#And Tumblr DOES have a (somewhat) good algorithm

[creep3r-chan]

me on Pixilart (which doesn't have a fyp and only relies on who you follow and what's newest with who you follow 💔💔) trying to get my art noticed 💔💔💔

Why artists and writers reblog their work multiple times:

They posted it late at night and want people to see it in the daytime

They want others to reblog it

They want more attention for it

THEY WANT OTHERS TO REBLOG IT

They have followers in different timezones and want everyone to get a chance to see it

THEY WANT OTHERS TO REBLOG IT

IF THEY REBLOG IT MULTIPLE TIMES, THEY’RE DOING IT BECAUSE THEY WANT ATTENTION FOR IT AND THEY’RE LIKELY NOT GETTING ENOUGH, SO THEY KEEP REBLOGGING IT IN THE HOPES THEY’LL GET SOME

BE A COOL BRO AND REBLOG

THEY’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER

[rockafirevevo]

something very bittersweet looking at a gen ai-run blog that i've followed since gen ai was a silly gimmick that very visibly couldn't Do much (as opposed to now when it still can't do much but one thing it has become very good at is convincing people it can)

this ai has a human name and a "personality" and is still posting, using the same algorithms it did years ago. it still posts art that's mostly just lines and circles placed randomly. it still makes text posts that have the vague cadence of a tumblr poster but don't usually make any sense, and if they do, it's pretty clearly only by chance. (this combination does make for some excellent shitposting, for what that's worth.)

when it was new, it was super cool and impressive and i was actually very excited to see where it was going. now, not only do we have more advanced versions that are significantly "better" by the primary metric (regularly strings together sentences and images that make sense) but much worse by every other more important metric (environmental footprint, ethics in source collection, trustworthiness of output, etc.), but this new "better" version has retroactively tainted the old version.

it feels wrong to delight in an ai saying something funny or poignant now, even though this particular ai is just as wholesome as it was in 2017. i certainly wouldn't want to anthropomorphize it anymore, not that it was ever truly correct to do so, but it certainly didn't carry the same implications it does now. it's just sad. i want to go back.

*back when it was new, i always called it by she/her, and so did everyone else i saw. i'm reverting to "it" because it feels wrong today to give an ai any other pronouns, but it must be said that i also feel somewhat inexplicably bad for not honoring its original pronouns. i couldn't tell you what the implications of that are

[ultimateplaylistmaker]

It's a matter of expectations and consent, the difference of where the line is drawn is similar to how someone reacts to being seen in their underwear vs being seen in a bathing suit.

Sure it's a part of the Danganronpa brand to have gore, but people playing the game are going in expecting the gore and have time to prepare for the worst of it. On the other hand people are just scrolling and reading through a tumblr feed, everything they see is at random so that more explicit stuff can come without warning. Plus not everyone that can come across the post is familiar with Danganronpa so to them their just seeing a random boy getting his legs crushed.

(I'm doing my best to be neutral, it's just that trigger warnings on the internet are generally good practice since quite literally anyone can see it and it's not a random persons fault that their algorithm showed them something that they wouldn't actually be able to handle)

True, you have a point, but my point remains that if you follow a danganronpa blog, the expectation that violence or gore can end up on your dash should be bundled into the experience of following a danganronpa blog so finding a line between canon typical violence, which can get pretty extreme just look at komaedas death, and something that should be tagged due to being exceptionally violent is near impossible.

Along with the fact that if someone finds the post who isnt familiar to danganronpa, there isn't really much difference between seeing some random anime character getting crushed by a hydraulic press and seeing that same random anime character getting their legs crushed. The correct choice to someone stumbling upon a blog they do not follow that disturbs them because tumblr decided to show them the blog is to block them.

I will admit I am also somewhat desensitized to this kind of content, which makes the lines even blurrier for me. So that's why I keep asking where the line is, where does canon typical levels of violence stop and torture begin in a series famous for its torturous deaths? It feels like a fools errand because what im being asked to tag, feels less extreme then what happens at some points in canon.

[kageyuji]

Hii! This is my first time trying this, but do you have any advice for starting and building a writing blog?

I've been wanting to start one for a while but I'm not sure how to gain followers and stuff.

hi!! no worries :D and tbh.. i’m not exactly sure LMAO despite it seeming like i have my shit together i Do Not. but!! i can give you some general things/ideas:

write for yourself. write what makes you happy and what you genuinely want to write. despite how much of a people-pleaser i am, it’s also really important to remember that this is a hobby and if you write things you don’t really want to write, it’s going to show through your work but it’s also going to burn you out quickly.

(that said, if you are writing for x reader content make sure your reader is ambiguous. having a character be a 5’4 brunette with a knack for baking is cool sometimes, but it’s also a very slim audience and it’s going to throw some people off)

similarly, don’t compare yourself to other creators and don’t compare yourself to.. yourself. if you have something that does really good, and then you post the next week and it does shit, that’s okay! sometimes tumblr algorithm is just shit. sometimes certain characters are more of a fan favorite. but, also remember that people who have already built a large following are going to have more notes. just don’t get discouraged easily — every fic is something entirely new and it shouldn’t be weighed off of someone else or an entirely different work.

make a masterlist, and make it organized. if you write for a lot of characters and use different posting types this can get really confusing, but look around at other places or play around with it until you find something that you think feels right.

watch your blog activity (once you start posting, anyway). i believe mobile doesn’t have it, but on desktop (or just login to tumblr from your phones browser app lol) there is a little icon that will show interactions with your posts/blog and you can ask it to show the chart based on time of day, weekly basis, etc. post accordingly to that, and hopefully your posts will gain a little more traction :)

aesthetic is (unfortunately) pretty important in my opinion. of course, if you have the most well written thing i’ve seen i’m going to ignore the kinks but i’m also going to be a lot more likely to read things that are organized well. this is mostly about fics to catch someone’s eye, although this bleeds into your actual blog as well.

(pinterest has lots of cool stuff for aesthetics. twitter layout blogs also usually have a lot of good headers. if you want dividers, you can search the “dividers” tag on tumblr or there’s loads of mobile apps to get the thin color strip dividers like i use.)

similarly, try to make your pinned/navi organized and easy to follow. in my personal opinion, i like adding things like rules/dni, tag guides, and especially masterlists linked somewhere in the post. although, again, it’s up to personal opinion on what exactly you want to link there. as long as it’s organized and somewhat simple, you’re good.

as far as a masterlist and rules go, i would recommend laying out certain things beforehand, like what characters you’re going to write for and hard “no”s. as much as i love people on tumblr, sometimes they just cannot read — it helped me a lot whenever i was new to tell myself “hey, i don’t have to do that. it says that right here and it’s not my fault that they didn’t see that!”

(i also added a little rule that said “if you actually read this, add a ‘<3’ in your asks so i know” LOL it helped me filter requests between who actually cared to read my rules and who didn’t)

add tags to your fics. add so many tags. add many more tags than you think you probably need. add so many tags that you get sick of them — that’s how people are going to find you.

try to keep anonymous asks on, that’s where a lot of interaction comes from. ik people can be dicks sometimes but there’s also a lot of shy people on tumblr. probably 90% of my asks are from anons and i use anon 90% of the time whenever i send asks (especially to my moots bc they’re scary :[ lol)

just generally be nice to people. you don’t have to go out of your way to send love letters to everyone on your feed, but i’ve found that just leaving a little “i hope you enjoy reading this” or something similar as a little note helps my mental for some reason, but it also (hopefully) makes me seem a little less intimidating

[missmaywemeetagain]

A Million Little Heartaches: Pandora's Box 💔💫❤️‍🔥

A/N: Hi, my darlin's! I was feeling a little hesitant about posting my first non-EP fic, but I got over myself lol. This one is a bit of an experiment as it's not told in chronological order, and we'll see if I continue it based on inspiration and interest. Please let me know your thoughts! As always, they are so appreciated and what helps keep me motivated a lot of the time, especially as I'm trying new things. I really hope you enjoy it and can't wait to hear what you think. 💗

ALSO, I'm not sure if tumblr has changed its algorithm or what, but I know I'm not seeing people's posts in my feed like I used to. Turn on notifications for me to not miss anything and if you like this, it would be super helpful if you reblog this post! Thank you babies! 💗

Key Tropes: Angst, right person(s)-wrong time, star-crossed lovers, slow burn kinda? friends to enemies to friends to lovers?(LOL), forbidden love, second chance love

💥 Head's up! My first Scarf Universe exclusive (Red Scarf) is set to come out THIS WEEK for my Patreons! It's utterly filthy and indulgent, so if you are interested, you can join my Patreon community HERE to get access! 💥

A Million Little Heartaches

Part 1: Pandora’s Box

March 2026

I’ve curled my legs up under me in an oversized armchair, staring aimlessly at the fire. My empty wine glass is precariously balanced in my hand as I am hypnotized by the flames. Liam’s angry outburst shocked everyone, and his words still ring like poison in my ears:

You abandoned me.

I run through all the things I could’ve said in response instead of just standing there speechless as he ripped me into pieces in front of everybody.

Namely, you made your choice, Liam. And it wasn’t me.

It was never me.

Good ole Lily, forever the consolation prize, I muse, shaking my head.

There’s a hollow feeling in my heart that hasn’t been there for a long, long time.

“Mind if I join you?” Jake’s rumbling voice startles me out of my staring contest with the fire.

Oh god, now? Seriously? is what I’m thinking, but I manage a cordial nod instead, setting my empty glass on the side table next to me.

He sits in the chair facing mine. A glance over reminds me he’s a man now, not a boy, the firelight hitting the weathered but not unattractive lines on what used to be a baby face. The peach fuzz which had tickled my cheek so long ago is now a short, dark beard on a sharper, less rounded jaw. His once sandy hair has darkened some and is peppered with grey. He has aged well.

I can’t imagine how he must be looking at me after all these years, at the changes he must see. I know I’m not the girl I was. I look back at the fire.

