultaneously as I write it.

PhuTian

Ah, ATOTS. Why do I love you so? Of course I'd write ATOTS fic.

re/live

Rating: E/NC17 Chapters: one-shot Summary: In which Tian celebrates his fifth year with his new heart in the best way. Tags: tian's birthday as an excuse to write smut, sloppy blowjobs, insecurity issues

old wives and the tales they tell

Rating: E/NC17 Chapters: one-shot Summary: Mayhaps Phupha has a kink. He refuses to validate the good Doctor Nam's speculation. Tags: domesticity kink, villager!tian, headcanon epilogue to ATOTS Note: Written in response to @earthmixsclowderofcats's Thai BL Kink Meme! Please show it some love and answer the prompts too please PLEASE!!

bad behavior

Rating: E/NC17 Chapters: one-shot Summary: Tian watches as Phupha grabs something from the nightstand – a pen? – and uncaps it. He holds Tian’s chin with one hand, and Tian feels the wet drag of the pen against his cheeks. “Chief, what are you—” “There,” Phupha says, “Whiskers.”

betwixt bewitched entanglements (in progress. might possibly discontinue.)

Rating: E/NC17 Chapters: 19 (out of a planned 15 lmao, I swear this was supposed to end earlier. Summary: Magic meets royalty meets a society walled off from the rest of the world. Tags: Royalty AU, Magic AU, political intrigue, slow burn Notes: Look. I got carried away writing this, and to be honest, the concept's flown so far away from me and the worldbuilding had been so solid in my head and I even know how this fic will end, but honestly? It's not getting engagement. That's not the sole reason for writing fic - of course not - but I'm not quite sure if it's worth my time and effort writing this out.

JimWen

10/31: So I just wrote this today woohoo!

the ebb and the flow

Rating: E Chapters: one-shot Summary: The first time after their last time. (Wen learns how to swim. Jim learns how to trust. A one-shot on the wandering thoughts of Wen and Jim as they navigate being in a relationship: the fear of stagnation, for Wen; and the fear of betrayal, for Jim.) Tags: introspective; plotless; PWP; alternate ending

OngsaSun

The first half of 23.5 excited me so elfin much that I'd write little tiny Ongsa character-explorations in between episodes. Here are the two I'd actually published.

gravity

Rating: G Chapters: one-shot Summary: Ongsa muses on the meadows of her mind. Tags: anxious!Ongsa

nightfall/daybreak

Rating: G Chapters: one-shot Summary: Ongsa is no stranger to the dark—that is, until she gives in to the light. Tags: depressed!Ongsa TW: "dark" as a metaphor for depression

[alives]

——— BASICS ! ♡

NICKNAME : rory

PRONOUNS : they / them or any tbqh

ZODIAC SIGN : leo

TAKEN OR SINGLE : taken

——— THREE FACTS ! ♡

i was diagnosed as a type one diabetic at the ripe age of twenty one ( one of my many medical mysteries bc wtf )

i have three pets & between those three there are seven legs. have fun with that math !

i have a dancing pole in my bedroom & my favorite move i can do is a layback ( & i severely pay the price for it x )

——— EXPERIENCE ! ♡

i've been rping since like 2011/2012 without fully knowing it was called rp at the time in some weird chatrooms online with strange emojis that haunt my dreams to this day. started indie tumblr rping in like 2014 bc of my ex girlfriend , kept tumblr rping till 2017 or so , came back a few times but haven't been fully back until this year in indie at least. i've done a bunch of group rps as well as some twitter & jcink ones. i just always end up back in indie after awhile , my brain just fluctuates with what i want to write & my attention on media so honestly ?? multi is the way to go & i'm not sure why i didn't before now.

——— MUSE PREFERENCE ! ♡

for some reason i always pick muses that are extremely devoted to another in some way , one of my first & longest muses was horn skuld & my recent comeback to indie was zestial / paimon in a similar vein. magnus bane however has been by far my longest muse considering i still write him here on this account. chewbacca might actually be my other longest. some of my friends will also claim i write old men & they aren't entirely wrong.

——— FLUFF / ANGST / SMUT ! ♡

FLUFF : i'm a sucker for some fluff !! it's a nice little palette cleanser after angst. ironically will have me kicking my feet more embarrassed than smut.

ANGST : i love it. i think it's very fun to make my writing partners scream & button smash over it. > : ) there's just something fun about exploring emotions in the same way i like watching the occasional sad movie !

