Weird, comics related stuff, and Tumblr

[shapinglight]

Icon not really relevant, but I love the image so much, I have to use it regardless.

Last night, I dreamed I was Spike in the Buffy comics.



This was brought on, I think, by a combination of things. Firstly, I'm currently re-reading Buffy season 10, which I admit, I'm enjoying, and secondly I got involved briefly in a comics-related conversation on one of the fanboards, though it didn't hold my interest long. I made one comment and walked away, even though I hate it when other people do that. ;)

Anyway, in my dream, I started off actually being Spike. I was talking to Comics!Buffy (we were both cartoons even in my dream). She was eating a bowl of strawberry ice cream. I asked her to tell me straight out which she preferred, me or Angel, and she got this guilty look on her face and admitted it was Angel.

Suddenly, I was no longer Spike in the comic. I was me, hurrying to get online and let people know this, so they could steel themselves for the inevitable disappointment and put on a brave face if anyone felt inclined to gloat.

Then I woke up.

Odd. I've never dreamt I was a cartoon before, or that I was Spike. Or even about Spike. The only character from the show I've ever dreamt about is Angel - and even then I think he was more David Boreanaz than Angel.

I've been enjoying the comic, like I said. I do agree with rahirah, though. While I can see BtVS season 7 Buffy possibly becoming season 8/9 Buffy, or BtVS season 7 Buffy possibly becoming season 10 Buffy, I can't for the life of me see season 8/9 Buffy becoming season 10 Buffy.

Oh well.

In other slightly comics-related news (in a very roundabout way, and only because I'm following Cullen Bunn, the writer of the sadly defunct Magneto solo series from Marvel on there), I'm still trying, and failing miserably, to get to grips with Tumblr. bogwitch and quinara said they'd help me work out how to use the site when we meet at Writercon, but I'm supposed to read the FAQ before then. Trouble is, whenever I look at the it it just makes me miserable. I kinda...hate it.

:Gloom:

Also, given how quiet LJ's become, I've suddenly become anxious in case it's not profitable any more and our Russian overlords close the site down altogether. I have so much that I've written on here. Not just fanfics (multiple copies of those exist anyway) but life stuff. I'd hate to lose it. I do import content to Dreamwidth fairly regularly, but that site could also disappear any time. There used to be a program by which you could download a copy of your LJ, entries, comments, the whole thing, to your hard drive. Does it still exist, does anyone know?

ETA: It looks like LJ Archive still exists but that there are loads of problems with it. :(

Comments

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is one hell of a dream! :P

I've tried tumblr so many times and hated it every single one :( But then I go through the tags anyway, to find gifsets... so... IDK.

[shapinglight]

You know, I don't even know how to find things on there with tags. I suppose I should try to learn that at least.

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

I just use the url, like (for instance :P) https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/spuffy I think there's a way for registered users to track a tag which makes puts it on your "dash" (home page) as well. Which is I guess why tracking your own username to see what other people are saying about you seems to be such a common practice (but... whaaa...)

[shapinglight]

I think I read some posts recently where people were using the Spuffy tag to spread their dislike of the 'ship. That seems a bit mean.

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

tumblr tags suck. I'm sure it's partly just mean people, but also just the whole system works against people having good relationships with each other.

Unlike on LJ, where tags are for archiving your own content so that you and other people can read about a particular subject, tags on tumblr are both archival tools and actually seem to function as the equivalent of a community on LJ. Meaning that if two users use the same word in a different way, they will often get into a fight over who has more "right" to that tag, because a tag being used in two different ways makes its community function useless to both groups. For instance, I remember a while ago a polynesian tumblr user getting extremely angry at polyamorous people who were tagging stuff about their love lives with "poly", because it was "invading" the tag that polynesian people wanted to use to talk about their heritage, and the person in question felt that the polynesian community should have "dibs" on the tag, and obviously the polyamorous people felt differently, etc.

