#literally not tagging this because i dont want this post to get any traction.

[sniper-tf2-teeth]

Gotta confess something, the person who accused your and the dear heavy tf2 tummy person of fetish farming made that post because I spoke in a space we share about how excited I was to have received your ask, and they really didn’t want me to draw it, I have anyways because I enjoy it and I know it’s practically a trend at this point, and also because I’m an independent person capable of making my own choices. So I just really wanted to say I’m sorry if that alls been causing you trouble still. Especially since that trouble is partially, and unintentionally my fault. Hope that all makes sense. I’m incredibly sorry. I loved getting your prompt :) I can only await the day I get my heavy tf2 tummy one as well

You're not responsible for that person's actions; if you werent going to tip them off, something else would have (assuming the series of events did go down how you said it did). It was only a matter of time before someone called the trend problematic anyway.

Plus it was funny to get accused of fetishfarming and harassing artists just to see all the reblogs be along the lines of"yeah that would be really bad IF IT WERE to happen" and "oh i should look out for that" and "woah is that really happening?", because that post was moreso making up a problem to get upset over and most people instinctively recognized that that wasnt happening at all. There was also a vaguepost about it that got some traction, which I admired.

Fetishfarming would be more like asking for a closeup of Sniper at the dentist, or requests for Medic preparing Heavy for surgery (implying Heavy would be shirtless). All the asks in that trend were literally based on being extremely forward and direct with what the asker wanted, the opposite of fetishfarming or artist exploitation.

Requesting art isnt harassment-- it becomes harassment if the artist has asked you to stop or has otherwise indicated that they wont partake in the trend or wont take requests and you still choose to send the request. I heard through the grapevine that some people think art requests were entitled and exploitative, which were also the arguments used for that fetishfarming post and MAYBE a much earlier and long-forgotten post about the heavy tf2 tummy anon (dont quote me, though), which is just plain wrong. Requesting art in any way isnt entitled either (unless, like said before, the artist has indicated they do not do requests). Thats what having a public art account is like. People will interact with you and get excited when you draw stuff they like, so you set boundariies. If you don't, thats on you.

The only fair point that person really had was tagging the posts, which I couldnt really do until now. Ill add that caveat to my pinned, but Im not sure how much good itll do now

Glad you liked the prompt, anon! Thank you for sending this ask, it was a good oppurtunity to address that post. I hope you get the heavy tf2 tummy ask soon <3

[heartnosekid]

I started making stimboards a while ago, granted I'm not the most frequently active even with a queue, but I greatly enjoy carefully crafting a board, digging up sources for gifs, ... still, I cant stop feeling a bit hurt that I get next to no notes on them. A single board easily takes me 30 minutes to 1 hour, and a recent one got 1 note. That's all. I was so proud of it, and now it feels like it was all in vain, despite the fun it was to assemble. I love seeing you on my dash btw, I love your gifs and boards. But yeah. Did it take you a while too to get a decent amount of notes / followers ? I try my best to use appropriate tags for reach. I dont even do super niche themes. And I tell myself to just keep at it, with enough time and effort I'll have some more followers too. Idk. I was just hoping for some words of encouragement if you can spare some lol

i 100% understand this frustration and i have a few questions for you.

firstly, is there any way you could send me a board of yours so i can see the tags and potentially give some advice about that? it's okay if you would rather not, i understand wanting to maintain anonymity.

secondly, if you did want to send your blog my way, i could potentially reblog some of your stuff and help you gain some traction.

now for some encouragement, i promise your work matters regardless of followers or notes or anything like that. the internet has a sinister way of making us feel as if the only way our work is important, even to ourselves, is if it gets lots of recognition and interactions and clicks. this is wholly false, and a dangerous mindset to get stuck in. (i'm still in it and i hate it. i work so hard to not care about notes but it is so hard, especially when you're raised by a critical voice when it comes to your art.)

i will always encourage you and anyone else to ignore the numbers. i know this is extremely hard to do, especially when you're just starting out and you want to make your work seen and be praised, but i promise it will help build healthy habits in regards to posting your work and not taking the fun or meaning out of it for yourself, because at the end of the day, making art should be for you and satisfy you first and foremost. i made the huge mistake of getting into the numbers game in regards to my work and i regret it every day, quite literally. and yes, it did take a long time for my boards and gifs to start gaining traction. i've had this blog since 2017, i have been making boards since...2019 i think, maybe 2018, and gifs since either late 2019 or 2020, i think, and i didn't start seeing major interactions (1k+ notes) for about two to three years.

if your work is fun and fulfilling to you; if it satisfies your creative nature in a way other things can't, please keep doing it. i promise it is worth it to make the art 100000% self indulgently rather than to rely on attention from others to progress.

much love and support to you, anon. i hope to see some cool stuff from you in the community. <3

[earthtooz]

omgomg hi i literally love every single thing u post esp the dr ratio content we r getting recently (we are being ABSOLUTELY FED and i'm FERAL for ur characterisation of him)

if u dont mind sharing do u have any tips for new bloggers(?) tumblr writers(?) to grow platforms 😔😔 i myself have posted a couple of things but they aren't gaining much traction 😔

first of all, thank yew anon!! 🙆🏻‍♀️🙆🏻‍♀️ much love, i’m very happy that you’re enjoying my dr ratio content because tbh… it’s not going to stop HAHAH he is here to stay.

second of all, i’ve been here for almost three years so i hope i have some good tips to share 😔 they are below the cut !!

everything on this list is targeted at gaining traction with likes and reblogs rather than focusing on your writing!! pls keep that in mind ;o

1. blog layouts and post layouts.

generally speaking, if a reader is scrolling through the tags, the first impression they get of your fic is how neatly it is laid out. a more aesthetically pleasing layout is always going to capture someone’s attention, regardless of the story.

take a scroll through the tags and maybe find inspiration (don’t steal layouts!) as to how some writers have arranged theirs. normally it incorporates a cute banner/picture with a/n’s or warnings.

also, this may just be personal taste, but don’t post your fic in small text. small text fics are the ones i get turned off the most because i… don’t want my eyes to hurt 😔😔 simple as that 😔😔 even if the synopsis sounds great, i want to see your story in full, not in tiny!!

