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possumbreath · 7 months
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And here are my pieces for Trouble, on their own!
I had a blast working on this and using it as an excuse to stretch my background and coloring muscles. Also special shoutout to @fordtato who came up with the original concept for the polaroid pictures; I just delivered on their idea! Thirty years may pass but Stanford Pines will be the same idiot annoying the same dragon. Mans is consistent.
If you're here from Trouble, I don't actually post on Tumblr much! If you want to see more of my work more often, I'd check out my Youtube instead (also Possumbreath).
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possumbreath · 7 months
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Guess what lads, this project is finally complete! It came out absolutely fabulous and it was so cool watching everybody's process working on it and getting to know them in the Discord.
So delighted I got to be a part of this <3
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And here it is at last! The Gravity Falls Multi-Artist Lyric Comic tribute to the Stan Twins, "Trouble"!
Stay tuned, as @stariousfalls is working on making all of this into a video version. That will be coming along in the next few weeks!
And of course, Happy Birthday to Dipper and Mabel! (Even if this project was Grunkles-centric, Stan and Ford's stories wouldn't have come to such a heart-warming resolution if it wasn't for their niblings. Credit where it's due!)
Some credits and acknowledgements below the read-more:
(I'll have remarks and thanks in another post; but for now, thank you SO MUCH TO EVERYONE who worked on this and made it spectacular!)
CREDITS:
Polaroid Collage One: elishevart, zephrunsimperium, pinkplatiploo, mother-ofthe-universedraws, fordtato, shadeartstuff, creativepup, skysdrawings
I've been a beggar: lemonfodrizzleart
And I've been a king: kingsofjersey
I've been a loner: muria-art
And I've worn the ring: everlight_283 (instagram)
Losing myself: batman-gif
Just to find me again: tazmiily & gin-juice-tonic
I'm a million miles smarter: eregyrn-falls-art & stephreynaart
But I ain't learned a thing: annakitsun3
I've been a teacher: gobblewanker
And a student of hurt: skysdrawings
I kept my word: orangephoenix6
For whatever that's worth: mother-ofthe-universedraws
Never been last: jackyjackdraws
But I've never been first: jasmine-sketchbook
Oh I may not be the best: stephreynaart
But I'm far from the worst: spectralreplica
Oh I may not be the best: elishevart
But I'm far from the worst: zkyeline
Oh, I've seen trouble: fexiled / fexalted
More than any man should bear: mischieflily
But I've seen enough joy: ginandshattereddreams
I've had more than my share: gin-juice-tonic
And I'm still not done: morcian-draws
I'm only halfway there: jamesfenimoreharper
I'm a million miles ahead of where I'm from: fordtato
But there's still another million miles to come: deerpines, orangephoenix6 & fordtato
Polaroid Collage Two: creativepup, cbmagus49, inkdrawndreamer, bluefrostyy, mother-ofthe-universedraws, fordtato, bewildred-grimsley, shadeartstuff, alphazed
Oh I keep on searching for the City of Gold: vililae
So I'm gonna follow this yellow brick road: cbmagus49
Thinking that maybe it might lead me on: cutebatart
I'm a million miles farther: hellmandraws
And a long way from home: eregyrn-falls-art
I know that there's a plan that goes way beyond mine: possumbreath
Got to step back just to see the design: pottersfieldcustodian
The mind fears the heart: rechoclo
But the heart doesn't mind: novantinuum
Oh I may not be perfect: tazmiily
But I'm loving this life: hubbabubbagumpop
Oh I may not be perfect: athgalla-arts
But I'm loving this life: thisiswhereidraw
Oh I've seen trouble: purblzart
More than any man should bear: shadowofaghost5
But I've seen enough joy: alextwdgf01 & fordtato
I've had more than my share: dragonsheepstudios
And I'm still not done: acetyzias & stephreynaart
I'm only halfway there: cryptidjeepers
I'm a million miles ahead of where I'm from: chiiroptereh
But there's still another million miles to come: stephreynaart
Polaroids Collage Three: cbmagus49; fordsy; fordtato; puppylove24680; sciencevillain; lemonfodrizzleart; mother-ofthe-universedraws; possumbreath
Polaroids Collage Four: jamesfenimoreharper; gin-juice-tonic; rusted-blue; shadowofaghost5; cutebatart; possumbreath; fordtato; nour386
Polaroids Collage Five: fordtato; pinestwinssimp; tazmiilly; melodramaticwolf; eregyrn-falls-art
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possumbreath · 8 months
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after inputting some complex algorithms into my super computer i’ve determined what tumblr will look like in the year 2020
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possumbreath · 8 months
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cake is such an underappreciated band. i can’t believe we brought back low rise flare jeans before we brought back cake in the top 40
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possumbreath · 8 months
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i wanna draw my fursona more so i'm trying to figure out her shapes and details...
