#so many things in this site have been WIDELY improved

[southcodes]

support/staff: we- some of yall: this is the worst thing that you have ever done to this site you ruined my life killed my family called me names

[lethesbeastie]

Hi, I saw your post about practicing drawing fat people and I was wondering if you could compile like a list of resources or references?

It can be difficult to find resources for drawing the wide variety of forms fat bodies can occupy, so I've done my best to bring together some resources I've been able to prove have some degree of diversity in the references they offer!

My primary resource recommendation for drawing fat people is Morpho Anatomy For Artists: Fat And Skin Folds! It does a wonderful job breaking down where fat accumulates on the body, how it interacts with the familiar landmarks of human anatomy, and what sort of shapes it tends to form under the influence of gravity. It's a phenomenal reference and my top recommendation for anyone seeking to improve at drawing fat people!

When it comes to finding decent photo references for fat people, the pickings are frustratingly slim. Most sites that specialize in pose references either don't have fat models or have all their images behind paywalls. Of the resources I looked through, the best sources for pose references were Adorkastock and Line of Action.

@adorkastock actively seeks to provide an incredible profile of pose references with diverse body types, and as an added bonus you can access a lot of their images for free on their site/Tumblr or join their patreon for early access to images! Line of action is a site aimed towards practicing figure drawing, providing images and a timed function to challenge artists to sketch within a set time limit. I took the time to go through roughly 300+ images and was pleased to find that during my session around two-to-three out of every ten photos were fat models. The only caveats to this was the fact that most of the images were of the same individual, limiting the applications for studying the variants of fat bodies. Still, it's an amazing tool that has a free mode and allows you to filter the types of references you want based on age and level of nudity.

Beyond sites that specialize in art reference photography, there's also the ever popular Pinterest, which is the site where I typically seek references for my personal studies. Due to the nature of Pinterest's extensive collection, there's a vast variety of references for different fat body types that includes a lot more "everyday" people. The primary issue with Pinterest however is the rampant reposting and lack of proper credits for images, which can make things dicey depending on how you wish to use the references you find. For personal studies this isn't really an issue, but for any sort of professional or paid work is something to be aware of just for the sake of accountability.

* For those who are 18+, porn photography of real people also offers an incredible wealth of visual resources for fat bodies and how they interact with gravity/movement/etc. The variety of positions and angles offer many opportunities to study human anatomy, and it's a pretty well-known fact that drawing NSFW art can be an important learning experience for those struggling with drawing anatomy. In the end, it depends on your personal level of comfort with viewing/drawing explicit images, but it's not something you should completely overlook.

Last but not least, look at the work of artists you admire who draw fat people! While I typically recommend sticking to photo references for learning anatomy, studying artist's portrayals of fat people is also incredibly helpful for learning different tactics for simplifying and/or stylizing fat bodies to better fit ones own style. There are also plenty of artists who've crafted tutorials detailing their approach to drawing fat folks, so I highly recommend you check them out as well! I hope the resources I've linked here can help you in your studies, and feel free to drop another ask if you have any more questions! I'm planning on posting a tutorial on how I do studies for fat people soon, so that will be an additional resource for you once I've got it posted!

[itsmrshamilton]

If you can take a request for a Lewis Hamilton falling in love at first site for a fan he just met at a GP and eventually saw her again during the summer break she was taking a Europe solo trip & they kik it off #fluff

First Sight | LH44

a/n: Never been on holiday so my imagination worked overtime to get this right.

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Lewis Hamilton had not slept a wink. It was 4:59 a.m., and his alarm was about to go off, and he had not slept all night. This wasn't like him. Yes, he had nights when he felt too anxious to sleep well, but never had he laid in bed and still been awake more than 6 hours later. His eyes were burning, and his limbs felt very heavy each time he turned over to get into a new position. The bed was too hot but his room was too cold. The discomfort was slowly driving him insane.

The phone alarm rang loudly but failed to do its job of waking its owner up because he was already wide awake. Sighing in great annoyance, Lewis grabbed the device off the nightstand and silenced the blaring noise. Upon unlocking his screen he saw messages from his assistant updating him on his schedule for the day. He swiped the blocks then hesitated as he stared at his wallpaper - a recent picture of Roscoe lying on Lewis' chest as they rested on his bed. Roscoe's sweet face rolls were squashed upwards by the force of his big grin exposing his silly tongue. Lewis smiled softly as he looked at his best friend and made a mental note to video call home later and check in on Roscoe.

Peeking at the time, he sat up and began the process of getting ready for the day. He hadn't been looking forward to this race for a long time. His last qualifying race for the season in his second year with Ferarri. Things weren't going as well as he had hoped. Fred, his engineers and the car were all great but Lewis still hadn't won his 8th world champion title despite pushing weekly and winning more than a handful of the races. Despite his performance improvement from Mercedes, Lewis still had Max Verstappen breathing down his neck, chasing him down at every corner. The races were exhilirating for Lewis because this was what he loved, but the stress was creeping up on him. The Ferarri car was great, the strategies were another story.

When he was done preparing and packing, Lewis left for the car outside. Slipping on his sunglasses to try hide his dark eyebags, he prayed to his God that the day would go in his favour.

The screams and noise could surely be heard from the next town over. Yet they somehow increased in volume when Lewis stepped out of his vehicle at the track parking lot. He was exhausted and slightly grumpy but he knew that many fans had travelled from far to meet the drivers so he trudged over to the metal barriers to sign and pose for photos. Papers, magazines, helmets, caps and phones were shoved at his face by arms waving frantically. He smiled, complimented and signed. Colourful beaded bracelets were slipped onto his wrists, artists handed over their creations and photographers snapped away at his every movement. Overwhelming was an understatement but Lewis was incredibly grateful to have a fan base as supportive as his. The move from Ferarri was not easy but it had enjoyable moments created by those who wore the number 44 with pride every weekend. For these people, he would smile til his cheeks hurt and his teeth fell out.

"Thank you all for being here. I appreciate you all!" He shouted as he waved and retreated to the paddock entrance. Cameramen tripped over themselves as they made to move with him. Lewis Hamilton Fashion Week was still going on. Their flashes illuminated his soft sleeveless yellow cardigan, his sheer yellow tracksuit pants and his white sneakers. The irony only he could laugh at was the meaning of the colours against his current feelings.

Having had enough of the cameras, he turned right into a passage and began weaving his way between buildings to get to his destination. The photographers took the hint and disappeared but Lewis kept using the passages and gaps. Getting closer to the Ferarri building, he took a sharp left round a corner and walked right into someone who was looking down at their phone, completely unaware of their surroundings.

"Oof, excuse me. Apologies!" She exclaimed as both their phones went tumbling onto the paved ground. Lewis winced at the sound of his phone screen hitting the floor. He bent down to pick it up at the same time as she bent to get hers.

Lewis noticed that they had the same covers but as he straightened up to mention this, their heads knocked together. This time she winced at the sound it made.

"Oh, jeez. Ouch. Are you okay?" Lewis asked her when she yelped. He rubbed the side of his head tenderly. He took the time to look at her.

"Ow! Im sorry! Omg, this can't get worse. I'm okay. Are you-" She stopped when she looked at his face. She had the most beautiful eyes Lewis had ever seen on anyone. Her lashes framed them perfectly, making him want to stand there all day and study them intently til he could draw them from memory. Not that he needed all day, just these 10 seconds were enough to ensure that he would never forget her face.

Her braids were falling out of the high ponytail she had them in, and her necklace sat askew at the base of her long neck on her exposed bronze collarbones. He felt a little light headed at the sight of them. Her small mouth was downturned in a pout which made him slighlty upset that he was the cause of it. He took the time to eye the rest of her. She was all limbs. Tall, bronzed goddess in a yellow and red Ferarri top, jean shorts and sneakers. He couldn't remember where he was or what he was supposed to do today.

"Oh wow, you're Lewis Hamilton." She muttered to herself.

He snapped out of it and managed to send her small smile. He was still trying to remember how to use his mouth to produce coherent words. At his damn age he was standing there like a fool.

"I'm sorry about that. I didn't know where to go and felt a little embarrassed, so I stepped here to gather myself and contact Sheila, but my phone's acting up - my phone!" At that, she dropped down to pick up her phone but hesitated when she realised that both devices looked the same. Picking up both, she turned them over and grimaced at the sight of the cracked screens. She turned them on to differentiate by wallpapers. The one in her left hand had a picture of a cute dog.

"Uh, that's Roscoe. My dog." Lewis stated as he finally figured out how to work his tongue. He reached out to receive it from her.

"He's very cute." She smiled at him. He stared back. She raised her dark brows at him in slight amusement. "I'm sorry about your screen."

"Oh, uh, don't worry about that. Its always cracked. I'm sorry about yours."

"It's okay, mine is always cracked too." She laughed softly and looked down at it. Lewis noticed that the wallpaper was of her and another woman around the same age taking a selfie.

"Uh, you, uh, you mentioned being lost?" He cleared his throat. He didn't know why he was still standing here talking when he had somewhere to be for something very important. But to be honest, nothing felt more important than being here now, with her, whoever she was. It felt right.

"Yeah," she frowned. "I came here today with my friend Sheila but we got separated in a crowd and I stepped into this passage to call her but my phone is freezing up. I dont know where to go." She sighed in frustration.

Lewis hated seeing her upset. He questioned why he felt like he could move the moon and stars just to make her smile again again. His stomach was tingling in an uncomfortable way. He had spoken to many women in his lifetime so why was he finding it hard to function normally around her?

"You can use my phone." He offered it to her. "Or I can take you to the garage, and we could send out a broadcast for her to find you there? Might be easier that way." He smiled sheepishly and hoped she would take the invitation. He really wanted to spend just a bit more time with her.

