#people will probably be underwhelmed

[erigold13261]

Okay okay okay! I might use this design I have for Tatiana's mom instead for a first cousin once removed character to Tatiana (so her mother's sister/brother's grandkid).

Look, I know it's confusing but I REALLY want to use this design for present day stuff! She would be the same age around Cyril as they would be of the same generation.

I REALLY need to make a family tree for Tatiana (along with Neon's and Yinu's family as they are also pretty big. Nova doesn't need one I feel because his family is just his parents and him. No cousins or aunts/uncles. I could do grandparents at some point though lol)

[fiona-fififi]

...

[classicintp]

How do I sincerely relay that I am a very plain and boring person (at least, in a general sense of the term by society's standards), but without it sounding self-deprecating, pitiful, or edgy?

[aromanticannibal]

The pattern is that people straight up do not read™. or they read a 3-5 tweet summary of what happened and treat it as if they did. or because shonen expectations based on "the classics" is bullshit and significantly rotted people's brains when deciding wether an ending is good or not.

Which could be nothing right

yeahhh. i will forever regret reading the last chapter through leaks because it was a dreadful experience, and watching everyone ever shit on it for like a week after genuinely made me want to just get off the internet forever or something because i felt like an idiot for liking the ending (all this is my fault for getting too invested in both tumblr and mha etc etc).

All the "it's rushed" and pacing complaints barely matter to me at this point because you just cannot feel the pacing of something correctly when you're reading it exclusively through leaks. you can't absorb info like that. And don't get me started on the number of complaints and criticisms I've seen of the last chapter that are just provably bullshit (I saw someone say Izuku didn't get a statue lmao. yes he did, you just read the fucking leaks and watched twitter drama unfold instead of reading the actual chapter i fear).

[sskk-manifesto]

!

[fleurladari-a]

i honestly try to take all of the flare interpretations and jumble them into one, with the manga being my prime influence. honestly my point in writing them is to pain them as absolutely abhorrent at times and downright irredeemable. the cover of yipee sometimes doing very good things, but in the end working towards a really . really bad 'solution' to a 'problem' that doesn't really exist to the extreme that they believe. there could be good things done, but a majority of those "good things" took the worst actions to get to.

[babymorte]

Fully anon ...

Going on a hike and having a picnic with you, talking about games, movies and music sounds like a really good time. (and don't throw that "you'll be disappointed" at me, we both know you're amazing)

this is super kind of you to say but im very different in person unless im comfy around a person. I really don’t talk much. im not trying to be humble im being honest

[kopw]

Angle, draw and feud for the wrestling asks please!

this is gonna get long. you have been warned

angle: your favorite storyline(s)? why?

the ospreay-omega-okada relationship dynamic triangle... thing. whatever those three have going on. if i have to formulate it as a storyline... ospreay's hero story. that's maybe the best way of putting it. everything from the point he joined chaos to him beating okada at this year's g1, with a very large appendage in the shape of one kenny omega

my main interest since around september of last year has been the ospreay-omega feud, but i think it's near impossible to look at that as an isolated storyline removed from its context. which is why one of the first things kenny rubs in ospreay's face during that off-air promo after the first round of trios tournament matches is the fact that ospreay went there fresh off a loss to okada at the g1, contrasted with the fact that kenny was able to beat okada before. and why okada and kenny teaming at new year dash against united empire was a very pointed message at ospreay, who dropped his title to kenny at wk beforehand. and why ospreay had to beat kenny before he was able to beat okada. so on and so forth

like... these three people just feed into each other in such intricate ways, i don't think you could tell one story without explaining another along the way. i have like at least three essay-length conversations about them per week. and also the ospreay-omega feud in particular is very personal to me. right place, right time, stuff like that

draw: list 5-10 qualities about your favorite wrestler(s) that caused you to be fan of him/her/them!

