Fandoms & Shenanigans

[photomatt]

Tumblr Advisor Board

I think it could be cool to put together a board of the top Tumblristas in the world, that could see previews of what's coming up and advise on strategic direction. Who should be on it?

[prismatic-bell]

Okay, look. We're gonna do it like this, Matt. I used to work in market research. This one is free, next time I expect a month of free premium and if there's a third time I expect a job.

TO EVERYONE ELSE:

A series of ten reblogs is about to follow, since you can only have one poll per reblog. Please answer all ten polls. If you don't see them all, check the notes (this shouldn't take me long so if it's more than like, fifteen minutes since I posted this one they should all be there.)

1) What is the PRIMARY thing you do on Tumblr?

I mostly reblog others' posts

I write original posts

I make/post memes

I make/post images or gifs

I make/post videos

I run a poll blog

I run a gimmick blog

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

2) how long have you been here?

Under twelve months

1-2 years

3-4 years

5-6 years

7-8 years

9-10 years

More than ten years

I don't remember

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

3) how old are you?

Under 18

19-28

29-38

39-48

49-58

59-68

I'm one of the Tumblr grandparents

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

4) thinking about the recent Tumblr feature release/rollback, what did you find most frustrating?

There was no communication before the fact

I felt like the feature didn't take Tumblr users' wants and needs into account

I felt like the feature showed a lack of understanding of Tumblr culture

I felt the feature would hurt Tumblr culture

I felt the feature would hurt Tumblr artists and small makers specifically

I wasn't bothered by the change

It happened so fast I didn't even know until it was all over

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

5) thinking about the recent Tumblr feature release/rollback, what satisfied you most about the response?

Tumblr staff responded quickly

I felt like we were heard and listened to

It was nice to see our concerns were understood

I wasn't bothered by the change

It happened so fast I didn't even know until it was all over

Other

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

6) thinking about features you use on Tumblr, what would you like to see improved?

The recent UI changes to reblogging are too confusing

I'd like tagging to be easier

I'd like to see the tagging system overhauled

I'd like to see the reporting/adult tagging system improved

I'd like a separate page for my communities

I'd like to be able to mark posts as for my followers only

I'd like to see the blocking system improved

I'm happy with Tumblr as it is

Other

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

7) with the understanding that Tumblr needs to attract new users or convert more current free users to paying users in order to stay online, what do you think of Matt's "top tumblrista" idea?

Absolutely not--this is very famously the influencer-hating site

Absolutely not--this site is too diverse for that to work

Absolutely not, for other reasons

I'm actually liking this poll method

The poll method is clunky but something similar would be great

I think the panel of "top users" would be great

I have no opinion on this

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

8) if you don't currently pay for use of a Tumblr feature, why not?

I have paid Tumblr features

The price point is too high for my wallet

The price point is too high for what's offered

There's nothing offered that I want

I wouldn't pay even if something I wanted was offered

Other

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

In the following question, "pre-social media" refers to platforms like LiveJournal, forums, alt.net boards, early MySpace, and similar spaces.

9) thinking about the given definition of "pre-social media," how much do you agree with the statement "I think most tumblr users I know would prefer pre-social media to modern platforms like Facebook and X"?

"Strongly agree" is not strong enough

Strongly agree

Agree

Kind of maybe agree?

Neutral/I don't know enough about pre-social media to say

Kind of maybe disagree?

Disagree

Strongly disagree

"Strongly disagree" is not strong enough

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

10) do you think Matt should just hire me to do this so I don't have to squeeze it around my break at work?

Yes, this was awesome

Sure, you're not perfect but this was way better than what they've done til now

No, but someone should do this

Honestly I'm just sad you didn't give us nuance/bald/vanilla extract/tickybox

Voting ended onMar 27

[rowark]

I love the irony that if that new reblog change had actually happened, @prismatic-bell would have been getting all the notes for this post, making it completely useless for @photomatt for any sort of research purposes, because he happened to get reblogged by a more popular blog and would have not gotten all the notifications when people added comments

Like, I hope this clears up why we all hated that idea

[prismatic-bell]

This is an excellent point. I genuinely hope @photomatt looks at the answers here and finds them informative even though I definitely could have done better if I wasn't cranking it out in an hour while waiting for my machine at work to come back online.