Her gorgeous eyes lit up and put him in a trance once more. "The Ferarri garage?! With you! Oh my gosh, I would love that." She handed back his phone and his fingers brushed hers. His knees nearly buckled. He leaned on the wall next to them to seem cool and poised but really he was trying to regain stability after a bolt of electricity shot through him. He noticed that she jumped back slightly as well after contact.

"Cool, so we'll head there then? I'm sorry, I never got your name..." He said softly.

"Y/n L/n. Pleasure to meet you." She stuck her right hand out to shake. If he had looked away from her eyes for a second, he would have noticed that it was trembling softly. His big calloused hand grasped her small one and he shook it but held on afterwards, rubbing his thumb against the back of her hand.

"The pleasure is all mine." He murmured as his eyelids lowered sexily. His eyes darkened as another jolt of energy ran through him. The air around them in that narrow passage way crackled with electricity and the noise of the paddock vanished. In that moment it was just the two of them. Her eyes held his gaze but her smirking full lips put up a great fight to draw his attention away. He was mesmerised, enchanchted, gobsmacked. Utterly and completely in love with this Y/n L/n.

"Y/n? Y/n! Is that you? Hun, I've been looking all over! Where have been hidi- oh my lord." Another woman entered the thin area they were in and interrupted the moment. Lewis painfully dragged his eyes off of Y/n to look at her and recognised her as the lady in the wallpaper. Who he now assumed was Sheila, her friend.

"Y/n. Jesus, what are you doing...omg. Is this Lewis Hamilton??! What are you doing with Lewis Hamilton!?" She whisper-shouted at Y/n who had now released herself from Lewis' grasp and turned around. Sheila's eyes were huge with shock.

Y/n took her hands and shushed her quickly. "Sheila, this is Lewis. Lewis, this is Sheila." She pointed from the one to the other. "Lewis was going to help me find you but now that you're here, we can go. Can't waste these paddock passes anymore than I accidentally have." She laughed from embarrassment.

Lewis wanted to reassure her and promise to buy all the paddock passes to every race she wanted to attend. Instead he smiled at her and tried to think of something cool to say. "Hello Sheila." He greeted and received a squeak in reply. He opened his mouth once more but was interrupted.

"Thank you for the offer. I really do appreciate it. I'll see you up on the podium, yeah? Bye!" Y/n gathered her shocked Sheila and they walked quickly out of the narrow space and into a crowd. She looked back once to wave at him before they disappeared. Lewis stood there dazed.

There was a slight ache in his chest now that she was gone. And he rubbed his forehead when he realised that he didnt get any of her contact details. He would have to find her somehow, she had to be on at least one social media platform. He nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone rang loudly. Answering it, he was greeted by his assistant's voice questioning where he was. Lewis answered that he'd be there in a minute then began to make his way. He kept his head high so he could look for Y/n's hair. Unfortunately he didnt see her for the rest of the weekend despite asking around as well.

His grievances with Ferarri from that morning were forgotten. He ended up on the podium that Sunday, 1st place and did his best to squint into the crowd in hopes of recognising her face. Nothing.

It was with a very heavy heart that he accepted that he would never see her again.

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The humidity in the air was going to kill you. It felt like it was forcing its way into your windpipe and filling it to the brim so you couldn't breathe in any useful oxygen. You were being extremely dramatic but you couldn't help it. It was difficult to be in a good and optimistic mood when your hair had shrunk to tiny curls on your head. All that effort to blowdry an afro, gone.

"Sheila, I don't know where to go. It's so hot every where!" You whined into your phone.

Your best friend clicked her tongue at you in annoyance. You had been complaining since the first flight got delayed and had been 6 hours since.

"Y/n if you whine about one more thing, I promise you I will block your number. You are on vacation! Enjoy it!"

You sighed in mock annoyance. "I'm alone, though. Travelling isn't that fun without you."

"Uh uh. We are not doing this. You've been planning this solo trip for weeks, okay. You said it yourself that you need to experience solo living to better yourself. It's easier to grow without the influence of others. Remember, I tried to tag along, but you insisted!" Her reminder was gentle, but you felt like reaching into the phone and pinching her.

"I hate that you're right. I'm a big girl, I can do this." You said mainly to yourself.

"Atta girl! Now go find some hunky european natives and enjoy 3 weeks of bliss! I love you!" She squealed. You laughed at her nonsense and repeated the phrase back before ending the call.

She was right. You had gotten a job straight out of university and worked your ass off daily. The excitement of doing what you loved for a living was overwhelming, and it carried you through the first 6 years of work. But the excitement ran out, and you found yourself struggling to get out of bed due to burnout. Considering a change of career and lifestyle, you planned a solo trip to cleanse yourself of the stress. And now, here you were. Ready for 4 day stays in 5 gorgeous countries.

You arrived at your first destination about 2 hours ago, checked into your first hotel and unpacked already. The afternoon sun was blistering, which was surprising to you because, well, it was europe, but you guessed that the temperatures might be due to a heatwave. Of course, it was your luck to plan a 3 week stay during a heatwave.

Your stomach gurgled loudly. "That's a sign to get out of here and go eat." You mumbled to yourself.

After packing a beach bag and attempting to resuscitate your afro, you made your way downstairs to get directions to any nearby restaurants. The receptionists were very helpful, so you found yourself seated at a table under a large umbrella with a gorgeous view of the blue waves. Your beef with the stifling humidity was forgotten as you took it all in while having big bites of your meal. Life was good, and you didn't believe it could get any better than this. You ordered a drink to go and then made your way to the beach, which was slowly starting to empty out as the day went on.

Glass of sweet juice in one hand and your shoes in the other, you took your time walking the length of the beach to find a spot. The sea smelt divine, the sand between your toes was soothing, and the cool breeze that was picking up dried the moisture off your dark skin as well as your hair. Once you found your spot in a clear area, you began to unpack your colourful bag. Bending over to unroll your beach towel, you heard shouting before someone bumped into you, and you went tumbling face first into the sand.

"Oi! What is-" You were wiping sand off your face.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry about. I didn't see yo..." The familiar voice trailed off. "You! It's you!"

You cleared your your vision and opened your eyes to a shirtless Lewis Hamilton crouching before you. His hair was tied up, allowing you to stare straight into his honey brown eyes. His beautiful face was one of surprise, and his big smile was so contagious that you found yourself beginning to smile despite your previous frustration.

"I can't believe it! I searched everywhere for you after the grand prix. It's Y/n, right?" He offered you his tattooed hand as he stood up. You hesitated for a moment, trying to remember how your limbs worked before taking it and letting him pull you. It's like you weighed nothing to him.

"Yeah, it's Y/n." You confirmed breathlessly. His tattoos up close were delicious.

"That's great because I thought I was typing the wrong name into every social media app I know about." He laughed in embarrassment, and you couldn't help but keep glancing at his pearly whites, which were decorated with gold jewelry.

"Oh, I don't have social media anymore. It became too much at one point, so I deleted it. I rely on my friend to update me." You tried not to talk too much. His brows met for a second.

"Sheila, right? Yeah, I found hers, but you weren't even featured on her feed. Im sorry, by the way, for bumping into you -"

"Again." You inputed. Making him grin and chuckle softly.

"Yeah, again. We really should stop meeting like this."

"I don't mind it." You hadn't really thought of him much since meeting at the grand prix because you thought you'd never see him again. Sheila had nearly picked you up and thrown you into a trash can when she found out you didn't exchange details with him. If you closed your eyes, you could still perfectly see her flabbergasted expression.

The air crackled between the two of you, and the humidity that you thought you had gotten away from was suddenly back again. Sweat dripped slowly down your neck and into your cropped top. You could feel dampness on your palms. One of which was still firmly in his grasp.

There was a shout in the air.

He turned around briefly to investigate, and that's when you took notice of the american football in his other hand as well as a group of people waiting on the beach.

"Oh gosh, I'm sorry. I didn't realise I was keeping you away from the game. I'll move my stuff, and you can get back to it." You didn't really mean that, but you thought that if you moved to a better spot, you could watch him play without being caught ogling him.

"No, don't do that. Come join us." His thumb began that thing of rubbing circles against the back of your hand. You felt your knees buckle a bit.

"I don't understand the rules of the game. But I can sit and watch?" You offered. His brows met in the middle once more before he shook his head and turned around.

"Yo, Miles!" He threw Miles the ball. "Carry on with the game, I'm out." Miles smirked as he caught the ball and nodded.

"We have a fire going nearby. It's going to get cold soon." He suggested. You tried your best to fight your smile and play hard to get. Which was unserious of you because Lewis was the man of your dreams currently.

"Is that how you ask a girl out, Lewis?" You raised an eyebrow and dropped his hand.

"Uh, no, I- um. I was trying to be casual with it? I wasn't sure if you wanted to have dinner with me. Ahem, I- I'm usually so much better at this." He scratched his neck, and you giggled at his flustered state. The Lewis Hamilton was stumbling over his words while trying to ask you out. He took a deep breath.

"Y/n, would you like to go to dinner with me later?" He looked nervous.

"I'd love that. Let me get my stuff, and we can leave." You smiled.

He crouched and picked up your bag as you rolled your towel and grabbed your shoes. He gently took the towel and shoes out of your hands and led the way to the fire his group had set up. You felt giddy with excitement and fought the urge to skip behind him.

Sitting side-by-side at the fire, you felt his eyes on you. The sun had set, the stars were bright, and the air was becoming colder around you. His friends had settled around the fire as well. There was soft chatter and laughter in the air. Lewis had arranged a blanket for the two of you so you sat wrapped up in it. You had chatted for a while about work, family, and friends, then fell into a comfortable silence. He was easy to talk to, and you found yourself laughing louder than you should have. You laughed even harder when he laughed at your laugh because his laugh was so contagious. Never in a thousand years did you think you'd be at a beach, cozied up with one of the greatest motorsport athletes of your time. You weren't a big F1 fan, but you sometimes watched races and read articles about it, so you knew enough to pick a team to support and drivers to cheer on. Lewis was one of those drivers, so the urge to fangirl violently when you first met was there, but now, after a mere hour or two, it felt like you'd known him all your life. There was a strange buzz in the air just like the one in that narrow passageway. You felt drawn to him. And safe.

