Well then

[zenolalia]

I've closed my tabs and logged out of tumblr for what I suppose will be the last time.

I spent a decade on that site. It was my news, my social life, and my fandom hub.

Probably, I gave more of myself to it than I should have, really. But in return, I got so many things that I can't imagine finding anywhere else.

I don't know what I feel.

But, it is the dawn of a new day.


(The joke: it's the middle of the night in my time zone)

Comments

[anarfea]

Welcome over here. We haven't really interacted but I've followed your tumblr blog for some time and have enjoyed reading your POV. I hope you will continue to post over here.

[zenolalia]

Oh, I'll be posting here, not to worry.

I just don't know what I'll be posting, yet. Presumably without a constant dripfeed of hellfire from tumblr, my awareness of the current fandom wank and political "discourse" will wither away.

I guess I'll go back to being just a regular ass fan? Homestuck meta again??? It's been like 3 years since I contributed to fandom in any way other than posting meta on other people's posts, so like.

It'll take some practice lol.

God, I have to get /reaction icons/ again, too.

[teethntongue]

It definitely is something worth mourning, and I can't even imagine. I was really a lurker, but even I'm not sure how to feel about it all.

I have to say though that your blog definitely meant a lot to me. Your perspective has always been so grounding and helpful. I don't know how Web 3.0 is going to go, but I hope to have the opportunity to keep hearing from you.

[cassini]

[i'm gonna miss that trash heap. there were good times and bad times, and heck, the sudden disruption to the substandard-service-as-usual certainly got me brave enough to jump into the shallow end of the fandom pool afresh, say hello to people who had too big an audience and make sure i got some off-tumblr contact details for some good friends. there's always loss to subcultures when platforms evict us like this, so i'm doing my best to look for the little gains ]

[elendraug]

I've really appreciated your perspective as well, AND I would be thrilled to see Homestuck meta for sure

[flowerqueer]

ooh i feel this in my soul, i have my dreamwidth all set up now and my tumblr queue is ready to spit out my "where else to find me" post one last time and i guess this is where i live now? gonna take some getting used to for sure, but i'm excited to see where this (and other future platforms) takes us

A lackluster pun

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

I guess I'll go back to being just a regular ass fan?

Ooh, good. I, too, am a fan of ass, and dreamwidth has the benefit of being nsfw-friendly. I support your transition into becoming a journal-er of all things butts.

[yvannairie]

Ngl the bitterness this morning was pretty overwhelming. Tumblr's pace of posting was so good at making me get things done 200-300 words at a time, and "quality" was a nice surprise, not an expectation. Idk how I'm gonna stop myself from getting writer's blocked by my perfectionism.

[lissaze]

It’s honestly pretty devastating… I’ll probably keep using tumblr, if only out of habit or maybe to see its decline but I’m gonna miss seeing you (and like half the people I follow) on my dash if I do stay.
But I guess now’s the time for me to get used to dreamwidth and hopefully it's a better place than what tumblr became.

[capribornio]

Going from having to deal with constant discourse to no discourse at all is a pretty weird transition. Definitely looking forward to Homestuck meta if that's what you decide to post.

Re: A lackluster pun

[zenolalia]

Now, to be fair, I have always been a ass-fan. I like how they wiggle. But a /regular/ ass-fan? Never before. I have always been a queer-ass fan.

It's a whole new world of butts out there, waiting for me.

[zenolalia]

That's a good attitude. I wish I were better at maintaining it, myself.

I mean, as much as the mechanics of tumblr allowed for truly spectacular crossovers and the creation of a whole new style of roleplay (both of which are hugely important to me, emotionally), I have to say, I'm already remembering what it was like to be able to, you know, control who interacts with you.

And I've missed that more than I realized.

[zenolalia]

Homestuck meta #1: Lanque is a good, good boy who I am going to rail so hard he passes out.

Homestuck meta #2: As a Life player, Lanque naturally reflects and responds to the input of the living beings around him, mirroring their behaviours and attitudes. This type of behaviour is also commonly seen in autistic and other neurodivergent groups, as a way of processing high levels of emotional input.

Therefore, it is only logical to conclude that Lanque's true class is one that suggests an inherent and dramatic mutability of self to fit any situation. Because he is by nature reactive rather than proactive, this also suggests he would be a more passive (though not hugely passive, given his intensity) class.

Therefore, I posit that Lanque is a Rogue of Life.

Homestuck discourse #3: Flower crowns are good, actually, and I am pleased that this good, good, sexy boy is reclaiming them from the serial killers fandom.

[zenolalia]

My suggestion to you is the same as I gave some of my other friends:

Shitpost.

Just fill the initial, like 3 pages of your blog with one liner shitposts, until you've convinced yourself that DW is just as shitpost friendly a medium as anything else.

The interface, with it's complex rich-text editor and near complete HTML support, makes DW feel more "serious," but if you can churn out a few dozen shitposts, you'll begin to get over that hurdle.

