#screenshot because tumblr is bad at spacing

[slateblueearthbelow]

[revenantghost]

Man! I feel bad about being not as present for bookclub as I was last year, and also about how behind on messaging/responding to peeps between migraines and health stuff I am, but the community here and support and kindness has been amazing even as I feel like I'm letting everyone down, and I've just gotta say:

Thank you <3

[jiskblr]

Tumblr Rules for Redditors

Hello, fellow redditors! Many people are trying to tell you rules about how to Tumblr properly. Many of them are wrong, or assholes, or both. I am also an asshole but I’m going to not be one for a minute to give you some advice:

“Reblog this or you’re a bad person” and any variation on that is a violation of intergalactic law. Don’t do it. Also, refuse to comply if someone else does it.

Generally, people can see what you reblog, but cannot see what you ‘like’. A like may seem like an upvote, but it is much less significant than one, since it doesn’t affect visibility in the slightest. A like will be visible both to the OP of the thread, and to the person whose reblog you put the like on. Like promiscuously! It feels good to get likes and there’s no downside. (Unless you are a space alien AKA influencer.) There’s a setting for like visibility, but it’s still somewhat hard to find even if it’s turned on.

Tumblr nominally has the ability to browse global tags (e.g. seeing the entire site’s posts and reblogs tagged #superwholock or #reddit exodus) and to search the site for things. No one uses them and they don’t really work.

You are probably less surprised by this than denizens of literally any other website on the internet, but there’s mostly no algorithm here. Chronological order only. This now defaults to being on, but you can and should turn it off. (If you’re using the search or global tags, they might have an algorithm, but if they do, it doesn’t work. We don’t know because we don’t use them, because they mostly don’t work either.)

Anyone can have absolutely any conversation in the notes of your post that they like. This is how the website works. You are allowed to complain about it, but don’t expect anyone to humor you. I think it’s possible to make posts unrebloggable and disable replies, but this is essentially refusing to use Tumblr. If you want to do that... go ahead, I guess?

Many people have ‘DNI’ lists in their blog descriptions. This means ‘do not interact’ and indicates that they don’t want you to message them, reblog from them, reblog any posts they are OP of, or even, sometimes, ‘like’ their posts. It is good manners to respect these, if you know they exist, but in normal use you probably won’t look at blog descriptions very often so it is entirely okay to violate them by accident. (When the lists get very long, it becomes impractical to check whether you violate them. Generally, just skip it. You probably don’t want to interact with those people anyway.)

Notes on posts you start will go to you no matter how many intervening hops there are on the reblog chain. If you get a post with an enormous amount of notes, this can get overwhelming. Whatever the current incarnation of Xkit (basically RES for Tumblr except we’ve switched names and maintainers seven times) is, will have a setting to deal with this. If that’s insufficient, the suggested course of action is to reblog your OP to your own blog so that you have a copy for posterity’s sake, and then delete the OP. This silences the notes.

If you and another user both follow each other, you are ‘mutuals’. This makes it much easier to have conversations with each other, which is ordinarily sort of hard since everything is purely chronological. Frequently your mutuals are your friends; if not yet true, they may become your friends.

When you reblog things, you can write words both in the word part and in the tags, Modern tumblr norms are to write long rambling tags in full sentences rather than put words in the main body. Unlike some other norms, violating this one and putting your response in the body of the reblog is not particularly rude. The worst it does is make a reblog chain long. Probably don’t reblog things and just say “This.”, though.

Tags can be subjected to peer review, by which we mean someone copy-pastes your tags and/or screenshots them and adds them to the main body of their reblog. Generally this is a compliment. The alternative is to say “#prev tags”, and this makes everyone hate you because it’s hard to find which tags were ‘prev’. Please just peer review properly if they’re good.

If you want to search your blog, consider Siikr. Don’t overuse it, it’s one guy’s project.

Be verbose! This ain’t Twitter, no character limit. (Not even the really large character limit of a reddit comment.) Write a 3000-word story in a single reblog if you want, that sounds awesome. Use ‘read more’ if you do, though. Posts can be very long, one of our oldest memes is about this.

Infinite scroll is the default, but you can turn it off. Actually, check all the settings, many of them will improve your experience.

On queues: Go nuts. Some people put everything in the queue, some people almost nothing. Some queue specific aestheticposting (personally I do #too smol) and post other things normally. Most people who queue a lot add a queue-specific tag like #the mighty queue or #this queue shall pass, or at least I notice them more than poasters with untagged queues.

You know how Reddit lets you buy Gold and people go 'thanks for the gold kind stranger'? On tumblr we spend money on Tumblr Blaze, and it is considered the PvP section of Tumblr. Though sometimes people actually use it to spread posts they like, such as people attempting to evangelize Christianity (no, really, that happened a lot) or the, I hope, actually-kind stranger who blazed this OP. You can turn off PvP with one of the many settings.

Everybody be excellent to each other!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: The Call Is Coming From Inside The House And I'm Mad About It

Or, a response to National Novel Writing Month's stance on Artificial Intelligence.

But before we get into that, a quick story update: I actually haven't been working on much of anything lately due to some IRL issues going on (nothing too serious, don't worry, I am still alive and healthy). The Edge is going to be on a soft break until I get my energy levels back up to serious writing levels, but I will continue to make update posts to keep people in the loop about how well I'm recharging.

Unfortunately for the people behind National Novel Writing Month, while my energy levels might be low, my spite levels are always at an all-time high, and they are fully fueling me to take down their official position on AI. But first, a timeline.

I wake up to a message in a group discord I'm in with a screenshot of National Novel Writing Month making some...interesting comments about their position on AI.

While going to tumblr to see if anyone else is talking about this, I find this post my @the-pen-pot featuring the screenshot I saw. In the responses, I see @darkjediqueen saying that the article had been updated @besodemieterd giving some information that I'm going to keep secret for now because it creates a truly amazing punchline.

I get off tumblr and read the updated article.

I feel a deep rage in my soul that cannot be tamed by group chat participation, and I click the "write a post" button.

So, with that out of the way, let's break this down, shall we?

The original post, as seen in the screenshot of the above post, contained the following two paragraphs:

NaNoWriMo does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI. NaNoWriMo's mission is to "provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page." We fulfill our mission by supporting the humans doing the writing. Please see this related post that speaks to our overall position on nondiscrimination with respect to approaches to creativity, writer's resources, and personal choice.  We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and abelist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.

This was all I saw when I first heard about this, and this on its own was enough to tap into my spite as an energy source. The second paragraph, in particular, was infuriating. "People who argue against AI are classist or abelist" is a terrible take I've seen floating around AI Bro Twitter, and to see it regurgitated by an organization that is supposed to be all about writing was, to put it simply, a lot.

But, as noted in the timeline, I did see that they had updated the article (about two hours ago as of me working on writing this), so I went to the updated post to see what was said. Somehow, it had gotten worse. I'll be addressing the updated post on a point by point basis, so if you want to read the whole thing without my commentary, here you go.

The first paragraph is the same was it was in the screenshot. The first major different is an added paragraph that begins like this:

Note: we have edited this post by adding this paragraph to reflect our acknowledgment that there are bad actors in the AI space who are doing harm to writers and who are acting unethically. We want to make clear that, though we find the categorical condemnation for AI to be problematic for the reasons stated below, we are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values.

First off, I find it a big troubling that while they discuss bad actors in the AI space, they won't acknowledge that these same bad actors are often the ones pushing the whole "being anti-AI makes you morally bad, actually" accusations with the most fervor.

Second, why are you not more strongly discussing and pushing back against the "situational" abuse of AI? Why is the focus on how using AI can be good, actually, rather than acknowledging the fears and angers of your userbase around how generative AI is ruining an art form that you claim to want to help foster? I have a theory about this, but we're saving that for a bit further down.

The paragraph concludes:

We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse. 

The funny thing is, in a vacuum, I don't have a problem with this statement. They're not wrong: AI is an umbrella term with a lot of complexity to it, and I can see how people would be hesitant to condemn the technology as a whole when there are uses of it that aren't awful. If their whole statement had been this, I would have less of a problem with it (still some of a problem, sure, but I wouldn't be writing a lengthy blog post about it) But they had to delve into how Being Against AI is Morally Bad, Actually, which is where the post continues from here.

