John Bierce

More Gods Than Stars Book 2, In the Court of the Mimic Queen, is now serializing on Patreon! For those who haven't read Book 1, The City That Would Eat the World, the series is a *takes deep breath* sword and sorcery economic progression fantasy trilogy following a washed-up mimic exterminator and an eccentric wandering adventurer as they travel across the habitable moon of a gas giant while dealing with toenail priests, a mimic-based ecosystem, prayer futures markets, uncounted millions of gods, carnivorous public transit, theonomic crises of divine capitalism, and a pseudomedieval megastructure arcology spreading uncontrollably across the landscape.

The trilogy is heavily influenced by China Mieville, Terry Pratchett, and classic sword and sorcery heroes like Conan, Jirel of Joiry, and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

Book 2 Synopsis:

Thea and Aven have escaped the ever-growing expanse of Cambrias' Wall, leaving chaos in their wake, only to find themselves stranded deep in the Scovan Range-- a colossal, heavily populated mountain range, even with much of it already strip-mined for the Wall's expansion. They're still being hunted, though-- until they deliver the ancient godkilling clay tablet to the West Pole, the pursuit will never end.

With the Wall's elites and a mysterious antlered woman that looks remarkably like Aven on their trail, though, stealth and speed are their best allies. Even so, it's not long before they find themselves embroiled in the century-long war between Cambrias' mercenary armies and the giant mobile Gnostic monasteries that seek to resist the Wall's endless expansion, not to mention the resulting refugee crisis.

Still, it could be worse. At least they're not embroiled in the Twelfth Morphic Crusade, the inevitably doomed attempt to purge the uninhabitable Court of the Mimic Queen of its endless swarms of carnivorous mimics. There's surely nothing that could persuade Thea to get tangled in that mess.

Surely.

For those who haven't read book 1 yet, you can find it here!

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

Write it badly or it’ll never be written.

consistent practice opens up whole worlds of skill that you couldn't imagine

making mistakes in the process of learning is not only natural, it is also essential

activities that you enjoy can give you more energy back than you spent on them

"What's the secret to your success?"

"Put in the work."

"No but really."

@staff

For years, the total note count on a post served as a universal metric of a piece of content's impact. Whether a user liked the original post or a reblog fifteen branches deep, that engagement flowed back to the source. This ensured that the original artist, writer, or editor received the full credit for the viral success of their work.

Under this new system, engagement is trapped within the specific reblog a user happens to see on their dashboard. If a massive, high-traffic blog reblogs a piece of art from a small creator, every like and reblog that occurs through that larger account stays with them. The original creator is left with a stagnant note count on their own dashboard while their work generates thousands of interactions for someone else.

Erasure of Creator Visibility

Instead of seeing one post with 10,000 notes, a creator may now have to hunt through dozens of different reblog chains to find where the conversation is actually happening.

If the notes no longer flow back to the original post, the creator loses the ability to see who is enjoying their work, what the tags say, and how the community is responding.

On a platform where engagement often dictates visibility, splitting that engagement into tiny, unlinked fractions makes it significantly harder for original works to gain momentum compared to the high-reach blogs that reblog them.

Incentivizing the "Big Blog" Monopoly

This system rewards accounts that have already established a large following at the direct expense of the smaller accounts that actually produce the content. It transforms reblogging from a method of sharing into a method of acquisition.

When a reblog functions as its own independent post with its own note count, the incentive to click through to the original source disappears. The platform is transitioning from a collaborative ecosystem into a standard social media feed where the person who posts the content last—not the person who made it—reaps the rewards.

Impact on Collaborative Conversations

Tumblr’s unique culture is built on the reblog chain: a chronological, evolving conversation. By allowing users to like or reblog "any part" of the chain as an independent entity, the platform is breaking the narrative thread.

If engagement is siloed into specific branches, the incentive to add to a conversation is replaced by an incentive to simply own a piece of the engagement. This change doesn't encourage conversation. It encourages the commodification of individual posts within a chain, making it harder for the original voice to ever be heard over the noise of the rebloggers.

The Disincentive to Create

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of this update is the psychological toll on the creative community. When the platform actively diverts credit and engagement away from the source, it destroys the motivation to share original work at all.

For many, the reward for posting is seeing how far their work travels. If that travel is now invisible or attributed to others, the labor of creating becomes thankless.

This system makes creators want to share nothing. If the platform is built to harvest a creator's effort for the benefit of curator blogs, the logical response is to stop providing the raw material. I am one leaning into this category. Without us creators, the curator blogs have nothing to curate.

Now, as to how it works and the specific implementations of the dogshiticity, here is what I have observed from initial experimentation:

OP will get notified of all reblogs, so far as initial testing has gone. This includes tagged reblogs, commented reblogs, and uncommented-untagged "silent" reblogs. This also continues to include reblogs-of-reblogs. The only place OP will be able to see this is in their activity feed, because there is no longer any single location to see all notes/ reblogs on a post. Nobody else will be able to see ALL reblogs.

OP will get notified of any replies directly to their original post. So if you chatter in the notes of the original, OP will see that.

OP will get notified of any likes directly to their original post.

OP will NOT get notified of any likes to commented subsequent reblogs, as those now form a "new" post. Anyone wishing to leave a like should click the like button on OP's section of a reblogged post, otherwise OP will not know.

OP will NOT get notified of any discussion in the notes on comment-reblogs, as those are discussions on a "new" post.

OP will NOT be able to find any specific reblog chain, because for OP the notes on their post will only ever show the direct-from-OP reblogs and never any subsequent ones.

OP will NOT be able to find anything in their notes, and the Activity Feed is not a reliable place to be able to go hunting for other people's previous reblogs.

OP will NOT be able to turn off reblogging on a post, so there is no way to keep a post contained if it takes off in a way you don't want it to.

Every chain effectively becomes a complete silo, unconnected to any other reblog and only barely connected to the original post.

We will NOT be able to scroll through the notes of a post and look for funny tags or interesting comments, because the notes are now wildly fragmented and there is no central reference point. So it will not be possible to look through the notes and see if a hundred other people have already said that thing you were about to say.

OP will NOT be able to do anything to stop a harassment campaign that fills their activity feed, but also will not be able to find any of it in the notes of their post unless the harassers reblog directly from OP every time. This is a feature which will absolutely be used to harass people.

It is also VERY unhelpful that we don't have language to easily disambiguate "comments" (as in, a reblog that someone added something to, thus creating a new post) and "comments" (non-reblgo chatter that happens in the notes). Not that we can reliably see either of those any more.

So! Now you and I are armed with this valuable knowledge about how the new system works, please go to tumblr's feedback form and explain why this is a series of bad problems that you would like them to stop doing.