So I think tumblr just exacerbates character and ship wars because content talking about a character/ship in a negative way that, in LJ days, would have stayed on a single person's journal and likely only be read and commented upon by people who agree with it already, now ends up "in the tag" for that character or ship, which is usually full of mainly people who like it. I assume that lots of spuffy-bashing also goes on on LJ, I just don't see it, because it's easy here to avoid the kind of content that you're not interested in.

This is kind of tangential to the issue, but the famously rigid language- and content-policing that goes on between users on tumblr is something that in my opinion has also arisen out of the fact that tumblr does make it so damn difficult to avoid coming across the kind of content you don't want to see. i don't really know how they can fix that, besides the tag blacklisting available with add-on services like xkit, which is kind of a band-aid solution offered by a third party, not the website itself (which, WTF) to what for me was a fundamental enough problem that I decided not to use the platform altogether.

[shapinglight]

Thanks for that information. I had some idea that people were using tags in Tumblr in a way that annoyed other people, but I had no idea of the mechanics of it, or how the problem had arisen.

Back in the day, there were plenty of people bashing Spuffy on LJ. That's very limited now, unless it goes on a lot still in locked posts. I only know one unlocked LJ where you could be pretty sure of seeing some Spuffy bashing. But even so, for the most part, Spuffy 'shippers would just stay away from it and let the LJ owner do their thing.

This wasn't always so, of course (and here I am talking to you as if you're new to LJ, when you could have been here for years, for forgive me if that's the case). Also back in the day, if you made an open post stating something contentious, you could be pretty certain lots of people would come along to argue the toss.

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

That is very interesting! I guess that's the thing-- staying away and letting the LJ owner do their thing is normal behaviour on LJ, much more than on tumblr. At least that is my impression.

(And... I got into fandom about five years ago (although I lost my old LJ username, so this account is new) but I definitely would not have been of an appropriate age to have watched BtVS when it first aired, so I was not around for the early days of this fandom :P)

[shapinglight]

I guess that's the thing-- staying away and letting the LJ owner do their thing is normal behaviour on LJ, much more than on tumblr. At least that is my impression.

It is now, but that could just as well be because everyone on LJ has heard it all before. ;)

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

True! Well in that case, glad to be here now :D

[shapinglight]

;)

It does get a bit quiet sometimes (often, in fact), but I can't say I miss some of the awful rows that used to happen.

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Imo, tag workin as a community has some pros, too. Like, it's way easier to discover people with similar interests or be noticed by them.
LJ is extremely unfriendly in this aspect (I don't mean people, I mean platform). If you are a noob unfaimilar with the concept of thematic comms, you are doomed to die alone in your dark and lonely personal LJ. And even if you discover the right communities, it will take at least several months (or more likely - about a year) to get connected with other people.
LJ could benefit from some global discovery system, like the one Tumblr has. (Though it would be wise if there was the way to separate global and individual blog tags; or have some sort of "tag wrlangler" moderators like the ones on AO3.)

[shapinglight]

Like, it's way easier to discover people with similar interests or be noticed by them.

There is that, it's true.

[tei-lj.livejournal.com]

That is a good point! I mean, I guess it's telling that I still check the tag despite not using the site-- when the tags are working correctly, they're an excellent way to discover people and content in a low-pressure (?) way. But I also like checking the tags (more than I liked having my own dashboard) because I don't particularly mind reading ship hate-- I guess I've been in fandom a short enough time to still just find it vaguely amusing-- so I suppose it depends on your tolerance for coming across that kind of stuff.

[shapinglight]

You know, I haven't the faintest clue how you check tags on Tumblr.

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Some ways to do it:
1) type something like tumblr.com/tagged/buffy-the-vampire-slayer into address bar.
2) click on any tag from the post on your dashboard.It will take you to the global tag page.
You can track tags, but all that tracking does is adding the tag to your "quick select" menu in the search bar, so you won't have to type it manually every time you want to check it.

[shapinglight]

Thanks. If I can ever summon even the ghost of any enthusiasm, I'll give it a try. ;)