"Earlier, you mentioned that you were looking for me?" You asked softly, turning to meet his gaze.

"You're really beautiful. I couldn't get you out of my mind that weekend. I had been struggling with the sport for a while, but after meeting you, things suddenly started to go right. I won every race after that, I'm on track for another championship. It's like my life turned completely around. Like you were the catalyst. Like you're meant to be in my life, like I was meant to meet you." He laughed humourlessly. "I may sound crazy but I feel alive around you. There's something here between us."

You were cuddled up so close that you could feel his heart pounding in his chest. "I feel it too." You whispered.

"I'd really like to figure out what it is. Find out what life with you could be like." He slotted his hand into yours. You couldn't hold back your grin anymore.

"I'd like that too." You leaned in and pressed your lips against his. He reciprocated immediately and pulled you closer. You felt fireworks go off inside your head. Your whole body was tingling.

He pulled back slowly but pecked your lips again. "Are you ready for dinner?" You grinned in response.

Sheila was going to be so proud that you had bagged THE ultimate european hunk.

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Whew! This one took a while. Can you tell I've never been to the beach, lol. Take note that Y/n did not swim in this fic! Cause I hate the thought of swimming in an ocean, lol. I struggled to write the last part👎but its done now so be nice. Dont forget to suggest a song!!

Thanks for reading! Please interact before you leave. Don't alter, translate, or repost onto another platform.

[elumish]

You know, a while ago, I saw a post that was something along the lines of "On Tumblr, you could write a post saying 'I like pancakes' and people would reply with 'So you hate waffles???' like nah man that's a whole new sentence!".

These anon you've been getting are really proving the point of that post's OP. I'm sorry you have to deal with Tumblr's often rather mediocre reading comprehension.

FWIW I follow you for being one of the people with actually nuanced takes instead of that weird thing most of this site has got going on, where it's either "If you EVER even think of a character who did ANYTHING wrong in any remotely positive light you're irredeemably evil" on one side and "If you ever so much as imply that maybe there's some things people write or put in shows that can cause harm to real people, you're irredeemably evil.". I hope they all grow out of their black and white thinking. Or at least learn to leave you and others alone.

I appreciate it.

I think, if I'm to give a little bit of grace now that my frustration has died down a very small amount, that people have become so conditioned to reading one argument that they assume everything that looks even remotely similar is the same thing.

On my dashboard, most of what I see is people arguing the same exact points as the anons, usually using fiery overgeneralized language to rile people up about the dangers of censorship online. And so if all you see is people getting mad over and over about this point, written in a way that paints everyone who is critical of any content in fiction in the same broad brush, you are going to start to believe that it's all one thing.

And they're not entirely wrong about the dangers of censorship and harassment--there are, obviously, broad efforts across the United States (and I'm sure other places, but the U.S. is what I'm most familiar with) to censor certain types of literature based on conservative fears of their content.

There have also been efforts, generally well-intended, from the left to reduce "problematic" content. While some of these have been great (e.g., sensitivity readers), others have been abused, often by people who lacked the cultural competency to understand what they were reading or who wanted an excuse to harass people. Many of these efforts, especially those that were implemented most ineffectively or most abused, were focused on the criticism and removal of writers or existing content.

I understand the sensitivity, I really do. I also disagree with efforts that have happened across the board to remove wide swaths of content just because they made someone a little uncomfy.

And yes, I do talk about content moderation, because I also recognize the difference between "made someone a little uncomfy" and "we are welcoming to Nazi content" and unfortunately certain places err too much on the latter side rather than the former in the name of universal free speech with no exceptions.

But most of what I talk about is writing, because I'm a writing blog. I do want to change how people approach writing, because I believe fundamentally in our responsibility as human beings to 1) do what we can to avoid harm and 2) do what we can to improve the world around us. And if that means that there's less of certain content, like magic that relies on biological essentialism and love stories involving SS commanders, then I'm okay with that.

[cin-cant-donate-blood]

I think there is something really tragic about those posts that are like "man can you imagine future archaeologists reading our posts" because I don't actually believe even a fraction of all the things we say will survive for very long.

We supposedly live in an information age where everything is recorded, and people say that once something is on the internet, it is there for ever, but this is clearly not true.

Most of the internet is managed by corporations, and when a certain website dies, there is absolutely no incentive to spend all the money necessary to preserve ecerything that was ever posted. Maybe Archive.org will have saved a lot, but it can't save everything.

Even right now internet history going back as recently as the 90s is really spotty. A lot of forums and sites are simply lost to time.

And maybe one day Archive.org will run out of money too, and everything they preserved will be lost, not in a dramatic bang like the fire in the Library of Alexandria, but with a whimper, like the many thousands of times more documents that have been lost simply because no one copied them in the few decades they had before the mold or worms or whatever else got to them.

Think of Sappho and Catullus, two of the most celebrated poets of ancient Greece and Rome respectively. Both were prolific, and both were titans, widely celebrated for their extraordinary work, long after their deaths.

Both had a single century or two where people got tired of them, and almost every single thing they ever wrote was irrecoverably lost, because books do not last forever, especially not the ones written on papyrus, which was the dominant medium at the time and has a quoted life span of about 70 years unless stored in nearly perfect conditions (desert conditions, which is why we associate papyrus with Egypt).

All we have now are a handfull of fragments of their work. They are, once again, and perhaps forever, celebrated as geniuses, but we can't ever undo that single, brief moment where the majority of their work was lost forever, not out of malice, but out of indifference.

Everything not actively, painstakingly, expensively maintained will be lost, inevitably and irretrievably. Stone carvings last longer, but they're horribly space inefficient. The invention of parchment, which can survive centuries, greatly improved things, but that too is extremely expensive compared to paper or papyrus. Modern digital storage is the same; we just made the copying process easier.

One day, tumblr will die. It is as inevitable as your death or mine. Or the death of the sun. In fact, tumblr will probably die within our lifetimes. When it dies, some things will be saved, but many will not. Some will miss it, but most will forget. Out of millions of posts, perhaps a few hundred thousand survive as jpeg screenshots on reddit, instagram, or whatever sites survive tumblr. Then, as those die, perhaps ten thousand screenshots of screenshots carry on to new social media sites, as of yet not made. And then a thousand of those survive as those sites die.

And maybe those will be the thousand best, and maybe some expert will even be able to tell you that they're screenshots of tumblr, and in a few words what tumblr was, but what even is the thousand best? Every copying act is a choice by someone who thought it was worth copying. Tastes change, and as they do, maybe one generarion's favorite is destroyed by the neglect of the next.

Tumblr isn't special. This is the future of all social media. Echos will persist, but so much will be lost.

So maybe, one day, an internet archaeologist will find your silly tumblr post about how crazy it would be if someone was reading what you said centuries from now. Unfortunately, there will be so much context missing. Maybe your post will be one of a mere hundred remaining, most of which make references to in-jokes and memes long forgotten: incomprehensible and empty. Like the statue in Ozymandias: nothing beside remains.

I'll end this with a poem from the lost poets I mentioned, and since this is tumblr, why not a gay one? Both Catullus and Sappho have their share of love poems dedicated to members of the same sex, but the partial poem known as Sappho 31 is probably the most well known. This is Edward Storer's translation:

He seems like a god to me the man who is near you,

Listening to your sweet voice and exquisite laughter

That makes my heart so wildly beat in my breast.

If I but see you for a moment, then all my words

Leave me, my tongue is broken and a sudden fire

Creeps through my blood. No longer can I see.

My ears are full of noise. In all my body I

Shudder and sweat. I am pale as the sun-scorched

Grass. In my fury I seem like a dead woman,

But I would dare...

... and that's it. The ending has never been found. Scholars think anywhere between a few lines and half the poem is missing.

[dotthings]

The performative outrage farming style of leftism in this site has gotten so ridiculous there’s literally accounts who spread misinformation against the Democratic candidates that tries to make people feel miserable about voting for them, because people want to feel virtuous, I guess, at the same time they turn around and tell you to vote and voting is so important!!!!

Are these real people? Are they agitprops? Who even knows anymore. The actual election interference diatribes have been going on for months, and the nihilistic grind has predictably now turned towards Harris-Walz.

And the lying about the progressive policies at the top has to end. Too bad if it’s inconvenient for your sense of absolutist morality. Distorted narratives won’t help anybody. “Both sides equally bad” “both sides are the same” is an appalling and blatant lie and every time I see it I wonder if someone is actually an agitpropping election interference bot.

It’s not “progressive” to keep drinking the nihilistic chaos agent kool aid. Some really just want the US to burn and don’t care about the global harm of that or how many people in marginalized groups in the US would get hurt.

Speaking out is important and criticizing politicians is important. Contact your reps, protest, donate. But it’s more complex than that.

There is a whole wide gap between alert, active, critical & supportive engagement with democracy vs nihilism & performative wokeness that isn’t actually saving people and in fact enables mindsets that could result in the side winning this US election that will not only make things worse globally and in the US but unleash a full on dystopia where civil liberties in the US are gone and people will die from it. I’m sick and tired of this faux moralistic superiority that encourages throwing open the gates to even more death and suffering. Oh yeah that’ll teach everyone a lesson!!! Society is saved!!!

If you want to live in a better society, you don’t just shoot your mouth off on social media. You don’t only engage in outrage farming. You do the work.

You engage not just to performatively and nihilistically scream and yell about how all the establishment US politicians suck, you also engage positively to support the ones in power you think are doing better, and you plan for the future. Want things to move in a more progressive direction at the top? Support progressives downticket because that’s the pool for the future top powers.