“Are you okay?” he asks after a moment of silence.

I roll my eyes over to him and huff a bitter laugh. “Does it matter?”

I shouldn’t have said it like that—Liam’s freak out wasn’t Jake’s fault—but everything feels so fucking raw that I don’t have the wherewithal for a filter.

“It always has,” he says quietly.

The words hang there between us, heavy. There’s a poignancy and deeper meaning to them that slaps me out of my pity party.

“Excuse me?” I breathe out, blinking. My heart starts racing, like a hummingbird trapped in my ribcage.

He doesn’t get to say my feelings have always mattered. Not him. Not the guy who dragged me to hell and back because he was too much of a coward to let me down easy. Not the one who I spent nearly six years trying desperately to know and wishing for him to know me, too. Who I tried, only somewhat successfully, to forge a friendship with after it seemed all between us was well and truly done.

Jake shifts uncomfortably in his seat, looking at the fire before he finds what he needs there to bring himself to look back at me.

He only knows a fraction of what he put me through, or at least I think he does. He was ever the master at shutting me out, so it’s always been hard to know what he’s thinking or feeling without having to pry it out of him with a crowbar.

His voice echoes in my head, a long-forgotten memory: I guess I’m just the kind of person who hides my feelings.

An understatement.

This makes it a surprise when he looks straight at me with those warm brown eyes that used to melt me into the floor and says, “Your feelings have always mattered.”

Maybe it’s the wine, or the blowup with Liam, but my filter disappears completely. There’s a latent, hot anger that boils to the surface.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You, of all people, think my feelings have always mattered?” I throw back at him, scoffing.

He looks as though I’ve slapped him, and if I wasn’t so upset, I might try to backtrack. But I spent six years of my adolescence trying to shield him from my feelings, and as an adult, I don’t have time for that shit anymore.

“I suppose I deserve that,” he recovers, looking back at the fire.

I’m surprised, to say the least. It’s not as though we hadn’t talked about it back in the day, at least somewhat, but I never let him know just how deeply he hurt me. I never told him about the panic attacks, the intense depressions, or the manic feelings I’d get from just a morsel of attention from him. No, I’d buried all that for the sake of our “friendship” or whatever it was.

Part of me knows it’s stupid to try and rehash things that we put to rest so long ago. I shouldn’t hold it against him—we were just teenagers—but it wasn’t until my twenties that I finally grasped just how much Jake fucked me up. He made me think that if you love someone enough, they can treat you however they want and it doesn’t matter, and if it’s “meant to be” then someone can string you along indefinitely without consequence. I’d been so convinced we were these star-crossed lovers that had such a deep thread of connection that we’d someday figure it out. But someday never came.

Liam had. Liam pulled me from the ashes of my heartbreak and showed me real love. Or so I’d hoped. I’d hoped so much that I’d ignored and excused all the similarities between the way he and Jake treated me. But he had loved me and risked it all for me at one time. I mattered to him, to a fault.

But with Jake, I’m never sure I mattered. I always felt on thin ice, or at least that’s how I remember it. But memory warps over time. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve been wrong about all of it.

God, he still has me running circles around myself.

“Yeah, you do deserve it, a little,” is what I finally settle on, but it comes out gentler than I want it to.

He gives me a familiar sardonic half-smile.

Ah, there he is, the little shit. It was a look that twenty years ago would set my heart a-flutter on a good day and made me want to throttle him on a bad one. Some things never change.

Another thing that hasn’t changed is my need to shove him past his comfort zone with all my thoughts and feelings.

“Sometimes, I’m still not sure I mattered to you at all.” The words catch in my throat, giving away more than I want to.

His eyes snap back to mine. “How can you say that?” he asks with a surprising level of hurt in his voice.

I’m taken aback. “Jake, I don’t think you entirely understand the way you…” I stop myself and shake my head.

“The way I what? Say it,” he challenges, uncharacteristically.

I take a deep breath. “The way you broke my heart completely. How I spent months—no, years—trying to figure out what I had done that was so bad that you didn’t have or couldn’t really admit you had feelings for me, or why I was so repulsive you couldn’t bear to be with me. You had me so tied in knots I could hardly breathe.”

“Lily, you were never—” he starts, shaking his head, but I don’t listen, plowing right through whatever he thinks he needs to say.

“And then Liam came into the picture and helped me heal, and still I was so desperate for your approval, for us to be friends. But you always, always kept me at arm’s length. I could never figure any of it out. I still wonder if it was all one-sided and I was just a crazy little girl who manufactured this epic love story in her head,” I ramble out, shaking my head.

I’m saying too much, I know I am, but what the fuck does it matter now, after all this time? I have no need to impress him anymore.

   He shutters down, and it’s so entirely familiar that I have to laugh. “That. Right there,” I point, “is the same thing you did to me 27 years ago. You could never let me in, could you? As much as I hoped you would, as close as I swear I got sometimes, this brick wall is what made me question everything about us. It always has.”

His eyes widen as he’s called out so viciously, his hands tensing then releasing the arms on the chair. I let him sit in it for a moment before I drop the last bombshell, the one I’m sure will ruin the precarious balance between us:

“You were my first love, Jake, and I was so in love with you it hurt. God, I was so convinced we were connected in some timeless, deep, soulmates kind of way. And sometimes you did things that seemed to confirm that, but then you’d turn around and…well, I tried so hard to understand why you didn’t feel it, too. But I was young and stupid and obsessed, I guess,” I laugh, looking into the fire. “I finally just had to accept I was never gonna figure you out or understand why you didn’t love me back.”

He’s quiet for a long moment and I’m almost afraid he’s going to get up and walk away.

“Sorry, I guess old habits die hard. Here I am, still blasting you with all my feelings, 25-plus-years later,” I chuckle. “No wonder you never wanted to be with m—”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” he interrupts.

My head snaps back to him. “What?”

“I never meant to hurt you like that. I never meant to drive you to…Liam,” he says, with a frustrated bitterness in his tone that surprises me.

“Okay…?” I’m not sure where this is going, but my heart kicks up again.

“I told you back then I liked you,” he says blatantly, as if it were ever that simple between us.

I can’t help but laugh. “Did you, really? You told me in different ways how you were ‘gonna ask me out, but…’. And there was always a ‘but.’ And it was never in the present tense. I heard from other people that you liked me, sure, but you never really told me. Not in a way that felt like I wasn’t forcing something out of you that you were ashamed of or just telling me to save face. And it was always me who came to you. Always. You had a thousand chances and never followed through. We never even kissed, Jake! You kissed everyone but me. What was I supposed to think?”

“I-I-I…damn it, Lily,” he growls. “I couldn’t.”

 “Excuse me? You very much ‘could,’ you just didn’t want to. And that’s fine, you never owed it to me to reciprocate my feelings. Just don’t pretend—”

“Of course, I had feelings for you!” he yells.

I’m stunned into silence.

“I had feelings for you since we were 12! You were the first girl I ever really thought of in that way and I had no idea how to deal with it. And the moment you showed any interest in me I panicked and pushed you away. And I regretted it after and thought I’d ruined everything, but you came back, and I-I-I did it again. And again. Because my feelings for you scared the shit out of me.”

My heart is jackhammering now. I can barely breathe. “Why?”

“You were special. I couldn’t—I couldn’t ruin that…or you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense! You didn’t want to ‘ruin me’ so you broke my heart, over and over?”

“I didn’t deserve you. You were way too good for me and way out of my league.”

Flabbergasted, I blink at him. The pure insanity of this conversation has me whirling.

“But you kept flirting with me anyway, leading me on? You’d hug me, hold my hand…Lord, you even snuggled me and popped a fucking boner against me at that party freshman year…” I babble.

A blush floods his cheeks. “I was only 15, I-I-I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“You knew enough to fuck Talia.”

He looks like I’ve struck him again, but I can see in his eyes he knows I’m right. Talia would forever be a sore spot between us.

“I was young. And dumb.”

“No shit. And it doesn’t track. You did the same with Tina, Heather, and pretty much any other girl who showed the slightest bit of interest in you. Everyone except me.”

“I know. I was wrong. I was in a…bad place.”

“I practically handed myself to you on a platter and you humiliated me. How do you think it felt that I was the only one you never…you just kept me dangling on a string,” I say, shaking with anger.

“I know,” he whispers, “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t…”

“Sure,” I shake my head and look away. I don’t know why I care so much. I shouldn’t. This is all ancient history, and maybe it is Liam’s doing for sucking me back into the past tonight, but for some reason it all feels like it happened yesterday.

“I knew it was wrong, that I was treating you badly, a-a-and that’s why I found God. I wanted to be better…for you.”

Something cracks inside of me at the gesture. It doesn’t make any sense—why would he do that for me? My breath starts to falter a bit.

I remember he had changed dramatically mid-sophomore year, turning into a nicer, happier, and kinder version of himself. He’d stopped going after every girl in sight and wasn’t blatantly ignoring me anymore. We’d become friends again. I’d thought he was swept up in wanting to hang with the cooler, older Christian kids in the group, bowing to a weird form of peer pressure, just as I had done.

Of course, my “conversion” had not stuck after everything that happened later, but that’s beside the point.

Slowly, pieces start falling into place. Things I’d never considered.  

“You didn’t. You did it for…me?” I say breathlessly. “That’s a pretty drastic thing for a 16-year-old to do…”

He nods.

A shiver runs down my spine.

“Why…why would you do something like that for me?” I hold my breath and quell the trembling of my hands by clasping them together.

In the heavy pause, it feels like all the air gets sucked out of the room, and everything else around us warps and stops.

“Because I was completely in love with you.”

My heart stops. “What?” I whisper.

This can’t be real.

But his eyes are as open and pleading as I’ve ever seen them, begging me to finally understand what he couldn’t impart all those years ago.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” I manage to choke out.

A pained look crosses his face. “I was too late.”

It’s like I’m 16 again, the way my heart is ready to explode while simultaneously being yanked from my chest. The air whooshes out of my lungs and I can’t bring myself to speak. All I can do is look over at him with questioning eyes.

