Dear Readers,
In addition to the frustration of last weekend I have been very sick since Sunday.
Tonight is the first time since Saturday that I have had my laptop up to pic hunt, and I'm very backlogged. Lots of great pics, but at 3 sets every 3 hours a lot of time was lost. I have saved them to favorites and prioritized them. I doubt I'll do more than one set tonight.
I'm still very sick. I'm still going into work. It's rough but I just have to make it through tomorrow.
The Purses are not done. I'm not well enough to cap those yet. I'm surprised I felt well enough to do the pic hunting a bit.
If I could cap on my mobile device I would, but it's only good for comments and notices like this. Believe me, I've tried every software I could and nothing was as good as MS Paint!
I have been keeping up with the comments. I haven't replied yet because, well, I'm sick in bed coughing up my lungs.
So here's what I do have to say about what some recent comments are saying.
Some of you are saying that I'm taking all this too seriously. When I read that I start thinking maybe I am too serious about TG captioning and maybe I'd be better off being serious about other things instead.
Yes, you're accidentally talking me into quitting for good because obviously this isn't something I should be taking so seriously, right?
Taking this seriously is what's kept me from abandoning the audience when most captioners come and go after only a few years, some have lasted as long as I have but even some of them have retired.
I've seen blogs go retired since I've been doing the blog here. I've seen Yahoo Groups deleted for posting mom/son caps even after numerous attempts of recreating and recreating the group over and over.
I've witnessed web hosts purge TG fiction websites, other groups like Lycos and Smart Groups rise and fall into obscurity.
There are people out there that do not support Transgender Rights. There's those out there who don't understand why people enjoy this type of fiction. There are those even in the TG community that see some forms of the fiction as incest or even underage pornography in a weird and twisted way.
Those are very serious perceptions that can make it easier for say Google to justify purging TG capped pics blogs. In fact, they almost did!
I wasn't even aware of it until Google sent me a notice saying they had decided NOT to purge adult content blogs from Blogger because of the conflict of people trying to express their gender identity issues.
They were going to do it. Then this blog would've been gone, Yahoo Groups still an unruly mess, and then what?
Then the only refuge is Rachel's Haven.
No lurking. To read capped pics you have to participate. Your participation is tracked and monitored. You have to comment so much to gain access. Plus there's even stricter censorship because the capped pics have to be politically correct.
In other words, TG Capped Pics NAZIS.
But the site is TG owned, TG paid, and a lot of the community I knew way back when support it.
I'll admit, they advanced things a bit. Paid models to pose for uncapped pics even for their members to use. Even got a book published with online TG authors doing the stories. They even helped build a new generation of TG captioners!
Oh, wait. They're the ones struggling to keep up with demand of "you cap me, I cap you" and get burned out from all the requests that I suspect most of the defunct TG blogs I find were originally Haven cappers probably tired of people not being able to see their captions unless they submitted to forced participation.
Yes, all the characters are fictitious.
Yes TG fiction is just fiction.
But there's rules of society one must straddle if they want to keep out censorship, if they don't want the art as a whole to be demonized, or simply even just keep it all online.
Don't take the freedom for granted people. Seriously, if I had to cap under Haven guidelines most of my recent capped pics wouldn't be permitted. Not just the family swaps, but racial swaps, anything concerning ethnic stereotypes such as a gypsy intervention, or probably even witches! Now I will admit it's been years since I read up on their guidelines, but this was at least within the past 5 years.
I'm the TG captioner that argued for lurker freedom. I understand that not all of you out there even speak English at all, or very well.
So maybe I do take this all too seriously. Should I stop taking this seriously?
Sincerely,
Gensabi
So just to clarify, You aren't leaving us right? we love the caps you do regardless!
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify that wasn't my intention but some comments about being too serious about captioning is making me wonder if I should. I was only going to stop the family swaps in order to prevent any incest claims. Everything else I'd still do. Yet some are saying I'm taking all this TG captioning thing too seriously. If I'm too serious then stopping would lighten me up a bit.
DeleteAs a long time fan, and a member of Rachel's Haven since its creation, I feel I might have something worthy of being 2 cents.
