#probably wouldn't really have a consistent update schedule either

[e2019]

my new boss is the biggest asshole of them all so far. example: on tuesday & wednesday i was scheduled to work at a site i had never been to before. i had absolutely zero knowledge of the site, & i wasn't provided any info about it (not even a vague rundown of what my responsibilities would be) either. i wouldn't have even known that this was the plan if i hadn't checked my schedule. but it's fine bc i check my schedule religiously since this is the norm. it's very rare that i ever go to a new site knowing anything about it other than the name & address of the place and the start/end time of my shift. so i didn't think anything of it.

this was added to my schedule a little less than a week prior. zero communication about it until finally on tuesday morning, my boss's boss called me. i ofc missed the call since i work overnights (so he called me at the equivalent of like 2am for my sleep schedule), and i've started putting my phone on silent when i go to bed because if my boss doesn't answer his phone half the time, then why should i?

anyways, he left a voicemail saying that it's a really easy site, basically all i'd have to do is sit in my car all night long. well i don't have my own car, i have to borrow someone else's car (shared btwn 3 ppl total) to get to work (or uber when that's not possible). it's already difficult enough to arrange that as it is. in the past i worked some sites similar to this, but eventually we agreed it's not worth it for me to take the car for 12hrs straight so no one else can use it when it's not even necessary for me to do so bc i could just go work at any other site instead. this is something that i've discussed multiple times with 2 of my previous bosses, and it always made them get SO pissy with me even tho i give them no other problems + they hire ppl who don't even have a license + when i was hired i told them i have a license, but having my own vehicle and/or even driving at all were not requirements for my employment (they were just bonuses).

so tuesday afternoon i called my boss's boss back, no answer. then i called my boss, he answered. i explained the above to him and said "sorry due to my vehicle situation i'm not gonna be able to work this site unless y'all can provide me with a company vehicle to use for it." this is not an outlandish idea because i've also worked multiple similar sites where i did get a company vehicle to drive. plus i know they have tons of vehicles at the main office just sitting there starting to rust. but he was basically just like "umm no wtf why would we do that. ok so i guess we're taking you off that site. thanks."

the next day (wednesday) i called my boss several times throughout the day (from morning-evening) and never got an answer. finally my boss called me back just after 5pm. i missed the call but called him back about 15min later. what i had really wanted to talk with him about was switching to a different position that would allow me to have a consistent schedule bc i'm getting annoyed by shit like this + getting tons of hours one week then nothing the next, etc. i had brought this up with him before, and he said he would look into it and get back to me, but ofc he didn't.

however, i noticed that the new site had been removed from my schedule for tuesday (yesterday) but not wednesday (today). i figured it was probably just an oversight, like they just forgot to update it or something since my schedule is always fucked up. but i decided that i should confirm what's going on with that just to be safe. so that's the first thing that i said to my boss when i finally got ahold of him. and he said "yeah you said you couldn't work there, but that was yesterday." and i thought to myself, "wtf does this idiot think i just bought a new car overnight or what?" but i apologized and explained the situation once again and said "sorry that's my fault for not explaining myself clearly but it's not just yesterday or today i apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause but i'm unable work that site or any sites similar to it ever unless i get another vehicle eventually."

and he said "and you're only just telling me this right now? 2hrs before the start of the shift?" and i apologized again and said "well it had been my intention to inform you with our discussion yesterday. i also tried to get ahold of you earlier today." and i tried to continue by saying sorry i would've left a voicemail but your inbox is full (& has been for months btw) i probably should have sent a text but i honestly wasn't expecting to have this misunderstanding or for this to still be an issue after yesterday but he cut me off and said "we're going to need you to solve your transportation issue. thank you." and hung up.

fucking moron it's not even a transportation issue, i get to & from work every single day just fine. i've been wondering if that was just a stupid choice of words there or if it's evidence that he STILL doesn't fully comprehend my situation. anyways from my point of view i don't think i did anything wrong here, but my boss acted like i did, so now i'm really afraid of him. i've been trying to work up the courage to call him again to ask about being switched to a permanent site, but i've been too pussy.

well i guess i have no choice but to call him now bc about an hour ago he called me, and when i didn't answer he left both a voicemail & a text just saying for me to call him back when i can. i'm so nervous... and the worst part is this just means i'm gonna have to call him once more so i can hopefully finally talk about what i actually want to talk about, except after whatever is about to happen, i'm probably gonna be even more scared. assuming i'm not about to get fired i guess.