You don’t abandon “red states” thinking you’re too woke to touch them. While you’re treating those like an unfixable cesspool, there are real people living there whose lives would be improved by progressive downticket candidates winning races. There are multiple ways to enagage and help: donate to a campaign, volunteer to write postcards or phonebank, do word-of-mouth, online and off.

Also, yes please vote!!! Not just at the top. Local politics improve and save lives too.

I’m tired of hearing how allegedly mean it is just to point this stuff out. That it’s somehow ~bullying people to urge them to vote and be engaged instead of giving in to impractical nihilism. (As if the misleading nihilistic dialogues are so great???)

For context, I’m a fandom blog. I don’t talk about politics much on here and I need that kind of space. I volunteer with several grass roots orgs and devote hours every week to educating myself about what tf is going on in the world and the US and I contact my reps with my opinions regularly and do GOTV efforts and support candidates. There is a link between the harmful dialogues I’ve referenced and the demands that “if you don’t reblog this or talk about this you’re morally bankrupt.” It’s toxic and misleading and discourages active engagement. Speaking out is part of the picture but non-stop outrage farming also dilutes the message.

[cindylouwho-2]

Etsy's Adult Content Ban: Some Things You Might Have Missed, & Some Reasons Almost Everyone Has Missed

As almost everyone knows, Etsy announced a wide-ranging ban of many types of sex-related items on June 27, to take effect on July 29, 2024.

While the corporation was predictably vague about the reasons for this change, it's not overly-difficult to figure out why this happened, although at least one reason seems to have slipped by many. It's slightly more trying to make the logic work when we consider what they still allow. It may be more interesting (and vital, for some sellers) to consider what Etsy might ban next, or ban by accident when this policy takes effect.

While this post isn't intended to be a deep dive into all of the revisions to Etsy's official policies, I will briefly go through certain highlights of the new rules, followed a few alternative ideas for both sellers and shoppers. I'll then discuss why Etsy did this, and we should expect in the coming weeks, months and years.

First. here are the relevant materials:

the much-quoted announcement

Etsy's new Adult Nudity and Sexual Content Policy

the revised Mature Content Policy

as well as some of the media coverage:

Mashable was the first large outlet to publish

The New York Times (soft paywall)

The Guardian

The BBC

Modern Retail (soft paywall)

What's Out, And What's Still OK to Sell or Display

As has widely been reported, Etsy will no longer allow sex toys that touch genitals or enter the body, a female product model's nipples in photos, photos or "photo-realistic" images of sexual acts, types of nudity with "sexual context", fetish items such as used underwear and foot pics, and "sexual language referencing familial relationships". (Pornography was already banned before now.)

Plenty of other items are still permitted, though, including:

BDSM accessories

body harnesses

kegel weights

sex furniture

non-photorealistic nudity and "sex acts without visible genitalia or anuses"

female nipples in photos if the photo is the product and the first listing image obscures them

These exceptions lead to all kinds of questions. For example:

Etsy likes to position itself as LGBTQ2S+ positive. That means a topless photo of a trans male with visible nipples is ok even if they never had top surgery, right? Especially if they have legally transitioned and have government-issued ID that lists them as male, correct?

Where is the "non-photorealistic" line drawn? If a painter attempts to be photorealistic, but is not very skilled at the process, is that painting ok to sell on Etsy?

I am sure you can think of plenty more. But holes in the policies are not my main concern in this article, so I will move on (after noting that Etsy is going to have some enforcement messes with the policies as written).

Where Should Sellers and Shoppers Go After July 29?

(Mention in this section is not an endorsement of the platform. Please carefully research any option before signing up. Some links are not "safe for work".)

Etsy gave business owners just one month's warning that they were no longer wanted on the site. Many are still scrambling to replace their steady income that their Etsy shop provided. The alternatives are not always simple, and it does depend on what a shop sold.

There are a few small marketplaces for adult items, including https://spicerack.market/ and https://charmskoolshop.com/ (links not safe for work). These are not going to have the level of traffic Etsy had, but that also might improve now that many businesses and shoppers are looking for new venues.

There are also larger marketplaces that do allow many of the products Etsy banned, but each has its own restrictions and exceptions, making it risky to copy existing Etsy listings over directly. Always carefully research the rules everywhere. Amazon does have a sexual wellness category, but it is not part of Amazon's Handmade section. eBay also has sex toys. The Artisans Cooperative currently has some adult items listed, but the site is still in beta, so only coop members can sell there at the moment.

Freestanding websites and self-promotion are another approach, but this can be daunting for makers who chose Etsy for its built-in traffic, plus some platforms and payment processors do have rules against certain types of adult content. Shopify's Shop app bans pornography and "sexually gratifying" fetishes, and the bot filters can sometimes block allowed content by mistake.

If you have a favourite seller, they have likely already posted where they plan on going next; if not, ask them.

Why Did Etsy Ban Many Adult Listings, and Why Now?

The various media articles lay out numerous possible reasons for the new sex policies. They include:

Some jurisdictions have laws that limit what children or under-18s can see online, which is likely why Etsy's short announcement uses the word "safe" in 3 different places.

Some social media sites restrict adult content - "evolving industry standards", perhaps?

Some payment processors restrict what adult items can be sold.

We're forced to speculate, because Etsy has refused to answer questions or release additional statements since June 27. That's problematic when talking about destroying livelihoods, because none of these reasons seem to dictate an absolute ban.

As mentioned above, many sites still allow most of the prohibited products, either openly, with age minimums, or with siloed categories that don't appear in generic searches. A big tech company should easily be able to program for this. There's been no indication that any of Etsy's payment processors have withdrawn due to this content, either. So that list simply doesn't add up.

Instead, it's clear that the core explanation is that Etsy wants a bigger slice of the ecommerce pie, and is willing to reject long-standing sellers and product lines to better appeal to shoppers who find sex and related topics distasteful. But again, why not just separate the categories better, as Amazon and eBay do? Amazon is certainly not lacking for customers despite having a sexual wellness category where many things Etsy disallowed still happily reside.

This all boils down to a key reason few are discussing: Etsy's faulty algorithms don't seem capable of keeping such merchandise out of sight of really picky shoppers. They've in fact been trying to do that for a few years now, as the 2022 Transparency report detailed. Etsy stated that the “mature content classifier” led to "a 17% decrease in flags of mature content from our member community". Let's be honest - 17% isn't a great reduction. Even worse, that classifier led to shadow banning such innocuous items as dog diapers and "nude" coloured leggings, while endlessly missing actual porn, including deep-fake AI celebrity images [Forbes; soft paywall].

CEO Josh Silverman has made it clear that Etsy isn't going to focus on improving search relevancy any more, and will instead be focussing on product quality and shops' customer service records to determine search ranking. Problem is, niche searches still display tons of irrelevant items - go check; I'll wait - and this is frequently where one might see things they weren't looking for. If the search and other algorithms aren't able to give shoppers accurate results even when Etsy is attempting to filter out mature items, then Etsy's alternative is to ban the items outright.

Let's face it: if the real problem was female nipples being seen by kids, they'd all have to be blurred out, instead of just the first image. The first image is what shows up in search, ads, and recommendations across the site, so that is what Etsy is censoring. Kids are welcome to look at butt cracks to their hearts' content, as long as they click on the listing first. The real problem is instead that Etsy can't deliver accurate searches and tailored recommendations that people want to see, and regularly serves up things shoppers were not expecting.

But why now? Other than the recent promises to change the search focus from relevancy to quality, what made Etsy drop this notice on unsuspecting sellers on June 27?

The answer appears to be Etsy's new creativity standards, released on July 9. Those standards codify previously unofficial exceptions to Etsy policy, such as allowing 100% commercial goods to be sold in gift boxes. They are also the first official mention of Etsy permitting AI art to be sold on the site, although Silverman had already announced that unofficially.

The policy changes are likely to increase the number of listings on the site that are not handmade, vintage or craft supplies, and Etsy obviously felt the need to stem the eventual tide of sexual gift boxes of dildos from AliExpress - yes, there are already some listed on Etsy - and even more AI-generated nudity etc.

Note as well that July 29 falls just 2 days before the second quarter report is given to investors, providing Etsy with a topic to discuss during that call. They can claim they are taking action against mature listings without being expected to have removed 100% just 2 days after the ban, and the topic will likely be forgotten 3 months later when the third-quarter call happens. It's possible that, 3 months from now, no analysts will check to see if the ban was actually successful. Perfect timing, I'd say.

What Next?

First, any experienced Etsy seller knows that Etsy attempts to remove now-banned items will result in plenty of legitimate listings being deactivated as well; see the dog diaper example above. Items won't even have to be related to the prohibited categories, as the image recognition bots can be particularly bad. Every time Etsy bans something, even if only within one country or area, there is always collateral damage in the form of non-offending listings being removed. (I've had items deactivated for being amber, drug paraphernalia and illegal plant material, when they were nothing of the sort.)

At one time, you could expect Etsy to reinstate such items after an investigation, but that is less common these days, and frequently takes weeks to months when it does happen. This means all sellers should be alert and watch their deactivated listings folder in the coming weeks, and be resigned to losing best-selling products for no good reason, due to bad bots.

Long term, I doubt this is the last time Etsy narrows what can be sold in the interests of appeasing sensitive shoppers. Even if you 100% support Etsy banning everything that they did last month, you should be uneasy about what could be coming next. If age-limit laws were really behind some of this recent decision, what happens when some US jurisdictions start restricting no-fault divorce? Everything from party supplies to t-shirt slogans to happy divorce gifts could be on the chopping block.

It's also possible the company will try to continue to refine its bots and algorithms instead of outright banning other products. Since Etsy is already shadow banning items for certain searches, are shops with a few LGBTQ2S+ articles invisible right now in places where laws are discriminatory? In places where birth control is illegal or severely restricted, are birth control pill cases still ok? I am not sure we can assume Etsy won't continue down this path.

Whatever your thoughts on the listings Etsy is currently banning, remember that these are businesses who were allowed to sell their wares on the marketplace until this month, and have therefore done nothing wrong. Things you believe in could be the next target.