I especially love that as of right now, almost 70% of respondents agree he should hire me. I'm being wasted in this 90-degree factory, Matt, I have no degree but I do have a good grasp on Tumblr culture and how to generate useful data. Listen to the people 😎

[rowark]

I think the fact that you made these polls in the first place, on your own time, really highlights what sets Tumblr apart from any other social media platform, which is that Tumblr users actually LIKE Tumblr

We don't see this platform as a means to an end, like how influencers use other platforms to make money off their followers and don't actually care what platform they're on, as long as it pays them... we see it as a community we are all part of, and that we want to see improve without losing the community aspect

Every other social media is just using algorithms to feed us non-stop ads, pumping out the most far-right Nazi content, and being completely overtaken by bots and AI. There's no "social" aspect left to most of them.

Tumblr also has a Nazi problem, and dealing with that would be a great change to implement, but aside from that, Tumblr is pretty much the only place you can go and interact with real people, without being sold to non-stop.

Influencer culture is dying out everywhere... this is NOT the time for Tumblr to hop on that bandwagon. It would literally kill this website... no one is going to join Tumblr because it become more like the other platforms that everyone's already sick of, and the more it becomes like Twitter or Tik Tok or whatever, the more current Tumblr users will abandon it, just like they did with every other platform.

Actually, that would make a good additional poll, I think:

What social media platform do you use DAILY, excluding Tumblr:

Facebook

Twitter (yes I will keep deadnaming Twitter til the day I die idc)

Tik Tok

Instagram

Reddit

LinkedIn????

Other????? (are there more??? I don't even know)

More than one of the above

None of the above, and I never have used any of them

None of the above BUT I used to, and have since deleted my accounts

I have accounts for one or more of the above, but RARELY use them

I have accounts for one or more of the above, but NEVER use them

Voting ended onMar 27

... for the purpose of this poll. rarely means more than never, but less than daily, I guess

I am not a market researcher, but I do love polls lol

[prismatic-bell]

I actually meant to have this as a question and then forgot it because I was doing it off the cuff rather than actually writing out and tweaking it ahead of time, because it's a deeply important one. So thank you for adding it.

[stargazermeadow]

yall should take this face blindness test and rb with what you got bc im curious

70-75

65-70

60-65

55-60

50-55

45-50

40-45

<40

Voting ended onMar 23

Interactive measure of face memory, free, 3-6 minutes.

[ficauthor]

[azelk]

[thepromiscuousfinger]

[chaifootsteps]

#Please little bird

[meriwetherwrites]

I love that the modern-day tumblr post equivalent of chain emails only requires me to reblog a relatively pleasant image instead of forward an email to a bunch of my friends and family members to quell my raging anxiety.

[nightguardmod]

It’s a win win. I get a bit of hope, you get a cute birb photo

[the-haiku-bot]

It’s a win win. I

get a bit of hope, you get

a cute birb photo

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[the-silly-words-on-your-screen]

this is fred, the dot.

fred wants to grow into a beautiful tree, but sadly has no branches

reblog to give fred a branch

i will post fred status updates as he grows

[the-silly-words-on-your-screen]

look at him go!

[the-silly-words-on-your-screen]

he's figuring out how to tree!

[the-silly-words-on-your-screen]

35 reblogs, he's growing so good :D

[the-silly-words-on-your-screen]

75 reblogs, fred continues to grow

reminder to spread out your branches (ie. dont spam reblogs on one post), he's starting to get a little crowded near the trunk :(

[gallusrostromegalus]

At 1788 Reblogs, Fred is spreading nicely... But We Can Do Better :)

[siderealglimmer]

I would like to see the Fred again please

[the-choir-invisible]

[siderealglimmer]

Oh, ✨Fred!✨

🤩

[cantotallyeven]

This is Fred the post. Please help Fred the Post grow more. We love Fred the Post.

