I love you art and style!

It's so good, I just wanna, Ñ a m.

HAPPIEST YOU ENJOY!!

do people understand that your reblog tags on a post do not impact whether or not a post goes into the main tag. like it does not matter how many times people in my notes tag a post of mine with "qsmp" or whatever the tag is, it's not going into that main tag; that's not how browsing tags work. the ONLY way a post goes into a browsible tag is by OP putting the tags on the original post.

relatedly, do people understand that tag blocking functions the opposite way-- if someone tags "discourse" on a post at any time, it is immediately blocked for anyone who has "discourse" on their filtered tags list. does not matter what op tagged, does not matter who puts it on your dash from that point forward, the tag is on the post so it's going to be filtered. this is how i end up not seeing a lot of those big "tag a piece of media that--" posts; it's because i have a lot of things blocked, so anytime a single person tags any of them on a post, i have the whole post blocked. [and i use xkit rewritten, which means i don't even see the post at all]

also related-- there is a difference between actually browsing a tag and searching a phrase-- tumblr has made it kind of strange to tell the exact difference, so i'll demonstrate:

so when i type in "qsmp fanart", it gives me a couple of options.

first, i can click "Go to #qsmp fanart", which will take me to the tag "qsmp fanart":

rad, exactly what i'm looking for, i'll scroll through latest to see what people have posted in the last couple hours.

however, secondly, it gives me the option "[search] qsmp fanart", which is NOT the same thing as opening the tag itself. it will open the search function and look up "qsmp fanart," meaning it grabs whatever assortment of posts tumblr's broken search engine has decided mention "qsmp fanart":

[most of said posts are, in fact, qsmp fanart, as the way tumblr's search indexing works does include searching tags, but it also searches post content. i'm censoring because posting screenshots of people's art feels iffy to me, not because i have any issue with the art itself.]

these two things are NOT the same. one of these takes you do the actual tag, the other makes you search for those terms mentioned on a post. which, like i said, means it indexes not just the tags but the post content itself-- this means any mention of said search term on a post means it could be seen in this search (unless OP has their blog marked unsearchable). for a while, as well, tumblr made this the default whenever you pressed enter rather than manually clicking an option, meaning people would think they were opening the tag to browse it but instead were searching for whatever they entered. i believe they've fixed that now, or at least one of my extensions has; regardless, clicking the # option will get you to the right place.

this is, in part, how i think we get people going "you put neg in the main tag!!!" which, while it does happen often, is not always the issue; what actually happened is tumblr actually had them search for the term mentioned in the tag rather than going into the tag itself. regardless of this issue, though, i think it's just good for people to understand the difference between when they're searching posts (not very helpful at times, doesn't get you much of what you're probably looking for depending on the search term, drags up every single post (that tumblr can actually index properly) that mentions the term) versus when they're opening the tag (OPs here clearly actually want you to see their posts).

zuko doesn't think about katara outside of how she coudl bring aang to life and ruin the approval from his father.. zuko remembers aang suggestion of being friends

zuko getting a rainbow dance with aang

zuko/aang being sozin/roku parallel Zuko joking about capturing Aang / Aang worried about zuko going off to face azula alone

zukaang deserves more love its way more soulmateism than zutara will ever be iif only aang was older then it prob be the main gay ship tbh i think zukka is very overrated, no offense to zukkas but i just find the idea of what fandom presents of em as boring and it always makes zuko look like the girl of the ship kinda just want gay fanart to look like well gay fanart instead its usually just so.. heteronorative.

I usually don't like to call any gay content "heteronormative" because 9 times out of 10 is just dumb people on the internet misusing a term until it loses all meaning just so they berate other people for "enjoying fiction the wrong way"... but boy, do Zukka fans often fit that 1 time out of 10 in which it is used correctly.

I'm not anti-fujoshi, and a lot of times the "we must not allow straight girls to like gay stuff" is just misogyny dressed up as "fighting against objectification", but BOY, so much of the Zukka content post 2019 just screams "Okay, Zuko is the japanese guy, that means he's so feminine and submissive he just HAS to be 'the girl' of the relationship, while Sokka has dark skin, therefore he must be the aggressive, manly man that never bottoms" with manages to be homophobic, sexist and racist all in one go.

It's the same thing with some Zutara fanarts. I lost count of many times fandoms will want to lynch some poor artist because their drawing of a dark-skinned character has their skin be slightly darker/lighter and thus be called blackface/whitewashing even though the difference is barely even perceptible - meanwhile in come the worst zutarians with fanarts in which Katara looks like she was either drawn by a member of the KKK that is trying to make her look barely human since she commited the crime of existing while brown, OR they make her look so white she can be mistaken for Azula of all people.

I am not kidding. I once was going through Tumblr, saw what I assumed was a Zucest fanart because the girl had dark hair, pale skin, red lips and was wearing a red dress with all gold accessories... then I notice she has blue eyes and a blue necklace around her neck. I check the notes and yep, that was supposed to be KATARA.

HOW does one fuck up that badly?

(Also the Sozin/Roku parallels are objectively the gayest thing about Zuko and Aang's dynamic. Even gayer than the iconic "You're the thing that fuled my fire. No homo")

Fandom Etiquette Guide

Hello RA fandom! Over the past several months, there have been a few things I've seen repeated in this fandom that need addressing. I've had talks with multiple creators in this fandom, and there seems to be a general agreement that the RA fandom has a lack of understanding of fandom etiquette. As a fanartist, I'm going to focus on the general etiquette that comes with interacting with fanart, but a lot of this applies to fanfiction and other fan works as well. These are situations that as a fan, you ought to avoid. This fandom has already lost a few wonderful artists and creators because of how often these situations happen. It's up to us to keep our creators in the fandom and well cared for!

Situation 1: Stolen and Reposted Art

We all have seen art from our beloved artists that is uploaded to Instagram or Pinterest without permission. This steals credit from the artist, and means that potential fans never actually go to their account or interact with them. What a lot of people don't realize is that this applies to posting art in discord servers as well. You should always include a credit if you are posting art that you did not draw. Another prevalent problem found in this fandom is the issue of traced art. If you trace another artist's rendition of a character and post it as your own this is art theft. You can keep that tracing to yourself, and build your skill until you can post your own drawings.

Situation 2: "This doesn't look like___"

If an artist or author depicts a character in a way that doesn't match your mental image, your job is to walk away without leaving a comment. It is not kind or appropriate to tell artists that they have failed to depict the character accurately. If you would like the character to look different, it is your job to draw it. Never tell an artist or that their character doesn't look right.

Situation 3: Unsolicited Art Critique

Similar to the above situation, you should never tell an artist that their art is flawed or technically incorrect unless they have specifically come to you and asked for your input. Art critiques do not belong in the tumblr tags or any social media comments. Even if you see something that looks like an obvious fix, you should not point it out to the artist or author. This is one of the ground rules for any artistic or creative space. Unsolicited art critique is the #1 way to make sure an artist leaves a fandom and doesn't return.

Situation 4: The Never Reblogger

An artist or author's work can only be seen through the reblog function--this is the foundation of tumblr. If you appreciate your artist or fanfic author's work, you need to show that appreciation not just through likes, but through reblogging it to an appropriate blog! When artists or authors spend a lot of time on a work and it never receives anything but likes, they are likely to think that their work will be received better elsewhere. Reblogs show a creator that their work deserves to be shared! Reblogging works so well because it attaches the creator's name to the image you are sharing--it is not the same as reposting, which when you take the creator's blog off the post and upload just the artwork onto your own blog as its own post.

