#but it was just a LOT of work and without tumblr to host it on it was a lot of work for zero pay off...

[crowleysgirl56]

Updated with edits!

Timeline of the last 12 months 15 months of the Good Omens fandom.

July 2023 - Good Omens season 2 drops. Fans watch on the presumption this season is based on the sequel idea Terry and NG spoke of in the 90’s and 2006. Reactions are mixed but mostly positive. We’re happy with fluff. Initial thoughts: “I don��t see how this story could have been fleshed out into an entire novel, but I guess it was only ever just initial ideas, so I suppose that works.”

July 2023 - THE KISS.

Fandom reaction: NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

August 2023 - NG responds to fandom

NG: “Season 2 isn’t actually based on the idea Terry and I spoke about.”

Fandom: “What?”

NG: “Season 2 is just a bridging story to get us to season 3. That will be the story that Terry and I discussed.”

Fandom: “What!?”

NG: “Season 3 hasn’t been greenlit by Prime yet so we might not get it.”

Fandom: “WHAT?!”

NG: “Also I wrote the kiss that way by giving the fandom what you want without actually giving you what you want. So like, stop asking me for things or I won’t write them.”

Fandom: “AAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!”

August to November 2023 - The fandom, now lost and depressed, mope through the halls of Tumblr and Reddit, desperately clinging to any piece of information dropped by NG, sharing fan art, creating headcanons and theories, and writing the angstiest of angst fanfiction ever written. Some weep in a corner mumbling about the South Downs. Most just trudge through their daily lives, listless and despondent.

December 2023 - Prime greenlights Good Omens Season 3.

Fandom: YES! OMG HOORAY! WAHOO! Dancing in the streets. Fanfiction turns to fluff and smut. NG is active and happy, answering many questions without actually answering them. Gives us the hilarious gift of Dottie and Sadie.

January 2024 - speculation of when season 3 filming will begin commences. Realisation that it could be quite a while starts to sink in. Actors and writers strike has caused delay to the scripts being written. David and Michael have taken on theatre work which will delay their filming schedules. Douglas McKinnon announces he’s stepping away as director. Fandom has slight freak out, but NG reassures everyone it’s nothing to worry about, and linked to the recent strikes.

Early to mid 2024 - “The invisible and unbreakable line that joins Crowley and Aziraphale”.

Fandom: AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! We inevitably become even more feral. Much fanart is made.

March 2024 - David hosts the BAFTAs and Michael helps him during the opening. David is then nominated for TV BAFTA for Good Omens.

Fandom: OMG YYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAYYYY!!! Much dancing and celebration is had once again. We are so in love.

May 2024 - filming schedule for GO season 3 is announced. It will commence January 2025. The fandom reacts.

Fandom: “That’s still so long away!” “Michael and David will have their hair dyed white and red for the awards season!” “Going by the previous production schedule this means season 3 won’t reach our screen until 2026! No!” “Cannot wait for this to start filming we are going to be so feral!” More fanfiction, more fanart.

June 2024 - David hosts Pub in the Park. Michael joins him.

Fandom: THEY ARE SO CUTE! HOW CAN THEY BE THIS CUTE, WE DON’T DESERVE THEM.

Early July 2024 - horrible allegations are laid against NG and the fandom comes to a terrible crashing halt. Much debate and discussion is had back and forth: “Believe the victims”. “Separate the art from the artist”. “Drop the fandom entirely”. “Step back for a moment”. There is a lot of arguing, but there is also still a lot of love. NG has fled all social media.

Late July 2024 - until it’s January, and the show actually starts filming, Good Omens season 3 has now become Schrödinger’s Series. It both now exists and doesn’t exist. Prime at any moment may pull the production due to the backlash against NG. The fandom now re-examines McKinnon’s departure speculating if he left for other reasons. We once again despondently trudge the halls of tumblr and Reddit feeling the same feeling of this time last year.

This section of the post was made in late July was this was original posted: And that pretty much brings us up to date. Anything could happen in the next six months, which is why I feel we’re all worried. It’s why I’m worried. So instead, keep sharing the art, keep writing the fanfiction, keep speculating with theories and headcanons. Let’s be here for each other. Because we created this fandom for each other. It doesn’t belong to NG anymore. Let’s do this for Terry. Personally, I can’t wait to come back to this timeline and add January 2025 - filming begins.

28 July 2024 - Michael Sheen, the absolute angel that he is posts a picture of his tartan socks clad feet alongside the caption “To our world”. Such a beautiful, beautiful man!

10 September 2024 - Amazon Prime announces production for season 3 is paused. Everyone loses their shit. There is much lamentations.

Unsubstantiated posts start circulating that the show is cancelled. People who have a friend whose cousin’s gardener’s former roommate claim they are involved with the production and therefore they KNOW the show is cancelled. More lamentations.

Amazon stays silent for EIGHT. FUCKING. WEEKS.

The fandom walk around in a god damn haze again akin to what August to December 2023 felt like. Will we be left with the final 15 forever?

Mid October 2024 - for about 3 days straight the fandom receives information that is akin to a rollercoaster of emotion. Head graphics designer Mickey tweets out a now deleted post that everyone is going back to Scotland. Then Peter Anderson Studio tweet out a now deleted post referencing the South Downs cottage. Then random casting company updates their subscription website advertising Good Omens: The Finale a TV movie. Entertainment website releases an article referencing this. The fandom LOSE. THEIR. SHIT. AGAIN. We honestly can’t take much more of this.

25 October 2024 - Amazon finally announces the news we’ve been half expecting half dreading with positive and negative ramifications. Neil Gaiman is gone. GOOD! Season 3 will still happen. GOOD! But now it’s just a 90 minutes finale. WAIT, WHAT, NO! But it could have been worse. It was a hairs breath away from being completely cancelled. GOD BLESS RHIANNA PRATCHETT AND ROB WILKINS.

It’s been a wild ride everyone. I’ve already posted earlier this morning (25 October 2024) my thoughts about the whole situation so go read that there. But for now? Gaiman is gone, and we get our ending.

For now here’s to seeing our boys with their red and white hair again.

[astercontrol]

If KOSA passes

Or if any other form of censorship (there are many in the works!) ever succeeds at stepping in to impede our ability to communicate online:

We have to make plans.

Now, I dunno who'll even see this post. The few followers I have are TRON fans (who despite the fantasy we live in, tend to have realistically dismal views IRL about Disney and the various corporate uses of software).

And this fandom, on average, is pretty tech-savvy. It's where I've encountered the most people under 20 years old who actually know how to use a desktop or laptop computer.

So, if there's any hope for what I'm thinking about, this is prolly a good place to start with it.

(As with all my posts, I encourage reblogging and containment-breaching.)

(Gifs are clips from TRON 1982, mainly the "deleted love scene," from the DVD extras.)

Anyway.

Current society has moved online communication much too far onto major social media sites for my comfort. Whoever you communicate with over the internet, chances are you do it through a service owned by a big company: Tumblr, Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Facebook, whatever. Even TikTok (shudder).

These sites, despite their many flaws, can provide experiences that are valuable and hard to get otherwise. And once all your friends are on one site, you can't just leave and stay in touch with them all, not unless they all go the same place. It's easy to see why it's hard to abandon any social media platform.

But a backup plan is important. Because, as we've seen over and over, social media sites can't be relied on. They change their policies suddenly, without good reason-- and are inconsistent, even discriminatory, about enforcing those policies.

If they're funded by ads, the advertisers are their main customers, and your posts are the product. Their goal is that the posts most valuable to the advertisers get seen by people the advertisers consider desirable customers.

Helping you communicate-- making your posts get seen by the people you want to communicate with-- is optional to them.

Not to mention that the whole business model of an ad-funded website is generally unsustainable. Many of these sites are operating at a loss, relying on shareholders in a fragile bubble, doomed to fail soon just from lack of real profit.

And the more restrictions --like KOSA-- that the law puts on freedom of online speech, the likelier they are to go down or just become unusable. Every rule a site is required to follow is another strain on its resources, and most of them are already failing badly at even enforcing their own self-imposed rules.

If we want any control over our continued ability to stay in touch with our online friends-- we need to have a backup plan. Maybe it'll be simple at first, a bare-bones system we cobble together-- but it's gotta be something that will work. For a while at least.

There are lots of really good posts about ways to build your own website, using a service like Neocities. I VERY MUCH recommend learning this skill-- learning to make websites of the very simplest, most stable, glitch-resistant type, made of html pages-- which you can upload to a host while you store backups on your home computer. If you value the writing and art that you put online, this is probably the safest you can keep it.

But that's for making your own creative work public.

As for communicating with others-- for example, receiving and answering other people's comments on your work-- that gets more complex. I personally haven't found it worthwhile to troubleshoot the problems that come with having a system that allows visitors to comment publicly on my website.

But what we do still have-- and likely will for a long time-- is email.

Those of us who came of age before social media's current hold... well, we might take this for granted. Email was the first form of online contact we ever encountered… and thus it can seem to us like the most ordinary, the most boring.

But in the current world, it is a rare and precious thing to find a method of communicating that doesn't require everyone in the chat to be signed on with the same corporation.

Email is, as of now, still perfectly legal-- as much as social media companies have been trying to herd the populace away from it. I'm sure there are other ways to share thoughts online that are not bound by laws. But I am not going to go into that here.

Email service is provided by law-abiding companies, which will comply with subpoenas if law enforcement thinks you are emailing about doing illegal things. So, email is not a surefire way to be safe, if laws become dystopian enough to threaten your freedom to talk about your own life and identity.

But it's safer than posting on a public social media page.

For now.

Email is beautifully decentralized. You can get an email address many different ways-- some reliant on a company like Gmail, others hosted on your own domain. And different people, with all different types of email addresses, hosted in all different ways-- can all communicate together by the same method.

Of course any of these people, individually, can lose their email address for some reason or other, and have to get a new one. But as long as they still know the email addresses of their contacts, they can reconnect and recover from that loss. The structure of a group linked by email is reliant not on a single company-- but on the group itself, the friends you can actually count on.