2. write broader and more cliché tropes at first

i just wanted to reiterate again, this post is not to help you improve your writing quality (bc mine is still ass lol). from when i was still starting out on tumblr and trying to get a following, i think i focused quite a bit on writing tropes that i know everyone will enjoy.

these generally are like the cliché ones, like hurt/comfort, sleeping on the couch, being clingy or whatever, just fluffy stories that you find everywhere.

for example, in 2021, i wrote jujutsu kaisen headcanons of you sleeping on the couch and like… that fic is still getting notes to this day (to my chagrin). so the more cliché, or fluffier, the stories you write, the better.

(MINORS LOOK AWAY, as an sfw writer, i wont sit here and act like people don’t enjoy nsfw though, so if you’re capable of doing so AND OF AGE, then why not try your hand 🤣🤣)

3. long fics and stories that take a lot of effort

despite how many short blurbs you may see in the tags on tumblr, a lot of people do enjoy long fics (me included!). people love their long fics with classic tropes interwoven throughout.

ofc, use the tags as they are the medium that you’ll be guaranteed interaction! i don’t think i need to tell anyone that anymore LUL

but these tips are the ones i have conjured off the top of my head. whether or not you choose to listen is completely up to you, but i wholeheartedly believe rule 1 is one to follow, no matter what. rule 2 is a great one to implement, and rule 3 is just bc i love reading long fics, as with a lot of other readers!

i hope this post has been helpful even just slightly :) thank you for your ask, anon! and i wish you much luck for your writing journey 🍀

[sissa-arrows]

Feel free to ignore this but i need a place to let this out cus im not active on tumblr much but with the current events ive been checking the tags and today ive noticed multiple posts (that gained a lot of traction unfortunately but are we surprised?) from zionists that basically call Palestinians antisemitic bc some use the word “jew” when they talk about israelis and i need to make some things clear: all these Palestinians have ever known their whole lives is jews who want to kill them. What exactly do these people expect?? Is it the fault of the Palestinians that their oppressors and killers are all jews??? What kind of fucked up logic of blaming the victim is this? They’re calling them jews bc thats what they all are!!! I’m Palestinian and have grown up around this language and know for a fact that when Palestinians use the term they dont mean Literally every single jew, or even the religion itself, they specifically mean the jews who are targeting and murdering them and making their lives a living hell, the word jew also most often than not goes hand in hand with the word zionist so we say “zionist jew” but even when the zionist part is dropped in day to day conversations its still subconsciously acknowledged. People on tumblr who have never set foot in occupied Palestine or ever interacted with a Palestinian simply do not get to police the language Palestinians use. They dont have the right. Palestinian Jews (yes, they exist, even if they’re a small percentage) also know and acknowledge this, they know they arent included in this. Its a word that gets used because we grew up around it basically. (And again, we grew up around it bc they literally are all jews! AND the israeli government and israeli settlers make a huuuge deal out of the fact that they have a right over the land BECAUSE theyre jews and its their “promised land” but Palestinians are supposed to gloss over that??? Over the fact that these murderers are using their religion as an excuse to murder us??) I also need to emphasize that this has been a tactic of Israeli propaganda to shut down any conversation around Palestinian oppression for decades!!! They’ve always been playing the antisemitism card whenever it serves them (whenever the oppression of Palestinians is brought up) when in reality they couldnt give less of a shit about actual jewish struggle

People refuse to put things in their context. They also refuse to acknowledge the horror of colonialism. Nobody but the colonized know how bad it is how horrible and violent it is. Nobody but the colonized know the breaking point when dying fighting is just a better option than anything else. Everyone can understand the horror of colonialism in a moral theorical way if they educate themselves but only the colonized understand the real horror.

People outside of Palestine need to be careful with the terms they use I will always correct them. But for Palestinians? I won’t tell them which words they should or shouldn’t use because there’s a context. Palestinians use the term Jews in the context of Palestine because that’s what they live what they grew up around. The people oppressing them, killing them, stealing their land happen to ALL be Jewish and they happen to claim to do it in the name of Judaism.

It’s also a settler colony situation. It means that every single settler is making a choice. There’s no such thing as a “liberal settler” or “liberal zionist” or an Israeli ally. A settler who actually cares about Palestinian will leave the fuck out of stolen colonized land. Some did already. They realized how the situation was horrific, they realized how the education system was raising their children to be racist supremacists and they came back to Europe.

Just take a look at the videos of Israeli leaving out of fear… compare them to historical images or refugees fleeing war and to colonizers being kicked out of a land that doesn’t belong to them. I can assure you that it looks much more like the second rather than the first.

Last thing. Israel encourages and feed that confusion between Jews and Zionists. Israel and Zionists are the first ones who use the term interchangeably and pretend they are synonymous. They are the one telling Jews in the rest of the world that they are targets too despite the fact that the Palestinians resistance didn’t not threaten Jews worldwide they threatened their colonizers. Calling out Palestinians without addressing that is ignorant at best, at worst it’s an hypocritical diversion meant to put on the same level the illegitimate racist unprovoked violence of the colonizers and the legitimate violence the colonized use to defend themselves.

[rapha3liii]

I know this makes me sound desperate for traction on my account but PLEASE reblog artists work! Regardless of if my art gets 20 notes or 500 notes the majority of those notes are likes. Likes, unfortunately, do not help boost an artists work besides in the already small circle its trapped in. The only way art (or any post) travels in any sort of way to other peoples dashes is by reblogs. This is not like Instagram or Twitter where likes play into an algorithm - literally the only way people see my art is if you reblog it to your blog and tag so others see it.