[journey-to-the-attic]

s4 (jtta-ified)

i received an ask about how i might redo s4 in the lieu of how i redid s1 for jtta, but then i ended up losing the ask (i got duplicates of it for some reason and accidentally deleted the original ask as well), so i’m putting my response here in its own post--

if i was going to write a full-length sequel to jtta, this’d probably be its plot - though there'd be a bunch of like bonus one shots to fill the space between too. since i’ve already had these notes accumulating for a while, i’ve got enough detail here that i could reasonably turn it into an actual fic? essentially i’m saying that it’s no longer a impossibility, so i guess you could ignore this if you wanted to go into a potential sequel blind - but it’s also not definitely going to happen, so keep that in mind

unlike jtta, which still followed all of the plot beats of s1, i'm basically reinventing the new s4 characters and forming my own narrative around them entirely, so this is mainly free of s4 spoilers i think?? i still haven’t actually caught up, so if any of this is massively contradicting to canon... well, what else is new haha

!!long post ahead!!

s4 brings up the issue of demons in the devildom not agreeing with diavolo's policy and disliking the exchange program, but this comes out of nowhere and isn't brought up at all in previous seasons (as far as i remember)

not to mention it wouldn't fit in with what the r.a.d. is like in jtta

so instead:

the r.a.d. is populated by demons from the main devildom city, the residents of which are what you'd call modern/progressive demons. they're not necessarily young, they're just open-minded as a result of living close to the centre of the devildom's cultural development (which, before diavolo being placed in charge, was extremely slow, but has been accelerating since he became acting ruler)

to these folk, they consider the old king's rule obsolete, and diavolo is their king as far as they're concerned

so students at the r.a.d. are largely supportive of diavolo and his plan to unite the three realms (though they don't all necessary think it'll work), and most are at least neutral if not positive on the exchange program

however, the main city and the r.a.d.'s students only make up about 35% of the devildom's population, the rest of which is largely spread out in more rural settings

this larger chunk of the demon population still thinks of diavolo's dad as their true king, and is the one that disapproves of diavolo's uniting-the-three-worlds plan - you could consider them the devildom's version of old-fashioned conservative folk

once diavolo is made aware of this, he immediately begins plans to help change their minds

this is all very simplified, but basically he invites solomon, luke, simeon and ik back for another exchange year (they accept), and also extends an open invitation to the r.a.d. to all of that old-fashioned population

this is how om mephistopheles comes into the plot - here, he's part of this old-fashioned population, didn't previously attend the r.a.d., and only starts when he accepts diavolo's invitation. he's also the only one that does so

(he's considered a noble because, in the devildom, being noble just means that you're above a certain age and were associated with the old king's court, not including those who were just employed there)

(mephistopheles only came into the picture fairly late into the old king's rule, so didn't know him well, and subsequently is a little more open-minded than the demons he lives around - but not by a lot)

raphael comes in because he ends up joining simeon and luke, ostensibly just because he was curious about the devildom, but in actuality it was because the high council wanted him to keep an eye on things

especially on simeon, who's been very out-spoken about the celestial realm's issues ever since he returned from the first exchange program, as well as ik, who's been mentioned by simeon and luke a lot

and thirteen reaches out to diavolo after hearing through the grapevine about the exchange program starting again - because she's curious about the human who died and came back to life, being a reaper who deals in life and death

so that's the set up!

the main plot is that diavolo is working to garner more acceptance from that rural devildom population with the exchange students as spokespeople - mostly the original four, but he does get raphael and thirteen involved too

there's one sub-plot for each new character, which each also has some of the side characters involved, since they don't get as much spotlight in jtta

also, my version of simeon's s4 subplot would basically just be this: he's even more disillusioned with the celestial realm now than he was after the war, he's attempting to make changes to make it less of the not-great-place that it is, and the high council doesn't like that

it's not quite as serious as in the original (i'm pretty sure it involves the ring of light from s2, which isn't a factor in our version, since s2's events didn't happen), but it's still a running plot thread

the brothers are still present throughout all of this, but act more as helpers and advice-givers - since their primary arcs were all in jtta, their arcs in this plot are most background running ones

the subplots intersect with each other and the main plot, and they come in chunks for all three parties, but for efficiency's sake we'll just summarise each character's plot line separately

mephistopheles' subplot:

