only here to answer stuff

like,

on chicken smoothie, all customs are a gift from the site owner to the user. this doesn’t mean that the owner plays favorites and gifts whoever she thinks has the best takes or is the funniest or kisses her ass the hardest - rather, most of them are gifts to long-time, dedicated staff (who are not paid rlc) as a thank you for helping with the site. the only exception i know of is that Very early in the site’s career, she gifted a custom to a close friend who played. all other custom recipients are current staff or retired staff.

customs are one copy only. they are tradeable, but they cannot be duplicated at all. that means that if an owner chooses to trade their custom, they are giving up their only copy. as such, one cannot get rich off of repeatedly selling or trading copies of their custom. i suppose you could get some quite good pets if you were willing to part with your custom, BUT that copy is your one and only, so you have to be ready to accept the possibility of never getting it back.

because of these two factors, almost all players understand they will never own customs. brand new, often young players have historically gone through phases where they asked around to see what it would take to get copies, but they are quickly pointed in the direction of multiple confirmations from staff that all customs are thank you gifts for site service and cannot be requested by random users. cs has at times hosted a fairly young user base, so it’s not unheard of to see a thread of a user begging for their own custom, but even the kids learn this fantasy is completely in vain. some may resolve to become staff to get a custom, but of course, you have to wait until applications are open, you have to qualify in the first place (i.e. be 18+ for most positions, not to mention have site experience), you have to be picked by admins, and then you actually have to do a lot of work for the site. even after all of that, customs are not guaranteed to all staff, they are not promised to any particular staff members, there is no timeline for when the owner has to gift someone a custom, and there’s a chance you could go through your time as staff and retire without ever getting one. so, needless to say, most people see it as an unrealistic goal and move on to pursuing obtainable goals.

because customs cannot be duplicated, there is no organized custom economy. custom trades are exceedingly rare and usually only done when the original owner wants to leave the site and cross-trades for valuables on another site, or when the original owner starts to dislike the design and wants to get rid of their custom. when a custom does change owners, in fact, it’s usually because the custom is taking a “vacation” with a new owner (the original owner sent them as a temporary gift to a friend to dress up and hold onto for a bit, with the understanding that the person will send the pet back) or because the original owner gifted their custom to someone else. there is no organized way to track this, but i would guess that less than one true custom trade a year takes place. 

there is no gacha system associated with customs. in fact, there is no gambling mechanism on the site at all. anywhere.

as a result of all of the above, there is virtually no custom discourse.

tl;dr no, dv’s “customs are personal commissions i can use to GET RICH and i deserve FULL CONTROL OVER” culture does not come from chicken smoothie. cs has a lot of problems, but its custom culture is honestly relatively healthy and fair.

some people unfamiliar with the site culture might be like “but isn’t it sad/unfair/discouraging that regular users can Never hope to achieve customs?” but the answer is that people on cs don’t see it that way because it’s understood from the start that customs can’t be “aspired to,” and because decisions about who gets customs and who doesn’t are based off of the staff member’s hard work and the genuine gratitude of the site owner, rather than being based off of 1) who’s rich enough to throw resources into the void and 2) which of those people gets lucky. anyone can get jealous ofc but people generally like seeing those who work hard and help the community be gifted, whereas it’s very discouraging as a “typical” player to see someone win a prize because they’re richer than you could ever hope to be and they had an advantage over you.

Because it seems like there’s some miscommunication or misunderstandings going on, and I’d like to clear them up.

I want to say that I’m not emotionally invested in any of this, so I’m not upset in the slightest, but I believe it’s valid for you to feel upset, sad, etc. because of anything I’ve said. After all, we can’t help how we feel. I do sincerely apologize and want to emphasize that nothing I’ve said is really personal. Hopefully I can ease some of your worries by explaining my thought process & intentions.

I want to add I did NOT send the ask accusing Has30 and Ch1 of being pro-block evasion. I am not sure if that was sent by someone who agreed with me that my original ask should not have been deleted or by someone who DISagreed and wanted to post bait by using similar wording to one of my asks to make my points look ridiculous.

[Link to the mentioned ask.] I actually never assumed you were the same anon, but it’s nice to have confirmation anyway. Thanks for clearing that up! You’re all anonymous, so I know it’s impossible to know who sent in what ask.

For anons, it seems there’s often a personal attachment to the asks you submit. On the other hand, most named commenters only respond to the text rather than “you.” I’ve talked about this here: PSA @ anons of the blog. When I respond, I am reacting to the “text prompt” rather than any single individual as your anonymity obscures your identity and makes it impossible to see anons as individuals. I genuinely always hope that my words are not taken personally. Additionally, I’m in a more vulnerable position because I’m easy to identify and target, but I’m also glad that this has helped me engage in candid discussions with you guys.