It just frustrates me because of course I can see that people are liking and enjoying my art - which is greatly appreciated - but regularly my art never travels because those people who like don't reblog. I get you dont want every post you like on your blog and that's fine - but this is a hugely overwhelming issue I've seen with so many arts and bloggers in general wherein new users who have recently migrated don't understand that liking does essentially nothing for the artists account or interactions. Please please please reblog artists work!!!! It will never get seen otherwise! While I don't do commissions often myself, so many artists completely rely on their work for their income and its so important that their platforms are boosted through reblogs <3

Just some examples from my own art:

Regardless of how many notes there are , whether it's 50, 70, 700 or over 1000 the reblog to like ratio is SO LITTLE

Like guys - on a piece of art I recieved over 900 likes... but only 69 reblogs. Do you see the issue here.

[halfusek]

Imma be honest with you, before BATDR came out, you literally held this fandom together with bandaids and stick glue. 2019-2022 was basically the dry age of Bendy content

haha thanks i tried my best

i Do enjoy being in a fandom, i've always looked up to the danny phantom phandom a lot cause the vibes there are just fantastic, there's a lot of things going on, people have many interactions with each other, so i wanted to try to introduce that to the batim fandom and i'd like to think that i sorta did

i know that it is a popular opinion to not engage with a large portion of the fandom but instead just grab a few friends and sit in a corner with them but like

engaging with a bigger portion of the fandom every now and then can be SO fun and give people an opportunity to meet other people and idk

fandoms are communities of people just united by liking A Thing so it can be challenging to make a space for many people to get along but i dont recall any super serious only fandom related dramas in batim?? weirdos are in every fandom and you just blast their asses into oblivion with a block button

and there have been cases when i felt kinda bad for blocking someone because that meant i'd exclude them from something i wanted to think of as a fandom-wide event for everyone who would obey it's rules but that's where this outlook on curating your experience into a smaller circle is very much the way to go lol

wait what am i talking about

aha yea 2019-2022 everything fucking DIED here but i was having a blast drawing my comic and also a lot of people who were into the sides of batim i was into mainly (the human characters) stayed around more than everyone else and it was really chill, i've met a lot of people and made many friendships :)

as the fandom was getting smaller there was a noticable drop in the amount of notes batim related posts were getting which is a very big symptom of a fandom dying but i think at some point it sorta stabilized who stayed there after batdr was delayed and delayed

i reblog and tag more than an usual tumblr user (when im active cuz sometimes i can not reblog anything for months because im busy lol) and that didnt start without a reason, it sure is a habit now and i really enjoy doing it, letting people know what i think about their stuff and putting nice things on display for others to see

reblogs are not just crucial for singular artists but also for fandoms as a whole, thats how you keep that train rollin

though here is a sad thing that many many artists dont reblog a lot, or reblog to their sideblogs that arent followed by nearly as many people as their main blogs

and thats like understandable, im the weirdo who puts a whole mess of many posts on my main but i think thats also the most effective way to help other people get traction and i never see this mentioned when people complain that tumblr users dont reblog as much stuff as they like

its even kinda funny to me when people complain about their stuff not getting reblogged when they dont reblog others stuff themselves at all xD though there is a bit of cyanide in that thought heheh

on the other hand reblogging doesnt work on stuff that i could see from other people: the stuff i reblog i get from browsing the bendy and the ink machine tag sorted by new + sometimes when i bored i scroll through my dash and reblog some random things but i follow 2k people so i dont really see any individuals art specifically, just a collection of random posts that i am able to scroll through in a few minutes (and every minute theres a bunch of new posts posted/reblogged by those i follow)

and that can take a long time! if ive been busy for months then scrolling through a few months worth of stuff people around the world made for bendy is so bad even on a beefy computer that it just pushes tumblr to its limits and takes HOURS to reblog and tag for me, and then i might even hit the daily post limit and have to continue tomorrow

but i enjoy doing this, bendy is my fixation after all and i fucking love art and what people can create for this thing that i like i soooooo desire to see it all

and i try to reblog as much as possible, though i dont obviously reblog *everything* from the tag, sometimes i just give a like or i just dont like the thing cuz its not in my liking and thats it

but i did make it a thing that during ink demonth i reblog all entries for the event no matter what my opinion of them is just to give some of that Exposure TM because hey maybe some of my followers Will like it

i dont run a super duper popular blog but there is a bunch of yall there and i think me reblogging something in this fandom at least may give a litol boost to the notes on a post

and its always fun to see peoples reactions that dont expect me to reblog from them but then i do and they freak out a little, i think i love it on the same level as getting comments on my own art :) its super wholesome

man by writing this post im procrastinating on something but fdnjkfdfd

but anyway thank you!! and im glad you think so because i did try to accomplish that :D

[fairie-grl]

https://www.tumblr.com/fairie-grl/742807151930638336/if-you-dont-like-max-thats-fine-no-one-is

I’m the one who wrote this and you really don’t get anything. He’s not a perfect person and I understand why the use of mongol does offend you, but here’s a couple points.

1) Saying a man isn’t usually racist DOES NOT make you racist. Unless he said he agreed or what he said wasn’t racist at all, then he isn’t racist

2) yes, I’m a poc who defended him, but saying I did it because I want him to have gay sex is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. I don’t like shipping and it’s so stupid of you to think everyone who defends him does it because of that reason

3) it is about being racist because that’s what your whole post was accusing him of. You literally said that he has been openly racist, admitted to being racist, and has said the N-word many times. You have no proof of him doing any of this. All you rely on is your word, and when people tell you that he isn’t being racist, you just say “no, he is.”

You have no leg to stand on anymore. You can’t just come on the site, lie about a man being racist, make it about something else, refuse to give any more proof on how he was racist, and then say people only wanted to defend him because they want him to have gay sex. at first, I was just assuming that you didn’t know you were in the wrong, but now I think you’re outright mental. You seriously need to think about this. Because some people are giving you genuine logic and facts, and all you say is “no, he is a racist, because I said so” I know that’s not exactly what you said, but that’s basically what everyone is getting.