starts first: he arrives at the r.a.d. and has extreme culture shock because of how used to his traditionalist home environment he is

he still admires diavolo, but more subtly and also more subconsciously than in canon

behaves quite standoffishly with students who try to befriend him, doesn't make a lot of friends right off the bat, kind of hates his experience for the first few weeks

the first demon he befriends is actually wiz - who kind of speaks his whole high-class language and so is able to communicate with him, and so he joins the newspaper club

right off the bat: he and jtta mephisto do not like each other

they have completely contradictory personalities and principles, and mephistopheles wants to be a serious club while mephisto's all about the wacky joke papers

and of course they also don't like that they share a name

(normally this isn't possible, but with mephisto's backstory, the rule of each demon's name having to be unique because of magic stuff doesn’t apply to him)

mephistopheles's arc involves him moving past his ingrained prejudices against change and the other two realms, letting go of the idea of 'more magic power = superior', and beginning to use his noble position among those old fashioned demonfolk as a force for progress

(those folk respect him because he was associated with the old king)

another theme in mephistopheles' arc would be a sort of impostor syndrome - he enjoys the respect he gets from his peers where he's from, which is partly why he acts so haughty, but he also feels deep down that he doesn't deserve it

because 1. he actually believes more in diavolo as a ruler than the old king, and 2. he never actually met the old king in person

mephistopheles also slowly recognises that being a passive listener in the very archaic and often harmful views of the demons around him is pretty bad, even if he doesn't usually actively engage in it

diavolo gets involved in this arc - and, whether or not this ends up in romantic territory, so does our mephisto

they're both linked to the time before diavolo taking the throne, but mephisto's moved forward and is doing his own loony thing, while mephistopheles is still partially stuck in the past and on traditional values

because he's older, mephisto is also a representation of the fact that mephistopheles shouldn't go along with the prejudice just because he was 'bOrN In a DIffEreNt tImE', because mephisto was around for arguably even worse times, and has turned out fine by now anyway

and it's always better late than never to become a better person

so over time mephisto essentially grabs mephistopheles by the hair and YANKS him out of that comfortable, prejudice-complicit shell

(which would eventually end in either them just being friendly rivals, or mephistopheles gaining a massive crush and then them becoming tentative boyfriends)

anyway mephisto is what gets mephistopheles out of that shell, but ik and diavolo help him actually recognise, adjust, and settle into life outside it

diavolo because he's the guy mephistopheles looks up to, so he begins following his example of always being eager to learn about new cultures, putting kindness first, etc

ik because she's part of the group that mephistopheles' old-fashioned peers dislikes, and is a shining example of the fact that humans are actually pretty great and there is literally no reason for the grudge being held against her race

as a combination they help convince mephistopheles that change is possible and also desirable

(ik also serves as a link for mephistopheles to get to know the other exchange students, so overall he gets to make more friends that see him as equals, rather than just having acquaintances who only respect him because of his very loose connection to some old dude)

thirteen's subplot (though i talk more about lore than plot here haha)

technically starts around the same time as mephistopheles' subplot, but doesn't really begin in earnest until later

we’re not told a lot about what reapers are, or much about thirteen, so i’ll be making stuff up again as per usual

reapers as a species are descended from demons, but have evolved to be distinct from demonkind because 1. they lack the ability to make pacts, 2. they don’t have a demon form, and 3. they cannot create offspring using the dark matter in the third layer

reapers are created with a similar process, though - just with vivus wax rather than dark matter

vivus wax is also what their candles are made of; additionally, rather than being something used to control death, the reapers’ candles are used to observe the processes of life and death instead, and any conscious being can have a candle

one being can also have multiple candles, if multiple reapers are interested in observing them, and you aren’t going to die if a candle of yours is put out while you’re still alive

reapers can tell the difference between a candle that’s gone out because its being has died and a candle that’s been blown out because its reaper got bored of it; in the former case, they’ll often save the wax to study

what exactly the burning and the wax tells the reapers is unbeknownst to anyone but them, as they’re quite secretive about their practices (all that’s known is that it doesn’t give them information on you as a person, but rather something less tangible about the way life persists and then disappears)

not all reapers will have candles to observe, but most do, since as a species they’re inherently given to studying death (though no one knows why)

some reapers (known as underground reapers) live in cave systems around the edges of the sixth layer of hell - the one where the underground tomb is located - and are responsible for managing any punished souls imprisoned there

