In light of the most recent developments (re: a wide and ineffective anti-nudity measure), we should take a moment to appreciate the unpaid work of one man, who worked hard and plugged many leaking holes to keep tumblr afloat against all odds.
I am, of course, talking about the XKit guy.
Thank you, XKit guy, for helping so many of us make sense of this Titanic of a website.
From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:
– don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.
– archive everything on your blog you want to keep
– tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.
– tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.
– go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.
– support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.
“why do we even need ao3/ why won’t they censor content i don’t like/ what’s that money going towards”
it’s going towards not arbitrarily deleting all your fucking blogs overnight because yahoo had a shareholders meeting, that’s what the fuck it’s going towards. if you don’t own it, they can yank the cord whenever they feel like it, for whatever reason, using whatever wobbly catch-all algorithm they want, and that is exactly what the fuck we’ve been telling you. “wellll i’m not a porn blog, it’s not going to affect me,” oh worm?? you sure?? this website is suddenly gonna be capable of censoring posted content with surgical precision? give ao3 ten bucks immediately and get real
something that really bothers me when people discuss natural selection is when people ask questions along the lines of, “why aren’t all turtles extinct if they’re so slow and dumb” and “if neanderthals are superior to gorillas, then why are neanderthals extinct?”.
Like these are such misled questions that you’d have to answer completely different, unasked questions to actually help the person understand, but it also belies a really unfortunate fact about the history of evolutionary science and how natural selection was once, and for a really long time, studied as if evolution is a battle between superiors and inferiors. and this framework was developed for the purpose of economic and sociopolitical gain, and to justify bigotry toward marginalized peoples, and this framework still permeates how people teach and learn about natural selection. it worries me a lot!
i think bioware were very very good at portraying grey morality (the werewolves/zathrian’s clan, loghain and anora, duncan killing jory, the arishok, whether to spare the architect, bhelen/harrowmont, larius/janeka) before they started actively trying to portray it
idk lmao the above mentions didn’t feel forced?? and they worked. like zathrian was in the right originally, now he’s not, but can we slaughter an entire dalish clan? but these werewolves are innocent – but they’ve killed people for revenge when they weren’t involved? and it was SO GOOD. and loghain was so good, lmao you do need the context of some books to understand but still, and so was anora, they’re both trying to do what they see as right even if that goes against the player, duncan has to kill jory but does he? it’s not a good thing, but he does it and he’s a good guy!! what’s going on here?? OOH GREY MORALITY.
is the arishok and the qun bad?? yeah, but it took years before he finally flipped. did the invasion kill innocent people?? yeah it was SHIT. but the chantry had been doing exactly the same to the qunari and they couldn’t leave. the architect fucked up and he’s obviously dangerous but can he learn from starting the fucking blight not to experiment on anymore dragons?? he helps you, he sends the messenger, what his intentions are can’t be described as anything but good – since they’ve apparently changed since the calling, thanks, utha – but he’s also a sentient darkspawn emissary and a magister?? bhelen and harrowmont and larius and janeka speak for themselves and i have typed enough. but!!
bioware did good things w/ grey morality before!! or at least having two sides of something with compelling reasons or arguments. sparing loghain comes to mind Again. but they were good at it? idk what went wrong. they tried so hard to force the mage/templar elves/everyone moral complexity thing but it didn’t work because they spent literally two games setting it up as a system of oppression that the player should want to get rid of and then suddenly backtracked when it got too much for them
funeral-biscuit 