See the shoes in the background? Yeah, that is what drew me in to this photo!
Apparently there are quite a few tumblrs that are posting a metric fuckton of TG/Sissy captions, and some of them are posting ones created by friends of mine, and sometimes mine (I understand I am a niche captioner in many different genres, often silly, so I maybe make a caption a month that each reblogger would find interesting so I don't pop up as often as Simone, Dawn, Zoligomyst or even Caitlyn Masked does with her Obscura posts) and I'm happy with it when I see proper attribution and a link to the original work.
I have no doubt that some of these tumblrs are driving eyeballs to my official blog, and everyone else's too .. but only where there is a direct link to our site .. unlike this post:
http://stormfries.tumblr.com/post/123717648021/captions-from-evil-these-captions-and-comics-are
and this is the problem I have with Tumblr right now .. I am not sure how I would be able to contact this person unless she saw this post. In it, I am mixed in with VIP Captions, Mindy, and a few others I'm not sure of, though I do recognize the style, like forced femme fantasies or Candy .. and none of us has recognition, unless you count the "watermark" some use.
I cannot complain TOO much about stormfries, because I would say 50 percent of her original posts have links, "sort of," If it is a single post, and on tumblr, you can click to see the original. If it isn't from tumblr, then it's just the source (quelle) with only a name, which is often spelled wrong. For instance, I saw a post of two with the attribution bearing "Caitlyn Maks" or "quelle: caitly masks". If we have been around a bit, we know who she meant, but still!
Not everyone does it that way. Femslut21 calls her tumblr "Femslut's Curated Captions" and it IS just that, if there is a blog where it came from, she's got a link right to it. If it's no longer up, like Smitty's old caption blog, she'll mention that as well. But for the shoddier linked ones like the stormfries one above, look at how many times someone liked it, or reblogged it.
It was posted a week ago according to the post, and has 67 "notes" with it being reblogged 20 times .. yes, you read that right, TWENTY times! That means the rest of them are likes, though I think most of the reblogs also liked it. How many more views and comments could be directed towards our original blogs if there were a viable link there for Me, VIP, Mindy, and others?
We need to really be vigilant when viewing captions on Tumblr. We need to praise those like Femslut21 for not only giving attribution, but even going out of her way to ask the viewers when she doesn't know who made it! She posted on May 21st, this, "Unknown author. Helpful pointers to the image board, blog, forum, newsgroup, etc used by the author are welcomed." You can't get any more helpful than that! So when people reblog her post, and they do, all the accreditation still leads you to the source material. That is what we are looking for, just a bit of recognition.
We should also try to keep those using tumblr that aren't posting their own work accountable as well .. acknowledge that there is a creator of the work, and where you can find more of what they do. If you see something made by Katie Mills or Hailey Pixley, draw attention to that fact! Get them to realize that when they help us, we help them by providing more captions for them to post. We don't have to have an adversarial existence. I WANT my captions to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible, and we all want to be promoted, but give us the courtesy of our nom de plume, not like some random Internet Meme to be shuttered from tumbr to tumblr.
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I knew from the start that the caption was going to be for one of these long winded posts as a blog exclusive. I saw the image, and while she's a lovely young lady, and one I don't think most people would mind being changed into, it was blah for me caption wise until I saw all the shoes in the background. I mean, why the hell would there be multiple pairs of shoes outside a school/library? Doesn't really make sense on any level, so my brain invented one that was TG related, and of course was inspired by that "Walk a mile in my shoes" aphorism, and any chance I get to use some of the more notorious conspiracy organizations, why not plug them in there!
They want to control everything, and if they see the world in crisis, they are going to HAVE to do something, right? Even if it is against the master plan, you have to have a society to keep ruling it, and you throw a bone to the masses now and again!
