and i'm native to it, but i'm overgrown

Hi Pillowfolks! We have some exciting news to share. Thanks to your support, we were able to exceed our monthly goal for August 2022 by $598 (13.6%). Pillowfort continues to remain online and has the ability to compensate the teams working on our platform because of our generous supporters.  Thank you so much. 

As a reminder: To show our gratitude to everyone who has shown their support by donating to Pillowfort both past and present, we will be introducing new donation badges for users to display on their blogs very soon. Be on the lookout for those. 

We also wanted to let the community be aware that as of September 2022 we have adjusted our monthly goal to $7215 because our amount needed to compensate our staff has increased. This increase is due to our QA team's increased work hours as we continue to refine the new UI and prep the dark mode features, as well as another developer joining the team. The full breakdown is available on the donation page. 

Finally, we are planning on another seasonal fundraiser that will launch near the end of the month. All donations made in September will be counted towards each of the fundraiser  goals. 

Alright so I’ve seen a LOT of opinions and incorrect information all over the place regarding the platform and Im sick of it. What a time to spread misinformation tumblr, never change.

I’m an extreme newbie on pillowfort but I wanted to clear up misconceptions and dumb talking points:

It Doesn’t ‘Cost Money’ in the way you keep suggesting

Pillowfort was a kickstarted platform and it is still in BETA (keep this in mind it’ll come up a lot) - It costs $5 to get a ‘key’ and enter. There are no subscription fees, no secret additional costs, its literally just $5. The cost is there to help support the building of the website, since the website is NOT owned by a giant company (like the one screwing us rn) so the money goes directly into supporting the platform.

I understand there is a barrier for people who are extremely poor or unable to easily make online purchases. They have stated on their twitter that they are looking into ways to make it more accessible right now with Tumblr shutting down the way it is. Also there have been people floating around willing to buy keys for friends, followers, mutuals, etc.

It’s not “Broken” or “Down” and it being offline for MAINTENANCE is a Good Thing

Pillowfort has been offline for a little bit because they are working on fixing security issues, yanno, making sure the website is safe and functioning for its users. Its unfortunate with the timing, considering how many of us are ready to pack up and leave now. They have said they are pushing to have it open Dec 4 or 5.

I’ve seen people say that their servers crashed, or that they dont trust a website that isn’t online 24/7 and thats all hogwash and you know it. Pillowfort is in BETA and they are still building functions and ironing out kinks, thats a GOOD thing. I would rather ride a rollercoaster that shuts down for maintenance for an hour every day rather than ride one that hasn’t been repaired until the tracks literally snap. Pillowfort is new and under construction, you gotta learn to be patient and understanding.

There are PLENTY of people using it and more coming!

I keep seeing people say “but its empty! no one is there!” like yeah Becky, its NEW. But there ARE a lot of people online using it, there are easy to find communities already up and running and with tumblr doing what its doing there are going to be WAY more people showing up. Joining any new social media is going to give you that awkward time where you have only 5 people you follow cause youre not sure how to use it yet, let yourself have those growing pains.

Its Not ‘Ugly’ or ‘Bad’ its UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Gods help me. They are still building the website and have a huge list of things they are looking to implement soon once the foundation is secured. There is transparent blogs from the developers where you can suggest what you would like to see if its not there already. Its NEW its UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

You “Don’t Trust” them? Okay have fun on twitter?

I dont even know what to say to people huffing and saying they dont trust any alternative. Like, do you trust tumblr? Do you? 

The fact is, if you PERSONALLY aren’t interested in another blogging platform that takes the good shit from tumblr and LJ and other sites and makes it new and their own then thats fine. But you dont need to spread misinformation to people to discourage them from trying it for themsleves. 

If you just dont want to use it until its ‘busy’ or whatever, then just shut up, take down everyone’s usernames, go to twitter or facebook or club penguin or whatever, and wait. But please stop spreading misinformation.

Also PLEASE 

Hey! Have you heard about Pillowfort.io?