If he has admitted to being racist, show proof. If he has said the N-word multiple times, as you’ve said in your tags, show proof. If he is as openly racist as you say, show proof. There’s no such thing as people being perfect, and I’m not saying that he hasn’t done some very shitty things, But he has changed from that time and is trying to become a better person. Yes, he has said some ablest slurs, but not once. Has he ever been racist like you accused him of, but you’re not gonna see that. You refuse to see what you wanna see, and read anything but what you wanna read. I sincerely hope that you take time off of this app and get some help because obviously you need it.

There's nothing more you can make of that. I think the wording that was used, even with the different kind of cultures and things they probably said when they were younger, was not correct.

"Let it be a lesson for the future not to use that word because it's very offensive, especially nowadays it gains more traction."

[echidna-auxiliatrix]

Incoherent vent post incoming

I really do fucking hate being a lesbian, ace-spectrum, and autistic. It makes existing on this website so damn hard. It's like these groups are always fucking against each other. "If you use aspec then youre ableist and also asexuals stole #actuallyautistic". Thats something ive heard over and over from certain dumbasses on the exclusionist side trying to use autistics as pawns in this stupid fucking discourse. I'm almost completely neutral on ace discourse at this point and damn every time I read something about it my blood fucking boils. Aspec never fucking meant autism. Aces didnt steal the #actually____ tags from us or anyone else. Those tags are meant to be a safe space for people who's main tags might be unsafe (ex. The autism tag being full of anti vaxxers and ableist and the asexual tag being flooded with porn) it seems like the same number of autistic people are on both sides of the discourse but neither side will quit using us as their pawns. Lesbians and asexuals constantly pit themselves against each other which I fucking hate. Certain aces say lesbophobic shit like constantly saying that lesbians are terfs and derailing lesbian positivity posts to talk about terfs and that one person who literally said anyone who uses the lesbian label is a terf. And lesbians saying shit abt aces like the whole "turbo virgins" deal and the whole "asexy" thing and shutting down ace headcanons. The truth is that lesbians and female aces (and I use female to mean woman not afab ppl) have more in common than we do different and we need to confront that and fucking get our shit together. Another thing that bothers me is how because autistic ppl are more likely to be asexual than allistics inclusionists can seem like theyre trying to protect autistics when honestly? The majority of ppl in this stupid discourse are allistics using us as pawns. And I know there are autistics on both sides and yeah y'all have your reasons and whatever but just please know that at the end of the day allistics ESPECIALLY neurotypical allistics are our oppressors and at any other point in history they wouldve gladly called us a bunch of retards. Aspec has never been a thing for autism and this comes from someone whos been lurking in the community since 2008 as a scared 8 year old little girl. I remember going on wrongplanet for a few minutes a week when I got home from school in 3rd grade just reading threads. Lesbians and aces (again, especially female aces) have to come together because tbh y'all dont realize the damage it does to people like me. Ill find a seemingly cool ace blog only to find out they're a garden variety liberal lesbophobe. Ive found many a lesbian blog thats violently aphobic. Like I just stumbled on a post from a person begging for help to pay their medical bills and I went onto their blog to see how theyve been doing recently and like. So much violent malicious intent towards asexuals...I just dont get it. In not welcome on either fucking side because each side hates one part of my identity. Just fucking stop it and be respectful you bunch of Dumbass freaks.

Tl;dr existing on tumblr is difficult for me as an autistic ace lesbian because both sides of ace discourse use autistics as pawns and the inclusionists hate lesbians and the exclusionists hate aces.

Ultimately, if I *had* to pick a side I'd still pick inclusionism because at the end of the day I believe aces and aros are inherently lgbt.

[firelxdykatara]

not gonna lie I would love to hear more about the drama and infighting that went on in The Vampire Diaries fandom if you have the time (and also want to use that time to give your experience with the fandom, which from the snippets you've told sounds Not Fun so I get it if you don't want to lol)

oh god, there was like, SO MUCH, i just

i really feel like tvd is one of those fandoms that is so hard to describe without a lot of ‘you’d have to have been there’, but it really felt like this huge and all-consuming beast for about five years until the show finally imploded and the fandom basically turned on it en masse. (you ever see that post going around that’s like ‘if you ever want to know what true regret feels like, ask someone who once called tvd their favorite show’? still a mood, all these years later. basically the entire fandom thought the show should have just bowed out with whatever shreds of dignity it had left at the end of season 6, and became more of a hatedom than a fandom for the last two seasons. when you have an entire fandom cheering news of your show’s cancellation, i think that’s a sign you done fucked up, julie.)

first and most infamous, of course, are the ship wars. which are pretty much inevitable in any teen-centered drama, and i really think the CW fucking thrives on them, but it was particularly egregious in TVD’s case because not only was the base premise of the show a love triangle, but the two main romantic leads were brothers that the show constantly pit against one another--in pursuit of elena’s affections, but also because it kept up this insistence on the ‘good brother/bad brother’ dichotomy which stopped making sense after about season 2 (by which time we have found out that the good brother was never as good as he appeared, and the bad brother has been growing and isn’t nearly as bad as he pretends to be)--and the question of which brother ‘deserved’ elena (and no, what elena wanted very rarely factored into these discussions, especially in the team stefan camp because they turned on her when what she wanted was no longer The Good Brother, but i’ll get to that in a bit) was hotly contested.

i’m not kidding when i say the shipping wars were vicious. i started watching tvd shortly after it began to air, which was late 2009, and kept up with it fairly sporadically over the years. i didn’t come onto tumblr until 2011/2012, and by then, the fandom was already pretty much a garbagefire. there were anti ship and anti character blogs, any time something bad happened for one ship the rival ship would invade the tags to gloat about it (seasons 3 and 4 were especially rough, and i’m not gonna pretend delena fans weren’t just as bad about tag invasion and shit, but as that was my side of the road i saw a lot more of the stelena shippers being assholes, which soured my opinion on the ship a long time before i started rewatching and realized the red flags were there from the start), confessions blogs were popular also toxic as fuck (so much fighting happened in the notes of those posts, good gods), and this was right around when twitter’s popularity was on the rise and the line between Celebrity and Fan was thinning, so the fandom was absolutely atrocious to much of the tvd cast and crew.

