That's So Ravy

Fan art, theory, and discussion. Champion of underserved characters who Deserved Better™. Will cut a ho over Lucrecia Crescent hate. Respectful discussion always welcome and appreciated.

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

So long, farewell, au revoir.

After my blog is done exporting again, I will no longer be posting to Tumblr.

You can find me here on Twitter for art, some cosplay, and general fannish communication: @Ravy_Nevermore

You can find me here on Pillowfort for art and possibly fanfic WIPs: @ravy_nevermore

You can find me here on Instagram for cosplay: @ravy_nevermore

I’ll be around and easily accessible— just not here.

[asylos]

Now that pillowfort has paused invites

It’s time to repost your ID!

That way we can all find you.

[up-sideand-down]

I don’t know if this was an invite to reblog with our ID’s but I’m gonna make it that. 

I’m up-sideand-down!

[the-backwater-experts]

I’m the-backwater-experts over on PF too! ^^

[risingoflights]

Crimson-Sun. Nothing there yet tho :)

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

ravy-nevermore

Posting mainly FFXV these days, but I did create a(n empty) Lucrecia Crescent community. xD

Also communities for Ignis Scientia and HighSpecs. Come join me!

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

An interesting thing happened to me today, which was either caused by Tumblr or my own forgetfulness/negligence. I exported/downloaded my blog last week after the announcement, which took a full day to export for a 4 year old blog with 3000+ posts on it. I wanted to tell someone how large the zip file ended up being, but I couldn’t find it anywhere!

Checked my Chrome Downloads history, and saw this:

Did I delete it?? Did I do that by accident?? Did I move it to a storage drive and then delete it from my hard drive because it was so large?? I have zero memory of any of this.

I went to download the export again, because I recalled this link existing:

The button was still there. Okay, good. Except when I clicked it, it told me that my download link had expired.

So now I’m thinking there might be a chance that the zip file, too, is something temporary?? Is that possible—for a zip file to delete itself after X amount of time—or am I really just that forgetful and had to have done it myself?

Anyway, my blog is exporting again, but who knows what weirdness will happen when the exporting still continues into December 17.

All my art and fic is backed up elsewhere. I'm not too fussed over reblogs I made, either, but I’ve certainly made a lot of meta posts over the years that I would like to back up, and hopefully I will have some way of doing that at some point.

Just a heads up to make sure you still have your blog export ZIPs and they haven’t mysteriously deleted themselves.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

how web 2.0 (and especially tumblr) is ruining fandom

there’s so much to tell about this subject that I might add more to some points on subsequent posts.

everything in the below post is from observation and reading about the experiences of others on web 2.0. please feel free to add anything you feel is necessary.

(socmed = social media in shorthand.)

What even is web 2.0?

Web 1.0: web model where dotcoms generated their own content and presented it to users for free, depending on advertisers for their income. ‘social media’ mostly made up of mailing lists and forums on these content-oriented sites. collapsed because ad revenue wasn’t sufficient to support site maintainance costs.

Web 2.0: web model where dotcoms create a free space for users to generate their own content, depending on advertisers for their income. these sites define social media today. likely to collapse because ad revenue still isn’t sufficient to support site maintainance costs (even after shucking the cost of paying content creators).

(if you want to read more about how ad revenue is the social media Achilles Heel, check this link out: Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure.)

What makes Web 2.0 social media so much worse than web 1.0?

mostly: web 2.0 socmed exacerbates the pre-existing conflict of interest between users and site owners: site owners need ads. Users want to avoid ads.

With web 1.0, users were attracted by site-created content that had to appeal to them: users were the clients and advertisers were the sponsors. (Forum interaction was a side offering. sites dedicated to user interaction were small, scattered, and supported by banner ads.)

Web 2.0 socmed strips users of client status entirely; the content we generate (for free!) and our eyes/eyes we attract to the site are products the site owner sells to the actual site client: advertisers.

early web 2.0 social media sites (livejournal, myspace) used hybridization to pay site costs - users could buy paid accounts or extra blog perks. they also had privacy/limited-spread sharing functions and closed communities, which still ‘exist’ but with limited capabilities on current socmed sites.  privacy, it seems, isn’t very profitable.

now web 2.0 is geared towards spreading content as far as possible - and further if you’ll choke up a little cash to grease the algorithms. ;)

–

Web 1.0 had its fair share of problems. Web 2.0 generated new ones:

following people instead of joining communities based on interests has negative emotional and social implications

social media sites benefit from knocking down privacy walls. Maximizing content spread and minimizing blocking/blacklisting capabilities benefits advertisers - the true clients of websites.