ReplyDeleteI've been doing my own best to caption for the past few years. In fact, Rachel's is what got me started. My blog is mostly dead, but has sporadic periods of activity when I get a bit of inspiration or an idea. I started back in the Lycos Groups days, then Yahoo, SmartGroups, Google, Tumblr, all of that nonsense. I still yearn dearly for some of the caps from Lycos that I know I will never see again. You have been one of the few to make it through all of those and keep going. You are 100% correct that it is incredibly rare to find someone active this long, through that much.
Now, whether you take it too seriously or not is all in your own perception. If this is something you view seriously, then by all means keep on keeping on. I don't keep up on capping seriously, but I wish I could like you and others. I just don't have the creativity or drive to cap as often, so I look up to cappers such as yourself.
Now Rachels, I will admit it is hardly a perfect environment. Theres always gonna be differing opinions, and opinions. However, I don't believe its quite as bad as you make it out. The comment limit for caption access really only applies to the Gallery, when a vast majority of captions are posted in the trading forums, which if I recall are open to new users.
It helps to tackler a major issue that gets me down sometimes, is the lack of anyone commenting, responding, recognizing, etc, either positively or negatively on captions. Its not just Rachels, but Google, and Tumblr, and Deviant Art, and wherever. Its always hard to tell if people liked it or not. I know I dont comment as much as I should. Im in that crowd of no feedback. Forced comments isnt the best solution, but to me, it seems to help at least a little.
As for the burn out, I know a lot of cappers have burnt out, some due to personal stress, some due to community infighting, some due to lack of interest. Its a mix across the board, which is hard to nail down a root cause. My main reason for not posting captions is I have no ideas, and no desire. Although I get bursts of activity, and it becomes fun for a while, but usually simmers down.
My spiel complete on the Haven, me personally, I enjoy you caps greatly. I'll admit that the Mom/son stuff is not really my thing, but I love the mix of mental changes, age changes, and sexual plot lines that work so well. You write such vivid tales, which has kept me coming back week after week, Month after Month, year after year.
Do what helps you best. No sense in driving yourself crazy over writing some smut online. I know you offered a Purse cap to me, which is very much appreciated, but please never feel obligated.
Hope this helps, even if only a little.
Thanks for understanding and for backing up my spiel too. You're still going to get a purse cap but I don't know if it's going to be this weekend or not. I went to the hospital today and I'm on medicine now but I'll be resting most of this weekend.
DeleteIt can get frustrating not to have comments to read. Yet, I am a lurker when I go to other blogs, groups, etc. Why? Because I save them and read them later. My archives of others TG capped pics date back to before I started. I just don't have them all organized or in one spot.
DeleteWhat I found great about the blog is there's a lot of different ways other than comments to see what's going on. Like the feedback check boxes. I chose ones that are helpful and people don't have to type. Then there's the page metrics. This blog has a varied international audience, and I can see how many times a post is viewed, and can see top viewed posts for the day, week, month, year, and all time...and the top 10 are even listed here.
The feedback is immense if you look at the numbers. Sometimes words are what we look for but it's the raw data that tells us the most. Hope that helps!
I mean my point is how is it incest, in a lot of your captions the story elements don't really involve that much sex. And it's seen as a physical aspect instead of a mental one, in a lot of the mom/son caps you do, the father doesn't know he's having sex with his son, I was very disappointed when you announced you weren't doing any family swaps, As I feel it is one of your strong suits.if you are absolutely sure you're quitting, I think me and allot of other people would like a big Batch of mom/son or family swaps for like a week or something, and then just start doing Friend's mom and friends sister captions,As I feel you would be good in those categories
ReplyDeleteReally, it's a sketchy line. One day I stopped and thought about it years ago and that's when the moral dilemma started. It took me awhile to figure it out for myself that it's not about that but about being who you've become.
DeleteNow, I just did huge mom/son updates fairly recently, tons in that respect.
Where did the incest problem arise? A commenter on one of the bully caps asked about doing a caption where a bully takes over the bullied's mom and then sexually confronts the bullied son.
That's what set off my incest alarm, and in order to protect the blog I announced no more family swaps.
Stay strong gensabi get better. Would be tragic if you left.
ReplyDelete