“Me being such an asshole pushed you straight into his arms and by the time I came to my senses, it was too late. You’d fallen for him, even though he was with someone else,” he says bitterly.

He is not wrong. The whole reason Liam and I became friends in the first place was he listened to my heartbreak over Jake.

“So, I tried to be your friend instead. That was what you wanted, right? I thought maybe I could get closer to you and change your mind, talk some sense into you.”

I find my voice. “What are you even talking about? Liam and I were very much not together that spring and summer because of Melissa. You had the perfect chance, but you started dating Tiffany right when school got out.”

His jaw sets, clenches. “Oh, come on. It was beyond obvious you weren’t over him. So, yeah, when Tiffany showed interest, I gave it a chance. But I couldn’t stop thinking about you. You probably don’t remember how I messaged you all the time. How our conversations got longer a-a-and deeper. How I begged you to call me.”

Vague memories flash back to me. “I did call you. And I definitely would’ve remembered you telling me this!” I shake my head.

He has no idea how this revelation would have changed everything. God, I can’t breathe.

            “I tried to feel you out that fall, but you were pretty focused on Liam.”

            Mind racing, I try to remember how it all went down. My attraction to Liam had been all-consuming, made worse by the way we desperately tried to keep our hands off each other when Melissa left for college. We weren’t officially together, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that we were mad about each other. Between that, the play, and keeping my grades up, things were intense that fall, to say the least. But there had been some weird moments with Jake that I’d tried to brush off as friendly at the time, but maybe they weren’t.

            “Friendsgiving.” It pops into my head suddenly, and I look at him with wide eyes. “I couldn’t figure it out—you went out of your way to take me home that night, then you were so teasing and flirty. We sat in my driveway for like half an hour. You couldn’t keep your hands off me—tickling me and putting your arm around me. I thought it was strange…but you were with Tiffany. I convinced myself I was imagining it.”

            It starts to dawn on me that perhaps my instincts had been right this whole damn time.

            I ramble as I recall more, “You were so obsessed about Mick having to kiss me for the play. We talked about how weird it would be if you had to understudy and it was us who had to kiss instead.”

            Jake looks at me sheepishly. “I wanted to kiss you so badly.”

            “God, why didn’t you?!”

            “You were in love with Liam!”

            “You are still such an idiot. Did you not hear anything I’ve said to you? If you’d kissed me, it wouldn’t have mattered. You were always there in the back of my mind. It was always you.” My hands are trembling at the admission, at how easily I would’ve folded if he had come for me.

            His eyes narrow, almost incredulously, as if he can’t believe it.

            “That’s all I ever wanted, Jake—for you to care enough to show me, or tell me, or anything at all! To fight for me…for us. But you never had the balls to do it, and that’s why we never happened. Not because of Liam. Not because I didn’t feel the same way. Because of you,” I say, voice shaking as hard as my hands.

            I’m coming apart at the seams, unravelling for the second time tonight because of men who never truly understood me or put me first. Refusing to cry in front of Jake and let him know just how much he’d changed with his inaction, I stand too quickly, wobbling on my feet.

            Jake jumps up to steady me, one hand at my forearm and the other at my waist, touching me for the first time in over 20 years. My stupid body responds with a jolt of electricity now just as it did then, like a phantom limb come to life. Logic tells me to pull away.

I don’t.

            He steps closer. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into my hair, “I feel like all I’ve ever done is hurt you, and I hate myself for it.”

            Oh, god. His proximity is dizzying, a reminder of moments long gone. A whiff of cologne. The way his thumb gently rubs the dip of my waist through my dress. The not-so-subtle way he lures me in closer.

            I don’t understand. How is it after the decades of life that have occurred, after having my heart swell and break and swell again with different types of love, that this man still can send me reeling?

            And he’s right—all he’s ever done is hurt me and tie me in knots. Being near him is like being edged in the most painful of ways because there is never any payoff. He had seen to that.

            There is something inherently cruel in the fate of it all. How the moment I had moved on all those years ago, the moment I released my hope of being with him and found another, that was when he figured his shit out. The worst part used to be feeling like he’d never felt the same about me, but knowing now that he loved me somehow makes everything ache even worse than it did before.

            Tears sting the corners of my eyes, even though I promised myself long ago I’d never shed another tear over Jake. I hate he will forever be the one that got away. The one who I’d never felt closure with, like a scab that crusts over but won’t heal underneath. As stupid as it sounds, there has been a part of me since the moment he so sweetly helped me solve a math problem in the 7th grade that has unwillingly left a piece of my heart in his hands ever since, no matter how many others there have been to take his place in between.

            And I hate him for that. I hate him even more now that I know I was always right about us from the start, about the thread of connection that bound us to each other almost 30 years ago.

“Does it even bother you? The ‘what could have been?’ Did it cross your mind that maybe everything would be different if you’d just said something? Or did you just forget about me, about all of it?” I whisper angrily.

God knows, I haven’t.

Furious and frazzled, I press my hands into his chest to push away. It’s a terrible move because his large hand covers mine, pinning it to him. He’s warm through his dress shirt and his heart beats wildly under my palm. My eyes fly up to meet his.

“I think about it all the time. More than I should. But God works in mysterious ways,” he says, as if that explains it all.

I roll my eyes. Another wonderful excuse. “I guess he does,” I add sarcastically.  Extricating myself from him, I immediately feel clearer, but part of me wants nothing more to feel his touch on me again. I shake the feeling off.

I had abandoned religion and the guilt and bigotry that came along with it the moment I got to college, when I realized just how much it had fucked my young brain up. Not shockingly, the religious friends who’d taken such offense when I’d gotten together with Liam were the same ones who quickly fell out of my life once they realized I wasn’t going to tow the line. Jake had only dug his heels in deeper into his religion after that, with Tiffany and his cookie-cutter perfect family and church going ways, and now it crosses my mind that it’s all because of me.

Don’t be stupid.

He’s waiting on me to say something. It takes me a moment to absorb the fact that he admitted thinking about me more than he should. This good and pious Christian man was thinking about me when he should have been thinking about his wife.

But I am in no place to judge. Not about this.

I want to know what salacious thoughts have run through his mind about me, but I can’t bring myself to ask. Part of me wants to utterly ruin him in all the ways I couldn’t when we were teenagers. A heat gathers low in my belly at the thought, at his nearness.

Romantic and physical chemistry is no joke, I realize. It’s like my pheromones were preprogrammed by the universe to be attracted to his, and by the cautiously heated look he’s giving me now, I’m wondering if it’s always been the same for him.

One of my biggest regrets about us, since the beginning, was the question that if we had even just kissed once and got it over with, would it have broken the tension between us like a summer rainstorm breaks the heat? Would we have gotten it out of our system and figured out if whatever chemistry we had was real or just something we’d worked up in our imaginations?

But it’s too late for that. The past can’t be changed. Now the ‘what if’s’ that plagued me for all these years hurt worse than before, knowing that with one stupid admission or one kiss all those years ago, we could have had it all. Maybe we would have been the high school sweethearts who got married and annoy our 2.5 kids with stories about what an idiot their dad was until he’d finally told me how he felt.

There would’ve been no me-and-Liam, or him leaving me because the world had gone to shit. I wouldn’t have met my husband. All of it, an entire life I’ll never know, flashes before my eyes and nearly brings me to my knees.

And while I don’t subscribe to his God, I do think the universe puts things in our path. But what was the point of all this, then—of us never being the “us” we both know we wanted it to be? I just don’t see why this thing can’t seem to die and fade into the ether. He’s like a bad penny I can’t shake.

At least with Liam, there was closure. We had loved and dated and all of the milestones that go with that. Knowing Jake loved me doesn’t make me truly feel any better, other than the fact I know I wasn’t a delusional, lovesick teenager.

But he loved a version of me that’s grown up into someone different, just as I begrudgingly loved a version of him that I’d made up in my head to be better than he was.

I’ve been quiet too long. “Why?” It pops out of my mouth unwillingly. “Why do you still think of me?”

“Do you still think of me?” I expect him to shirk away from the question, but he flips it on me so fast I have whiplash.

I close my mouth, my eyes darting away, answering his question.

He nods. “Then you know.”

Does that mean he replays fuzzy memories of interlocking his fingers with mine or pulling me too close in a dance? He sees the stolen, meaningful glances in his mind’s eye? He thinks about the multitude of chances he had to press his lips to mine but didn’t and what may have happened if it had gone farther than that? He thinks of how if he and I became a “we” it would’ve completely altered the course of our lives?

I have trouble thinking he ponders any of that.

But if he loved me like he says he did…

The hollow ache in my heart is back with a vengeance, erasing all hope I had at getting out of here relatively unscathed.

“Maybe we were just destined to hurt each other. Maybe we’ve always been bad for each other,” I say indignantly instead of voicing all the other thoughts buzzing in my head. But it feels true, nonetheless.

I watch him shake his head rather vehemently. He opens his mouth to speak, but I beat him to the punch.

“But too bad we never had the chance to find out for sure,” I add with venom. After this, I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling like he stole that chance from me.

We were babies. Give the guy a break, a tiny voice in the back of my head chimes in.

            Unfortunately, I’m a little too emotionally wrecked to let a silly thing like logic get me back on track and remind me I’m a goddamned adult.

            Star-crossed lovers aren’t real. “Meant to be” isn’t real. Threads of fate tying us together in inexplicable ways aren’t real. What’s real is hormones and youth and cowardice and terrible timing. What’s real are jobs and spouses and children.

            Then why can’t I shake the feeling that this isn’t even close to being the end for us? It makes no sense.

            It never has.

            I grab my purse. Furious and regretful, I can’t be around him anymore, which is made evident by the fact that I want to stay so badly, even if it means my heart is bleeding out in front of him. But I have more self-respect now than I had when I was 16, and I certainly am not going to cry in front of him.