social media sites benefit from eroding online anonymity. they track user site interaction, searches, and more to precisely target their ads at your interests (unless you deliberately turn it off). tracking data can endanger anonymity and make doxxing easier.

social media sites benefit from conflict. Conflict generates user response much more effectively than harmony/peace. More user interaction means more eyes on ads, increasing ad space value.

social media sites are therefore deincentivized to address abuse reports, increase moderation, improve blacklisting tools, or offer privacy options. and there’s nothing you can do about it because

there’s nowhere different to go. it’s difficult to compete with existing social media sites as a startup. to draw social media users, a newcomer must offer something bigger, better, and equally free*, and offering any of this on startup capital is … unlikely, at best.

*‘I’d move if they just had privacy features!’ the joke is: any successful socmed site that starts with privacy features will have a hard time keeping them down the road under the present profit model. they will be forced to cater to their advertisers if they want to keep afloat.

–

how does the structure of web 2.0 socmed harm fandom?

in aggregate: it forces fandom[$], a diverse space where people go to indulge niche interests and specific tastes, into overexposure to outsiders and to one another, and exacerbates the situation by removing all semi-private interaction spaces, all moderation tools, all content-limiting tools, and all abuse protection.

The result is that fandom on web 2.0 - tumblr in particular - is overrun with widespread misinformation, black & white reasoning obliterating nuanced debates, mob rule and shame culture as substitutes for moderation features, fear of dissent and oversensitivity to disagreement, hatedoms and anti- communities, and large/expanding pockets of extremist echo chambers that have no reality check to protect those trapped inside.

to be more specific:

moderated communities were replaced by following unmoderated tags, directly leading to and encouraging the creation of hate spaces - ‘don’t tag your hate’ leads to negativity-specific tags that could themselves be followed, forming a foundation for anti- communities to develop from

no privacy, minimal blacklisting options, poor blocking tools, lack of oversight, lack of meaningful consequences for TOS violations = ‘fandom police’/vigilanteism (attempts to assert authority over others without actually having that authority) - some people react to the inability to get away from content that they hate by trying to force that content to stop existing entirely. without actual moderating authority, they accomplish this by social pressure, intimidation, and shame tactics.

the people-following structure of web 2.0 is fundamentally incompatible with web 2.0 reshare functions and search engines. content posted on a personal blog is rarely intended to stand alone because people who follow the blog presumably see all the blog’s content in an ongoing stream. but reshare functions and search results separate the content from the context in which is was presented, causing misunderstandings and strife. (for site owners, the strife is a feature, not a bug.)

following people instead of joining communities based on a shared interest creates social stress - following/unfollowing an individual has more social & emotional implications than joining/leaving interest communities

Unmoderated conflict is polarizing. Web 2.0 specializes in causing unmoderated conflict. - exacerbated by the depersonalizing effect of not being able to see or hear other users, conflict in the unmoderated spaces on web 2.0 social media quickly devolves into extremism and nastiness. web 2.0 socmed structure even eggs the conflict on: people are more likely to interact with content that makes them angry (’someone is wrong on the internet!’ effect), which shares the content with more users, which makes them angry, so they interact (and on, and on).

The extreme antagonism generated by web 2.0 socmed creates echo chambers - the aggregate effect of unmoderated conflict is that the most extreme and polarizing content gets spread around the most. polarizing content doesn’t tend to convince people to change their minds, but rather entrenches them further in their ideas and undermines the credit of opposing points of view. it also increases sensitivity to dissent and drives people closer to those who share their opinions, creating echo chambers of agreement.

reacting to content that enrages you increases the chances of encountering it again because algorithms - social media site algorithms are generally designed to bring users more of the content they interact with the most because they want more site interaction to happen. if you interact with posts that make you mad, you’ll get more recs related to content that makes you mad.

everyone has an opinion to share and everyone’s opinion has to be reshared: reactionary blogging as a group solidarity exercise. when something notable happens and everybody has to share their reaction on social media, the reaction itself becomes an emotional and social experience, sometimes overwhelming and damaging.

when the reaction is righteous anger that everyone can reaffirm in one another, it creates an addictive emotional high. one way to reproduce it? find more enraging content to be mad about (and web 2.0 is happy to bring it to you).