[rhythmic-idealist]

Just so people know, epilepsy warnings aren’t about, like, purity culture, or online leftists acting as if disabled people are real. It’s about my mom

[rhythmic-idealist]

We human beings have discovered patterns of light and/or sound that kill some people and we should probably not have hissy fits about your right to fire a weapon at my mom. Like if you could put some text onscreen explaining the upcoming seizure-inducing patterns so that people can scroll away. That’s super fucking easy. i AM sorry that something as mindless as a tiktok edit could kill someone but hey, so could driving to work every morning, we all treat THAT accordingly (long, pointed stare. because yes we had better be treating that accordingly too)

The casual abundance of Thing That Kills People doesn’t mean you shouldn’t avoid killing people

[rhythmic-idealist]

#all media should have epilepsy warnings like all food should have allergy warnings#and if you disagree then I'll kick your ass

via @angst-and-fajitas

[theodysseyofhomer]

odysseus absolutely does present a threat to penelope if he perceives her as at all unfaithful, and i feel the unfairness of this, and i think people tend to undersell how much tension at least potentially exists between odysseus and penelope. but i'm also like. his reaction, all speculation aside, his actual reaction in the odyssey to her flirting with the suitors is delight, because he immediately ascertains that she is running a con. sorry that they're so in-sync in spite of the forces that try to drive a wedge between them, including their own misgiving hearts. sorry that they invented homophrosyne ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[strinak]

oh, you meant they literally did, ok

[theodysseyofhomer]

would i, tumblr user thee odysseyofhomer, lie to you?

[polyphemusthecylcops]

...

[theodysseyofhomer]

this is the only funny addition to this post

[treasures-and-beauty]

Anglo Saxon/Frankish crystal ball pendant, 600-700 AD

[wordswithkittywitch]

Something interesting about these pendants: we aren’t quite sure what they were for. “But Kittywitch,” you say, “Who’s to say they were for anything? Is it not enough for a pendant to be pretty?”

To which I say, “Yes, we cannot forget that humans have always been human and humans like pretty things. However, these balls were found hanging off of chatelaines alongside tools.” It’s a bit like that one bit on a Swiss army knife that you’re not sure what it does; but if it’s hanging off a keyring with your snips and your needlecase and your key, that implies this is also a tool of some sort.

The most repeated theory is that they were used for smoothing linen. and I’ll admit it doesn’t take much to make linen crease so you could probably get a crease out with this if you tried really hard. But the thing is, I’m a reenactor. I’ve got one of these things. I have tried to smooth linen with it and honestly, it’s more effective to just tug at the edges of the fabric.

I’ve seen other reenactors use them as dousing pendulums, and while they were very effective there’s no real reference to pendulum dousing in this period.

Others have suggested that one could start a fire refracting light through one of these, but I’ve never seen that even come close to working. Apparently, there was one reenactor who was told that this theory wouldn’t work, and went and started a fire with one just for spite.

It could even be this was just a status symbol: very clear glass in a very round orb was hard to make, so these would have been expensive. We do know that some of the spoons were symbolic as well as practical, so that’s a very workable theory.

It’s not impossible that they are purely decorative and I’m basically looking at someone’s Hello Kitty keyring and saying, “Every other thing hanging off this right opens a door! This has got to do something!”

In any case, feel free to speculate as to the purpose of this object. At this point your guess is pretty much as good as anyone else’s.

[wordswithkittywitch]

#ooh that’s pretty#maybe it’s for concentrating light? like not for starting a fire but for highlighting a bit of text you can’t quite make out#like ye olde penlight#i’ve seen similar things done with round bottles on a larger scale#or maybe it’s like a magnifying glass

via @hirilelfwraith

That is a very interesting idea, and I’m definitely going to try it out next time I’m reenacting. However, I’m not entirely sure how to make that work because most things a lady would do that require light also require two hands, like threading a needle. These were worn by women, and a woman not in the church in this period had a very low likelihood of encountering a book, much less being able to read it, so even if it can highlight text that might not be what it was used for. Still, it’s an interesting thought worth more experimentation!