The last big change between the screenshot and the updated article is in this paragraph:

We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege. 

This is much less strongly-worded than the original paragraph. If I had to guess, they got a lot of criticism regarding the original sentiment (namely, assuming that disabled and poor people can only make art if a machine does it for them is actually way more abelist and classist than saying generative AI is bad), and dialed it back through this rewording. They could've just worded it this way from the beginning instead of saying the dumbest possible thing they could've, but whatever.

I don't know if the rest of this was in the article from the beginning or if it was added later, as the original screenshot I saw only showed the first two paragraphs. Regardless of whether this is them trying to cover their asses by explaining logic they should've explained from the start or if this was always here, I still have major issues with these points, so we're going to address them next.

(As a quick full disclosure note: I had to transcribe the rest of the article instead of copy-pasting it because I lost the ability to do so at about this point in the blog writing process. I don't know what happened or why, I just wanted to let you know that almost all typos are my fault, but beyond that I recorded the text as-written at the time that I had the article up in another tab. I promise.)

Classism. Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.

You may note that they are discussing the use of AI at what seems to be the editing process. As someone in my group chat pointed out, National Novel Writing Month has nothing to do with editing, and everything to do with writing. The only way you can currently use AI for the act of writing is if you use generative AI to do it for you, which is, I think we can all agree, not actually writing and is actually bad. This emphasis on editing ties into the punchline, which we'll be getting to shortly.

On a final note before we proceed though, I would like to carry over an argument about this matter that is used in the small business/handcrafts sector: If you can't afford it now, save up for it. Don't devalue the work of other people (in this case, editors and things like sensitivity readers or beta readers) by saying it's too expensive and I can get it cheaper on Shein by using AI. Save up and support your fellow workers if it really means something to you, or just do the editing yourself and hope for the best. (Disclosure: I don't have an editor. Or a beta reader. I can't say my writing is the most polished all the time, but I get by just fine.)

Abelism. Not all brains have the same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers "should" be able to perform certain functions independently or [sic] is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly. There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can't "see" the issues in their writing without help.

First of all...just say "disabled." I promise your hands will not fall off if you type that word.

Second, level of education should really fall under the class bullet point, but that's just me nitpicking.

Third, I would argue that the real goal here shouldn't be to say "no using AI is fine, actually", but rather to a) dismantle the idea of what writing "should" look like in order to make it more inclusive, and b) fight back against people who bully imperfect writers. Those are actually more noble goals than propping up a corrupt industry by using the disabled as your scapegoat.

Fourth, the dangling "or" is not a typo I take credit for. It was in the article as of me transcribing it. If I had to guess, there was more to this sentence at some point, and they just didn't fully delete the thought.

Fifth, funny how this is once again more about the editing process of writing and not the writing part. Even more funny when we view the final point.

General Access Issues. All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don't always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur.

This one really pissed me off, because the indie author sphere is actively under attack by the use of AI. AI-created scam books on Amazon's kindle publishing platform are increasing and actively stealing attention and money away from human authors (see this article). Sci-Fi magazine Clarkesworld had to shut down new author submissions due to the influx of AI generated stories, and while the head of Bards and Sages cited physical and mental health problems as a reason for shutting down the company entirely, having to weed through AI generated submissions and the way such bad actors are impacting the industry were listed as the final straw. There are probably even more examples of this, but I only did a cursory google search to avoid being here all day.

Simply put: AI is not helping authors who have to go to the indie space in order to escape systemic problems. It is actively killing the space instead. I don't want to sound doom and gloom, but if this keeps up, these authors aren't going to have anywhere to run to. A refusal to condemn the ways in which AI is impacting these spaces does, in my opinion, make you complicit.

On a final note, you might notice that this point is seemingly once again focusing on editing, not writing. Which means it's time to unveil the punchline pointed out by besodemieterd, the response that made me lose my mind:

They made this bullshit up to justify them getting into cahoots with an AI company called ProWritingAid, it's all over their instagram.

I immediately ran to factcheck this...and it's true. ProWritingAid is, in fact, a more in-depth Grammarly that uses AI for its functionality. They are a sponsor for National Novel Writing Month, and the first three posts on their instagram are dedicated to this partnership.

I completely back up besodemieterd's belief that they wrote this article to justify their taking this sponsorship. If I had to guess, they started taking a lot of flack for taking ProWritingAid as a sponsor and wrote this article in order to defend their decision to do so without actually saying so directly.

I don't want to shame NaNoWriMo for taking sponsors on the whole, as they do need money to stay afloat. However, taking an AI company as a sponsor and then defending their stance by essentially calling people with concerns about this morally wrong and bad is, as the kids say, clown behavior. This is clown shit. It's laughable, it's cringe, it's incredibly disheartening. It's so, so bad.

The next paragraph is just about how they "see value in sharing resources about AI and any emerging technology, issue, or discussion that is relevant to the writing community as a whole." Since my stance on this can be summed up as "AI bad and platforming it is bad", I'm going to skip over this paragraph. I will, however, address their last paragraph:

For all of those reasons, we absolutely do not condemn AI, and we recognize and respect writers who believe that AI tools are right for them. We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that's perfectly fine. As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions.

So, basically, you're incapable of saying "no" to money and decided to lean into the talking points of bad faith actors and refuse to address the destruction that generative AI is wrecking on the writing world in order to justify why you took a certain sponsor. In taking this middle of the road, individual choice-ass response, you also threw human editors and beta readers under the bus by justifying the use of technology that actively removes them from the space. You are making the writing world a worse place, which is absolutely crazy when writing is supposed to be the thing you're all about.

Truly amazing. And they're doing this on Labor Day, too.

In conclusion, I will be dead in the dirt before you spot me participating in National Novel Writing Month again. Which is probably for the best. My life can only handle so many self-imposed deadlines. I guess I should be grateful to them for removing one from my plate.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

would i be the asshole for contacting my ex to ask them if they could stop talking about me online to a community that knows who i am? (🥐)

tw: kinda emotionally abusive relationship

bg info

me (24f) and my ex (28) were in a three month relationship three years ago following a whole year of friendship. they were my first partner and i came out as a lesbian to everyone during our relationship. when we were together, they were 24 and i was 20. i was very emotionally dependent on them when i was 20 due to mental health issues and so were they which is probably one of the reasons why our relationship was as explosive as it was. i looked up to them, my whole emotional world revolved around them, and our friendship/relationship was the only thing i had in my life at the time. they constantly asked me "hey is it even ethical that im dating you, im 4 years older, you tell me please, oh i feel like such a bad person", yet, they still continued dating me every time they would ask.

our fights were horrible and truly explosive as they broke their stuff in front of me out of anger, threw things at me and insulted me as stupid, amongst many other things. our fights usually ensued because i would ask them for reassurance and they would start panicking and screaming at me to shut up. to be fair, i would cry every time i was asking for reassurance which probably made them feel scared about losing me, so i consider myself 50% at fault for everything that happened in our relationship, i shouldve been able to talk to them in a secure manner that wouldnt trigger their abandonment issues. our fights were quite jarring and made me walk out on them several times out of fear. yet i always came back and apologized and took the whole accountability, even though i dont consider myself the only one at fault. walking out several times during fights was probably one of the worst things i could have done but at the same time i was simply scared. even when i walked out after our last fight, they begged me to come back, which i did, i apologized under tears, and yet, told them that i cant promise them to stay no matter what.. and left.

we met through tumblr and were in a medium distance relationship. after our relationship, i went to a clinic and had to learn a lot about myself, what i experienced and what i want from life. im in a very happy and healthy place now and since the end of 2021 im with my current partner whom i want to be the love of my life and whom ive started to build a life with.

context

i have my ex blocked on all social media because they used to do hour long deep dives into my blog, even as of recently (i have statcounter installed for my safety bc im paranoid about them sending me anonymous asks). at first i also used to visit their blog after our break up but stopped doing so after moving on with my life. one year after breaking up i temporarily unblocked them and explicitly asked them not to look at my social media (or at least to do it in a way in which i dont notice aka asked them not to watch my instagram stories).