It’s easy to spread misinformation (and hard to correct it) - no modern social media site offers ways to edit content and have that edit affect all reshares. Corrections can only reach fractions of the original audience of a misleading viral post.

web 2.0 social media discourages leaving the site with new content notifications and by lacking tools that keep your ‘place’ on your dash, deincentivizing verification checks before resharing content.

web 2.0’s viral qualities + misinformation machine + rage as a social bonding experience = shame culture and fear of being 'next’ (tumblr bonus: no time stamps and everything you post is eternal) - when offending content is spread virally, each individual reaction may have proportion to the original offense, but the combined response is overwhelming and punishing. many people feel the right to have their anger heard and felt by the offender, resulting in a dogpile effect. fear of inciting this kind of widespread negative reaction depresses creativity and the willingness to take risks with shared content or fanworks.

absolute democracy of information & misinformation plus too much available information leads to uncertainty of who/what is trustworthy and encourages equating feelings to facts - social media doesn’t give content increased spread and weight based on its truthfulness or the credibility of the OP. misinformation is as likely to spread as truth, and the sheer amount of available information - conflicting or not - on the web is overwhelming. when fact-checking, it’s hard to know who to trust, who is twisting the facts, or who is simply looking at the same fact from a different viewpoint. information moves so fast it’s hard to know what ‘fact’ will be debunked by new information tomorrow. People give up; they decide the truth is unknowable, or they go with what ‘feels’ right, out of sheer exhaustion.

information fatigue caused by web 2.0 makes black & white thinking look attractive - conflict and polarization and partisanship erodes communication to the point that opposing points of view no longer even use language the same way, much less can reach a compromise. the wildly different reference points for looking at the same issue makes it difficult to even know what the middle ground is. from an outside point of view this makes everyone on both sides seem untrustworthy and distances the objective truth from everyone even more.

it’s easy to radicalize people who are looking for someone or something to trust/are tired of being uncertain - information fatigue leads to people just wanting to be told what to think. who’s good and who’s bad? whose fault is this? and don’t worry - lots of people are ready to jump in and tell you what to think and who to blame.

everyone is only 2 seconds away from being doxxed: our anonymity on the net is paper-thin thanks to web 2.0 - before facebook encouraged using our real names and the gradual aggregation of most people to a few major socmed sites, anonymity was easier to maintain. now we have long internet histories with consistent usernames and sites that track everything we do to improve ad targeting. anyone with minimal hacking knowledge could doxx the large majority of socmed users. 

and all it takes is one poorly-worded, virally spread tweet to send the whole of twitter after you with pitchforks.

[$] using the vld discourse survey as a reference, fandom is (probably) largely neurodivergent, largely queer/lesbian/gay/bi/pan/not straight, has many non-cis and/or afab members, and around 20% are abuse survivors/victims. fandom is a space we made for ourselves to cater to the interests we have in common with each other but mainstream society doesn’t often acknowledge. 

[prettyarb]

Not to trash freedom-of-fanfic, because I’m a big fan.  But while there are some good points here, there are also quite a few mistaken assumptions. In particular, I disagree with all the initial core points.

For starters, the definition of Web 2.0 here is wrong.  Web 2.0 started with the rise of blogs.  Web 2.0 basically means the internet as an interactive space vs. the static websites that came before.  Just to be clear, Web 2.0 enabled online fandom as we now know it, AND it ruined it.  It’s pretty much constantly doing both simultaneously.

I disagree with this: “site owners need ads. Users want to avoid ads.“  Ads are odious, yes.  However, they are not the only way to monetize a site. They are not an inescapable part of Web 2.0. They are also frankly not the worst thing going on Web 2.0. Ads in themselves do only minor harm compared to a number of other behaviors–such as reverse-engineering ads into your site when your site wasn’t originally designed for them.

I disagree with “Web 2.0 socmed strips users of client status entirely” because this also implies it’s an intrinsic quality of Web 2.0 social media.  It is not.  It is ONE method by which social media sites can operate, but they have other options.  Livejournal, as noted, sold optional paid subscriptions and add-ons.  It was doing pretty well with that model.  While they never released their revenue reports, a number of anecdotal reports from ex-employees indicate that Livejournal was profitable.  The mistakes came in repeated fumbled attempts at community management which drove a large portion of the user base away.

Another point of disagreement: Most of what’s in this post does apply accurately to Tumblr and Twitter.  But it’s a mistake to assume that what goes on with Tumblr and Twitter is representative of social media as a whole, or even the direction social media as a whole is taking.  These two sites are deliberately structured NOT to model human community, but rather to generate and reproduce memes.  This is a very different logical architecture than most social media sites.  All the stuff about maximizing content spread and eroding community boundaries is specific to Tumblr and Twitter. 

