wait wait, what’s the change tumblr did to the reblog chains ? 🥲🥲🥲 I’m so lost
okay so basically, let's say you see a post on your dash
before the update, if you clicked on a url, you could do 3 things:
view that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A)
view the previous reblog on the blog A reblogged it from (B)
view the original post on op's blog (C)
however, staff recently implemented an update where clicking on a url no longer takes you to that specific post. now, clicking on a url just takes you to the blog itself.
this means that you now get 5 things:
view ONLY that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A) -> changed location near header. also, you will now ONLY see that post and nothing else
view ONLY the original post on op's blog (C) -> changed location near header. you will only see that post and nothing else. and ONLY if the op hasn't deleted it, otherwise it just shows an error
view the blog of the person you follow (D)
view the blog of the person D reblogged it from (F) -> option B no longer exists
view the blog of the op (E)
you might be thinking: "cool! i get more options so that's good, right?" well, no.
there are SEVERAL things wrong with this and it goes beyond the prev tags issue
1) first of all, it's counterintuitive that A and C changed locations to the area near the header, especially if your userbase was already used to the previous functions. it just seems like horrible UX design to me but let's put that aside for now.
2) as you can see, option B which allowed you to see the previous reblog of a post no longer exists.
now, if you click on the previous url, you will just be taken to their entire blog. you can no longer view the post itself.
someone asked staff about this, and they replied in this post that the change was INTENTIONAL and if you want to view the previous reblog you would have to "go through the notes view".
to borrow what someone else said:
basically, this update just killed the prev tags culture in one fell swoop.
(sure, you can still use it to reply directly to the person you're reblogging from, but it's now literally useless to use "prev tags" for everyone else involved. sure, you can choose to copy tags or peer review them, but again, if people will have to copy them then the less people are likely to use them, and not every prev lends itself to peer-reviewing imo)
now, listen. i know not everyone likes the prev tags culture, but it just seems like such a poorly-thought decision to kill a culture that like... half of your entire userbase uses (see this poll as a quick reference) and that's UNIQUE to your site and sets you apart from other social media.
but it's also not even just prev tags. let's say you want to remove an annoying addition on a post's reblog chain? you can no longer do that.
however, i feel like this is the most important point:
regardless of how you may feel about the prev tags culture, the pure UI aspect of it should remain
what i mean by this is: even if you don't like prev tags, simply 1) being able to access the reblog chain, and 2) clicking on a post and actually have it take you to their BLOG (and not just a page with that one single post) is literally essential navigation.
this update threatens to drive down user engagement (which is already critically low) by making it harder to navigate. which is actually another point:
3) even if you click on A and C now to view those specific posts, it's NOT the same as it used to be.
before, you could view the reblog directly on the blog. so you could just scroll down and see the other posts leading up to it. now, you will be taken to a page where you will ONLY see that post and nothing else.
but also, you can no longer easily navigate other people's blogs.
you know how sometimes you would see like 50 notifications of someone going through an entire tag on your blog? that's going to happen a lot less, i'm afraid.
let's suppose you want to go to op's blog because they're an artist and you want to see more of their art. so you click on C and see that the tag they use for posts with their art is "#my art"
cool! before, you could just click on that tag and immediately view ALL of their art as long as the posts have that tag.
but now, if you click on that tag, it will take you to the ENTIRE tumblr tag with literally all the posts that everyone in the history of time has tagged with that specific tag.
now, to do the same thing that just took 2 clicks before, you would have to: click on C to view the post -> look for the tag you want to navigate -> click E to view their whole blog -> scroll and look for a post that just so happens to have that tag (the search function is literally useless) and hope to god that there's a recent one or you'll have to scroll for ages or simply give up -> if you happen to find it, click on that tag to navigate their posts.
you see how this is counterproductive, right? you see how this can literally drive down engagement with content creators, right?
if you make people's blogs harder to navigate, you will literally drive down the number of likes and reblogs on their posts, which have already been steadily declining for years now.