SMUT : also 110% okay with it !! but i also don't mind fade to black if that's what my partner prefers. some of my muses are a little spicy ✨ considering the media they're from.

PLOT / MEMES : both ? both !!! i adore plotting when we're just talking about our muses & shooting thoughts back & forth. but memes are really great ice breakers too !!

tagged by: i'm a thief tagging: steal it from me !!

[navree]

I saw your post and got super worried because I assumed it was the artist I've loved since they started here on tumblr. So, I went on the dreaded 🐦 app and low & behold, stan culture ruins things once again! Kinda glad I wasn't around during the heyday of GOT because it must've been absolutely insufferable! 😖😖😖

Fandom during GOT's prime must have been insane already, but I do think it's gotten worse in recent years. There used to be the unspoken rule of "if you've got nothing nice to say don't say anything at all" that appears to have completely vanished from fandom spaces. Cuz if I see a post with an opinion I don't like/agree with, or fanart of a character I don't care for, or fic of a ship that I dislike, I'm not gonna leap down OP's throat about it. I'm just gonna scroll, maybe vague post about it on another app (I've vague posted about some dumb Twitter opinions on here on occasion), and then move on. But this idea that, if someone doesn't like the same things you like, they're not only morally reprehensible but personally committing some kind of wrong against you specifically is insane. It's more than that trend I've mentioned about trying to equate fandom with morality, it is, as I said in the tags of that post, something that reeks of insecurity. There's a bunch of people in varying fandom spaces that feel that their own opinions simply must be validated, because their opinions are correct, but it's not enough for them to think it, other people need to think it too.

And it's an issue that has dominated Team Black in HOTD specifically. Cuz I'm not seeing it from Rhaenicents, from Greens, even from show casuals. It's diehard Team Black and primarily TB book purists at that who find Rhaenicent fanart (especially ones that take Emma D'Arcy's actual appearance into account), or Team Green posts, or even regular posts expressing any sort of appreciation for Team Green actors or sympathy for some of the characters (especially Alicent or Helaena) and just lose their minds. Insult the poster or the artist, deride actor's appearances, weaponize actual political language to support their point despite no real tangible thread of connection ('killing Lucerys is basically femicide' omegas aren't a real thing and killing that boring ass boy is not, in fact, femicide, there are actual femicides happening in the real world right now, focus on those), and get hopping mad at the fact that these varied posts exist. It's greed to an almost biblical proportion tbf, it's not enough that most show casuals agree with their opinions, that most people with both book and show knowledge are on their side, that the narrative of the show supports their views (in the Jaehaera art thing specifically, that canon dictates she's gonna die and that Daenaera and Aegon are gonna be married and have a reasonably happy married life). Everyone needs to be on their side, nobody had better dare have opposing views to their's. And if those opposing views exist, well then those people have earned all the nastiness that's gonna get thrown their way for having those opposing views.

Like, you're that insecure? You need everyone to agree with you in order to hold fandom opinions? You can't just like something for your own reasons and ignore people who don't agree? Other people, people who don't even know you exist, hold that much power over you? Team Black, are you guys really so pathetically weak?

Anyway, fuck people who tag butch Rhaenicent art with snippy "Daemicent!!!" quote tweets, fuck people running TG fanartists off of social media because you can't handle drawings, fuck people going up to actors and saying vile shit to them based on their characters, fuck everyone who tries to be an asshole about Olivia's looks or TGC's looks or Phia's looks, and fuck stan culture. Everyone's who's so deranged about their fictional opinions that they act nasty to real human beings should simply find the nearest noose and hang themselves by the neck until dead, the world will be an infinitely better place and no one will miss them.

[puckpocketed]

hi!! I was wondering where or how you do you research for players and teams, and just hockey in general? do you have any favorite blogs or other resources? thank you~

okay picking thru web rot for the sharks primer has prepared me for this one lmao here's the quick answer because i really need to eat some pie and go to bed. Hockey is my all-consuming interest at the moment and I haven't watched actual television or films; or read anything non-academic that isn't about hockey in.... 9 months? If it seems like I am taking in a LOT of information in a short amount of time it's because I am. I listen to hockey things at 2-5x speed depending on if its a video on youtube (locked to 2x), a podcast (3.5x is my ideal speed), or my screenreader (5x) and often take notes, save articles as pdfs to go back to, and transcribe things for fun (only recently am putting my transcriptions as addendums to gifs... very rewarding <3). When not studying for my actual degree, I am reading about hockey or listening to something hockey related or watching hockey or writing about hockey or learning how to play hockey. i am so serious. please don't assume that this is normal, optimal, or even something I would wish upon other people. I am in Love with her in thee most wretched and irrevocable way. She's my hobby in the sense that shes my sun and im building my wax wings and looking directly at her light and thanking her for blinding me. amen.