Not a disagreement but I think it’s an overlooked point: There’s no mention here of the rise of interest-based algorithms, and they are way more important to creating the current online social climate (and the social climate in general) than most people give them credit for.  The echo chamber effect is driven primarily by interest-based algorithms, in which content is delivered to you based on a set of keywords the site has generated that it believes represents what you’re most interested in (with an occasional extra slipped in there to make sure you get your share of ad content).

Interest-based algorithms are separate from but do often go hand in hand with social media advertising, because the site needs some way to identify the best audience for a given piece of advertising content.  Beware where you see them rise (Tumblr, I’m looking at you), for ads are likely to follow.

Now back to monetization: yes, it is a problem–but a specific pattern of monetization is the problem.  Namely, it’s very common for social media platforms to launch and begin to grow, only to discover as they grow that growing costs money. THEN they have to figure out how to fund themselves, because they didn’t bother thinking about it before.  

Reverse-engineering revenue generation into your site is always a bigger challenge than building it in at the beginning.  1: It’s never going to fit as smoothly, or without altering some of the site’s existing functionality 2: now you’ve got a user base you’re going to disrupt with your shenanigans.  

Ads are not the only possible solution.  They’re just a popular one because they’re seen as being an easy solution by people who haven’t done their research into the market.  (This means most social media developers, because these people are usually coders who have no background in the sociology of the internet or user psychology, and they’re either lazy or too caught up in their own optimistic idealism to bother facing facts about what they’re building.)

This does piss me off because it’s dumbass, and these people get warned, over and over again, that this IS going to be a problem and that “we’ll figure it out later” has historically never worked.  It’s lazy, and it’s laziness that happens at the expense of the site’s user base.  And at the expense of their company, because for all the massively used social media platforms out there, very few of them are actually earning income (Twitter has never turned a profit since it was first launched.  Tumblr? Also not profitable.  Facebook is, but at what cost?)

Every now and then, you find a site that takes funding itself into consideration BEFORE it becomes a problem.  Dreamwidth, for example.  Writscrib may end up being another good example.

Finally, regarding the profitability of unmoderated conflict: this also may be wrong.  There are indications from studies that unrestrained conflict may do more economic harm than good, both in terms of slowing or even reversing growth of the user base, and in terms of the amount of investment that sites can attract.  It may also adversely impact the bottom line of companies that advertise on conflict-prone websites, at least insofar as it lowers their earnings-per-ad-dollar.

The reason you don’t see more conflict moderation is…well, honestly? The primary reason is because most of these sites are captained by brohams, who hire brohams who either don’t realize or actively don’t care that they’re not doing anybody any favors by letting this stuff slide.  Also the companies don’t want to invest in the staffing or training that would be required to ensure fair and just moderation.   They haven’t quite caught on yet that there’s no future in allowing that sort of behavior.

Mainly I don’t want the takeaway of readers to be, “Oh, well, we’re just inevitably going to hell then.”  That isn’t true.  There are other options out there, some which exist now and some which can be built.  Along with Dreamwidth, Mastodon, Writscrib, keep in mind that Discord, Snapchat and other such ‘private’ networks are social media platforms too.  

The biggest trick of social media is that the value of it to a user increases according to the number of other users on there who you want to connect with.  This is called the network effect.  So it’s up to YOU to choose your next platform not based on where “everybody else is going,” but based on what actually works.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I would definitely not consider this trashing! you bring up a lot of points that I wanted to go into at greater length, but found the post had gotten disgustingly long as it was. Really appreciate the additions.

I don’t think our vision of the internet as it presently stands is actually as different as you do (yours is certainly less pessimistic, though, which is why we need people like you). also, I think our focuses here are somewhat different: you’re focusing on how things could be different based on counterexamples, and I’m focusing on how things are in the socmed spaces that fandom mainly exists on - tumblr and twitter (and facebook/instagram, to some degree), all of which are supported by ad revenue.

that said, I think that I didn’t make it nearly clear enough in my post that I was focusing on twitter and tumblr (I think facebook mentions got almost entirely cut) because they are the social media sites fandom is on the most. there are a lot of social media site options out there, and I haven’t taken nearly enough stock of them to say that my post covers it all, but my post sounds like it does, and that’s misleading. (another reason I’m glad for your addition.)

some more thoughts (some of them sparked from your post, some of them truncated out of the original post): 

“ Web 2.0 basically means the internet as an interactive space vs. the static websites that came before.” - different words but the same basic meaning, I think. Web 1.0 was less interactive: sites produced their own content (static, as you put it), and users consumed it, often for free. Sometimes individual sites had forums where people could interact with each other. And as you point out, Web 2.0 is entirely about interaction: sites act like an empty house and invite users to decorate.