Conclusion

In all, this fandom is a wonderful place to create. I truly believe that we can make it even better, and make sure that our remaining artists and authors feel inspired and welcome to create here.

Anon art human again, I mean finding views or just acknowledgement for you art, I'm broke and either way wouldn't feel right blazing the nsfw stuff I draw but it gets no traffic or notes. Idk leaving an ask was impulsive but I really respect your art and was curious how you got your followers, if it was more a waiting thing or you found the right areas to post.

I dunno, it probably takes patients to get attention but finding motivation to make good art and then getting nothing but emptiness and boredom at the end of the process isn't motivating lol. Anyways Im thankful for your response and apologetic cause I got this trigger instinct to just blurt my questions to the cool artist I found on tumblr, and I'm sorry for bothering you so

No worries, I just felt bad that I didn't understand ya!

Getting noticed depends on a lot of things. I've had several accounts through 12 years spent on this site, and this one is the first that kinda popped off!

Do you make art that has crowd appeal? As in, is it a little silly, cute or relatable? Does it have a story behind it besides looking pretty? Is it attached to a fandom? Are you making stuff for an underrepresented niche? I often see people make something that is technically impressive, or their personal best, but it doesn't get shared too much because it lacks that appeal. It sounds harsh, I know, but it happens to me too. Until recently, my most popular piece was a doodle I banged out in an hour - just how it is, but I'm happy it resonated with people! You can have a look around at what other people post and see which posts of theirs do better or worse as well.

I don't follow the rule of posting at specific peak times, or posting every day. But I do try to tag stuff appropriately. Tumblr only uses the first 5 tags from your post in the search function, the rest you use for categorizing for your blog. So if you're starting out, it really is a waiting game until someone notices and shares your stuff, unless you have a buddy that can boost you.

I come here to have fun, I make art for me and if other people like it - awesome! I don't really optimize that well for social media reach, I just have my characters and their little stories. I do my specific niche of porn/kinks that are fun for me to draw and talk about. It helps that I have a more solid art style now than I did when I started. Apparently I've been doing NSFW for the past 7 years, and early this year is when it took off on tumblr.

To counteract the emptiness, it helps to have friends to bounce ideas around with or to make characters together with. It's why I create, really. I do it with friends because that's what I find fulfilling. And then I feel driven to draw and post about it as well, and that's been true all this time for me.

I hope you can find fulfillment as well, I think it does come through sometimes if a piece was made for reach or from personal joy. I for sure see that in ancient fanart I've done, I hate those pieces. But the personal stuff that I did for fun is still cute to me, even if it did get at most 5 notes way back when.

Sorry if my thoughts are jumbled. But yeah, this is what I do and what worked for me. But it's always different person to person. Much luck in your endeavors!

blip bloop bitching below. keeping this out of the tags as I need to scream but don't want it to travel.

I hate so much that I genuinely dread days when Philza and Tubbo interact. Because they're friends and should be able to just hang and stuff! And it can be fun to watch! But it seems every time they even go near each other the Philza tag becomes full of crap, then people kicking back, and its /worst/ now Sunny is here (I love her, mostly, but it makes it so much worse). The post about Sunny being scared of Philza with the screenshots was at the top of the Philza Tag (by how I access them at least) for 3 days. It always defaults to top before I flip it to most recent. It wasn't tagged as discourse or neg or anything - it was just screenshots after all - but the bitching which came out of that was so much, and every time I saw them it bought the bitching to mind, and half of that wasn't tagged either (on the original posts, in the tags, where I like looking for fic and meta and fanart and check my top 4 tags each morning).

And, yeah, a 30-off year old streamer probably not even on tumblr doesn't need defending online. BUT the shit and the way those posts talk and the things they shit on him for... a) its very much cc!Phil not q!Phil no matter what people say, because he talks in the same way even on the fucking pumpkin carving stream and more importantly b) mirrors very real bullying, discrimination and hate I and a lot of other English people have experienced. (yes of course its worse if you're an ethnic minority or have a Scottish accent or any number of other things, but just because other people have it worse doesn't mean it isn't a genuine axis of discrimination).

And sometimes I need to fucking defend not him but myself, because I feel like I'm going mad.

You might not see it, you might not even know about the north-south divide and English class politics, but its embedded into near every fantasy movie you've watched, accent wise at least!

Just personal shit... I have a southern parent and a northern parent. I grew up in the south-east. As a kid I could switch accents at will. Using my mother's northern accent (slightly more natural to me, as she was home more often) I would get marked down in class for being aggressive and argumentative and other kids would think I was angry with them. My father genuinely suggested I switch which I spoke with, and it was effort but doable, and guess what? My marks went up and I was seen as friendlier than the other children. It still wasn't the accent for the region - where I grew up has a very distinct one even for the south - and yet I was treated better for it.

Which. Could have seriously messed up my future if my grades kept being marked down and I kept getting into trouble for behaviour over stuff in another accent nobody bat an eyelid to.

[I had a section here too about different treatment while getting bra fittings, but given it involved members of staff literally hurting me as a literal child only when speaking one of the two accents, I removed it. Minor hurt, but hurt.]

And that was just personal experience! Of being read as aggressive or scary or like I didn't care for sounding northern.

And of fucking course this is only ever about fucking Tubbo, the southern who logs in regularly, this shit always starts. The southerner, whose accent is on the respectable side of this not-quite-a-class-divide.

And you know how deeply routed the north-south divide is? Sociologists generally date it back to /1066/ and the north being massacred for causing trouble for the new king. Economically and in terms of reputation, the north has never actually recovered from that. Even when it was major industry, even when major ports, its /always/ been behind the south.

Not just in terms of money going around, but things like life expectancy and education expectations. Rich northerners still have a harder time than their southern peers.

(Honestly, Sunny having 'verbalised' being scared of him for his tone of voice and not other adults who treat them older than they are [because yk its impossible to tell with an egg model] also kinda rubs me the wrong way, because of that sort of treatment of me as a kid. If I was aware of more fear towards other adults she doesn't know as well it'd be easier. Yeah he's a bit intense, and he should maybe be more delicate with a kid, but heaven knows he's not the only character that is. Maybe as more people drift back we'll see it more, I don't know, the admin probably isn't English either, but dear god. The daughter of a southerner telling her daddy that the northerner is scary is such a fucking classist trope. And a really offensive one at that. And shit which actually happens irl, which sometimes leads to the police getting involved.)

maybe this is a 'hot take' for which i apologize but. i feel like fanart is a big aspect of this too- how different even is it to make 'rpf' of gerards stage characters as opposed to fanart of it. it's essentially only a different medium. keeping it separate from gerard (Person In Reality Who Has A Life) outside of (character he made up to have fun with) can also easily be an invitation for fans to have fun with it too. which is why a healthy relationship with it can and does bring good things. in theory i mean. ive never seen an mcr fanfic i really liked but :p

yeah i see what you mean, it's one of the reasons that the step from tumblr (or twitter) fandom to the ao3 tag feels like. quite an arbitrary place to draw the line? as if the same thoughts and behaviours are fine right up into they're intentionally put to prose - but images or even comics are okay, textposts discussing their emotions and states of mind as extrapolated from live shows or song lyrics, putting research into constructing timelines of their lives or compiling facts about them as people - even writing (sometimes quite detailed) sexually explicit posts/tags about them is common around here. i do a lot of these things too - i'm not saying they're inherently wrong or bad - but i genuinely don't see how they're any less prone to being disrespectful or invasive or comically removed from reality than a writer putting them in a situation lol. they all involve some level of assumption, scrutiny, and interpretation.