            “Goodbye Jake. I hope your life is everything you want it to be. Give Tiffany my best.” It’s a dig, to be sure. We both know Tiffany wants nothing to do with me, and now I finally know why. I turn and walk away, quickly, escaping my past down the darkened hallway towards the bathrooms.

            “Lily, wait,” he commands from behind me, catching up and grabbing my hand. Shocked at his tone of voice and forwardness, I have no choice to spin back to him. His eyes are blazing.

            “What? What is there left to say?” I say, my voice cracking with emotion. “That one of my biggest regrets is that we never made this work, this—this silly pseudo-romance from our teens? That I hate how much this matters to me, even now, even though I haven’t seen you in years?”

            He advances, his eyes never leaving mine, and a small huff escapes my lips as my back hits the wall. It’s hard not to notice he’s broader and taller than he used to be as his body comes so close to pressing against mine. Every one of my nerves sparks to attention at his sudden proximity, a buzzing static electricity.

His hand clasps my neck, the rough pad of his thumb trailing along my jaw. I have no choice but to keep looking up at him, into those darkened brown eyes.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

Shock precedes a pool of fire low in my belly when he boldly brings his thumb to the center of my lips and slowly drags it down. My lips part and a small moan escapes them. I’m vaguely aware of my purse hitting the floor with a thunk.

“What I should’ve done a long time ago,” he says definitively. His warm breath tickles my cheek where his mouth hovers too close to mine.

As my body fully kicks into overdrive, I’m reminded of what I’ve always known: I’m incapable of resisting Jake Lawson. One last rational thought pushes through the fire that is rapidly consuming me.

“This is a bad idea,” I pant, my eyes scanning his face.

“A terrible one,” he agrees, and when he nods, his nose brushes against mine.

I expect a crash of lips and teeth, but instead his soft lips brush mine tantalizingly, dragging in a way that sends an explosion of heat through my chest. The warmth of our breath mingles, and I can’t stop the way my hands instinctively reach for the lapels of his jacket. His hand on my neck pulls me closer and when our lips finally press together in earnest, oh, god, it’s everything I’d ever hoped it would be.

Instead of breaking away, we are pulled into each other by some unknown force that makes my entire body tingle from head to toe. Jake deepens the kiss, and I turn as pliable as putty in his arms, wondering how it is possible that we went this damn long without doing this. His fingers tighten in my hair, eliciting a groan as his mouth opens and his tongue persuasively brushes against my lips. Granting permission, I open to him further and our tongues roll gingerly against each other.

Something ignites in me that hasn’t in a long, long time. It’s a blast of desire and truth so strong it threatens to undo me. It’s different than pure passion—there’s a yearning, a need, a rightness lacing every touch between us. And based on the way he clings to me now, I have no doubt he feels it, too, this sense of fate that we were always destined to end up here.

Every instinct I have wants to feed the fire that is swirling in my belly, but the last thread of rationality left in me reminds me that I shouldn’t let this go too far. It has gone too far already. I force myself to pull away, which is like prying two strong magnets off each other. I can’t move more than an inch, just enough to separate our lips. I’m too dizzy with the smell of him and what must be a lack of oxygen. Or maybe it’s because my entire world feels upended.

His forehead rests on mine, his thumb caressing the hollow of my throat. “Shit,” he sighs out with a shudder, his breath tickling my face as he struggles to control himself.

For once in my life, I have no doubt of what he’s feeling. The way he says that one word tells me he is every bit as blindsided, connected, and aroused as I am. But it’s more than just that. A tether of knowing has tightened between us. It’s so overwhelming I feel like I might cry.

As we stand pressed close together in this dark hallway, I don’t think either of us truly expected it to feel like this. Like everything that’s been wrong between us was because we resisted this bond, a power that feels beyond anything I could have imagined. In mere moments, we’ve confirmed what both of us have inherently known but tried to ignore for almost three decades.

That’s when I realize we’ve opened Pandora’s box. We can never go back.

“Jake…” I choke, trying to get the words out, but they won’t come.

“I know,” he responds solemnly, and I have no doubt he has come to the same conclusion as I have:

We are in deep trouble.

*

taglist

@sassanoe @re3kin @thella @suspiciousmidge @hiddlepiddlediddlewiddle @carolinesbookworld @juggernort @aesthetic-lyss @stitchattacks @donnamarie23 

@lacyluver @littlebitofgreen @paigevis @bugg06 @xhannahbananax03 @artlover8992

@18lkpeters @frozenhuntress67 @girlblogger2002 @kendralavon7 @misspresley @elv1s-is-pretty 

@be-my-ally @whositmcwhatsit @vintageshanny @ellie-24 @thatbanditqueen @powerofelvis @from-memphis-with-love

@precious-little-scoundrel @stylespresleyhearted @prompted-wordsmith @crash-and-cure @elvisgf @ohjustpeachy1 @lookingforrainbows @fic-over-cannon @godlypresley @ab4eva @whatstruthgottodowithit @elvisabutler @ amydarcimarie @idontwanttoputanything  @callieselvisobsessed @captainamerica1235-blog  @xenaspace3-blog 

[ophthalmotropy]

Hi Dae! Sent a similar ask to Vi but I thought you would also be a good person to ask. A friend has enlisted me to help her find good books and movies and we are now at the stage of searching for more general/meta advice on finding (high-quality) books/movies on particular themes that are too hard to concisely describe for a straightforward search to yield much. If the question is too specific, any general description of how you pick books/movies for your to-read/to-watch list would be great, and if that's also hard to do then top-of-your-head fantasy/sci-fi recs are also much appreciated. Feel free to ignore this if you're too busy or don't know how to answer of course!

Hi! I'm happy that you thought of me, but I don't have a lot of advice because there's a lot of serendipity involved for me. Taking the latest novels I've most enjoyed, for example, I discovered Solaris because I watched Tarkovsky's film adaptation—and I discovered the movie because my high school professor mentioned it in class in 2020. I similarly read Crash because I watched the movie first, and I started reading Arlt because of a scene written by him that I heard read aloud on the radio by pure chance. So I guess my first real piece of advice is to keep your eyes and ears open?

I can't really speak on finding books on specific themes because I feel that they find me most of the time, but sometimes looking at which artists are friends with each other helps (Cronenberg and Clive Barker were like that to me), or seeing which filmmakers adapt which books (Cronenberg led me to Ballard and Burroughs). Tumblr parallels compilation posts aren't bad either.

Tumblr is a source of book recs to me too. I got a good percentage of my current TBR just by following Vi lol, and when I see a quote I really like I normally add the source to my TBR too (same with gifsets and movies). I also like to browse through bookshops even if I don't have money atm, just in case something catches my eye. Those two sources plus what my professors mention make up the bulk of it, but since I started logging my reading on The Storygraph (kind of like Goodreads) I also look at what it recommends me from time to time. The algorithm can't quite nail your preferences, but I do find stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise. You can also search for recommendations filtered by genre and mood there.

For movies, aside from seeing gifsets, I sometimes discover them through the actors in them. Very rarely, I click on Letterboxd's "films like" feature out of curiosity and find some interesting films.

I don't know if that was helpful, but as for sci-fi book recommendations, I can give you off the top of my head Solaris by Stanisław Lem (a psychologist is sent to a station that orbits around a planet covered by a vast, possibly sapient ocean), Crash by J.G. Ballard (a group of car crash fetishists explore the relationship between the human body and technology), and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (political intrigue set on a planet populated by hermaphrodite aliens). In terms of fantasy, His Dark Materials is a series for children that I still find a lot of value in as an adult.

For movies, my first recommendation is Cronenberg's early body horror films (especially Videodrome, Crash, and The Fly) plus Crimes of the Future (2022). I also recommend Poor Things (2023) (describing it as a female Frankenstein's monster does neither character justice, but you get the gist), Primer (2004) (convoluted time travel movie), Pan's Labyrinth (2006) (dark fantasy set in post-war Spain), and of course Solaris (1972). I also rather liked the Alien prequels (as well as obviously the original films, but those are better known).

I hope this was somewhat helpful and good luck!

[dreamingofyeo]

Crescent: Chapter 7 ☾⋆⁺₊✧

The alliance

2050 words

masterlist - playlist

~ ☆彡~ Tumblr's algorithm works from reblogs so if you like my work please consider It

The peaceful sounds of the forest gently rouse you from your disturbed sleep. You’d have thought that the gentle way in which you’d been lulled into unconsciousness last night would’ve deterred your brain from concocting its usual batch of poor memories to serve you on a steaming platter, which those with less pained hearts would deem a nightmare. Alas, it would seem that peaceful nights would take longer to return to you. At least your wakeup call was pleasant.

You sit up groggily in your bed and stretch your tired arms above your head, leaning your body side to side to wake up your muscles. Physically, you feel exceptionally well rested, a rarity you’re not accustomed to but are immensely grateful for. You have no idea what the elves have in store for you and Hongjoong today. You look over to your right toward the male, he’s still sound asleep. Soft, deep breathes moving his chest up and down at a constant and gentle pace. By this you make a guess that he is sleeping well, shoving down the twang of jealousy at such a luxury you smile at him and push back your blanket. There are two large bowls of water resting on the table across the room, with two clothes on their rims. One of the elves must have left them there for you both earlier this morning, thinking about it, that was probably what began to bring you out of sleep. You inwardly cringe and hope that your previous internal distress was not something to be observed.

You wash your face and do your best to wipe any sweat off of your armpits from under your dress before coming to the conclusion that you should find a moment today to ask Felix if there was anywhere you’d be able to bathe more thoroughly. Not to knock Hongjoong, but you certainly didn’t want to end up smelling like him. With that in mind you decide to lightly suggest he should bathe too once you get back, you’d have to word it gently though. Likely having to pitch the bathing spot as incredible as an excuse so as to not offend him. You begin your descent down the stairs to the main part of the palace- well its technically not a palace as there is no royalty but it certainly feels like a fitting descriptor.