I really brushed over the algorithms more than I should have, though they were mentioned. they really are key to how socmed sites try to draw our attention in and increase our site interaction.  the keywords chosen by algorithms are why anti-she1th people get recced she1th blogs - they talk about she1th so much that algorithms think they must want more of it. (I get recced a lot of anti blogs, and I know damn well why.) I appreciate you highlighting them.

one thing I ejected from my post due to length was talking about why I think LJ, DW, and a few other web 2.0 sites that are small and quiet are never (and were never) going to be able to compete with tumblr/twitter/etc. LJ screwed up a lot, yeah, but fandom was already drifting towards tumblr anyway for some of these reasons, I think. 

This really deserves its own post because I think there’s a lot of factors, but I think the biggest ones were:

reblog function let fandom lurkers have a voice/that note count was heady if you were an LJ migrant: tumblr was the first socmed site with reshare functionality, which meant people who didn’t have original content to contribute could just reshare the content of others. and that viral sharing capability without the viciousness that would come later was so powerful for creators, especially fanartists. you could reach massive audiences with such relative ease! 

lack of moderation, which was initially seen as a good thing. no more awkward introductions! no more community cross-posting! tumblr made it feel so easy to share literally anything and get noticed without having to talk to anyone. I’m sure it was amazing for lots of people.

and the REALLY big one: free unlimited image space and unlimited image sharing. speaking of fanartists, tumblr burst onto the scene just as cable/broadband internet was getting widespread enough to load an image-heavy dash with reasonable speed. uploading images was easy & quick, and they didn’t just disappear for half a month if too many people looked at it, like images stored on Photobucket.

i really can’t emphasize enough the sheer power of free unlimited images … especially because I also think this is the number one roadblock to breaking into the big social media scene. images take up a lot of storage space. to offer free unlimited images with unlimited sharing means having a lot of storage space - ever-increasing storage space - and absorbing that ever-growing cost somehow. (And ads aren’t the only way to handle it. Pinterest did it by becoming a paid service. Snapchat does it by deleting images from the server quickly.)

 In addition to ad sponsorship, Twitter and Tumblr both mitigate the growth of image storage by offering the GIF search (so people don’t post fresh copies as often), and Facebook/Instagram slows storage growth by degrading image quality. but they still offer this service for free, and frankly? neither DW nor LJ could do that without changing something about how they pay for their server space.

we’re spoiled. People aren’t going to go back to sharing via sites with image storage limits. And most people also aren’t going to jump to paid services if they’re used to it being free. so … what happens now? how do we pay for it without ads & without paid membership? (I don’t know.)

another thing that got cut from my post (though by accident! it was in the draft) was mentioning that conflict that’s entirely out of control will drive off a userbase. what tumblr and twitter (and facebook) actually benefit most from is a mildly irritated userbase - anger driving up site interaction but not so intense it makes people want to leave.

on that note, I’m absolutely convinced that concern over users leaving tumblr is what motivated a tumblr-based tag filtering system. They had to offer something to control the vitriol levels here. and as they are moving off the chronological dash and to the best-posts-first algorithm-based dash, I’m sure we’ll still see enough to irritate to keep people busy.

like always, this ended up so much longer than planned. (the bold is to help make my responses more readable to me, not because I think you particularly need emphasis points.)

BUT PS - Amino apps are social media spaces that are semi-private, moderated, and (I believe) fairly successful! I don’t know how they monetize, though.

[sorrowschengmei]

i am a fandom artist who’s been around for more than 10 years, doing art for several fandoms and trying all social media i can to share my work, and i am glad someone finally put to words the MESSY SHIT TORNADO we as artists have been dealing with

i started my career/training at three major places: orkut [indian/brazilian social media that died around 2010. think of it as a pre-facebook], dA and art forums. apart from poor image handling, cringy pre-memes and an abudance of dodge&burn naruto art being held as the new mona lisa, what did those sites have in common?

democratic fan/artist interaction.  

let’s have a test: go at some reylo artist at dA [yes, dA is STILL VERY ACTIVE!] and spit ‘reylo is abusive and kylo ren is a bitch’ at their art. its VERY likely your comment will be hidden as soon as the artist puts their eyes on it, and THE END, FIN, you will not gather a multitude of haters, you will not drag their name to the mud and have thousands of people telling them to kill themselves, your ‘policing’ ends as soon as the artist decides their space was invaded. 

