people loving ukraine’s entry and there being a war in ukraine are completely coincidental things and not at all related. like die mad but ukraine’s entry is amazing impeccable legendary and it would deserve to win. if you don’t like it i’m sorry you haven’t yet discovered how wonderful and healing and sexy eastern european folk inspired music is
hey y’all, i haven’t been using tumblr much recently anyhow and i won’t be deleting anything here, but if in the mass move away from the platform you’d still like to keep up with my shenanigans, i’m mostly over ontwitterthese days
people loving ukraine’s entry and there being a war in ukraine are completely coincidental things and not at all related. like die mad but ukraine’s entry is amazing impeccable legendary and it would deserve to win. if you don’t like it i’m sorry you haven’t yet discovered how wonderful and healing and sexy eastern european folk inspired music is
Even though I know it’s years away, I’m so ready to see Walker Scobell yell “GO CHASE A DONUT” at Tantalus and then hard cut to him and Annabeth washing dishes
This may not be a funny meme, an art work or fanfic, but I think it’s just as important. It might be a long post, I’ll appreciate if you take the time to read this and spread the word. This post is about artists in The Arcana Fandom, their apprentice OCs and being supportive towards each other.
Yesterday I received anon hate for my MC’s look. The anon said my MC is “ A big titted bimbo looking dumbass whore “. ( You can check out the post. ) From what I get this person implies that any MC / OC with a big bust size is automatically unintelligent , slutty and lacks personality. Apparently any OC that is confident, shows skin, is comfortable in their body, or expressing their sexuality is bad. Which means any OC that is covered up, has little to no bust is automatically well written and smart. You’d think anon hate and slutshaming died out by now, but it’s still present to these days.
The person clearly knew nothing about my MC’s backstory, personality or motives and made some assumptions based solely on her apperance. If you ever received hate on your MC, I’m here with you.
The Arcana MC is a fun character because they are costumizable. The MC doesn’t have a certain design like in most dating games. As the player of the game, the apprentice’s look is completely up to your imagination. That includes: their looks, personality, gender, sexuality, and many more details.
Your MC is comfortable with their sexuality or rather keeps intimate details to themselves? or they are not comfortable being sexual? Your MC is valid.
Your MC is experienced sexually or lacks experience? Your MC is valid.
Your MC has a big or small bust? or wears binders? Your MC is valid.
Your MC wears revealing clothing or prefers to be completely covered? Your MC is valid.
Your MC has freckles, tattooes, piercings, markings, beauty marks, scars, stretch marks? Your MC is valid.
Your MC loves to wear colorful/patterned clothes or is more comfortable wearing outfits with little to no color/pattern ? Your MC is valid.
Your MC is short or tall? Your MC is valid.
Your MC has disabilities? Your MC is valid.
Your MC is slim, curvy, plus sized, muscular etc. ? Your MC is valid.
You draw your MC in a realistic/heavily stylized way ? Your MC is valid.
You are a professional or a beginner artist/writer? Your MC is valid.
You MC is an OC or a self insert? Your MC is valid.
MCs of every skin color, sexuality, gender ? Your MC is valid.
All MCs were made with love,time and effort. The creators behind them had fun designing them, and making their ideas come to life with drawing or writing. By degrading and comparing them, you clearly don’t give a damn about all the thoughts the creator put into them. The superior or inferior MC design doesn’t exist. Some people even have a personal connection to their MC, so you may be insulting the very person behind the character.
This game was made to be enjoyed, to have fun with as you play it and to bond with others who love it. If you are only in this fandom to spread toxicity, or to tell someone that their MC is less than someone else’s, you clearly shouldn’t be here. For many people it means a lot that the MC could look and act however they want. It helps them develop a stronger connection to them. There is no right or wrong way to create an MC. Let people enjoy the game and spread positivity.
If anyone feels like adding any positive thoughts to this post, feel free to do so! I’d love to see your thoughts! Thank you for taking the time to read this. #your mc is valid
And to the people who’ve been whining about how these recent posts are ‘guilting’ people in to reblogging art/fics/content ‘just to help their numbers’ or saying its stupid that tumblr creators have been asking that people reblog rather than just leave a like on their work because “you should be able to use the site however you want and if you want to use it like twitter/instagram/tiktok and never reblog anything that’s fine! uwu” or whatever: worsties you’re literally getting content - fics fanart etc - for FREE. If doing the literal bare minimum of sharing content that you LIKE to help and show creators appreciation for the work they put in is simply Too Much for you then start paying. Leave a Kofi donation or subscribe to their Patreon if they have one. No? You don’t want to do that either?? Then stop the “wah wah how dare creators who are spending hours to provide me with free content for my enjoyment ask me to take the extra step to Share the content that I already Like and use the site the way it was Supposed to be used and Ruin my ~blog aesthetic~ just to hELp ThEir NuMbErS“ give me a break
Unfortunately, what we have here regarding fan content is a significant difference of personal philosophy. Specifically, regarding whether fandom is a barter economy or a gift economy.
