Courtney's Clean Caps: February 2015

As many of you may have heard, Google recently announced changes to their Terms of Service. There is a notice on blogger that states, "On March 23rd, Blogger will no longer allow certain sexually explicit content. Learn more here."

My first thought was, “Does this really apply to me?” We founded this blog on the basis of providing something that was rarely available in TG Land, clean caps that don’t have explicit sex involved. Although we have dabbled into taboo subjects and had the occasional sophisticated captions featuring nudity we have always wanted this to be one of the best places to find clean material.

This theory came to an end when I visited a few other clean blogs. Some are announcing their retirement, others are moving to a new platform, some are staying put. Overall, I’m definitely not happy about this decision however I think people may be jumping the gun to make a choice.

As far as the future of this blog is concerned, let me assure you of this: We will ALWAYS be open on some format unless one of three things happens. These three things I will not address in detail right now, but one of them is definitely if I am “forced” to take it down by a service provider.

There is a bigger issue at hand though. Could this be the start of The End of TG Captions?

When I first came to TG Land in the late 90’s/early 2000’s as a very young teen, fiction stories and comics seemed to rule the land. The only caps I remember seeing at the time were poorly made using MSPaint (hey, somethings never change) and often featured pictures that seemed like they were either scanned from a magazine or poorly pixelated. Keep in mind, digital photography wasn’t up to par yet! For this reason, I mostly read stories on Fictionmania, Storysite, and enjoyed graphics at places like TGComics and TGFA. It wasn’t until the mid-2000’s that I found captions that I really enjoyed and wasn’t until a few years later that I started making them myself.

In the past 2-3 years, I’ve noticed a trend in TG Land that is focusing a lot on original content whether it be animation, drawings or videos. I really thought that with the popularity of memes that a lot of people would make more captions but other than fly-by-night creators, it seemed to not grow as much as I thought it would with younger artists. I feel like most people who are into gender transformation right now mostly either read fiction or are into animation art.

Personally, I got really burnt out on making captions for awhile. At my height, I was making about 4 a day which only took about 20 minutes and would schedule them to be released. Now, especially with focusing on writing full length novels, the task of making these sometimes isn’t worth it. Especially with those that receive 0 comments or likes. That being said, if I DO have an idea for a story that I don’t feel can be fleshed out to at least short story status, a cap will be made.

In terms of platform, I have felt for YEARS that Blogger is dated. About 2 years ago, I decided to move the site to a different address and use a Wordpress based platform. This move wasn’t nearly as successful as I wanted it to be. I discovered that most of our views were coming from referrals and links on other Blogger TG sites. Even though this Blogger page was still active, some people just didn’t visit the “new” site. After about 6 months, I decided to close it. Although there are several TG cap pages on more modern sites like Pinterest and Tumblr but I feel like Blogger has been the de-facto platform for TG Caps for YEARS and if some of these blogs close you may never seen this kind of content available. Maybe it has already peaked? Look at what happened to Lyco groups, Yahoo Groups, and now maybe Blogger? Perhaps we CAN move to a new standard platform?

I would like to recommend Rachel’s Haven as a great place to see DECADES of caps and original, custom made content but I don’t believe some artists will move there. I have been a member of the site since 2007 and putting out content there since 2010. Probably 10% of the caps I’ve made have appeared on the site. IF by chance this blog does close, every caption I’ve made is backed up on my computer and an external hard drive so they WILL become available somewhere else.

As far as the future of this blog goes, again we WILL remain active on here as long as we can. I want to thank Hammster who has been actively posting on here when I'm unable to. I’m also ALWAYS looking for new artists who want to post here. Claire and I have two stories we are working on right now, I have a few by myself and Haylee and I have a new story as well as a sequel to “Not Normal” coming out. Caps will be made but sparingly from me.

I would love to hear your input on this matter. Do you think this is the start of The End of TG Caps?

-Courtney Captisa