4) options D and E to view the blogs and not the posts are literally useless because you could already access other people's blogs before. you just had to click on their url to view their blogs starting from that specific post AND you could choose to just refresh it to view their newest posts.
either way, the change just seems completely unnecessary. and again, it's not just about the prev tags culture but about basic UI.
so what can we do about it?
i normally don't advocate for flooding staff with messages but i do feel like this is one of the worst updates staff has ever done (and that's saying something) and something needs to change.
even if they don't retcon the entire update, that's fine, but staff could at least add the option to view the reblog chain as a different feature (maybe even opt-in) for example. there are better ways to go about this than just axing an entire existing feature.
also, this same issue that makes it harder to navigate blogs needs to change. i feel like content creators will be especially affected by this unless this changes because you can no longer easily navigate their tags, so it will inevitably drive down engagement.
so please, contact staff and let them know we want a change.
you can contact support here!
here's a template for a possible message you could send, but feel free to edit it. (under category you can choose "Feedback")
Hi, I would like to politely request a change to the recent update that affects the reblog chain of posts. Regardless of the "prev tags" culture itself, the UI aspect of being able to view the reblog chain of a post is essential for navigation on this website. Even adding it as a separate, opt-in feature would be a huge help. Additionally, clicking on a post and then on one of the tags now takes you to the entire tumblr tag instead of the tag on that blog, which makes it harder to navigate blogs. Both of these issues have the potential to drive down user engagement by actively making it harder to navigate Tumblr, but especially for content creators. I hope you can do something to address these issues as soon as possible. Thanks in advance and have a nice day.
also, if you can and/or want, reblogs are appreciated to help spread the word!
that's pretty much the gist of the issue from what i've seen, but if anyone else has anything to add or a different way we could contact staff to make ourselves heard, please feel free to let me know!
TLDR: it's not just about prev tags, this update affects basic functionality and content creators as well
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failed bounties and fresh bonds (3)
G/T July Day 14: Instrument
warnings: dehumanization, mild blood, threats, captivity, child endangerment, lmk if i missed any
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Roman was in the midst of perusing the brightly-colored wares at a market stall when he overheard the quiet conversation.
He hadn’t actually planned to stay in town for so long, but the innkeeper had mentioned the weekly market and he’d found himself wondering if maybe there were any toys or other entertaining items being sold there.
He’d be a poor excuse for an uncle if he didn’t even bring back any gifts for his treasured nephew, after all!
(And maybe if he picked the perfect one, he’d make some actual progress on getting in Virgil’s good graces. Or at least having the kid be even a little less terrified of him!)
It was at least worth looking, he decided, even if such a detour was a bit of a distraction from his journey. He would be in and out, easy as that.
Except one stall had pointed out another, which had led to another and so on, and before he knew it, half the morning had gone by. And he still hadn’t picked out a gift!
Before he could commit one way or the other, hurried whispering from the nearby corner caught his ear. He was a knight, which meant all his senses were keenly trained to pick up trouble. And mutterings about a monster? That most certainly sounded like trouble.
“Pardon me,” he started, cutting into the hushed argument with a dazzling smile. “As a knight of the realm, I’d be happy to help you out with your little monster problem! No bounty hunters necessary.”
“It’s not a little problem,” one of the townsfolk grumbled, while the other eyed Roman speculatively.
“You’ll get rid of it without charging us?” she asked bluntly, earning a glare from her companion.
Roman nodded, used to the question. “Such is the responsibility of a knight of these lands.”
“It’s not something we need to get rid of!” the first stranger interrupted with a scowl. “It’s powerful, it could be devastating on a battlefield. Your king should be buying it from us.”
“Oh, shut it,” the woman snapped. “You can’t get that beast to do anything but growl and hide away, and I want it out of here before the town becomes its next casualty!”
The man wheeled around to face her, his face purpling, but before they could start bickering again, Roman stepped forward.
“Why don’t you take me to where the monster is, first?” he said, patting the hilt of his sword reassuringly. “I won’t be able to decide anything without seeing it.”
The pair subsided with matching grumbles, and before long, they were walking down a small, overgrown path outside of the town, one that slowly curved into the rockier forest area that surrounded it.
It was interesting that he couldn’t find a trace of fear on either of his guides, even as they grew closer to where the alleged beast was. Wariness and irritation, sure, but none of the true terror that so often came with seeing one of the monsters of this land.
Roman didn’t think it was an ambush or trap, either. Perhaps they’d simply caught a particularly large wolfdog and gotten overexcited?