Pillowfort.io is a new blogging website, made by people who grew up on blogging sites like LiveJournal and Tumblr. We wanted to make a user-friendly space on the web for creativity, communication and content-sharing. Pillowfort aims to be a hybrid of Tumblr, Twitter, and LiveJournal–keeping the strengths of these sites while compensating for their weaknesses.

Our goals for Pillowfort are

To build a space for fans and creators alike to share their work

To give users tools to create communities of their own

To encourage a positive and safe environment for all users

Features

The ability to control who can view, reblog, and comment on your posts

Nested comment threads for better dialogue between users

User-created communities for sharing content and meeting others with similar interests

A built-in blacklisting feature, so you can hide posts containing certain keywords and tags

A private messaging feature that lets you build friendships one on one

But you know what’s the best thing about Pillowfort.io? It’s already live and in beta! We’re gearing up to welcome our fourth wave of beta users this Summer and you can sign up for registration here. If you have any questions, check out our FAQ!

We look forward to having you join the party!

Read this post on Pillowfort.io!

Hello everyone! I’m glad to announce that we’ve officially made enough progress on the site that we are now ready to accept the 3rd wave of our beta user registrations, and we will do so on February 4th! You can still sign up to be included, and we will send you an email on the 4th with a link to use to create an account. Thanks for your support and stay tuned!

There seems to be a virus or some sort of malware going around causing blogs to “send out” chat messages to blogs that they follow asking for help with the purchase of certain items through donations of seemingly small amounts using bitcoin and adds a link to the message.

The message goes as following (at least the first message I got went like this): “Hi there buddy. I need help, I’m trying to buy a laptop and I can’t afford it. I’m about 0.36$ short, and I’d really appreciate if you could help me and transfer some money to me via bitcoin using this *link*.”

The small details in the message seems to have a few variations with the greeting, amount and purchased item showing up in different variations from formal to friendly, from 0.016 to 2$ and from a phone case to a laptop among others.

The blogs that are affected send out the messages to blogs that they follow for a long time mostly, so you are most likely to receive the message from a long time, active follower whose name you might recognize or a mutual etc. The blogs that are affected are not spam bots but actual active followers who follow the recipient for months or years and most likely the blogger who “sent” the message is unaware of the message being sent.

DO NOT OPEN THE LINK.

Opening up the link will cause the virus to spread even more and infect your computer/mobile with any sort of malware.

And that just depresses the shit out of me because this means that Nix Hydra isn’t just screwing over fans with their prices, they’re leaving SO MUCH MONEY ON THE TABLE. Like, The Arcana has such a huge and dedicated fanbase! All of this gorgeous fanart is free publicity. They should be embracing this fan culture they have. And I’m sure that if they lowered prices to levels people could actually afford, their fans would love to buy the game!

I also went digging back into the Kickstarter comments because I remembered that, once upon a time, the devs said that the entire route would be $2.99 per character.

So The Arcana’s pricing scheme is exploitative and terrible and I’m astonished nobody is talking about it.

The standard response from the developers is that all of the paid content is ‘optional’, but you know what I want out of my romance game? Romance. 90% of which is paid content.

Also, this assumes I don’t want to pay for the game. Except I do! I backed it on kickstarter! I want to give these people my money. But I also don’t want to be bled dry.

This isn’t even getting into how the kickstarter promised backers the game itself as a reward, then reneged on their promise, offering a paltry $10 refund to make up for it (which will buy you a grant total of 1 chapter for 1 character’s route). 

This kind of business practice hurts other kickstarter projects down the road, because it erodes people’s trust in the platform. A lot of indie otome game devs rely on kickstarter. But my experience with The Arcana has sure made me think twice about supporting any other projects.

The worst thing is I like the Arcana. The art is gorgeous, the characters are fun. I supported it on Kickstarter. I told my friends to support it on Kickstarter. But I can no longer turn a blind eye to how Nyx Hydra seems to be willfully exploiting their fans.

