do you hate miles?🤨

i was wondering when someone would send me an ask like this yeah i dont like him to be honest. i know ppl on here have largely moved on from the fateful 2016 interview and it has been discussed to death and yeah he immediately said he was joking etc etc but i dont think its weird to think you shouldnt have to feel pressured to like completely forgive and forget and absolve the sins of a male musician saying something that made a female reporter feel unsafe or objectified or 'caught in an increasingly distressing situation' or act like its some sort of unheard of and unimaginable offense that has never happened before in the history of music interviews and one someone’s favorite musician who can do no wrong in their eyes could definitely never get caught up in (esp given how gross in general the music industry is towards women). OR even go so far to say the reporter did it all for attention i cant believe this is even a discussion that has ever been had in any form ever like genuinely nothing makes me angrier than ppl who literally turn into blatant sexists whenever their favorite white guy's reputation is even mildly put at risk ive literally seen one person on here say the whole interview was made up and exaggerated and that she just wanted to 'join the me too movement' which is like Okay man i think you might just not have any respect for women in real life maybe. even watered down and not as extreme its a take thats more prevalent on am tumblr than i thought or previously imagined and i hate how bad it makes the fandom look like i trust that everyone on here is a reasonably intelligent and empathetic human being who has at least a basic tumblr education on the fact that victim blaming is bad so we dont rly need to turn around and immediately go 'she just misunderstood what he was saying' or 'she just didnt get his sense of humor' like Alright

i hope im articulating all this reasonably well like i think its literally fine that ppl have accepted his apology and moved on and are able to enjoy him as an artist and/or as a person too thats awesome and im happy for the ppl that i follow that have this kind of relationship with him. even if it wasnt for the interview thing he stil wouldnt be for me i used to be a pretty big fan of his music when i was younger but nowadays since ive found different music i dont rly pay any attention to him. im glad he was able to spark alex creatively but thats as far as my enjoyment goes of him to be yonest

also ive just realized now that all this makes me look kind of contrived given the fact that ive written milex before and i dont rly have like an impenetrable explanation i literally started writing for jamex around the time the car album came out bc i found out all my fav jamex fics had gotten deleted by their author so i wanted to fill the void and then one day i was like wait am i good enough yet to write a functional milex fic (plus i was hoping to get more ppl to notice my writing and milex offers a pretty easy way to do that) so then i wrote 2 and i was like ok i am cool. i dont intend to write another fic for them

hope this makes sense i probably forgor to say like 10 other things i wanted to say but thats okay

i often joke abt it but that weird wave of people who simultaneously a) found being attracted to real life people "immoral" in the sense that it was somehow wrong to have sexual thoughts and feelings about people who don't Know that theyre doing that and b) had no problem sexualizing real people (i.e. celebrities, youtube ppl, actors etc.) to the point of making sexual fanfic, fanart and other media focused on them is so emblematic of this... really weird paradigm ive noticed? where wanting sex from another person is seen as this grand flaw of character, while engaging in sexual behavior is "whatever" to the point of irrelevance?

i'm sure i dont have the Proper proper words for it but jesus christ we really have forgotten how to be humans to such a large degree and its a little scary. you're allowed to find real people attractive and sexually appealing, it's not immoral, i'ts not "problematic", it's not "invasive", and it's sure as shit not HARMFUL. it's NORMAL. that's what THINKING is. you're allowed to THINK about real human beings and want to fuck them. that's literally the baseline of normal human behavior. what's NOT normal is tangibly breaching someone's boundaries and presenting/approaching them in a sexual manner without their consent. yknow, like making porn of them without consent? like writing mile-long diatribes of how you'd like to fuck them and plastering them on public websites? or saying off-kilter, brazenly sexual shit to them in public? Literally all of the behavior we have come to recognize as sexual harassment? it is very literally dehumanizing to do that to another human being and it's honestly Weird how commonplace an issue it's become, in conjunction with this idea that it's wrong to simply desire someone and simultaneously treat them like a regular-ass person.