[zenolalia]

I kind of thought about sticking around to watch the site fucking immolate, but honestly, given how often I used the "discourse" surrounding tumblr as a way to punish myself when I was depressed and knew I couldn't "get away" with traditional self-harm, it's probably for the best that I just let it go.

Like, things are bound to get ugly, even by tumblr standards, as there are fewer and fewer sex-positive and pro-fandom people left.

[archaeocoyote]

It's definitely a very weird feeling, I was on tumblr for almost 8 years, and don't really intend to fully leave until they actually shut it down for good, but the sense of finality to it is palpable. I never really gelled with it as a platform, but I will be sad to see parts of it go, especially how easy it made it to find interesting folks, like yourself!

[zenolalia]

Homestuck meta #4: Nepeta is the most valid representation of autism to come out of the 2005-2010 era. She is good, and sweet, and utterly unrepentant about her total disregard for social conventions that make no sense to her. The fact that Karkat calls her autistic as an insult is unfortunate, but given the era, I will take whatever canonical representation I can get.

Homestuck meta #5: Karkat and Dave are also autistic, however, Kanaya's apparent autistic affect is, IMO, the result of her extreme isolation during her developmental period. Although trolls are not terrestrial mammals, they are still undeniably a social species, and Kanaya's lack of direct socialization before entering the game has probably severely stunted her social development. However, she's still The Best, just like every Homestuck character is.

Homestuck meta #6: Feferi probably thinks Equius's sweating is cute because she has such a hardon for pitiful boys with no self control, and also because she loves saltwater and sweat is just saltwater.

Homestuck meta #7: Feferi has a sweat kink and it's the most disgusting thing on or off world.

[zenolalia]

Honestly, I was still on the fence about leaving as recently as Thursday, but over the weekend my dash slowed from about 250-300 posts per day, to only about 30-40 a day, and by yesterday I had a grand total of 22 posts on the dashboard all day, of which about a third were "where to find me" posts.

Even if the staff walked back this absolutely stupid idea (which they've made clear they won't in a new post, apparently), I'm not sure the site itself could recover from a plunge that severe and that sudden.

[elendraug]

I guess I'd better catch up on Friendsim, haha. Excellent post.

[elendraug]

piggybacking off #6: The Land of Caves and Silence has brackish water due to the presence of Equius Zahhak.

[archaeocoyote]

Yeah I really think they've dug their grave with this one, even if they tried to walk it back - there's simply no more trust left, and the site was reaching critical mass as it was. I haven't checked today, but my dash had slowed down considerably too in the past week. After this long putting up with the various nonsense tumblr has put us through, I think a lot of us were just waiting for an excuse to move on to greener pastures.

That said, I'm also not convinced this wasn't Yahoo/Oath's intention in the first place - wring the site for everything they thought it was worth and abandon it now they realize it's unprofitable, burning it down in the process to cover their asses. I won't be surprised if the interface, flagging, etc just continue to deteriorate until the site is basically unusable - or if the site is just suddenly entirely taken offline one of these days. Better to establish elsewhere than stick entirely to that sinking ship.

[zenolalia]

Fucking valid and correct.

[zenolalia]

Oh, did you hear they deleted biggest-gaudiest-patronuses this morning? Apparently they restored the blog some time this afternoon, but having one of the biggest nodes in the tumblr network get deleted within like an hour of them posting this whole "news update" about hwo they were definitely 100% not going to be deleting anything, just "screening" and "hiding" it was just not a good look.

I'm not exactly a twitter poweruser, but the real-time reaction to that deletion seemed to basically be a lot of people saying, "well shit, guess all the alarmists were right, time to get the fuck out."

At this point, if they're NOT trying to shut the site down so they can claim bankruptcy on its debts, I'll be really surprised. It's just hard to imagine this many stupid decisions this rapidly happening by mistake.

Especially when they know they're stupid decisions. I saw a screenshot of the news post just a bit ago, and they actually say, and I quote, "female-presenting nipples (yes we know you hate that phrase)."

Like, if you KNOW then why are you STILL DOING IT.

The whole "oath is wrecking tumblr on purpose" thing has gone from edge theory to "probably the truth" in record time.

Re: A lackluster pun

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Wooooooooooooooow, are you implying that being queer and being regular are mutually exclusive? That's so offensive, I can't believe dreamwidth user zenolalia is calling queer people freaks and upholding normative standards of cisheterosexuality. Don't you know that only liking queer butts is fetishization? Time to write a call-out post about this new #discourse.

[archaeocoyote]

Wooooow lmao no I hadn't heard about that, what a clusterfuck. I still have no idea how much of my stuff was flagged - I literally never saw any flags regardless of what I used to view my blog or dash.

And yeah the fact that they would double-down upon the site's stocks and user activity absolutely tanking since the original announcement all but confirms that they're doing this on purpose. I feel really bad for anyone whose business/life was a lot more tied to it than mine was, just another reason to not trust corporate-controlled social media, as most of us who remember Strikethrough already knew.