[nekrotiize]

In lieu of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), most well known for their fiction hosting website Archive of Our Own (AO3), formally warning a volunteer for expressing Pro-Palestine beliefs, and censoring Pro-Palestine adjacent content and phrases despite advertising themselves as an Anti-Censorship, No Holds Barred archival website, and various other companies and organizations committing to the same level of censorship or having staff members outright expressing Zionist beliefs, I’ve been thinking a lot about the centralization of the Internet. I do think AO3 is a good springboard for this conversation, since it’s the most familiar platform for most people on this accursed hellsite.

Not too many years ago, the Internet was very much so decentralized- everything was scattered across a million different smaller sites and forums, and while it could be a hassle to navigate, it did at least give you plenty of options if the site you were currently using had a sudden change, or the staff members began expressing opinions you did not believe in. If the site you were on was revealed to be ran by what you deemed as “unsavories,” or the overall vibe in the community or the site layout changed in a way that you didn’t like, you could simply move to another one that suited your needs more. Different websites for different niches, and different websites within those niches for different codes of honor. Tough to keep up with, sure, but again, it gave you a lot of options.

Things are widely centralized now, meaning most of everything is kept on only a handful of sites- Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit are the main sites online. Most reselling is done on eBay, most indie online stores hosted on Etsy, most fanfiction hosted on AO3, most videos hosted on YouTube. Instagram and TikTok are downloaded on an uncountable number of phones, and I’d be remiss to not mention them as mobile platform giants. There are other options- we’re on one of them- but most online activity is focused on those sites, to the point where if you need to change to a different one, you’re kind of out of luck. Most other sites don’t have nearly as much traffic, most people aren’t willing to follow you to what they will likely read as either archaic or a startup bound to flop. It’s a big deal. You lose your following, and you lose your revenue.

If you want to move to another one of the bigger websites, you’re simply forced to adapt to the fact that posting on all of these sites are such vastly different beasts with such vastly different cultures and algorithms that it’d be ridiculous to compare them, and you’re forced to adapt to the fact that since all of these main sites are ran by billionaire assholes, you really aren’t improving much by going from one to the other.

The options are minimal, and that’s shit. None of this is helped by how fast-paced the Internet is these days- art isn’t savored, it’s consumed within 5 seconds and then forgotten. It’s difficult to build loyal followings when most algorithms rely on constant posting. Some artists work themselves into the ground for that sweet, algorithm-friendly daily upload.

The only thing one can do about the dismal nature of the centralized Internet is get more vocal about supporting smaller sites… And then actually use them regularly. It hurts no one, and helps everyone, in the long run.

We need niche websites back. We need forums.

Bring back the old internet.

[noys-boise]

Can you infodump to me about whatever youre currently obsessed with

can i? dude you're going to have to stop me with force i REALLY want to infodump I just never have the excuse to do it. I'll be nice enough to put it under a read more though because this is very long.

let me tell you about this little streaming service called dropout.tv because it has taken over my life. it was started by the people at collegehumor (idk if you know it, they made sketch comedy and that sort of videos for over a decade) when they got tired of having to conform to advertisers on sites like youtube or facebook. and also not long after dropout launched collegehumor's parent company tried to sell the brand since it wasn't profitable enough for them leading to Sam Reich, who's worked at collegehumor pretty much since the beginning, acquiring the rights. however he did have to lay off pretty much everyone except a skeleton crew plus Brennan Lee Mulligan who created the most popular series on the platform. but everyone else keeps working at dropout on a freelance basis so it's all good.

anyway with the launch of dropout they moved away from scripted comedy to really a wide variety of unscripted content. the series that got me into dropout is game changer, a game show where the contestants don't know what game it is they're going to play since the game changes (almost) every time. it is SO fun?? there's been so many insane concepts including lie detector that's secretly controlled by the contestants' significant others, selling useless shit like a keyboard that only has the letter p or a rubik's cube that's all green, murder mystery that's somehow both fictional and real at the same time (it's. really hard to explain this one it was really just to troll one specific contestant, a lot of episodes are made with specific people in mind since these people have worked together for a very long time), escape room but it's just locking these three people in a room and also there's some insane lore around it that people still make conspiracy theories about, an actual time loop and of course the multiple survivor parodies and the one batchelor parody (it's very bisexual). i could honestly rant about game changer forever. it really has that appeal of being able to get to know the contestants (a majority of whom are former collegehumor employees who appear in many episodes across all dropout shows) and that they're all professional comedians who know each other and the host very well. it has fun cozy vibes except when it actively breaks my mind (looking at you deja vu).

there are three shows that were spun off from game changer: make some noise, which is prompt based improv (sidenote, my icon and url are both referencing this show, specifically the original trio this series started with back when it was in game changer. the noise boys refer to Josh, Zac and Brennan who after doing four episodes of this game within game changer are also the contestants in every make some noise season premiere and finale), dirty laundry which is kind of based never have i ever as a game show and also Grant O'Brien is there as a bartender (Grant O'Brien is the tall bisexual theatre nerd i post quite a lot about), and play it by ear in which they improvise entire musicals, which i still haven't watched and I'm fully aware of how out of character that is for me. however i do really love the original game changer episode play it by ear is based on.

so.... here's the thing. i kind of lied. i said game changer is the first dropout show i got into but um, actually, i was into a dropout show before i really knew what dropout is. Um, actually is a game show where the host (originally Mike Trapp, now Ify Nwadiwe) says incorrect statements mostly about nerdy media which the contestants have to correct, but they have to start their corrections with the phrase "um, actually" or they don't get the point. they made two musical theatre themed episodes that i found back in 2022? i think? that were on youtube and then i got into Howard the duck which got me kind of into marvel comics which are referenced in a lot of episodes leading me to watching quite a lot of the episodes that were up on youtube (i think out of all dropout shows this one might have the most free on youtube content) and then i kind of forgot about it until this year's april when i started properly getting into dropout.

however the most popular and longest dropout show is dimension 20, which is a dungeons & dragons actual play. almost every season is a new setting and there's been a lot of different players though there is a main cast known as the intrepid heroes (Zac Oyama, Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, Siobhan Thompson, Emily Axford and Brian Murphy + Brennan Lee Mulligan as the dm). the first season that then got two continuations is fantasy high which is set in a more modern dnd setting but with the same fantasy races as the original game but there's been a lot of seasons that completely break away from all traditional dnd elements (some of them aren't actually dnd at all but different game systems) like the one I'm watching right now is a murder mystery with anthropomorphic animals.

there's sooo many more dropout shows i could talk about but this rant is already getting way too long. i love so many things about dropout. they make so much original, fresh content that no one else is making. there's so much diversity in such a natural way (to me especially seeing Ally Beardsley's transition is very special) and it's generally extremely progressive and ethical. idk what else to say, watching dropout makes me very happy, I'm very hyeprfixated on it, it's my main comfort thing right now and i can't recommend it enough (there's a bunch of stuff on youtube for free already but also imo it's absolutely worth 6 dollars a month)

I'm sorry for how long that rant turned out unfortunately i am very unnormal

[sanguinarysanguinity]

"Fic Writer" Meme

(I'm not just a fic writer, and have adjusted the questions accordingly.)

Tagged by @oldshrewsburyian, thank you!

AO3 Name: sanguinity

Fandoms: Currently, the Hornblower novels and The Flight of the Heron. Previously, Strange Empire, Elementary, and a wide array of niche Holmes fandoms. And in the even more distant past, I mostly did lots of rare-fandom exchanges (Yuletide, Festivids, Kaleidoscope -- oh, how I miss Kaleidoscope!), so that between one thing and another, the long tail of my fandoms list is very long. (There was a long time that I wondered how it was even possible that people managed to have enough works in a single fandom to qualify for a remix exchange, since I had almost exclusively one-offs! But that all has changed now…)

Number of Works: 172. Most of those are fic; a couple dozen are vids; a handful are podfic. I need to go through and sort out my video and podfic hosting again; providers have decayed, morphed, and gone offline since I posted these, and I need to find new hosts for some of them.

Work I spent the most time on: Hornblower's Lost Honour, at approximately three years. (That will be GREATLY eclipsed by Langstroth on Bees if I ever finish it! Which I still intend to do someday!) Longest I spent on a vid was a year, for Something Good (Will Come From That), my multi-Holmes magnum opus.

Works I spent the least time on: Oh, good God, there are so many I whipped out in a day. A Peaceful and Beautiful Spot (FotH), Brandy and Soda (The Seven Per-Cent Solution), and Score: Q to 12 (Elementary) were all single-day works that came out very well. The Sherlock 60s, by dint of being 60 word stories, also all took something like an hour apiece. Also, the whole ceci ne pas une vid collection was made at the pace of a vidlet a day, which usually involved downloading and watching the movie, too.

Longest fic: Hornblower's Lost Honour

Shortest fic: the individual entries in Sixty for Sixty, each being a sixty word story based on one of the sixty canon Sherlock Holmes stories.

Most hits: The Sincerity of Dust (BBC Sherlock)

Most kudos: See previous. It's one of my oldest works, written at the height of a mega-fandom, and it's been wildly popular from the beginning.

Total Word Count: 726,055

Favorite Work of my Own: I feel like you're King Solomon asking me to cut my babies in half! Usually my favorite is whichever one I've reread or rewatched recently. They nearly all mean something special to me, or I wouldn't have put in the work to finish them.

Fic You Want To Rewrite/Expand On: Ugh, all the early stuff needs to be rewritten. I use too many italics, the sentence structures are awkward. I've improved SO MUCH as a writer that I almost flinch to look at them now. But I REFUSE to go back and rewrite them, I am NOT going to get entrapped in that time suck of despair and self-reproach.