i think right now the wrestler i like the most is... ospreay. obviously there are people who like him heaps more than i do, i'd say i'm just an enjoyer mostly, but i like watching him a lot

the first thing that always catches my attention when feeling a pull towards specific wrestlers is what they do in the ring. i watch wrestling for... well... wrestling, first and foremost. and ospreay just possesses such outstanding athletic prowess... i don't know how he does what he does. his current move set is also informed by a lot of things i typically enjoy in wrestling (high-flying and impactful kicks). love hunting down the inspiration behind specific moves he does... he has great taste when it comes to what he decides to draw from

the way he paces his matches. i think it's one of those hit or miss things where if you hate fast-paced action you're not gonna like him. my attention span is fried at this point and i do look for a certain level of stimulation when it comes to matches so it's as close to perfect as it gets

i talked about this with a friend recently, but the way ospreay carries himself within the context of kayfabe is one of the most interesting facets of him i think. it's very jarring to see him perform beside all of these characters when he himself... isn't so much of a character, in the traditional sense. i don't want to stick a label on his forehead that says he's the most authentic wrestler out there or anything but his character work is incredibly honest. downright gripping stuff i tell you

big sexy entrance coat

shoot autihd icon

feud: your favorite rivalries?

sort of answered in the first one already (because there's a big overlap between the two for me) but some others that i think worth mentioning are: giulia vs syuri, shibata vs goto and hiromu vs ospreay. oh and of course hino vs yuki "not sexy" iino

[fluxweeed]

yes I agree that you’re implicitly required to rec a fic you’re involved in which is why it HURTS WHEN PEOPLE DONT like oof. you said yes to work on it but then you didn’t like it that much hey. obviously I’d rather that than people rec something they don’t actually like, I’m not saying it should be disingenuous, it just hurts you know? ouch

nahhh i don't think ppl should feel obligated to do marketing for a fic they've already put time and energy into helping the writer with!

[hallous]

hi!! so i dont have a commission for you, but i do have a question if thats okay! i think your art is absolutely gorgeous, and i love your style and how pleasing it is to look at with how you use lines and colors. i really do love how you draw and sketch and i was hoping you could give me some advice. i really want to start getting into art, but i just have no idea how. i have a little sketchbook with some pens that a friend gave me, but when i sit down and try to actually do anything, i just have no idea how. i dont know how to start, where to start, or even how to begin the process, ya know? ive never actually drawn or sketched anything before, so its all completely new to me. do you have any tips that you think are good for beginners to learn? or anything you did when you first started out that helped you? if youre too busy to answer any of this, thats absolutely fine! i just wanted to ask because of how much i admire your skills, so i figured i should just take the risk. i hope youre having a really wonderful week, and thank you for taking the time to read this behemoth of an ask lol

oh hello! first of all, thank you so much!

secondly! i don't remember exactly how i started to draw. my mom often tells me i used to do it since very little, but don't really have any memories of it ahah.

that aside! i remember getting into anime and how i liked the pretty pictures i saw! i used to try to copy styles i enjoyed, mainly card captor sakura and inuyasha. even so, whenever i tried to draw something of my own it wouldn't look how i wanted, but i was stubborn about it and kept going.

drawing is magical but also tortuous in a way? it takes a while to get good at it and it's often a bumpy ride. so after all that, what i can tell you on how to start is just: pick up a drawing, an anime or manga panel you like and try drawing the eye maybe? or just a floating head, something like that 😊 experiment with how drawing with a pencil feels, how the drawing with a pen feels! how to add color with the tools you have.

most of all, have fun drawing and trying different things! it doesn't have to be perfect specially because drawing is something that keeps on evolving as a skill the more you do it.

i hope this helps in some way 💕

[cagesings]

so  ever-loving  emotional  over  these  audios  guys

[doushiteworld]

Trying to figure out how I feel about the Nightcord at 25:00 ver of Non-Breathe Oblige

[mysterialnos]

@staff reqs/ideas in tags? Also honestly doing some data collection and idea fielding might not be the worst idea. Throw out some surveys or polls (lol) maybe and get what people like, dislike, use, don't use (though the latter hopefully y'all have click metrics for).

Idk, I feel like there's a way to solve this without devolving into every other platform. I avoid algos myself, it's why I'm here, and I'm a SWE. It's organic here, and I can breathe.

On the complete other side, open source social sounds like a trip and a fantastic idea from my perspective, lolol. (Idk how easy, very different from what I work with)

If y'all do open source people can add/make shit and really lean into the "customizable" brand. You could even market that a little. A build kit, premade stuff, etc.

I think things use to be more customizable anyway. Like lean into yee old neigh myspace level stuff, I bet people would lose their minds (in a good way) with like cool blog wallpaper and stuff. Really hone in on that individuality.

I could go on. Yes and your site's current direction friends, and don't make it into something it's not, which everyone else seems to be dying doing anyway. That's what I'd say.

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.

[maganne-studies]

"My father said it looked very sad: a stairway in a field of ruin, going up to nowhere."