Ch1, I appreciate your clarification that you didn't see the original ask. But if I can be honest, and this isn't just towards you, but towards all frequent commenters, this is why I think users should try to look at the full story before accusing anons of "harassment," which is the word you used to describe my ask (that you hadn't even seen! based only on the fact that you knew it contained the word "asshole!"). Like I said, I'm not the anon you were replying to with that post, but I do have to admit that it was frustrating and hurtful to be accused of "harassment" based off of one true post, that you had not read, and no one could go back and read, because Mod Yoshi deleted it.

No problem, and I think I can see why you felt hurt. I do apologize for upsetting you.

FWIW, the anon (which I dub ”anon #2″) who accused your ask of containing inflammatory language never mentioned anything about the block evasion. At the time, it was reasonable for me to believe that your original ask only served to disparage someone who’s so often targeted on this blog, because that was what anon #2′s ask and mod responses to anon #2 indicated. (Anon #2′s ask was unfortunately also deleted, so I have no way of linking you to it.)

Just to clarify my intentions, I didn’t zero in on your deleted ask alone to conclude that there’s harassment. It’s been a trend since volkconfessions. Here are my comments that I presume you’re referring to:

i’m going to guess it’s because of the harassment. i also had to have 2 past threads deleted because of malicious users/anons

[Link to the ask I responded to.] 

no one is equating constructive criticism with harassment. it is harassment to continually target someone with insults/namecalls, such as calling v10 an ‘asshole’ and so forth. the most inflammatory asks have been deleted by this point, but we’ve seen this repeated over the months

[Link to the ask I responded to.]

I’ve surmised it’s the fact that I mentioned the “asshole” part that it looks like I targeted your deleted ask. That was never my intention (although I did believe your deleted ask was only namecalling...because that’s the only context we were given before “anon #2″’s ask was also deleted).

The search function on tumblr is abysmal so giving examples is difficult, but the asks about him would range from openly hostile to insidious (i.e., looks innocuous but they’re spiteful without giving reason):

And FUCK V1o for openly saying DV should cater to the rich users. V1o is the worst custom owner of them all

[Link to the ask and my reblog.]

vi0 was absolutely the wrong person to lead this custom discussion.

[Link to the ask.]

I speak up out of principle (but I don’t do this blindly...I won’t defend block evasion and the like, and I never have), and I’ve gone into some of my reasons for why in this reblog if you’re interested, though most of it talks about my own experiences with harassment from two unspecified custom owners.

user may be a scammer? Here’s the proof… what do you guys think?” and even then the comments will accuse you of having an unhealthy obsession with stalking the user. You can’t say “User’s custom prices are ridiculous,” you have to say “Erm, as a disabled full time worker full time college student with seven kids, it makes me a wee bit sad to see customs selling for 900MP. But I understand it’s nobody’s fault but staff’s, and staff are trying their best.” I’m not even confident I could criticize the person who openly practiced zoophilia with their unconsenting dog without having to be overly gentle. I know you guys are trying to prevent harassment and I appreciate it a lot, but I don’t think this is sustainable. It’s wrong to delete informative asks because their wording is harsh but true. It’s wrong to police people’s language past the point of disallowing slurs or threats or violence. I am growing very uncomfortable with the tone policing here. And I don’t know what to do, because an uncensored salt blog would likely be worse.

seriously not saying any of this because i’m trying to dictate the tone of the salt blog, but just to get my rambling thoughts out here:

i squarely place the blame on the dv staff (more specifically, the devs that built this system) rather than the custom owners, because i find blaming the owners to be an unproductive use of my time and energy.

the "us vs them" mentality causes division in the userbase, when IMO we should be working together. the only ones capable of changing the system are the devs, and they need to feel the pressure from all sides.

i think the "mean/jealous users bullying the custom owners" is a convenient scapegoat for admin. "why re-evaluate this flawed system when the issue lies in the entitled players!"

i hope they realize: when one user is upset, that user is wrong. when hundreds of users are upset, the system is wrong.

anyway, these threads are typically formed in the dv & lore forum, so i was following tradition™

so here it is: "need communication (drop rate, balancing, etc.)"

i'll drop the screenshots of my OP and replies later in the notes of this ask so you'll have the full context of the thread.

🌿 i won’t unblock those users.

🌿 i will continue to update when necessary. tried my best labeling these in chronological order & indicating the page that each post landed on.