This is why I am trying to promote the idea of forming email lists, as a backup plan to give people a way to stay in touch as mainstream social media sites prove to be unsustainable.

I'm envisioning a simple system of sending emails to several addresses at once, and making each reply visible to everyone in the chat by using "reply all" (or, if desired, editing the To field to reply to only some).

If enough people get used to using email in this way, it could fill most of the needs met by any other group chat or forum …without depending on a centralized social media company that's taking dystopian measures to try and make the business profitable.

So here are some thoughts about how I personally imagine it could work.

(Feel free to comment and bring up any thoughts I haven't addressed, or suggestions to customize how specific groups could set it up. This is meant as more of a starting point for brainstorming than a catch-all solution.)

As I see it, here are the basics of what you and your friends would each need to start out:

An email address. Any kind, hosted anywhere. You should use a dedicated email account just for this group, one that you do NOT use for other communication. Being in this group will result in things you don't want happening to your main email address-- like getting a TON of email, one for every post and reply. Or someone could get your email address that you really don't want any contact with. Use a burner email account (one that you can easily replace) and change it if needed.

The knowledge of how to "REPLY ALL" in your email. This will be necessary in order to add a comment that everyone in the group can see.

The knowledge of how to EDIT THE "TO" FIELD in your email, and remove addresses from the list of all recipients. This will be necessary if you want to CHANGE WHICH PEOPLE in the group can see your comment.

The knowledge of how to FILTER WORDS in your email. This will be necessary if a topic comes up that you don't want to see any mentions of.

The knowledge of how to BLOCK PEOPLE in your email. This will be very important. If someone joins this email group who you do not want to interact with, it will be up to you to BLOCK them so that you do NOT see their messages. (If they are bad enough to evade the block with multiple burner accounts, that's what you have a burner account for. Change it, and share the new one only with those you trust not to give it to them.)

Every person in the group will be effectively a "moderator" of the group, able to remove people from it by cutting their email addresses out of the "To" field. Members will all have equal "moderator" privileges, each able to tailor the group to their own needs.

This means the group may naturally split, over time, into other groups, each one removing some people and adding others. Some will overlap, some won't. This is good! This is, in my opinion, what online interaction SHOULD be like! There should be MANY groups like this!

In this way, we can keep online discussion alive, no matter WHAT happens to any of the social media websites.

If the dystopia got bad enough to shut down email, we could even continue with postal mail and photocopies, like they did in the days of print-zine fanfiction.

If it looks like the dystopia is gonna come for postal mail too, we'll use the connection we have to preserve whatever contacts we can with people who live near us.

Not saying it's GONNA get that bad. But these steps of preparation are good no matter exactly what kind of bad stuff happens.

As long as some organized form of communication still exists, we'll have a place where it's at least a little safer to be your true self…

to plan events and meetups…

and maybe even activities a little too risque to make the final cut of a 1982 Disney movie.

They're trying to censor us. We want a Free System. So we're gonna fight back.

For the Users. Not the corporations.

Peace out, programs. <3

[genericpuff]

Public service reminder: I love y'all for your support in what I do here, but (a very gentle but) I want to make it clear that this isn't the way-

Names are censored for obv privacy reasons and I don't want to put any of my own readers on blast because I trust comments like these are made with good intention. I appreciate y'all for loving what I do here and putting it out there for others to read along, but I don't do it for this. As much as Rekindled is indeed a parody redraw of LO that's trying to "fix" a lot of the original comic's issues, at the end of the day it's still just a Tumblr project that I'm doing here for fun and I don't want to see it used as ammunition in the comments sections dedicated specifically to LO (for clarification, this was in the @webtoonofficial announcement post for LO winning its third Eisner).

Whether or not it's "better" than LO is subjective and irrelevant. I obviously can't pretend like I didn't have my own motivations to "fix" what I felt was broken, but the act of "fixing" was for those of us who saw it as broken, not for those who love LO as is.

I also can't reasonably ask anyone to keep their opinions about Rekindled to themselves, it's a piece of work that is publicly available and therefore that will put it under the lens of public opinion, but from me to you, this ain't the way. I host it on Tumblr and DH precisely to keep it out of the main view of the fans/stans, because this work isn't for them, it's for all of you who share my disappointment in the original series. I want to be able to run this space free of any extreme fandom discourse - this is also why you won't see me using general LO tags on Tumblr/IG - but the only way that can happen is if we all play nice and don't let the heat of the discourse get to us. Rest assured, I will always stand by my work and what I do here because I love it and have found my lost joy in what LO used to mean to me through it as well as a community of amazing writers and creators... but prevention is better than the cure and I don't want any of that heat getting thrown back my way through weaponizing of my work with or without my knowing in the first place.

Am I pissed about the comic's third win? Absolutely. And as much as I feel it isn't worth anyone's time or energy to get into bickering matches with the stans in these comment sections, those opinions regarding the comic pre-exist my participation in this fandom and would have, one way or another, hit that boiling point regardless (and it's been wild to watch that comment section go down, I can't lie lmao) But this is not the way. Rekindled is - to me, and hopefully to you, too - a reclaiming of the love and passion people like myself used to have for LO, and a celebration of Greek myth and transformative fiction as a genre, above everything else it stands for or could be interpreted as. It's not a weapon meant to be used in discourse. Let's please do our best to be mindful of that so we can keep having fun in this special little space we've carved for ourselves and not make ourselves into the monsters we're often made out to be just for critically discussing and transforming a piece of media that, in spite of all its flaws, brought us together in the way that it did. Let's keep being the best for each other instead of turning ourselves into the worst over others within this massive fandom who we were never going to agree with in the first place.

Thank you all, much love 💖 Do no harm, take no shit ✊️

[nyerus]

🎧A Guide to the TGCF Audio Drama🎭

With the release of the new season of the fabulous TGCF audio drama, I wanted to make an updated guide on how to make an account, purchase, and listen (with English subs) to it! Hopefully, this will help more people enjoy it and join in on the fun!

As a quick reminder, the audio drama is based on the revised version of the novel! It's a very faithful adaptation, but if you're a new fan, that might throw you for a loop! If you need an overview of the different versions of TGCF, check out this post first!

Part One: Making an Account & Purchasing

The process is a lot easier than you may expect! The site where the audio drama is hosted is "missevan.com," also known as "MaoerFM." They are one and the same!

Check out these infographics to create an account and buy the audio drama. (Due to tumblr compression, they may be difficult to read. If this is the case, please view these images in full-screen and preferably on a web browser for best quality!)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

General Info:

It costs 319 diamonds for the first season, and 359 diamonds for the second season of the TGCF audio drama. This was less than $5 USD, for each season. Future seasons will likely be similarly priced.

Episodes typically release weekly. Mini-episodes/bonus content releases intermittently, and often continues after the main season "ends."

This guide will work for any other audio dramas you want to purchase and support (such as MDZS)! They obviously have different costs, but the process of buying is pretty much the same.

Account/Registration Info:

If you do not see your country/region code listed when making an account, it is unfortunately unavailable there. I do not know any workarounds at the moment, apart from asking a friend/relative in a different country to help you out! If anyone does know other options, please let me know!

Step One of the guide is technically optional, as logging in on the app for the first time will automatically create a new account, if there’s not already one associated with your mobile phone number. I recommend doing that step anyway, as it will ensure that you have a password linked to your account. Several people in the past have reported that they sometimes cannot receive the verification code to log in. (Especially from South America and SEA for some reason.) Having a password bypasses this, if it happens to you.

Unfortunately, it seems that you MUST register with a mobile number to begin with.

Otherwise, you can use an existing Bilibili/QQ/WeChat/Weibo account if you have it. They all require a number for registration too, as far as I know, so you may run into the same problem. They may still be worth trying if you have no other options! Once again, if anyone is aware of other workarounds, do let me know.

Additionally, it’s possible to link your account to an email AFTER you register with a mobile number. (There’s no escaping that, from what I can tell.) You can then use that to log in.

It seems useful to have your email and a password associated with your account, especially in case your country code gets nixed from availability -- which has been known to happen without warning in the past.

The mobile browser seems to prefer you log in with a number/email and a password, rather than a verification code.

LINKING AN E-MAIL TO YOUR ACCOUNT (Optional)

This must be done via web browser, or with your mobile browser set to desktop mode. It’s VERY easy if you use a browser with an auto-translate feature like Google Chrome:

(These images are the MTL translated versions!)

Unfortunately yes, you will need to receive a verification code via mobile number to enable this. The second verification code gets sent to your email, though! (Try not to lose your password, because I'm pretty sure you'll still have to use your phone to verify and change it.) Don't forget to check your spam folder if you don't see it. It will be from "猫耳FM."

Once again, this is optional! I just wanted to include it as an extra avenue for people who may struggle with the verification codes, as they can be finicky. And it happened to me while I was making this section, so I knew I had to....

Part Two: How to Enable English Subtitles

First things first: there are no official English subs for the TGCF Audio Drama. Though I'm fairly sure this applies to all dramas on MaoerFM.

However, there are Chinese (Simplified) subs for each episode.

OPTION ONE: MTL

The main method that non-Chinese speakers have been using to understand the Audio Drama is via MTL (machine translation) on those subs! Browsers like Google Chrome not only have auto-translate, but it works in real time as you watch/listen to the episode.

Make sure that it's turned on and that you've selected English -- or your preferred output language!

Be aware there are TWO types of subtitles on MaoerFM. There are the official subs, and the temporary subs.

At the bottom of the audio player, there is a button labelled "字幕," which is circled in purple in the image below. If it is there, it means that episode has official subs available, and you can toggle them on/off. Meanwhile, the "弹" that the green arrow is pointing to is known as the "barrage." That's the scrolling text that you will see filling the screen. It's other fans screaming and crying in chat. You can turn it off if it feels overwhelming!

New episodes may take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two to be officially subtitled. (The bonus episodes don't have official subs for whatever reason.) In the meantime, there will be subtitlers working on adding temporary subs! I'd advise waiting a little while before listening to a new episode so they have more time to work, and you'll have better coverage!