while i dont visit their blog/social media because i dont want to know whats going on in their life, tumblr mutuals frequently dm me stuff like "hey i think you should know that your ex posted about you/shit talks about something that you posted". i havent asked my mutuals to tell me whenever this happens but i imagine they do so because within the tumblr space we exist, everyone kind of knows everyone (so my ex doesnt have to mention my name for people to know who theyre talking about). sometimes mutuals send screenshots of the posts so that i dont have to visit my ex's blog. last ive heard my ex joked about throwing jewelry at me and posted extensively about a tattoo that i got. my ex's behavior makes me uncomfortable and feel just as helpless as i did back then.

why i might be the asshole

im scared that they might be venting because i was more at fault in the relationship than them and that i am unconsciously deflecting. however, i talked about every detail of the relationship and this fear extensively with my therapist, friends, and partner who are of the opinion that i was young, scared, and intertwined in a relationship that was incredibly toxic. im still unsure though because my emotions frequently triggered theirs.

why they might be the asshole

i asked them once to stop visiting my social media and i feel like venting about our relationship that broke off 3 years ago to a tumblr community of friends and acquaintances is kind of unfair. however, i might be the asshole and they might just need the space for venting. i could just ignore the vents and let them heal in their own way from what ensued.

WIBTA if i confronted them again and told them that i want them to stop talking about me online? or would i be a party pooper because every person needs a space for venting?

What are these acronyms?

[nyaagolor]

Bad Polls and the Art of Engagement Bait

So as anyone who follows this blog probably noticed, I posted a poll yesterday. Sorry ace attorney tumblr, it was bait. That was part of a little social experiment to test some theories I had about engagement bait and the tumblr "algorithm"-- and it was a resounding success!! I even made a replicate, that being a similar poll only hours later, which had basically the same result. Somehow. Now that the cat is officially out of the bag, I thought it would be fun to talk about it!

The entire point of this little social experiment was to combine some observations I had about what posts do well, the general attitude of tumblr users, and how to maximize engagement with minimal effort within fandom spaces. Thus, I'm combining all my thoughts into a little guide: how to make the lowest effort, highest engagement post possible:

Recognize that negative engagement on tumblr travels father than positive engagement Tumblr may not have an algorithm, but the system is still set up in a way where negative engagement rewards the poster more than positive engagement. A simple "like" is enough to show agreement or approval, but dissent or shock requires replies or reblogs (the latter of which are significantly more common). More reblogs = more people seeing the post, and thus posts that elicit a negative reaction tend to travel further than positive ones

Capitalize on the fact that people love to bitch about things when given the opportunity Generally speaking, going onto a random post you hate and exclaiming how much you hate it is a bit of a tumblr faux pas. Same thing with venting about how much you dislike something. While bringing up the topic yourself and being snippy to specific people are frowned upon, however, places like polls that provide an opportunity to bitch about things are a great outlet, and a LOT of people will take it

Take advantage of the poll's inherent anonymity This may seem counterintuitive-- the person posting the poll and everyone reblogging it aren't anonymous at all! This doesn't matter though, only the votes do. The anonymity of the votes on a tumblr poll turn the opinions of others, no matter their relative size, into a nebulous opinion of the indeterminate masses. THIS is the most important part of the engagement bait, because tumblr users love to complain but aren't likely to do so to someone directly for fear of hurting their feelings or getting called out for being rude. If you can take a dissenting opinion and remove the actual user from the equation, people are far more likely to share exactly what they think about it-- this is when the "no reading comprehension" and "you people seriously think (X)" and "ugh I hate fandom" takes come out en masse. Tumblr users may be mean, but more importantly we are also cowards. In the case of the poll I posted above, even extremely small minority opinions were being commented on in almost every single reblog, despite the fact that these opinions made up less than 10% of the votes for a majority of the poll's run.

More buzzwords, less nuance Buzzwords and a lack of nuance work together to make engagement more likely-- buzzwords are often both overused and misused, while a lack of nuance (typically in the form of a yes or no question) eggs people into explaining themselves. Combine these two and you add people justifying themselves, arguing with others, and complaining about the buzzword in general into your reblogs, boosting your numbers even more. In my case, I chose the lowest of the low when it comes to poll topics: "Is (recognizable character) (buzzword)?". How people fell for this twice I'm not sure, but it works!

If things are getting boring, stir the pot yourself You can use alt accounts or just make up tags yourself, but I was too lazy to do this. However, there's always the option of cherrypicking-- screenshot outlandish or dissenting tags, even if it's just one in a sea of hundreds, and post that in a reblog with an incredulous caption. Bringing tags to the attention of the majority invites new focus on those tags AND your poll, giving people another outlet to add their takes. Some people will likely even reblog it Again.

Now that the bait is set, watch people in your notes talk over themselves like a flock of seagulls

Congrats! You've now made a successful bait poll. Fortunately or unfortunately, mine worked so well that people fell for it twice, both of them got thousands of votes each within the day, my notifications are overflowing, and popular blogs have made posts referencing it. Point proven, hypothesis verified. As they say: easy website.

[coelpts]

alright, guess we're complaining now.

[Image ID: First image: A cropped screenshot of Tumblr's Friday, May 26th, 2023 changelog which reads, "On web, clicking anywhere in a post’s header now opens that post. Previously, you had to click specifically on the blog name."

Second image: A cropped screenshot of Tumblr's Tuesday, May 30th, 2023 changelog which reads, "To clarify a point made in last Friday’s post: on web, clicking the reblogged-from blog name in a reblog’s post header now takes you to that blog, not their reblog. Clicking in the empty space in the post’s header, and in the header of each reblog trail item, now takes you to that specific post in the blog view popup. This is one of a series of updates we’re making to the reblog consumption experience across all platforms, to make it more intuitive and consistent, especially for new users." End ID.]

Tumblr, this change is bad. A lot of other people have already shared their own complaints for this new and awful system, but it's time for me to properly throw my hat in the ring instead of at-ing you directly due to user error. Whoops.

[UPDATE 6/11/2023] HORRIBLE NEWS, EVERYONE! This change has hit mobile. There is no longer any way to access the previous version of a post except through theme reblog chaining on desktop. I've added some extra fun comments both as an edit to this post and as a reblog so nobody misses out.

All my complaints are in the read more because this got LONG.

TL;DR- This change breaks a major signifier used across the site, removes post functionality only to replace it with redundant blog links, and completely destroys a primary mode of social interaction that's been used on Tumblr for over a decade. Here's the Tumblr Staff support link so you can give feedback on how bad this change is.

Part One: Signifiers and Consistency

This is my biggest point, so it will be a bit of a doozy. Strap in.

This change is about making Tumblr operation 'intuitive and consistent' by unifying behavior between like-designed parts of the site. Now on the face that's not a bad reason to do things, and making sure users are able to intuit what a button does based on its properties is good design. I'll give an example:

Hearts symbolize the 'Like' function on Tumblr. The heart button on a post adds it to your Likes, the Likes option on your account is accompanied by that same heart, and Likes show up in post notes with that heart. This heart, then, becomes a consistent and reliable signifier. If you see a heart button on Tumblr, then whatever it's attached to probably has something to do with Likes.

So, back to the change. This change relates to the signifier of the 'Tumblr blog url link'. The idea is thus- on other parts of the site, such as the Search tab on mobile and on a blog in the dashboard tray, you will see related or similar blog suggestions like these:

[Image ID: First image: A cropped screenshot of Tumblr's Getting Started help page. It shows an example blog with the 'Blogs like this one' tray visible, populated with four example blogs.

Second image: A second cropped screenshot of Tumblr's Getting Started help page. It shows an example of the Search page on mobile with the 'Check out these blogs' feature highlighted, where two example blog cards are shown. End ID.]

These suggestions are Tumblr blog urls paired with their icon and a little bit of their blog, either the title or some recent posts of theirs. If you click on that url title, the link follows through to that blog. So there's the signifier: click on the url, go to the blog.

But now we have a bit of a snag. What about these?

