#slowly my tumblr is becoming my second shitpost page

[xabarik]

“мне жалко что я не зверь” really reminds me of phantom (i found this translation, if you're interested in reading what's on the art) never thought I'd be drawing something like this for aa but here we are

and other stuff

back in 2019 I often drew Blackquill wearing those broken glasses. and i like that the phantom in the game is a little taller than bobby after his reveal and my favourite girl taka... childhood love of birds is scratching inside.

my friend said she thought he was wearing a wedding suit. I said he would have had one suit for both the wedding and the funeral because after prison he wouldn't have had a chance to buy a new one.

[mattved]

On blogging, again

Everybody makes a mistake from time to time, and the junction came where I gotta admit belonging to that exact domain. My blog went through about as many changes in platform as it had posts. (Everybody sometimes exaggerates, right?)

So I am here today to give an account on journey of my content across individual platforms, outlining their upsides and downsides and ranting about my fuckups leading to choosing them.

The Beginnings: Blogger

One of the most popular blogging platforms of the 90s offered two gates of entrance to your Google-hosted website: Hitting an URL, either name.blogger.com or your own domain, and being discovered through hub of all Blogger articles, featuring the most popular favorite-tag-relevant along a fulltext search. Both obviously played role in googlability and building an on-line brand.

It seemed to work for a while. I was getting units of traffic from people and crawler hits every now and then. With keywords including my name and username, I slowly made it to the first page of results in Search and DuckDuckGo, pushing the pamphlet article about a person of my name dying at the age to the second, and enabling to compete with identically named photographer for #1. The latter, I unfortunalely did not make. And am obviously mad about it.

The problem was that Blogger lacks some cool features of the modern web. To this day, you are limited to a raw/wysiwyg HTML editor, forced to do more clicking than real writing. Uploading images was a completely separate activity from the writing process and involved browsing filesystems three times before inserting one into the article.

Besides, people no longer visit the article hub, making it useless for anything than that SEO aspect mentioned earlier, and professing the site's backend obsolescence with the a searchbar included along the top edge by default. Of course you can hide it through creation of custom theme including a CSS tweak, but that is just more hassle. Besides, you are not really allowed to do much other than raw CSS to manipulate the site's looks. And the loading times of some articles were just horrible, especially when the engine attempted to apply analytics tools on embeded content, often causing its failures to even load.

And even though Blogger was my big love for the early posts and I stayed for almost 9 months with it, these aspects had driven me elsewhere. Somewhere I was in control of both my content, looks, and structure of the homepage.

The Techie Period: Webhosting

I had rented a cheapo webhost my friend and I had been using for ages as a platform for our various PHP projects the history of which ran all the way to our sweet boarding school development sessions, which were known throughout the staff hierarchy and occassionaly lifted the curfew imposed on us by the system.

Since I was now able to do whatever I wanted with the whole base, many experiments were done and a lot learned in the process. I even made a switch to self-hosting everything on my very own BananaPi webserver, gaining a lot of sysadmin skills.

May I write, please? Wordpress

So many people love wordpress, since there is a massive ecosystem around it, with so many commercially available themes, wonderful plugins, and an open-source base. But I was not overly excited about having somebody else's work showed off on my little personal site. I wanted to build my personal brand and allow myself to be actually proud of it.

But the time it takes even a fairly skilled webbie to get into the zipped-theme format with about as many files as a fresh core linux installation has is not the shortest. And the tweaks always seemed to break whatever I was trying to customize. I sure could've had a blog in no time, but getting to something I'd be happy with was a question of becoming fairly expert in the wordpress ecosystem, which is honestly not worth it, unless you wanna capitalize on it as soon as you can. Besides, there is no certainty in how long such profession would remain relevant. And there is all the Filipinos beating you in sales.

Wordpress is really not for you if you want to give individualist impression. After about a month, I deleted the folder.

This is actually fun! Anchor CMS

Real perfection for those who know pure PHP and want to build a unique site really quickly. It is also where I first encountered markdown outside of GitHub. And it had been my platform for over a good year and a half.