While official subs are entirely separate, the temporary subs are part of the barrage. So you will have to keep the barrage turned on. (Notice how there is no "字幕" button next to it yet!) Unlike the rest of the barrage, the subs will be stationary, color-coded, and at the very bottom of the window -- so they're easy to differentiate.

However, since the barrage can be a lot if you aren't used to it, there is a way around it.

Hit the settings menu (blue circle) and block the scrolling comments. You can also turn off the top ones, but just make sure not to turn off the bottom ones -- because those are the subs!

DO NOTE that this all works best on desktop! If everything's gone correctly, you should have something like these:

Right -- regular view, temporary subs Left -- full-screen, official subs

It's possible to get this to work on mobile if you enable desktop mode in your Chrome app. You will probably need to refresh a few times after that, or open the page in a new tab to have it work properly. Then it's the same steps as above!

You should have something like these:

Right -- landscape mode Left -- portrait mode

The scaling on mobile can be troublesome, and I have noticed that the auto-translate is slower than on desktop. It seems to take an extra second or two to work on each line -- whereas on desktop it's pretty instant -- and that can get annoying, especially in fast-paced scenes.

Additional Info:

This does not work for the mobile app! It is for the website ONLY!

If the translation stops working, refreshing usually fixes it.

There are potentially other options to using Chrome. Any browser that has an auto-translate will work, assuming it's as quick as Chrome's. If anyone has tried other browsers and seen success, please leave a reply!

OPTION TWO: FANSUBS

TreasureChestSubs here on tumblr have been doing high-quality fansubs for several audio dramas, including TGCF as of recently! However, at the time of making this guide, their TGCF translations currently only cover the first few episodes of season one. You will need to request an invite to their Discord server via the form in their posts. Please do check them out if you're interested.

I don't personally know of any other fansubbers who are actively working on the audio drama right now. But I do want to mention that Xyra_Rei on twitter has a Discord server where they share some translated snippets from various episodes. There are other great resources by fellow fans, too. Links and more info about the server can be found in the pinned post on their profile!

Part Three: Enjoy!!!

I hope this updated guide helps more people experience the wonder that is the TGCF audio drama (or really, any audio drama)! I cannot overstate how good it is in every aspect, and I think every TGCF fan deserves to be able to hear it for themselves! 💖

[gallavichthings]

A.U.gust 2024

It's almost August again, so time for us to explore alternative universes and see all the other ways in which our boys could fall in love. 😊

For this year, each week will have a general theme, and anything that falls under that theme is allowed, as long as it's original. WIPs, updates or re-imaginings of your own previous works are also allowed (to use someone else's work as inspiration, please ask for their consent before starting).

As always, no sign-ups are needed for this event. Just make sure to mention me using @gallavichthings on the body of your post (you can hide it under a read-more or by using a reblog if you wish to). Posting here on Tumblr is mandatory, but you can host your work somewhere else and post only a link if you want to. There will, of course, be a collection on AO3 (to be announced later).

Some posting suggestions (nothing is mandatory, but it would be courteous):

Tags are to your own discretion, but I suggest tagging NSFW works or hiding them under read-mores (in case of visual posts - fics are normally not an issue).

If you post a long fic on Tumblr in its entirety, it's best to use a read-more in order not to make your post too long and take up a lot of space on people's dashboards and on the tags.

For posting multiple unrelated works on AO3, posting separate works and making them part of one series is better than making each work a chapter of one single fic. That way, you can tag it appropriately and people can more easily find the fic they actually want to read. (That doesn't apply, of course, if your fics are actually connected.)

And without further ado, the themes for each week (please note that a few examples were provided for each week, but they're just a small fraction of what can be done):

Week 1 (01/08-07/08): Seasons/ Holidays (Christmas AUs, summer vacations AUs, New Year's AUs, Halloweeen AUs...)

Week 2 (08/08-14/08): Past/Future (Pirate AUs, Cyberpunk AUs, 1950s AUs, Star Trek AUs...)

Week 3 (15/08-21/08): School/Work (High School AUs, College AUs, Office AUs, Coffee Shop AUs, Tattoo Shop AUs...)

Week 4 (22/08-28/08): Supernatural (Vampire AUs, A/B/O, Soulmate AUs, Superhero AUs...)

Week 5 (29/08-31/08): Free - since this is only half a week, these last three days will be for anything that does not fit any of the other weeks.

If you aren't able to finish your work in time to post it in the designated week, please wait to post it in the last three days. If your AU falls under more than one category, you may post in any week you prefer, according to what you judge to be the most relevant to your work.

I hope that is clear enough, but if not, send me a message and I'll be happy to explain anything further.

And if anyone is in search of some AU ideas, this post contains several AU prompts.

See you in a few weeks!

[mavcancees]

how to adapt into dtblr culture for twitter refugees

so you've decided to move here from twitter. welcome and congratulations. this post is basically a big warning that goes THIS ISN'T TWITTER, DON'T BEHAVE LIKE IT IS, LEAVE THAT AT THE DOOR

i'll be teaching you two things, how the site works, and how to adapt your behavior to tumblr ( and really, normal human being ) culture. believe me, it's not that hard and it will actually feel very productive

let's start with the basics and frequent questions

your username can be anything, don't stress about it

your picture can be anything. a lot of us don't even have dteam related stuff up on our profile

your display name doesn't have to be your name. nobody is going to see it when you post, only usernames are visible

check your settings. do it. get familiar with them. turning on and off asks, turning anon off, turning submissions off. click on your blog, go to blog settings, check things there, go to account, your muted things will be there, go to dashboard and customize that. use your settings !!!

yes, pinned posts are fairly important and they tend to be pretty extensive. name age what you post about ( a lot of people here are multifandom !), just don't overshare ( no locations no trigger lists i beg you ). they also usually have a breakdown of your tags at the end

tags

it's a whole thing. some are actually useful. some are just passive commentary

the tags you put on posts ( both when you made the post and when you're reblogging something ) are both global and hosted on your profile. it's why you'll see things like "nameofperson art" rather than just "art". using just "art" will put you in the promoted tag, in this case

you can use spaces on your tags

usually you will tag what type of post you're making ( art, text post, ask post ), and then the contents keep in mind this is how people often mute things, some people tag the current situation, people use and mute ship tags. but this is also how people find things, like the specific asks from one person to another, so "username ask" is commonly used, "irl person ( dream, dnf, etc )" is also seen a lot just watch how others tag things and copy them. nobody will get offended you took their tag formatting, most of us will appreciate properly tagged posts

you do tag when you reblog people. you use tags to comment on things. don't really use replies unless you're, saying thank you to someone or pointing out a spell mistake or asking to add an option to a poll, etc. we don't do replies, just rb your reply

quick reblog and like deets

post popularity is measured in "notes" which is the sum of replies, reblogs and likes. we don't really care much about numbers here and if you start getting crazy about it people will not like it. this is more of a talking and showing site

you can reblog without tags, feel free to

you can hide your likes. you can and should like as many things as you want. they don't alter any algorithm, since there's none. a like is a "i saw this post" notification to the poster

actually posting

people talk a lot. a fucking lot, and it's something you will have to get used to, because it's very different from twitter

there are no qrts. callouts are looked down upon. breathe. if you don't like something MUTE IT DON'T POST ABOUT IT, because no one is going to listen to any callouts. you will have to learn to live with the fact people like things you don't. this will, with time, make you feel very free

the bulk of posting here is asks, as you might notice soon. asks are fun and encouraged. just don't name drop if you're talking about drama please ?

don't be scared to send asks off anon, this is how people will find you and get to know you really. people are also more likely to reply to you

block bait anons. yes you can block anons. yes it will block every blog they make

culture time

i've said this. tumblr is unserious. drama here is approached very differently and with several less layers of panic. you will see death threats. you will see slurs ( said in non derogatory ways ). you will see jokes about serious topics. you will see people say "i didn't like this" and nobody will care

tumblr is a community of individualism. you will like your own things within the thing we share we like. you might not like dream's music, you might not find irl streams entertaining, as long as you're fucking normal about it ? nobody will care and you're free to express your opinions. people will even come ask you about it and just have a chat. we're here for the same content to some degree

tumblr is also a bunch of people who understand they like another bunch of people. that none of the streamers have stopped being human. so you might see people defend things that, maybe, you'd not have thought to defend before. maybe you're even uncomfortable seeing them defending it. this is something you will experience a lot, and you'll learn to properly deal with it as time passes

because again. no one does callouts here unless it is extremely bad. no one cares if you don't really like them. and they also accept people might and will not like them. and that is fine. and that doesn't make either person horrible. you're just different people. and you don't even have to interact

you want to make friends ? ask people things, compliment people's work, genuinely attempt to make conversation. this is not an impersonal website the way twitter is. people don't care about your opinions because they care about you, and you are more than what you don't like

the more positive and jokey and interactive you are the more people will talk to you. there's no "hitting the algorithm", there's no "engagement", it's just people talking to people. so don't be a neg posting bot, and be a person

you will learn to be less miserable. you learn to stop giving a shit and just do what makes you happy. they cannot get you here. there's no qrts. the few antis you'll find can be blocked and you'll never have to directly interact with one. don't be mean to the people in your own community, even if you disagree

again, you are more than what you don't like. learn to be what you like instead. and leave the dooming at the door

[robbie-wallis]

I need to vent about Watcher, endure it if you can

Relax, this isn't a parasocial thing, but it is a long ass post, which suits me as a long ass human.

I need an outlet to discuss the terrible business decision Watcher has made by announcing their plan to leave YouTube, and this long-forgotten Tumblr account reached from its grave to grab at my ankle.

If you didn't see their video, good for you. It's extremely cringe-worthy in its sentimentality and editing, with blurry shots, pensive pauses and obligatory sad piano.

But at least there's no f'ing Ukulele.

Although, I think we might get the Ukulele in a few months.

Even though anyone who reads this is probably familiar with what the "Ghoul Boys" have done, I feel as though I need to add a little history.

WATCHER HISTORY

You can skip this part if you've been obsessively following the shenanigans, this is for the noobs who were never a "shaniac" or a "boogara".