In a barter economy, kudos, likes, comments, and reblogs (especially reblogs and comments) are the trade goods that fans exchange for fanart, fanfic, etc.
In a gift economy, someone shares their fan content in the hopes that it makes people happy, and in the hopes that it will inspire others to share their own fan content and keep the happy going.
For someone who believes fandom is a barter economy, not commenting or reblogging when you like something is akin to theft.
For someone who believes fandom is a gift economy, people demanding comments or reblogs in exchange for content are entitled and whiny.
There is definitely some crossover between the two groups, and there are several other factors at play. On top of that, switching the topic from fanworks to original works and bringing up whether money is involved complicate the conversation further. Even going between different platforms can make an impact on the users’ general opinion.
I am not going to make a judgement on which group is “right” or “wrong”, or if there even isa right or wrong opinion. I know which I prefer, but that is only my preference, and I’ve sen the forum of public opinion swing both ways on the issue.
Iwillsay that those two camps have been around for as long as I’ve been in fandom, almost certainly longer, and no amount of pleading, goading, guilting, pressuring, or shaming has ever changed that fact, nor can I remember anyone successfully convincing a person to switch from one philosophy to another.
respectfully i disagree; i think even in a gift economy there’s at least some expectation of a reciprocal expression of gratitude (kudos, rbs, etc) and i think it’s a little unfair to categorize fandom creators wanting their efforts to be acknowledged as “goading, guilting, pressuring, or shaming”
I may have over-simplified a bit on gift economy; what the gift economy fandom people are really expecting when they post is to be part of a community. They wouldn’t be posting in the first place if they didn’t at least want their work to get attention. And frequently, that community will take it upon themselves to add likes or kudos, to build positive fandom spaces, and to even gift in return. That’s what I meant by “spreading happiness”.
And while not all barter economy fans goad, guilt, pressure, or shame, some of them do, and it is that sort of behavior I dislike. I’ve seen it a lot on Tumblr, where reblogging is the trade that creators expect; on LiveJournal and FF.net, it was usually comments. Lots and lots and lots of people have complained about a lack of comments, and have used negative tactics to try and get people to comment more, and even to extort comments (“I’ll update the fic when I get 50 comments on this chapter!”); I’ve been seeing much of the same here on Tumblr.
There are ways and ways of making commenting and reblogging more palatable for people, and it’s the ones that try to make people feel bad for not reblogging or commenting that leave a foul taste in my mouth. Saying, “Hey, if you liked what I did, please consider leaving a comment or reblogging! It’s the best way for me to figure out what I’m doing right and/or to reach new audiences!”, or listing things that creators are looking for in comments, are both great ways to encourage that behavior! They’re also wildly different from implying that someone is a bad or selfish person for not commenting or reblogging.
ah i see! yeah i mostly agree with what you said, i’ve noticed this too. like on one hand it’s very understandable to be frustrated and in turn ask for feedback in that guilting manner, but on the other hand, like you said, it usually just makes people feel even more disheartened and less likely to comment/rb
Exactly! I personally have found that making it easy for people to do the thing you want is the best way to, you know, get them to do the thing you want. Gift Economy Fandom people also love comments and reblogs! Practically everyone in fandom period loves those things! But being made to feel like you’re a bad person for not doing those things just makes most people want to interact with them less in the first place.
For a while on LJ, I ran this little biannual festival called Lurker Day, and it was dedicated to the people who lurk and consume content and never comment or otherwise make themselves known. And that can be a pretty isolating experince as well. Make them feel bad for not getting over whatever anxiety or executive function bullshit is holding them back, and they might never go on to participating more fully in fandom.
Make them feel welcome and appreciated, and they might just take the opportunity to say, “Hi, I love your stuff, is it okay if I share it with my friends?”
I have to come here and say that this conversation is getting wildly off topic from what the post was about, and it also seems to be talking more about creators who guilt-trip for engagement and how they “should” ask instead, rather than about the types of entitled fans the original post was specifically about.
