Ink. He/Him/His. Born in 1993. Jewish. Queer. If you need something tagged, please let me know. I am an adult and post about adult stuff sometimes, so browse with caution!
my dream is to make an original animation meme out of disco banjo just to infect youtube with disco banjo and i feel like that’s a good summation of me as a person
I had a blast working on this and using it as an excuse to stretch my background and coloring muscles. Also special shoutout to @fordtato who came up with the original concept for the polaroid pictures; I just delivered on their idea! Thirty years may pass but Stanford Pines will be the same idiot annoying the same dragon. Mans is consistent.
If you're here from Trouble, I don't actually post on Tumblr much! If you want to see more of my work more often, I'd check out my Youtube instead (also Possumbreath).
And here it is at last! The Gravity Falls Multi-Artist Lyric Comic tribute to the Stan Twins, "Trouble"!
Stay tuned, as @stariousfalls is working on making all of this into a video version. That will be coming along in the next few weeks!
And of course, Happy Birthday to Dipper and Mabel! (Even if this project was Grunkles-centric, Stan and Ford's stories wouldn't have come to such a heart-warming resolution if it wasn't for their niblings. Credit where it's due!)
Some credits and acknowledgements below the read-more:
(I'll have remarks and thanks in another post; but for now, thank you SO MUCH TO EVERYONE who worked on this and made it spectacular!)
Guess what lads, this project is finally complete! It came out absolutely fabulous and it was so cool watching everybody's process working on it and getting to know them in the Discord.
i’m just saying cake’s music would be widely regarded as so sexy if it wasn’t for all the mariachi horns and vibraslap and the vocalist didn’t always sound like he was explaining his suicide plans to a gun store clerk in sacramento. the world wasn’t ready for them
i genuinely dont care if the creation of all media comes to a screeching halt btw i will very gladly live with no new movies no new tv shows no new anything for years if that's what it takes for the people who create them to be treated like human beings. i hope every other facet of the entertainment industry goes on strike too and i hope all the ones that havent unionised yet will. i want media creation to become completely impossible and i want the people who could make it possible again to hold out until they get every single thing they want. btw
Oh god, I just aged several years in a single second, a friend of mine sent me a snippet from a fic that read someone put a VHS into a VCR and took so long getting back to it to press play that the menu screen had looped multiple times
every time I think maybe I am putting too much effort into researching the details of technological advances I lived through, something like this crosses my dash
For the young whippersnappers who don’t understand the issue, VHS tapes don’t have menu screens. That is not technologically possible on a tape.
A magnetic tape works because information has been magnetically encoded on the tape. The tape is very long, and is wound around two little spools, one at the end, one at the beginning. In the middle is a part where it is flat and there is a thing called a ‘head’ and it reads the magnetic encoding on the bit of the tape next to it and converting it into sound and/or images. When the tape plays, the little spools wind/unwind so that new sections of tape are constantly being run past the head. Every single thing a VCR can do is a function of controlling which part of the tape is next to the head.
You put the tape in the machine and press play on the machine, and it plays. You press stop and it stops. You press play again and it starts playing right where it left off, because while it’s stopped the tape is not moving past the head. You can pause it instead of stop it, which will leave the frame you paused on on the TV (in contrast to stopping, when the screen goes dark). You can fast forward, and it will wind the tape forward towards the end. You can rewind and it will wind the tape back to the beginning.
in my experience it usually played automatically on being fed a tape, and you had to pause or stop it to prevent this, which was awkward sometimes when the tv volume turned out to be set way too high
unless of course the tape hadn't been rewound before being taken out last time. then, unless auto-rewind was a feature of the VCR in question, you had to push that button first to get back to the start so the movie was watchable.
also if you wanted it to rewind quickly instead of playing the entire film backwards, silently, at maybe double speed, you pushed 'stop' first and it lifted the tape away from the reader to respool at speed.
#reminds me of the fic#where they went to great lengths to make it clear pictures were being taken on film
#and then someone took the camera away and 'looked through the pictures'#to see what they were of and if they were Forbidden Content#and then gave the camera back like no harm had been done and i'm like
#so she...didn't rip the film out and ruin it? then what just happened?
#OH. OH THIS CHILD HAS NEVER EXPERIENCED. NOT DIGITAL.
VHS tape plays like a picture book that turns its own pages. You can stop it yourself, or turn them back toward the front, but if you don't, it will start on its own and turn pages slowly until it reaches the end, and then stop there.
Camera film is like a picture book you can draw yourself, but you have to draw every picture without looking. If you try to look before it's properly printed, you'll get blank pages.
I left no comment correcting the original piece of fiction, nor did I even name it so no one else could correct it, because fanfiction is a for-fun endeavor.