more seriously, if I'm going down a player rabbit hole I will try many of these things - though not necessarily all of them, and not in this order (and i'm sure i've forgotten one or two things I usually try... lordy):

I go to spotify/apple podcasts and throw in player names just to see what comes up and listen to basically everything.

if they are on an NHL team, there are likely MULTIPLE podcasts dedicated to that team. trawl through their podcast archives, especially post-game podcasts where discussion is happening about their performance. sometimes there are even interviews <3

i do the same with youtube if I can...!

throw their name into reddit, tumblr, twitter and scroll. endlessly. just trawl through everything that I can possibly get my hands on. The more obscure the player the easier this is, because there really aren't that many things to find out about them and not many people are talking about them at all. <- this is how I make contact with people who are the only person that knows about this one (1) guy and then we hold fins forever. <3

find out who the teams beat reporters are. if youre looking into prospects, even juniors teams have people covering them. the writing might not be the highest quality but you WILL eventually find fun details if you go digging.

check: elite prospects articles, the hockey writers articles, find out the player's home town and see if their local paper has anything on them (basically, check any and all databases that use a tagging system or have a functional search engine)

helpful things to tack onto the end of google/youtube/database searches: "media availability" "post-game" "interview" "feature" "profile" "scouting report" "draft" "debut" "review" "highlight" "tournament"

if they're a player from a non-english speaking country it's worth throwing their non-romanized name into google to see what you can get. google translate the website // chatgpt translation are two options - not ideal and not to be trusted 100% over actual translation done by a fluent human speaker.

Instagram stories are the bane of my existence because they're so ephemeral

tiktok is a parallel universe to me. I do not have the app. any browsing I do on it is solely via googling "[team name] tiktok official" and clicking around on my desktop PC. I've only ever done this for M.Chrona's gf (who is much more famous than him) but if you're really doing down the rabbit hole of player research, some of their WAGs will post about them. <- as always, be respectful/not weird.

facebook for older stuff... genuinely makes my skin crawl so I avoid it and its a last resort LMAO but yeah teams used to post on facebook and everything!!! <- again. dont be weird and stalk peoples families or friends asjklakjl

"[player/team name] gettyimages [day/month/year]" <- substitute getty images for: flickr, hockeyshots, dreamstime, alamy

Substack is good for general hockey stuff if you can stomach the dreaded idea of subscribing via email or getting the app <3 I like: Jack Han (hockey tactics newsletter), Sean Shapiro (shap shots), Adam Gretz (adam's sports stuff), Thibaud Chatel <- for the analytics nerds, Alex MacLean <- his Scouting The Scouts series is what got me into substack in the first place, Greg Revak (hockey IQ newsletter) <- this is the one that's got me on development stuff atm SUPER rec because there's gifs and charts and many many hyperlinks included for citations <3

i should do a book rec at some point but uhhhh its getting late and im hungry <3 thank you for asking + reading if you got this far, I hope it was a helpful peek into my process?

[shmreduplication]

someone had linked me this a few months ago when I was queuing the videos and complaining about how hard it was to find the social media pages for everyone

this turned into a long post. tldr is it's hard to recreate something from 12 years ago even tho it was entirely on the internet

I went thru all of Lydia, Charlotte, and Jane's tumblrs and queued posts that are mostly pics of the characters posted from the blogs rather than reblogs. The people who put together that transcript of all the social media posts clearly had the same idear but only looked thru the tagged posts on each blog because Jane's blog has a few in-character photoshoots that someone didn't tag correctly. Since I'm trying to waste as much time as possible, I actually looked thru the entire blog archive so it was a little easier for me to catch them. Charlotte unfortunately does not have anything worth reblogging, it's mostly movie posters and trailers with a few fan interactions. Jane's blog is a fashion blog so there will be a handful of posts from her, and Lydia does the most fan interactions which includes reblogging gifs and fanart. I was listening to the Wicked soundtrack while working on it so I did add in two posts comparing Lydia to Glinda. She also starts posting her youtube vids on her tumblr, but those are already queued on the main blog so I'm not going to add them to the soc med blog