there are definitely valid arguments to make against engaging with rpf in a fandom sense! i totally respect that, and it's something i felt kind of ashamed/guilty about when i first got into mcr, so i understand the reservations. it's just that...the way i see it, i truly think those arguments just as reasonably apply to so much of what happens in any fandom involving real people. behaviours that are extremely common and far from unique to the online fan spaces of today, to the point where avoiding them is a more conscious decision than engaging in them. i respect if people do make that choice, but...that isn't any of us who are running mcr fanblogs yk? haha.

anyway yeah. i agree with you anon, i reckon most people's definition of what does and doesn't entail rpf is just a lot narrower than the reality. there's a lot of extremely beautiful, highly-skilled emotive fanart out there, for which i'm so appreciative! i 100% don't mean it as an insult when i say those often a different kind of rpf. so are the emotive posts about how much this tour means to all the guys, how happy they are, how much they love each other and how they're all friends. i'm not saying these things are untrue, i'm just saying they absolutely don't paint an unbiased holistic picture of real human beings and their genuine emotional states hahaha. neither does fanfiction. and i just think it's impossible to not realise that if you're engaging with fanfic in any kind of thoughtful way, as opposed to reblogging textposts about them on tumblr that also project a lot onto them, yk?

and okay. i also think "the bible/succession/velvet goldmine etc etc is rpf too! shakespeare wrote rpf!" is equally as reductive as "rpf is when fangirls write about band members boning each other." as always, there's just so much more nuance there. what does and doesn't make rpf is a lot more about intent, and if you're parasocially attached to these people as deeply as we all are, most of us just share that same intent. and from what i've seen (though in fairness this is the first real person fandom i've been in, and i only really talk to other adults) it tends to be the people actively engaging with fanfic who are a better at accepting how much of fandom is pure projection and assumption based on very limited information. and that acceptance is a huge part of having a healthier relationship with celebrities/bands/bandom (along with the conscious acknowledgement that these people don't owe us anything at all besides the shows we bought tickets for - least of all insight into their personal lives or private thoughts.)

like genuinely? free your minds. we're all making shit up based on the little parts we see, i think it's healthier and more fun to openly accept that. who cares what's real when we can talk about things in terms of narratives and arcs and metaphors - none of which truly exist in real life, which is infinitely complex and individual and messy. or, more precisely, who cares what's real as long as you know what isn't! and keep that stuff far far away from the real human people involved in the band.

do you have any drawing tips? i'm just starting out and your style inspires me to keep going fr!!

HIYA !!! thank you that is so kind of you, i would say to keep drawing with references and do studies!! typically art studies (in like art school lol) are of old masters (da vinci, etc) but doing studies of styles that you like, like trying to copy a certain artist you like, also helps you develop skills !!

for example, lots of people (especially fanartists lol) do studies of artists like leyendecker while making the models their favorite characters/ocs, so it helps to make studies fun. literally look up leyendecker study on tumblr dot com and you will see hundreds.

(gets a bit long and rambly so i've thrown it under the cut :')

style studies can be anything! above was done while watching wolfwalkers, just loose sketches that copied the style as the movie went along. i love the design and style in that film, wanted to incorporate it in my character design work, so i tried it out myself! it let me know the kinds of shapes used in the construction, the way it moves (wrt to animation) and silhouettes. by copying something, you learn how to do it on the way (so the kinds of colors used, what works best with shading, etc) it's like. reverse engineering

even very loosely copying something to identify what you like about the style helps! these were modelled after the way slimsense on ig paints (her work is 2nd + 4th examples below, my attempts at 'paint' 1st and 3rd lol), but doesn't really look like her work. i'm not necessarily trying to make perfect copies. i liked that her paint didn't blend perfectly, was blocky, and the additional lineart over the painting, so i brought that into my own art. i tried to create a painting style that was 'my own' off of lots of trial and error, and seeing what stuck!

also find brushes you like! adobe has a bunch on their page (if you have photoshop, but i know there's some for procreate and other programs) and if you want the adobe brush files, lmk. i will send a drive link to you LOL (sketches of the same characters, using different brushes below. the two i used the most often, one being a solid inker and the other being a paintbrush)

generally doing figure drawing is good too. i've heard advice about art where you can only start breaking the rules after you understand them, and a good grasp on anatomy, proportions, etc is definitely a good place to start! good sites to use for this are line of action for poses, and the morpho books (if you need pdfs of this let me know, though you should be able to find them if you look lol) !

i would also say learn perspective early on. i have no tips for you here i am so sorry. i didn't and now it bites me in the ass, but there has to be a youtube tutorial for this out there that can help you AND me. same goes for color theory. quickly dropping my favorite van gogh quote of all time:

(quote is from a letter to his brother) just everyone needs the fundamentals first. don't worry about a personal style: that just comes naturally as you develop as an artist, and i was certainly inspired by a lot of the things i watched/consumed and artists i admired which absolutely shows in my work i think (manet. western comics. fma. avatar. pjo fanart. there are tells. you know how it is.)

also flip your canvas !!! like see below ... frankly this marcille is so lopsided (her entire face should shift to the left) LOL !! flipping horizontally makes the anatomy mistakes obvious, and shows you you what you need to fix. i should never have posted this as is but sometimes it works for humor and an artist is lazy </3

AND ALWAYS USE REFERENCES WHEN YOU CAN!! i should use more references tbh!!! it helps with posing, getting anatomy correct, etc, and my friends use pinterest a lot, though i tend to just google when i need to LOLLL

also draw what you like. there is genuinely nothing that is better for your art than getting into something REALLY BAD and then non stop drawing it. time + practice will lead to improvement no matter what the subject is!

i hope this was not too much information all at once !!! and some of it is helpful!!! it's a lot of basic improvement tips that i try to practice and use when i can :) so sorry that this got so long!!!!

Omg thank you for saying it

Multiple times I've come across ppl literally sharing images of people who've been killed (in one case children what the fuck???) And even if its below a cut I still have to read the description of why they've put it under a cut. I know ppl have different opinions of this stuff but in my view that's so disrespectful of those who've lost their lives. The guilt trippy stuff (and I'm sorry but it's largely coming from people that don't know what they're talking about, as shown by the fact that there's literally no awareness that the stuff that's being said/shown untagged is hugely triggering for ppl who've lived through this stuff)

This is not a news site!!! People trying to avoid this stuff does not mean they don't have awareness of what's going on and aren't staying aware by getting their news from actual news sources???

I'm not against people talking about this stuff on here at all. It needs to be talked about. But for the love of God, making a post is not the same as taking to people in person. People do not have the option to walk away when you just send a post out in to the ether like that. Just tag things appropriately it's not that hard!!!

So yeah thank you for saying it. I always feel hugely guilty for trying to avoid certain things because of the guilt tripping that's so rife on this site but I really shouldn't cause half of what's coming up isn't even constructive (or true a lot of the time) and it just brings up a whole load of stuff that hits my mental health and makes it harder for me to actually campaign in a way that helps people

I always think of that one tweet that's like 'misery is not activism' making people feel shit isn't actually solving any of these issues or helping the world at all lol

When it comes to this topic, I always think of some articles I read about the human brain's capacity for processing bad news. One of them was titled something like "your brain can't handle the world".