As for expansion, there are a number of stories I want to write further installments to: Until Death or England Do Us Part, the Kraken series, the Any Service series, the Psychic Wolves series…

Share a Bit of a WIP or story idea you are planning on:

While visiting Ewen Cameron in the dungeons under Fort Augustus, Keith Windham forgots his pen-knife. Ewen's guards discover it the next morning when he is searched before his departure for Fort William, and via its inscription, it is traced back to Keith. Keith is court-martialed for aiding a prisoner, found guilty, and cashiered. His sword is broken, and his spirit with it.

Several years go by before he learns that the court martial had been rigged against him from the start, and that Major Guthrie had been instrumental in arranging that. With a burning desire to recover his honour, Keith boards a ship for the Highlands, the site of Guthrie's current posting, to demand satisfaction. Upon landing in Inverness, however, he makes a near-fatal miscalculation: he is robbed, stabbed, and left for dead.

When he wakes, he is in an unfamiliar room, with a very worried Ewen Cameron of Ardroy sitting vigil at his bedside…

Tagging @gniew777, @cedarboots, @verecunda, @tgarnsl, @chiropteracupola, @sailorpants, and anyone else who wishes to play!

[machifuwa]

Autumn Cafeteria | Episode 3

Tsukasa: In summary, we are working as Volunteers to help this place.

Yuuta: I see, so that's why you're all here.

But I'm a bit disappointed that even my seniors used to come here. I thought it was a hideout that only I knew of because there are never many customers no matter when I come.

Shu: I used to think the same way before. Because there are few people, it is calm and comfortable.

However, when I put myself in the position of the store, I realized that the number of customers is proportional to its profit.

Even though it's a holiday, this situation is simply terrible... It's not a viable business at all.

Koga: Even though you're just volunteers, seems like you guys still have time to talk to usーcutomers.

I mean, what about work? Is it okay for all three of you to be relaxed like this?

Shu: It's a bit of a bummer, but it's not a problem. As of now, you two are our only customers.

Yuuta: Oh, that's true. But there was another couple there just now.

Tsumugi: By the time I had brought the food to you two, they had already paid the bill and left afterwards.

Even though it's pretty busy during lunch time. It's still a lonely sight~.

Koga: …So, how's that workin' out for you? Do you guys know how to solve this, huh?

Yuuta: Why is Oogami-senpai acting like he's in charge?

Koga: I didn't mean to meddle, but I'm pretty sure you're also curious about all this, ain'tcha?

Tsumugi: We've been looking for ways to improve the café while we work, but we haven't thought of any good ideas so far.

The menu has a wide variety of items, the prices and tastes are perfect, and the customer satisfaction is high.

The only thing wrong is the location. If this store could be moved to the front street with just a "bang," it would be an immediate solution.

Tsukasa: As expected, it's difficult. We don't have any more land left to move this place…

Tsumugi: No no, I'm just kidding. Don't take it seriously.

Shu: What are you doing, teasing a serious child, Aoba?

Tsumugi: I was trying to make the situation more relaxed~. After all, we won't gain anything staying still like this.

Yuuta: Is that so? I can't believe they're closing, even though I found a great hideout. I'd hate to see it go down the drain without being able to do anything about it...

I don't have any good ideas. But can I help you?

Shu: Umu, you are very much welcome. This place means a lot to me too.

Koga: Dammit. This reminds me of "Special Music Zone".

Seems like the number of closed shops and collapsed buildings increased due to the influence of ES over there, too.

Yuuta: So, this means Oogami-senpai will be joining us.

Koga: Haa? Why would I?

Yuuta: Eh, am I wrong? In the spring, when I was making a fuss about helping the live music clubs in the "Special Music Zone".

"I'll help you," you offered. So I was expecting that you would cooperate with me this time again.

Koga: Ah…Well, since I've stuck my head in so far, I can't just ignore it, huh?

Yuuta: Really? Fufu, Oogami-senpai is very caring, isn't he?

Koga: Shut up. Don't be comfortable just cuz there are more people. It's all meaningless if you don't have any ideas.

Tsumugi: Even if there are volunteers like us, there are no customers and this place is deserted in the first place.

We're still having a lot of free time, and now that we've increased to five people, we're going to have a lot more...

Aah, yes. If you guys don't mind, Yuuta-kun, Koga-kunーand Suou-kun, can you three inspect the site?

Tsukasa: Inspect?

Tsumugi: If we all stay stuck here, we'll just end up wasting time, so I think it might be a good idea for you to visit other stores to gain some insight.

I want you to leave this place to me and Shu-kun.

Tsukasa: Hah...I understand. Oogami-senpai, Yuuta-kun. I'm looking forward to working with you.

Yuuta: Yeah, same here! What are you going to wear? Are you just going as you are?

Tsukasa: No, I'm going to go change. Could you give me some time?

Koga: Alright. We'll wait for you outside.

Yuuta: See you later~!

Alrighty then, we're off for a visit!

Tsumugi: Take care~.

Shu: ...It's such a pity. I had no idea I'll have to stay with you, out of all people.

Tsumugi: I'm simply worried about leaving it to only Shu-kun and Suou-kun, who have little customer service experience.

Even if you went with them, will you be able to blend with them?

Shu: Excuse me. I'm more used to collective action than I was before. In Paris, I'm always surrounded by free people who pretend to be artists.

Tsumugi: Oh~. You must be a good influence there, then.

But still, Paris, huh... When I was still a student, I remember making the "French Special Corner", even though I haven't set foot in the country myself.

If I come visit sometime, will you show me around?

Shu: Non. I don't want to.

Tsumugi: Even if Natsume-kun and Sora-kun came along?

Shu: ………

...I never came to Paris to become a tourist guide.

However, it'll be troublesome if they go missing, so I'll simply lend a hand.

Tsumugi; Fufu, thank you very much.

Shu: Somehow, I feel like I'm being tricked into this.

Tsumugi: You are kindhearted.

Shu: Hm. You saying that won't make me feel proud at all.

Tsumugi: Aw, that's pretty harsh~♪

Prev | Masterlist | Next

Translated by mars | Proofread by machi

[autumnslance]

Here’s the thing, folks: You Can.

I don’t use mods on my own rooms, apartments, or Dark Autumn’s house. I maybe use the storage room trick once in awhile to get things closer to the walls than they otherwise would get. I layer some things on top of each other, maybe hide a table or bed on things. I once—once—glitched a picture in C’oretta’s room to make a mirror and I won’t do it again. It was a pain and I haven’t the patience.

The rest is just. Practice, really. Some time. Like anything else. Honestly, I’m not very good at color, design, lighting, and so on in traditional art, so decorating’s taken some time for me to improve at, too.

I check helpful FFXIV housing websites that show items and list where to get and/or make them. Also, the basic housing menu has previews for all housing items (except holiday/store stuff) available built in already.

I watch the market boards across my DC for deals on stuff I want. I know where to find vendored items—gil, GC, Scrips, Tribal—so I can get those, too. I collect things over time, saving them on a retainer. Is it cheaper to make some or all of it on my own?

And then I sit on it awhile. I had a similar room in Iyna’s FC space for maybe a year, but wasn’t satisfied with it. I fiddled with it, poked it. When I swapped the photo studio to Iyna’s room, I transferred the items to Dark (using the FC public house storage, and/or swapping items between Dark and Aeryn via a house they’re both tenants in), and spent a few hours mucking with it.

I have 25 slots left I can use to add to it, change some things. It’s a wide open floorplan, so space to move and swing a camera around. It’s useable, which I care about.

It simply depends on what one wants.

I know it seems discouraging, when it seems every housing image on every site one sees is using placement mods and glitching to make wildly detailed rooms that use every slot to fill a quarter of the space to make a showcase of the designer’s impressive skills and imaginations.

People tell me I’m good at writing; I didn’t get good at that in a day, I’ve been working on it most of my life. Any visual artist will tell you about the years of work they put in. Dark’s house and apartment look very different than when I first started playing with housing when we got our first FC house in 2017, and it’s not just due to new in game items (though they help). And those impressive housing designers will likely also tell you, it’s just taken them time and practice (and yeah, quite a bit of gil and/or farming) and they often still spend hours cursing their tools as they try to make those tricky builds work.

So look around at pictures of rooms and apartments, real and imagined. Consider what’s available in game. Consider your characters, your intentions for the space. And just iterate on it. Think about it. Change some things around. Add to it. Learn a new trick, come up with new ideas, and build it up over time. Allow your mind to change, too. There’s a lotta options these days. Many of them easier to obtain than you might realize.

Be kind to yourself, and if you want to take the time, you can totally make your own OCs the kind of pretty spaces they deserve to tell the stories you want with your spaces.

[tarikulislamahc]

SWEET777 Casino Review

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The home at 777 sweet briar trl se in milford mi is a single family property that contains 1000 sq ft and was built in 1957. It has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. This property was last sold for $365,000 in july 2014.

Its been about a month now since ive been ordering my food from sweet pea cafe and it hasnt been delivered. The last time i ordered the a la carte menu it was just a burger and fries and that took about 30mins to get delivered. This time i just ordered the dinner special. The waitress came over to take my order and said the dinner special was 40mins, so i told her it had been about a month since ive placed my previous order and that i would be happy with 30mins. She gave me a look and then said ok, ill give you 20 mins and let me know when i can expect my food to arrive.

The best part about this restaurant is the food and the service, i cant say enough good things about it! I will definitely be coming back in the future and recommending it to others. I love their food, the burger is so tasty and their fries are amazing! I just wish they could deliver better.

I have been coming here for a while now and the food is always really good, and they have a great selection of drinks! The staff are friendly, and the prices are reasonable. The only thing that bothers me is the delivery, they are so slow! It usually takes 30 mins or more for them to deliver.

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This website is a great resource for people who are looking for a new way to enjoy the thrill of gambling at an online casino without having to leave the comfort of their own homes. They have a wide range of games, from classic slots to 3reel slots and video poker. They also have a great selection of tournaments.

