Translations for Cowards

Surprisingly more ALW-based! Trans people are valid.

[muirin007]

Thinking about Love Never Dies and how an actual, hand-to-God thing the Phantom says with his own mouth is, "Give me the gun, Meg."

"Who should we send in for hostage negotiations? Probably someone level-headed and normal like, you know, the Phantom of the Opera."

[thuktunflishithy]

I feel obligated to repost a meme I made about this.

[cowardtranslation]

most genuine comedy moment from LND is the line "Give me the gun, Meg... Give me the hurt and the pain AND ALSO THE GUN MEG"

[hiveswap]

I hope none of you disappear in the coming days. Seriously don't do anything that can't be undone.

[hiveswap]

I know i'm just a random person you follow online but I mean it. People (all kinds of marginalised people too!) Have survived all types of horrible times and managed to find happiness eventually. If for no one else, survive for them. And also, try to survive because the people making you despair don't want you to live. Don't give this to them. Don't give your life. The best thing you can do is cling to it with everything you've got. Lay in bed for a day if you have to. but please promise you won't hurt yourself.

[hiveswap]

Take screen breaks, (now more than ever!!) Meet up, Call your friends, call your family if you're on good terms. Text your favourite mutual you never speak to if you've got no one irl. Make sure you eat enough and sleep enough, and take any meds and vitamins. Don't believe anything you think if you're hungry and tired. Rewatch your favourite show. Get a therapy appointment if you think you need it.

You can absolutely not take any shortcuts when it comes to your wellbeing right now.

[britishchick09]

you've heard of ben lewis' crazy eyes, now get ready for gantom crazy eyes! (inspired by @wheel-of-fish's epic saturday stream!) ;D

[ojamajodoremisharp]

Everything I know about Chess the Musical is from one of my mutuals but whenever I listen to “The Interview” this image conjures in my mind and ruins any emotional tension the song has

[ojamajodoremisharp]

@sweet-beezus I like the way you think

[glassprism]

What's your favorite Mirror Bride???

At this point, anything that's not the generic, bald, silver Mirror Bride with no distinguishing features.

I am very fond of robot dancing Mirror Bride from Prague:

[roycohns]

i would like the beauty underneath if it wasn’t from love never dies and didn’t have a clown on a penny farthing in it

[roycohns]

i’m not bullshitting even a little bit

[godlessondheimite]

this is a good time to revive chess with the anal beads revisions

[godlessondheimite]

[THE ARBITER]

If you're thinking

Of the kind of thing

That we've seen in the past

Chanting gurus, walkie-talkies

Walkouts, hypnotists

Anal beads

Not so fast

[cowardtranslation]

On the one hand, giving the "clown husbandry and taxonomy" website a pet clown for their dashes is an amazing idea.

However, making it a creepy clown you can't pet or take care of won't endear us to him :/ he doesn't even honk when you click him!!

[cowardtranslation]

Hi friend! How did you choose your blog name?

Should be obvious enough-- David Coward's translation of Phantom!

When I was new to the POTO phandom and hadn't read the book yet, I thought it was called the "Coward translation" for being an easy/basic translation that no True and Scholarly phan would touch. Nope. That's just the guy's name.

I liked it so much, I decided to be Coward, too! I take it ironically, a bit like when the cartoon bodybuilder is named "Tiny"

[night-unfurls-its-splendour]

I love when, in the final lair, a Christine definitely sees Erik sneaking up behind Raoul, lasso in hand, and she just nopes out. Makes no motion to help Raoul or stop Erik, she's just, runs away.

I know it's just a blocking thing: Christine's usually looking away or not paying attention, but here she definitely saw Erik and the implications of that are hilarious to me. Even the way she runs upstage almost makes it look like she's getting him in line with a mark.

Raoul: Christine! CHRISTINE, DID YOU LET HIM LASSO ME?!

Christine: No! (...>.>)

(Here I imagine @birdstooth Erik looking smug)

[birdstooth]

…

Christine:

BONUS:

[wheel-of-fish]

Saturday, July 15, 2023 • 9 p.m. EST: STOLLEBOOT

We used to joke about wanting to see jack-of-all-trades actor Jeremy Stolle in a one-man performance, and then @cowardtranslation actually made it happen: an amazing edit starring JEREMY STOLLE as the Phantom, JEREMY STOLLE as Raoul, JEREMY STOLLE as Passarino, and JEREMY STOLLE as Piangi.

I'll be streaming on SyncTube again, as it seemed to go pretty well last time! There's no registration required. For general info, please see the (now outdated) Saturday Streams FAQ! Link will be posted here at 8:45.

[cowardtranslation]

hell yeah!!

[staff]

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[30to50feralcatgirls]

the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed

absolutely horrifying

describing users ability to curate their experience as outdated shows a fundamental lack of understanding of why people are here and not elsewhere

being able to choose who I engage with is the MAIN reason tumblr is engaging

If the following tab stopped being default with no way to put it back I would stop using tumblr

but I guess that doesn’t matter because this whole post comes with an undercurrent of “we would prefer new people come than the existing culture stay”

[cowardtranslation]

Y'know what'll bring more traffic and sign ups to Tumblr, the home of fandom?

Reallowing explicit artwork.

People come to Tumblr to rave and write about their blorbos and ships, then end up spending more time on Twitter when they want to see their favorite characters doing anything more explicit than h*lding h*nds. People spend money on Patreons to see fandom porn! (And there's nothing wrong with that!)

We have the community labels system now. Keep excluding IRL porn if you have to, but if Twitter is fine hosting explicit art as long as it's labeled, why can't Tumblr?

[marleneoftheopera]

NO WAY

[wheel-of-fish]

just Ian Jon Bourg things

[alichickens]

Saw PotO live last night and thought of this during the last few minutes

[opera-ghost]

remember that time ben crawford went on reddit and just straight up lied?

[mcytarchived]

tumblr gimmick blog that reblogs posts with the code to the exact page from the online library of babel that says the post word for word

[ashtreelane]

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[2nowfort]