twitter's UI is not familiar to me and it doesn't seem like they have a good archive function the way tumblr does so instead of pulling from that, I'm copying from the social media transcript, de-formatting it in gsheets, then I'm going to reformat it with a fake tweet generator. If they missed any tweets like they did with the tumblr posts it's going to be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they have some fan-interactions there too but just from skimming it it's only fans who aren't winking at the fourth wall, like asking what kind of camera they use and saying they looked tired in the most recent video and asking if they liked the most recent doctor who episode so I trust their judgement

the different styles of the tweets and tumblr posts are actually really done, shows the team had a very strong sense of character for everyone in the cast. The tweets from the Lees and Darcys are more similar to each other, the tweets from Charlotte and Lizzie are more similar to each other, the tweets from Kitty (a literal cat in this version, her account is run by Lydia) really seems like Lydia tweeting as a cat rather than like someone hired by Hank Green pretending to be a cat

fixing the formatting on the tweets is really boring but I'm getting a much bigger appreciation of the overall ambition and success of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and of the fans who put together the social media transcript, and people who try to do research on internet-based communities. There's sooo many posts spread out over soo many websites, but those are subatomic compared to all the posts on all those sites so they can still be hard to find, and there's always the risk of things being deleted w/no secondary source

[cxnscience]

respond to the following prompts out of character, then tag others you'd like to get to know a little bit better. i'm days late on this but hey it's munday so I Might As Well do it today

roleplayer name : august !

pronouns : she/her or he/him

muse name(s) : as far as solo blogs, i've got jiminy cricket (You Are Here), bones from star trek at @bcnes, and then a (way more inactive) oc who i won't even bother listing because he is That Inactive. i also have a lot of video game and movie muses over at @multimoth but to be frank i tend to write the same 5 of them and everyone else is gathering dust

preferred communication : i am AWFULLL with tumblr dms so those are at the bottom of the list. i'm on discord way more often! anyone can reach out and i will probably give you my usename to add me :")

experience : uhhh i started on random forums way back in the early 2000s and stuck with those venues for like 15 years. that and neopets. i moved to dreamwidth during college and then twitter after that (it was awful). then tumblr maybe 4 years ago or so

preferred roleplay type : i tend to start most interactions out as banter because it's just easier for me to let that develop into threads naturally! ask memes are also great. i have a bit of a hard time writing out fully plotted scenarios because i like the Improv nature of rp a lot, i like to see how things change when we both throw our ideas into the mix as the interaction progresses. that and i love relationships and plots that form slowly. the slow burn of it all.........

pet peeves / dealbreakers : most of my muses are multiship (and in bones' case, polyamorous even) so i get really annoyed when people insinuate they're cheating by virtue of having multiple partners or something. or get possessive of a character. like my guy.. . there is no overlap here there is zero reason to make your character jealous. i also dislike it when it feels like my character only exists to give therapy to other characters please he has so much more going on........ he'll reach out to try to do that sort of thing sometimes, yeah, but in general i think i don't like when rps feel uneven. i want the characters to get to know each other equally.

in that same vein, if people treat my character as a joke or belittle him constantly it's going to get old very quickly. and i'm prone to drop threads that feel like they aren't going to evolve into anything significant? like if it's just characters arguing back and forth with no resolution, or one character maintains the same view of mine forever with no room to change that. not every character has to become friends or anything like that but things should move in Some direction with enough time and repeated interaction

best time to write : i have a 9-5 and usually need to take some time to decompress after that so i'm typically on around 8pm est or so!

are you like your muse ? : god i hope not. but uhh out of all my muses honestly i think i'm Least like jiminy. outside of being like... relatively stubborn and a little hotheaded (i'm an aries, i don't know what jiminy's excuse is)

tagged by ellie @lcafman aaand honestly a lot of y'all have already done this so i won't double tag you. if you see this and you haven't done it, steal it from me!

[angelofthepage]

Hey gang, let's talk about Bendy: The Cage. Last night we got a new screenshot from theMeatly's Twitter page involving an eyeball, pointy teeth, and a lot of red, something monstrous. And the first exposure I had to it was numerous Discord servers posting it in channels that were either likely to be unmuted because they contain important updates about said servers, or with an at everyone so everyone would be notified and have to click on the channel to clear the message. And it was all in spaces that normally haven't done this for new screenshots or releases, which was very odd. I had no choice but to look at it because it was shoved directly in my face, uncensored, no content warnings, nada. If it hadn't happened MULTIPLE times (on more than just Discord in the end), maybe I would leave it at addressing it in just those spaces, but the frequency and variety of places where it happened makes me feel like this is something we're not on the same page about. I think there's a conversation that needs to happen about The Cage and what this is going to mean for the future of interacting in this fandom. There are some things with both the contents of The Cage and the way we choose to engage with it that I feel we would benefit from talking about.