Shane Madej and Ryan Bergara used to work at Buzzfeed. They hosted the successful Buzzfeed Unsolved shows. In 2019 they followed in the footsteps of the Try Guys and Safia Nygaaard and left Buzzfeed to create their own YouTube channel named "Watcher".

They brought along Steven Lim, another Buzzfeed person who is most known for the "Worth It" series. This series followed Lim and his friend/s spending obscene amounts of money on obscenely overpriced and indulgent products.

Think of it as being similar to the $100 V's $10,000 Sidemen content, only without the self-awareness and British "bad lads" humor.

Notably, even the Sidemen seem to have cut back on those adventures, perhaps understanding how bad it looks when so many people are struggling to pay their essential bills.

Steven became the CEO of Watcher while Shane and Ryan continued to create and present for the new channel.

They were wildly successful by YouTube standards. At the time of their self-spanking on Friday they were close to achieving 3 million subscribers, in just 4 years, based on basically only 2 cornerstone shows. If Social Blade is still a reasonably trusted source in everything but estimating income, they were gaining thousands of new subscribers every week.

Their most successful shows were Ghost Files, Puppet History, Too Many Spirits and Mystery Files.

Ghost Files is the only one of these shows which requires heavy investment, travel, a large crew and impressive production costs. These videos are shot on-location and require a lot of work. The rest are basically Good Mythical Morning style, just the two hosts and their banter.

Aside from Ghost Files, their content could be created with 3 cameras, 2 lapel mics and a good editor.

They were massively successful, solely because of Ryan and Shane.

THE DEMISE

So, what did they do on Friday 19th April? They decided to announce the launch of their own subscription platform.

Not a Patreon for extra content, behind-the-scenes, audience interaction etc, (they already had a Patreon with 6,000 paying subscribers earning them at least $50k a month), but a bespoke streaming platform which looks like a clone of Netflix.

The cost is $5.99 a month, or $60 a year.

Comparable to Netflix.

And by that I mean the price is comparable to Netflix while the content is comparable to a 4 year old YouTube channel.

Don't get me wrong, their production quality is incredible. The quantity, however, is not.

From the end of May viewers will have to pay to be a subscriber on their own platform in order to watch their shows.

They'll still be posting their trailers on YouTube, and the first episodes of new shows, but to watch it all you'll have to pay up or miss out.

Edited to add: Variety originally reported the Watcher crew were planning to remove all their existing content from YouTube to monetize it on their own platform. It's since been confirmed they will not be removing their old content. Fans are undecided whether this was a back-track after the announcement or a misunderstanding by Variety. You be the judge.

Of course, they're entitled to do this. They are creating a product and you can either enjoy it or not. No one is entitled to see it, for free, whenever they like.

Why did they do this?

Half of the sombre video gushes about their "humble beginnings" as "struggling young guys in a big harsh world", which comes across as extremely self-indulgent and ego-stroking.

A quarter of it explains how insanely successful they've been on YouTube and how this is all thanks to the fans who stuck with them after Buzzfeed, how it's allowed them to hire 25 people, how it's given them the freedom to create what they enjoy making and what the viewers want to see, and - most importantly - how it's allowed them to increase production quality on Ghost Files.

The final quarter of the video explains that this isn't good enough, the quality isn't high enough, the finish not glossy enough, it's not "TV caliber" enough! They want more, they need more, you have to give them more, mostly (apparently) because their CEO Steven Lim wants to bring back his show where he flies around the world with his bestie sipping Champagne and eating gold-leaf-covered lobster.

In short, they want more money to make even bigger things, even though their audience never asked for that.

WHY IT WILL NOT WORK

Oh my goodness, this is going to be a ride so strap in.

I'm not a YouTube creator so there are a lot of things I do not know. Having said that, I know a little about business.

This ain't Buzzfeed, y'all

Watcher became successful because of Ryan and Shane. It was their friendship, their personalities, and the content we loved to watch featuring them at Buzzfeed, that brought us along for the ride.

The audience they poached from Buzzfeed is there for them and Ghost Files. It's not there for Steven Lim and "Worth It". His show worked under the Buzzfeed umbrella only because they had numerous sub-categories in that community to support it.

The Try Guys left and created their own channel from their Buzzfeed fans.

Safia Nygaard left and created her own channel from her Buzzfeed fans.

Shane and Ryan left and created Watcher from their Buzzfeed fans.

Steven Lim left and became the CEO of Watcher. He didn't take his audience with him.

The audience of Watcher is not the audience of "watch me fly around the word with my pal and spend $100K on hand-reared, Whiskey marinaded, diamond-encrusted Kobe steak".

And... IN THIS ECONOMY?

Steven chose to become a CEO instead of a presenter. He's missed the opportunity to take that Buzzfeed audience with him.

This is made clear by the Watcher channel itself. Their "man eats food" content rarely breaks 500K views while their Ghost Files breaks 2 million consistently.

If a million of their viewers followed them from Buzzfeed to Watcher, the other 2 million have joined them since, based almost entirely on their spoopy content.

Not only did they base their channel on this genre and format, they have distilled their audience further ever since the creation of their channel and no matter how hard they try to diversify into "man eats food" it's just not working.

This ain't Netflix, y'all

As mentioned, the $5.99 charge is comparable to Netflix and just about every other streaming platform. Only Watcher can't give you even 5% of what a competing platform can offer for that price.

Other platforms also tailor their content and their pricing based on geographical location and localized economics.

You're paying far less than $5.99 a month if you live in an economy where the median household income is $300 a month. YouTube has a global audience. Their subscribers don't all live in a stable economy where $5.99 is considered disposable income.

We don't know the numbers, but I would guess only 60% of their subscribers are based in the USA, Canada, and the UK.

Even for those who do live in a stable economy, their audience is predominantly young adults and students. Most young adults are currently facing the reality that they will possibly never own their own home, they're living day-to-day trying to budget.

They've instantly priced-out a large % of their audience.

I confidently predict that diehard fans who can't see anything wrong with this will sign up for $5.99 a month, binge watch for a couple of weeks, realize there's no new spoopy content and cancel.

They'll come back when a full season of Ghost Files has arrived, pay again, binge it and leave.

Steven Lim thinks they're gonna get $5.99 a month, every month, from thousands of subscribers. In reality they're going to get maybe $12 a year, from people signing up to binge watch what they want, then leaving.

This will then decline naturally as attention wanes during the months where there is no spoopy.

This ain't good marketing, y'all

They're going to be posting "trailers and season pilots" on YouTube.

Sure, I bet YouTube is gonna be totes okay with a channel doing nothing but trying to hijack traffic for an external site.

Posting nothing but trailers and season premiers will mean maybe one full video per month during busy seasons. That's not enough to remain relevant for the algorithm.

If 80% of those posts are also just trailers saying "leave YouTube and come here", the channel will be smacked down quicker than a crypto scam using an AI generated Elongated Muskrat.

Their channel was growing steadily, but that was with full content regularly posted. When the schedule drops off, and when most of it is considered spammy by YouTube, it's going to collapse like a flan in a cupboard.

A streaming platform needs a constant flow of new subscribers just to replace the gradual drop-off (maybe ask Rooster Teeth about that). When your global audience at YouTube is gone, where are those new subscribers coming from?

The platform is also an additional overhead. It's going to cost thousands a month to keep the servers going.

This ain't good financial management, y'all

I don't know if they've already spent hundreds of thousands of $s on Lim's "men eat food" gamble, but I suspect they have.

I know they have spent hundreds of thousands of $s on a new season of Ghost Files, flying to the UK to host live events while filming those episodes.

This means they've over-extended their finances just at the moment where they've cratered their opportunities to see a return on investment.

Just that, on its own, is enough to destroy a production company.

They do not need 25 employees any more than I need an editor and proof-reader for this long ass post.

They do not need a production studio in Hollywood any more than I needed an office to write this.

They do not need to spend tens of thousands of $s on glossy graphics that appear on screen for maybe 4 seconds in one episode any more than I needed to add screengrabs to this painfully long essay.

By leaving YouTube they've lost:

Adsense revenue (which might not be much on a per-video basis but adds up with a back catalogue over years of productions)

Sponsorship deals, which allegedly contributes almost 50% of their annual revenue.

Merch sales, which is about to crash if the only people they can promote merch to are already paying per month in their smaller ecosystem.

Patreon. Why would someone pay $5.99 twice, for the same or less content?

And they've abandoned all of this for maybe a few thousand people who will probably end up paying just $12 a year when a new spoopy season arrives for them to binge.

I'm no Will Hunting, but no matter how hard I try to make the numbers work they just don't, and I don't need Robin Williams to tell me it's not my fault.

This ain't nice, y'all

Some of you are feeling like Ned's wife right now, and some of you will have no idea what that's in reference to.

Most of you will hate that I made that reference more than you hated the SNL skit.

I get it.

Maybe the worst part about all of his, from a viewer's perspective, is the dismissive nature of their sign-off.

They didn't mention the Patreon members once, not one single time in the whole video. It's like they consider the Patreon "too YouTube". They're the deformed cousin locked in the attic. They're the relative who wasn't invited to the wedding because they can't afford a Tom Ford suit. They're the colleague who isn't invited to the staff night out because they only work in accounting and no one has anything in common with Janice anyway.

These are diehard fans who were actually paying them extra to support them and enjoy a little bonus behind the scenes, and the boys didn't even consider them worthy of an utterance.

They also finished with "If you don't follow us and pay up it's been real, peace out". I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what it was.

They spent so much of the video saying how awesome and great it was that the fans and YouTube got them to this point, but they didn't thank their Patreon members, and they ended with a blunt suggestion that if you don't follow them and pay more then you're not a real fan anyway and they don't really need you.

"Thanks for getting us here, sucks to be you, bye now!"

You made them wealthy, you helped them hire 25 people, you helped them increase production value to "TV caliber" even though you didn't ask for that, but your job is done and now you're superfluous. Only the real fans are wanted.

In the words of the great George Carlin - "It's a big club, and you ain't in it".

They're okay losing the vast majority of the people who got them here if a few thousand of those are comfortable enough to be able to pay $60 a year for a YouTube channel.

Can it get worse? Sure!