i genuinely have no clue where im going with this but all i can really say is can we please start being normal about each other again because we really are falling down a rabbithole that could very easily end with alot of non-celebrity people being treated to this same, Weird treatment where "i dont wanna have THOUGHTS about fucking someone because that's weird and invasive and they don't KNOW that im thinking that...BUT it's totally fine for me to publicly crow about how i think about their body and what i would do to them in bed and they're obviously not gonna know about it or feel extremely weird about the fact that im saying this bc it's on a public web platform that everyone can see" is somehow a natural, normal thought process for people and not grounds to get your shit knocked

How do you get people to always buy your dragons? Genuine question

i was gonna say something like “haha i have no fucking clue” but that would be a lie i think about this a lot actually so i might have some insights i’ve been breeding dragons as my primary activity on FR since i started playing FR (in 2014...) and people have only started actually buying dragons from me consistently like, 5-6 months ago, despite 2-3 attempts at running a genuine hatchery onsite that always died due to lack of interest & not really being worth the effort. 

so ive thought a lot about what the hell is happening now and why my dragons are suddenly consistently selling and I think ive come down to these being the main points of advice i can give: 1. make friends! be friendly! don’t be weird! be a cool and fun person to interact with! 2. post consistently. post your dragons consistently. post about other stuff consistently. just be an active member of the community 3. POST YOUR SHIT IN THE “#FLIGHT RISING” TAG. THIS IS PROBABLY THE ONLY TRUELY HELPFUL THING I SAY IN THIS POST 4. make pairs that are sexy as hell and be openly proud of them. make dragons and pairs that you like, not what you think will necessarily sell. people can tell when you like stuff and being genuinely passionate about something, whatever the fuck it is, will get other people passionate as well longer versions/explanations under the cut because man this got a mile long. i wasn’t kidding when i said i think about this a lot and i am so sorry if you wanted something concise and useful

1. to be a little glib. i am mutuals/friends with more clout in the FR community than I do kjdshfdsfdhjhkfdf shoutout to everyone who draws their dragons really good on a regular basis because i am riding on your coattails to sell my dragons. i love you this was never my intent, obviously! DO NOT BEFRIEND PEOPLE BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU WILL GET STUFF FROM THEM IT’S JUST A REALLY BAD THING TO DO TO PEOPLE!!! i wouldn’t be friends w/ people if i didn’t genuinely like and get along with them! no amount of pixel cash is worth putting up with people you dont like or abusing people you admire!  but i’d also somehow feel wrong to just... neglect mentioning this factor. idk it’s probably a self-esteem thing sjdkgfhdsf i just Don’t feel like my #success has been totally out of my own effort because its not like im #hustling or whatever i just posted dragons and stuff happened

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2. being consistent! just. posting consistently! posting Every Hatchling I Have and Talking About Them On Tumblr!  Once I had a couple nests just sell super fast likely due to aforementioned clout, i was emboldened to just post more of my nests more often and I swear this has more effect than anything else. i just needed the self-esteem boost to Start Doing That posting consistently makes ppl follow u for ur content which gets even more people to look at your dragons which gets more people to buy your dragons.

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2a. Also just post a lot in general, even if you aren’t necessarily posting about your dragons for sale. it definitely helps! just be friendly and active and people will come

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3. post your shit in the tag. not in “#dragon-sales” or “#fr-dragon-sales” or anything weird like that because I don’t know if anyone actually looks at those, but people definitely browse “#flight rising”. no matter how many followers you have, more people will see your content if you post it in #flight rising than if you just chuck it into the void. 

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3a. however! do not put links into the post if you want it to actually show up in the tag. tumblr is cool in that it doesn’t actually matter that much when you post something, the same way it really matters on twitter bc twitter has algorithms that decide for you what it thinks you want to be seeing whereas tumblr just shows you everything in chronological order. if you post something into the tag at 1am... it will still be there at 2pm when people log on and start scrolling.

the only thing tumblr seems to consistently hide from a tag (and possibly a dashboard, but idk) are posts with links in them, as a half-assed attempt to limit spam. instead of linking to your sales tab/to the dragons directly in the post, reblog it with the links instead. to reduce latency between a post going up and the links being available, i type out the links in the initial post, cut them, post the thing into the tag, then very quickly reblog, paste the links, and post the reblog jdhfsdf. i don’t know if that benefits anything really? but it can sometimes take me a while to type links, so if i posted, pressed reblog, typed up all the links, then posted, it’d be like ~15 minutes where someone may see the post, think “oh i would like to buy those dragons”, then can’t find the link, think “oh well, i will just find it later”, scroll on, and just... completely forget about it. so uh. go quick?