“Here we are,” the man said, his vexed expression fading away in favor of excitement, like a child showing off a new toy.
They’d reached the wide mouth of a cave, one that was squat and shallow, but still deep enough to house something large. There was nothing in sight.
“Are we supposed to venture inside…?” Roman hazarded, not too keen on the idea. His dislike of dark spaces aside, cramped quarters were the worst place for his favored style of combat.
The woman snorted. “Not unless you want to be bitten in half. Just wake it up already.”
The latter sentence was directed at the man, who scowled darkly at her before pulling an engraved bit of metal from his pocket. From a single glance at the intricate symbols and embedded stones, Roman assumed it was an enchanted magical instrument of some kind.
The woman shot him an assessing glance, as though to see if he had any negative response to the item, but he only met her gaze evenly, unperturbed.
His brother had wrangled the magic of his curse into its own kind of witchcraft at ten years old. Roman would be a hypocrite to believe that all forms of enchantment were designed to harm.
He had something of a bad feeling in his gut, though, and it only worsened as he watched the man press a thumb down against the sharp edge of the tool, pricking his finger to activate the device with his blood.
There was a pause as the man waited expectantly, and then frowned, before tightening his grip on the tool and yanking it through the air, as though pulling at an invisible cord.
With a muffled cry, something huge tumbled out of the cave into the light. Roman took a step back, feeling the color drain from his face.
That was not a wolfdog.
His attention caught on the identifying details first— the horns, the scales, the horizontal pupils, the wings— and he knew that this was a dragon, shifted into a more humanoid form (if admittedly one that was still dragon-sized).
In the next moment, Roman’s eyes settled onto the face beneath the mythical features, and his heart dropped like a stone. That was a child’s face, round-cheeked and crumpled up in distress.
Sure, it was a child big enough to grind his bones to a paste in one swat, but that didn’t change the fact that he was seeing a kid in tears. A kid that happened to be awfully similar to his recently acquired nephew.
They were alike in more ways than one, he realized as his gaze dropped down to the thick metal cuffs that were wrapped around all four of the child’s limbs. They had no chains binding them together— or rather, no visible chains. The engravings visible on the metal were telling enough as to just what that enchanted instrument was connected to.
“Where did you get that tool?” he asked, dizzy with the shock of such a scene.
The man preened, mistaking Roman’s alarm for interest. “Impressive, isn’t it? Some idiot sold it to me for cheap.”
The only ones skilled enough to get cuffs like these on a dragon shifter were mercenaries, who were known for being demanding barterers. More likely than not, that ‘idiot’ had been pawning off a stolen good, hoping to pass on the consequences of crossing a mercenary guild to an unlucky buyer.
Roman remembered the faded scars on Virgil, and felt a boiling hot fury bubbling up in him. He took a step forward, expression dark, and the kid flinched away and huddled down. The motion was enough to send a shock of horror down his spine, dousing the worst of his impulsive anger.
Right. Get the kid out safe first, deal with scumbags later.
“This is certainly a dangerous creature,” he lied through grit teeth, and then held out a hand. “You were right to take me up on my services. I can take it from here.”
The man recoiled, holding the tool tighter. “I know something valuable when I see it, and clearly, so do you. It would be stupid of me to part with it without getting something for my time.”
Roman turned to look at the child again, trying to repress the hot anger bubbling in his chest. The kid wasn’t even watching them discuss their fate, eyes scrunched up tightly and hands twitching like they would have covered their ears, too, if their wrists weren’t still locked in place.
He had left to avoid inflicting more distress on a traumatized child, and yet here he stood, doing exactly that yet again. Roman grimaced, and then asked himself a question that almost never led him anywhere good: What would Remus do?
Turning slowly, he met the man’s eyes, set a hand on the pommel of his sword, and grinned.
“It would be stupider,” he said, slow and menacing, “to demand anything from me when I’m the one fixing your little problem in the first place.”
The man lost some of his confidence, wavering.
“If you’d prefer to lose a hand along with it, by all means keep hanging on,” Roman added, almost conversationally. “I’m sure even the bite of my blade would feel like tender mercy compared to the wrath that will fall upon you if the mercenaries that caught this beast find out you’re the one who stole that key.”
“Give it to him,” the woman snapped, expression hard and hunted.