with the reblog/retweet system, this power was lost. the artist can’t delete your rude reblog, blocking you will not erase content you already reblogged, even if the artist deletes their own artwork the reblogs will STILL be wandering through tumblr. the content maker becomes a tool on the hand of the content spreaders.

this system also creates another problem for the fandom artist. how many times have you complained that your dash is being spammed with 5 reblogs in a row of the same edit/meta/art/photo? it’s because the algorithms create a system of rewarding those who are already privileged. you feel like if you choose who you follow you’ll be choosing what content you want to see, but this couldn’t be more far from the truth.

on other social media, fandom popularity usually is a mix of networking, regular schedule and quality of the work. on tumblr, it has become a matter of pure luck, aka algorithms. if you fucking painted the birth of venus with kylo’s face in the place of that white italian lady and the fandom famous didn’t reblog from you, you flop. you just flop. your artwork will be lost in tumblr’s black hole, and even for people that track the tags you used it’s gonna be hard to find it, because tumblr works in chronological order. if the work doesn’t make it to the 100-500 notes on its first hours, it’s likely failed forever. it doesn’t happen in websites with gallery systems: even works that failed to catch attention on their first moments can be found again, and most get a regular influx of likes.

if you sketch on your lined notebook ‘hahaha im bored and i want to die’ and the fandom famous reblogs it on the right time, bro… you’ll be bombarded with notes for the next two weeks. people will send you messages saying they want to marry your art, 500 new people will follow you, they will ask how was your day… 

because tumblr culture equates fame = quality of work = quality of artist as a person. if everyone is reblogging this, so it must be good. if everyone sends i love yous to this person, they must be good. the following system is too personal and creates god like figures, that are so above the mortals they can take a picture of themselves taking a dump and the fanbase will reblog and like. so you end up with a system that:

- denies its user base access to content that isn’t already famous 

- encourages people-worshipping instead of reasonable art appreciation

- denies the content maker the possibility of engaging with their public unless they are already famous, as ALL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS ON TUMBLR THAT AREN’T REBLOGS ARE 100% BOTCHED. the artist needs to wait for someone to reblog and add personal comments to know what’s the public opinion on their work [and you can see how wonderfully well it works on a place roughly 90% of the users are socially anxious]

- denies the content maker the possibility of controlling the responses from their public

the result of this MESSY SHIT TORNADO? 10 fandom famous artists being treated like gods that can send hordes of haters against people they dislike, people having their self worth equated to their number of followers, lack of artistic variety, artists self-policing to avoid hate/failure, artistic echo chambers where everyone draws on the same style and repeats the same tropes, massive lack of feedback for anyone under 500 followers,…

unfortunately, there is no place to go. dA has strict pornography rules, as insta and fb do, and everyone KNOWS what fandom is about. everyone who wants to be a fandom artist needs to face this anxiety-inducing mob mentality hellsite =/ 

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

@razziecat, @greenjudy, and @allsortsoflicorice reblogged a version of this that I was going to reblog but I found out It Got Better and I think you guys would find these addendums interesting as well.

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

Now on Pillowfort, and stacking pillows like a maniac.

Because I have zero chill, I am not only now on Pillowfort, but have also created three communities that I felt there was a need for and would like to invite folks to join me in:

Ignis Scientia

HighSpecs

Lucrecia Crescent

There’s also all sorts of communities for FFXV, FF7, and some other ships! (I am personally a member of the IgNoct and Gladnis communities, and I have also seen Lunoct and Promnis communities around!)

The ones that I created are still pretty empty at the moment, since I just created them in the last two days, but come on in— the water’s fine!

Furthermore, as an extra "fuck you” to Tumblr, I will be taking some free art requests starting Dec. 17, but only posting them to Pillowfort. 8)

[tyramir]

Heading to Pillowfort, and I’m Offering Keys

Hi, you may or may not know me. I go by Tyramir, and I’m an author. Mostly I write fanfic, but I have also published a book at some point. (Yes, that was a subtle plug – don’t feel obligated to click the links, they’re there to justify to myself why I’m doing this so I can say this wasn’t 100% altruistic because I’m a crusty old troll)

So, recently, Tumblr has made something of an announcement regarding what kind of content they will and will not host in the future. And you know what, that’s okay. It’s their site. They can do what they want. Just like I’m free to say, “Hey, @staff, go fuck yourselves with some sandpaper, you masochistic fucks.”

Ah, that felt good. You know what else feels good? Moving to Pillowfort. I’m in no way associated with them, beyond that I am now a user. I just bought a key. More than one, actually. I bought a whackload of them. I am not rich. See: author. Very poor profession if you’re not ultra-successful. However, what I am is angry, and disappointed with the direction this site is taking. 