- The Woman Who Had Two Navels by NIck Joaquin

[tokyo-lockdown]

Finished Fumi's route on the last night of the year. I love everyone and everything about this game and now I'm empty inside and I know there's 6 routes left but I don't know how to move on.

[inbabylontheywept]

by tradition, the first day of the camp was spent pranking the group next to us. our prank was ziptying the zippers on their sleeping bags together. we figured one of them would sleep with a knife, because we all slept with knives, because we were dangerous maniacs and half the danger of a dangerous maniac is that they tend to think that they are Actually Normal. so. obviously that didn't pan out, and instead they got stuck in their sleeping bags for like half an hour and because their scoutmaster slept in their car and couldn't hear them yelling, they actually only got out when one of them went full caged animal and chewed through the plastic. which meant they had time to make it to the axe throwing station, but they did miss breakfast.

the scale of our victory was impossible to understate. it was an epic prank. unrivaled. the best in years. we knew they were going to retaliate, and we both feared and craved it. maybe i'm still a maniac, but that feels like a common thing, right? do well adjusted people that are not maniacs crave Judgement?

(serious answers only please, from people who would never spoon a knife.)

anyway, the next day we got back to our camp, and the neighors had skipped dinner to just come back and fill all our tents with pinecones. which was like, a decent prank, i guess, but it probably took them an hour to fill all the tents up, and it took us like 15 minutes to tip the tents out, and as a return volley to the ziptie prank it was incredibly underwhelming. we felt a little cheated.

so our scouting group held a council, and we agreed, unanimously, that our prank was 100% better and theirs sucked and that there would be no escalating tensions because we were the clear victors. they'd had their chance to retaliate, and they failed, and so the war was over. that was it.

we agreed on this. we swore. but madness is a relative thing, and in our group of maniacs, we still had J. i have many, many J stories. too many. i biked up to school with him from 4th grade to 8th, and i saw him get hit by cars thrice. he'd just swerve into the road sometimes. one time on a rainy day in 4th grade, a car splashed me, and before i could even consider my response J yelled I GOT THIS and then he blitzed off after the car. i didn't see him the rest of the day. i was so anxious i barely slept that night. i saw him the next morning and he told me that he'd chased the car until it got to a gated community and then he'd climbed over the fence and looked in peoples garages until he found the one with the car, and then he'd ripped the hood ornament off and broke their window. then he gave me a hood ornament to a different brand of car from the one that splashed me and i didnt tell him because i didnt want him missing more school. i want you to mentally adjust your mental model of the things a 9 year old is capable of doing to include chasing a car for five miles, hopping a fence, breaking into a garage, and vandalizing a randos car.

and that's just the tip of my J stories iceberg.

the point of all this is just to say that J was so crazy that he made us knife spooners look like accountanting enthusiasts.

so we agreed the war was done, and we shook on it, and then J, in the name of friendship, in the name of honor, in the name of avenging our pinecone filled tents, snuck over to their camp that evening and fornicated with a watermelon that they'd been saving in their cooler.

i want to emphasize, again, that this was not the consensus of the group. that is not a prank. like i know it seems like we dont know what pranks are because of the whole ziptie thing, but even we knew that fucking someones food is not a prank, it is a crime, and a sin, the kind of weapon that had only been ethically used once in history by Horus in his battle against Set and none of us dumb assholes had owl heads.

so.

the next day went pretty well. we threw some more axes again, which is a valuable and important skill for children to learn i guess, and we learned how to tie knots, which is a skill that turned out to be far sexier than i ever expected, and i learned how to light fires with a magnifying glass, which was great. i'm looking back at this, and i am actually just now beginning to realize that the clear and obvious point of scouting is turning child sociopaths into apex predators.

and then the day ended, and we went back to our camps, except for our leaders, who had a sort of Scout Leader Meeting they were going to have for a few hours at least. it was built into the camp, that day was supposed to be our day to chill as a group, and make peach cobbler, and just be buddies.

except, as it turned out, our neighboring group's alternative to making peach cobbler was eating their watermelon. so at some point they opened their watermelon, and woo boy. oh man. you think catholics hated seedless watermelons? you should see how much mormons hate seeded ones.