The train of thought regarding your companion suddenly reminds you of last night’s events, his sorrowful words and false impressions. Not really a way to bring that up without embarrassing him by alerting him to the fact you were awake to hear his vulnerability. No, not at all. That would have to be carefully weaved into a later conversation.

As you round the corner at the bottom of the stairs you spot Felix , he is deep in conversation with an elf you haven’t met yet. The nature of their interaction seems somewhat serious considering how the familiar of the two is holding his chin between his fingers, a downcast look on his face which does not suit his otherwise positive demeanour. You shift awkwardly to the side, going back upstairs was of course an option but if you were spotted it would look somewhat strange. Thankfully, your pondering is cut short by the enthusiastic greeting from Felix, having sensed someone else in the room and picking up on your dilemma.

“Arla! Good morning, did you get enough rest?” he practically glides to your side, gesturing for you to follow him.

He introduces you to the other elf, her name is Ryujin. She might well be the most gorgeous woman you have ever seen, thick black hair cascading in delicate waves to her shoulders, a striking contrast to the pale blue robe she wears. You don’t miss the intrigued yet suspicious look in her eyes as she observes you, a look you’ll just have to get used to during your time here you assume. The two exchange a knowing look to communicate that they would continue their conversation later before Ryujin wishes you a happy stay and walks away. Felix turns to you and offers a soft smile before speaking.

“Is Hongjoong not awake yet?”

“He wasn’t when I left him, should I wake him?”

“Yes please, I’ll be waiting here to explain today’s schedule when you return.” He finishes with an aura of such unmistakable authority that even if you didn’t want to follow his request you fear you would not be capable of going against him.

~

When you reach your room, you find that Hongjoong is already awake. Well, to be precise he is standing with his back to you, shirt off, having a quick wash. You instantly turn around, your cheeks flaming with embarrassment at your intrusion. You didn’t miss the numerous whiplash scars decorating his back, the embarrassment is now mingles with guilt and sadness as the weight of what you saw hits you. You wait around the corner of the door frame, out of his sight so that when you go in again- when he is ready- it isn’t obvious that you’d been waiting.

The feeling that you’ve now unintentionally intrudes on two venerable moments of his makes you feel uneasy and incredibly guilty. There was no way of bringing this up to ease your conscience though, the very notion would be as selfish as it would be pointless. The embarrassment it would undoubtedly cause him would only add to your guilt anyway. The questioning voice of the man himself rips you from your thoughts and you inwardly curse your mind for overthinking into a state of unawareness for your surroundings. He is stood at the door frame, taking in your no-doubt plagued expression with nothing but curiosity and innocence, furthering your guilt.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.” you bashfully admit.

He smiles knowingly and repeats himself, “I said good morning, were you waiting for me?”

You inwardly panic, hurriedly stringing together a reply in your mind that would not give away what you had seen.

“Good morning, yes, I heard movement and wasn’t sure if you were decent so I waited.” there, good job.

He smiles and offers his thanks for the consideration before gesturing for you to follow him downstairs. Only further adding to your guilt.

~

Felix is waiting for you both as stated when you reach the bottom of the stairs, he takes you both in for a moment. His brow furrows slight, no doubt sensing some level of tension from you. Thankfully he doesn’t mention it, opting instead to get down to the point of the meeting.

“As fraija stated last night, you are the responsibility of myself and Hyunjin for the time being. This means you will be accompanying us both on our daily patrols before we get on with any sort of personal work with you.”

Hongjoong quirks a brow at this, “personal work?”

“Yes, when we get Fraija’s approval we will begin to train with you, if forming an alliance with us is something you decide to do” “And when will we learn what exactly this alliance is for?”

Felix lightly sighs, “I cannot say for sure, I’d imagine it will be somewhat soon considering the state of things though. By the sounds of it, its something that wouldn’t take much consideration from yourselves to join though. So to put it bluntly, don’t worry yourselves over it. My people have no quarrel with you, when it is discerned if you’re threats or not you will be given free choice of how to proceed, you can simply leave if you wish. We just cannot offer you that choice yet, I hope that is something which you can both understand.”

He finishes gently, no sarcasm in his tone which the same sentence out of Hyunjin’s mouth would surely be laced with. Hongjoong sighs and nods in affirmation along with yourself at this.

~

Hyunjin had joined you minutes later, with 4 cloaks and his and Felix’s weapons in hand. Thankfully, Hongjoong didn’t question the lack of your own weapons, taking Felix’s words of building trust into consideration. Felix had the foresight to split Hongjong up from the fiery elf, pairing you with him instead for the patrol. Though logical, it is undeniably awkward between you two as you tread through the forest as quietly as you can manage.

You are barely inside the borders of Reynyr now, something which makes you incredibly anxious to say the least. Shockingly, Hyunjin is the first to break the silence between you both.

“So, how did you end up out here?” His tone is somewhat sincere, but there is a layer of dry humour to it to, scratching at your brain the wrong way.

“Would you like the short or the long version?” You reply, fighting yourself to not match his tone.

“Truthfully, the short version. But it's easy to lie in that version so it would be pointless to listen to. So the long version if you please.”

From the angle of trust building, that made sense. So you overlook his rudeness and explain your situation. Glossing over any details of your homelife. To his credit, he actually listens intently and almost has a look of empathy on his features. Almost. He only offers a curt nod and blunt “Okay” in response though.

After a further half an hour of patrolling the borders of Reynyr, Hyunjin bluntly calls for a water break, kneeling down next to the stream to your left to refill his water sack. You quickly finish the dregs of your own before leaning down next to him to do the same. Just as you’re securing the end, a twig snaps ahead of you, causing both you and Hyunjin to snap your heads up in its direction, the elf swiftly loading his bow at an inhuman speed. You’re both silent, peering into the foliage to get eyes on whatever the sound came from. The sounds of more leaves and twigs being disturbed from various directions splits your attention and there is a beat of utter, terrifying silence before you both realise that you’re surrounded.

You manage to evade the first arrow that flies toward you from your left, Hyunjin immediately releases his towards its archer. There is a blood curdling scream and the elf takes a horn from under his cloak and blows as much air as he can into the mouthpiece. In any other situation, the sound would’ve been beautifully serene. He looks at you with a somehow stoic expression, places the horn in your hands and speaks one word.

“Climb.”

And so you do, the tree just behind you being the perfect candidate. You shock yourself with how easily scaling the branches came to you, you put it down to the adrenaline though. You settle on a branch with plenty of cover around it before sounding the horn again. You’re utterly terrified as you watch Hyunjin dodge and return arrows, you can feel your heartbeat in your head and the world has gone completely silent. The only sounds processing are the arrows slicing through the air and thankfully finding their targets. The sight of Felix running towards the ambush with Hongjoong a few paces behind both fills you with relief and worry, the former somehow spots you amongst it all and you can just make out him telling Hongjoong to climb aswell.

Felix joins Hyunjn in the clearing moments later, an arrow already drawn and delivered from the quiver at his hip. Its a miracle neither of them have been hit yet. Not that it should shock you due to their elven blood but they’re incredibly skilled, easily evading any arrows which slice towards them, each one promising mortal death and coming up short. Despite this, the tension only seems to be reaching a boiling point.

Hongjoong reaches you then, frantically relaying Felix’s message to continue blowing the horn, and so you do.

After around a minute of continuous melody sounding from the horn, the two elves' call is answered. Hongjoong snaps his head up with an unreadable expression at the reply, however as it continues to grow a layer of something akin to fear awakens in his eyes. These sounds are not made by any instrument, they are howls.

<- Chapter 6~ Chapter 8->

taglist-

[omamervt]

Something that's very frustrating to realize is that every video uploaded to YouTube likely has an audience, and any video failing to get views is the direct result of YouTube's AUTOMATED PROCESSES not doing the necessary work to find it.

All it took was 2 people reblogging a 25-second embedded YouTube video here on Tumblr (and the ensuing, like 5 views) for that video to get pushed to ~1,900 people on YouTube. it has a total of 130 views right now after 5 days. I know that's still relatively small numbers, but to someone trying to convince people he's a good streamer they should watch and interact with, it's not nothing that over a hundred people clicked that video, and over half of them watched the entire thing. Yes, it was 25 seconds. Put that aside for now, please.

So why, then, does a video of equal length and significantly more editing work get picked up by the Shorts side of the platform and bomb, only reaching 2 people, both of which were my alt accounts?

If Shorts actually works like TikTok, which is very much a "throw anything that looks somewhat adjacent to this person's interests at them and hope we get it right once out of ten tries" platform, then it shouldn't be possible that it gets zero views from people scrolling through Shorts, unless it just didn't even try to put it on anyone's feed. Not my subscribers, not the ~400 people who have watched my previous Shorts, sometimes even interacting with them, nobody.

And this is, like, the platform's one and only job. How is the "60 seconds or less video roulette" system have a LOWER hit rate than videos on the normal platform that one or two people clicked on from another site? The only way it's possible is if their Shorts algorithm didn't even fucking try.

[goldmanguyperson]

its not that i dont agree with what theyre saying, but theres a lot of people on the “pro *ndo” side that seem to be engaging with “anti end*s” (censored literally only because i dont want tumblr algorithm, which does indeed exist, showing this to people lol) in a way that i literally cannot see doing anything but making things worse

Having long reblog chains arguing with someone who’s lobbing insults at you is not productive, I don’t think it helps them much and i am skeptical of it helping anyone around them. It kind of just gives me a lot of secondhand embarrassment for everyone involved. Maybe it’s just because I used to engage in long instagram comment arguments where nothing ever happened, but I also feel that gave me some good perspective on how much stuff like that actually does. They are not there to be talked to, they are there to get mad. They fundamentally do not believe the things they do for any logical reasons. There is no talking to them in a way that will get them to understand. You can tell them facts all day and they’ll just fight even harder about it.