Additionally, no one on this thread is going "oh my god the kids don't even know about x?!" The point of the original post was "someone didn't know about something that was common in my childhood, and that makes me feel old" followed by several reblogs (in good humor) explaining what the thing is and how it functioned in case anyone did want to know (and several people in the notes did, when this originally went around), as well as reactions to how seeing our own early tech be unrecognizable makes us feel.
The emphasis here isn't on "this person got it wrong" the emphasis here is "I feel old for having lived through now-outdated technology such that I recognized this wasn't how it worked." It has nothing to do with the fanfiction piece I saw and everything to do with how much ibuprofen I'm going to take tonight.
And if you're writing something and including technology you don't know how to use because it was before your time and you have no reason to know how to use it the reasonable thing to do is just fact check how it works anyway.
With all due respect, it's fanfiction. People don't have to research shit if they don't want to. Literally no one has to. There are literally people in my fandom, a significant portion of people actually, who haven't even seen the source material they're writing about, and it's fine. I don't care, they're here to have fun and I love that for them. This post isn't about telling people they have to do research or change anything. This post is about feeling old for recognizing outdated technology use in fic through inaccuracies in it's use. And also explaining that tech for anyone that either wants to know or wants to get the joke about why we feel old.
Please don't use my post to try to make anyone feel bad about not having done research so they can have fun. I don't care. No one nice actually cares; if anything it's kind of fun to see the discrepancy and see how people think things worked. It's sparked a lot of cool conversation about old tech in this case, which wouldn't have happened otherwise. Not everything has to be right to be fun and good.
Being raised by areligious jews with 0 exposure to christianity outside pop culture is so fun. One time I asked my ex-catholic friend why a picture of jesus had a bristle crown and she looked at me like I was insane. One time I heard someone mention the "lance of longinus" and responded, word for word, "Like from Evangelion?" One time during a history lesson my professor described an important monk and scholar as "Dominican" and I spent the rest of class super confused and hung up on it because I was very sure that the Dominican Republic didn't meaningfully exist as an entity back then, maybe she meant he was a native Taino or something but that's a weird way to say that and I'm pretty sure this was pre- European contact? Really fucks people up when they realize I genuinely have no idea.
This but it's my partner taking an art history class in college and the professor looking at them like they grew a second head when they answered "What came out of Jesus' wound when he was stabbed on the cross" with "...Blood?"
Additions that prove my point by mystifying me because what on earth would come out of a nail wound besides blood. Are you telling me it was something besides blood. What was jesus full of that wasn't blood. You guys are scaring me
Apparently it was water?? I guess he was also stabbed on top of being crucified (which feels like overkill imo) and water came out, which was a huge deal in medieval symbolism and also to my medieval poetry professor, who was genuinely shocked and upset that I didn’t know. This man fully docked me points because I, a whole ass Jew, hadn’t somehow heard about the secret waterballoon Jesus lore that I guess everyone is supposed to like… intuit
On the plus side, it does lead to some absolutely wild medieval Jesus art of angels tapping him like a fucking keg
a friend of a friend went to go see passion of the christ for kicks without knowing anything about the story
when jesus was hauled up on the cross he turned to my friend and said, in all evident sincerity, 'i know they're not going to kill the main character but how's jesus getting out of this one?'
actually there is, she has one line at the end when she says “how do you know?”
ok I just skimmed though the movie again, and here she is in the beginning, she just doesn’t say anything, and you wouldn’t guess she was a girl because they didn’t do that weird humanizing, tits and longer eyelashes thing that most movies with animals do.
i’m pretty sure that all the female coded rats are the smaller rats, which is apparently accurate to real rats. Remmy is also really small. after going though the movie I realized that there are only five rats that have actual lines. Remmy, Emile, the dad, the really big bodyguard rat, and the rat at the end. whack.
99.99% of rap haters have never even listened to rap. or if they have it's like one gangsta rap song & they treat the genre as a monolith and act like it's representative of every rap song ever. and well of course they are also just racist
99.99% of country haters have never even listened to country. or if they have it's like one post-9/11 pop country song by a rich poser & they treat the genre as a monolith and act like it's representative of every country song ever. and well of course they are also just classist
i would lecture you about the importance of jazz in US history and african american history and music history but you're a swiftie so there is no hope for you
is this where i finally get to plug beloved best band ever, Gangstagrass, which is a bluegrass/rap outfit outta Brooklyn? As it turns out, two genres that tend to both focus on songs about hard life and systematic disenfranchisement go really well together!
You want a song about how being poor causes those around you to look down on you and exacerbates your other issues? They got that.
You want a song about how we've destroyed the environment including a verse from Mother Nature herself and she's fucking pissed? They got that.
You want a song about the inequality in living conditions, job and education opportunity caused by racism and classism? They got that.
Also they got Barnburning which just fucking slaps
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.
cool! if you introduce an algorithm to this site and take away my ability to curate my space and what i want to see, I will personally carpet each and every one of your houses with legos :)
romaincrisis
snowghoul
2087
stormborns
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
kianamaiart
