#~dash

[doctorslippery]

Watching people I don't follow fight in the reblogs of a post that shows up on my ~dash.

Hitting refresh.

[em-dashes]

when u come up with a tiny change for your story that not only makes the writing flow better but also hammers in the character motivations and story theme

[oof-i-did-it-agaaiiin]

Beautiful from Ordinary Days

[bitchvania]

One of tbe brilliant things about mlp:fim is that the main cast aren't wayward children or highschool students they're just a bunch of young adults. Like. Twilight is a postgrad forced by her supervisor to go find friends. Apple Jack has responsibility of gaurdianship of her little sister. They're all employed. They pay rent and taxes. Fluttershy has to deal with her deadbeat underachiever older brother who can't seem to move out by himself when she visits her parents. She also has anxiety she hasnt grown out of since high school. Rainbow Dash spends most days getting high and goofing off on her minimum wage job. Pinkie Pie has a culinary apprenticeship and lives with an older couple after she left her small mining town when nobody there was as into psychadelics as her. Rarity balances running her slowly growing etsy fashion bussiness with going on tinder dates with the worst men you've ever seen. They all vote. They have to pick up their own medical perscriptions. These are 26 year old girlies going through first quarter life crisises. So, yea, that fanart of Fluttershy smoking forever weed is highly accurate.

[punkitt-is-here]

local horse woman voted most Male Living Space of all time

[catmask]

i remember when everyone was having the 'is genderbend art morally wrong' debate online when i was 14 sitting there thinking oh god i am a monster for looking up 'fluttershy as a boy google images' and now im 4 years on testosterone

[notfocks]

[futch-disaster]

incredible gender homie! can ı raw you?

[aiburr]

monsters can go to the surface (twitter), but the night vale residents cannot/don't want to get out of town (tumblr)

[nightmare-chaser]

Ive seen multiple posts from reddit refuges that go like "im queer and its so welcoming here!" Or "im nonbinary and dont get quized on my gender here!" Or "im autistic and i can be weird here and yall like it!" And its so fuckin cute its like yes hi hello welcome this is the gay ass autistic website we love special interests we love weird genders we love just saying random shit and the just happy surprised tone of those posts is so wholesome to me like yes! hi! you are in fact the target audience! welcome home

[polararts]

It's a period piece~

[doctorslippery]

These unrelated images appeared side-by-side on my Deviant~dash. They tell a story.

[kedreeva]

When I was a kid, maybe 14 or so (which is, you know, 20+ years ago), I belonged to a Yahoo! mailing list for an anime called Gundam Wing. It was mostly populated by other teens, of varying ages, as it was started by a teen and her friends. Eventually it migrated, when Yahoo! groups started as forums, and even branched off into non-GW related stuff in a second forum.

One of the things I remember the most clearly is the oldest person in the group. Her name was Steelsong. She was a 40-something Dom with a sub whose name we knew even though we knew nothing else. She ran her own fanfic archive because the web was still handmade HTML and navigated in webrings and I’m pretty sure Google didn’t exist or was only barely, barely launched and not well known. She was kind and patient and we loved her. She treated everyone on the group with the respect given any adult, even though most of the rest of the world was still treating us like we were children. Not teenagers even, but children. She never once condescended to any of us, never made our youth a barrier to her respect, never treated us like we were incapable of being full people or like we were less than her because we were young.

I remember that she hosted our fanfiction, as absolutely terrible as it was (and I still have some of it, I am WELL aware of how cringingly terrible it is, just absolute nonsense garbage), right there alongside of other fic that was soul-achingly beautiful. Not a separate section for her friends or for kids, just right there like we were good enough to feature alongside other authors. I never once received crit from her that I didn’t ask for, only support. Only love. I am still writing today partly because Steel was so kind about our fic, fanfic and original.

I remember that when I started doing clay sculpture, she commissioned a tiny pair of dragons from me, to support me doing artwork. She sent a check my mom cashed for me, and my mom helped me mail it when it was finished. It broke in transit, and Steel assured me that she mended it and that it was still beautiful. It was a small gold dragon curled up with a small silver dragon.

I remember that her patience knew no bounds. I remember that she was there for us, regardless of reason. When we wanted to know silly things like what to do with a single AA battery, she answered. When we had serious questions about sex, she answered.  When we had questions about writing, she taught us. When one of our group members, a young gay teen in Australia, ended up in the hospital and then stopped making posts, and we all knew what had happened, she let us talk to her about it because we couldn’t go to our own parents, even though we had just lost a friend.

She was not a replacement to my parents, but she was an extra parent, in some ways. A friend, certainly, but someone that had been through more life than we had and was willing to pass on knowledge if we asked for it. Someone older that we trusted with things that were too uncomfortable to go to our parents or teachers or whatever about, because we already knew she wasn’t going to judge us or something, and that we would get an honest answer.

I don’t know why I’m remembering this so hard tonight, and I’m not sure if there’s a point to sharing this, except that I know she’s gone now. She was ill the last time we spoke, and her site went down a long time ago, and I miss her. She was a huge influence on my life, then and now. She was hope, for me, that life as an adult didn’t have to be boring, it wouldn’t have to mean giving up the things I loved and Becoming Only Responsible With No Fun. Her presence meant I had hope I could still write and play with friends even when I wasn’t ��a kid’ anymore. And she’s gone, and I miss her, and I wanted to share her from the perspective of youth, and the perspective over twenty years later has provided me.

And I think of her, when people go off about older folks being in fandom with younger folks. I’m an older folks now, or at least middle aged folks because there are certainly folks older than me still, but I wasn’t always. I’ve been here since i was a younger folks, and I know how much Steel’s presence and support meant to me, how much she helped not just me but everyone on that group. And I think of the people saying older folks don’t belong in fandom, and that they shouldn’t interact with younger folks at all, and I just think... I can’t agree. I needed that kind of solid presence in my life back then and even at the age I am now, I need the folks older than me to stay. I want them here.

So I guess, like, if you’re here and you’re 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or whatever, I want you here in fandom with me, still. Your presence here is a comfort. It is hope. It is a reminder that life will continue to be fun, even as I get older, myself. And if you’re younger and you have this sort of elder in your groups, I hope that they are like Steel. I hope they are kind and patient and supportive, and that knowing them gives you hope for your own future. I hope in twenty years you look back and remember them fondly.

[unnecessaryligatures]

[Image description: Pacific Rim meme of three screenshots of Hermann Gottlieb pointing at an enormous chalkboard with his cane. Text reads: “In the beginning the bot accounts were spaced apart 24 weeks. Then 12, then 6, then every 2 weeks. In 4 days we could be seeing a bot every 8 hours until they are coming every 4 minutes. We should witness a double event within seven days.”]

[punkitt-is-here]

you gotta believe her

[yousaytomato]

Hey erm.... is Tumblr actually scaling images down in the app now...?