some reapers also live among the demons in the devildom, and they’re generally considered underground reapers as well

some reapers (known as earthly reapers) live in the human world, similar to sorcerers and witches; some will be integrated into human society (like grisella), whereas others prefer to live remotely and observe from afar (like solomon)

demons and reapers are traditionally rivals, as are witches and sorcerers (witches are traditionally allied with reapers, and sorcerers with demons)

so you’ve got an already instinctive/pre-established rivalry between thirteen and all the demons, and also a sort-of one with solomon based on both their past and the fact that they’re associated with different ‘sides’

thirteen is considered an underground reaper at the time of joining the exchange program, but that’s actually quite a recent development; up until about five years ago, she was an earthly reaper, and was one of the sort that mingled with humans and lived among them

so she and solomon serve as sort of foils to one another; thirteen, despite being a reaper, is actually more well-acquainted with modern humanity than solomon, the actual human

in the beginning, thirteen’s having a sort of conflict of identity, which is the reason she went from being an earthly reaper to an underground reaper in the first place; essentially she began to become fully aware of death’s effects on humans, how destructively some would grieve, and of just how much death creatures will inflict on each other, sometimes for no reason

as a reaper whose very existence is essentially rooted in death, it made her question her own origins, and whether there was something inherently wrongful about her species’ most basic interest for humans to fear it so much

so she joins the exchange program out of interest in asking ik about her own experience with death, having heard about an odd phenomenon from a few reapers who had a candle for her where they remembered watching the flame go out, but saw that it was still burning whenever they went back to check it

thirteen’s arc involves two things: primarily it’s developing and resolving that identity conflict, and she also plays a role in some secondary ripples involving ik

(essentially something happens that makes ik relapse a little, making it apparent that she’s still not really recovered from her own death and the existential aspects of her revival; thirteen would be the best equipped character to help her with this - along with someone else, but that’s spoilers for some future jtta stuff)

another less focal part of her arc is based on that whole traditional witches + reapers vs sorcerers + demons rivalry, relating to mephistopheles’ arc and the idea that what is old isn’t necessarily right, and that you’re supposed to judge based on the individual and not the population

there’s also some stuff based on the idea that a lot of reapers find it difficult to actually consider individuals as living beings with active existences - as in, being used to studying them based on candles that don’t tell them anything about them as people, they forget that said people exist uniquely

raphael's subplot:

probably the most underutilised so far in canon, not because he doesn't get screentime, but because he's set up with so much potential for conflict that isn't really used - i.e. him being a hitman for the celestial realm

so it's established very early on that raphael might be a danger to ik, because simeon’s aware of why he’s joined the exchange program alongside him and luke

he pulls ik aside pretty much immediately after she and raphael are introduced, and warns her to keep her guard up

his own subplot is integrated into raphael's in this case, and since it's less monumental than it (presumably) is in canon, he's not hiding it as much

it's fairly clear to anyone who pays attention that there's tension between simeon and the authorities of the celestial realm, there just isn't a lot of explicit conversation about it

so raphael's plot line is more passive for the first half of the main plot: it's mostly just a drip-feed of him being distant from everyone that isn't luke or simeon (and even then he's still kind of distant from them), plus hints that he's possibly up to no good

but, over the course of this, raphael is also slowly being dragged into befriending more folks because he has ik as a mutual friend

past the halfway point there comes more significant moments of reflection from raphael, as he begins to look past his orders from the high council and starts just living a comfy and friendly life in the devildom

eventually he talks to simeon and tells him the full extent of his orders from the high council of the celestial realm

basically it's this: keep an eye on simeon, keep an eye on who's influencing him, keep an eye on who he's influencing, and do as you see fit to if you detect a major threat. if simeon goes too far, bring him back alive.

and raphael's kind of like "i don't think anyone's a major threat, so i'm not going to do anything, but technically i'm still following my orders, right?"