so we were chilling by the fire, and then we heard screaming from the camp over, but we didn't pay much mind to that because there are many reasonable explanations for a group of 10ish children to scream simulanteoulsy, such as wasps, which are abundant in arizona, and then the screaming got closer, which did not bother us because there were many reasons for a group 10ish children to scream and run towards us, for example, wasps, which are abundant in arizona, and then we noticed they had large sticks on them, which we figured were perhaps being used to drive away the wasps, which are abundant in arizona, and then they arrived and they started beating the shit out of us, abundantly, in arizona.

so we ran into the woods.

now, at this point, we had no idea what was up. we knew that the camp next to us was out for blood, which was crazy, because we'd actually locked them in fartproof bags for 30 minutes and they'd barely done anything back, and were trying to figure out what could possibly have happened that could drive them to Terrible Violence when we realized that J was cackling like a witch that had learned how to order children off of ebay.

so we politely asked J what the hell he had done, and he politely explained that had "done" their watermelon, and we politely beat him with large sticks because life is nothing but endless cycles of violence.

we were still being chased by the other camp btw. so it was them, chasing us, chasing J, and then they got tired and went back to their camp, and we chased J a little longer because we were mad we'd all been walloped with sticks, and J did not care because he was a supernatural entity whose only weaknesses were Needles and Fire, and then we got tired and went back and J kept running, and we just kind of figured he would come back eventually.

he did not.

we went back to our tents, and we waited, and J did not come back. we stayed up all night, peering into the forest, worrying. our leader came back, and we did our best to hide our battlewounds, and he either genuinely did not notice or simply accepted this as part of Boyhood. then he went to bed, and we waited, and waited, and waited. And Waited. and did not sleep.

eventually, we convened again, and we agreed that if J was not back by after breakfast, we would have to tell the scoutleader about what exactly had transpired. and we really did not want to do that, because it would have meant that everyone would have gotten in a very large amount of trouble.

morning came around, and J still was not back. we went to breakfast, and we ate very, very slowly. we were afraid the other camp was going to continue their war with us, but they actually looked fairly frightened. one of them actually came to us and asked for a truce, and we agreed because we truly felt bad for them. like, yes, they did beat us with sticks, but J fucked their watermelon. we werent complicit in the watermelonfuckening but they didnt know that, and it was definitely the kind of crime that left one outside the bounds of the social contract.

and then when we could eat no more bits, when breakfast was almost done, right when i was getting pushed to go and tell the scoutleader that we needed to find J, he arrived. he was sleep deprived, and noticeably scraped and bloody, and tied to his belt was a blood squirrel tail.

and i asked him, J, where did you get that? and he said, don't worry man, it was already dead, which did not answer by question and gave me several more.

the camp ended that day, and the other groups avoided us like the plague, and it was not until some weeks later that we were able to piece together what happened.

J, in his sojourn through the forest, managed to find (or, possibly, make) a dead squirrel. he then cut off the tail to keep on his belt, because he was a weird little freak like that. he also took the dead squirrel, and he skinned it, then he tied it to a little crucifix made of wood, and he left it in the other scouting group's camp. which is why they were so scared of us.

it was such an unhinged thing to do it actually sobered us up for a while. scouting became a scary thing for us. we'd found something dark and primal there, in the place where no adult could see, and our appreciation of J as a wild ride kind of changed into seeing him as something truly dangerous. we had a sense wherever he went, something terrible would follow, and the only way to escape it was to not be there when it arrived. and so piece by piece, the scout group dissolved. it wasnt until he moved out of that ward that the rest of us started daring to go back to scouts.

and for the final epilogue of the tale:

i have a little brother who was friends with a younger cousin of J's, and the two would go to parties together in highschool. and sometimes J, who was in his early 20's at that point, would show up at the parties, and it was unsettling in such a way that it just became a known risk at parties with the cousin. and at one party, they were playing truth or dare, and J wasn't even in the room, but someone asked him the Truth of how he always knew how to find the cousin, and J said the cousin's mom had mentioned she was worried about him and the parties so he'd put a tracker in his car. and when he saw that the cousin was out of the house on weekends, he'd made a visit by, just to make sure he was safe.

then he left. and every single person at that party went over that poor kid's car. they searched the wheel-wells, checked underneath it, the works, until they found the tracker. then because they were clever, they didnt break it, or throw it away, or anything that would've given away what they'd done. they just gave the tracker to the cousin, who put it in his glovebox. and on schooldays, he'd take it with him, so J could see him in the parking lot. and on weekends, he could leave it in the garage, so he could go to parties with out Hell coming with him. because everyone that met J - every single person - knew that the only way to be safe from him was to be far, far away.