(some of them deserved a lot of the later backlash, but in the early years a lot of it was ‘how dare you write the story in a way i dont like, you terrible fucking person’, and gods don’t get me started on the dobsley vs nian Thing)

i think what really encapsulates my feelings on the tvd fandom as a whole, though, is the way they (to this DAY) treated elena gilbert, which can be summed up in one meme that gained a lot of traction around season 3 if i remember right: that gif of pam from true blood, with the text altered to read “i’m so OVER elena and her precious doppelganger vagina!”

i swear at one time i had over half the active tvd fan accounts on tumblr blocked, because i got to a point where i would no longer tolerate elena hate, and she was (and still is, in what remains of the fandom; you’ll see a lot of ‘elena was one of the worst things about the show’ takes from ex-fans, too) one of the most widely despised characters in the entire fandom. because she -checks smudged writing on hand- was a traumatized teenage girl who -reads off a crumpled notecard- couldn’t always perfectly sort out her own feelings and -squints at the ceiling- sometimes made mistakes or bad decisions. (except a lot of the fandom also insisted that she was a mary sue who had no character traits or flaws or faults and it was like....make up your fucking minds???? is she a calculating conniving bitch whose somehow manipulating these centuries old vampires to tie them around her little finger or is she a boring flat character with no depth and no flaws??? jfc)

there was this massive double standard, too--like, stefan and damon could fuck whoever they wanted and that was fine, but elena was constantly raked over the coals for the crime of developing romantic feelings for the two men who had become constants in her life and whom she cared for deeply, and oh my GOD the slut shaming that happened when elena slept with damon was fucking wild. (and also happened in canon lmfao. like the show had one of elena’s best friends basically call her diseased on screen for falling in love with someone other than stefan. it was gross and ridiculous and the friend in question was also being a giant hypocrite at the time since she was happily flirting with someone who was directly responsible for the deaths of like four of elena’s loved ones and her own boyfriend’s mother but that’s beside the point) but like elena was called a slut and a bitch and a whore for ‘cheating’ on stefan (she hadn’t, and she had in fact broken up with him on screen the episode earlier) and ‘immediately’ jumping into bed with damon, even though none of them said fucking boo when stefan had one night stands or damon had fuckbuddies or whatever.

shit, caroline didn’t get any of this treatment when she started falling for tyler while dating matt! which isn’t to say i think she should have, just that i think it’s fucking ridiculous that elena was absolutely demonized by the fandom for daring to have feelings for two guys at once and eventually acting on them--despite the fact that the entire premise of the show was a love triangle. it’s not a love triangle if both sides don’t eventually get explored, and the crew had been pretty explicit about the fact that delena was going to happen at some point--but when it did, a huge chunk of the fandom absolutely threw a fit.

and a lot of these elena haters were alleged stelena stans, and i say alleged because they hated her so much for not wanting stefan’s dick anymore that it was clear they were really stefan stans and only wanted stelena to be endgame because they wanted stefan to ‘win’ at the end of the day, because ‘he’s the good brother’ so he deserved elena more.

it was all very gross and very misogynistic and very sex shaming (apparently delena was a ‘shallow’ and ‘superficial’ relationship because they had sex after two years of unrequited feelings slowly becoming requited and then pining for ages on both sides, and because they had a lot of on screen chemistry that the show capitalized on for years so of course they did a lot of making out and shit but it’s not like stelena didn’t have its fair share of making out and sex scenes, stefan was just too much of a coward to let elena top i’d apologize for that joke but i’m really not sorry because it’s true), and when i say it was egged on by the crew, that’s because they refused to let the love triangle die back in season 4 when it should have.

they insisted on stringing stelena fans along, dropping little bread crumbs to keep them invested, like dreams of a future where they were married and revealing that stefan was also a doppelganger and he and elena were descended from a pair of star-crossed lovers (a plot that ultimately went nowhere, to no one’s great surprise), and then fucking like. julie plec turned around and threw nina under the bus after she chose not to extend her contract and pretended that stelena might have happened again if she hadn’t left the show, which....i mean frankly i wouldn’t put it past her, but it would have been shitty writing. then again, she thought having a vampire pregnancy where a uterus was magically transplanted from a witch into a vampire that could somehow......carry the babies to term.... made sense and was a good way to accomodate candice’s RL pregnancy rather than like literally ANYTHING else, soooooo. but anyway julie saying that around like, end of s6 sparked off a new wave of nina hate and elena hate and ship wars bc they SEers took it as ‘confirmation’ that stelena was REALLY meant to be endgame and it was all just a hot fucking mess

another thing is that, while tvd was in its prime before the anti/purity culture shit started picking up any real steam, there was still this pervasive attitude throughout the fandom that if you liked Damon, you were A Bad Person. liking damon was apparently grounds for insults and harassment, and apparently he was The Worst Person on the Show even though literally nothing he does on screen is any worse than shit we know stefan has done (and frankly every other vampire too, but i mention stefan specifically because he was always held up--in the show but especially in the fandom--as the Good Brother while damon was the Bad One, and if you liked damon more then that had to mean your morals were dodgy and you clearly couldn’t appreciate what a heroic and saintly figure dear stefan was and....oops, i’m sorry, my salt keeps leaking -cough-).

meanwhile klaus quickly became a fandom darling despite not even really having much of a redemption arc (on tvd anyway, he just became more ‘affably evil’ as the show went on and more inclined to work with the main characters rather than try to kill them; i have no idea what went on over on his show, though), and like i can 100% appreciate liking villains and not caring that they do dodgy villainous shit, even just liking them bc they’re hot and wanting them to kiss a main character bc they have insanely good chemistry (yes i ship klaroline, no i won’t apologize for it, they could have been Really Great), it’s just really the double standard that gets me.