This screenshot itself isn't particularly bad, I won't lie, at the very least it doesn't squick me out all that much, but it's creeping up on something that I foresee being a problem. When we talk about indie mascot horror games, one of the unintended consequences is that because the cute mascots have such a charming appeal, they attract a wide variety of people. Some of those people are kids (many of which have parents that aren't teaching them internet safety or looking at what they watch, even though the original Bendy is rated T for Teens, so they shouldn't be looking at it in the first place). And some of those people are people across all age ranges that have their sensitivities, phobias, legitimate triggers, and squicks, and this group is the one I'm the most focused on today. One of the things that's special about this genre is that a lot of people can exist in it because it's usually a little less intense in terms of horror media out there (at least in terms of visuals/what is shown on screen), but that also comes with a variety of consequences. With The Cage making a shift into being a more mature story, with confirmed blood, body horror, dark themes, etc, that means that part of Bendy's existing audience is not going to be able to partake in this adventure, just per the nature of it containing things they can't handle. And that's not a bad thing, there is no shame in that. We cannot help our brains, not every experience or game is going to work for every person. Nor are the devs required to make every entry the same as the last, if they want to experiment with new things, they have every right to. But when you make a shift like this, it means the content warnings have to change and adapt, and how you conduct yourself online now has a lot more questions you might wanna ask yourself.

What is safe and fun and enjoyable for one Bendy fan is not going to be that for every Bendy fan, and if we don't make an adjustment to how we tag and share this stuff, it's going to further alienate people, to the point where you will see people leave the fandom altogether even if they still like the old but not the new. That's why we tag stuff with things like gore, blood, body horror, etc, that's why we use the sensitive content filter on Twitter. That's why we have words you can mute or censor here on Tumblr, and even on Instagram and Tiktok to a certain extent. By giving people a tag that's a content/spoiler warning, you give them a choice about whether or not they look at that content so they can self curate and protect themselves. Because the last thing you want is to send someone into a panic attack or spiral if it could have been avoided. If someone can't trust you to be thoughtful about how you post when you are posting legitimately horrifying stuff, the end result is you will be unfollowed/blocked, your servers will become a lot more empty, and your fandom space will grow a lot quieter, as it has become an actively hostile place. You can make the choice to not tag that sort of thing, if you're okay with acknowledging that people can't partake in your page, but it's responsible to give them a heads up somewhere, somehow, that you don't use those tags, so they can just unfollow you from the start and avoid the hassle, part on good terms at least. Again, being considerate goes a long way. Managing expectations is just as important of a skill as self curating. That said, tagging to be sensitive of others also comes with the plus side of essentially advertising to people that like that stuff. It will give them a sign that you are sharing things they enjoy, because they likely follow those tags, so they will find you, and you can have new and fun interactions over a shared interest. And that is very worthwhile.

Part of me is worried about what The Cage is going to look like in a broader sense. Just how "mature" is it really going to be? And is that going to have consequences in more than just the fandom? Take a look at YouTube, the platform that was crucial for Bendy's success in the first place ala let's plays and reaction videos putting it on the map. Look at how their algorithms have affected other titles in the horror genre that are openly gorey, bloody, brutal, or disturbing. Heck, look outside of the horror genre at games that are just plain violent. A lot of those videos don't survive. There's demonetization, age restrictions, there's messiness with the system, and a lot of people who try to cover those games will stop because of how hard it affects their channels. I'm concerned for the future of Bendy. I'm surprised that the filters let stuff like the ending of BATDR through, given we push Wilson into a grinder and have Audrey brutally get her legs chomped off. (Frankly I'm also surprised the "insanity ending" made it through, though that's not bloody, it was certainly uncomfortable to watch and was not the greatest example of how to execute a psychiatric ward in a horror game. Which is a whole tangential topic for another day.) But now that we're doing something as small as introducing the color red into the mix? It may not be as forgiving. We may see people unable/unwilling to cover Bendy content because of how dark and unfriendly it's getting for YouTube's system. SuperHorrorBro has a great video that goes over it from about a year ago, I'm gonna link it here. Highly recommend giving that a watch. Bendy can get away with a lot because it's in sepia. When all your blood is ink, somehow it doesn't seem as brutal, even though we have characters getting impaled, decapitated, etc. But that's not the case anymore, there is confirmed blood and red in the palette. It's not the same flavor of horror as it once was.