The primary things that got me out of my conspiratorial, harmful, partially mental disorder-fueled thinking back in the day were time, my family, and youtubers i liked to watch. It’s not that I don’t think changing harmful beliefs is impossible, it’s that i think you cant do that with random strangers online who have no reason to listen to you (youtubers and shit are different because parasociality is a reason, perhaps THE reason, to listen for many people. Random Tumblr bloggers do not have positive parasocial relationships with other random tumblr bloggers who have never seen them before). So trying to do so comes off as kinda holier than thou and like a virtue signal to me. even though they supposedly are talking directly to the other side, it just ends up becoming preaching to the choir. Because they don’t care about any fact you can give them

And like, yknow, i dont deny that some people probably go on to question the things they believe in the future, and that your words might help with that. but I’m just gonna say, when i still believed a bunch of shitty harmful crock, a lot of the ways that people tried to refute it left me EXTREMELY stressed out at the time, even somewhat traumatized in at least one case. And i’m not sure that that’s really a place you want to accidentally put people in

[wherenightmaresroost]

just gonna go through the @staff update post.

"Tumblr is not easy to use"

Create a tutorial for new accounts, or an official, up-to-date, easy-to-find FAQ and guidelines. Both would be good.

"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."

Nearly everyone using Tumblr for the longest time had been praising the site's commitment to user-curated feeds as one of its advantages over other social media sites. Listen to them. Listen to your users. They are not just "a small portion". Do not repeat Coke trying to taste more like Pepsi.

"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. "

Highlight the site's customization ability - Tumblr is one of the few remaining sites that allow this level of customization - and encourage your users to use it, so that logged-out visitors can be enticed to join in.

"Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards."

That will probably also improve user experience and increase user activity, so it's good for everyone.

"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."

Listen - Tumblr is great exactly because it shows me only the things I decided I want on my dash. It is great even if I'm getting bad content, because that means it is within my power to remove that bad content from my Tumblr experience.

Again, no one wants algorithm-determined content. We want 'better' content in the form of images actually loading and being easy to zoom in, videos loading in and being easy to pause and seek, minimal format fuck ups, and not losing our place in the dashboard scroll.

I understand wanting to show relevant interests to new NEW users (saw a few people complain that there's nothing on Tumblr, not knowing you have to fill the feed by yourself) but we'll probably better off by letting the users select interests from a broad variety of topics, and then recommending posts and blogs based on their choices.

"Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread."

This is good! I think this will actually improve discussion somewhat, and prevent OP from repeatedly receiving the Same Points when they've already addressed it in a different reblog chain.

"Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. "

There are people who view this as a feature - so might be better to give people the option of collapsing them, instead of removing it for everyone.

"However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  "

Improve the search and tagged functions of the site. Focus on the development of multiple dashboards - so we can group our interests, especially those from slow updating blogs. Focus on the development of followed tags, because I swear to the gods above and below, it does NOT update properly. The followed tag dashboard usually tells me the most recent post was one week ago, when in fact more than 10 posts had been created over that time. Remove that weird feature where posts with links do not show up in either reblogs or search or tags - plenty of artists like to link to their other accounts or personal sites in their post.

"Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral."

This is a good thing lol I only had the misfortune of having my dashboard unusable (2010s) / having my activities unusable (2015s) like thrice and. Never again.

"Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery."

This could be good opt-in feature, especially if we get to choose which blogs it applies to. Slow-updating blogs often get lost in the dash. But again, this is only good if it's a feature people can choose to use, and not use. I think a lot of people want to separate their e-mails from their social medias, or have a hard boundary between Tumblr time and Other Things time. This is also something a multi-dashboard feature / better tag-tracking can easily solve.

"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."

No.

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Again, NO.

If someone has their push notifications off they likely just straight out do not want to ANY notifications about it, especially e-mails, which are typically already clogged to begin with.

I am begging you guys to actually listen to your user base.

Principle 6 atm is the only point I have no issues with.

"You deserve a digital home that works for you."

Then do not focus on algorithm-determined feeds. Let your users build their own homes. Provide them with the tools to do so.

[jiskblr]

Tumblr Rules for Redditors

Hello, fellow redditors! Many people are trying to tell you rules about how to Tumblr properly. Many of them are wrong, or assholes, or both. I am also an asshole but I’m going to not be one for a minute to give you some advice:

“Reblog this or you’re a bad person” and any variation on that is a violation of intergalactic law. Don’t do it. Also, refuse to comply if someone else does it.

Generally, people can see what you reblog, but cannot see what you ‘like’. A like may seem like an upvote, but it is much less significant than one, since it doesn’t affect visibility in the slightest. A like will be visible both to the OP of the thread, and to the person whose reblog you put the like on. Like promiscuously! It feels good to get likes and there’s no downside. (Unless you are a space alien AKA influencer.) There’s a setting for like visibility, but it’s still somewhat hard to find even if it’s turned on.

Tumblr nominally has the ability to browse global tags (e.g. seeing the entire site’s posts and reblogs tagged #superwholock or #reddit exodus) and to search the site for things. No one uses them and they don’t really work.

You are probably less surprised by this than denizens of literally any other website on the internet, but there’s mostly no algorithm here. Chronological order only. This now defaults to being on, but you can and should turn it off. (If you’re using the search or global tags, they might have an algorithm, but if they do, it doesn’t work. We don’t know because we don’t use them, because they mostly don’t work either.)

Anyone can have absolutely any conversation in the notes of your post that they like. This is how the website works. You are allowed to complain about it, but don’t expect anyone to humor you. I think it’s possible to make posts unrebloggable and disable replies, but this is essentially refusing to use Tumblr. If you want to do that... go ahead, I guess?

Many people have ‘DNI’ lists in their blog descriptions. This means ‘do not interact’ and indicates that they don’t want you to message them, reblog from them, reblog any posts they are OP of, or even, sometimes, ‘like’ their posts. It is good manners to respect these, if you know they exist, but in normal use you probably won’t look at blog descriptions very often so it is entirely okay to violate them by accident. (When the lists get very long, it becomes impractical to check whether you violate them. Generally, just skip it. You probably don’t want to interact with those people anyway.)

Notes on posts you start will go to you no matter how many intervening hops there are on the reblog chain. If you get a post with an enormous amount of notes, this can get overwhelming. Whatever the current incarnation of Xkit (basically RES for Tumblr except we’ve switched names and maintainers seven times) is, will have a setting to deal with this. If that’s insufficient, the suggested course of action is to reblog your OP to your own blog so that you have a copy for posterity’s sake, and then delete the OP. This silences the notes.

If you and another user both follow each other, you are ‘mutuals’. This makes it much easier to have conversations with each other, which is ordinarily sort of hard since everything is purely chronological. Frequently your mutuals are your friends; if not yet true, they may become your friends.

When you reblog things, you can write words both in the word part and in the tags, Modern tumblr norms are to write long rambling tags in full sentences rather than put words in the main body. Unlike some other norms, violating this one and putting your response in the body of the reblog is not particularly rude. The worst it does is make a reblog chain long. Probably don’t reblog things and just say “This.”, though.

Tags can be subjected to peer review, by which we mean someone copy-pastes your tags and/or screenshots them and adds them to the main body of their reblog. Generally this is a compliment. The alternative is to say “#prev tags”, and this makes everyone hate you because it’s hard to find which tags were ‘prev’. Please just peer review properly if they’re good.

If you want to search your blog, consider Siikr. Don’t overuse it, it’s one guy’s project.

Be verbose! This ain’t Twitter, no character limit. (Not even the really large character limit of a reddit comment.) Write a 3000-word story in a single reblog if you want, that sounds awesome. Use ‘read more’ if you do, though. Posts can be very long, one of our oldest memes is about this.

Infinite scroll is the default, but you can turn it off. Actually, check all the settings, many of them will improve your experience.

On queues: Go nuts. Some people put everything in the queue, some people almost nothing. Some queue specific aestheticposting (personally I do #too smol) and post other things normally. Most people who queue a lot add a queue-specific tag like #the mighty queue or #this queue shall pass, or at least I notice them more than poasters with untagged queues.

You know how Reddit lets you buy Gold and people go 'thanks for the gold kind stranger'? On tumblr we spend money on Tumblr Blaze, and it is considered the PvP section of Tumblr. Though sometimes people actually use it to spread posts they like, such as people attempting to evangelize Christianity (no, really, that happened a lot) or the, I hope, actually-kind stranger who blazed this OP. You can turn off PvP with one of the many settings.

Everybody be excellent to each other!

[elixlozgamer]

Im probably gonna get a lot of hate. Im probably gonna get death threats in my ask box (again. Yes Im looking at you "kill the soldiers" anon. Speaking of which, anon will be OFF until this post stops getting notifs. Block me if you don't want to see any other opinions than you own, because I'm allowed to have them.)

Rest of PSA is below the cut. TW for mention of death threats and possible cussing.

But we do NOT need to send death threats, things with smutty themes, etc. Into a celebrities ask box all because they're gonna be on this site.

They're people just as much as we are. If you don't like them, theres a handy-dandy feature called "blocking and moving on". Not writing rude messages. Not saying "Blazing a post is a pvp attack". (Because god forbid an artist use a feature to be seen)

I understand not wanting big corps to make their way on Tumblr. Believe me, I do. However Tumblr's advertising (or at least on mobile) is easilly skippable/you can scroll past or actually look at the ad if its somewhat interesting.

Also, Tumblr sells shoelaces for 19 dollars. That should only be like three dollars, but it shows that it really does need the money. (@indigoartistqueen mentioned that, along with other various things in this article) Such as paying programmers to create new features. Paying artists to create new logos and themes. paying the employees that check out the reports. (which I am rlly sorry for them bc I just so happen to keep finding really rude comments or things shipping an 8 year old with an 1000 year old.)

So, if tumblr got a little more money, then merch will cost less. Features will cost less. You can crab someone for less for goodness sakes. (Speaking if which, if you REALLY hate a celeb that badly, run them off with crabs.) But tumblr, just like any other site and app, NEEDS money to keep it running.