and all of this, incidentally, required ignoring some truly gross shit stefan was responsible for wrt his relationship with elena, that frankly it has always bothered me never really got addressed in the show. i get why elena herself would never be able to actually call him on it, but the fact is that he stalked her for months after he first saw her and thought she was katherine (meanwhile it only took damon .5 seconds to realize she was someone else entirely, but that’s another topic entirely), and then he deliberately inserted himself into her life because, in his words, ‘i have to know her’. he never gave a thought to how his presence in her life might affect her (or rather, he did, and tormented himself about it in his internal monologue, but never let this actually dissuade him from disrupting her life), and elena would wind up blaming herself for every tragedy that befell her friends and loved ones as a result of getting mixed up in vampire bullshit even though none of it was her fault--she literally blamed herself for existing but most of the fandom didn’t give a fuck about that lmfao--and stefan did shit like find out that she was adopted and then withhold this information from her until she got pissed about another secret he was keeping (her resemblence to katherine) and drop it on her to try and distract her from her very reasonable anger, and like... i should stop before this becomes a whole rant about how much i hate stefan fucking salvatore, but the point is, he did a lot of really sketchy shit he never answered for and elena never really took him to task for, and the fandom just kept eating up his insistence that he was the Good Brother and therefore he deserved to have elena, and if she didn’t want him anymore it was because she was a heinous bitch who didn’t deserve him.

uh.....i think i got off track there. and there’s probably a lot of shit i missed, like i think i was incandescent with rage for most of seasons 5 and 6 so i missed a lot of the interfandom shit cause i was too busy being increasingly pissed off at the show itself, but if nothing else this should give you an idea of how much of a goddamn cesspit the fandom was while the show as in its prime. there’s a reason both the show and the fandom have such a lousy reputation lmfao.

[into-the-clintoris]

Please read the reblog-tags on Marywhal's post, because other POC are actually complaining about the racism thing. Like, jesus, we know the situation is shitty and a lot of people decided to be assholes to Travis for the most stupid details, but calling the McElroys out on their racism is not reaching for straws, specially after it's been brought up before and ignored.

I dont think I ever said that its grasping at straws, just that people liked to use criticisms of Graduation to be literally disgusting towards Travis. My point is that this conversation tends to lack nuance because a lot of people care more about canceling Travis than improving TAZ.

I think maybe that POC comment was out of line, but I really can't fix the version of the post thats getting way more traction than I wanted it to. Someone asked me in the tags if it was ok to rb and I probably should have said no but its lowkey too late now. I'm not trying to downplay ANY criticism, I definitely feel like that critique of the indigenous-coding of the centaurs is valid, its just frustrating to me that this entire fandom can get up in arms over something that the people it affects don't even care about. I understand the frustrations with them not addressing it, but please people. I'm frustrated too.

Overall, that post was meant to be bitter, venty, and was fueled by one take that vindicated me. I hope it didn't seem like I was going after anyone specific, but please. You are arguing with a bitter vague post about how I'm not having fun in this fandom anymore due to the poison I've seen spewed on Twitter, not an essay on racism in TAZ. That might seem hypocritical since that post also complains about nuance but im sick of being the person to analyze and bring nuance to the table. I'm sick of being the one asking every hot head in this fandom to calm down. Im frustrated because hatred towards one of my favorite creators made a piece of media I liked not fun anymore. If you want to talk nuance, I'm definitely all ears. I love media analysis. But that is not the post. Fuck.

[yoshi-p]

everyone and their dog is doing it and everyone is absolutely allowed to share their opinions so i want a turn but first let me clarify:

hello im yase, been around since 1.0. I am of turkish and nogai descent and i can speak fluently in tatar, turkish but my english doesn’t hold 100% so i will be all over the place.

Unfortunately this will all be word of mouth and may be taken as vague posting, but I have experienced issues since the release of 4.0 and would like to give my opinions. I want to let this all off my chest this is just a huge vent basically so i guarantee my english will be terrible.

the most important point: NEVER EVER SPEAK FOR ANOTHER CULTURE. NEVER EVER SPEAK ABOUT A CULTURE YOU DON’T KNOW. YOU HAVE SPREAD FALSE INFORMATION AND I AM SO HURT.

another point is ITS A VIDEO GAME GUYS (does not apply to everything but some people really need to take a step back because people are concerned.)

Here’s the hot topic I’ll talk of first: garleans. I personally do not play one as I prefer to play characters that would never be involved in a sense with the political agenda because in real life im too stupid to comprehend anything like that so i wouldn’t even know how my character would behave with the hot topics. I really do think people need to take a step back and see that everyone who is putting in their input is making solid points but personally I would never compare them to nazi germany though I see why people are generalising. I always saw it as tsardom of russia with the use of roman influence as well, something obvious in naming conventions and the way the ranks/monarchy(?) works but it’s not so clear what the main influences of most places in this game if you have a look at the bigger picture. Without like full on spoiling, its weird to have this view to me with the knowledge that ascians are behind this. Are you implying anyone who plays or was influenced by ascians is also under this umbrella? 

Also why THE HELL WOULD YOU TAG SOMETHING KNOWING IT WOULD GET A LOT OF TRACTION AND RESPONSE THEN BE LIKE “you guys misunderstood, I was expressing my feelings” lol no. “ I don’t understand where this is coming from, and at this point, I don’t really want to.” then why did you even fucking bother do it in private dont tag it.

You are COMPLETELY valid to feeling uncomfortable, it is fine because with how much of this world we have there will be aspects some of us don’t like. You are not inclined to involve yourself with someone if they roleplay as a garlean but you do not need to start publicising it in a way that will paint the community in black and white when its truly a wider spectrum.

