Tumblrpon Retrospective: 1-16/16 “The Shared History”
First and foremost, let me get this out of the way: I’m not leaving. This is not a goodbye message, this is marking the end of the Great Draft Dump with a look back upon my time in Tumblrpon. This will be a very long post, hence the pagebreak.
Comic sprites commissioned from @darkfiretaimatsu Final art commissioned from @askmovieslate Background vectors by BonesWolbach Editing by me
Credits for each drawblog are after the page cut.
A long time ago, I had a saying. “Ten days online is like a year IRL.” What I meant by that is that so much stuff happens online and so quickly that if you go away for a couple weeks and come back, things may look completely different. Just think of the addition of ‘blorbo’ to Tumblr vocabulary, for instance. My point is, on that measure, I’ve been a part of Tumblrpon for 408 Fyears (Fandom years). Considering the oldest trace of Tumblrpon we could find is 415 Fyears old and the show itself is 438 Fyears old, it’s safe to say I’ve been around for a while. And, like any old dragon, I've lived through a lot and got some stories to tell.
The Beginning
When I started, Tumblrpon was small, but vibrant. There were drawblogs, indeed; the First, Applebloom; the Drunkard, Berry Pnuch; the Musician; Octavia, and surely others I have forgotten. In these very early days, Tumblrpon was mostly roleplayers. Among them, the Second Queens, the Lawlicorn Diarchy. This was the age of magic anons, of KA-THINGY spells and the invention of the word ‘ponification’. Aside from the drawblogs, here I have remembered some of the more prominent roleplayers of the era, many of whom were, and are, my dear friends. Many of them are still roleplaying in the depths of Tumblrpon, long since overshadowed by drawblogs. I still think they’re the core of Tumblrpon, though; more on that later.
Eventually, however, one drawblog would appear that would change everything. Easily the most influential Tumblrpon drawblog of all time, and perhaps the most deserving of the title Queen of Tumblrpon. The Third Queen, Pinkamena. Before her entry, grimdark elements like Cupcakes and Scootabuse were frowned upon, even hated. Pinkamena rose up and destroyed that barrier. She was by far the best-drawn drawblog up to that point, and pulled no punches when it came to blood and gore. And in doing this, she became famous outside of Tumblrpon. Her art spread to Ponibooru and other pony outlets online, and seeing what she was doing here brought many, many, many other artists to Tumblrpon. She arrived 3 days before me, and within a year of her arrival there would be hundreds of drawblogs. Her presence was brief, but her influence ever-lasting. This was the beginning of our finest era.
The Golden Age
Over the next few years, Tumblrpon thrived. This was also the golden era of the fandom as a whole, the period from Season 2 to roughly 6 or 7. With every new episode, drawblogs would pop up out of the woodwork. With each new character, multiple drawblogs would appear, often with variants. Tumblrpon-wide memes happened; Misty’s Hoodie, Rainbow Chubbie, Yellow vs Blue Pegasi, Ghost Trixie’s Memorial and the Somboom were but a few of them. Collab drawblogs appeared that were simply ‘put all the drawblogs of this one character in the same house’. I went to my first Bronycon (thanks to a charity drive by my Tumblrpon artist friends) and was part of the first of many Tumblrpon panels, through which we brought even more artists into our community. In the midst of all this, I jokingly called Raikissu the Queen of Tumblrpon, and it ended up turning into a massive injoke among our group of friends (which, because it included a lot of influential drawblogs, turned it into a Tumblrpon-wide injoke). They're the only one who really got to experience that title, making them the Fourth Queen. They were also the last, since eventually people didn’t realize it was a joke and started getting uptight at them about it.
As for me, running Fisherpon was a lot of work. I had separate categories of tags that I would search through, some daily, some weekly, some monthly and some yearly, and I would fully tag and put everything into the queue. I had to make a second Tumblr account and move Fisherpon to a secondary blog so I could bypass the 300/day post limit to handle all the content! But it was too much, and eventually I burnt out. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I think it was sometime in 2016. After that point, I stopped trawling the tags as much. I was following most of Tumblrpon (often running into the following limit of 5000 blogs), and through them I often saw new drawblogs (which I reblogged) and good pony art (which I tossed into the drafts, for when I’d eventually get around to processing it). Most of my blog’s activity turned into liveblogging new episodes, and Tumblrpon itself left its growth phase and plateaued.