There's a lot running through my mind as we approach the future of this series. I don't want to police anyone's behavior or how they should do things, that's not my place nor my intention. At the end of the day, everything I've said here is more to make you aware so you think about how you want to handle this shift, rather than explicitly telling you what to do about it. Equip you with information and stuff to consider when making those choices. Would I prefer it if we all were thoughtful about the tagging system? Yes, absolutely. I could stand to be better about it too, and I'm going to make an effort to be more thoughtful about how I post and engage with social media regarding topics like this. I would greatly appreciate having an open dialogue about it so we can figure out which tags work best for our fandom space. But do I expect us all to use it the same way? No, not in the slightest. The fact that I am still required to go on a social media hiatus whenever new Bendy media comes out is telling enough, I don't trust this fandom not to spoil things. I'll acknowledge it's gotten a lot better than it used to be, but when I'm still hearing stories about how people tried to enjoy BATDR blind and got spoiled on MAJOR PLOT POINTS in the first WEEK of release, nay, the first DAY, despite blocking and muting every tag and word possible to avoid stuff, it's not good. So how can I trust fans to take care with this larger, more serious thing, when we haven't gotten to that point with spoiler tagging? It makes me upset. I'm not upset that I have to self curate, that's essential on the internet no matter your space. Can't control anyone but yourself in life. I'm upset that people are inconsiderate and don't think about the consequences of their actions.

I don't talk about this often, but I'm not a traditional horror fan. Bendy is my weird exception. For most of my life I've been scared of the Tower of Terror at Disney, and that's freaking TAME. This last time I went, I tried to conquer my fear and go on it, and I only got through it because I was actively looking away and covering my ears during the story, and holding my brother in law's hand. Is it really scary, or am I just struggling with the childhood trauma of having gone on the ride the same day there was a thunderstorm? I don't know. But then I'll be fine watching something like the FNAF movie, which I'll be real, I didn't find scary in the slightest. So why am I into Bendy if horror isn't usually my vibe? Because Bendy is more than its horror. It's got a really cool art style that sucked me in. It's got a story about humanity and hope that was just the right amount of darkness when I needed it. You know that comic that makes the rounds about the story blimps that pull you out of dark places? That's Bendy for me. It's not the story I expected to get into, but it's the story I needed when it happened, and I've continued to stick with it because it's kept giving me that. The last book? That's the story I needed, absolutely. And in a strange twist, I've found myself seeking out more of the less intense horror stuff, this genre is something I've started to really enjoy. The darkness can be kind of fun. But The Cage may be going somewhere I cannot go. I hope not, but I recognize it's a very real possibility, for myself and for many fans. It's fine if it's not the same as what we love about Bendy in years past. It's not required to be the same as other Bendy entries to be valid or valuable as a game/story. Heck, I don't want it to be exactly the same, that gets stale, let there be new and interesting innovations in the series. Let it tell new stories. But it does make me wonder if what I value about Bendy is the same as what the devs value in this series.

And that's something I want to revisit in the future. Full disclosure, I've been trying to write a comprehensive post about my thoughts on the Bendy movie that's been announced for WEEKS since the announcement. Seeing as theMeatly very directly asked for feedback, I do have feedback I'd like to give. But figuring out how to give it thoughtfully has been tough. 'Cause like, the people who work on this thing are people, humans, who have feelings, and if I'm really going to put my thoughts out there, regardless of what they are, I want to do it in a way that's kind. Like, if I'm gonna take the time to be constructive in my criticism, I want it to be worded well. And then Tumblr screwed me over by posting it before I was ready, even though I clearly hit save and not post. So I deleted it in a panic, because it wasn't ready to be seen, and haven't found the energy to talk about it since. But I've had a lot of complicated feelings about the direction Bendy is taking right now. The short of it is that it's gotten away from what I think are the most important things about Bendy, which to be clear, doesn't make it bad. But it does leave me with questions, about Bendy and about storytelling as a whole. And if you know me, you know I occasionally enjoy diving into questions to really ponder the possibilities. I'm curious as to what it is that appeals about this story to the wider fandom, versus what about it is valuable to me. Maybe I'm the outlier here, who knows? I want to really think about that, what it is that makes Bendy special, what it is that draws us to this story, and what people have gotten out of it. Because I think that's a valuable discussion to have. Perhaps that's something I ought to open the floor to you for. But not right this moment, I need more time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Thank you for taking a moment to think about what I had to say. I know it's long, I know it's a lot, and I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it was valuable to talk about. At the end of the day, I just want this fandom to be a kind and friendly place to be. I hope that's what gets across.

