I still feel bad that I let myself fall away from here but after some really horrible incidents at another site and with some online people I let everything online and fandom drop.

I've been slowly working back since I feel much better with my fic here vs. other sites.

Tumblr might be more popular but Tumblr is super, super toxic.  There's a lot of "moral absolutes" that people feel if you don't adhere to you are free to be harassed, threatened and labeled as evil/worse by fandoms and the internet at large.  (An incident with an artist being given cookies with needles because of a pairing she wrote).

I'm not able to help on the art side of things since I'm a pretty mediocre (and currently not active) fic writer, lol.  Maybe I can be more help as I move things here and try and finish items that I had to abandon for one reason or another.

I forget, does Paper Demon have a twitter?  I'm far more active there as I leave my FB private.

And I'm super sorry for rambling in your forum post.  Hope I said something useful XD

Hey DragonAceSg7. 

You shouldn't feel bad at all for not being active here. It's totally understandable to take a break from being online. That is really common. Taking care of yourself is more important.

I'm really sorry to hear bad things happened to you. I've been reading and watching videos lately learning more about GamerGate and the toxic way women have been treated online over the last few years. I don't know if what you experienced was similar to that at all but that kind of thing really upsets me and I never want it to happen here.

I realize it might be personal so if you don't want to share that's totally ok (also feel free to send me an email directly at [email protected]) but I'd like to know if there's anything in particular we could do on PaperDemon to prevent that sort of thing from happening here.

Thanks for the notice about tumblr. Totally unaware that things were toxic there too. 

Yep we do have a twitter handle. I tend to keep the Facebook page more up to date because we have a lot more engagement there.

It would be super awesome having your contributions to the writing section. We're all here trying to get better. I feel pretty mediocre about my art. There's a lot I have to improve still. And that holds me back from making art more.

It isn't to say you can't find good people on Tumblr, it's just overrun with this 'all or nothing mentality where it is considered by some they need to be the moral compass of the universe and police not only creative works but those who consume or create them.  It's absolutely awful.

Not for moral reasons but I was forced out of a fandom for daring to complain about things on my own blog.  It has gotten, thankfully, very easy to block someone on Tumblr and unlike before where it kinda filtered things, now it IS a block.  Not only that but I use Tumblr savior so that topics I'm not comfortable with are collapsed if a friend I follow posts them.

And even following only a dozen blogs (a few are people I know in real life) I still see constant garbage.  

And sorry, didn't mean to start ranting about Tumblr, lol.  The place just pretends to be nice but really, it's not worth trying to be there.  Especially since it seems to also be a HUGE place for art theft as well.  I've seen many posts of art with 'don't know the artists' where someone took the image from a Tumblr post and reposted it, sometimes cutting out the watermarks

I'll be straight up honest.  I glad to be back here.  I've never felt scared to talk here (outside of normal nervousness)..

Hello DragonAceSg7, nice to meet you! It's sad that that sort of things happened to you on other sites, the internet can be a scary place. I'm glad that you feel safe here though, I'm fond of this place myself. Hopefully it'll help you feel comfortable enough to start posting and making more again soon.

To BogusRed, it's neat that you put up a livestream, though sorry I missed it. I only get online a few times a day, and the stream fell squarely outside of those! Don't worry about seeming awkward, it happens to all of us. It might help if you have a loose outline for what you're going to say beforehand. It would be less clunky than notes, and for those moments when you're unsure what to say, you can briefly glance at it and see where to go next. As long as you don't follow it like a gps, it can help a lot with talking to an audience!

I think that the community and self improvement are great aspects to focus on. The community is a large part of why I like paperdemon so much- people go out of their way to comment on one another's art, even if it doesn't fall into their niche of interest, which feels so welcoming. On larger art sites that doesn't really happen- the only ones who have a dialogue going on are either personal friends or artists with hundreds of followers. It's particularly bad for original artists like myself, since people don't want to take the time to learn about new characters and worlds, but instead flock to fan artists, who often are no better or worse than yourself but are vastly more popular.

Providing resources is also great, since it gives people a steady place to look when they're hoping to get better at some aspect of art instead of having to dig through other places to find what they want. Further, sometimes things pop up that someone didn't think about previously, which can lead to them improving in aspects they didn't expect. Something like that happened to me with one of the past articles. It was about story boarding for animations, which wasn't something that hadn't occurred to me before, and I decided to use it in the animation I currently am working on, which helped.

I'd say more about the red curtain except I'm a very SFW artist and would have pretty much nothing to contribute about that discussion, but I think it's great that it's an option for those who participate in that sort of thing. I greatly appreciate the filter system!

I left you some feedback on Facebook. Sorry that I didn't make it in time to see it live. I honestly really enjoy how you have the filter set up on this site, it comes in handy for times when you might not want to see more adult oriented content or can't. I enjoyed getting to know more about the history of the site and your history with it. Made it feel more personable to me on what you see this site becoming and where you want it to head. It's also a relief because so many smaller sites seem to die out, and while larger sites like deviantart are nice, they just don't have the personal community or group feeling that smaller sites do to me. 

Thanks for the tips MaskedDragonNamedLin. I will totally do an outline next time.

Oh sweet. I'm glad the storyboarding article was helpful! Thanks for letting me know that. Sometimes I have no idea if anyone is reading those things so it's great to hear back about it.

No worries about the adult section. Not for everyone which is why we keep it separate.

LazyDragoness. Thanks for participating in the conversation :D I didn't give much notice about the livestream. No worries for missing it. The videos are still on facebook so anyone can watch them whenever.

Yay glad you like the community feel. :heart:

I'll try to do another livestream either late this week or next week. I had a pretty busy and stressful week last week and have some tight deadlines this week to work through. I'll let everyone know when the next livestream is going up.

Is there any way to have default settings for the reply boxes?  Like a certain sized font or the spell check off?

Hi DragonAce. Do you mean in the forums? I might be able to figure out a way to do that. I'll check

yes for the forums, don't stress yourself if you can't though :)  was just curious