But my audience disappeared entirely. The search engine performance remained, true that, but that was about it and it seemed that some social network marketing was necessary. And even though I do have some outreach on Facebook and Instagram, I consider these to be purely personal devices, that I give public limited access to. So in spite of my general satisfaction with the workings of my wonderful brown colored design featuring many elements enriching the text, I now understand that this alone just won't cut it. And maintaining the website along with a different platform is just not something I have time to do.

So long, my love. I'll pull you out once I'm famous enough. I'll rebuild you on something less outdated than Anchor.

Taking it seriously: Medium

The problem here is that I rarely react to immediate news. Because I am long-term oriented individual aware of the self-adjusting nature of running averages of almost anything. And it doesn't even need to be on index-based variables. Because yes, I do believe that all functional relationships have some sort of equilibrium. Logical or strictly endogenous.

Besides, Medium is filled with... well, media. Wide-readership accounts shitposting five times a day in order to maintain audience, especially of those behind the paywall, who may even consider that the media they are paying for through means other than advertizing are more reliable as a source of infromation.

Yes, I went through the grind of migrating my entire blog to this site, copy-pasting almost everything and adhering to that non-markdown article editor, which made me feel well in the very beginning. It made it a no-bullshit platform after all.

I even wrote one medium-exclusive post, which is never gonna be on Tumblr as I managed to delete it along with my entire account days after doing all the hard work.

Medium is a great concept badly executed. Adios.

Terminal station: Tumblr

At least so far. I may be giving up on fully custom theme for a short time or I may be on a retreat. I may have decided to use an exclusively ad-based platform (at least I can remove ads on my personal tumblr, if not in the feed.

I don't like that there is very little original content on here, but I might soon benefit from reblogs. I don't plan to reblog a lot myself, unless I find a post to be five-star. But I will always like whatever feels appropriate and amazing. And I am always happy to stay in touch with any number of followers. Because some audience is better than massive audience. And I can get at least some feedback here. Hit me, guys. I'm posting for my own benefit and hope somebody will take time to read and reflect on what I am about to post here.

I even plan to switch back to the slightly more interesting topics, showing off my knowledge and passing it on.

Wish me luck ^^

[typei101]

“What do you dream of becoming when you’re older?” “A shit writer.”

Ever since I was 4 and learnt how to write simple sentences talking about who I am and where things are placed in a room, I knew I wanted to write. Something about writing phrases on a piece of lined paper put me in such a mental state I was addicted to. You could say I was my biggest fan. I used to parade my work into the face of teachers and family to read it and look in awe on how such a young person could write so well, but eventually as the years went on my fire slowly died away.

Whenever someone asked me “What do you want to be when you’re older?” I suddenly didn’t know what to say. My go to answer of an author just seemed like wishful thinking. Rather than parading my work into the faces of others I would tell them long, emotive stories about my dreams of being a writer and how my heart aches to regain the strength to write again. It would garner sympathy and passionate responses from people, namely my brother, but at one point it made me feel sick because I knew that what I was saying and what I was doing were simply lies.

I didn’t want to lie anymore: at 12 I decided I wouldn’t be a coward and I wanted to write again. I went on to Wattpad, the only place I felt safe in writing in. It had an environment of people too interested in bland generic stories to read my incomprehensible work, and it was such a large but accessible platform I could write comfortably without being judged. But what did I do? I still felt like there were eyes watching my work and I. Every second I wasn’t at the laptop checking on incognito to see if others could read my work, I was paranoid that somewhere, somehow someone I knew would use this as blackmail. So as an indefinite preventative measure, I made sure that everything I wrote was satirical. Over-exaggerated romance pieces on people doing disgusting or just stupid things with each other, with the themes matching up to whatever I knew the mainstream, or my friends would be into. When I was done making my confusing piece, I would send the link like wildfire to everyone I knew, just like how I used to when I was younger. Instead however, I was awaiting the reaction of confusion and horror instead of a proud pat on the back and the awe I was used to get high off.