This site is home for the marginalised, for the outcasts, for the misfits. It’s also the home for a lot of fellow artists, like myself. Ones that might not have a little extra cash in their wallets. So, as a Christmas gift (and as a way of sharing that link up above advertising my book, see self, you’re not totally altruistic), I’m making this offer.

Reblog and like this post. You don’t have to follow me. You don’t have to buy my book. You don’t have to tell anyone it exists. You don’t even have to click that link. Just like and reblog. Anyone who likes it will get one entry for drawing for a key. Anyone who reblogs it will get one. Anyone who does both will get two. And on December 17th, the Day of Ignominy, I will draw ten names, and I will gift ten keys. I’ll even wear a Willy Wonka hat while I do. You won’t be able to see it, but the spirit will be there.

If you want to get the word out, but don’t want to get an entry (say you already have a Pillowfort account), just reblog and tag the post with “no entry,” or some variation thereof. I’ll exclude you from the draw, but thank you (in my mind, I’m not gonna actually thank people, but that requires effort, yo) for helping others learn about this opportunity.

TL;DR: Bald author wants to use very little cash he has to give people Pillowfort accounts. Just like and reblog for entries. Also, I hope you are feasted upon by a swarm of angry weasels, @staff.

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

Already bought my key so no entry for me, but signal boosting for others because the grittier that sandpaper the better.

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

This is how Tumblr dies: with no banging and the whimpering flagged “under review for sensitive content.”

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

Where/how to find me

My blog has never been terribly NSFW, but I’m a huge advocate of freedom of expression in art and in sexuality, so honestly the new rule introduction itself is enough to send me off Tumblr if a more viable alternative presents elsewhere with less offensive censorship.

I can’t say yet where I’ll end up, but I use the same username everywhere, and if I make new accounts, I’ll stay consistent. What I can say is that future content is likely to trend toward FFXV rather than FFVII.

Accounts that I already do have set up:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ravy_Nevermore

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ravy_nevermore *It isn’t really set up as a creator account yet, mostly because I haven’t decided how I want to structure my tiers as both a fan artist and a cosplayer and possibly a fic author and...

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ravy_nevermore/ For cosplay.

On a personal note, I believe freedom of expression of sexuality in art is important both in and of itself and as an extension of fandom. The rule that I take the greatest offense to here is that “illustrations depicting sex acts” (as well as depictions of actual “female-presenting nipples” because yo #FreeTheNipple) will no longer be tolerated on Tumblr.

I personally find great beauty in the artistic depiction of sex acts. I believe it is an art to evoke an erotic response through the creation of drawings, stories*, etc., and furthermore that the fan art containing such content often contains an important emotional component to it as well. Fandom (especially non-cismale fandom) has a long history of fans relating to one another and building communities through shared interests in precisely how fictional characters fuck each other and, you know what, I think that’s a beautiful thing.

I am definitely not conflating fandom itself with NSFW here, and in fact one of my most popular rant-type posts floating around is how it grates on me when people do that. Sex is not the entirety of fandom, but it is an important part of fandom, and I’m not okay with Tumblr just hacking that part off and considering myself appeased because I get to keep the rest, so long as the rest is deemed “appropriate” and “permissible.”

I probably won’t delete this blog, but I won’t be using Tumblr heavily, either. And if a sizable FFXV fandom community pops up somewhere else that is more explicit-art friendly, I’mma jump ship so fast and that’s where you’ll find me. Hell, I might just start drawing porn out of spite.

Anyway, that’s my rant. Catch you all on the flip side, wherever that ends up being.

*Erotic writings are not being banned, which is ... at least a saving grace for the rp community, but still fuck Tumblr.

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

Sooo where are explicit artists gonna be migrating to? Was hoping to dabble in the craft but WELP. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fellow fan folk, what are your plans?

[chilledfoodtin]

The Curious Case of Highspecs

I am not a Highspecs (Ignis/Aranea) shipper.  In fact, I don’t ship anything in FFXV (very strange for me as I usually have a ship in every fandom I belong to).  So this post is in no way an argument for a particular ship (feel free to ship what you want!). Rather, this is an analysis of Ignis’ personality and his interactions with Aranea.

With that being said, I think there is enough evidence to suggest that some members of the dev team (most likely those working on Battle AI and camp scenes) wanted to hint at some sort of special connection between Aranea and Ignis.  This connection isn’t necessarily romantic, but it wouldn’t be hard to read it that way.  Nevertheless, this connection was not developed or explored in a significant way.