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3b. the armchair sociologist in me also thinks self-reblogging has the added benefit of like... you know how people are more likely to tip a barista when a dollar is already in the tip jar? or how people are more likely to take one of those little tabs on a flyer if one of them is already missing? i think that works with notes, too. i don’t know why i think that or why it happens i just swear once a post gets 1 note, suddenly it gets Even More Notes, and if it doesn’t get any notes for a while it will sit at 0 notes until the end of time. so giving yourself 1 obligatory note makes people more likely to interact. i think

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4. all of these are hard to quantify but this one is especially so: have cool and unique dragons. make your pairs sexy as hell. don’t put all your eggs (hah) into the one basket of selling dragons that are technically “popular”. we have all seen triple white/triple obsidian/triple orca/triple any other popular colors and cherub/pere/stained or wasp/bee/glim pthahlos or whatever. they’re pretty! we get it! but everyone has had one and everyone has had those pairs and market for dragons like that can be super oversaturated. try to break free from that and sell dragons that people can only get from you. I can’t tell you what to do though bc that rly depends on you. make pairs that you find exciting or interesting and people will feel that. i have a very specific theme and aesthetic that i don’t feel like is especially common on FR and i am genuinely very enthusiastic about it. marine shit is my Thing:tm: both on and off FR and dragons are one of my many ways of expressing that   if you have a Thing:tm:, either some fr-centric aesthetic (like being super into plague or earth or light or something) or something more general (such as any of the -punks or -cores)... just fuckin roll with it honestly. if you’re goth? make got h dragons. like scene stuff that looks straight out of a middle school in 2010? rock that hot-topic lair. outdoorsey type? make dragons that look like you’d meet them on a hike in the woods. it really works with anything!  people can tell when you really love something and i know that seeing someone really love something, even if it’s not necessarily MY thing, makes me really excited too!! 

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4a. never show fear. people can smell fear. never be like “well this one isn’t that good” because suddenly now you’ve planted the idea that it’s ugly in other people’s heads when they may have really liked it had you not accidentally suggested to them that it’s an ugly dragon. people are EXTREMELY suggestible to even VERY minor cues so be always a little bit bolder than you think you should be you’d be surprised at how many times ive been like “eh, this one’s kind of a dud, i’ll probably have to exalt this one when the auction expires” and then that hatchling is the first to sell. never ever ever ever decide what other people like for them. always act like your dragons are the hottest shit in all the land and Believe It. this is what people mean when they say “fake it till you make it”

- 4b. also, idk if it’s true of everyone but it’s really off-putting to see someone having serious pity-parties for themselves, on sales posts or otherwise. ive had bad experiences with people who are uncomfortably quick to self-depreciate (because they were using their genuine self-hatred to manipulate me or my friends), so i might be a little more trigger-happy about avoiding this behavior than others, but don’t weaponize your sadness to guilt people into doing what you want. it’s really not cool.

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okay i think that’s my entire manifesto on how i do dragon selling. anon i am so sorry im sure you were expecting like “believe in yourself :)” and here i am dissecting dragon selling like it’s a frog in a science class

edit: AFTER ALL THAT I STILL THOUGHT OF ONE MORE THING. It’s not really a Point, just a Reminder:

i don’t post about all the times i have to exalt dragons that don’t sell. you are seeing me being very selective about what i post. you dont sit and stare at my lair or click through offspring lists or check old sales posts. there are a lot of times where someone just doesn’t sell. even now when i’m selling stuff pretty consistently i will still sometimes have dragons that don’t sell for seemingly no reason. even dragons I think are sure to sell will sometimes just... not. and that’s ok! you gotta just be.. ok with that. it’s par for the course. i typically list dragons for 7 days on the AH, give them a couple more days after their auction expires (partially because i forget, partially to give them a grace period for people to pm/ask me about them), and then exalt them after that point. w/ some dragons that i don’t think got a fair shake for one reason or another (such as the sales post not showing up in the tag or something) i do a little clearance (like the halloween dragons i recently posted) but for the most part if they don’t sell, i just exalt them. 90% of the time i don’t even bother to level them up i just press the exalt button and call it a day. it’s fine