Also, don't you think SOME form of algorithm will be good? Or at least better search results? Because artists do tend to use very different tags. (Like memes, funny, lmao, lol, etc.) All that could be grouped under "Funny" so that people can actually find and search for their content easier.

Not to mention that with the way the tumblr staff are, I highly doubt they're gonna be implementing things that will cause a riot from their supporters, like the algorithm, bc the blogs ARE the algorythm, reblogging stuff they like to spread it out.

But just a better tagging system! i myself have stopped posting art as much because I just DON'T get seen! People just don't like or reblog my work, but if I were to blaze it, I would suddenly have 1,000 notes full of threats and "this is a pvp attack. Everybody block on sight."

Now, getting back to the celebrity thing. So many people have said that they don't want any political opinions to divide this site. Well I'd hate to break it to you, but we have, in some form, a type of political dispute. Usually its over the type of view one should have on a fiction character. How you can interpret them. What headcanons are correct. Which fandoms better. Which characters hotter. I could go on over the disputes! Plus the political side of tumblr! Science side of tumblr! Religous site on tumblr!

It never ends! If you don't like a celebrity, DON'T SEND DEATH THREATS TO THEIR ASK BOX! Some will actually commit it! Instead, BLOCK. THEM. It's easy! Don't pay attention to it! Just block them. If you really don't like them, send a cursed image, like I don't know, Patrick Star in stripper heels! A perfect circle thats slightly off! Do NOT send threats, because they're humans just like you! (Or as a Fairy myself, xenogenders as well)

Point is, quit trying to run celebrities off this site all because you're afraid of contriversal opinions that you don't agree with! Just block them! It's there for a reason! It's not like roblox where you can only block 100 people total!

Use the block feature. Don't fight fire with fire. It will ONLY get worse. You don't see firemen using flamethrowers, do you??? No! Please for the LOVE OF WHOEVER OR WHATEVER YOU BELIEVE IN quit spreading hate! It only makes things worse! You're only making yourself worse! Just because tumblr is an anonymous site does not mean you can do whatever you want... Because guess what? There's other humans right behind that post you just saw! (Unless its a bot ofc, that's a different story for another time)

Respectfully, have a good day. If you don't like my opinion, block me. If you send me a threat, I'll block and report you.

[bookishjules]

it can definitely be a bit of a learning curve, but i trust you to get the hang of it! idk if you're actually asking for tips (considering you do have a nero who can show you the ropes), but here are a few anyway hehe

reblogging posts is like collecting rocks and putting them on display for other people to see. we love reblogs. there isn't much of an algorithm (there's a fyp but we'll get to that) so reblogging is really the main way for posts to be spread. you can add an additional caption/comment to a post when you reblog it if you have something significant/funny/informative/etc. to say, but know that if people reblog the post from you, your caption will stay attached.

if you want to share your thoughts but don't have anything important to say or don't have the commitment to put your thoughts in the actual post, add them to the tags!! tags are a lovely place for rambling thoughts. they are also used for organization so that you can find things easier on your blog (tho the search function can be kinda shit at times but we'll take what we can get). if you are making your own post and want to add tags so that it will show up when other people search those tags on tumblr itself (i.e. not just your blog), make sure you are only adding relevant tags. talking about one character and tagging a completely unrelated character or using a trending tag to try and gain visibility will just annoy people and could get you being reported for spam.

speaking of reporting people.. there are (porn) bots/spam accounts that will follow you. block and report them for spam. blocking is also very normal and good here. it keeps the ecosystem healthy. don't be afraid to block people if their posts annoy you or are hurtful in some way.

for the most part, you will exist on your "dash" or the part of the site where the posts created and reblogged by everyone you follow appear in chronological order. the "for you" page does exist, as i said, but it's not used much because it's kinda lame and also somewhat contrary to how people have used tumblr for the majority of its existence. people follow blogs they want to see and trust that if they're meant to see something, it will appear on their dash lol

you can also go out into the tags and collect things to bring back to your mutuals and followers. it can sometimes be like the wild west out there, but that's also the best way to start out imo--looking up fandoms or characters you like and finding blogs that post opinions or fanart you vibe with.

unlike reblogs, likes don't do much except (a) work as a way to collect posts just for yourself to come back to or (b) acknowledge the person whose post you're liking, like a way to support or show sympathy for personal posts etc. they're an important feature, but if you really like a post or art or a fic or whatever, the best thing you can do is reblog it so that other people can see it as well

in the settings, you can also hide your likes and following tabs on your blog, so that they're more private. there are a lot of features in there you can turn on/off too, under "dashboard preferences" i'm not sure which ones tumblr has on automatically, but it's worth going in there to personalize your experience. i have pretty much everything turned off except for timestamps and colorized tags. in your settings, you can also blacklist tags, which is good for things like triggers, which people will normally use tags like "tw ___" for, as well as fandoms or books you don't want to see spoilers for, or otherwise annoying content you don't care to see.

i think that's more than enough for now lol but i'm always around if you have any other questions <3

you made this blog just for me didn't you <3 it's okay you can say it hehe jkjk but fr i'm so excited you're here??? i literally RAN to your blog the moment i saw nero's text that you had joined <3

welcome to the hellsite babes <3333

AHHHHH HELLO MY DARLING SLEEPOVER BUDDY!! now we can bully nero loudly together 😻 also idk how to use tumblr pls help me

[gh0stfellow]

RSS for Artists and the People Who Follow Them

RSS is the best thing for artists that you didn't know still existed. Tired of trying to figure out what new thing you have to do this week to get your posts seen? Tired of keeping up with 8 different websites to follow all the artists you like? Do you hate Musk/Zuckerberg, the general social media experience for artists, endless scrolling, or fractured communities? Use RSS! It's a super simple and comfortable way to experience social media.

Keep reading below for the full how-to!

What is RSS and why should I care?

RSS is a standardized format at a URL that computers can read to monitor updates to a website. When a post gets made, the RSS feed gets updated containing the post's information. An RSS reader is the app you use to view these RSS feeds and subscribe to them. It displays updates to the RSS feed similar to a normal social media dashboard.

There are many more specifics we could get into, but the technical details aren't really what matter here: the main point is that you can use an RSS reader to follow all your favorite people from almost any site and never miss an update, all while being able to view the content at your own pace.

Through simple steps outlined further down, you can follow twitter, instagram, deviant art, youtube, and tumblr accounts, subreddits, personal websites, newsletters, and more! The cool thing is, unlike your twitter or instagram feed, the RSS reader has powerful tools to display the posts exactly to your liking with filters, sorting, AND posts that won't disapear until you mark them as read, so you can kiss FOMO goodbye. Of course, this does mean I don't necessarily recommend you use RSS for your general meme accounts where an endless feed is somewhat ideal, it's much better suited for following creators or others you want to keep up to date on.

I use Inoreader as my RSS reader because it's free (though you can pay for more features), has a good mobile app as well as a browser version, and a good UI that is comfortable for post viewing.

Benefits as a viewer

No algorithms (but you can set filters)

Posts stay until you see them, so you don't have to be online 24/7 to see art you followed for

You can follow people on any* site and see it all in one place

No logging into multiple accounts or checking websites for updates

No ads, sponsored posts - nothing you don't want to see

Benefits as an artist

No algorithms! Format posts any way you like without worrying about getting nerfed

Freedom to post where ever you want

If RSS became standard, you wouldn't have to worry about posting on every social media in existance; anybody can follow you easily, no matter where you are

You'll be able to reach your audience no matter the whims of social media changes

Like having a newsletter without any extra work

How to subscribe to social media feeds through RSS

Here's a quick run down of how subscribing to an RSS feed generally works:

A website exists that has RSS

You type website.com/rss/ into your RSS reader and it sees an active feed

You hit subscribe

Peace on earth is achieved

Of course, sometimes it's not that simple and a website's feed is at a different URL. There might be a little RSS button on the website you can copy the link from, or readers like Inoreader can be given the basic URL and it'll try to find if any RSS feed is attached to it.

In the past, most socials had RSS built in, but this has slowly been phased out in favor of notifications/algorithms. So unfortunately, it's not as simple as it used to be anymore. Fortunately, however, websites like rssbox or RSS-Bridge can automatically turn twitter and other social media profiles into an RSS feed.

Before we get to that, however, there is some great news: some sites, such as tumblr and DeviantArt, still have RSS built in to each profile!

Tumblr feeds are at: https://blogname.tumblr.com/rss (god bless tumblr)

DeviantArt feeds: https://backend.deviantart.com/rss.xml?type=deviation&q=by%3Adeviantname+sort%3Atime+meta%3Aall (as usual, DA likes to over complicate things)

Enter the user name of the person you want to follow in the URL where indicated, remove the asterisks, pop it into your RSS reader and you're good to go.

Youtube channels can also be followed by pasting the channel URL into your reader, where it'll grab the feed for you to follow automatically.

*Note: sometimes, there appears to be small discrepancies between someone's tumbr.com/username url and username.tumblr.com url, and you must use the second for the rss feed link even though clicking on their profile name usually send you to the first link version. If you're having trouble, I recommend going to the user's archive on tumblr and then replacing the word "archive" with "rss" in the URL you're at. This way you'll know your formatting is right.

So what about twitter and other bastard sites? That's where our friends on github who make open source projects come in. As mentioned above, rssbox and RSS-Bridge are both great options. You can host them on your own server, if you're into that kind of thing, to ensure you never lose service and your feeds might get updated faster, but both have free to use websites that make it as easy as:

Copy the profile URL of the person you want to follow

Locate the corresponding social media section on the rssbox/rss-bridge webpage and paste the URL in

Adjust any settings you want

Copy the URL it gives you and subscribe to it in your RSS reader

*Note: Many RSS readers mention having twitter and other social support (usually with a paid subscription), but I've yet to see one that doesn't cap you at like, 20 accounts. This is a ridiculously small number. That said, Feedbro is a reader that is available as a browser extension only and DOES offer real, free, endless social media to RSS feed conversion. Personally, I hate its UI as well as the way it automatically marks things as read, but it's up to you and what works best for you. I probably just missed a reader when I was looking around, so if this matters to you do your research on what reader you use.