We've had a weekend to enjoy the constant heat of this bonfire and it's predictably worsened with each hour of silence from the company and its employees.

The fact that they haven't back-tracked, despite almost unanimous agreement that this is badder than the baddest thing that could happen to their company, suggests they're okay with it.

Consensus seems to be that they knew it would be this bad, and they're cool. They predicted 90% of people would scream "Boo to you good sirs! Boo indeed!" and they could still survive on the 10% who don't see a problem here.

The lack of response reinforces the narrative that they're totally fine with discarding almost their entire audience if they can just squeeze the cash they need out of whoever is left.

This ain't fixable, y'all (maybe)

Note: I don't want this to be mean, but it's going to sound a little bitchy no matter how I try to say it.

If they'd brought out the Ukulele on Saturday, or even teased Ukulele's on their socials before putting out a video on Sunday, they probably could have survived this with much hand-wringing and a little groveling.

But now I think they've grilled this Kobe steak for far too long.

They've lost 100K subscribers, and counting. The venom among Patreon members is allegedly worse than the public comments section under the video, which is startling. Dozens of YouTubers are torching them harder than a $100 crème brûlée.

People are scraping their channel content in case it's nuked.

Shane "eat the rich" Madej's sentiments over the last few years look disingenuous, to say the least. To shamelessly steal someone else's comment: "Imagine being all 'eat the rich' right before throwing yourself on the plate". He's silent while his McMansion burns down, at his own hands. "Why not!?" indeed.

Steven "I drive a Tesla" Lim's socials now make him look like a tech-bro try-hard and his use of words like "early adopter" and "soft launch" in the video only compound the belief that this was all his brainchild. He is the CEO, and that comes with responsibility and the associated blame. You can't steer the ship into the Bermuda Triangle and then disappear without looking like the bad guy.

Okay, you can disappear, but that convoluted metaphor is a mystery for someone else to solve.

Ryan "TV caliber" Bergara now sounds like an elitist who thinks YouTube is "too pedestrian" for his big plans, not big enough to meet his artistic vision. You see, he's more James Cameron, while YouTube is more like your student film club. He's grown beyond this pesky platform with billions of daily hits offering exponential growth with almost zero financial risk.

Even if they released a video today admitting they messed up big time it's still going to be hard to get the taste of this Ghost Pepper Warhead out of the collective mouth of their viewers.

This hasn't just burned their shared brand, it's singed their individual reputations among an audience upon which their careers rely.

What they should have done, on Saturday, is release a video (Ukulele or no) confessing their error. They should have announced their new platform will instead just be a bigger and better Patreon, with early access to everything, behind-the-scenes content, extra features, audience interaction etc.

They should have reversed to make clear their YouTube channel will stay the priority, their main source of revenue, but that you could get more on their own platform if you want it.

And, maybe, over time, people will pay for that. If they grow their channel to 6 million subscribers in the next 4 years there will be a couple hundred thousand of them willing and able to pay $5.99 a month for 8 years of shows, 8 years of behind the scenes content, 8 years of community involvement and regular early access to new episodes.

Maybe then they could try out their "privileged guys eat expensive food in expensive places" show and see how it does? Maybe a majority of people won't be living on the cusp of poverty by then and it won't look as tone-deaf as a 13 year old YouTuber trying to cover Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah"? Maybe then they could hire another 50 people and make Bergara's "TV caliber" (I still don't know exactly what that means) game shows and reboots?

The clock has been ticking since they hit that "publish" button on their career ending video, but that clock is about to count down to zero and silence will permeate throughout their previously lively community.

That 1980s basement set needed someone crying in the corner, right?

The problem is, their own platform is not a terrible idea. Really, it's not the worst thing they could do. The badness came in the timing, the switch, the middle finger and the f you. They could have released this as an extra, their own Patreon alternative, waited, developed it over time into something sustainable and established.

They could still try to do that and hope this dark chapter is forgotten.

Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe Lim is a financial genius with more skill than the management of Rooster Teeth and their corporate parent company combined? Maybe this gamble will be wildly successful despite all streaming services down-sizing or just going bankrupt? Maybe they won't be back on YouTube in 3-6 months begging for views after having to lay off 20 of their employees?

I know this... if I were one of those 25 employees blind faith would not be enough to stop me from looking for another job.

I suppose this will, for now, remain... a mystery.

EDIT:

I'm not writing another essay about this, but I'm glad to see they've backtracked and made the right choice to use WatcherTV as any sane creator would - to host early access and exclusive content in addition to their YouTube channel.

Over time, while promoting it in every video, building up that trust and fan base, it can be a secure and long-term financial bonus helping them to expand their business incrementally as finances allow.

Why this wasn't the plan all along is anyone's guess. Gambling everything on this was never the sane decision.

I still think they need to scale back on costs. I still think the food content is not currently a viable source of income while being a serious drain on resources. I still think they need to stop hiring all their friends and they need to hire one person who doesn't have personal relationships with everyone there and can make the tough business decisions.

No one likes firing people, it's ten times worse when it's a friend. But this is a reality of business and just wishing it wasn't so isn't going to make it go away. It would be awesome if we could all run a business where we can hire all our friends and family, never have to rely on any outside funding, make whatever we want, make a great living in one of the most expensive cities in the world and continue to grow.

That's just not the reality.

Their apology was genuine, in my opinion. I just hope they can work out the right financial balance.

[yukipri]

Some thoughts on Cara

So some of you may have heard about Cara, the new platform that a lot of artists are trying out. It's been around for a while, but there's been a recent huge surge of new users, myself among them. Thought I'd type up a lil thing on my initial thoughts.

First, what is Cara?

From their About Cara page:

Cara is a social media and portfolio platform for artists. With the widespread use of generative AI, we decided to build a place that filters out generative AI images so that people who want to find authentic creatives and artwork can do so easily. Many platforms currently accept AI art when it’s not ethical, while others have promised “no AI forever” policies without consideration for the scenario where adoption of such technologies may happen at the workplace in the coming years. The future of creative industries requires nuanced understanding and support to help artists and companies connect and work together. We want to bridge the gap and build a platform that we would enjoy using as creatives ourselves. Our stance on AI: ・We do not agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical form, and we won’t host AI-generated portfolios unless the rampant ethical and data privacy issues around datasets are resolved via regulation. ・In the event that legislation is passed to clearly protect artists, we believe that AI-generated content should always be clearly labeled, because the public should always be able to search for human-made art and media easily.

Should note that Cara is independently funded, and is made by a core group of artists and engineers and is even collaborating with the Glaze project. It's very much a platform by artists, for artists!

Should also mention that in being a platform for artists, it's more a gallery first, with social media functionalities on the side. The info below will hopefully explain how that works.

Next, my actual initial thoughts using it, and things that set it apart from other platforms I've used:

1) When you post, you can choose to check the portfolio option, or to NOT check it. This is fantastic because it means I can have just my art organized in my gallery, but I can still post random stuff like photos of my cats and it won't clutter things. You can also just ramble/text post and it won't affect the gallery view!

2) You can adjust your crop preview for your images. Such a simple thing, yet so darn nice.

3) When you check that "Add to portfolio," you get a bunch of additional optional fields: Title, Field/Medium, Project Type, Category Tags, and Software Used. It's nice that you can put all this info into organized fields that don't take up text space.

4) Speaking of text, 5000 character limit is niiiiice. If you want to talk, you can.

5) Two separate feeds, a "For You" algorithmic one, and "Following." The "Following" actually appears to be full chronological timeline of just folks you follow (like Tumblr). Amazing.

6) Now usually, "For You" being set to home/default kinda pisses me off because generally I like curating my own experience, but not here, for this handy reason: if you tap the gear symbol, you can ADJUST your algorithm feed!

So you can choose what you see still!!! AMAZING. And, again, you still have your Following timeline too.

7) To repeat the stuff at the top of this post, its creation and intent as a place by artists, for artists. Hopefully you can also see from the points above that it's been designed with artists in mind.

8) No GenAI images!!!! There's a pop up that says it's not allowed, and apparently there's some sort of detector thing too. Not sure how reliable the latter is, but so far, it's just been a breath of fresh air, being able to scroll and see human art art and art!

To be clear, Cara's not perfect and is currently pretty laggy, and you can get errors while posting (so far, I've had more success on desktop than the mobile app), but that's understandable, given the small team. They'll need time to scale. For me though, it's a fair tradeoff for a platform that actually cares about artists.

Currently it also doesn't allow NSFW, not sure if that'll change given app store rules.

As mentioned above, they're independently funded, which means the team is currently paying for Cara itself. They have a kofi set up for folks who want to chip in, but it's optional. Here's the link to the tweet from one of the founders:

And a reminder that no matter that the platform itself isn't selling our data to GenAI, it can still be scraped by third parties. Protect your work with Glaze and Nightshade!

Anyway, I'm still figuring stuff out and have only been on Cara a few days, but I feel hopeful, and I think they're off to a good start.

I hope this post has been informative!

Lastly, here's my own Cara if you want to come say hi! Not sure at all if I'll be active on there, but if you're an artist like me who is keeping an eye out for hopefully nice communities, check it out!

[ms-demeanor]

got a question I was hoping you could answer!

why do all apps have to go through an app store? why doesn't anywhere have their app downloadable from the internet or something?

was wondering this because lots of issues with apps seem to stem from having to comply with app store guidelines and whatnot. So why not avoid that problem and make the app available off the appstore? And if part of it is because they're easier to find in the appstore, why not do both? why not also offer the download on a website or something?

there's gotta be some reason why there's afaik no one who offers a download for their app without the appstore right?

There are absolutely other ways to get apps, and the one that springs immediately to mind is the F-Droid App Repository.

Sideloading is the process of loading an app that doesn't come from your phone's OS-approved app store. It's really easy on Android (basically just a couple of clicks) but requires jailbreaking on an iphone.

The reason more USERS don't sideload apps is risk: app stores put apps through at least nominal security checks to ensure that they aren't hosting malware. If you get an app from the app store that is malware, you can report it and it will get taken down, but nobody is forcing some random developer who developed his own app to remove it from his site if it installs malware on your phone unless you get law enforcement involved.