[lunavenefica]

Isn't it a bit of appropriation to take Celtic pagan culture and use it for your witchy nonsense? I mean, the only people who could possibly get away with this stuff are the Irish/Scottish etc.

I usually don't reply to these questions but since I can see that whatever you're trying to say comes from a place of ignorance I'll give you a quick history lesson:

1)Who were the Celts?

"Early sources place Celts in western Europe and also occupying land near the headwaters of the Danube River. Their home territories have often been traced to central and eastern France, extending across southern Germany and into the Czech Republic.

In 279BC the Celts were known to have looted Delphi, the sacred Greek site. Strabo (Geographer) recorded a meeting between the Celts and Alexander the Great in 335BC in the Balkans. Classical writers had recorded a large-scale migration of Celts soon after 400BC, this migration took the Celts from central Europe into Northern Italy and Eastern Europe."

As you can see, the Celts weren't only Irish or Scottish, that's something you could've googled and discovered in about 2 seconds.

2) Is it cultural appropriation?

Once again, it would've been enough to scroll through my blog to get your answer, if we're really going into cancel culture and cultural appropriation the answer is still NO!

First of all we have 2 admins, 2 different people with different backgrounds, I (the person answering this ask and managing most of the blog), 'Isidora' am literally of Slavic descent, I was born in Eastern Europe, in the Balkans, near the Danube river quoted in point n.1, and live in Italy, while the other person 'Blaiz' is from France and has Breton roots. So technically speaking, it's not cultural appropriation.

If we're talking about morality? It's still a no!

As absurd as it can seem, different cultures have a LOT, and I tell you, a LOT of common traditions, there may be some smaller differences or a change of names but you'll find a lot of similar holidays, practices and traditions in most cultures.

3) Are we using Celtic Pagan Culture for our witchy non-sense?

Never have I stated that I'm a Celtic Pagan, I am an atheist and see Witchcraft as a craft that combines a bit of psychology, science, self-help and fun to keep myself motivated to work on whatever I need to improve in my life.

What I'm sharing here are my notes and an insight of the history of certain Holidays, or ways to modernize what people did for centuries, because with the progression of technology what was easy to do in the past (like having bonfires) can be difficult in the present.

The other admin, Bleiz is a pagan who works with Breton deities.

They are pagan, there are MANY branches of paganism and there's absolutely nothing wrong in exploring them since the Celts were one of the most widely spread populations in the Ancient Age and there's been a LOT of contamination.

That being said, I hope you find something better to do in your life instead of sending passive aggressive anon messages trying to invalidate someone's beliefs/ruin their day just to get a response on topics that you clearly have very little knowledge of.

Educate yourself before speaking and respect other people's beliefs.

That's all, happy Halloween and touch some grass.

Yours truly,

Isidora

NB : Here is Bleiz writing!

My friend answered really well to your ask. Like she said, descendants of Celtic people are not only in Ireland or Scotland. There is a part in France, called Bretagne, where they stayed and kept a lot of their celtic traditions (mixed with christian religion, but that's another thing). A part of my family comes from there actually. In some villages, we still celebrate the old festivities going back to the celtic people (which were rebranded as 'christian honors' because they were so engraved into the cultures and traditions of Bretagne that the Church couldn't completely suppress them).

Not everyone on this site is american, and we all come from different backgrounds. Your question could have been really interesting, however with the tone you used, it looks more like an aggression to my origins and a disrespect to my ancestors who were murdered by the church because of their beliefs of the ancient gods.

If you don't know something, we would be glad to explain them to you, but please, next time, try not to be so aggressive. There is no shame in not knowing something.

Take care of you, and I hope this will help you to get into Celtic History, traditions and cultures through the different territories because it is fascinating!

Trugarez, kenavo!

⛤Bleiz⛤

[honnojis]

Wow just read about your flower parade post and I have so many questions! is it like a pride parade? How did you learn to make something so amazing?! Is there anywhere online I can watch that parade?

ohhhhh you have opened the floodgates dear anon. welcome to one of the biggest joys in my life; the Zundert flower parade

It's not a pride parade, but a full blown artistic flower parade in my hometown that was first held in the 30's and has grown to become the world's largest! Originally it was in celebration of the Dutch Queen's birthday at the time, but nowadays it's held on every first Sunday of September. The max dimensions of a float are 9 meters high, 5 meters wide and 19 meters long (unless you're using more than one chassis, then the totaling length of your creation can be 50 meters including any potential actors on the ground)

The coolest part that it's organized and built ENTIRELY by volunteers, relying entirely on sponsors to be made a possibility, so it's very much a cultural thing, not a commercial project as no one's getting paid for anything. It's what I generally like to call an out-of-control hobby, LOL. It's so integrated in the culture of the town/municipality where I live that people always talk about times of the year as "before corso" or "after corso", kinda as if it's our version of new year's.

It is an actual competition though, so there's prizes involved! Tho it's more for the honor than having actually anything big at stake. The parade passes by the main grandstands twice, the first time to put everything on display for the jury and the second time when it's time for each workgroup to receive their results and placement, which is literally the most exciting thing of the entire parade oh god the nerves

Oh and, all the money earned during the events goes back into organizing the next year's parade and the 20 different workgroups that build the floats each year! So pretty much all the remaining money is kept to improve on the parade and help the workgroups out.

I've been part of one of the workgroups (Heikant) for my entire life, and have had the honor of being one of the float designers for the workgroup since 2019, having designed a float 3 times now. I work together with my oldest brother and three other friends from the workgroup! We've managed to get 2nd place twice in 2019 and 2021 (2020 edition was cancelled bc of covid lol), and we took the win home last year :) We've also won the 1st public's choice award twice and got the 3rd public's choice award once as well! The float you actually see on the front page of the site I linked is the one we built last year!!! Tho really, you should look up video footage. It's so much more impressive when it's in motion.

If you wanna explore what's been built in the past, you should check out the archives! It's got all the creations listed from all the workgroups over the course of years. I recommend checking things out from 2001 and onward :) Most of the coolest stuff built is in there LOL.

The event usually gets streamed on Omroep Brabant every year! There's a livestream on their website. But you can also watch back older parade videos on the youtube channel of the parade! Here's the full video from last year!

anyways GOSH thank you for letting me gush anon bc this is such a huge part of my life and has done an insane amount for me in terms of helping getting rid of a lot of my social anxiety, so it makes me stupidly happy whenever i get the chance to talk about it

[cindylouwho-2]

ETSY FIRST QUARTER 2024 EARNINGS REPORT - No Idea When Sales Will Improve, But Lots of Change Coming

(Above: Slide 18 from Etsy's Investor Presentation, © Etsy. The top 6 categories were down across the board)

As Etsy predicted last quarterly report, gross marketplace sales were down in the first quarter of 2024, but contrary to predictions last quarter, the top brass now do not expect anything to improve in the second quarter. They didn't even try to sugar coat it much.

However, this turned out to be an interesting call anyway. Given that they had bad news and little new to announce, they actually had to divulge more details on how the site actually works, and the search plans for the near future. I strongly suggest that every Etsy seller familiarize themselves with what is coming down the pipe.

First, here are the official sources:

the press release

transcript of the conference call

slides from the conference call

video of the call (click on “Webcast”)

my summaries of the first quarter 2023, and the fourth quarter 2023 for comparison

Then, the basic numbers (covering January to March 2024, compared to the same period in 2023):

Sales on Etsy were $2.6 billion, down 5.3% year over year

Total sales for all 3 marketplaces (Etsy, Reverb, and Depop) were $3.0 billion, down 3.7%. [Elo7 was officially sold in mid August; its numbers were included in the comparison totals from 2023]

Etsy’s revenue (including all 3 sites) was $646 million, up 0.8%

Seller service revenue was up 3.2% to $179 million, while marketplace revenue was down 0.1% to $467 million

Net income was $63 million, down 15.5%

Active buyers on Etsy alone stand at 91.6 million

Active sellers on Etsy alone are at 7 million, up over 1 million from the first quarter 2023 but no change from the 4th quarter. [Note that “active” means one charge or transaction in the past 12 months; many “active” shops currently have nothing for sale.]

Etsy sales where the buyer and/or the seller was not in the United States were 48%, although across all three sites it is only 45%

As usual, I am mostly reporting on what Etsy said, but my own comments will be in square brackets, as well as in the analysis section at the end of this post.

Gift Mode and Gifting Initiatives Aren't Going Away

Etsy's front office seems happy with Gift Mode so far, and note that gift buying on the site in general is already increasing. "We're pleased to report that Etsy's total site-wide gifting GMS in the first quarter grew in the low-single-digits year-over-year," which was better than other gift sites they were tracking.

Gift Mode was also a huge success at getting attention, with over 4 times the news coverage of any previous Etsy public relations campaign. CEO Josh Silverman said they were happy with the Super Bowl ad, and would consider doing one in the future if the company had another big thing to announce.

And finally, we heard the real reason that Gift Mode sucked when it was released: the team that came up with it in the summer of 2023 intended it to be released in 2025, but Silverman insisted that they do it for 2024. He admits it needs a lot more work. [So a lousy product that doesn't do anything it is advertised to do was launched a year early because the CEO was out of other ideas and needed something fast. No doubt that is why a lot of the ads and emails are leaning into the personas instead of the main function of choosing a gift for a particular person and occasion.]

Etsy Search and Discovery

They've been talking about this for a while, but this time the comments were far more explicit: Etsy search has too much "clutter". The whole quote is important:

"All too often, when you visit Etsy, your search is cluttered, showing you too many items that feel very similar...failing to highlight the incredible diversity that is a towering strength for Etsy. In addition, you might not be clear as to why each of these items belong on Etsy. For example, which are handmade by the seller themselves, which are designed by the seller, but produced in close collaboration with the production partner and/or which are personalized and customized by the seller. While there's demand on Etsy for each of these categories of items, it depends a great deal on the buyer's shopping mission." [my emphasis]

Slides 8 through 10 discuss how Etsy plans on solving this problem.