and simeon basically replies "attaboy raphael, i knew you had it in you to question our home realm's questionable authorities"

the main big conflict of this whole story would be related to raphael’s arc in particular (whereas thirteen and mephistopheles’ arcs just equip them to help out)

whether or not it actually happens, the conflict would involve the possibility of some kind of celestial civil war, which gives us a whole bunch of good character fodder for both the angels and the brothers (given their own experiences with the original war)

i won’t go into too much detail on it, though - since 1. i haven’t actually fully fleshed it out yet, and 2. if i do write out this fic, i’d want this conflict in particular to not be spoiled

raphael’s arc would also involve some looks into the whole angels = good and demons = bad thing; he starts out believing that demons are inherently evil, but also doesn’t extend this view to the brothers, since he still largely sees them as the angels he knew

ik (plus luke and simeon) get him to confront this hypocrisy, and this relates back to the whole judge by individuals not species thing again

there’d also be some looks into where the angels = good and demons = bad thing came from in the first place

some other miscellaneous stuff:

the side characters (royals + purgatrio) would be having ongoing arcs based on their development from jtta, since unlike the brothers their arcs aren’t concrete enough to have a final resolution by the end of the first year, and their arcs are what tie them into the new trio’s subplots

the arc themes would be: diavolo + change, barbatos + duty in relation to his powers and what he can and can’t do, solomon + his identity as a human, luke + deciding what’s right and wrong in comparison to what he’s grown up learning, and simeon + the past and confronting the flaws of the angelic hierarchy he’s been complicit in

i’d want to have ik’s dad take a more active role in the story this time, since ik needs to have her own overall arc throughout the fic as the main character, and reconciling her properly with her dad seems to be the natural next step after her arc in jtta

of course they’ve taken steps since ik returned from the first exchange year, but the fact that ik agreed to be away for another whole year in the first place is telling as to the fact that her relationship with her dad is still at least a little distant

i don’t think zhao would come to the devildom as well, but he’d definitely be in regular contact and/or visit

there’d be an arc involving a visit to the human world where thirteen gets to meet ik’s aunt lisa, and then i get to bring back adam and jack from the satan arc for a cameo (possibly also ethan, sophia and noah?)

the brothers aren’t delegated to being background characters or anything - they also get involved in the subplots, plus have sorta group secondary arcs of their own

like i’ve mentioned before, it’s not a bad thing inherently to bring back satan and lucifer’s conflict, since it’s definitely not completely solved by their initial arc - it’s just that they kind of rehash it rather than really develop it more each time they do

so if there was a secondary arc involving it, it wouldn’t be the focal point - rather, i think it’d intersect with ik and her dad reconciling as well as some more general development for lucifer regarding his treatment of his brothers

we’d get to see more actual belpheroth developments on-screen (so to speak), since roth would be involved in belphie’s secondary arc relating from everything with him in jtta

building on that, we’d have him involved in an arc with zhao, since ik doesn’t tell him what belphie did to her, and then this arc would also involve barbatos, diavolo and thirteen

as for all the events that lead to the developments and arcs i’ve mentioned - they’d probably mostly be original, but i might borrow some plot points from s2-4, or maybe even a few pop quizzes??

[keikakus]

Sorry if you’d prefer this on your side blog but I was wondering if you had any tips for a Genshin newbie? Stuff you personally wish you’d one or not done? Little stuff like that.

No worries anon I'm glad you sent a message here! (I probably wouldn't have seen it on the side blog)

This ended up really long but I got excited sorry ~

Here are some tips from me:

- Use your primogems wisely! Primogems are best spent on the limited banner and the weapon banners. Especially if you don't plan on spending IRL money.

- Understand how the pity system works! This was probably the most confusing thing for me starting off. Knowing how this works is useful for planning which characters you want to aim for.

In the limited banner: You are guaranteed a 5* character every 90 pulls. This character will either be the featured 5* character for the banner or a standard 5* character (i.e. Keqing, Diluc, Qiqi, Mona, Jean). There is a 50% chance of either happening so everyone calls this your 50/50. If you get a standard 5* character you are guaranteed to get the featured 5* character after another 90 pulls. So in the worst-case scenario, a featured 5* character will take 180 pulls to get. Thankfully, this is actually very very rare because after 75 pulls the chances of getting a 5* increase by a lot. The amount of pulls you do carries to the next banner so don't sweat it if you don't get the character you want, better luck on the next banner. ALSO!! YOU CAN NOT GET 5* WEAPONS IN THIS BANNER.

On the standard banner: You are guaranteed either a 5* weapon or standard 5* character after 90 pulls. I've heard if you get a weapon, you'll get a character next and vice versa but I don't think this is confirmed.

On the weapon banner: you are guaranteed a 5* weapon after 80 pulls, if you don't get the weapon that you chose two times, your third one is guaranteed to be the one you picked in the path thingy. Make sure you select which weapon you want before pulling on this banner!!