The reason more developers don't go outside of the app store or don't WANT to go outside of the app store is money. The number of users who are going to sideload apps is *tiny* compared to the number of users who will go through the app store; that makes a HUGE difference in terms of income, so most developers try to keep it app-store friendly. Like, if tumblr were to say "fuck the app store" and just release their own app that you could download from the sidebar a few things would happen:

Downloads would drop to a fraction of their prior numbers instantly

iOS users would largely be locked out of using tumblr unless they fuck with their phones in a way that violates Apple's TOS and could get them booted out of their iOS ecosystem if they piss off the wrong people.

Ad revenue would collapse because not a lot of advertisers want to work with companies that are app-store unfriendly

They'd be kicked off of the main app marketplaces

So most people who develop apps don't want to put the time and effort and money into developing an app that people might not pay for that then also can't carry ads.

Which leads into another issue: the kind of people who generally make and use sideloaded app aren't the kind of people who generally like profit-driven models. Indie apps are often slow to update and have minimal support because you're usually dealing with a tiny team of creators with a userbase of people who can almost certainly name ten flavors of Linux and are thus expected to troubleshoot and solve their own problems.

If this is the kind of thing you want to try, have at it. I'd recommend sticking to apps from the F-Droid Repository linked up above and being judicious about what you install. If you're using apple and would have to jailbreak your phone to get a non-approved app on it, I'd recommend switching to another type of phone.

(For the record, you also aren't limited to android or ios as the operating system of your phone; there are linux-based OSs out there and weird mutations of android and such - I am not really a phone person so I can't tell you much about them, but they are out there!)

[noudenet]

THE PATHOLOGIC WIKI HAS MOVED TO WIKI.GG!

hey everyone! i'm Mani, i've done a lot of work on the Pathologic wiki in the past and i'm so happy to announce that the wiki is now hosted at wiki.gg!

it's no secret Fandom is, well, not that good, like at all. wiki.gg is a much smaller host but also is home to other wikis like Wowpedia and hopes to grow! The Fandom wiki for Pathologic will remain up (and the Fandom based wikis for The Void, Cargo!, and Knock-knock will remain as is for now as well) but won't be edited from the main team of the Pathologic wiki any longer.

I ask that you spread this post around, and if you want to contribute to the Pathologic wiki, to help us on wiki.gg!

there's always work to be done on wikis, and with Bachelor route rumours popping up every few months I hope to see more work done on the Pathologic wiki as time goes on. Thank you all for your support and I hope that we can grow on wiki.gg even further!

https:// pathologic . wiki . gg/Wiki/Pathologic_Wiki is the url without tumblr auto linking, just remove the spaces!

[cupcakeslushie]

Do you have any tips on for people starting a comic and wanting to post to tumblr? Like pacing ect. Or well any experience you’ve had with your comics? Love your content as well ❤️

If it’s simply for fun, and you’re just trying to gain experience, my biggest advice would be to just START. Don’t worry about it looking perfect. Don’t worry about comparing it to other’s comics. Just try something, and if you find it’s not working, you can always change things up. I have gone through several styles and page layouts since starting. Do I wish those first pages of EW looked just like what I’m doing now? Yes, but if I’d waited around for perfection I would have never started. And I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun creating it! If people like it, that’s great, but your art is for you. If you’re growing and learning and having fun, then you’ve accomplished something!

Now for some less preachy advice 😂…

—If your comic is gonna be hosted on Tumblr specifically, I would say, make sure you keep the 10 image limit in the back of your mind when you’re pacing things. That can definitely cause some headaches down the line. If you don’t plan ahead, and end up hitting it, you’ll have a sudden cut in your flow. This last update I knew it was gonna be long, so while I did plan, but I could’ve planned better.

—Variety is key!!!!!

Composition changes keep your viewers from getting bored. Sometimes I’ll find myself falling back into the bad habit of just doing the simple back and forth with two characters talking straight on, but changing the camera angle, making establishing shots when you change locations, and over the shoulder shots, etc etc…All these will make for a more interesting viewing. You may think a character needs to be in every single panel to make it interesting, but if you have a lot of dialogue, a simple plain shot—either in top of a solid background, or just over something boring, like a glance at the set, etc—this will let people focus on the words rather than splitting their focus.

Variety applies to shading as well—whether you’re using color or black/white. Variety in values are SO important for comics. You’re shoving a ton of information in a limited space, so try to keep your values different for items that are close together….it can make things very confusing and turn your line work into indistinguishable blobs if you shade without this in mind.

(Using this panel as an example….)

The top two panels have a variety of darker values and a halftone background—so the next two with Venus, I kept rather simple. I could’ve colored the buildings behind her, but then, she might’ve gotten lost amidst all the grey. There’s not really any trick or solid rule to this, but once you develop your creative eye, you’ll make these choices without even thinking about it.

A few links to helpful tools (they’re all procreate centered I’m afraid 😅)

Outline brush — a free tutorial for Procreate users. This brush kinda mimics the CPS feature that lets you create panels with a nice black outline. I used this brush very often, and it really gives your panels a professional look. Fair warning, it can be glitchy, but it’s free…

Manero Comic Bubbles and sfx — These brushes are not free, so I would recommend maybe getting in your groove before you try them out. They’re by no means necessary, but I’ve just started using them, and they save me so much time. There’s a HUGE selection of shapes, and they go on with a solid white background, so you don’t have to worry about coloring around your dialogue balloons.

[seonghwaddict]

tell me — kim hongjoong PART TWO OF LILO'S 600 FOLLOWER EVENT

requested by @tayisgrt. “I saw this picture [ middle pic in the header ] of Hongjoong and it just got me thinking abt a short smut story abt fem!reader going to a frat party or something and seeing him and finding out that he’s a playboy/fuckboy or the host of the party and they go back to his place and end up having a one night stand or just end up hooking up in the bathroom at the party. Either one works 🤷🏽‍♀️” lilo’s notes. this request is such gold, thank you so my for this tay 🫶 at first i kinda struggled to write but um… yeah i got carried away and the word count turned out to be a lot higher than i. also i am completely aware that the past tense of grind is ground but grinder sounds better to me so deal with my chosen bad grammar (i already uploaded this earlier but i’m pretty sure tumblr flagged it)

prompts. “i’m crazy for you” ; “tell me what you want me to do” ; “i can’t wait to feel you inside me” pairing. kim hongjoong x fem!reader

warnings. smut under the cut, minors please dni, dirty talk, thigh riding, cocky hongjoong, swearing, p in v, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it folks), fingering, slight bimbofication, nicknames (baby, baby girl, pretty girl, slut), praise, slight degradation, i missed anything please notify me. wc. 2.7k

as you danced in in the middle of the overly filled living room with your friends, not a single worry crossed your mind. it had been a while since you’d gone out, wrapped up with school and your part time job, so you were grateful when wooyoung dragged you out of your dorm to go party.

throughout the night, you’d been licking eyes and catching glimpses of a familiar man. and though you couldn’t quite place your finger on why he seemed familiar, his short, bleached hair, alluring smile and sharp eyes hidden behind sunglasses despite how dark the room was had you feeling some type of way.

he didn’t miss the way your eyes roamed over him so desperately, practically begging him to take you. and you certainly didn’t miss the bite of his lip as he leaned against a wall, watching you with a smirk while he sipped from his red solo cup.

as you danced, a pair of hands landed on your waist and slowly slipped down to your hips. you didn’t really care who it was and without much thinking, you backed up against them and swayed your hips to the beat of the song as one hand slid up their chest and around the back of their neck. the person behind you wasn’t too much taller than you, making minimal effort to lean down and ghost his lips over the skin of your neck.

as they bent their face over your neck, tufts of short, bleached hair fanned over your face and you realised who it was, suppressing a shudder of blatant excitement. his lips brushed up to kiss the shell of your ear.

“i’m crazy for you.” he whispered against your ear and you actually shuddered this time, his fingers caressing your hips gently before dipping two centimetres under the waistband of your sparkly skirt and then slipping out again.

you wanted him just as bad but that was embarrassing to admit, so you rolled your hips against him, your ass right against his crotch, as he kissed his way from your ear to your neck. feeling his erection press against your ass moments later, you couldn’t wait much longer. you turned around and pulled his face close enough to whisper against his mouth without your lips touching.

“let’s get out of here?” it was less a question and more of a plea, but he nodded and took your hand to drag you out of the house and to his car.

it was a quick and silent drive, his hand kneading the plump flesh of your thighs did nothing to dissolve the tension or ease the ever-growing puddle in your panties. if anything it made your head spin even more as you body warmed up. some time between when you left the party and got to his house, you finally remembered his name.

hongjoong, member of the hottest fraternity on campus and probably also the host of the party you just escaped from. soon enough the car came to a stop and you tried to get out as calmly as possible to prevent yourself from just ripping off his clothes right then and there.

the walk from his car to his bedroom passed in a haze, both of you rushing on quick feet as he led you there. as soon as the door shut and he locked it, you were all over each other.

teeth clashing through feverish kisses, your hands were quick to undress each other down to your undergarments and grope at each other’s bodies. his hands squeezed your breasts over your bra as he backed you up against the door he just locked despite the bed being two steps away.

you moaned against his mouth as he brushed his thumbs over your nipples and slotted his thigh between your legs simultaneously, his thigh rubbing against your core with every movement. your hands tangled themselves in his hair, pulling him impossibly closer before one of them made its way down. you felt him shiver as you dragged your nails over his torso lightly and stopped on his taut stomach.

you both went still for a moment, not out of uncomfort or anything, just to catch your breaths. your breaths mixed in the sliver of space separating your lips as you got lost in his perceptive eyes. something stirred in you when a mischievous little smile appeared on his lips and for a moment you had a hard time thinking.

“tell me,” he started, a hand trailing up to twirl a lock of your hair around it, “tell me what you want me to do.”

unable to form words with the way he was looking at you, you slid your hand down a bit further to touch what you needed. but before you could get there, a chuckle escaped him and he laid his other hand over yours to stop it.