The first point - removing non-handmade items - is covered below.

As has been mentioned in previous calls, Etsy wants to change its search to show more "quality" products. This means adding factors "such as the quality of the listing and photography, shipping price and reliability and customer reviews into our organic search algorithms." [This is likely the reason Etsy recently updated the search legal policy page, mentioning these sorts of factors in their recommendation algorithms. Yes, as I have been telling people for a while now, image quality is becoming part of Etsy SEO and its other algorithms. Looking at the listings which have "Etsy's Picks" badges is a good way to spot what Etsy currently thinks is "quality", but that could easily change at any time. Note also that he said "organic search algorithms" - apparently they are not planning on doing this with Etsy Ads just yet, meaning shops who lose visibility through organic search may have to pay for ads to make up the difference.]

Their definition of quality excludes "sellers that have higher levels of refund or consistently ship late" - they want the customer to be happy with the whole buying experience, not just the product. So above-average rates of returns and late shipping are also likely to factor into Etsy's many algorithms, if they don't already. [Shipping late is a policy violation, and those are search factors under the Customer & Marketplace Experience Score. All of this is Etsy SEO now. We already knew they hated refunds/cancellations because some sellers have received payment reserves for having too many - as few as 1 or 2 in some cases - in a short period of time.] Silverman did agree with a comment that returns/refunds lead to lower Etsy revenue as well.

They also seem to be working on some new way to categorize or filter items, as hinted above with the comments on production partners. "Better organizing our diverse listings into cleaner aisles will declutter our site." This could be referring to the previous attempts t auto-filter large generic searches into narrower categories; see examples in my third quarter 2023 summary. It might also connect to 2 other quotes worth reading:

"[T]he first page of search results might be 30 things that look very, very similar... If these 30 things are virtually identical, can't you just tell me, which one is the best or what are the three, and what are the trade-offs between them? And that's harder for us where we don't map to a catalog. But I think with the latest machine learning and GenAI techniques, it's easier and easier for us to start to understand what the stuff is, what's very substantially similar and really try to give you fewer choices of just the best."...

"Gen AI is actually going to be, I think, more and more helpful at understanding how much value did this particular seller truly add to the product. And we're looking to prioritize items that are really original where the seller really added value and then be able to explain to the buyer exactly where the seller did add value. Did the seller make it themselves, did they design it and produce it with a production partner, did they personalize it, I think that buyers are interested in knowing that." [my emphasis]

So the search plan is to show fewer items that look similar to each other, while adding more diverse items to the first page, all while boosting listings where the seller "added value". That sounds difficult to accomplish. Think of some searches where it is clear that many of the shops are using the very similar supplies, using the same fonts etc. In his ideal version of Etsy search, are most of those items going to disappear from the early pages in favour of things that look different and/or more complicated to make?

[There were 2 separate mentions of the differences between handmade vs. designed vs. personalized, including in the prepared remarks. Are they actually going to do something to make this more evident to shoppers, and if yes, how? If a shop sells POD and has their production partner linked, Etsy could display that more prominently on the listing, and even use that fact as a search filter. However, many owner-designed products don't have integrated production partners, and Etsy has done almost nothing to enforce disclosure there. We know from experience that AI will do a poor job of figuring this out, but Silverman doesn't seem to have noticed that yet. I am intrigued, but not hopeful.]

"Keep Commerce Human" and Handmade Policy "Violations"

They continue to tout increased removal of items and shops under the handmade policy, and mentioned the AliExpress bot again. If the image exists on AliExpress, "our default now is we take that down". Silverman mentioned that sellers can appeal the takedown, but failed to mention that the process takes weeks or even months, and the shop loses a ton of sales and their listing quality score in the meantime.

Handmade removals more than doubled in the first quarter compared to the year before. Etsy has lost a bit of money due to more aggressive removal of listings and shops as handmade violations; they estimate sales are 0.5% lower than they would have been if nothing was removed. Since the push started, they claim millions of listings and tens of thousands of active sellers have been taken down.

The annual transparency report should have more details; it will be out next week. [I will write my review of it the week after, when I return from a short vacation.]

The Economy

In case you haven't heard, some people feel they have a shortage of discretionary income these days. Silverman claims that Amazon and Walmart are only growing because they sell "everyday essentials". [Remember when Etsy said they were a site for everyday essentials too? The early pandemic was a wild time, and Etsy might be better positioned today if they hadn't assumed the ecommerce boost would continue forever.]

One of the analysts expressly asked if Etsy could still see itself as "a growth company" when they weren't showing any growth, and if they were planning on making really aggressive moves to restart growth this year. Silverman insisted they were all about big moves, citing Gift Mode as an example.

[Perhaps in frustration, this is where Silverman slipped up and swore, saying the corporation does "a sh**-ton of measurement" on the value of its projects, which for me was truly the highlight of the call. I like it when the talking heads show they are human.]

CFO Rachel Glaser pointed out that Etsy is still growing in the higher income brackets, and that when economic conditions improve for lower income households, Etsy will be in great shape.

Miscellaneous

In shipping updates, Silverman reported that:

"Our fulfillment team recently launched a new machine learning model, which reduced our estimate of USPS transit times by greater than one day, resulting in a nearly tripling of the percentage of eligible orders for which Etsy is now able to show an estimated delivery date of seven days or less."

[This would explain why so many shops are reporting items due to arrive before they ship, or have the wrong processing times on them. Any time Etsy applies machine learning to anything, there are widespread errors. They do seem to have fixed the processing time issue, however. Expect Etsy to continue to push for shorter processing times all year, and to have issues with USPS estimates.]

We finally got updated information on buyer app use: 45% of active buyers use the app. That does not necessarily mean that 45% of purchases come from the app, just that those customers use the app at least once in a while. Oddly enough, this was the first quarterly report in years that did not mention sales from mobile. Last quarter, 68% of sales across all of Etsy's sites came from mobile. If those stats are identical on Etsy - that's a big "if" - and if the 45% app use number was actual sales (not just occasional use) that would mean that 45% of Etsy sales would come from the app, 32% from desktop, and 23% from mobile browser. They will be pushing the app much more again this year, "since purchasing days per app user are 75% higher than our non-app users."

the $15 sign up fee for new shops reduced both new sellers and fraud attempts. Silverman referred to "low-effort sellers" and stated "if you're not prepared to invest $15 to get your shop going on Etsy, you may not have the skill or the will to really succeed." [This is such a huge change from the years of him bragging that anyone can start a shop for 20 cents that I wonder how he doesn't get whiplash from these reversals.]

we got a little more info on the planned loyalty program, but not a lot. It won't even be out in beta until the second half of the year, and "the focus is going to be on occasional shoppers...and [how to] turn those people into more loyal buyers."

Reverb and Depop both had good quarters, in part due to their "appeal to value-oriented shoppers".

My Commentary

The biggest takeaway is that algorithms will be changing, and that could hurt a lot of sellers who are currently doing well. They've been saying this for a while now, but recent policy updates and more details on their vision makes this feel much closer.

If they are truly going to narrow down searches to the best of the similar, a lot of items will be shown a lot less than they are now. The difference in "quality" between one listing and the next could be very minor, so setting the goal of narrowing the choices down to just a few means some top sellers could be impacted.

If you want your Etsy shop to keep being shown to visitors, work on:

eliminating late shipments. Extend your processing times and extend individual orders as required. Make it easier for your customers to understand they need to provide information for custom items. [This is tough to balance, because longer processing times and cancelling orders when you don't have the information from the buyer yet are both things that also hurt your visibility. It's just another way in which Etsy is sabotaging sellers of truly custom made items on the site.]

reducing returns and cancellations as much as possible. Examine the reasons people cancel or return orders in your shops, and look for common complaints/reasons you could potentially decrease though information in descriptions and images, FAQs, automated notes to buyers, and Message snippets. [I once stopped selling a product because too many people couldn't figure out how to use it properly. I thought I was explaining it well, but obviously I was not. There is no shame in failing, as long as we recognize the fact.]

improving image quality. This includes making sure your photos are at least 2000 px in the shortest direction, and are clear, uncluttered, properly white balanced and attractive in composition.

making your unique contributions evident in the photos and description. If you "add value" to the product, let everyone know that.

when considering new lines, doing your best not to look like everyone else. Aim to sell that original version that Etsy wants to display as evidence of Etsy's diversity.

remembering that shipping price is a search factor. It may eventually be necessary to bury some or all of the shipping fee in the product price, or to discontinue low-margin and expensive-to-ship products, if they are going to be narrowing down to only a few "quality" products for each query.

I'll have more to say on the handmade violations initiatives after I read the transparency report next week. My current feeling is that the seller community needs to be more publicly vocal about how Etsy's refusal to "keep commerce human" by hiring more support and more handmade screeners is harming truly handmade artisans. Removing items that are also showing up on Aliexpress or Shein as the default action, then forcing small business owners to wait weeks or even months for a resolution, is the antithesis of "human". Oh, and instead of picking on handmade items, try turning AI on the boxes of commercial snacks and foods that continue to violate Etsy policies and cheapen the site.

Some people seem really worked up about the loyalty program plans, but since we know virtually nothing about it yet, I will reserve judgement. A properly-planned loyalty program should produce enough extra revenue to cover the costs, just as Etsy aims for with its periodic "save $10 on all orders over $40" offers.

Finally, last financial call they said they expected to see things picking up in quarter 2, now they say that is not expected until the second half of the year. What happened? Is it truly economic pressure, or did they have to abandon their plan to make more money by forcing shops into tiered subscriptions, at least temporarily? Silverman did stress that they think the gifting initiatives will pay off more as the year goes on, but the tone of this call was so different from the previous one that I can't help but feel that they had other plans just a few months ago.

My prediction from last quarter - that 2024 will be a rough year for many sellers - still stands.