[Image ID: A cropped reblog screenshot. The crop shows the Tumblr urls of the reblogger @coelpts and reblogged @coelpts-artchives with the reblog symbol between them, the rebloggers icon, and the date that this reblog was posted. End ID.]

Well, these LOOK like Tumblr blog url links. They're styled in the same way. In fact, the reblogger even has a blog icon next to it! So all signs point to these url links pointing directly to a Tumblr blog if clicked on. After this change, that's exactly what they do- so, like, no problem, right?

But, hold on. There's another signifier here! These aren't JUST Tumblr blog url links! This is…

[Image ID: First image: The former image of a cropped reblog screenshot, focused on the urls and reblog icon.

Second image: The Tumblr reblog icon. End ID.]

Our good friend, the Reblog button! That's another classic Tumblr signifier, and it sits right next to the Like button I pontificated about. Reblogs are an integral part of Tumblr, and on top of every single reblogged post you will see that icon. And would you look at that- it's even the same color as the second url link!

Those url links that established the 'url link' signifier that we talked about before, in the search page and on the dashboard tray, aren't attached to any posts. But this url is, and the reblog symbol is right next to it. The reblog signifier modifies the url link signifier. This link should go to the reblog from this user. Right? Because it is a reblog FROM that url link- so that's where it should go! And that's where it used to go, before this update.

[EDIT] I came back to fix some typos I noticed but while I was away I tested mobile to see if this change hit the app yet. It has not, but what I saw instead confirmed the above point- on mobile, selecting the reblogged's url ALSO highlights the reblog icon next to it! These two signifiers are connected, and should be read together.

By changing the url links to be more 'consistent' with other url links across the site, a major signifier that keeps the site together has been broken entirely. What should lead to a reblog- something that is clearly shown through use of a recognizable, consistent symbol- no longer does.

Part Two: Redundant Redundancy

Okay, so that's not all this change does. It also adds a brand new functionality to the post header- the white space is now clickable and serves as a replacement for the original 'to this post' link on the reblogger's side of things. These headers also generate for anyone who adds to the post, and you can click through OP too.

[Image ID: The cropped reblog screenshot from before, but with the word 'Clickable!' written in purple in the blank space above the date. End ID.]

This is also part of that design unity thing; on mobile tapping anywhere on the post header takes you to the post, and you can only tap on the blog url of the person the reblogger reblogged from. That makes sense, since on mobile you're maneuvering your fingers on a small screen and tapping a tiny url next to another tiny url is bound to cause problems.

I don't necessarily have a problem with this on the base of it. I have opinions about mobile and desktop parity that aren't really important here, but it does nicely showcase an issue I DO have- most of the changes made to reblogged posts are completely redundant and unnecessary.

---

[UPDATE] This change has hit mobile now, and it's added a fun new complaint about desktop-mobile parity that is now very suddenly a problem; the headers generated from reblogs with content don't have any responsive feedback for tapping them on mobile. OPs does, but any old Joes doesn't. This is not true on desktop, where on-hover a post header will change color; on mobile they stay completely white and plain with no on-tap color change. On top of that, the new headers are actually harder to see on mobile! There's no clear way to actually see where the header starts and the post continues! Tapping a header was deeply confusing because I got no confirmation I did anything of value until I was wisked away to a post- there's no signifier on mobile that this is a thing you can press.

This is what I was talking about in regards to desktop and mobile parity that wasn't important at the time- what's good for mobile isn't always good for desktop and vice versa. Having a post header be tappable on mobile instead of op's url link, where you have less fine motor control and there's a lot of small buttons clustered together, makes sense; but making all post headers into buttons on desktop isn't a good idea because they aren't 'buttons' and it's very hard to make it clear they are. I mentioned signifiers above and that applies to this change- there just aren't enough signs that show these are all buttons now and where they go. The fact that they're completely unresponsive on mobile really is the cherry on top, because you do not KNOW it's a button unless you tap it accidentally or already know from desktop that all headers link to reblogged posts. The design has been made more confusing; what was a functional affordance on mobile has been applied to desktop without limits or concern, making the original mobile affordance more confusing and producing a poor signifier.

Alright, that's enough from future me. Let's get back to the original post, about how this change that introduces a bad signifier is also redundant.

---

First of all, it's not like clicking the link url just threw you into a post abyss when you clicked it. Clicking through to a reblog…still took you to that blog, both on mobile and on desktop. On mobile all you need to look through the blog proper is to pull down and refresh; on desktop it's even easier, because following a link pulls up the dashboard tray for that blog with the blogs url immediately below their icon.

[Image ID: A screenshot of the previously cropped reblog, now shown on the blog @coelpts. The post is on the left, and the user info card is on the right. End ID.]

This change then removes one step to get to the front of a blogs page, and puts the original longer path on the new clickable header. They go to the same place, the first is just exactly one click faster. You could do the exact same thing by clicking the user icon instead.

But wait! We can get even more redundant! You know what else is standard Tumblr functionality on desktop? The hover card!

[Image ID: A screenshot of the previously cropped reblog, now showing the card for @coelpts-artchives below the icon. It has the blog title and description alongside three popular posts. A purple arrow points to it from the url. End ID.]

If you hover over any url link for about a second, a card for that blog will pop up. This tray lets you follow a blog, send asks, report them, check their popular posts and do a bunch of stuff straight from the dashboard. It also takes you directly to their blog if you click the url link on the card itself! That's right, there was already a way to go directly to the blog the previous user reblogged from! And every single blog url link does this, too- not just on post headers, but even in the text of a post itself.

So before this change, you had five ways of interacting on a post:

Click the reblogger's url > Reblogger's post.

Click the reblogged's url > Reblogged's post.

Click the reblogger's icon > Reblogger's blog.

Hover on the reblogger's url > Reblogger's blog.

Hover on the reblogged's url > Reblogged's blog.

One of these is redundant, but that's fine- it's just how url links work, and it's better that all urls can do that. Signifiers, we talked about this. But every other link goes to a different place, including the previous version of the post.

After this change, there's six, with changes in bold:

Click the reblogger's url > Reblogger's blog.

Click the reblogged's url > Reblogged's blog.

Click the reblogger's icon > Reblogger's blog.

Hover on the reblogger's url > Reblogger's blog.

Hover on the reblogged's url > Reblogged's blog.

Click the white space header next to a user > User's post.

We now have three ways of getting to the blog of the person who reblogged this post, two ways to get to the blog of the person they reblogged from, ONE way to get to the post, and ONLY if someone added to it!

This change removes functionality and replaces it with needless redundancy. As I said near the top of this section, we could already get to the blog through a reblog link- so all this does is remove getting to previous post iterations.

Part Three: Broken Chains

And hey, let's talk about previous post iterations. Y'know, something that's super important on Tumblr? Different versions of a post float around the site for years- some have been around for a decade or more. And some are only available for one post.

As I'm sure everyone knows, unless a group of tags are peer reviewed and added to the body of the post itself or are appended to the next reblog in the chain, they only exist on that version of the post. This means every iteration of a post is functionally unique, and long before we were given the ability to check the tags on a reblog directly, the only way you could check the tags for a post was by checking every iteration. This practice still exists today with 'prev tags'- users still find it useful to gesture to a previous version of a post and show what other people were thinking or add their own thoughts.

Remember the new redundant links? All that means you can't get to a previous version of a post anymore. Those tags are functionally lost now, unless you dig through that persons blog or through all the notes of a specific post. Sure that may not be a problem for a post with 300 notes or so- but what about 27,000? What about a post that was reblogged three weeks ago? If you're trying to wrangle Tumblr's dodgy search function on the blog itself, what if the post has no text to search for, or if the blog has it's search function turned off? Any post tagged with prev tags now directs to literally nothing. Anyone arguing or conversing in the tags is now speaking at air to everyone else.

There is still one way to trace reblogs. You can access the blog itself- not the dashboard tray, but the actual url.tumblr.com blog- by using a hidden link in the meatball menu off the side of the post.

[Image ID: A screenshot of the previously cropped reblog, now showing the meatballs menu accessed. The first option, showing the date of the reblog, is highlighted. A purple arrow points to this option from the meatballs menu icon and a circle is drawn around it. End ID.]