Basically, it talked about how years ago (mind you, not that many years, given how fast modern technology evolved) you would get your handful of news, good and bad, on the newspaper or on TV and radio, and even that was already much more than a person in the 1800's would, given the slow pace of letters and how only vital info was able to fit into one. Newspapers would often only carry local news, and you could spend a whole lifetime without knowing what was happening in countries on the other side of the ocean.

Now, imagine that. A wedding would be the talk of the town for weeks. A funeral would be The Sad Event for your to grieve over for the following months. That is the amount of happy and sad (and playful, and contemplative, and other emotions) that one could experience and process in a healthy manner.

But nowadays, you get see the story of a family adopting their first puppy two continents away, and that's great and cool, but unfortunately that also means that you get the story of a bunch of children dying two continents away too, and the testimony of their families, and the overview of the political landscape that lead to this happening and the bleak understanding that that's not gonna change and it will happen again--

all that while you might be dealing yourself with a fascist government in your country, and your own bad news, and your own shitty economy, and laws that hurt a minority of which you are a part, and, and--

That is all too much. Literally too much for the mind of someone who is already tired of doing their own activism and surviving within the microcosm that is their town/community/country.

So you close CNN. You turn off the news livestream. You take a deep breath and you open tumblr because your mind is parched for dopamine and happiness you could use some cute fanart and compelling headcanons to relax.

You are two cute dog pics down when you scroll into graphic pictures of the latest massacre, paired with a detailed testemony of whatever horrific thing that happened. There isn't even a link for donations, or an e-mail you can reach to do anything remotely useful about it. It's just a spatter of misery smeared on your phone screen, quickly erasing all joy you might've gotten from the dog pics.

Your taglist is extensive, mind you, for the sake of keeping your dash a small safe haven from the dangers of doomscrolling - it's all there, blocked from sight: #negative, #current events, #death/, #child death/, #animal death/, #[insert current world tragedy], #[insert topic particularly triggering that could send you into a panic attack].

But people don't tag their shit. They say shit like "i don't care your blog theme, if you don't reblog this, you're a monster". They say "stop scrolling and look at this horrific thing". They say "why is no one talking about this"--

And don't realize, or don't care that some people are drowning in bills to pay and extra shifts to work and needing to double-think about wearing their pride pins because homophobia is getting worse in their country, and struggling with depression and anxiety, etc, etc.

I'm too adhd to make a concise text post ever, but if I can make any sort of point here, I guess that would be:

There is nothing wrong with not wanting to see, reblog or interact with negative posts about current events. This is not a news website. You did not come here for the news, and therefore is perfectly normal that you don't want to deal with them.

There is nothing wrong with making your dash a nice place curated with only the things you like. Block tags and blogs liberally. I know I do. This website is, to me, a source of memes, headcanons, jokes, character analysis and occasional useful knowledge. I don't get my news here. I don't engage in political/ideological debates here. I see a transphobe, I block them. I see a gun-freak bootlicker, I block them. This is my little garden, and goddamnit I will rip off all the weeds.

There is nothing wrong with not reblogging certain content, no matter what the guilt-trippy reblogs say. You don't owe anyone the space in your blog. This is your little garden, people don't get to tell you what to plant in it. You are one. Little. Person. You rebbloging something won't have the Big Worldly Impact they're making it out to be.

If you want to make room for the occasional activism in your blog, that's fine too. I make a point that everything I reblog that has a negative tone must be not only properly tagged but also have some kind of action attached to it - a donation link, a link for further reading in case of something raising awareness, a contact line for representatives to stop some dogshit law. I never reblog things that are just depressing and leave you feeling hopeless.

Please stay safe, drink water, be wary of doomscrolling, allow yourself not to be an activist 24/7, give yourself a safe space to decompress, take care, I love you <3

Before I go, I must leave fair warning to the piss-poor reading comprehension crowd: no, I am not advocating for toxic positivity or pretending that everything is fine, I just want the poor fuck juggling two jobs plus school while living in a political hellscape and managing depression and some other undiagnosed mental condition to be able to scroll the funny shitposting website without having to see triggering content that will send them into a panic attack.

Oh, and if you like my writing, here's my ko-fi for you to drop a lil coin <;3

hey! I'm sorry if you've answered this/spoken about this before, and if so please just point me in the direction of your previous answer. but I recently had a trans friend who asked me to stop interacting with the wolfstar/marauders fandom. liking/reblogging posts and reading fanfics within the marauders fandom are the only way I interact with jkr/hp. I would not do anything to directly give her money, but my friend's argument is that every like and interaction with the fandom makes it more influential, which translates to more money. as well as not boycotting hp entirely is a slap in the face to trans people. so, I've stopped reblogging content because I don't want to negatively impact my friend or any other trans people, but I don't personally think I'm doing any harm through engaging with fanart/fanfic.

obviously you're engaged in the fandom, so I'm kinda looking to have my opinion validated... but I think you're very smart and that we share similar values, so I respect your thoughts and any advice you have for this situation. thank you <3

honestly anon if ur looking for like a nicely-wrapped post of "here's why it's okay to interact with harry potter fanfiction" then u have probably come to the wrong place, as this is a topic that i still have conflicted feelings about myself! but. if u want a little essay of my thoughts on the matter then here u go xx

so, first of all - yes, obviously i still interact with hp fandom. however, i'm not going to pretend that i don't understand your friend's point. i get the logic behind the argument that giving any attention to any sort of harry potter media in this day and age helps keep harry potter relevant, which contributes to jkr's influence, which is an influence she actively uses to hurt trans people. i understand why ur trans friend would feel hurt or ask u to stop interacting w hp media altogether.

however, trans people are not a monolith, and there are many trans people who continue to interact with hp in a variety of ways. for me, the space i've carved out in fandom over the past year or so has been a little online haven since i have to remain closeted irl for the most part. hp fanfic has been an important outlet for me to explore + express things abt my own trans identity. but i am also very aware that within the broader trans community, i am not one of those who is most vulnerable to jkr's rhetoric + politics. at the end of the day, there are trans people who don't care if you spend money on hp, there are trans people who don't care if u interact with fandom as long as u aren't spending money, there are trans people who think u shouldn't touch hp with a five-foot pole, and all manner of perspectives in between.

for me personally, there are caveats to my interaction with hp + the way i navigate the ethical minefield of jkr. i don't think there is any reason to ever financially contribute to hp, whether that's buying merch or games or going to hp themeparks or whatever, and i discourage people from interacting w hp within the context of any sort of profit economy. i try not to interact with hp in a way that will grow the popularity of the franchise in any way - i post fanfiction on ao3, where the people reading it are gonna be people who are already part of this space that are seeking it out, and i have this tumblr blog which is, essentially, the same deal. i'm not trying to advertise my fic or get people to suddenly develop a new interest in harry potter, if that makes sense. this is part of why tiktok remains a bit of an ethical quagmire for me, because i feel that the way people interact w fic on there often blurs the lines between being inside or outside of a profit economy.