[azelk]

Depending on how heavy they are vs their size, and how easily detachable they are, they could have been used as weights for fibre arts? Sometimes with knitting in the round a weight is helpful, and i know this is the case with other types of crafting that involve long pieces where a little weight on it helps keep everything even and moving smoothly.

[only-cat-memes]

[spicyreyes]

I try and avoid engagementbait when I can but look at his EYES

[fozmeadows]

the only eyes it's right to describe as orbs

[stitchthesewords]

its rude to reblog things from people you arent mutuals with fyi. :/

💀 my brother in christopher

[basuralindo]

it's true and you should say so louder

[dubiouslynamed]

I don't know any of you, hitting the reblog button.

[sensiblereblogifposts]

Reblog if you don't know any of them

[jv]

Reblog if you don't check DNIs before reblogging

[suspiciouspopsicle]

[starblightbindery]

My personal goal is to try and make fanfic binding as accessible to everyone as possible, so here are some resources on how to make a fanfic hardcover for under $25.

This is a barebones bind for the broke college students and such. Happy to field questions, too!

Here's a proposed budget breakdown:

Loosely organized thoughts:

Fanfic bookbinders often share typesets amongst each other. Never pay for a typeset for a fanfic.

You'll hear a lot about grain direction for your printer paper, but as a newbie on a budget without your own printer, settle for some nice 92 bright paper. If you like the hobby, splurge after but expect to pay at least 2-3x more for short grain paper.

Printing is a pain because some copy shops won't let you print intellectual property smut, and it's very expensive. You are better off bartering instead or looking for a free printer on Buy Nothing.

You know the thick paper wrapping that comes with online orders? It's a good weight for endpapers if you need to scrounge. Paper grocery bags or gift bags (birthday presents) might work, too.

Ask your local library to give you covers from books they are throwing out. Ask for outdated textbooks (those covers are built like tanks) or three-ring binders that are too busted to be binders anymore.

Obtain a used book that was mass produced (so your destruction of it does not impede anyone's access) and maybe even become a little vindictive with it.

If you can afford it, I recommend the Olfa SVR knife (~$10)

If you can afford it, upgrade your ruler to a t-square.

I really hope this resource is helpful! I want to stress how possible this is and encourage people to cherish what they love through art.

If you are interested in fanfic binding and have a little more disposable income, I have an affordable Fan Fiction Bookbinding Starter Pack that I carry on my site. I pack them myself and drop them 1x/month on the 15th.

[shalottpress]

This is such a great resource for anyone starting out fanbinding!

[ceescedasticity]

I've seen several posts saying the James Cameron Avatar has no fandom because it's hollow inside, just a gimmick and effects with no soul or characters or anything. And while I agree with those assertions about it (and remember very little about it) — compare Inception.

Inception had a cooler concept, I think? (Though Avatar had the whole avatar mechanism which could be made interesting if you dug into it.) But I think a lot of its appeal was also in Cool Visuals. Maybe like… one and a half characters were more than an inch deep, and those were not the characters who were wildly popular for a bit. Also iirc a lot of the fic didn't really touch on the cool concept?

Fandom built Arthur/Eames on a foundation of toothpicks. So — what did they have that Cameron's Avatar characters don't?

Most important factor?

Better dialogue

Can be fit to common trope templates

Attractive actors

Movie cooler

Movie less annoying

More closely associated than any two male Avatar characters

LUCK

No actually I think there's more substance there

Some other reason but still not substance

Not familiar enough for an opinion

What the hell are you talking about?