[late-night-vocaloid]

tips for artists from twitter!

welcome! this is an extensive guide for new tumblr users, mostly geared towards artists, going over a few things I've learned here over the years.

(tldr at the bottom, short version of this post)

general tag usage

one of tumblr's best features is its tags. taking advantage of them will generally improve your experience (and ability to find posts later, something I think is a major advantage tumblr has over twitter)

tags on tumblr are used to help others find your post in site-wide tags and searches, to make your post findable on your own blog, and for commentary. they can use spaces.

your post will show up in the first 20 tags you use on it

if you use your main to reblog posts and post art, use one tag for all of your art. this will make it easy for people, yourself included, to scroll through all of your art at once without needing to dig through the reblogs. something as simple as "art" (if you don't use that tag for art reblogs too) or "my art" (if you do) will do, but it's also not uncommon to give the tag a more unique name with your name in it, like "[name] draws," etc.

speaking of which, some people also have a tag for talking, usually named similarly to "[name] draws," but again, it can be anything

don't censor your tags. there's no need to use "k*ll" or "unalive" here, and censoring trigger warning tags will cause your post to bypass people's blocked tags/words/phrases

sideblogs

sideblogs are additional blogs tied to your account. they work the same way your main does, except only your main can follow/block people, send asks, and like/reply to posts

there's no need to log into them, you choose which blog posts go to when reblogging/making them. going to a sideblog in the sidebar will auto-select that blog when you make a new post

people make sideblogs for different fandoms, blog types, etc., and because they're easy to manage and post to, many people make them for art! whether you use your main to post art or make an art blog is up to you, people do both

post longevity

posts on tumblr tend to be timeless. there are no automatically, immediately visible timestamps on posts, and people don't tend to think about when posts were made when reblogging them. you'll find your old posts will still get notes ages after you've made them

once a post is reblogged, there's no permanently deleting it. you can delete the original and it'll be gone from your blog, but the post as you made it will still exist on anyone's blog who rb'd it. this isn't to say it wouldn't get buried if only a few people reblogged it, just something to be aware of. same is true if you delete your blog

not about longevity, but the same is true of edits. if you need to edit a post, do it before people start reblogging it to prevent two versions of the post (the unedited original post, and the edited version) from circulating. of course, you can always tell people in the replies/reblogs of your posts to reblog/check the edited version on your blog (it's the same post, there aren't two individual posts) if it's important, but not everyone will open the notes and see that. people also sometimes use this for tricks

reblogging

considered the best thing to do if you really like a post, reblogging is for sharing posts with others, and saving them on your blog (+ being able to categorize them with tags if you'd like)

if you comment:

in the reblog: your comment is added as a part of the post itself, people are able to reblog the version of the post with your comment on it

in the replies: your comment is added under the post in the replies, people are able to reply back and forth to each other without needing to rb the whole post over and over, but can only reply with their main blog

in the tags: your comment will show up on your reblog of the post specifically without adding it to the actual post, it'll be visible on your blog and the tag viewing section of the post along with others' tags, keep in mind that the poster may read your tags on their post

people generally use tags to add little comments that they don't intend on getting a reply to when they reblog (for this reason, artists usually love going through the tags on their posts), but comments in reblogs and the replies are also perfectly fine

if you're on desktop, get the extension xkit rewritten and enable quick reblog. I cannot stress this enough. it makes reblogging infinitely faster by letting you hover over the reblog button for a little window with a blog selection dropdown, field for typing in tags, and reblog/queue/draft buttons, as opposed to pulling up the whole reblog screen (which is mostly good for if you want to comment with your reblog or type long tags and make sure they won't get cut off (tags have a 140 character limit each)

it's also totally normal to reblog your own art! at night if you posed it in the day, multiple days in a row, old art from forever ago, it's basically like quote retweeting it for people who missed it the first time. some people use tags like "reblogging for the later crowd" or "rb for the morning crowd" when they do this, but it isn't required

image descriptions

image descriptions (or IDs) make your posts accessible for those who are blind/visually impaired and use screen readers, which are software programs that read text aloud/make it readable through a braille display

to write them, give simple explanations of what the images you post are. for your art, include details like the medium (digital art, pencil drawing, etc), people/characters, outfits, hairstyles, expressions, poses, props, visual effects, backgrounds, and so on.