- Genshin has a very consistent update schedule! As of this reply, we are currently in version 2.5 of the game. Each version lasts 42 days. During these 42 days, there are two banner periods, each one lasting 21 days. The spiral abyss resets every 15 days, normally at the beginning of the month and the middle of the month.

- Complete your battle pass! I used to slack off a bit and never complete it at the start it. It's a good way to get extra resources and pulls so try to complete it by the end of every update.

- Do your requests and bounties! You can unlock gadgets that make exploration a lot easier when you increase the reputation level for every region you visit. The MRE is a must-have! (it lets you eat during battle instead of having to open the menu).

- Use your resin when you can, wherever you can! You'll want to farm bosses for ascension materials, get experience books, mora, and talent books. You can get artifacts too but leave the heavy artifact farming till you're AR 45 when 5* artifacts are guaranteed to save yourself the immense disappointment.

- Save your fragile resins for when you absolutely need them! Like when you're close to ascending a character/talent/weapon.

- Good artifact >> Set effect! Use artifacts even if they aren't part of the set you want. As long as the stats themself are good it doesn't really matter at the beginning.

- Level up your talents early! They're extremely important to level up and I only realized it embarrassingly late.

- Prioritize which talents to level up! Some characters' main damage output comes from using certain talents over others. You want to focus on leveling up those talents first and focus on the other ones later. Don't crown anything unless you're SURE you want it to be lvl 10. You only get a crown every 1To 2 updates.

- Use your weapon billets wisely! They're an extremely rare drop that you can only attain weekly. You can go weeks or months without getting the one you want.

- Build Xiangling! You get a free one for completing floor 3 of the spiral abyss. She's really beginner-friendly and you can use free weapons for her (i.e. the catch, prototype star glitter).

- Don't try to build every character you get! Build the ones that you plan on using first and build the leftovers when you have resources to spare. Resources are scarce since resin is scarce. In terms of free-to-play units -> Xiangling, Kaeya, Noelle, Razor are quite useful. Other notable 4* characters to build are -> Bennet, Xingqiu, Sucrose. Bennet especially!!

- Pull for the character you want! Don't fall for people that tell you "you should get so and so because they WILL be the next best character". When characters come out they rarely end up being what people expected and people hit the communities to complain about why the character sucks and why you shouldn't pull for them. Then a month later, the community gets a chance to really use the character and changes their minds.

- Certain characters are better for certain players and certain devices! This one is weird lol but important to me. Depending on your device (mobile/PC/Playstation) and playstyle some characters might end up extremely tedious to use. Before you decide to pull for a character, complete their respective test run so you have an idea of what you're in for. Turns out I really don't like characters that spam charge attacks.

- Finish the main story as fast as you can! A lot of people will tell you to not rush the story for immersion or whatever but at this stage in the game unfortunately you might not have a choice but to rush. A lot of event content and character materials are region-locked and require you to reach certain stages in the story. Try to complete the main story first and worry about the side quests later!

- When your world rank increases, the enemies get much tougher! Make sure you're prepared to face stronger enemies before you rush to complete your ascension quest. Alternatively, don't decrease your world rank unless you absolutely cannot survive in it. Enemy drops, mora, and EXP books from ley lines scale with world level.

PHEW! that's all I have to say.

there are a lot of resources online here are some of my favorite ones:

genshin interactive map: shows you the location of EVERYTHING on the map including quests, materials, bosses, etc.

gamewith.net, game8.co, genshin.gg: great for information about artifacts, weapons, characters, ideas on how to make teams, and how to complete quests.

the enhancement calculator: lets you see how much resources you need to get certain characters, weapons, and talents leveled up.

[networkbangtan]

hi! i found this net recently, it's amazing that you guys have run this net for so long to bring bts fans tgt! not planning on applying but i read the member requirements&i have a question. you'll only rb oc by members, yet the members do not need to be creators. wouldn't it make more sense to either only accept content creators, or simply rb creations with the tag regardless of membership? if only member content is reblogged, it seems that your aim's to give creators a platform but bts content

creators may not get in bc many spots are filled by simple fans. if the aim’s to let them meet frnds you’re not focused on promoting content by members, why not rb other creators’ work? moreover, do 80% bts posts really reflect their devotion to bts? isn’t it better to check if they create bts content than check if they rb bts ones? you’re probably the biggest bts net here&many creators would love to join for the exposure+community, but most may fail bc they dont only rb bts content, or bc

spots’re filled quickly. would 60 or even 50% be acceptable? i was in over ten tmblr networks, most are literature-focused ones who trag tags that all can use. i’m curious abt the point in such a high standard for members bc it’s a shame if multifandom bts creators cannot get the exposure they deserve, so can you guys can explain a bit/reconsider the requirements? thank you!