I’ll be looking at  3 main categories: 1. dialogue/banter (both incidental and main quest), 2. battle mechanics, 3. promotional material.   Evidence and analysis after the cut.

Keep reading

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

This is a great resource to answer the question “So why do people ship that anyway??” and I’m glad the stuff I gathered could help with it! When I first got into this ship about a year ago I was very much: “I kind of ship this?? Why do I ship this?? Do other people ship this?? Why/how do other people ship this??” and it would have been great if this post had existed then. xD

I may add some further personal thoughts about all of this at a later point but I’m not super savvy on current Tumblr comment etiquette (I feel like there’s been a general shift away from reblog + commenting toward adding comments via reply function only?) and I don’t want to hijack anything, but nor do I necessarily want to address entire ship/character tags. 🤔

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

While exploring the Crownsguard/Kingsglaive bunker in Insomnia, I was super interested in what sort of things they were stockpiling 10 years into the apocalypse, so I took these screen shots.

Of note:

So! Many! Binders! Of information (presumably)! Is this all info on the daemons and the Starscourge that they collected over the last ten years? Is it literature and other such remnants of civilization that they wanted to make sure was preserved? Is any of it in Braille?

Weaponry, natch. They seem to be communal property, just there for any of their forces to grab when they need and replace when they’re done for someone else to use. 

The playing cards, empty bottles, dart board, and radio by the bunks give some gloomy insight into how they spend their evenings, I think. Surely these 4 beds can’t house all the glaives, but I’m sure there are plenty of folks without permanent beds, either— just rotating the use of these.

The foodstuffs were what first caught my attention:

Wonder who’s stockpiling all that Ebony??

Bottled water, makes sense. Just as much Ebony as bottled water? ...Still makes sense.

“Crab and Fish Crackers.” Canned “Mega Meat Mix.” What appears to be canned sardines or tuna. From my very minimal FFXV-fanfic-motivated research, this is pretty much in line with what survivalists advise stockpiling in the event of longterm emergency/civilization collapse.

To be fair, coffee is on that list too, but generally the instant kind that still needs to be brewed.

“Relief Supplies”: first aid and medical things, I’m guessing?

...I’m still fascinated by the fact that nearly every convenience store you visit in Lucis during the roadtrip is “out of Ebony due to road closures” and yet somehow they found enough somewhere to still have this much of it 10 years into the apocalypse. I want to believe this was a good deed someone did for Ignis. Also, was this an intentional detail, or did the location designers just not get the memo that Ebony was already hard to find before the world went dark?

[mikia87-deactivated20220818]

Ok, I know other people have already done it on Twitter and Instagram, but I want to do it too and fangirl on the fact that there is LUNOCT, HIGHSPECS and PROMDY in this picture!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

Lol, I love how Cindy, Luna, and Ignis are all non-subtly staring at Gladio. Sry guys + Aranea, Gladdy’s here to steal all yo hunnies.

[ffxvcaps]

I wonder why the English dub of the alt ending of Episode Ignis, if you chose to give up, Ignis says: “I don’t want to die without him” 

But the ORIGINAL Japanese is literally Ignis just saying “I don’t want to die”

I get that Matt Furda (one of the English translators for FFXV) is a gay man and that is totally 500% awesome but seriously though why the add on?

The same can be said for the main game ending camp scene, English dub Noctis says “You guys are the best”

ORIGINAL Japanese Noctis literally says “I love you guys” 

Why couldn’t the English dub of the end also be Noctis telling his bros that he loves them???

Why couldn’t Square do direct translations for the English subtitles???? All we have for English subtitles in the game are the English dub lines =_= 

The English cast did a phenomenal job, don’t get me wrong…it’s just so much gets lost in translation why make it worse by only giving dublines when they could give the option of direct translations for the Japanese voices for the game when you choose to play with Japanese voices and lip sync.

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

Never knew that but thank god for Matt Furda if that’s the reason behind it because that is definitely one of Ignis’s gayest lines.

sb: Ignis’s love for Noct was completely platonic. me: *trots out “I don’t want to die without him”*

[bigfatfrogs]

Thought I’d re render this old one in Unreal too

[butim-justharry-deactivated2019]

The American Gods comic is really good, guys.

[neil-gaiman]

It really is.

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

Reblogging for meta relevance.

[joccuria-deactivated20190705]

Did someone else cried because it is literally the last thing Iggy saw?

[tiiifa]

uh so tabata resigned from SE and all of the new episodes except for episode ardyn are cancelled.

[ravy-nevermore-archive]

Welp.