From there, you can track a post backwards through proper blogs. The reblogged posts will have a 'via Blog' note on them, and you can follow that trail all the way up a chain.

…Unless someone doesn't have a theme enabled. Without a theme, a user won't have a url.tumblr.com domain and it will redirect to the dashboard tray, breaking the chain. And, as of an older update, blogs by default do not have themes enabled- so any and all new users suddenly roadblock this process. Oops.

All of this means that what was once a convenient social aspect of Tumblr has been completely severed with little to no alternative. Trying to wade through hundreds upon hundreds of notes to find the one you're looking for is tedious, time consuming, and potentially impossible if the post is large enough.

Finale: What Now?

Right, so- this sucks. I didn't even go into how this makes it tough to find and block cr/pt/t/rfs if a post passes into their hateful space, or how this makes it harder to copy post links without tracking shit because it's in a different menu now, or how it's now more difficult to access a previous post for reporting purposes. All that shit's also true, but they're side effects of the big three problems the changes introduce.

This change is ultimately user-hostile and seems to follow the worrying trend of 'other sites are doing it, so let's do it too!' Tumblr's been kicking about recently. Tumblr Live, the new change to images and videos, gating viewing posts behind making an account, and attempted algorithm feeds through 'Best Stuff First' and 'Based On Your Likes' are what immediately come to mind. Tumblr's defining, driving aspect for it's continued existence has and always will be its uniqueness. Pretending to be Instagram and TikTok and fucking Twitter will do it absolutely no favors- all it does is undermine what actually makes this site, as a social platform, interesting and vibrant.

But it's one thing to just complain and it's another entirely to provide feedback. Here's a link to the Tumblr Staff support page. They've walked back on new features before when we've made a ruckus- the Shop icon replacement is on the forefront of my mind right now- so it's time to make another.

TL;DR 2- This change makes browsing Tumblr more difficult than it needs to be. It breaks previously established signifiers and removes vital social functions only to add redundant and empty features to cater to a new userbase instead of actually improving the site for the users they already have. It's not a good change.

Thanks for reading ✌️

[sir-yeehaw-paws]

The forced sanitization of the internet has become so annoying. You haven't been able to share news articles on Facebook in Canada since late 2023 (and yes, its FACEBOOK I get it, but a lot of families do still use it as a primary means of communication, and small businesses use it). Some people get around this by taking screenshots of news, and posting the caps, but this whole mindset of everything in sight needing to appeal to advertizers is depressing as fuck.

I don't have a TikTok account, but the whole thing where you have to physically get aroudn 'bad topics' with ridiculous censorship, or sites bending and caving to implementing a stern 'no NSFW' policy that, I'll point out DOESN'T WORK (so what was the point?) so that it can be more viable to running ads, (half of which are bots with explicit porn: becasue it doesn't matter what is actually being advertized, as long as the persons paid for that ad space) proves that these factors aren't about "protecting the innocence" of anyone, but for money.

Which sure duh obviously but it's a little pathetic that people can't do proper research or get information about topics, without having to use god knows how many work arounds, because "this word is considered unsafe, this word is too controversial, this that." And now when you DO try to use Google, your first set of results are going to be sponsored ads, or search terms, and the amount of hits you'll get decreases.

I was taught how to do effective research in University. Methods that are now oudated, because ads rule the internet. Forget artistic freedom, forget human desires, forget anything that used to make the internet even semi-manageable; as long as it caters to ads, it's allowed.

There's some arguments too that people throw "to many hissy fits" about not being allowed NSFW. That it's not needed, that you can "go ten mintues without porn" blah blah blah.

Sure, you can do that. But the fact that there's no real place for minors to go and have their own place online, and that previously "17+ ONLY" sites (which tumblr was, btw) all caved to the pressure of "protect them so we can make money!" is just sad.

And it's not just porn that gets censored, by the by. It's anything deemed "inapporiate" which is also how lots of NEWS gets butchered and censored. Because you see goddamned news articles with "so and so unalived themselves" or whatever the hell it is. And YouTubers have to report on current events with "Mr. Person of this Article *bleeped* himself on the 2nd of March." etc. Because they will get demonitized otherswise. Censorship takes out context and shoves eveything under an umbrella.

So now you're watching a news report, with censored 'bad words' before a three minute ad roll interrupts that video, at some ridiculous mid-sentence moment, to show you an image of some mobile game with naked women shooting ppl in the head. All things that aren't supposed to be allowed but are accepted because it's ads.

But heaven's forbid you post an art piece with visible naked breasts, what would the children think!?

[macbethz]

ok i said i would stop drowning screenshots and posting them but I think this is genuinely so insidious i need to talk about it. This is on a post with TENS OF THOUSANDS of notes, with many reblogs featuring this attachment. I saw it because it was reblogged by people I follow!!

This language is horrifically harmful towards addicts, let's get that out of the way. The image of the addict is rendered disgusting and filthy for pure shock value, with the most "extreme" drug possible, to in turn make AI seem horrific. I'm fascinated by the fact that this kind of conservative rhetoric is adopted by leftist tumblr users the second it decries something they don't like. THERE IS A REASON the same people that consider addicts to be scum are speaking out against AI in this specific way, just like the same reactionaries that consider modern art a scourge on the earth and a pollution of traditional artistic values are making statements about AI art. The value of art is once again equivocated to the labor that went into it.

THIS is the natural endpoint of treating AI as just an objective moral evil in its own right rather than examining the conditions around it that are actually causing damage with it's use. The positioning of AI as a "vice" is juxtaposed with drug use as a "vice" just by its very nature - "using ai is bad because its bad." Even if we dive deeper into it, the argument becomes "using AI is bad because it makes you happy too easily, which is also why drugs are bad" Which like. Is a fundamentally conservative and reactionary stance.

I'm making this post as someone who dislikes AI, who works in game art and has literally experienced the effects AI is having on the industry I work in right now, including losing actual, tangible work to it. THAT, the MATERIAL consequences of AI art, is the discussion that should be happening in leftist spaces, not the positioning of AI as an inherent evil.

[foxyyaoguai]

The antis have been all over my posts in the last few days, so I wanted to share my experiences and write a guide on how to deal with them. 

First off: Our ships and character preferences are valid, no matter how hard some people try to demonize them. We are part of fandom and allowed to post about the things we enjoy, just like everyone else. Our fanfics, fanart, video edits, photo edits, etc. are all works of love and they deserve to exist and be explored by others. 

✨ Strategies for dealing with antis ✨

Don’t engage. I have checked the bios of all the antis that left comments under my posts, and the majority of them are minors. You don’t want to talk to minors in fandom spaces!! And a conversation based on logic or reason won’t be possible either. 

Delete their comments. Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube allow you to delete comments, DO IT!! You created something with love and hateful comments have no place underneath it. Even if the comment just makes you uncomfortable and isn’t outright hateful, it is perfectly reasonable to delete it for your own sanity.

Block generously. Not only the people who target you specifically but also anyone who engages in character- or ship-bashing. People who do that for one ship will do it for other ships too and it’s extremely bad fandom etiquette. When you see a character or ship-bashing post, block everyone who liked it and then the poster.

Report people for harassment. The rules vary by site, but especially threats of violence should be reported. Also, if someone follows you to another social media site after you’ve blocked them, that is called block evading and you should report that too. 

When you see other people getting hateful comments underneath their posts, leave a nice comment to offset some of the negativity. Your being supportive can make the difference between this person never posting again and them being motivated to keep going. People are always welcome to send me links to a post that is getting targeted by antis and I’ll like it and leave a nice comment. 🥰

Don’t let the bad comments outshine the positive ones! Every time my post gets enough traction for antis to find it, it also gets lots of lovely reactions. Many people have told me that my content and recommendations made them ship my OTP, and that is the single thing that makes me happier than anything else. Take a screenshot and look at these kinds of comments when you feel down. This is the real reason you should keep posting. 

Most hate comments are exceptionally uncreative. It helps to laugh about it, preferably with a friend. ✨ Remember, you used your energy to create something and you should be proud of it!