What this post is talking about is entirely Tumblr-specific. Creators who’ve been on Tumblr for a long time have been pointing out the Very Real phenomenon where the populace has shifted to liking and reblogging has become drastically less common. Where an art post would have 50% reblogs and 50% likes 5 years ago, an art post with the same amount of notes will have only 10% reblogs and 90% likes now. It IS disheartening when artists see 1K notes but only 93 people actually reblogged it (not an exaggeration), and the disparity between those numbers is ridiculous to people who’ve been on the site for years and know how common reblogging used to be. A 1K post usually meant ~500 reblogs!!! You can scroll years back in to artists’ blogs and see the disparity so clearly if you compare the notes on their art posts from around 2016 to their art posts now. The post limit existed for a reason!!!! “Post limit” was once something everyone knew about because it was so common for people to hit their reblog limit for the day. Reblogging isn’t just for feedback. Reblogging is LITERALLY what this site runs on. It’s how people see your work. Its how it gets on to other people’s dashboards. Hell, it’s how people will find it if it’s been reposted elsewhere without credit, because reverse image searching tends to be more successful when the art has been reblogged on a lot of blogs. You mentioned barter VS. gift economy, and how in gift economy the expectation is that the work will make people happy, and the thing is, if people don’t reblog creators’ work, it ISN’T going to be seen and make more people happy the way the creators want it to. Likes do nothing (and some tumblr creators even take it as a sign that their work wasn’t “good enough” to be reblogged). Likes mean almost no one else is going to see the post past the initial day or two it’ll be at the top of the recent posts in whatever fandom tags it’s in before it gets buried. Likes mean engagement with that post will become nonexistent after those initial 2 days. Unlike on twitter or instagram or tiktok, those likes are not going to help the post be seen by other fans.
So in response to this, artists/gif makers/etc. DID ask nicely. They started making posts NICELY asking and encouraging people to try to reblog their creations if they liked them to help them reach other people who might like them, the way people USED to use this site, in that very manner you said is more effective than making people feel like they’re “bad or selfish” for not reblogging. Some people understood and started doing it! Others stuck to lurking, which is fine too. And then there were those who, rather than just doing what they want to, took personal offense to it, implying that creators were shallow/greedy/attention-seeking/fishing for reblogs just because they want to “help their numbers” (exact words I’ve seen), saying that those NICE posts asking people to reblog their art (not even comment on it!!!!! just a request to push a single button to help them out!!!!) were guilting and entitled, arguing “I should be able to use my blog however I want!!!1!1!” (as if anyone said they couldn’t???) So yes, when the attitude from people in response to being Asked Nicely to simply hit the reblog button if they like something is “why do you have to ask for reblogs!!! you just want to help your numbers!!!! you just want attention!!!! why don’t you just shut up and continue making Content for me to consume!!!!” I have no issue with creators getting mean about it.
so what’s it going to take for mainstream feminism to grow some fucking teeth?
the entire last decade has been an experiment in tearing out feminism’s teeth and its guts and its spine and its brain, so now we’re left with 1) a group of evil idiots who are too busy blaming trans women for everything to do anything useful, and 2) a group of regular idiots who think any thought deeper than “let women do what they want” makes you part of group 1.
and where’d that get us? roe is on the chopping block and calling yourself an abuse victim is “defamation” and covid has led to women leaving the workforce in droves and employed women still do the bulk of the housework and i am so so tired
I’ve always liked storyboarding some of my favorite scenes from fanfictions I enjoy; there’s just something about the expressiveness and movement seen in storyboards that I feel really helps convey the emotion of the characters. And let me tell you, this story has
a lot
of that (how dare you make me feel this strongly for these idiotic boys )
For the first board, I drew a scene from Ch02 (I had to include an action-filled scene haha). I took some liberties with Spectra’s character design and gave her a really wide mouth, since she’s always feeding and feeding from other people’s pain and never satisfied. The next board is more in anticipation for the future interactions between Danny, Wally, and Robin; I for one am looking forward to seeing what mess these three will get themselves into
Seriously guys, go read this fic: the pacing and characterization are fantastic, and the amount of consideration and research that the author puts into the plot and character development is amazing. Plus, if you like theorizing and finding “clues” that hint towards the plot, this fic has plenty of breadcrumbs that will leave you hooked. Also, make sure you have tissues on hand.
