#from the clouds

[clouffy]

WAHHHHHH EAHHSHDHDIAKWHEIDDJ my mom dropped the news on me last night that we are going to adopt two kittens she picked out 🥺

[nimstratus]

The unshakable warrior’s bond between you and the guy who’s been driving behind you for like 10 miles

[runebackslink]

I’ll add my two cents here haha

• in 2016, we shifted from “welcome windows”, which were somewhat random times every few months that spanned 6-24 hours where the site was accepting new people, to “welcome weeks”, which were always right before the festival during any given month. The userbase would get together and do a huge welcome party for all the new users, often with specific welcome threads in flight forums.

Now this is speculation on my part, but that concentrated effort plus the new users probably made people more ‘into’ the site culture as a whole, right before the festival! I don’t think it’s a reach to say that some people might’ve thrown something together when swept in all that hype.

• now this is my bias showing but I think we were on the whole younger w more time in 2016 lol

• the G/T ratio was also 1:500. Skins that didn’t win were easier to print after

• we had WAY more user engagement from staff in the 2016 era. We had somewhat regular familiar coloring contests, we still had swipp skins and MP skins, and we thought those contests would come back! We also often had tooltip writing contests that we haven’t seen in several years now. It’s hard to retain user engagement like this when the ONLY thing to do is skins. Users are drifting away before the contests they’d enter even come around.

• the attitude towards staff is frankly, significantly more hostile, and this spreads to festival entries. Around 2018 (the skin market boom) there’d risen a sort of, feeling? Among users that staff plays favorites. That they only pick popular users. That “staff would never pick me, so I may as well not enter”.

-perhaps it’s pertinent to point out that this is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. You can’t win if you don’t enter!

I think this all culminates in a userbase that’s burnt out and disinterested, despite the sheer volume of more people we have. (When I joined in 2015, earth only had 5000 users, and a significant portion of those were people who never picked a flight after making an account!)

I don’t really know how staff would fix this. Is it even something they’re interested in fixing? Is this a bug? I cant answer these questions because I just don’t know!

Festival Skin Entries by Year

Me and my friends who regularly enter festival contests have felt for the past few years that the number of entries per contest have dropped. Today we finally decided to compile every single festival submission thread since 2013 and see if that's true! This was pretty interesting, so we wanted to make a quick post to share the results. You can find the spreadsheet here.

*Note that 2013 only had 6 festivals contests, and we are only 3 contests into 2025.

2015 had the highest amount of total entries that year.

Arcane 2015 holds the highest non-2013 record of entries at 45 pages.

The flights with the highest number of entry pages total is Arcane at 285, Light with 280

The lowest pagecount total is not actually Earth but Wind with 178 pages!

The total number of entries per festival has definitely been in drastic decline since 2015. What's the reason for this?

Contest prize went up to 1.5kg for Plague 2014, then to 2kg for Light 2019.

Fest entry slots scaled these fests: Light 2013 - 6 slots Fire 2013 - 8 slots (+2) Plague 2013 - 10 slots (+2) Fire 2014 - 12 slots (+2) Fire 2015 - 14 slots (+2) Light 2023 - 16 slots (+2) Light 2024 - 20 slots (+4 - 2 permababy 2 general)

Light and Fire in 2013 did not have separate submission and discussion threads. We filtered the pages into those that contained an img and those that did not.

2023 Rockbreakers is an outlier. Entry pages are unusually high for that year (29 pages) because we ran a 500g giveaway to enter the contest.

...although, 29 pages would've been the norm in 2015-2016!

Pretty interesting data!

My own thoughts:

The observation that started this off was that Nature remained consistently high in entries over the past 4 yrs while every other flight seemed to decline. This is still true! Nature is the only flight that remains able to break the 20 page barrier!

Why has the userbase doubled, but festival submissions grow fewer and fewer each year?

What was going on in 2016?

Here's a link to the submission thread compilation on FR; I can't add the links on Tumblr, the site thinks I'm a spambot.

[briskchips]

Mini doodle dump

[rahafmah]

🚨URGENT DISTRESS CALL

I am a mother of 5 children from Gaza. I lost my husband, my home, and everything I own in the war. I am writing to you with full pain and hope that you will heed my call and save my family.📍🍉🍉💔😭😭

This is my family of 6 people and we now live in a tent💔💔🍉

This is our house that was destroyed by the occupation😭😭😭💔💔🍉

This is our source of livelihood, but the occupation burned and destroyed it and we became without income😭😭💔🍉📍

This tent we live in is not fit for human habitation.🍉🍉📍💔💔😭

“Help me survive and go home 🏠💔”

My campaign is protected on gofundme for a year 🍉🍉📍📍🚨

The situation is very difficult, and with my family who needs support to survive in these harsh conditions. Every donation, no matter how small, may be the difference that helps us provide food and shelter💔💔😭😭🍉📍

@fly-sky-high-09 @awetistic-things @imjustheretotrytohelp @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @wellsbering @blomstermjuk @innovatorbunny @operationladybug @acehimbo @butch-king-frankenstein @butchjeremyfragrance @ohjinyoungblr @rememberthelaughter2016 @parfaithaven @huznilal-blog @saintverse @bagofbonesmp3 @anneemay-blog @ankle-beez @thatsonehellofabird @sunidentifiables @neechees

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[say0ranarts]

scattered pieces🧩

[niinnyu]

Bro is onto nothing!!

[ugly-bug-starscream]

d-16 dont piss off the old jet

Sky loving the Stars - TFOne au

[tinnedmarlin]

helmetless gabriel

gabriel got his “artsy side” from gianni. it runs in the family

[verflares]

belated valentines zelink ^_^ wanted to revisit these two in particular

[dreamersofcolor]

happy juneteenth, self shippers!

if you are a black self shipper who wants to promote your blog, commissions, or mutual aid, please feel free to add and reblog to this post / tag this account / tag your post with #dreamersofcolor !

[clouffy]

ren faire Syd photo dump :)

[barghest-land]

finally finished :) a lot of hours, a lot of fun!! + details!!

[mienar]

the wandering painter, part one

instagram | shop | commission info

[thirstywaffles]

Cloud projecting his period cramps to beat sephiroth in a fight