“words, baby girl.” he muttered lowly, a slight hoarseness to his voice as he tugged the strand gently. “how can i give you what you want if you don’t tell me, hm?”

“i…” you started, unsure of how to ask. nevertheless, he waited patiently. “i want you”

he let out another low chuckle. “be more specific, there’s many things i can do for you.”

you whined before giving in to what he wanted. “i want you to fuck me.”

“hm… you want my cock, huh?”

“god, yes,” you nodded enthusiastically, “want your cock so bad.”

“that’s a very possible request,” his finger slipped out of your hair to cup the front of your neck, thumb rubbing your pulse point. “but first, i’m gonna make you cum on my thigh,” he pressed said thigh against your core once again, “then my fingers,” his fingers tightened ever so slightly, not enough to complicate your breathing but enough to make you see stars for a moment, “and then i’ll fuck you so good i’ll ruin other men for you. how does that sound, pretty girl?”

you merely nodded, momentarily overwhelmed by his words and actions. but as soon as you feel his hands guiding your hips to grind along the length of his thigh, you quickly follow his guidance and move on your own with your hands braced on his shoulder. it wasn’t a hard task, the slick arousal soaking your panties helping you glide on top of him easily, a fact that he took note of with a sound half way between a laugh and a scoff.

“look at you,” he said, leaning forward to catch you in a breathy kiss as you came undone, “you’re already soaked and i haven’t even touched you properly. with all this wetness, i probably won’t even have to stretch you, baby.”

you arched your back off the door as your body flushed with heat and pleasure, a silent whimper escaping your lips. with you positioned like that, he had perfect access for his deft fingers to unclip your lace bra effortlessly. at his gentle “hands, please” you dropped your hands from his shoulder to help him slip the fabric off easier, tossing it in a random direction as you had with your clothes.

his hooded eyes roamed over your naked chest with an almost feral look as a groan slipped through his lips, his hand immediately moving to grope at them, messaging the flesh and rolling your nipples between his fingers. “look at you, so pretty and so bare, all for me.”

he tensed the muscles of his thigh and you slumped forward at the sudden firm sensation, moaning into his shoulder, the movements of your hips never once faltering as you grinded against him harder and faster. at your reaction, he gave your ass an encouraging squeeze and kissed your shoulder, tensing and relaxing that muscle in a rhythm that brought you rushing to your climax.

before you knew it, your back arched as you pressed your clothed clit against his thigh as hard as you could, crying out his name loudly as your orgasm finally hit you, mind devoid of thoughts. three months without sex seemed to have taken its toll on your sensitivity.

“there you go,” he cooed like the asshole he is, a mocking look of sympathy gracing his features. “come all over me like the desperate, needy mess you are.”

when your mind cleared just a bit after your first orgasm of the night, you quickly registered that you weren’t pressed against the door anymore. instead, he had moved you to lay on the bed, your knees bent over the edge as he kneeled between them with his hands caressing your upper thighs. your panties were also no longer on you, discarded amongst the scattered clothing on the ground.

once he noticed that the hazy look in your eyes was gone, one of his hands gently tapped its way to rest on top of your pelvis. “now, tell me, what else did i say i’d make you cum on?”

when you didn’t answer immediately and only blinked at him, he tilted his head. “come on, i know you remember it somewhere in that pretty head of yours, no? or did you fuck yourself dumb on my thigh?”

“y-your fingers…” you finally replied after clearing your throat.

“good girl.” he grinned and nodded, leaning down to peck your cheek. “do you still want to continue?”

“yes, fuck, please.” you were quick to answer in a breathy whine.

he hummed and the mischievous glint was back once again to torment you. “good.”

without wasting any time, he dipped his hand down and through your folds, groaning the the pool of wetness and nearly collapsing on top of you, but he pulled himself together quickly enough for you to not quite register it. either way, you were too busy grasping onto his shoulders and trying not to lose your mind because of how amazing his fingers feel.

as his index finger circled your engorged clit at a frustratingly slow pace, he pressed another kiss to your cheek before moving south. he kissed, sucked and nibbled his way down your jawline, neck and chest, leaving slowly bruising marks in his trails. the pressure of his fingers increased slightly and his kisses circled around your perked nipple before giving it an experimental lick, eyes flicking up to gauge your reaction.

“shit,” you cursed quietly, eyes shut tightly. “k-keep doing that.”

a shit-eating grin replaced the curious look and he did exactly that, licking it twice more before closing his mouth around it and such harshly. this elicited another cry of his name from your lips, your nails digging into his shoulders. they would probably leave marks but he didn’t mind that at all, if anything he’ll wear a tank top tomorrow to show it off.

“tell me what you’re thinking about, pretty girl.” he asked after momentarily lifting his head to look at you, only to find your unfocused eyes already on him.

“i can’t wait to feel you inside me.”

trying to hold himself back from impaling you with his cock, his head moved to give the same attention to your other nipple and he slowly pushed two fingers into your entrance. you let out a choked moan as he dropped his head in the valley of your breasts and groaned deeply.

“fuck…” he sat up to look down at you, eyes glazed over as they roamed from your slack-jawed face down to where his fingers were pushed inside your weeping pussy. “i need to be inside you right fucking now.”

“please, please, please.” at this point you were holding back tears because of how desperate you were to be dicked down but you couldn’t care less, not when he seemed just as desperate.

he looked around his room before his eyes settled on you again, biting his lip with uncertainty. “do we need a condom?”

“are you clean?”

he nodded. “tested a week ago and i haven’t slept with anyone since.”

“well then-“

“actually that’s a lie, i’ve slept with two people since then, not including you.”

you blinked at him.

“but they were both clean. and we used protection!” he was quick to reassure you.

you raised a joking eyebrow before laughing. “it’s fine, i’m clean and on the pill, just go raw.”

he froze for a moment but your words processed soon enough and he made quick work of shucking off his boxers and pumping his length a few times to spread his pre-cum. moments later he was hooking your legs around his, lining himself up with your entrance.

after pressing a quick kiss between your collarbones, he moved forward and began pushing inside you inch by inch. a string of curses left your lips, swollen from being kissed and biting them. hongjoong was a bit bigger than you had anticipated but it was welcome, with the way he was filling you so wonderfully in a way you’d never been filled before you weren’t sure you could think straight. perhaps he was right and was indeed ruining other men for you.

eventually, he bottomed out and neither of you moved for a short while, letting you get used to the stretch. you heard hongjoong groan and curse as he shifted ever so slightly and you felt his length brush against that sweet spot inside you, paired with his pelvic bone pressing against your clit, you let out a needy whine.

“move, please.”

that was all it took for him to pull out and slowly push back in again, setting a steady slow space. your mind, usually filled with so many thoughts, was silent. completely blank except for one thing. him, him, him. hongjoong.

he cooed at you with that same mocking voice from before. “hm, what a cute little slut you are. finally getting the dick your perfect little pussy was begging for. you’ve been thinking about it all night, haven’t you?”

you opened your mouth to reply but instead cut yourself off with a pitchy moan as he angled his hips at just the right angle so his cock dragged along that sweet spot with every one of his thrusts.

“you’re loving this, huh?” he leaned down to rasp into your ear after biting your earlobe gently. “i fuck you so well, don’t i? but let’s not forget how well you take me.”

his pace began picking up and you didn’t care if your moans were too loud, it was his fault for making you feel so damn good. the knot in your stomach tightening once more, an effect of the combination of his actions and his dirty words. but it wasn’t quite enough.

“more, faster, p-please.” you begged him with wide glossy eyes.

there was no reason for him to not comply, so he immediately sped things up, postponing in and out of you as fast as he could. a few more thrust later, your whole body tensed as your second climax caused the knot in your stomach to snap. your body convulsing as you open your mouth to cry out. you were shirt there were scratch marks all over his back and shoulders, but it’s what he deserved for littering your neck and chest with love bites.

hongjoong crashed his lips on yours, bith an attempt to muffle your sounds and to bring you even closer to him. he faintly noted you tasted of mint and some kind of fruit he couldn’t name. though your lipstick was already smudged, his wet kisses against your mouth and his tongue inside only served to smear it even more.

you heard him say something distantly, the intensity of your orgasm had your ears ringing but you faintly recognised the words “cum” and “in you.” it didn’t take a genius to pick up on what he meant, so your fucked-out mind had you nodding. and a second later he did exactly that and collapsed on top of you, his elbows on either side of your head supporting most of his weight.

your chests heaved against each other as he kissed you. though, “kissed” was a bit generous for the lazy, slow presses he left against the plush of your lips, murmuring praises against them. soon enough he slipped out of you and rolled the two of you over so you were laying halfway on top of him as you held each other tightly.

after a long silence he spoke up as he patted your back affectionately. “let’s get you cleaned up?”

“two more minutes.” you muttered into his neck. 

[ networks . . . ] @cromernet @blankjournal

[ perm taglist . . . open ] @ad0rechuu @sankatchu

[bellasboneyard]

The Steam Powered Giraffe Comic / Cartoon

I'm very excited for this year. Yeah we've got a bunch of live shows, but I'm also doing a lot of work on the Steam Powered Giraffe comic. Some of you may recall four years ago we pitched the SPG cartoon to a number of studios including Disney and Cartoon Network. Nothing came of it, but we loved the concept we came up with. The comic is the cartoon. It's the first step to hopefully hook people into the universe. We'd love to move on to animatics so we can re-pitch the concept in the future, but the story and designs, and writing will be in the comic, a place for it to live and breathe without needing to be green-lit by a studio. Though we've been wanting a cartoon of Steam Powered Giraffe from the beginning! Sam Luke, David, and I spent a large amount of time making plans back in the day, and as you can see with our various pitches to cartoon studios (Disney was the closest to biting, btw) it really has just been part of the undercurrent in the group. I love the story we've come up with, I love the new characters, and I'm working on honing the designs for everything with the help of people who are much more talented than me! If you stick around on Tumblr you may just see some sketches and art of your favorite robots, and our Patreon will host some behind-the-scenes goodies in the future. Can't wait to suck you into this world y'all.