I enjoyed being the funny friend in my circle, not only because I enjoyed making people laugh, but it lowered the standards people had of me making me feel so safe. I always wanted to feel safe in the company of others, always wanted to avoid being under the eye of scrutiny that I so mercilessly did with others in my spare time. I projected my biggest fears of someone latching onto my work to tear it down by doing it myself, and it only degenerated my work further and further. It got to the point where no one wanted to read my stories anymore. The shock and horror died down after they knew to expect weird wacky shit. I didn’t get the same kick out of writing it anymore either. It had seemed that what fire disappeared when I was 4 had died again.

I stopped writing for fun but instead found joy writing for my English GCSE. Tearing apart other people’s work, positively when writing for my grade but negatively when another person’s work was shown for us to learn about. I remember arguing with my English teacher about one particular piece that I found to be so stupid in getting that high of a grade. They made such a simple error in seeing a character as one dimensional in nature, when they were obvious layers to her, and the fact that 90% of the essay was building off of this bold assumption, it was bold of the examiner to give it an A grade. In a way, I felt jealous. Every time I wanted to answer an exam question, I would put so much thought into it, it seemed. I would make sure everything made sense to me as I’d write it, but then build on it so much more when writing it. I would proudly show my friends and teacher, and then when it came down to my mock exams consistently get low grades. It seemed like I wasn’t meeting expectations again, one of my biggest fears. All the passion I had for examining texts seemed to die, and right around the corner of the final exam season too. It all culminated with me getting a B in my final exam, when I had been projected to get an A*, one of the most crushing moments of my life. I left the hall that day with my grade close to my chest in quiet anger. My parents were disappointed in the way that parents would be no matter what the grade except for the ultimate best. But I was disappointed in what had happened. I escaped criticism for so long by not writing seriously and valuing my old works so much, but it truly seemed like I wasn’t on the same page everyone else was. I wanted to find my footing again. I wanted to write.

I began writing in secret, the only it would seem I could now. If I wanted to get on the same page as everyone I thought I had to do it alone. No one would care enough to cradle me and teach me how to be good, and it wouldn’t be good for me anyway. What I needed was strength, not a bullet point list on how to be a good writer. So began my long journey on figuring out how to the act of writing. I didn’t want to simply express whatever frustrations I had in jumbled words anymore. I just wanted to know how to convey feelings, thoughts and emotions through text again. The easiest way to do that was to write about what was easiest, and given my situation the easiest thing to do was to rant. So I opened up a private Instagram account where I would post pictures with long captions detailing frustrations I had in life with questions attached to almost every one of them. I needed to feel lost and confused, but more importantly I needed to keep the confusion in a place I could access later so I could hopefully learn from my mistakes. Soon enough my best friend found my account and wanted to read it. Though I was reluctant at first I let it happen, and soon my account changed back into a satirical account where I shitpost and repeated memes over and over again. So I deleted it. But the soothing effect that ranting gave me had reverted back to tension. So I opened another account. I let my friend follow. I shut the account down again. Again. Again.

I gave up on Instagram and began writing it on Tumblr. My friend didn’t know, but one day I told my brother about it and he read it. My Tumblr account emptied out shortly afterwards. I wrote some amazing things back then but I will never be able to get them back now. Regrets caused from being afraid of someone else’s opinion. In the end, I decided that I couldn’t even let the closest people in my life read my work, my fear and anxiety was deep rooted so far that I could only trust myself, even if that was because I didn’t have a choice. I moved back to Instagram, a private account.

My posts were brief at first, the first caption reading “I know I’m going to need to rant soon so I’m keeping this account open”. And so I did. I’ve been using this account for almost a year now, and no one follows it and it is one of the best things I have done. After writing there so much I decided I would give the old pen and paper a try. I began writing emotional rants with pretenses like “INCOMING EDGY TEENAGER FEELS !!!11” and other self-deprecating and satirical comments laden throughout the texts, so it was a safe way I could let out my feelings without taking myself too seriously.