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possumbreath · 9 months
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i genuinely dont care if the creation of all media comes to a screeching halt btw i will very gladly live with no new movies no new tv shows no new anything for years if that's what it takes for the people who create them to be treated like human beings. i hope every other facet of the entertainment industry goes on strike too and i hope all the ones that havent unionised yet will. i want media creation to become completely impossible and i want the people who could make it possible again to hold out until they get every single thing they want. btw
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possumbreath · 9 months
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Oh god, I just aged several years in a single second, a friend of mine sent me a snippet from a fic that read someone put a VHS into a VCR and took so long getting back to it to press play that the menu screen had looped multiple times
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possumbreath · 9 months
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Being raised by areligious jews with 0 exposure to christianity outside pop culture is so fun. One time I asked my ex-catholic friend why a picture of jesus had a bristle crown and she looked at me like I was insane. One time I heard someone mention the "lance of longinus" and responded, word for word, "Like from Evangelion?" One time during a history lesson my professor described an important monk and scholar as "Dominican" and I spent the rest of class super confused and hung up on it because I was very sure that the Dominican Republic didn't meaningfully exist as an entity back then, maybe she meant he was a native Taino or something but that's a weird way to say that and I'm pretty sure this was pre- European contact? Really fucks people up when they realize I genuinely have no idea.
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possumbreath · 9 months
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oh you think your life is hard? try being a gay rat living in france who hates your dad and just wants to cook
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possumbreath · 9 months
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is this where i finally get to plug beloved best band ever, Gangstagrass, which is a bluegrass/rap outfit outta Brooklyn? As it turns out, two genres that tend to both focus on songs about hard life and systematic disenfranchisement go really well together!
You want a song about how being poor causes those around you to look down on you and exacerbates your other issues? They got that.
You want a song about how we've destroyed the environment including a verse from Mother Nature herself and she's fucking pissed? They got that.
You want a song about the inequality in living conditions, job and education opportunity caused by racism and classism? They got that.
Also they got Barnburning which just fucking slaps
99.99% of rap haters have never even listened to rap. or if they have it's like one gangsta rap song & they treat the genre as a monolith and act like it's representative of every rap song ever. and well of course they are also just racist
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possumbreath · 9 months
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cool! if you introduce an algorithm to this site and take away my ability to curate my space and what i want to see, I will personally carpet each and every one of your houses with legos :)
Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy
Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.
The Diagnosis
In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 
Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 
To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.
Our Guiding Principles
To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.
Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Retain and grow our creator base.
Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.
Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.
Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 
We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.
Actions & Next Steps
Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.
Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.
Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.
The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.
Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 
Actions & Next Steps
Deliver great content each time the app is opened.
Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 
Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 
Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.
Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.
Actions & Next Steps
Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.
Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 
Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.
Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 
Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 
Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 
Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.
Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  
Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.
The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.
It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.
Actions & Next Steps
Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 
Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.
Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.
Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.
Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.
Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  
Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  
Actions & Next Steps
Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.
Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  
Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 
Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 
Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.
Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.
The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.
Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.
Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 
Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.
Conclusion
Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.
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possumbreath · 9 months
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i needed to read this today so im sharing it to all of you!!
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possumbreath · 9 months
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This old man. He played four
He man door hand hook car door
With a knick knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
My dad’s dead then who was phone
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possumbreath · 9 months
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image of me politely not engaging with an interpretation of a character from my shows which i do not agree with and find to be in slightly poor taste
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possumbreath · 9 months
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love ignoring things ‘have you seen this terrible show’ no im the ignorer ‘can you believe what that celebrity tweeted yesterday’ i am the ignorer
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possumbreath · 9 months
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fanart companion to "he would not fucking say that." he does not fucking look like that
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possumbreath · 9 months
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Hello. Chiming in (again) because the words 'they never really felt Jewish to me' punched me in the solar plexus.
Every single Pines family member casually uses Yiddish in their day to day speech. As I mentioned in my response to another person who also apparently did not know anything about Judaism, they all strongly embody the Jewish cultural philosophy of overcoming adversity and surviving in extreme situations (Stan and Ford especially), as well as the equally Jewish cultural philosophy of questioning everything around you (both in a genuine sense and also a tongue-in-cheek sense with Ford and Dipper, who argue about often-insignificant details like the oldest crustiest Rabbis).
The entire overarching plot of the show centers around Mabel and Dipper approaching their thirteenth birthday. They treat this as something that will completely change them -- make them 'adult' and open up a new chapter of their lives. This is an obvious reference to their B'nai Mitzvah, which in most modern/reform Jewish traditions takes place at thirteen for both boys and girls.