Knowing what terror she’d sat by and abided, Roman couldn’t find it in himself to feel bad.
“Fine!” the man spat, throwing the tool at his feet. “Take it and go!”
The woman, keener on the uptake, grabbed him by the crook of his arm the moment the key hit the dirt, and yanked him back down the path from where they’d come.
Roman obviously wasn’t actually going to use the tool to make the kid attack them, for a very large range of reasons, but he wasn’t going to correct the misconception if it got them away from him and the kid quicker.
He leaned down to scoop the key up, grimacing at the glint of blood still visible on it, and then turned to look at the kid.
They quickly shuttered the eye they’d been peeking out of back closed, immediately curling in tighter and bracing themself.
“Dear child,” Roman said, sorrow heavy in his heart. “Can you look at me for a moment?”
There was a pause, the kid twitching in surprise, and then a slow reappearance of those big blue eyes.
“Hello there,” he greeted, keeping his voice soft. “I don’t know you, but I have a nephew that you remind me very much of. I’m sorry for speaking so harshly before, but I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”
“Help me?” the kid echoed in a large whisper, and then winced as though waiting for a strike to land.
“Yes,” Roman replied, once he was confident that he’d ironed the last traces of the fury he felt out of his voice. “Do you know how I could remove these cuffs from you?”
The kid’s eyes went impossibly wider. “Really?” they whispered.
Roman nodded firmly. “Really, truly.”
Their bottom lip wobbled, and Roman felt a sense of despair at what was turning out to be a month that proved him extremely inept with children, only for them to blink back the tears and keep speaking in that hushed voice.
“I don’t know how to remove ‘em, but I— I know if you get all the blood off, I can move my hands around normal again," they offered, watching him with an unsettling intensity, eyes lit with the tentative hope of a starved dog.
Roman pulled his canteen from his hip immediately, untwisting the lid with his teeth and promptly dumping the contents over the metal’s surface. The worst of the blood was washed away, and he dragged out a part of his undershirt to wipe off the remaining stain.
He couldn't deny a bit of apprehension, but rather than try and attack him or otherwise lash out, the kid only pulled their hands to their chest and curled over them protectively, the mingled stress and relief so visible on their face that Roman felt his own chest ache in sympathy.
“May I know your name, dear child?” he asked, pushing away his automatic nervousness as they shifted to sit up to their full height.
“Oh!” the child gasped, seemingly shocked that they’d only just recalled their manners despite the situation. “M’name is Patton, nice to meet you!”
“Well, Patton Nicetomeetyou,” Roman responded in jest, relief sweeping over him when the kid smiled, “You may call me Roman.”
He swept into a dramatic bow, adding the silliest flourishes in his repertoire, and Patton laughed, a soft, watery chuckle. The longer they spoke without being punished, the more they uncurled, slowly, like a flower blooming.
“If I may?” Roman asked, reaching a hand out.
He thought for a moment that the child would refuse— Virgil certainly refused any and all direct contact with him— but Patton only hesitated for a moment before slowly reaching out, hovering their considerably larger hand in front of him.
“For you,” he vowed, and set the instrument on Patton’s fingertips. “Until we find a way to get those accursed cuffs off, you should be the only one to possess that device.”
Patton’s fingers drew back the moment they recognized the tool, inhaling sharply as they curled their fist around it. They sniffled slightly, but they were smiling again, as though they couldn’t help the surprised delight, so Roman didn’t feel entirely useless.
“My brother, Remus, knows much more about magecraft than I do. I would be honored if you would accompany me to his home. He may be strange,” Roman paused, and then emphasized, “very, very strange, but he’ll do what he can to help.”
Patton was nodding almost before he’d finished speaking, eyes still red-rimmed. “I can’t go home until I know nobody can make me hurt anyone,” they said firmly. “I wanna meet your weird brother, please.”
Now there was a sentence he almost never heard. With any luck, Remus would know what to do, or even Virgil, though Roman would be loath to ask anything that reminded his nephew of whatever horrors lurked in his past.
“Then meet him you shall! I’ll retrieve my horse from town, and we can be off!” Roman replied heartily, his own spirits lifted by Patton’s determination.
He wouldn’t have time to pick up a gift for Virgil, but that was alright. Roman got the feeling that his current endeavor was something his nephew would have valued more, anyhow.
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