i also think it's important, when interacting with hp in any way, to acknowledge jkr's influence and the inherent shittiness of the source material. i don't think it's enough to go "dobby wrote the books haha!" and act like we can just ignore jkr, bc her shitty politics are built into the book. i think it's important to engage critically and to consider how you're building off the source material and whether ur unintentionally perpetuating the biases in the text by copying and pasting them without further examination. i talk abt this more in this post

and, of course, i think it's important to vocally stand against jkr + her politics, and to support trans people within + outside of fandom spaces in whatever ways you can. i think it's important to stay educated + engage with theory + politics in a way that goes beyond retweeting posts or watching tiktok clips. jkr isn't just transphobic; her sexism, racism, classism, fatphobia, homophobia, ableism, antisemitism, and overall horrible neoliberal politics are very much built into the text of hp, and if u are not actively educating urself on these issues it's gonna be easier to just internalize them without realizing it.

for me, these are all considerations that affect the way i interact with hp + the extent to which i interact with hp. however, there are people out there who would probably tell me to get off my high horse + stop acting like there are more or less ~morally pure~ ways to interact with hp, bc at the end of the day there's no ethical consumption under capitalism and people writing hp fanfiction isn't really harmful in the grand scheme of things. there are other people who would tell me that it doesn't matter what mitigating factors i'm using to justify my hobby; any contribution that keeps people talking about hp keeps jkr relevant, and i should be able to find other shit to write about. and like....i understand the perspectives of both those people, y'know?

i honestly just think this is a decision where every individual needs to weigh the scales themselves and decide what they're okay with. it's not my job to police or justify the ways people do or don't interact w hp media; if someone's interacting with it in a way i don't like, then i block that person or just don't interact with them. if someone sees me interacting w hp fanfic + thinks that makes me a shitty person, then they can think that and we can go on living our separate lives. some trans people continue to find comfort + community in hp fandom spaces, other trans people feel deeply hurt by the continued existence of these spaces. there is no single answer to What Supports Everybody. your relationship with your friend is something specific to your situation that you'll need to take into account when weighing your own feelings about interacting with hp; the only advice i can really offer is that i think it's better to critically consider the various perspectives people have on this issue without reducing it to a black and white case of two sides where one must be right and one must be wrong.

this blog is kinda for the purpose of archiving, maybe even interaction?

Pretty sure this is gonna be a blog dedicated to these 2 freaks ^__^

info drop real quick: that other mf's name is Dies Irae!!! they use they/them pronouns :3c

I don't see myself interacting with anyone, or assuming anyone would be interested in my shameless self indulgence of an oc, but if you do like my content then that just makes my day ^__^

info drop 2!!!: this oc was my coping mechanism when I was younger and weather was my only comfort character when I was really depressed, so pls don't be mean to me 😭

and like I said this is probably for archiving, even including artworks from 2022. my art back then may not be the best, so please don't be mean if some of the things I post look god awful (Irae's lore and design changed overtime as well sooo)

Boundaries and disclamers‼️‼️‼️

if you don't like my oc x canon content, it's fine! I don't have a problem with other ships involving weather, but I do have a problem with being harassed for what I enjoy. just click away from this page and pls don't harass me for the shit I post </3

Irae is like 34 and I'd be uncomfy af if anyone were to portray them as really young, the 2 met when they were like in their 30's which are both consenting adults!!

Fanart is appreciated!! just pls no nsfw fanart/comments. that would make me uncomfy (like really red flag interpretations)

there might be some suggestive implications in some of my content, but even so the thing above still stands. I don't really like drawing nsfw and the most I could do is dialogue in the form of a shitpost?? I do make sure to tag it though

please don't comment weird shit about any of the characters involved in my posts I'd cry </3

Questions about my ocs and stuff are very much appreciated!!! I like talking about my lore :3

I don't think I'll post often, I often forget about social media. I'm also kinda new to tumblr I dunno if people would be nice or not

Anyways look at this thing I made back in 2022

I think that's all for now byeee!!!

Please give me the forbidden Goncharov discourse 👀

so for context, this comes from a post by tumblr user lastoneout that reads:

turns out tumblr does have reading comprehension and the ability to analyze a complex text through multiple frameworks and have a nuanced discussion while doing so but apparently we were all saving it up to have nuanced discussions about a fake movie with no actual text to analyze

and then my tags on the post, which read:

#this is so funny but i maintain it's the only unrealistic thing about goncharov (1973) #like you mean to tell me the fandom on tumblr is this huge and yet there's not one hate blog? #there's not a core group of haters posting the most deranged piss on the poor shit in the tag? #no discourse? no anon hate? #christ but there's not a single poc in it come on tumblr i've not seen a single person get called a racist for liking it #this is a glimpse into what peace on planet earth would look like #(ironically i do have some deep analysis for why this might be but i will spare op lmao)

now forgive me if this makes no sense, because this is the first time I have tried to articulate it before, and of course in keeping with the theme it's about a fake movie (cinematic masterpiece Goncharov, (1973) dir. Martin Scorsese).

with the obvious out of the way first: Goncharov is a fictional movie, it does not exist, and therefore there it nothing to say about the real-world issues associated with lack of representation. this means we can skip that in actuality, though if we're looking at it from the perspective of a real movie and how it would be regarded on Tumblr, I'm sure that there would be related discourse. however, this is not real, so we can focus on the more entertaining, light-hearted sides of fandom. and this is universally what Goncharov posts were like: gifsets, fanart, humorous and well-written textual analysis, deep and pretentious photosets and quotes, everything that you love to see. but it was odd, in terms of realism, that there were no haters at all. which made me wonder: why are there haters when it comes to real things, but not when it comes to fake ones? part of this is what's mentioned above: in real life, there are some dynamics and trends and issues that can and do have a very real impact on society, or represent aspects of society that should change. but I can't help think it was something else, too.

I mentioned in my tags hate blogs specifically, because in real fandoms, you can easily find hate blogs that have absolutely nothing to do with any real, tangible criticism. it is just vitriolic hate: of a character, of a book/film, of an actor or actress involved, or some combination of these. there's no actual criticism, and very often there are massive feats of mental gymnastics used to make fans of [character] or [thing] look bad. it is just seething hatred, all directed towards something that is supposed to be entertainment; it's supposed to be fun! so why do some people take something harmless and make their entire personalities about hating it -- as well as spending significant parts of their day talking shit, getting into arguments, and even sending anon hate and threats to fans? it's because there are some people out there who like to hate things. they don't seem to like having fun. anything fun that comes their way, they have to pick holes in it; they have to have something negative to say to it. deep down, they know this is a very sad way to live. they know there's a difference between being a casual hater who likes to bitch about things in private with friends, or make the occasional joke or rant online -- and running a literal blog dedicated to hating something. they know there's a difference and they don't want to admit that they're losers, so they dress it up as something noble. these days, it's usually activism. this also explains the mental gymnastics, the reaches, the "fans of [character] are -ist or -phobic" shit. they're applying a thin coat of legitimacy to the fact that they're irrationally angry about something completely pointess, and there are a lot of people out there who seem to think this is a good and beneficial way to spend their time.

even among fans, there are some who seem to be having a bad time. I have looked at certain posts or blogs before and wondered to myself if the person even actually likes it, or if at this point they're just hostage to nostalgia or the idea of it (either the potential or their fan version of the universe) and they can't just call it quits. these people are not the same as the previously described, as they don't make their whole lives about hating something, but they're clearly miserable and could do with moving on, and they do contribute to the kinds of critical and often aggressive posts missing from the Goncharov project. the absence of this, as well as the more unhinged hatred, does leave a pretty obvious gap in the believability of the film's existence, and this is... rather depressing, really.