YOU CHOOSE WHO YOU INVOLVE YOURSELF WITH AND WHO YOU PLAY WITH, PLEASE GET AWAY FROM PEOPLE WHO GIVE YOU NEGATIVE FEELINGS OR YOU’LL SPREAD IT TO OTHERS.

from that initial and very brief tagged post there popped up many others and new discourse is arising, opening discussions about many things which is better then being blind to it all. but if you have personal grievances with someone and you state its over, let it be over. It’s not healthy behaviour. it’s also troubling to see someone complain a lot about the game and continue to play, no one is forcing you or holding a gun to your head. take breaks if you need to and play less frequently. like, real life is so much more important and there are people in this community that prioritise relationships with players etc.

Also, please stop fucking talking about mongolian/turkic/turkish culture like you know things. 99% of the big mouths in this community are americans. like majority are white americans. 

over the course of this expansion i have had many people of varied backgrounds share with me some terrible experiences and i myself have seen some truly stupid shit. 

WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU LEARN OF OUR CULTURE AND WHERE TO CONTINUE DOING SO. DO NOT INTERPRET MEDIA AS ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF CULTURE.

it is absolutely not hard to tag a post and ask around, someone will pop up. I’ve been doing my very best to let everyone i know that i can help with learning about my culture or to find someone who would be more then happy to explain and share with other cultures. But when you go off of a documentary you saw of Genghis khan or only know of the tourist white people scenes of istanbul you as a community say some TRULY dumb shit.

I like to try and be patient because i myself when approaching someone of a culture i admire and am curious about i want that in turn. But if you say to me things like “Ainu aren’t real” or “Tatar people have nothing in common with tribes from the Altai mountains” its hard to do so.

FFXIV regions are not just “Germany” “Turkey” “Mongolia”. If you think this, it’s clear to me you don’t know shit and are too lazy to explore, further just google shit its not that hard. I had someone tell me that my people could never be in this game since its “Straight up mongolia” fucks sake NO ITS NOT. The designs vary and i can see the differences in simple things like words because i actually bother to do research even coming from a turkic culture. There were some beautiful little things dropped that linked to not only my people but others like Uyghur and Altai. The only place in FFXIV i think could only have a singular influence is Kugane, because from a foreigner’s perspective that’s already interesting enough. Many people have grievances and real issues with how SE has handled Doma’s influences and no one ever talks about that. Representation for asia in media has turned into this mess of specific east asian countries, the trio that even then gets categorized into China/Japan with brief mentions of Korean culture. 

Its frustrating. There are people who are happy to teach you. Who are willing to show what is wrong with the picture.

I have read several posts about Turkey/istanbul/Antalya. Yall fuckin weird you guys seem to think its in U.A.E or some shit with how you act. It’s in the Mediterranean/Europe/Asia/Middle East and there is no such thing as a specific looking Turkish person. You claim everyone is specifically white/brown, HELL NO. It’s a mixed nation and that’s the history of the land, if you had ever fucking stepped in turkey and spoke to any person on the street they’ll say their heritage that lead them to there. People claim Ala mhigo’s influences are turkey but i have yet to see that. As someone who has lived there and has heritage there and is strongly connected to that culture, i dont see it. sure the ala mhigan gown had patternings but thats also present in my nogai culture too because parts of turkey’s society descended from the line of the Kayi tribe. Just fucking LEARN TO READ GUYS. None of you guys even know what the altai mountains mean and i could sit and explain over and over again if you let people SPEAK.

Look at Thavnairian items. We have outfits that are completely different, a full length dress and then a bustier. you can’t start generalising things in video games to be one culture you have to realise most places in this game have several influences. We don’t know a lot but everything we have been given has been varied enough to pin point it to ONLY one influence.

I don’t want to just keep going about this simply because im growing frustrated.

The thing with Viera complaints. I think some are valid but some are stupid. For one as I make this post it hasn’t even been confirmed so there is no reason for policing Viera to a severe extent. Considering all the Ivalice content in game has been an alternate universe kind of thing its dumb as shit. But feol viera being made without understanding the knowledge that people who have played rw picked up is quite frustrating. As a community, its important to help people when we have information that others may need that they cant understand the context of.

I know people are worried about them being fetishized, that is my legitimate fear too as a huge ivalice fan. But this is a repeated cycle especially when we consider generalizations like miqo’te especially seekers and belly dancing or when au ra arrived and people thought xaela were genghis khan basically. 

The game is not solid, there are so many holes in the lore and the plots and i know people hate that but we fill the gaps with our own opinions and theories. While I understand some people think we need to move forward in 2019 because “japan is xenophobic”, its a very difficult thing to do. THEY DO HIRE PEOPLE FOR CULTURE ADVISING. THEY TRAVEL OFTEN AND DEVELOP WITH THIS. IT’S NOT LIKE THEY WENT ON GOOGLE AND SAID “yeah a japan land would be fun” they literally have people hired specifically for this stuff. however, at the end of the day its a company that has yet to show it can evolve with the times. Its becoming more and more evident with the recent patterns of main titles in FF and side projects having so many issues in story/lore/management. remember 1.0 basically died being absolute garbage and this is salvaged from that.

its really late and i had a terrible evening so i may not be making the most sense but theres more important things to worry about then to make this game a miserable experience when it could be a huge learning opportunity for everyone. There’s no need to generalise people into categories because of characters they choose to develop but its important to note with majority of people standing up higher on the pedestal are those speaking for the minorities groups that have direct influences in the game.

also lol if you fucking say ainu aren’t real to me one more time i will fucking throttle you

[thestorytellerofkpop]

Thoughts of a frustrated writer...

So...here's the thing...Tumblr fucked us writers. Literally, with the 100 "paragraph" break bullshit. My newest fanfic has over 100 breaks and even though it's posted and up and available to read, I don't think it's getting any traction because of the stupid, broken tag system and because the 100 break limit is causing it to not be found. I know that if you post texts with over 100 breaks from desktop, it'll show up completely. However. When you tag it does it show up in mobile feed? Does it show up at all?