When you see a creator you like, but they also display obnoxious behavior towards people who like other ships, characters, or dynamics, at the very least don’t give them a platform by sharing their posts. 

Stay safe. Don’t post personal information online. 

It’s completely valid to step away from social media for some time. Private your accounts, turn off notifications, do a canon reread, read some fanfics in peace. Whatever it takes to remind you why you love the things you love. 

Bonus Tip: Watch videos of cute animals to destress. Bunnies nose-booping each other can (and will) cure anti-induced anxiety. :)

✨ Platforms sorted by least to most toxic and my advice for using them ✨

1. Discord 

Discord is great because you can join servers specifically for your favorite characters and ships. If a server doesn’t already exist, consider setting one up! Pro tip: only invite people that have positively interacted with you in the past. A small server consisting of nice people is a lot more fun than a large server consisting of members that can’t get along or are only marginally interested in the topic. 

Fandom Discord servers have clear guidelines on what you can post. As long as you follow the rules, people have no grounds for calling you out. In my experience, moderators are quick to respond to harassment.  

When you join a server and you see they heavily restrict certain types of content, it is a red flag. Proceed with caution, even if you plan to only talk about “safe” characters and ships. 

2. Tumblr

I have rarely gotten hateful comments on Tumblr, and the few times I did they were easy to delete.  

A lot of the older fandom generations use Tumblr and they are more mature and accepting of all kinds of content.

3. Twitter

Twitter makes it easy to curate your own fandom experience. You can mute words you don’t like to see on your timeline, mute and block users, and most people have their ship preferences in their bio.

4. Instagram

My Instagram posts about Jadecest get a lot of positive interaction, even more than on Twitter. There are unpleasant comments once in a while, but they are easy to delete. 

Blocking a user will delete all their comments from your posts. 

5. YouTube

People who don’t like your ship will downvote your videos and downvotes lead to the algorithm not recommending your videos. 

I have gotten a few negative comments, but they are easy to delete. 

6. Reddit 

When you post in a fandom subreddit, everyone will see the post, independent of their ship preferences. 

There are a lot of minors on Reddit. 

You can’t delete comments.

Most fandom subreddits are poorly moderated. 

7. TikTok

I have gotten the most hate comments on TikTok. They can be filtered or deleted, but antis interacting with your video by leaving hate comments will lead to the algorithm recommending your content to even more antis. It can get very ugly. 

If you post on TikTok consider turning off comments, stitches, and video replies. You can also mark your content as 18+, so it won’t get recommended to minors. (Again, antis tend to be underage.)