the thing that allowed Goncharov to be a peaceful experience was because of the fact that it wasn't real, and everyone knew it. but this should be applied to all films and books: they are not real. while some criticisms are valid (such as the terrible writing that female characters are often subject to, or the lack of representation in popular cinema, etc) a lot of the hate comes from interpersonal beef about characters, and these people aren't real. it's a very strange thing to witness: that so many people are capable of understanding that Goncahrov and Katya etc aren't real, and therefore there's no point getting mad about them, but they cannot carry that over to any other fictional character. the film's unreality is part of the joke, woven into it from the foundations, and so no hater, no matter how deranged, could possibly take themselves seriously hating it. instead they have to resort to complaining about the joke itself, and how annoying it is, but the content remains completely hater-free. it's an absolutely fascinating glimpse at the complete breakdown of the line between reality and fiction on this website -- Goncharov came from within, and its construction and creation was there for all to see, whereas other media seems to spring to the consumer fully formed and therefore with some kind of mystery that awards it a certain flair of legitimacy. I don't mean to say that anyone thinks it's real, but certainly they seem to think it's more serious, and worth getting worked up over. but none of it is real, none of it is worth getting worked up over, but for some reason it seems that when a creation comes from one's peers, this mystery is removed and the complete pointlessness and inanity of getting into fights online over fictional characters and events is illuminated in all its glory.

2, 3, 7?

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom i did 2 over here! but now since i've done two characters who i think don't bottom often, i'll do two characters that i don't think top often. again this is with the disclaimer that i tend to prefer switchy dynamics for all my ships. sooo. turgon is such a control freak in life that i think he might enjoy just laying back and getting taken care of in the bedroom (god knows he won't let this happen anywhere else). i think he'd feel a "duty" to perform at first, but if you put him with a partner that likes to make all the decisions he'd be so very relieved to fall into that dynamic in the bedroom. also for whatever reason i think finrod and amarie are this:

don't ask me why it's just vibes

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

okay big disclaimer on this that everyone has different takes and what makes me very annoyed has a right to exist in fandom. no hate intended towards the takes and people i mention, should they somehow see this. that said i AM choosing violence tonight

i see a lot of takes i dislike but only one. has made me so mad that i immediately left my house and walked five miles out of sheer frustration. and it was this, as far as i recall, their logic: "sauron killed celebrimbor before celebrimbor gave him the information he was really looking for (location of the three rings). sauron is the master of torture, and this was kind of a pretty big torture fuck-up. thus, sauron was not at his best when torturing celebrimbor, and killed him too rashly out of anger. this is later backed up by the way he treated his body. thus, celebrimbor must have done something particularly heinous to sauron. in fact, it was celebrimbor taking advantage of sauron all along. this means that feanor must have seen maiar serving in aule's forges and decided maiar were some kind of servant class, which led to celebrimbor inheriting those beliefs and being creepybadevil at sauron when they worked together" i don't think i need to dissect this take to explain how much it pissed me off. but i WILL say i am genuinely impressed with this user for managing to victim blame the victim of a crucifixion.

also i would like to say that sauron is such a cringefail loser (affectionate?) that we should be surprised about him fucking up torture. guy got beaten by a big dog & also made the mistake of killing finrod before learning anything important from him

again no hate to the user. people have drastically different takes & headcanons and favorites but god. that one got me. it really did get me.

honorable mentions go to:

that one theory i saw that someone managed to blame almost exclusively women (indis, nerdanel, and yavanna) for the conflict of the silmarils

the person who said child!fingolfin should have been a better brother if he wanted feanor to like him. this one loses "bad take" points for being the funniest fucking thing i've ever read

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

hmmm i actually think i've mostly gone the other way around? i think i mostly tend to like characters more than i did coming into fandom. that being said i weirdly don't like erestor. something about him idk

i also used to like sauron a lot more than i do now. now i'm very sauron-cautious. some of the coolest fanart and fanfic in fandom involves him and i don't wanna dismiss that, i definitely enjoy reading about him, but for some reason he's the character the MOST likely to make me click out of a fic if he feels "off" to me

get to know me!

anna @keerysquinn filled this in and i was thinking about my own answers and realised they go on for ages so i figured if y'all ever wanted a super lore drop about me. here it is!

since my answers are so long, i'm not going to tag anyone, but if you also get inspired to answer, i'm more than happy to learn about people so you can tag me in as the reason you want to answer these!

(under the cut bc of how long it gets lol)

Name(real or alias): rj. letter r, letter j. (i have to spell it out especially when i'm in america bc people think i'm saying audrey) it's an abbreviation of my given name, which considering it's common knowledge that i'm afab, it's probably pretty easy to guess? but i don't want anyone calling me anything other than rj, or ridge

ridge comes from the sounds 'ruh' and 'juh' being said real quickly in succession. my friend jamie once sent me an ask on my old blog forever ago that started with 'hey ridge' and i fell in love with it, but something feels weirdly overfamiliar when people call me it who i'm not mutuals with?? anyway, that's why my user tag is userridge, bc it wasn't being used and it is a legit nickname of mine i've had for years

Age: [schmidt from new girl voice] TWENNY-NOINE

Country you live in: england (derogatory). the oldies at the care home i work at (not for much longer!!) always assume that bc i visit my friends in america so often, i'm planning on moving there, but tbh as much as i'd love to not be an ocean away from the people i love most, domestic day-to-day life in america isn't worth the move. i'd rather sensationalise the one or two trips i get to wal-mart every year, lol

Fandoms: the only fandom i actively participate in, in terms of consuming regular fanart, fanfiction, character analysis, gifmaking and shipping, is stranger things. i have a lot of other interests in other media that i love to consume, but i don't necessarily feel any particular urge to take part in most, if any, parts of fandom culture within those interests like i do with stranger things and other projects affiliated with its actors

Why are you on tumblr (writer or reader or both): i've gone from being strictly a stranger things reader insert writer, to an all-characters-played-by-the-joes reader insert writer, to a sometimes reader insert writer but not for stranger things, sometimes pairing writer but only for stranger things rarepairs, and also now gifmaker!

Favorite thing about yourself: i can take care of people, and i'm good at it. i can make people feel better, and i can stand up for them when it's needed

Something you think you are known for: being the co-captain of cheerscoops, and The Ralph Mutual (which is a kind way of saying the mutual mentally unwell enough to write a six-figure word count about a character with six minutes of screentime)

Who are you in a friend group(partier, mom, talkative, etc): lol what's a friend group? i kid, i kid. i don't really have any irl friend "groups" anymore, but even back when i did, i was more of a gap filler. like, i wasn't one of the first people invited to things, but then later on if someone dropped out or if the group realised more people could come, then i'd be offered

in online groups, i like to think i'm someone who makes people laugh? i'm definitely the indecisive one who needs to crowdsource every choice put in front of me, but that's what you get when you befriend a nonbinary bisexual lol. i also like to bounce ideas back and forth with people, though admittedly despite how often i do it, i do also hold myself back from it a lot bc i don't want people to think i'm taking their idea and running with it

Who do you love the most: keep this clip in mind as you read the next part of this sentence: ask me that again and look at my url. i haven't felt such a (distantly) parasocial connection towards (not with, there's a difference) any celebrity in a long time that i do with the joes. like, i don't want to know anything about their personal lives in the slightest, but i'm always excited to see what they're doing next, in a way i'm not necessarily about anybody else