Hello. We have quite a lot to say in response to this ask - it’s clear that you have little understanding of how labor intensive running a network this large is, so we’ll try to explain. 

Re: accepting only content creators: NetworkBangtan was not created with the intention of promoting original content only. We are a network - that means our focus is connecting fans through various means. Reblogging our members’ original content is just one of our focuses; we have also run multiple events in the past, as well as group chats for all members and spotlight posts for members. Accepting only content creators and not “simple fans” as you said is elitist and exclusionary for no reason; we are not a blog solely dedicated to content creation. There are other blogs like that out there, but that’s not our purpose, nor has it ever been. We don’t see the purpose in excluding fans from joining the network and participating in its other aspects just because they don’t produce content. 

Our job is not to cater to every BTS content creator on Tumblr. None of our rules are in place to purposely exclude people from joining the network; all of our application requirements are there simply to make the network more manageable for our team. Here’s why: 

Re: the 80% BTS requirement: We started the network with a 50% BTS content requirement. This was before HYYH-era, so well before the fandom grew so large on Tumblr. As the fandom grew, the network’s popularity boomed. We ran a round of apps where we received over 200 applications in a few days. In order to make the network more manageable rather than closing apps forever, we decided to raise the content requirement just to generate less interest. Over the years, we’ve raised it slowly and are now finally at 80%. Despite the high content requirement, we still receive scores of apps in a very short amount of time. 

We allow members to apply with sideblogs; many content creators and non-creators have gotten around the 80% requirement by making a BTS-specific sideblog and leaving their main blogs multifandom. In terms of spots being filled quickly, Round 9 was open for several days. 

Re: the NB tag being open only to members: Opening our tag to the entire ARMY fandom on Tumblr would be absolutely impossible to manage. We currently have over 800 members. Our queue remains consistently full; we have three assistants who queue daily and three admins who pitch in with queueing whenever needed. Around comeback season, queueing literally takes hours a day. We’re not sure you realize exactly how massive this fandom is on Tumblr; with 800 people, our queue is nearly unmanageable. ARMYs on Tumblr amount to the thousands. Keeping up is impossible.

Even if we were to double our team and queue twice a day instead of once a day, Tumblr itself is not built to handle that kind of content. Tumblr has a queue limit of 300 posts with only 50 posts posted a day. We’re already always at that limit or close to it; around comeback time, we have too many posts and far surpass the limit, so we can’t queue them all. As a result, posts are backlogged for weeks at a time to deal with the influx. We tried a third party app that increased the queue limit but unfortunately found it was a shady service, so we had to delete it. We’re stuck within the confines of Tumblr’s limits. 

If we were to open our tag to all of Tumblr, we would not feasibly be able to reblog everyone’s content anymore. We would have to pick and choose - like you said, there are other networks that track the tag for everybody rather than just members, but many networks that we have seen do this do not reblog every single post. They pick and choose to make it manageable. And they also receive anons like you questioning them - for being biased in the posts they select, for not reblogging their own posts enough, etc. Additionally, most other networks aren’t as large as ours. 

We’ve been running this network since 2015 - that’s 4 years. For four years, we have reblogged members’ content every single day. We have opened 9 rounds of applications. We have expanded our team, organized activities, run group chats, and more. No one has ever bothered to thank us; we do this for free, despite our own busy schedules. We receive absolutely nothing in return. 

We are now one of the largest networks around; we would have been well within our rights to close applications permanently years ago given how many members we have. Most networks do that. Most people don’t stick around to grow as big as we do simply because it’s hard. We put in a great deal of work on this network every single day. 

You’ve essentially come to us and asked us to do ten times the amount of work, while letting us know that you don’t even want to be a member of the network. Next time you think about sending an ask like this, consider the absurd amounts of hard work that go into running blogs like this for little to no return. This fandom is lucky that so many people put in their hard work and dedication to run networks, update blogs, create content, and more when they’re doing it for free on top of their own busy lives. 

Please do not ask that people put in more work to accommodate you when they’re already doing more than enough.