These multiple venting methods stayed open, and along that came over a story, one I’m not proud of. But I’m proud of it. And I showed someone, and they didn’t get it and I didn’t care. I wrote something. I finished something. It stemmed from a place of irony in that I was mocking the vagueness of edgy fanfic but though at first I saw it as a joke and shared it as a joke, I enjoyed it. I analysed my own work, as vain as that is. And it serves as the main reason as to why I want to write again (again again).

 I finally realised today that I didn’t want to be someone who keeps ranting start and stop. I also realised my dreams of being an engineer stemmed from a place of anxiety because it was a safe option, and being an author isn’t. I still want to be an engineer, but I want to become a writer. A shitty writer. It’s better than being someone scared of other’s opinions, because at least the first title has “writer” in it. I’m here to make a fool of myself and I want to take pride in that.

[hitodama89]

Thank you for the tag, @niuniente! <3 It has been ages since I've done one of these and I've really missed them.

Why did you choose your url?

Well kids, back in the good old days of approximately 2004 it was a widely used custom to use your birth year as an extension of your username if the actual username was already used by someone else, which is where the 89 comes from. hitodama I picked because I just wanted some other mythical creature to use aside of my number one pick, dragon, as every variation of that was naturally already registered everywhere I went. On the other hand the reason of why did I start writing the name with a lower-case h has been lost to the pages of history (=I don't remember it) but it has become so integral part of it that I take mental damage every time I see someone write it with an upper-case H. =')

Any side blogs?

So far only @hitodama89reblogs. I have sometimes toyed with the idea of making some other blogs, but so far I've never actually ended up doing it.

How long have you been on Tumblr?

My blog says the first post was made 7 years ago. Somehow it feels like it has been way longer than that, but I guess not then.

Do you have a queue tag?

I don't think I have queued a single post in my life?

Why did you start your blog in the first place?

This was supposed to be an ask blog for my characters and for a while it was, but as time went on the culture of sending funny little asks started to slowly die and most of my friends also stopped using Tumblr so I didn't really get any more asks to answer. That's why for the vast majority of time the blog has been just a "post whatever the heck I want" blog instead.

Why did you choose your icon?

It's something I originally drew to be used in my website's graphics and it just... Stuck. I don't tend to change my avatar images unless I have to; so far the one to be in use for the longest time is likely my icon in dA that has been in place for 12 years.

Why did you choose your header?

It's also part of the website graphics, so the story is the same as for the avatar.

What’s your post with the most notes?

According to that tool that lets you check it out it's this silly screenshot. The second best is this doodle from the start of this year. (Also according to that tool my blog contains 1336 posts, which is quite a bunch considering almost all of them are original posts and not reblogs.)

How many mutuals do you have?

Apparently 24 and something around 10 of those are actually active nowadays.

How many followers do you have?

194. It isn't a lot, but at least there aren't any obvious bots among them, as I check all of my new followers out and block those very blatant sex bot accounts whenever I see them (which is still at least once a week, which is pretty hilarious considering the sex ban).

How many people do you follow?

214 and according to a quick count around 70 of them are completely inactive... I should likely clean the list a little bit.

Have you ever made a shitpost?

Eeeeh, hmmh, I have no idea what ACTUALLY counts as a shitpost, so idk?

How often do you use Tumblr each day?

I check it a few times a day. I like to keep my watch list short enough that I get to see every post that comes through my dash without a huge struggle.

Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

I dooooon't think so? I've disagreed with people, but I don't remember it ever escalating into a fight or even a proper argument.

How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

I really dislike them and tend to avoid reblogging them just because of that guilt-tripping, no matter how good the actual subject is.

Do you like tag games?

Yes, I love them! <3

Do you like ask games?

I do, even though I miss those days when people weren't so hesitant on actually sending those asks to each other.

Which of your Tumblr mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

I'm pretty sure @niuniente at least has the most followers!

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

Okay it would be really funny if I said yes and then those 24 mutuals of mine managed to contact each other and then they'd have to cook up a convoluted plan to find out which one it is. I'd watch an anime like that!