What brought you to tumblr in the first place: this blog started out because @denim-mixtapes and i, who met through our former blogs dedicated to A Fandom We Don't Talk About Any More, were yelling about eddie munson via snapchat, discord, instagram, our public twitter accounts and our private ones, tiktok, maybe more? and then @fanatictypist, also a friend from AFWDTAAM and deep in the brainrot but never having taken the break from tumblr that mandy and i did, suggested taking our ideas to tumblr bc this was july 2022 when hype was INSANELY real

before that, i made a blog specifically for AFWDTAAM because a) i missed the fandom blog i'd had before that which i had previously deactivated, and b) i realised there was reader insert fanfiction for said fandom, but not enough featuring the person that i liked the most, so i started writing. i'd never written x reader before then.

before that, as i said, i had a fandom blog. it was the one i used to join rp groups on tumblr, which was fun until it wasn't. and i realised that i was going through a cycle of finding a new group, enjoying their company, having major drama ensue, and eventually instead of just moving to another rp group to see the same thing happen over n over again, i just deactivated entirely. i miss rp-ing, but also i wouldn't go back to it at the age of 29

Is there something you regret doing: i have a lot of things that i have learned from, and i regret the fact that actions i've made have hurt people, always inadvertently, but still. i wish that the things that helped me to grow weren't at the expense of other people feeling bad about something in regard to me, but i don't think that constitutes regret.

being autistic, a lot of the time, people seem to just drop me out of seemingly nowhere. and my irl bestie does tell me that a lot of the people i end up befriending, are people she gets a bad vibe from or doesn't really trust, and they're always the ones who don't stick around. but i do feel as though i must be accountable, too, and i know and understand that nobody owes me an explanation if i have done something that warrants them no longer wanting me in their life, but also, how do i know what i need to do to salvage important relationships to me if they don't think it important enough to tell me? that's why i'm a big advocate that your friends should not be your 100% hype men. if they are, i don't trust them. i need people to call me out on my shit and tell me if i'm doing something wrong, or going too far. and i need to feel like i can do the same with them, without them getting offended. it's for both of our benefits

Top five songs: ugh okay each of these has a v significant meaning so here goes

fool - djo: as previously mentioned, am autistic. i got myself diagnosed at 20, and everything suddenly made sense. my mum refused to accept it, told me that everybody's a little on the spectrum, that i only think i am bc i've looked it up and aligned myself with the traits. i learned at 28 that actually, i've had a diagnosis since i was 4. mum just never ever did anything to help me. not when i was going through school wanting to **** ****** bc i knew i was the "weird kid" but i didn't know what made me so weird that everyone ganged up on me so i didn't know how to fix it. turns out i couldn't. i could have gotten more support, but i didn't. and even now that they know i know about the og diagnosis, my parents refuse to acknowledge it. for years, they would scold and bully me away from behaviours that were actually just me stimming, and merely existing as an autistic kid. so i have to put on a persona for them, i have to be their "fool" to appease them rather than just getting to be my authentic, autistic self like i can be around my friends

consequences - lovejoy: going back to the earlier not-quite-regret-but-definitely-Something feeling of knowing that someday friendships and relationships will almost certainly be doomed. this sing encapsulates that for me a lot

car lights - james marriott: the queer anthem of all time. m+d have always said that they "don't care" who i bring home but whenever they talk about me having a future they talk about a husband, or a potential father of my children (which idek if i want) even though i've had relationships with women. it again feels part of something i have to hide from them

soft - motionless in white: a new contender thanks to kai and acey. i've always been the "wholesome" one, i've never really felt rage specifically, or had an outlet for it, but being a lifelong people pleaser and having something to inspire me to work on giving less of a shit what other people are thinking/saying about me has been a game changer for the ol self-esteem

undertale - toby fox: i can't explain this one. it just makes me cry every time i listen to it. like, weep actual tears. every time.

If you could go anywhere where would you go: i've always wanted to go to japan, but i also don't like going to countries where english is not a first language without having a basic understanding of the mother tongue of that country and japanese is fuckin difficult to learn. i've also always wanted to go to australia, even before anyone in particular came into my life tyvm

What is your hobby: fanfic writing, gif making, video game playing. procrastinating is a hobby at this point, lol. i like to try craft things, but i'm not very good at keeping up with them

Any tv shows you watching: i'm rewatching stranger things bc gifmaking has ruined my perception of the actual timeline of events. i'm actively watching the afterparty s2 and only murders in the building s3. it's not really a tv show, but i watch it on my tv, dimension 20's current campaign, mentopolis, is also something i'm actively keeping up with, on top of all actively releasing dropout content

What movie did you last watch: the last movies i put on were the mamma mia films, as background while i wrote, and ever since i've been slowly cooking a mamma mia stranger things au bc i'm basically incapable of consuming any media without relating it to stranger things at this point. i can relate each of the 3 canon characters to eddie, steve and jonathan, but i can't shake the idea that like. what if argyle was one of the potential dads. it wouldn't be a direct parody bc he's so different from any other character in the mamma mia franchise but i think it would be so fun to include him, too

Last thing you read(book, fanfic, etc): i'm reading rebel robin, atm, bc idk why i never really thought to indulge in the stranger things books before now? i used to read doctor who books so it's not like i'm a stranger to consuming media outside of its original format. i'm also currently reading through @pearlypairings' photocheer fic there is a light that never goes out!

Last text message you got: HAHAHA this one's funny. my sister's getting married next month and she's asking if we've all paid for our parts, I told her I'd paid it and her fiance told me they'd receievd it (he's an accountant so he's dealing with the money side of things) but my sister couldn't spot anything from me even though i told her what her fiance had told me, so my last text from her is "unless he's financially gaslighting me, or he's tucked it away in his fuck-off fund" (which i should establish is a joke bc he is 1000% not like that in the slightest)

Last text message you sent: sending to my sister, above: "or he's gaslighting me into believing i've sent it when it didn't go through, classic Dishonest [fiance name redacted]!" (again, all a joke)

Any pets: none atm :( i still live with my parents who have never wanted any of us to have pets, but now that my older sister has her dog, jasper, my family are obsessed with him. i mean, they have a photo of him in our living room that's bigger than any photo of any of us kids

Any advice for new tumblr accounts? I just joined and I have no clue how to grow a following? -shy anon lol

oh boy this isn't something i've really thought about before.

when i first joined tumblr in 2013 i wasn't looking to grow a following, i just knew some artists i liked were on here and i wanted to see what they were posting. it wasn't until years later i started posting my own gifs and art over on my main blog. follower counts aren't public but i don't mind sharing if it helps so on @emptymasks which i've had since 2013 and at times have posted a lot of gifs, art and fisc too and at other times have gone months and months without posting any of that because i don't see tumblr as a social media to like make money off or anything, it's just fun, i have 2988 on my main blog.

this blog dervampireprince has existed since december 2020 but it was a different blog with a different name until march 2021 when it became dervampireprince. so this blog has existed posting 18+ writing since march 2021 and audios since december 2021 and i have 3682 followers over here. never expected this blog to me my post popular but i'm not complaining.

tumblr isn't like other social medias, you can't see other users follower counts, following counts, and recommended and trending posts don't get thrown at you. you mostly only see posts from people you follow. yes there are recommended posts now but if you're an older tumblr user like myself you may use Xkit which is a 3rd party extension for tumblr that adds a bunch of features (blocking posts with certain words in them, mass tag editor/replacer, an outbox, ad blocker, use tumblr using older themes and layouts, etc) so some people don't get any recommended posts.

there's only one way to get your posts noticed by people on tumblr and that's using tags correctly, and relying on people who check their favourite tags to notice your posts. now a lot of people must not be like me, because i don't check tags for things very often, but clearly a lot of people do or my posts would have no notes. what tags you use though is going to depend on what type of post you're making. you can use up to 20 tags. tumblr will let you type more than 20, but anything above tag 20 won't be searchable, as in if you 21st tag is [marvel], your post will not show up under search results for marvel unless it's tag 20 or lower, not on tumblr general search nor in search results on your own blog.