others may add image descriptions to your posts, but writing them yourself is the best way to ensure everything in your art is interpreted correctly, and the most notable parts are communicated

image descriptions can be put directly into the body/description of a post, right under or above the image (and not separated from the image under a read more)

there's also alt text, which is text embedded into the code of the image itself that screen readers will read like any other text when the image is hovered over/clicked. many websites have a way to add alt text when uploading images, tumblr included

examples of image descriptions are below the cut.

troubleshooting your posts not showing up in tags

new blogs may not be able to post to tags immediately (a bot prevention method). to make sure your posts show up in tags,

add an icon/description to your blog (you may have heard this is important to show others you aren't a bot so they don't block you when you follow them, but this is also a way tumblr itself determines if you're a bot)

reblog a post/posts (they can be deleted later)

wait a while before posting (maybe a day or two, it's been a while since I last checked the amount of time with a new blog)

certain things, like adding more than two links (not video links, just regular ones), can also cause your post not to show up in tags

an easy way to check if you're able to post to tags is to make a quick text post and tag it something specific, like "testingggg," and then check that tag to see if your post is in it. it can take a few seconds for your post to show up. this is a good way to test anything you think may be causing your post not to show up in tags, and you can delete it immediately after you check

sometimes, tags are just finicky. if your post isn't there, it may show up later, it may not. if it's really important that your post shows up in the tags, delete it and try again later

tldr/summary

the first 20 tags on your post will have it show up in those tags

if you reblog and post art, use a tag for your art

don't censor trigger warnings

if you want to, make an art only sideblog within your account

posts on tumblr are timeless and may still get notes long after they're posted

if a post is deleted, any reblogs of the post on other blogs will remain

editing posts does not edit already-reblogged versions

reblogging is for sharing and saving, and is very much appreciated

reblogging with a comment adds it as a part of the post

replying allows for short-ish discussion directly related to the post

tags are often used for making one-sided comments for the poster/your followers/people browsing the tags on the post to read

on desktop, get xkit rewritten for its streamlined reblogging feature

if you want to, reblog your art for those that missed it earlier

add simple descriptions of what your images are to your posts for those who use screen readers (see image descriptions section)

you may need to add an icon/description to your blog, reblog a post, and wait a bit before tumblr will let you post to tags with a new blog (bot prevention)

you can use text posts with any tag to test if you posts will show up in tags before posting the real thing

of course, none of the advice here is obligatory, and you should use your account/run your blog how you want to, but hopefully you find something in here helpful. there's a lot I didn't cover, mainly general tumblr things people have already covered as opposed to artist-oriented tips, and it doesn't get into all the features like custom blog themes (which I recommend desktop users look into), but these are a few things that aren't immediately apparent/are different elsewhere. that's all, thanks for reading and have fun!

image description examples are below the cut.

[ID: a chibi figure of Vocaloid Kaito sitting sadly on the floor, his scarf wrapped around his torso and lower face, and his arms to his sides. He has a single tear and is blushing slightly, and there's a bandage on his head. Beside him are a melty, spilled, blue popsicle and a wet floor sign with the text "caution" and an image of the popsicle. End ID.]

[ID: the cover of the Vocaloid Gakupo album “Celebration,” which features cursive text that reads “Celebration” above regular text that reads “Gackpoid V3 Song Collection,” along with digital art of Gakupo. His hair is half down, half up in a spiky bun with golden sticks crossed through it. He’s wearing an unbuttoned, white dress shirt, a black jacket, a black tie, and an earpiece with a mic. He looks to the camera with a neutral expression, his mouth slightly open, loosening his tie. There are glowing petals around him, and golden flowers that turn into feather-like shapes behind him. The background is a grey-to-black gradient with purplish-pink bars with patterns on them. End ID.]

these are a couple examples of how you might describe your art. if there's something distinct about your art, like very-saturated or pastel colors, you might specify that too. if you post comics, you might start out with text like "a four-panel digital comic," before describing what's happening in each panel. if you were posting a meme, you might specify which meme it is and give only relevant information, not describing things like shirt color, etc. like you might do with art. a good rule of thumb is to describe the images in your posts like you would to a friend who's in the room but can't see your screen.