Bit of a side note: In early 2017, a very dear member of the community passed away. He’d been there since the beginning, had one of the most unique ‘draw’ blogs, and was a close friend to a lot of us. Despite not liking alcohol myself, I still raise a toast in his honor on every anniversary of his passing. I still miss you, Rusty. You wise old bastard.
Anyhow, on to the most prominent event in Tumblr’s history:
The Purge
When the news dropped, I was travelling abroad in Korea so I wasn’t watching Tumblrpon closely. However, when all my Discord groups exploded, it was pretty hard to ignore. I feared that it would be the end of Tumblrpon as a whole, and wrote a dissertation about Tumblrpon’s history and my memories from the site. That goes into more detail on my origin story, if you’re interested in that.
And, as I expected, it did a lot of damage. Many drawblogs that were already on hiatus used it to justify finally ending their blogs, and a lot of ones that were active found themselves struck out of the sky by a stupid bot that couldn’t recognize boobs if it motorboated them. Tumblr gained a reputation as being unfriendly to artists, especially for those grimdark and risque artists Pinkamena had attracted to Tumblrpon in the first place. I’ve heard that roughly 30% of the site’s users left entirely, and in no place was it more obvious than my dashboard. Despite following thousands of accounts, there were and are days where I catch up on my dashboard to where I was the previous day and have to wait for new posts to appear. That would never have happened back in the Golden Age. Tumblrpon had already been slowly declining, but watching Tumblr shoot its foot off and strangle Tumblrpon (among other fandoms) was very depressing and radicalizing.
However, despite the purge, Tumblrpon lived on. There was talk of migrating to Pillowfort, NewTumbl or Mastodon, but they never caught on well enough to seriously shift the userbase. Despite everything, some new drawblogs popped up, and some of the old drawblogs that survived the purge kept on ticking and gained new prominence (or were simply no longer overshadowed) among the ruins. Things clearly would never be the same, and yet not everything had been lost. It was reassuring, in a way.
Meanwhile, outside of Tumblr, another great star was nearing the end of its life. The show itself, our source of fuel. It whose whims had given birth to thousands of drawblogs during the Golden Age, and whose fancies had caused no end of trouble for drawblogs whose canon counterparts went through big changes (cough Twilicorn cough). Nothing can last forever, and Season 9 would be the last season. Generation 5 was still at least a couple years away, so I decided to finally lower my standards and bring myself to post pony art without proper tags. I know, it sounds silly now, but I took great pride in my post organization and it took a lot of willpower to override that. I made a post telling people about my plans for the Great Draft Dump and started posting again, dripfeeding Tumblrpon with a post (almost) every hour from my reserves.
The Present
And now, here we are. A year past my original ending estimation and a couple weeks short of 3 years since it began. I could have pushed it to 3 years, but today is also the 12th anniversary of the very first episode that started it all so I figured this would be a better ending point.
Tumblrpon is still recovering from the Purge. They’ve dialed back the bot, and that combined with Twitter imploding (or something?) has helped bring artists back to some degree (or perhaps it’s due to COVID stuffing everyone inside), but there’s still a long way to go. We have new horse content again, and while it doesn’t seem to have the same spark G4 had it has breathed some new life into the fandom which is nice to see. There’s even been a handful of G5 drawblogs that have appeared, even though we still don’t seem to have any for Zipp or Hitch which is weird (especially in comparison to the dozens of drawblogs each Mane 6 member had back in the day). And yet, I’m still reminded of times long past. With most of the drawblogs gone, a lot of the activity on my dash is made of roleplayers once again. They’re not the same roleplayers as back in Oldest Tumblrpon, of course, but I feel as long as they continue roleplaying and interacting with each other Tumblrpon will never truly die.
And that is my history lesson. They may not be aware of it, but the new generation of drawblogs and roleplayers carry on a 415-Fyear-old legacy, part of which I’ve included in this comic. Just as we were Tumblrpon, so are you. To every blogger who ever drew a pony answering a question, and to every roleplayer who by interacting with others helped knit Tumblrpon together, I am deeply grateful. Undoubtedly, in the making of this comic I’ve forgotten ponies who should have been included, and to those I deeply apologize as well.