Okay so back in 2020 someone went “hey golem is a thing tied to jewishness, I know it’s a fantasy trope, but i want to ask jewish people on here: is it okay?” And like everything on a petsite that even remotely suggests changing names, art, or anything associated with a marginalized population, the playerbase blew the hell up and yowled to the heavens that IT’S FINE, IT’S ALL FINE, IT’S NOT APPROPRIATION. Even if, you know, those people weren’t jewish. One person even went on to a jewish reddit to cherry pick some answers. Because please note how someone says:

“ HOWEVER - are the people in this debate who are claiming appropriation Jewish?  If so, I think it’s probably more important to listen to them than to us because: a) they have more context than we do, b) if they’re involved with this game’s community, then their feelings and inclusion are important and c) it’s pretty shitty to keep going around and asking Jews the same question until you get the answer you wanted.“

and our dear cherrypicking user gleefully ignores that shit and popped back into the dv thread to go SEE YOU GUYS I WAS RIGHT. because I bet that group might have responded differently if that user had been upfront and gone “hey yo I’m a massive goy and i’ve been stirring shit in this forum thread, including telling a Jew that they shouldn’t be offended, am i right here?”

because there were jews in that thread, and some were upset. Honestly it seemed like they were more upset that staff hadn’t come in to go “oh yeah shit you’re right this could be a problem” OR “hey all, perhaps let’s not talk over marginalized people here? mmkay? like let’s have a basic fucking civil thread.”

Eventually it got locked/deleted, and nothing was done about it, iirc.

Like all messy wanks, some splashback happened on the old salt blog and you can see it here:

https://volkconfessions.tumblr.com/post/623533052076949504/as-much-as-i-like-visindys-design-theyre-called

https://volkconfessions.tumblr.com/post/623750228370145280/why-is-religion-brought-in-this-so-what-visindy

https://volkconfessions.tumblr.com/post/623803082679189504/azuel-zorro-you-can-literally-just-fucking-google

https://volkconfessions.tumblr.com/post/624031210328522752/apologies-for-just-submitting-something-and-then

https://volkconfessions.tumblr.com/post/624037251572219904/wait-are-people-really-mad-a-character-is-called

It even landed on another blog entirely:

https://goatlingsdrama.tumblr.com/post/623696120834621440/i-hope-u-find-something-that-does-interest-you

By comparison, when flight rising got some feedbck that the Nagas were a being from Hindu religion, they uh… [checks notes]

CHANGED THE GODDAMN NAMES.

people complained for all of a hot second, and then moved the fuck on with their lives. Why this is so hard for Anji is pretty dang simple: her ass can’t ever be fuckin’ wrong it seems.

You CAN do both but be upfront on it, and be cool with it if people reasonably consider that to be a conflict of interest.

Because I was the thread creator of the self-deleted "custom owners survey," I think a few people might've felt offended on my behalf. You're allowed to form your own opinions—after all, I don't know anything about your experiences—but I'd feel bad if I didn't try to clarify some things.

V*o's comment in that thread wasn't directed at me or any specific user. As someone who's so often watched, scrutinized, or harassed by a faceless group of users, I don't think it's unfair of him to express some amount of frustration or ire, even if that means yelling into the wind. His comment was preemptively defensive because of the harassment he's received before. He wasn't berating me or implying anything negative about me for publishing the custom owner survey.

V*o and I are on good terms. We're not close, though most of our conversations do happen in private; fortunately I get to see the nuances of his responses. From what I see, he's not a bad person. He might clash with some people on the forums, but imo online/text-based communication is prime for conflict. It takes a lot of patience and benefit of the doubt to reach a mutual understanding. It's far easier to jump to anger, offense, and resentment... I understand that well enough because I often struggle with dealing with perceivably negative interactions.

When the survey was still live, I was separately contacted by two custom owners. [They're friends with one another, so I assumed (although there's no real evidence) that they coordinated this, especially since their messages were sent one right after the other. Neither one ever participated in the survey thread, and I think I'd only ever spoken to either of them once or twice before all of this went down, so I didn't really know them and vice versa.]

In their lengthy, intensely peer pressure-y messages, they opined that the survey is terrible for custom owners.

The first complaining custom owner uncompromisingly urged a total shutdown of the thread because, they reasoned, "the survey was started on a drama blog," thus it's inherently bad for custom owners who're already scrutinized on here. [This was where I asked Mod Egg for help. It was agreed that all asks about the survey would not be published on this blog in a genuine attempt to protect all of the survey responders.]

The first complaining custom owner also wanted me to publicize on DV that the survey's "created for and by a drama blog" so other custom owners would be fully informed of what they're getting into. [In fairness to myself, I would've made a survey regardless of this blog (as I've made surveys before). I can only imagine I'd be inviting harassment or the ban hammer to myself if I made the disclaimer that custom owner wanted me to make. So I didn't make the disclaimer. Almost predictably, I was harassed/threatened, but at least I wasn't banned.]

The second complaining custom owner dissected the survey, stating they must let me know why no custom owners will answer this survey and why they don't support the thread, and then sent me a list of (imho interpretively bad faith) questions.