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OK, time to come off the high horse LOL Here is your caption photo for the July DIY Challenge:
This time I am giving you the complete picture too! That way you can set it up with the right sizing if you wish to write more than what usually fits into my setting. Feel free to also manipulate or crop/edit this picture however you want. I will have a setting available for people to place their stories in, but you get a choice! I assume the most likely cut would be the half a girl with the wooden spoon wrapped in a towel, so I am offering the setting in both "with her" and "without her" settings for your caption writing leisure!
Also, you don't have to put ME into the caption. I've noticed that I am often the star of your creations.
Feel free to put yourself in it, or use someone you know as the star. Don't feel the need to make this about me because I am the one putting out the challenge.
The deadline for this is Friday night at midnight PST on July 31st. You can post it to my trading folder in the Haven under the title DIY so I know it is for the challenge. You can also write one up and put it in the comment section of the "Latest DIY" tag right underneath my banner up top, and I'll place your writeup in the caption setting. Looking forward to people's submissions!
This is an issue quite prevalent with tumblr as a whole. People create content, then others will repost without credit. While I doubt I show up much on THAT tumblr (I don't do much hardcore work these days.), I'm sure my stuff shows up somewhere. Sad part is most of my recent work is on tumblr already. All you have to do is hit repost!
ReplyDeleteI briefly considered doing a tumbler for that very reason... so that people could re-post my work to tumbler. If they re-post from a tumbler it will show where it came from. But then I wondered why I would put effort in to help people that are putting almost no effort into our community on their own?
DeleteI only looked at a few Simone. You were properly attributed on Femslut's tumblr, as most everyone is. I "went down the rabbit hole" so to speak on a few that follow or reblogged hers to see what captions and by whom they have tumbl', which is where I found stormfries.
DeleteI hear the lizard people were against this move. But they have Webbed feet and claws so they only like flip flops.
ReplyDeleteI was really pleased when a couple of my own captions were re-posted by gender role reversal and did get a lot of hits back.
Perhaps a retort the re bloggers might reply to us is that we all use other peoples photos without credit in our captions.
I have no idea where to go with the DIY But that's the challenge i guess.
I would reply to them that most of the pictures I use have been modified in some way, cropped, color balanced, adjusted the contrast and brightness, etc .. Caitlyn literally created entirely new works out of the original pictures, On the other side, all the plots and words were created by me, along with the whole aesthetic and gestalt of the completed and merged work. Many of the tumblrs reprint entire stories too,
DeleteGlad that you think the July DIY will be challenging. That was the point this month, to give something that made you think a bit more, but was sill fun to look at. I figured that hypnosis was a possible route considering the look in her eyes and the reaction of her face. The penis drawn down below also gives you something to work with!
I do agree the photo is just the teaser for the main written part. and as you say the photos are often re created. And yes i would feel hard done by if the work was not credited to me at least.
Deletei guess its the web as a whole music films photos etc etc are all used without payment or credit. not really sure what we can do about it other than logo each caption.
Ah, how many of us have already walked in someone else's shoes, may it be the mother's, sister's or girlfriends shoes.
ReplyDeleteThe point you make here is a valid, but difficult one. I do agree with you, that you should get credit for your work, as should every other capper for theirs, and indeed Tumblr makes it very easy to repost the works of others, without giving credit to the originals.
This, and the point Ian raises about the source pictures are two very important reasons to be very reluctant about posting outside the Haven, to start my own blog. Basically, the only caps of me outside the Haven are your DIY's.
In the end everybody wants recognition, the photographer, the capper and even the people who repost the works of others. The sad part is, that somewhere down the line it's hard to retrace the steps back to the origin, and others get the credit.
While a link to the source would be great, I guess the people who repost anything just want to say, WOW, THIS IS GREAT! At least that is what I want say when I use a picture for my caps.
I will note that stormfries is a Havenite and he did repost a number of my Tumbler posts which in turn increased my Tumblr following because people tracked back to me I've done the same on a number of blogs to follow the original. As long as no-one claims that they made the caps themselves I don't get bothered because they're not making money off me. It's not quite as bad as individuals who stel stories off off Amazon and then publish them on Amazon for money. That's a whole different level.
ReplyDelete