Or maybe it's just me? Maybe I'm just not making good enough stories, or maybe they're just not interesting enough for people to want to read? I'm writing things I'm passionate about and writing things that I want to read...but over the past few months with the algorithm changes, the banning of NSFW content, and every other fucked up thing Tumblr is doing, it's very frustrating being a small, growing writer on this platform now.

I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated because a year or two ago, I would be getting nice comments, notes, asks, but now it all seems like it's gone away not only for me, but for other smaller writers with Tumblr being the way it is, with our posts getting lost and/or not showing up in the tags.

And I know that numbers don't matter when you're doing what you love. Don't get me wrong, I love writing. I love creating stories and I love immersing myself into a different world. But you have to understand that sinking feeling you get when you've worked on something for weeks, even months or years, and then it gets washed away in a throng of broken code, of broken tags and broken algorithms.

You don't want to think that no one wants to read your work, that the story is just not getting traction is all, but sometimes you do think that way. That what you're writing isn't good enough, that no one wants to read your work, and the numbers prove that sometimes. And it's completely and utterly frustrating.

I'm sorry if this seems like I'm whining, or if it seems like I'm complaining, but at this point I'm in a slump and I don't know how to get myself out of it.

With everything that's going on, I've decided that I want to start to transfer my works onto AO3. Not the reactions, but the actual stories I've written. I don't know what the future of my writing career may be. But if it turns out that AO3 gets more traction than Tumblr does, then I might just transfer to AO3 permanently.

I don't want to, because I have friends here on Tumblr and love and support from them. But it's getting to the point where it seems like posting full length fanfiction to Tumblr isn't worth it for me, as a small writer, anymore. I'm getting no traction, my works aren't showing up in even half the tags, the hyperlinks prevent my work from showing up in the search engine and tags. And I'm just done. Especially since I have a new series that I want to release that I've worked so hard on, but I dont want to hurt myself or my confidence by posting it on Tumblr where no one will see/read it.

For now, I'll still be using Tumblr, but please know that change may be coming for me. The reactions, drabbles, and moodboards will still go up here, but the stories will be integrated to AO3 over the course of February.

If you want to follow me on AO3, I'm @/thestorytellerofkpop on that site as well. If I decide to write full length stories there permanently, I will link the AO3 account in a future post and in my Tumblr bio.

Thanks for reading,

~Germane

[kiyye]

do you have any tips for beginner cosplayers trying to gain exposure ?

oH JEEZ i may not have the best advice for this because i don’t put a whole lot of effort into advertising/exposure for my stuff. i just kinda like,,,, make it.

but anyways!!!! when i first started my cosplay instagram, I gained a lot of exposure through doing those cosplay contest things??? like you know the ones where people have a post for each character and you can get all your friends to go vote for you??? I love love love those because they often have like under 1k or even under 100 categories, and that can be sO SO helpful when trying to get urself out there. Usually it’s just nomination-by-vote, so enlist a friend to go comment your name. Or vote for yourself!

However. Thats pretty instagram specific??? I don’t think there’s a comparable phenomenon on tumblr. I’m also not sure how often people do those in fandoms other than the homestuck fandom. So here’s some more cross-platform advice:

1. USE TAGS!!! dont be afraid to use them holy shit. Obviously don’t tag your cosplay, like, “cooking photography” or something that doesn’t relate to the content of the post. But I tag all my cosplay on insta with “photography” and “transguy” and some other vague things in addition to all the obligatory tags of the characters name/ the fandom. there is literally no shame in adding a bunch of tags to ur shit. same thing goes for tumblr!!!!! there used to be this thing where??? your post would only show up in the tagged pages of the first five tags you used??? I’m not sure if that still exists but I always put the most important tags first.

2. Idk how to explain this but you can get a lot of momentum from like,,, riding the hype waves??? Like cosplaying things that are popular and current, producing content at a rapid rate, and tagging it appropriately, thus allowing it to get to the “most popular” sections of very very busy tags. For example, I managed to put together a davepeta cosplay like a week after the character was introduced and get nice looking professional photos of it up within the next week. I got a lot of activity coming in from the davepeta tags, because people were checking up on what stuff had been made for this brand new character. Same thing with my mettaton, which I did makeup tests for during the peak of Original Undertale Hype. 

LET ME STRESS. this is not me saying “only cosplay popular shit.” in the long term, it is way more fulfilling to just cosplay things youre really interested in regardless of hype. that also helps u build an actual Audience, because people will defs be more interested in Unique content that you put heart into, rather than you just churning out cosplays of every new anime character. You may even get people interested in new media if you cosplay something they haven’t heard of! I got a whole bunch of messages from people who started listening to TAZ because they saw my taako cosplay!!!! WHICH IS SO COOL so please cosplay whATEVER YOU WANT and also dont get discouraged if a cosplay of an oc or a less popular show or somethin get less likes!!! in the end, cosplaying popular stuff = a Lot of people go :D. cosplaying underappreciated, niche stuff = a few select people go 8′’’DDDD !!! :DD !!! 8DDD !! 8D !!!!!! and their whole day is made.

but yeah try watching a show that u hear is popular and cosplaying ur fav character. it can be very rewarding in terms of exposure.

3. Do collab stuff!!! Even if it’s just you and a friend, even if that friend doesn’t have a cosplay account for you to get traction from. Its just nice for people to go on your account and see that you’re involved with other people. Idk much about the less-than-5k cosplay culture on tumblr, but if you use instagram DO A BUNCH OF S4Ss!!!!!!!!!!!!! and if people do those on tumblr, do them on here too. also like comment on a bunch of posts! be passionate!!!! be FRIENDLY!!!! i try really hard to seem friendly because i am actually a very friendly person, and idk exactly how to explain/teach how to do that, but like. be friendly. be positive about the things u love.

THATS ALL, I HOPE IT CAN HELP YOU!!!!!!!!!! also like if you (ANY OF YOU) ever need a shoutout just message me on here!!! i can reblog ur shit!!!!! i gotchu!!! and i can do shoutouts on my story on insta too :DDDDDD