(sidenote - tumblr's search used to take you to tumblr.com/tagged/[thing you searched for] and years ago they changed it to tumblr.com/search/[thing you searched for]. you can still get to the /tagged page by typing it in the URL bar, /tagged always shows most recent posts first which i prefer and also if you searched for [loki] then /tagged would only show you posts where the word loki is tagged, whereas /search shows you posts that have loki tagged and have the word loki typed in any text in the actual post. which is annoying and you end up with non relevant posts showing up in certain tags)

so for example if i'm writing a nsft writing posts these are the tags i tend to use are: #nsft nsftumblr #nsft concept #nsft fantasy #nsft writing #ftm nsft #mlm nsft #nblm nsft #t4t nsft #trans nsft #trans man nsft #transmasc nsft #lgbt nsft #bi nsft . Now all those tags aren't relevant to every nsft post, some are gender specific, but you can find what other tags exist by just checking the general #nsft and #nsftumblr tags and seeing what other people use as tags when they post.

(and having xkit means i don't have to remember and type these out every time, i just have them saved as a tag bundle and one click and they all go in the tags)

or for example if i'm making a post on my main blog for a sandman drawing i've down i'd use the tags: the sandman #dream of the endless #sandman #fanart #hob gadling #dreamling #dreamgadling #hob x dream #dream x hob #morpheus #lord morpheus #myart #sandman fanart #the sandman fanart . And then people find it through the fandom and ship tags mostly.

Of course if you already have followers then your followers will see your posts no matter if you use any tags or none, but tags are the only way to get people who aren't following you to see your post, and hope that some of them reblog it so their followers can see (unlike social medias like Twitter, like aren't public here, your followers can't see what posts you like, and even if you set your likes to public they can only see them if they go to a specific page on your blog, your likes don't show up in their dashboard/timeline like they do on Twitter).

This is my oldest original piece of writing on here

I had somewhere between 1-10 followers at the time and currently it stands at 52 notes. I didn't use many tags, I didn't know about the existence of many tags, but I used the few I knew about and specific kink tags and people noticed it.

And as always it's the posts you spend ages writing that get fewer notes than one silly sentence you post at 2am thinking no one will notice

Because that still sits at my post popular post on this blog. And despite this blog having much more followers than my main, my post popular post ever is a Loki themed edit I did where I just posted 9 photos from fashion editorials, recoloured them to be green and black and gold, and it got to over 15k notes within a few months and none of my posts here are close to getting that many. Follower count doesn't reflect how popular a post can get.

Basically tags are your best friend on this site, use them wisely, don't use more than 20. It doesn't hurt to follow and interact with other blogs who are posting similar content to you, your followers are going to see any posts you reblog as well as your original posts. I've never approached another blog trying to be mutuals or friends before, if I end up getting to know anyone it just sorta happens from us seeing each others names a lot in our notes and sending asks to each other. Like with with aspiring-house-husband for example, I never sent them a message saying 'can we be friends' because that's kinda creepy, I just was reblogging a lot of their writing, chose to engage by sending them some rp asks, complimenting their writing, and then i realised they'd reblogged from me, small world, and speaking of Fawn, in less than a year they got almost 7k followers which is insane and goes to show how talented at writing they are. If you're really only doing it for the followers then finding a niche can help, if you're wanting to write nsft stuff you could focus around certain kinks or creatures or something. I ended up focusing around royalty kink stuff, and I hadn't even heart of it until a couple months into making this blog so.

I hope some of that was helpful? My goal with my main tumblr was just to be able to see art other people posted, making this tumblr yes I did hope for people to reblog my writing and I liked the idea of being a nsft blog people followed, but I didn't have any plans that I would make audios and end up making income off this stuff, it just happened that by the time I wanted to make audios I was lucky that 1. people were already following me and 2. I was making them for a new fandom that was really popular at the time (Arcane).

Yeah that was long, hope it helped, I don't know what sort of content you want to make and tumblr isn't like other socials, there's no 'tumblr influencers' and you can't get sponsored or monetized posts or get payed to host ads on your blog or anything like that so I can only tell you so much.

EDIT: I remembered something else! There are some blogs called source blogs, these blogs are normally centered around a fandom, character, actor, ship, etc. For example marvelgifs is a blog that reblogs Marvel gifs. These blogs will check posts tagged with their username, not @ ing them in the post, but putting their username as one of your tags etc #marvelgifs . You can tag source blogs as a way to help get your posts potentially reblogged. Most of these blogs only post and reblog gifs and edits but some do also reblog fanart, fics and other content for example I also run a blog @europeanmusicals where I reblog and post all content about European musicals that I can find including fanart and writings, and I check the #europeanmusicals tag to see if there's posts people want me to notice to them reblog to that blog. I was able to set up that blog as I'd already been posting about European musicals on my main emptymasks blog for a year or two at that point and surrounded myself with others who like that content.

TAG GAME WEDNESDAY: FANDOM EDITION

Thank you for the tag @energievie!

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your name: Maria

your age: over 40

your first fandom(s): the one and only Shameless

your current fandom(s): see above

how did you first get into fandom? I had no idea that fandoms even existed, but I went down a rabbit hole of trying to learn more about Season 10 by seeking out online spoilers, etc. It led me to Twitter which led me to Tumblr which led me to fanfic and the rest is history.

how long have you been engaging with fandom spaces? probably since just before the pandemic, so maybe November of 2019.

how often do you read fanfics? @suzy-queued and I have a standing bookclub engagement twice a week. That is when I get most of my reading done. Otherwise, I'm usually writing.

top 3 characters from your current fandom(s): there are really just two: Mickey & Ian.

have you ever written a fic for a fandom? if so, shout it out! Sure have: you can check out my AO3.

have you ever drawn fanart for a fandom? yes, I participate in @gallacrafts when I can, but admittedly, I prefer to draw/paint representations of themes rather than the boys themselves. I don't have that level of skill and bow down to the artists that do!

share a personal headcanon that you feel very strongly about: I'm gonna abstain on this one. I've gotten in trouble for some of mine in the past. lol.

you’re trying to convince a friend to get into your current fandom(s) with you. what episode, clip, or scene are you showing them? easy: dock sluts. Already did this with a friend recently and am waiting to see what that investment has reaped. lol.

and finally, what does fandom mean to you? this is a tough one. It's one of the best, most important diversions in my life. It's brought me great friendship and comfort in lonely times, definitely. However, it also serves as a reminder that the show is over and that those of us left hanging on are dwindling in number, so that part of it makes me kind of sad. But, I try to focus on the positive, so that's the uplifting note I'd like to leave on! lol.

Tagging @thevioletjones, @suzy-queued, @look-i-love-u, @yeah-all-of-it, @sweetbee78, @francesroserecs, @creepkinginc-au-vault, @gallawitchxx and anyone else who wants to play.