Ford's despair over getting denied his 'dream school' becomes a lot more meaningful when you realize that in the mid-1900s, Jewish students were still limited in their pursuit of higher education, often with a prejudice. There was a concerted effort to keep Jewish students out of colleges; Harvard and Stanford both had policies limiting admission of Jewish students. Being poor and Jewish explains why the next best option he had was Backupsmore.
Tato already handily addressed Stan, but I want to add my agreement. When I look at Stan I see my own grandfather who was born to Jewish immigrants, grew up incredibly poor in New York, and had it instilled in him from a young age that his primary function was to make his family money at the cost of his own health and happiness. I think of how that translated to how he raised me: I would find my grade reports on the breakfast table in the morning with anything below and A circled in red. I was disowned and kicked out of the house for withdrawing from a course in college. Not failing, withdrawing. I was not 'worth it' if I couldn't perform. This is not a narrative that exists only in fiction and the way it is told with Stan (and Ford as well) is very real and very human.
If anything, if we're talking stock characters? Stan always struck me as a sendup of Hershel of Ostropol: a clever jokester who always triumphs in the end due to his quick thinking, a poor man who regularly outsmarts the rich and powerful because that is what a folk hero does. Consider the culmination of his character arc: he outsmarts a literal demon in the name of protecting the people around him. It's the best joke he ever played.
I would examine why you see these anti-Semitic stereotypes first and foremost instead of the very clear Jewish narratives. I would examine why none of the other Pines struck you as Jewish despite it being explicitly textual that they are (and here I remind you that being Jewish and believing in a higher power are not synonymous and that religious faith is only one, completely optional, facet of Jewish identity).
I would perhaps consider that you think this way because you have absorbed more ambient bigotry than you want to think you have. I say this not to shame you but because I genuinely hope you continue to think about this and question why you feel the way you do about it. That continued questioning and self-examination is one of the most Jewish possible things a person can do.
A caveat: I am not the single authority on being Jewish. Other Jewish people will have different opinions from mine. But for me, personally, the Pines family being Jewish and their specific experience of being Jewish is deeply ingrained into the plot and emotional narrative of the show and it always shocks me when people say 'they never really felt Jewish to me'.
So, I’ve been watching some of your Gravity Falls videos—-and by the way, they’re absolutely fantastic, and I love that you included complex and under-discussed topics through the lenses of aspecs and of masculinity—though one of the things that’s been most surprising that you’ve mentioned in passing a few times is the idea that Stan and Ford were specifically Jewish immigrants.
I’m curious if you could tell me more about that, especially because that possibility doesn’t sit well with me as a Jew, as if it’s true it would make Stan’s entire character an antisemitic stereotype (the greedy, deceptive Jew is one of the oldest antisemitic stereotypes out there) and would make the entire show harder to enjoy or even watch.
Sure, no problem (and thank you for watching my videos)! So, the Pines family is canonically Jewish (the series creator, Alex Hirsch, is himself Jewish and based them off his own family and has confirmed this, and we see a mezuzah at Stan and Ford’s childhood home). As far as them being immigrants, I don’t say that Stan and Ford themselves are immigrants, but that they are the children of immigrants, as it is implied in the supplemental material that their father (or at least their father’s family) migrated to the US, with a mention of a name-change on Ellis Island. 
As far as the antisemitic stereotypes, that is an area that I feel less comfortable weighing in on (as I myself am not Jewish). It is notable that the characters were written/created by a Jewish man, and I feel it would be inappropriate for me to weigh in too deeply on how a Jewish person writes Jewish characters (and Stan, notably, is also based off of one of Hirsch’s relatives.) In all discussions of good or bad representation (regardless of which marginalized group I’m considering), I think a solid rule of thumb when considering a stereotypical depiction, is that it is important to see if that is the only depiction of that group present, or if there is diversity within the diversity, so to speak. The entire Pines family, including Dipper, Mabel and Ford, are all Jewish, and they have a wide breadth of traits and loveable qualities and flaws. If all of these characters had harmful stereotypes associated with their traits, or if the only depiction of a character from a given group is a stereotype, that is what usually sets off red flags for me. This does NOT mean that stereotypical depictions are immune to criticism, because they absolutely are not, but I do think criticism can be murky on a case-to-case basis, especially when those traits are written by a writer of that background. 
That being said, I have seen it said by other Jewish fandom members that Stan Pines can be seen as a deconstruction of the stereotypical tropes you mention and I’ve always found that very interesting. What at first appears to be greed/money-obsession can actually be seen as a manifestation of his means of survival (leftover from when he was homeless as a teen), the trauma of being told as a young person that he would not be accepted without money, and also that he was working to pay off his brother’s mortgage while working to save him from the portal.
I hope this was helpful and that my answer here made sense. 
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