UPDATE: So this is what they posted in response to a fan asking them about this on twitter

So The Arcana’s pricing scheme is exploitative and terrible and I’m astonished nobody is talking about it.

The standard response from the developers is that all of the paid content is ‘optional’, but you know what I want out of my romance game? Romance. 90% of which is paid content.

Also, this assumes I don’t want to pay for the game. Except I do! I backed it on kickstarter! I want to give these people my money. But I also don’t want to be bled dry.

This isn’t even getting into how the kickstarter promised backers the game itself as a reward, then reneged on their promise, offering a paltry $10 refund to make up for it (which will buy you a grant total of 1 chapter for 1 character’s route). 

This kind of business practice hurts other kickstarter projects down the road, because it erodes people’s trust in the platform. A lot of indie otome game devs rely on kickstarter. But my experience with The Arcana has sure made me think twice about supporting any other projects.

As far as I know, there’s no definite amount of books to be released, but let’s say they’re going to fill out all 22 arcana. There have been 5 free prologue chapters, so that leaves 17 books that you have to pay separately for. That would be $10 per book, so $170 per character, and $510 dollars if you want the complete package with all three characters that currently have routes. In addition, there are 3 more characters that may have routes in the future, leading up to a potential $1,020 spent on this visual novel. That is an incredible amount of money to be asking for any game.

As I was typing this, Nix Hydra wrote this response:

Exactly. I blew almost all of the free coins I was given in the beginning on a single paid choice in the prologue because I was under the assumption that you pay once and that’s it, just like every other mobile otome game currently available.

Those 150 coins are gone now and I can’t see that choice ever again unless I fork up another 150.

Every obviously romantic option has been behind a paywall. Every single one. Again, normal/free options usually give you the same basic content, just less direct + no cg. Not paying in The Arcana makes us miss whole scenes (and sometimes multiple choices).

I’d be glad to throw money at this game if it was on the same level as the rest of the games out there, the majority of which have you pay, at most, $30-40 for a whole route.

Heck, I’d be glad to throw money for bonus stuff too, I’d love to have more of these characters.

much of the ableism towards Autistic people doesn’t happen “because we’re Autistic,” it happens because we’re weird.

now consider that… and now consider what some of the most common insults are here on tumblr.

weird, gross, embarrassing, cringeworthy… all insults based on that same idea of “you are different and we don’t like you.” 

and now consider the constant mocking of “just trying to be special” and “Not Like Other Girls™” that is constantly seen on tumblr.

from early childhood, we are taught and conditioned to know that any deviation from the norm will be punished. for Autistic people, who make up a big portion of what is usually thought of as tumblr’s userbase, this conditioning is often increased tenfold by coercive “therapies” such as ABA and Social Thinking. 

the fact that so much of tumblr’s culture is based on strict deviation from the norm– often citing “weird, embarrassing, cringeworthy, just trying to be special” as offenses– is regressive. and as an Autistic person, I would go so far as to say that it is at least somewhat rooted in ableism. 

if you’re Autistic and you do this, especially if you’re a survivor of coercive behavioral and social treatments designed to make you “normal,” please think about why you take part in this treatment of others. I know you’ve been hurt, and overcoming internalized ableism is hard. I’m here to help.

if you’re allistic and you do this, please stop. just stop. we’ve already been through enough.

it’s less “ableism has gone full circle” and more “people are taking the lazy way out and calling harmful things ‘cringey’ and ‘weird’ instead of criticizing why said things are harmful, and while not ableist itself, that attitude is rooted in the same stuff that anti-Autistic ableism is rooted in: an attitude that different = bad and things are bad because they are different.” white nationalist memes aren’t bad because they’re cringey, they’re bad because they spread ideologies that have killed millions of innocent people.

stop feeding your compulsion to actively seek out content that you know is upsetting. 

stop visiting tags that upset you (you should probably blacklist them) 

stop visiting blogs that you’ve blocked, and/or that you know is going to post about stuff that upsets you. 

stop hate reading.