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.
Also, go read the source policies and official Tumblr statements in addition to user analyses and reactions. It’s important to keep abreast of developments over time; staying informed is your power in this situation. Memes and reaction posts are funny and are a useful way to vent / provide commentary, but some of them create an inaccurate picture of what’s happening and should not be taken as evidence on their own of what developments have happened.
Okay, guys I think I have a solution. It’s not the BEST solution, but it’s a solution for now.
$1.00 patrons will have access to everything I create. I post every single day so hopefully paying $0.03 an art should be agreeable.
If you’d like to continue seeing NSFW content, please consider becoming a $1.00 patron until things are figured out. Here’s a link to my Patreon.
I will be posting NSFW content on my Twitter (as long as that’s doable) and my Pillowfort (which is currently under maintenance.) Tapastic does not allow NSFW to a certain extent, but I’ll also be posting my comics there. I may resort to AO3 if I need to, but AO3 doesn’t like images and sometimes deletes them.
Shout-out to my fellow Fandom Olds who lived through Strikethrough/Boldthrough on LJ and knew this day would eventually come here on Tumblr.com also
Especial shout-out to the heroes at AO3 who designed their whole operation knowing that every other platform fandom used would pull this bullshit sooner or later
UPDATE *PLEASE READ*
1). Pillowfort is having some technical issues at the moment, but once it’s figured out I should be on! I’ll update here once that’s a thing as well as where you can find me on the internet.
2) The new NSFW filter shouldn’t affect me, since I keep it SFW.
However, it is affecting MANY fandom artists. If you follow any, please please consider supporting their move to a new site if they decide to. Can just be following them on the new site, joining their patreon or reblogging update posts.
3) I’ll be going through the process…the long long process….of backing up fan art that might be taken down on December 17th or after due to the new filters. I’ll be focusing on art that has a 95% chance of being flagged, and the user has deactivated or deleted their account.
Plan is to have a google doc or something similar with deleted art that can be accessed outside of tumblr. Old usernames will linked with the art, and current social media (with descretion as I know not all former fan art creators will want their work connected presently).
***MOST IMPORTANT THING***
4) if Tumblr’s move causes the site to implode in one way or another, I will have no choice but to leave. I won’t continue to work here if it’s for nothing. Again the plan would be to make google docs for people to access meta, theories, etc. And I’ll likely move to pillowfort and have that as my main camp for this blog. Unfortunately, I can’t save everything, there’s just too much. But I’ll save what I can, and what I deem the most important should I have to make a quick exit.
Artists in fandom should back up your work NOW.
Start the process. It seems like NSFW fan art would be okay MAYBE, it might get flagged and then unflagged after a review.
“We have a plan to top it. And I do think our plan is devastating. We’ve practically reduced our cast to tears telling them the plan… we’re probably more excited that we’ve ever been about Sherlock,” Moffat told reporters asking if he thought the next season could beat season three’s epic run.
Gatiss chimed in later that night: “We’re going to try to take it somewhere we’ve never been before — and I don’t mean outer space. It will be challenging place to go. We always start with a re-introduction that builds toward a darker climax — we might just be going darker [from the outset]. We got a very, very good set of ideas.”
Sherlock Fandom Archive 