As for me? I’ll still be here. Ever-watching, ever-promoting, though perhaps not as much as I used to. The tanks are dry now, and everything I post will be from the present rather than the past. I’ll probably just toss it all into the queue and have it post whatever it gets a few times a day. Thanks to Tumblrpon, I gained a lot of horse friends, and it’s always great fun meeting up with them at conventions or hanging out with them in my personal Discord server (the Tumblrpon Block Party). If you made it all the way to the end of my tale and you want an invite to it, or if you have a new drawblog you want me to promote, or if you just want to chat, feel free to message me. After all, like I said at the beginning:
I’m not leaving.
Blogs featured in the comic (Queens bolded): Again, if I forgot you, my apologies. My memory’s far from perfect and there’s only so much space on the billboard.
Beginning (Panel 2): @askapplebloom-blog (archive of the original one) @vindicarthehippogriff @faithful-student @rainbowdash-answers @askberrypnuch @askrustynail (RIP. Survived by @techmomma) @askoctavia @ask-reginald-dragon @asklyra @queenfrau @draggity @ask-nightmaremoon @mythic-swirl @trollestiaanswers-blog-blog @stilllunaanswers
Early Golden Age (Panel 3): @askpinkaminadianepie @askmlcblobs @ask-doctorcolgate @ask-sadistic-rarity @ask-dr-adorable @thetalesofwildcard @askterry @asklittlepip @askhotbloodedpinkie @ask-misty-wonderbolt-blog-blog @raindropsanswers @ask-sapphire-eye-rarity @askprincessmolestia @askcharliefoxtrot @junes-pony @askfluttershyandpinkiepie @spittfire @asksirlintalot @ask-glittershell @ponyhawkesho @askdeadrainbowdash @askpiratedash @askvelvet @askstonedtrixie @asksurprisearchive (archive of the original one) @ask-jappleack @askspirit @sweetiebotreplies @askthenightguards @ask-grimdark-bigmac @askpalette-swap @just-flutterguy-replies @susie-queen-of-the-vampireponies @seaponyluna @askbadbloom @askmeaniebelle @ask-scootabot (sequel to the original)
Late Golden Age (Panel 5-7): @raikissu @vocationaldeathcruise (Somehow, this is still up) @askstalkerloo @asklaura-and-naki @outofworkderpy @ask-dinky-dawberry-doo @ask-doctor-dimension @ask-cyberpunkspitfire @ask-thaumaturge-pony @luna-afterdark @ask-dolly @askmovieslate @cmcnext @thehorsewife @askflufflepuff @questionpinkamena @lilmissrarity @fiddlesticks-archives-blog @darkfiretaimatsu @askfirestarterspitfire @fristart @under-renewal (Ask the CMC) @ask-acepony @pinkiepiesolutions @askshinytheslime @reversal-mushroom @askpun @askloona @ask-de-writer @askresearchertwilight @ask-king-sombra (Somboom reflected in window) @ask-fillytwilight (has since been taken over by a russian pornbot) @ask-ikea-pony @askbananapie @askseriousrainbow @motherlyscootaloo @butters-the-alicorn @thecoopontlc (the first collab drawblog) @ask-canterlot-musicians
Post-Purge (Panel 11): @rainbowdashsmailbagthings @thelunararmy @aerialaim @whirlwindflux @ask-louvely @unlocktheaskblog @adorkabletwilightandfriends @askburningstream @glimglamandpals
Now (Panel 13): @askalbinopie (Fellow Keeper of the Past, except that they also have the art skills to do it justice. If Rai hadn’t abdicated and killed off the Queen system, I’d prolly make Alby the 5th for their art skills and their understanding of our history.) @askjetstream @questionthedoctor @twila-bloggin @ask-izzy-moonbow @askquartzandcord @askdrunktwilight @darkreplies @sunny-and-sparkle @ask-narratordoe @ask-pippamena (What did I say earlier? Pinkamena’s legacy lives on.) @asklostcelestia @a-spoonful-o-generosity @askcharmingshadow @ask-shutter-ghost Here’s a funky fact for those of you who came alllllll the way down here. In late 2011/early 2012, right when Tumblrpon started expanding, there was a lot of Homestuck on my dash as it was still updating at the time. Because of that, I have approximate knowledge of many parts of the mid-to-late part of Homestuck, and also because of it I considered opening up a second Fisher blog for Homestuck material. Fisherstuck. Who knows how things would be today had I done that? Who knows....