Show results

Voting ended onJun 18, 2025

[ceescedasticity]

So this looks like… 24% no answer, 22.8% 'better movie', basically, 36.1% 'more slashable', 10.4% disputing my assessment of character and/or movie depth, 7% luck/other. Cut the no answer… 30% better movie, 47.5% more slashable, 13.6% disputing assessment, 9.2% luck/other.

Someone in the tags said the second Avatar movie got more fandom than the first, but there are not distinct tags on AO3 so I don't know.

…There are apparently 6000-some fics on AO3. That's fairly respectable, actually. Not big, but respectable.

So really my entire question was based on false assumptions! Ooooops. Shows me.

Aaaaand… Inception has 3000-some works if you filter out Arthur/Eames — down from 12000-some if you don't. 3000-some works is also quite respectable for a single stand-alone movie!

—Filtering the most popular pairing leaves the Avatar movies with 4000-some. This does tend to support the theory that Inception has a higher fandom profile because of slashability.

(Then again some of the 9000-ish Arthur/Eames fics are likely not pairing-focused, just assuming it. Not sure how to check that quickly.)

It also appears to me that Avatar has a hatedom or at least an aggressively-"meh"-dom. Inception seems to get at worst neutrality.

So I think my conclusion is… Inception had an outsized fandom bubble because of a breakaway popular slash pairing; however, in terms of fandom activity we may think it's bigger than Avatar because Avatar has a bigger hatedom — I'm not sure it actually is bigger.

…No wait I need to look for usage of Inception-style dreamsharing in fics not placed in the fandom, dammit.

Well, I'm not going to do that. I think Inception is a better movie. I still think the Arthur/Eames bubble was really weird. Tumblr discussion has apparently been understating the size of the Avatar fandom.

[azelk]

If you did want the numbers for effectively Alternative Universe - Inception, minus anything actually in fandom tag i ran that because you made me curious XD

Inception Au tag, excluding the Inception fandom tag has 529 fics.

Avatar Au tag, excluding the James Cameron Avatar fandom tag has *7*

[blueboxbeagle]

By LabradoriteKing on Pinterest

[sonneillonv]

As a Dungeon Master I nearly scrolled past this before my brain kicked my own ass and reminded me that I have tried looking up 'Blue Gemstones' at LEAST a dozen times in the last six months and never found anything this helpful.

[shinonart]

What if abilities changed the appearance of a Pokemon?

A master post of all the ability forms drawings I've done! It's been such a fun series to work on and it makes me so happy that it's brought you all so much joy!

I regret not starting the little additional descriptions earlier and I thought of fixing that but I desperately need a nap so nope.

I did fix the one that ruffled the most feathers though - quite literally! The Skarmory saga is finally complete!

Other Ability Forms posts!

Find me and my art elsewhere!  

[mlerpwonders]

All my haters become aligators when I activate my gatorinator.

[mlerpwonders]

you laugh now, but when my gatorinator is ready, it's all over

[peregreen]

[mlerpwonders]

update:

transmogrifying my haters into an animal that is known for something called the "death roll" has backfired in a manner no one could have forecasted

[peregreen]

[mlerpwonders]

Having taken stock of the situation, it's not as bad as I originally thought. It's not like these crocodilians are an urgent problem, much less a representation of my own mortality. There's no ticking clock here.

[peregreen]

well now you're just doing this on purpose

[mlerpwonders]

I think that's the highest tags forecast I have received so far.

[stargazingdustbunny]

Posts that have 100k gators to me.

[mlerpwonders]

Actually there are only 5 gators in my post, but it is an understandable mistake.

[stargazingdustbunny]

Now there are 100,005 gators on this post

[mlerpwonders]

...

You know what? Good job.

Other people said this post had thousands of notes in their mind, but only contributed two notes.

You? You said that it had 100k gators to you.

And then you did it.

+1 respect point.

[paulgadzikowski]

now that's what i call a

gator aid

[dollsonmain]

I hate all of you so very much. (affectionate)

[slipstreamborne]

This YouTube comment had me leaning hands braced on knees like that person who had to take their shirt off to process Destiel becoming canon.