Platforms are more toxic the more they show your content to people outside your bubble. Discord, Tumblr, and Twitter keep your content relatively well contained to your circle of friends. Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram heavily promote your content outside your bubble, which is good, because more people are going to see it, but also bad, because it reaches more antis. 

~~~

Antis are loud and obnoxious, but it’s important to remember that they are a minority. Ship and let ship still exists, especially among the people who have been in fandom spaces for more than just a few years. Don’t be afraid to post your content and express your love for your favorite characters and ships! I, for one, would love to see your creations, and many other people would love to see them too. 

What are your experiences and strategies for dealing with antis?

[keaton-key]

I think the biggest mistake the rwby fandom made was not create a space for actual criticism for fans to discuss because the rwby critics and rwde are not it

Those spaces have only gotten worse as years have gone by and it’s gotten so bad that most posts these days are just daily bumbleby hate (like on the subreddit) and centered around stalking accounts, screenshotting posts and posting it to their Reddit or tumblr to make fun of fans and at times all gather to harass them. You barely see any posts of quality criticism on there and I feel like as fans we really lead people astray for only giving them those spaces to talk about their critiques when it’s not a good place at all to have a fair discussion when you don’t hate the show or think the writing overall is horribly written, but still acknowledge it has flaws

[the-real-rain-world-confessions]

I don't know if this will get posted because it's long and a bit ranty, but I want to get it off my chest and I think a LOT of people need to hear it. I won't reference any specific issue but there have been many like this, so it's still applicable.

I've been doing my best to stay positive about the fandom but my god, the surveillance of the internet and the "child friendly" insistence is getting ridiculous. No I don't want to chase children off the internet, they can have their space, but they also must understand the internet is mainly used by adults and therefore there will be adult content here. The fandom is not a mess because there are people making erotic writing/art, it's a mess because no one is allowing anyone to have their own space. Between pre-downpour puritans and minors just looking to get adults in trouble for BEING ADULTS, THAT is the problem we have here.

Yes, censoring adult content is important. Having NSFW alts is even better.

The problem?

Nosey people (often minors) who think everyone's business is theirs to meddle in. If someone has "bad" kinks, and makes content about it— going to blow some minds here —they aren't actually a bad person. I had to learn this myself, as I used to be the kind to judge people for it. But they are not reflections of someone's morality. Often times it's a result of trauma, a way to cope with or process something (and in saying that, no, you cannot ask someone what their trauma is to "justify" their kinks. let people have some semblance of privacy)

Something someone enjoys in fiction is not something they are guaranteed to enjoy in real life: take for example horror movies. Your favourite horror movie is Saw? Okay, so that means you're a psychopath who wants to torture people in bizarre ways.

Sounds stupid, doesn't it? Because it is.

We need to let people have their own personal lives again. Not everything needs to be laid out on the table to prove someone is a good person.

You are allowed to not like something, in fiction or in real life. You're allowed to not like NSFW content period. I am in no way saying everyone needs to be tolerant of everything and can't dislike anything, but you are not allowed to stop others from enjoying things that are (despite how much antis don't want to admit it) harmless.

People (especially minors) need to stop hunting for dirt when someone slightly upsets them (usually adults). We are human. We make mistakes. If someone upsets you, communicate it with them, or block them. We don't need to be ruining people's lives with the guise of "spreading awareness" about them.

No, you are not spreading awareness, because I am CERTAIN most people are not reading your lengthy post. They see the big scary words you've labelled this person with (often words that are highly exaggerated or, again, are people misinterpreting a fictional desire, like kinks, as real-life reflections of that person) and witchhunt.

That is no insult to anyone, it's a fact of the internet; Tumblr is another site designed to give short-form content, so big long posts we rarely actually read, we SKIM. Skimming usually means we see the big bad words, scroll past a few screenshots, and go "yep, seems legit", and reblog. We come onto this app for fast, easy dopamine. And drama? We eat that up. But this isn't just silly drama. This is ruining people's lives.

Rarely will people go deeper to look into the other person's perspective, or think about the motives of the person making the post, e.g. how did they get this info? why were they looking for it? and by extension, was this necessary to post and "warn" people about? Or, maybe, just maybe, can we let people do things that aren't hurting anyone (because it is FICTIONAL), and stay in our lanes so we don't have to see what we don't want to see.

Anyways, TLDR: People in the RW fandom, please be careful with who you listen to. If you want to get involved, then do it properly; look into the situation, properly evaluate it, come to a conclusion on your own instead of immediately agreeing with whoever started it. And if you can't be bothered? Then simply don't interact with it, because you are making uneducated decisions that could lead to lives lost.

Thank you to anyone who read this all the way through (if it got posted lol it may be way too long)

.

[cdroloisms]

a little ramble about dreblr, meta, and the ever evolving nature of this fandom, i guess?

i don't mean to soapbox, this is mostly just going to be vomiting some thoughts into a post. some recent stuff and a post or two have had me thinking about this fandom and how different it is from when dsmp was ongoing. it's,, pretty obvious that the fandom is quite a bit smaller and less active than that time, and there are generally a lot fewer people actively posting meta and such every day--which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and is natural obviously considering that the dsmp ended almost 2 years ago, but does mean that the culture around (?) meta and such has shifted, as well. it's one of those things too i think that is felt so much more obviously in dreblr, which is an even smaller group within this fandom that formed in response to uhhh being very much considered unwelcome by the greater fandom at the time.

that being said, as is the nature of all fandom, dreblr is still a community of people who are largely strangers who have gathered together because of one commonality: very strong feelings and often very strong opinions on the dream smp and c!dream. and i think when the fandom was more active, the entire fandom felt a lot more like a "pvp enabled" zone, lmao -- it was every other day when there'd be some new batshit meta about c!dream or some stream to react to and analyze and fight people about and whatever. since then, though, with the dsmp gone, the fandom has become quieter -- which i think has allowed some of the variation in opinions within dreblr become more and more obvious? and also become a sort of source of friction.

again, this is normal for any fandom. i'm certainly not here to agree with everyone about c!dream always, lmao. but the vagueing of takes is always more awkward on both sides when it's someone where you share more of the same circles. at the end of the day, it's up to each individual blogger's discretion to choose what they will or won't post on their own blog, but at the same time ... when it comes to the community, just speaking for myself, i don't want a super high barrier of entry when it comes to people feeling like they can't join this fandom unless they've got [xyz] experience or [xyz] takes.

when it comes to actual analysis of the source material, though, keeping meta a safe place for people to say "no, i don't agree with this take because of [xyz]" is important as well, which always raises the question of how said disagreements should be handled. and again, i'm no authority, i'm not here to tell people what to do. personally, when it comes to my own blog, i don't like to post very much directly about any one blogger, but I know I've definitely written posts inspired by specific takes before as well as screenshots of takes from the fandom's heyday, etc. i don't necessarily feel uncomfortable with this ...? but at the same time, i know that vagueposts can be a source of discomfort, especially if they're about your take in particular (speaking from experience) -- so it's you know. not the easiest line to draw, I guess, especially when we're talking about a community where different people are going to have different levels of comfort with what they post on their own blogs and what other blogs do in response to their takes. and whatever.

vagueposting, i think, has been common in the tumblr dsmp fandom for a long time, and especially in dreblr -- direct engagement in the past errr usually went badly, so a habit formed of keeping everything we did kind of within our own spaces (hence why many of us don't even tag c!dream or even dreblr on most of our posts; keeping everything untagged, or keeping the tagging system restricted to our own blogs, limited the possibility of trouble). that being said, vagueing within dreblr has become more common, i think, as disagreements within dreblr have become more and more obvious in the time since the dsmp ended. (just for the obvious example: i think it's a bit of an open secret that i, personally, strongly disagree with much of the common depictions of c!drunz in this fandom. i've written some meta about this before, as well as some responses to meta--which i enjoyed greatly, believe me--but i've also noticed (perhaps coincidence) an uptick in c!drunz positive meta every time i or someone else makes a post that maybe skews more negative. which is normal, don't get me wrong, but also a pattern i've noticed. i'm also very aware that someone the arguments i may bring up as counterarguments or structure my posts around arguing against are based on actual arguments i've seen while in this space, which i'm aware is an easy source of friction within dreblr.) and it's easy to say "don't take it personally when it's just metaanalysis," but that's easier said than done, lmao, especially depending on the tone of the vaguepost and a myriad of other factors.

i'm not saying that i have the answers. or, for that matter, a single answer. the boundaries i set aren't going to be the same as the boundaries other people set, for one, and i have no desire to police what other people do on their own blogs. i do miss, sometimes, the more collaborative and discussion-based meta experience of this fandom when it was more active--i might try to more actively reblog posts (including those i don't necessarily agree with) to discuss this server and these characters, bc at the end of the day that is kind of why we're here. personally, i've always drawn a pretty sharp distinction between fanwork and analysis -- i think it's pretty bad form to criticize people's AUs In General (not that i've not. been guilty of it in the past, but i try at least to keep it to criticizing more general patterns within fanwork; look, i'm not going to claim a moral high ground, i love bitching way too much and should probably get a handle on that but asj;lkfdsaf) but when we're talking meta about the source material, barring shit like. you know, harassment and otherwise abusive behavior, i do consider it more of a free-for-all. at the same time, i know that these standards can lead to newer fans feeling like they're going to be booed out the door for sharing their thoughts, which, i mean, isn't great 😭😭😭 fresh eyes can bring a lot of really cool new insights, and it'd suck pretty damn bad to miss that because they don't feel welcome, yknow?

anyway, this is a very inconclusive post, but i thought i'd just throw some of my thoughts out as someone who has been here for a decently long time. and if you want to discuss w/ me, inbox and dms are always open :)

[violetasteracademic]

I saw a reddit post a while back talking about how “obvious” gwynriel is, with hundreds of upvotes and everyone agreeing, saying that it’s exactly how SJM sets up her love interests, and it makes me feel like a crazy person.

I agree that SJM is obvious with her couples, but for me the only logical obvious answer is elriel. The entire time I was reading the series it couldn’t have been more obvious, and all my irl friends feel the same. We didn’t even know gwynriel was a thing. They barely interact in the books, and even then it’s only vaguely friendly and mostly one-sided. Then I get online and see all of these people who genuinely believe it’s gwynriel that’ll be endgame and I can’t understand how we’ve read the same books.

This is the only reason I question elriel at all; am I somehow missing something? What the hell are these people seeing that overshadows elriel’s foreshadowing? I just can’t see it from their point of view, no matter how many theories or analyzing I read from them. I almost wished I could so that this ship war wouldn’t be so frustrating, but I just can’t.