I was overwhelmed because I felt dogpiled with no real escape since this was happening in private (and the first custom owner just wouldn't let the subject go), and of course there were the disgruntled anons on here.

Because I was already dealing with the first custom owner (who is friends with the second custom owner), I sent the second custom owner much of the same response regarding the agreement reached with Mod Egg and my intentions for the custom owner survey thread.

The second owner sent me this:

"I have deliberately chosen not to know about/ consume content from offsite blogs ever since I quit tumblr many moons ago. The fact that you interact directly with such a blog and are in a position to influence the moderator frankly astounds me, and I think I understand a bit better now why you feel it's justified to - put bluntly - put custom owners on display, especially if you have what feels like the support of an authority figure (I do not recognise the moderator of an offsite blog as such, but I can see why someone else might), and I presume a school of anons cheering you on.

I am now really hoping that I have not been mentioned on that blog in any affiliation to this survey. I don't dare to look. 

I think it's best that we cease interacting for a while. I felt uneasy at the start, and it seems like letting you know about it has just made the feeling worse. Again I want to emphasize I believe your intentions are good, I'm just going to not participate socially on DV until this all goes away."

To be honest, I think this message crushed me more than all of the targeted comments I received on here.

There was the implication that I must be immoral and have some level of control (??) over these confession/salt blogs because I'm present on here. Keeping in mind the first custom owner (who's friends with the second custom owner) also reads, if not interacts, with the blog, I see it as an unfair assertion. How many users have come here to defend themselves or their friends? Throwaway-chi began because I was repeatedly dragged on volkconfessions. I think I have a right to defend myself. I then remained on this account to keep myself accountable, meaning nothing I say is published on anon (I solely do this for my sake; because I constantly feel burdened by guilt, I wanted to do this for my own integrity), and what I say here is not inhibited by DV-enforced rules, meaning I can express my thoughts relatively unfiltered.

Besides that, it's disheartening because I did like and respect that custom owner and only had nice things to say about them. About both of them.

I did block those two because I couldn't see any way for our acquaintanceship(?) to recover, and I think it didn't help that I couldn't tell who was sending those targeted hateful, death threat-y, spiteful anonymous submissions. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I also have to protect myself.

I won't name the two custom owners because I think they're only guilty of making me sad and stressed. Those aren't crimes. I'm sure they're nice to other users and they're unproblematic enough that they're never mentioned on here afaik.

A lot happens in private, whether good or bad. I have nothing against custom owners as a whole because the vast majority of the ones who've chatted with me have been very kind and understanding. That includes the owners who're often negatively namedropped here. IMO, they're the most misunderstood of the bunch solely because they're the most vocal.

I have my regrets with how the survey caused some people grief, and I'm especially sorry to Mod Egg who was only trying to help.

All in all, I hope this sheds some light on that situation since some anons demanded answers which I felt I couldn't give because I wanted to protect the identity of the aforementioned two custom owners who complained to me in private.

At the time, I couldn't reveal much because I felt stuck. (Guilt-tripped. Pressured to delete the thread. Pressured to keep the thread.)

we take turns planting, watering, possibly weeding, and harvesting. bearnard can be the npc that sells the seeds.

there can be a low chance of obtaining potatoes & turnips or something rare/special from the garden.

every day we check in to see how the plants are doing. on the forums, we can coordinate the gardening effort.

on a more complex level, it'd be cool if we can do plant breeding projects so there'd be surprises & variety. times of the day & where the plants are planted affect how they grow, too.

the plants may be useful in recipes (to create plant-based pets, clothing, and other items).

i suspect it's very possible that people send "false" asks to agitate the other side, and it might be more commonplace than i think.

possible example: someone (anti-custom) posing as a pro-custom anon & sending in asks attacking me (anti-custom but sympathetic to custom owners) in order to frame the pro-custom side as toxic/antagonistic.

(hopefully that makes sense. it also only takes one very bored person to pose as a massive group of anons.)

whenever i read an outrageous ask, i always wonder how likely is it that someone is doing this to stir the pot / manufacture animosity, rather than posting what they actually believe. it's a lot like the disinformation war and astroturfing we're seeing outside.

just weirdly pathetic that it's happening to a blog about a pet/avatar site where we play dress-up and stare at static pet pngs, lol

i requested this due to the harassment/attacks, to the extent of someone wishing cancer on me. not a battle worth fighting and tbh this is not the memory i'd like to leave with when i quit dv.

i do feel bad that there are people who poured much of their time & effort into their responses only for the thread to be so short-lived, so i have screencapped the threads before their deletion just in case those who've contributed to the threads want to have them.

i will individually reach out to the custom owners and others who responded in the custom owner survey threads as soon as i can.

thanks and sorry to those who didn't do anything wrong, mod egg included. 🥚 you did your best.