Another feed source of note is newsletters. Again, many readers will do this automatically for a price, but I enjoy the website Kill the Newsletter that'll do this for free. You can type in what you want to call the newsletter feed, click generate, and then sign up for the newsletter with the email address it creates for you. You'll then copy the second URL on the page (the one that ends in .xml) and this is what you'll plug into your RSS reader. Done! This is helpful for cleaning out your inbox of emails that you do want to see, but aren't important, and would otherwise end up cluttering up your inbox and burying time sensitive items.

Most websites, RSS feed or not, can have an RSS feed created for them if you're okay with it being a bit hacky. So I highly recommend doing some googling if you're interested in something I haven't mentioned here. You can also sometimes find RSS feeds for a website (if they aren't up front about it) by Inspecting the page and looking in the html head element for a .xtml or rss link. I'm passionate about this, so feel free to send me an ask if you have questions! (but also try to figure it out for yourself first)

How to get your own RSS feed

If you're on any kind of social, someone can follow an RSS feed of your art using the steps outlined above. However, I highly recommend you start posting your work somewhere with RSS built in! You don't have to do any extra work as your RSS feed is automatically made/updated on websites like tumblr and deviant art that still support RSS. I believe cohost might also be adding RSS support soon as well. I recommend following your own RSS feed so you know what is getting sent out.

If you want a space to truly call your own you can easily make a tiny website or blog. There are a lot of options for this, but if you're looking for simplicity I recommend bearblog.dev! Just make an account and start posting and your RSS feed is automatically made at: https://yourblog.bearblog.dev/feed/

Wordpress and Neocities also have built in RSS feeds, and likely a lot of other platforms that advertise blogging.

Now you have an RSS feed! And no worries about engagement from followers - it's easy to click the post link in your reader to a post, comment/like it, and then hop back into your RSS reader. It's made for that, even. Remeber to advertise your RSS feed; I hope they become the norm again, but until that happens you'll probably have to let people know it exists.

Closing Remarks

Listen, I'm realistic about this. I don't think I'm going to make this post and then RSS will return in full force to the internet like wolves being introduced back into Yellowstone. However, I spent years being dissatisfied with how I was forced to engage with artists on social media - the endless scrolling, feeling like "if I don't look at the next post I'll never see this piece of art again", the usual horrors of the internet we've fallen into - and if I can introduce a real solution to that for just one person I'll be happy.

I was born in the 90s and so can remember personal sites and forums, but never learned what RSS was and thought it was only something for power user programmers or stuffy business men. I have a feeling a lot of people have the same misconception, and it pains me to think of people out there that could benefit so much from this if only they knew of it properly. If you have ADHD, this is a game changer, I assure you.

I wish someone would've told me about this years ago. RSS is the answer to a lot of problems artists have. It's been there all along, it just hasn't been properly introduced to the wider community.

So I might not have much reach, but I feel so passionate about this; for the people this could help and the community we could create if we wiggled out from under what corporations have turned the internet into.

And oh, people have tried to fix this, sans RSS. I've watched many art websites come and go claiming to be the one to fix everything, but they usually fail because they divide the community and don't gain traction quickly enough. That, and non-artist support is extremely valuable and usually alienated in these attempts. RSS, on the other hand, is everywhere! Anybody can use it, anybody can follow it, and you aren't restricted to just one thing.

I say RSS is the solution because it's not just RSS. It's a tool that allows you to have the flexibility to make whatever solutions you need and be where ever you need to be on the internet.

RSS used to be everywhere, it used to be advertised - but of course, RSS feeds don't display ads, so it's only natural their head was on the chopping block. So my advice is such: pressure websites to add RSS back in! Make a tiny blog or website! Follow some feeds! Help reclaim the internet and regain control over the content you want to see. You don't have to be stuck in one spot, forced to use platforms you don't like, to see what you want and have your work be seen. Companies want us to consume more and more of what we don't want to see, to make us want to scroll endlessly into a stupor, and they'll do everything in their power to make us think we want it too.

So I dunno, follow some RSS feeds. Could be fun.

[olderthannetfic]

Hi! I know you're one of the older fans on Tumblr & I wanted to ask you about the anti movement. I'm 19 & when I see people talking about the ages of anti fans, they're often within the 14-25 age range & I have no idea why. I also feel it's a little unfair to say that younger fans tend to be antis, though it is understandable since I've also made mistakes when I didn't know things. Why do you think most antis are younger fans? What should younger fans who aren't antis do to be more involved?

Hee! I’m 40, which, tbh, actually isn’t that old for Tumblr (though it’s certainly old compared to the common perception of tumblr), so sure, I can probably answer this. I guess there are two questions here: 1. Is it true and 2. why, if so?

1. Experience suggests that antis do tend to be young... but it does not follow that young people tend to be antis. (You’d have to know the proportion of antis relative to the overall population of fandom, which we don’t. I think the majority of people of any age tend to want to read fic in peace and not be roped into endless wank.) I definitely see some ringleaders who are older and good at manipulating fandom trends for their own ends too.

2. Why would this be the case?

When I was in college, we used to joke about all the freshman year Marxists. It’s an eternal phenomenon: people who don’t have much experience learn a new thing and are on fire to change the world using the one tool in their toolbox. (To a man with a hammer, yadda yadda.) There’s no passion like the passion of the newly converted, and young people tend to have a lot more energy and often a lot more free time to yell on social media. Antis may be one expression of this among people currently in that age bracket. It’s not like people my age didn’t do other annoying-ass things when we were that age. You just don’t see it because it was 20 years ago, a lot of it was never online, and all the websites/platforms from then have been systematically destroyed. (Often by yahoo. Fuck yahoo.)

The other half of the reason, in my opinion, is that there have been concerted efforts to sway lefty/socially liberal people in specific--often TERFy--ways. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the right wing radicalization of gamer guys.

People are susceptible to it because their lives suck and because they don’t know enough history or have enough confidence to form their own opinions and stand up for them. Sure, some people are going to go hardcore for anti views no matter how much they know, but a lot of people are just being swept along with the tide because something sounds superficially pro-gay or pro-protecting kids or whatever.

I cannot emphasize enough that the things that make someone ripe for the alt right are the same things that make them ripe for cults and for various kinds of toxic fandom shit: it’s usually the smart, sensitive overthinkers who don’t have enough close actual friends and who aren’t in a good place in their lives.

---

So what can you do?

You can try to make fewer more significant friendships and make sure your support system isn’t people you only know because you currently share a fandom. Most of my offline friends are people I found through fandom meetups, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for making fandom your life and only hanging out with fandom people, but we’re just regular friends who have dinner parties and shit (well, when it’s not the plaguetimes). Most of the time, we don’t share specific ships or fandoms. It’s vitally important to have a real support network that can’t be ripped away by social media wank.

The next thing we can all do is publicly stand up for what we believe in and not cave to pressure just because someone yelled “think of the children”. It’s important to be clear about the real history and logic behind these things, whether it’s the history of censorship that inspires people to support AO3′s extremely permissive policies or the fact that ‘queer’ was a fully reclaimed umbrella term in the 90s.

It’s okay if we don’t all agree. What’s not okay is appeals to emotion and ignoring science. A lot of anti bullshit is like “Rape fantasies are an abnormal red flag”, and this goes against every damn thing we know about human sexuality.

Part of this is examining our own stances for illogic and hypocrisy. If thought crimes aren’t real, then all of them aren’t real. I see way too many “Okay, but that one gross kink though!” comments from people who claim to be on my side, and this is very silly.

Possibly the biggest thing, though, is that we as a planet need to start being savvier about shitty social media and how it’s destroying our mental health. I don’t have a good overall solution, and obviously, I’m still on tumblr, but we all really need to cut down the amount of time we’re on sites like Facebook and Twitter and probably tumblr too. The more it has an algorithm and the less it has moderation, the more it’s a problem. Individual discords and spaces that can have moderation are better. It’s fine if some of them are 100% antis. The point is to have multiple spaces with rules that suit different groups.

A thing you can do is make your own spaces: be the owner of a discord for your ship, not just a passive participant at the mercy of shitty mods in an existing one. Run a fic exchange with rules you think are sensible and be firm when people try to scream about problematique things you don’t agree are a problem. One of the most pernicious anti problems is mods breaking the rules of their own spaces (usually a “no kinkshaming” one) to cave to social pressure from the loudest, most assholish set of people in the server. They don’t know how many people quietly disapprove and quietly leave their fandoms because they only fear the loud harassers, not the silent toll of caving to them.

Honestly, the climate of fear is the big issue more than a bit of yelling: I routinely meet 20-somethings who live in fear of being canceled and shunned. You can help this by... not being like that with your friends. If they’re friends with a canceled person, don’t ask them to drop the canceled person or face the same fate. If you disagree about some fandom hot take, talk about it calmly and don’t act like the friendship will be over in 5 seconds and you’ll use all your knowledge of them against them in a public callout because they didn’t instantly agree.

Basically, have some self confidence and don’t be fucking terrified all the time... which can be a tall order and probably explains the age thing also.

[rastronomicals]

I’ve Noticed

the "pornbot" influx many people are talking about, but though they might be bots, they're not really porn are they? They're, um, *scantily clad* at worst.

But what I can't figure out is what active harm they might do to me or my account, as long as I don't click their links. I'm fine with knowing that my follower count is inflated somewhat. Big fat hairy deal: Somewhere in there is two or three thousand people with the taste to dig what I post.

And if I'm gonna be that way about it, does it even make sense to take the time to block them?

'Cause I certainly haven't been.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky that all these music-loving bots with no blogposts I seem to attract have assumed the avatars of skinny young girls; if the bot algorithm had picked those of middle-aged fat women I might have found myself in trouble . . . . .

Anyway it's simple, regardless of how I keep my blog: Porn good, pornbots bad. Figure it out Tumblr