Sorry to throw this rant at you, your posts and explanations are just very comforting and you explain things so well. I read them whenever I’m worried to assure myself I’m not crazy :,)

Hi sweet anon!

I certainly don't think you are crazy or missing anything, and I'm glad to know that some of my posts have brought you comfort. That is my one and only goal.

I've been getting more and more messages like this in my inbox, and I've been struggling with how to answer them because I've learned that a lot of my thoughts don't really fit in with the fandom at large. I don't mind that other ships exist. I have real life G/wynriel and E/lucien friends that are very chill and wonderful and not knee deep in the online fandom and don't think horrific misogynistic things. I stay out of spaces where I'm bound to see something hurtful, and I scroll so fuckin fast when I see the Elriel community screenshotting and reblogging bad takes cause I *don't wanna see it.*

I'm just a girl, and while I'm honored that this little weirdo's opinion has become of some value in this little comfy cafe corner I'm trying to build here, I don't want to say the wrong thing and make people feel discredited and invalidated. I've learned that people really like being in the drama and venting and focusing on how badly the other side is behaving, which I don't really like, and it often leaves me at odds with my own "side" of the war. But since you are here in my asks, I'll share my thoughts. Please know I am saying this with all the tender love and care in my heart, but I say:

Just let them exist. You don't need to understand. You also don't need to let it worry you. None of us are in control of the ships that are sailing in this war. So for whatever it is worth, I want to encourage you to try to stay away from the spaces that make you feel upset, confused, hurt, or angry.

We are all honestly similar in ways that might be hard to admit. If we are here, deep into this fandom, we are probably connected in a number of ways. Maybe we're a little bit lonely (me), a little bit mentally ill (me), a little bit hyper-fixated (me). Maybe we are easily consumed and obsessed, and don't have anywhere for that energy to go in our real lives and so we live on in a chronic state of escape and disassociation (yep, me).

We are also an exceptionally small percentage of SJM's readership, and we take things as far as a fan could possibly take them. This is not how most readers are interacting with her work. So to see hundreds of upvotes on something, even thousands, yes- it seems like a lot. But it's not actually that much in terms of SJM's actual numbers. Anyone on reddit, tumblr, tiktok, ect, is looking for community and people who share their thoughts and likes and dislikes. I think this is often why a lot of non canon ships actually grow more popular than canon ships, because people are here looking for a road the written story will not take them down.

I don't think it's strange or offensive or unhinged that ships other than Azriel or Elain exist and are popular. I *do* think its a little odd that this fandom has taken the stance of proving non-canon things as canon instead of just enjoying crackships, but I can't honestly sit here and say my posts proving "canon" to try to comfort people who want the same fictional couple as me is not the exact same behavior. I think I'm right. They think they are right. There will come a day when Sarah lets us know what she has decided, and it's out of our hands. But the ships will live on.

I love so many non canon ships, and I engage with them here every day. This is what fandom is for. I think this fandom in particular would be a lot less toxic if we would just live and let live and leave each other be. I am gonna keep making theory posts and writing fanfic. They are gonna keep making theory posts and writing fanfic.

Take care of yourself. Rock the block button. Strangers on the internet do not get unfettered access to me or you or anyone else just because we are online. Set some boundaries for yourself. Lurk where you feel good.

I hope my page continues to be one of those places where you can lurk to feel better. And if that ever changes, block me. I encourage it deeply. I actually feel relieved when I can see that someone has blocked me, because I know they are taking care of themselves and also saved me the time and energy of trying to diffuse an argument.

I hear your frustrations. I know it sucks to want to go on reddit if that has been a fun and comforting space for you, and now it feels overrun and not safe and not fun. Grieve that. We obviously all care very deeply, and that's okay. It's nothing at all to be ashamed of.

But at some point, we are all gonna have to learn to live with each other, because no matter what happens in canon, the ships are not going anywhere.

Take care of yourself, anon. And I hope you continue to find comforting spaces to rest.

[valkyriexo]

Since you want the attention that bad. Here you can have it.

statement and rant below the cut

If you're going to post screenshots of a conversation. Post the full thing. But since you didn't. I will.

let's start at the beginning, shall we?

the first time you felt "attacked" was in a staff channel, where you claimed one of our moderators at the time was attacking you. Here is a screenshot of that conversation.

Mind you, this is in response to you saying you didn't think fake texts were a valid form of fan fiction or work. But of course you can have your opinion,

but so can we.

The second time you claimed you were attacked was when you were called out for your negative criques every single time someone posts anything to general chat. In this case, it was a photo of Chan. The original messages between both you and ace were removed, so I'm not going to recount them as it will just be hearsay. However, what I can show are the screenshots of our conversation when I put both of you on timeout (cant send messages for a period of time) and issued warnings out.

Here is the official warn.

Here is our conversation.

I was not rude to you. I did not attack you. I did not blame you.

In the meantime, you continue to make remarks about others' appearances, making people in the server feel like they can't share anything without being invalidated or ignored because you always find a way to make it about yourself. You've turned what should be positive spaces into negative ones, and it's giving serious pick-me energy. You can't blame others for not wanting to engage with you or for voicing their concerns when your behavior pushes them away. Maybe instead of questioning why people aren't talking to you, you should consider why they don't feel comfortable doing so in the first place.

Here are some of the many statements you've made in public chat channels.

No one sent anyone to hate on you. the statement had to be made public because it wasnt just two or three people complaining. it was 12+ people through different forms complaining about how you were making them feel.

You're saying the complaints weren't real? The only reason i am not showing you them is because people came forward confiding in me. so i will not be putting them on blast.

HOWEVER.

You stated and i quote

"People claimed they felt so horribly unsafe by my presence, God knows why (nobody ever explained it beyond insulting me on anon lol) "

But here is the original message that got sent to you from our admin. TELLING YOU EXACTLY WHY.

You chose to leave, that was YOUR decision. We did not remove you.

You also stated and i quote "but sending your minions to harass me, insult me and tell me to kill myself is totally safe. This is absolutely fucking insane."

Here is the post i made both on discord and tumblr, along with Bel ( a mod) post that was also made

No where in this did we ask people to hate on you. and this is the message you sent me.

Apparently, I'm supposed to control the community? hm interesting.

I'm not a dictator, I'm not the president, and I'm not even the only administrator of the community. The name says it itself, it's a COMMUNITY. I'm not here to control people on the internet.

I'm sorry, your getting hate. But I'm not Tumblr's help desk. you can report your issues to tumblr.

Now onto the statement you said about @seungminindabuilding.. here are all the messages you so kindly left out.

But .. you have the full conversation, so you can re-read it yourself.

During this conversation, is when you blocked me. While I was responding to your message, you sent me on Tumblr.

You know... when you "recognized the language being used" as if i was the one sending the messages.

I'm sorry you're receiving hate; I don't condone that kind of behavior. But I want to be clear—I am not the person sending any of it to you.

I value myself as someone who is kind and calm, but that doesn't mean I'll tolerate disrespect. You do not get to bash me, this community, or its members without expecting a response. Respect is a two-way street, and it’s about time you learned that.

In short.

I stand by what I said.

You do not get to be rude to me and my staff and then play the victim in my messages. We were genuinely trying to help you, and in return we get you attacking us and blaming us. no thank you. You blocked me. now its my turn.

Have the day you deserve

-Val

[lover-of-mine]

Hi! So much has happened. Picking through different details to make sure this message is not repetitive because I know you have many many spies by now.

Firstly: the fake article. I cannot find who originally posted it. Only a screenshot from a BT mad about it. But apparently a Buddie made a fake post about a fake article about Lou quitting acting. They are very upset about it. It is ‘harassment’ apparently. People are offended that it cites mental health scare as the reason Lou would allegedly quit acting. As if BTs were not saying that Eddie should kill himself to mirror Ryan’s history of suicidality? Throwing stones from glass houses.

Here is the fake article screenshot. https://x.com/xfirepilot/status/1822790104525500839?s=46&t=i5gFcB_0q-6E5MZXiGtU_w

Secondly: Mark decided to lie about having ‘sources’ saying Lou is back on set this week. If he is not spotted… prepare for a full meltdown. They are CONVINCED this is the week. Especially because of the hangar. The longer they go without a sighting the more they lose it. They keep saying ‘quiet’ in hopes that it will make things happen (ie make Lou show up) which is kind of lame tbh. Taking all the fun out of the q word bit.

Thirdly: Happy birthday Peter! 9-1-1’s Instagram account posted a video of JLH + Oliver + Tracie + Ryan + Aisha + Kenny wishing him a happy birthday. Declan (Denny) also posted a photo of him and Peter. BTs are pretending that this is fine but are secretly losing it. Lou should be on set because of the hangar photo! Why is he not in that video! Why has he not posted about Peter’s birthday! But at the same time they are falling back once again on the ‘Lou is purposefully being hidden’ theory. Which is incompatible with their beliefs they will get a sighting this week.

Fourthly: one of them is saying a promo video will be released this week and promo photos the week after. I was not in the fandom in previous years but afaik this does not line up with past promo timelines? But correct me if I am wrong.

Fifthly: someone created a tumblr account called @killkinard and they are saying it is a death threat against Lou? Not Tommy? Very dramatic.

https://x.com/hofevanbuckley/status/1823057221053251994?s=46&t=i5gFcB_0q-6E5MZXiGtU_w

Sixthly: the subreddit drama… oh the subreddit drama. Okay. So. A BT shipper decided to make a new 9-1-1 subreddit because the main subreddit is way too Buddie focused. Complaining about anything to do with Tommy being downvoted on the main subreddit. So far the new subreddit has 35 members (as opposed to the 34170 members on the main reddit). So far half the posts on the new subreddit are transplanted from the main subreddit or the BT subreddit. Literally cross-posted. Makes sense that they do not like the main subreddit though. There was recently a post saying ‘why does Tommy get so much hate for being a bigot when half the main cast are cheaters’ uhhh because he is RACIST? And SEXIST? Honestly maybe it is a good thing they have that space now. Keep them contained away from the rest of us.

Seventhly and finally: someone said ‘I hope Lou posts a black and white picture Oliver takes of him on set’. They want Oliver and Lou to be Oliver and Ryan so bad oh my god. Not beating the Tommy/Eddie conflation allegations. Really all they ever do is steal from us. They have started calling Buddies ‘BDs’ now like we call them BTs. They are claiming Oliver’s new happy social media presence is a sign that he is filming with Lou. Everything we have or we say gets twisted and made about that man.

Anyways. I think it will be very funny if Lou does not show up this week. Especially because the hangar seems to be related to a Ryan and Kenny scene: https://x.com/buckleysbf/status/1823000264183271494?s=46&t=i5gFcB_0q-6E5MZXiGtU_w

Hi love 🩵

I don't even know what to say. I'm just staring at my phone. They really can't tell actors apart from characters huh? And this is a lot. I did the see part of the fake article drama but didn't fully get it. They definitely just want Tommy to be Eddie. I can't believe they dropped the BoB thing, come on guys, you don't have to copy everything we do. I do expect them to continue to detach themselves from reality more if Lou doesn't show up soon, even with the whole "they're hiding him" fantasy they have going.