[sreegs]

Tumblr users like to build up a lot of myths about this site that still get thrown around like they're fact, but I think the biggest myth they've convinced themselves is true is that the site is unprofitable because of the users.

Tumblr's unprofitable because its model doesn't fly under the current state of internet advertising. It's also had a string of owners, leadership, and people in charge of coming up with ideas for Tumblr that don't know what they have and would be damned if they knew what to do with it. You can't make money on social media unless you collect worthwhile info from users to sell to advertisers. You also don't make money on social media by copying existing features.

Tumblr's core prop, which they has somehow survived Yahoo, Verizon, and now Automattic, is anonymity. You can't sell that information that you don't collect. Outside of that, Tumblr's a long-form blogging platform which flies in the face of short-form attention-grabbing content like Tiktok and Twitter.

The people who have been in charge of making decisions at Tumblr have never known what to do with it. A lot of them just copied other platforms' features. It got really frustrating working there, being forced to make something you knew would just languish for months before being left to rot or, hopefully, mercifully, be removed.

Meanwhile site improvements were neglected because they don't make a quick buck. This was the main reason I quit, because I just gave up on trying to make the place better only to be forced into adding a new feature that no one wants to use.

Case in point, Tumblr live. I can assure you that none of the engineers or the people who run the Staff blog, or anyone else who does actual work work at Tumblr, wanted to support it. It's not even the first time Tumblr had live video.

The thing is, though, I'm not sure that just improving the site without adding anything new would lead to long term success anyways. You need a steady stream of new users to replace the old. It's also incredibly expensive to run a social media site that hosts images and video. AND you have to moderate it, which is expensive and difficult. Even if Tumblr just made all these things better, I'm not convinced it would keep the site alive much longer. Tumblr's too expensive to maintain on this model that doesn't make enough money from advertising, and it's too expensive to be maintained on user donations.

Anyways, the point is, the Tumblr users that like to proudly declare they have the power to make this site lose money are actually helping the site make money by posting and using the site. Even if you have an ad-blocker never pay for merch or whatever, your presence and activity here adds to Tumblr's usership statistics, which they use to court more advertisers. The people who have actually been keeping this site unprofitable are the people who own it and the decision makers who dictate what the next feature will be.

[jtargaryen18]

His Inheritance ~ Chapter 30

Part 30: Illusions

Series Masterlist

Words: 4.4k

Pairing: Mobster Steve Rogers x Mobster daughter reader

Warnings: References to mob crime families, reference to being a shooting victim, references to sexual violence. Strong language, betrayal, more than one character being in physical peril. This is a dark fic. Please read responsibly.

Disclaimer: The author of this work claims no ownership of characters aside from the reader, and original secondary characters mentioned. This work is not intended for those under the age of 18 due to explicit sexual content and darker themes. By reading this work or any works on my blog (jtargaryen18), you agree that you are at least 18 years of age. I do not consent to have my work hosted on any third party app or site. If you are seeing this fanfiction anywhere but archiveofourown and tumblr, it has been reposted without my permission.

Summary: For @alexakeyloveloki. Your father is the head of one of the most powerful crime families in Boston but he’s protected you from that life. In your quiet home outside the city, you’ve been cared for and protected. When the desires of a more powerful man with the will to dominate bursts into your life, all your illusions are shattered as he comes to claim what is his.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“There she is,” you heard her whisper.

Your eyes felt heavy when you slit them open. Your vision was blurry, and your mouth was dry. You tried to sit up and that’s when sharp pain reminded you of what happened.

“Stop,” Yelena said gently. “You’ll reopen your wound if you’re not careful.”

The concern in her hazel eyes reminded you of what happened. Blurry memories flashed in your mind of being in Hansen’s house. Neal. Dyson’s friends. Jensen. Dyson. Steve…

“Steve,” you asked, panicked. Your husband took a bullet for you. Well, he took the brunt of it.

Yelena lifted a glass of water from the bedside table. You were in the bedroom you shared with Steve. But you didn’t see anyone but Yelena there.

“He’s going to be okay,” she told you with a smile, holding the glass so you could take a sip.

“He was shot.” Your voice sounded groggy.

“So were you,” she pointed out.

It hurt like hell. You lifted a hand to your shoulder, feeling the dressing under the nightgown you wore.

“Fucking hurts,” you mumbled. “Hansen must be so happy... Bastard.”

That had Yelena smiling. “That’s your exit wound. It could have been a lot worse. It was a .45 caliber bullet. If it had just hit you, it would have done a lot of damage.”

That just meant it did a lot of damage to Steve.

“Did Hansen survive?” You were really hoping he didn’t.

Yelena sighed. “I’m not sure. When he shot you and Steve, it sent everyone into a panic. Hansen’s men faced off against Clay and Jensen so he could slip out, but he was hit. Word on the street is that Hansen’s dead, but I don’t believe it.”

“Where’s Dyson?” you asked.

“Waiting for the doctor to finish with Steve,” she told you. “He’s fretting over both of you like a mother hen.”

You blew out an exhale. “Is Steve really going to be okay?”

Her smile faded. “I think so. We’ll know soon enough. You were very lucky. The bullet barely missed your lung. You’ll have a scar, but you will recover.”

“Will Steve recover?” Guilt clouded your mind, blocking out everything else. “It was my fault he got shot.”

What if Steve died? What if it impacted the rest of his life? Would he forgive you?

“Try not to worry,” she told you. “The doctor is very good. He took very good care of you.”

“Me?” Again, you tried to sit up, but Yelena urged you to be still. The stabbing pain in your shoulder was breathtaking. “Why did he take care of me first? He should have taken care of Steve. He should have—”

“Steve wouldn’t have it,” Yelena explained. “He was only worried about you.”

And it was your fault you both got shot. Tears came on then.

“Were your friends okay?” You had to ask. “Jensen?”

“They’re okay,” she assured you.

“What about Clint?” you asked, panicking as you remembered more. “Have we heard from him?”

“Clint’s okay,” a familiar voice said from the doorway of your bedroom. Clint looked beat up, but he made it. “Nat! She’s awake.”

Nat scrambled into the bedroom, dashing to your bed. She might have hugged you if Yelena hadn’t caught her.

“She has to be careful with the stitches,” Yelena said gently.

Nat’s green eyes were glassy with tears. “I can’t believe you got shot.”

She hugged you so carefully.

“I can’t either,” you told her. “Where’s Scott?”

“Scott went to pick up Yelena’s things,” Clint said from where he stood at the foot of your bed. “He’s good.”

That meant Yelena was moving back into your home. Good.

“He’s not alone, is he?” You had to know.

Clint shook his head. "He’s got a few of our guys watching his back.”

With Nat’s help, Yelena used pillows to prop you up in the bed. The movements hurt but you could handle it. Your gaze took in all their worried faces. All you could think about was Steve.

“Clint!” Someone, you thought it was Dyson, called from down the hall.

Clint hurried off and intuition had your stomach dropping.

“When will we know about Steve?” you asked, hoping maybe Nat knew something.

You saw your own worry reflected in her green eyes. She smiled but it didn’t reach those eyes.

“Don’t worry about that right now,” Nat said. “You need to rest.”

No, you needed to know how your husband was.

They stayed with you, talking quietly. Clint had been lucky in that a couple of Dyson’s friends showed up to help him when he was surrounded by Barnes’ men. There had been a massive shootout before the cops showed up, giving Clint the chance he needed to get out of there.

Nat chatted on excitedly, retelling Clint’s tale. Groggy as your mind was from being put under, it took you a minute to realize Nat hadn’t said a thing about Bruce Banner. You had been about to ask about Banner, but you caught yourself, thinking better of it. Nat was still in a fragile place. Maybe nothing happened. Maybe something did. It wasn’t in her best interest to even think about Banner right now.

Clint returned a few minutes later, his expression changed. You thought you could read Clint somewhat but right now? It looked like one hell of a poker face.

Dyson followed him in, his gaze on you. So much emotion swirled in his eyes as he approached your bedside and Nat let him have her seat at your side. Dyson leaned forward to press a kiss to your forehead, his eyes were glassy, red.

Something was wrong. It sent a spike of panic through your heart.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” Dyson said with such emotion in his voice. “You shaved a few years off this old man’s life.”

You tried to smile.

Dyson took your hand carefully in his. “I love you too, but don’t you ever do something like that again. I’m supposed to take a bullet for you, not the other way around.”

You’d expected him to say something like that. If you’d been the only one shot, you’d have been fine. It would have been worth it. Aside from the bruises on his face from his none-too-gentle handling from Hansen and Neal, Dyson looked beaten up but mostly unharmed. Not shot.

The problem was your efforts had prompted Steve to protect you.

“Hey, Nat,” Clint said carefully. “Why don’t you get in bed? It’s late and you’ve had a rough day. Come on.”

Oh no. Your heart began to ache as you nodded at Nat, told her you’d be alright. Clint led her out of your bedroom. In the doorway, he paused. The poignant look he cut you before walking away had fear rioting in your chest.

Fear had even crept into Yelena’s expression.

“Dyson,” you whispered. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Dyson blew out an exhale, seemed to be working up the courage to say what he came to say.

“Tell me.” Desperation bled on your tone. “How is Steve?”

Dyson sighed. “The surgery went well,” he said slowly. “Doc was able to deal with most of the damage. But Steve… bled a lot. He lost a lot of blood.”

Oh my God. Panic had you trying to get out of bed. You needed to see him. Now.

“Is he alive?” you asked tearfully, your breath coming fast.

Dyson nodded, his gaze fixed on you. “He’s alive… But he’s in a coma right now.”

It took both Dyson and Yelena to keep you in bed, the pain be damned. The pain felt distant, not nearly as bad as the ache in your heart. The guilt…

“He’s strong,” Dyson leaned closer as he held you there. “He’s young. Doc says he might snap out of it any time.”

Might wasn’t good enough. Might wasn’t nearly good enough.

Again, you scrambled on the bed and again, they got a grip on you. That’s when the tears came on.

“Please,” you begged. “I have to see him. I have to talk to him. If I—”

“You will,” Yelena assured you. “But not right now.”

“Yes, right now!” you yelled.

Your gaze moved to Dyson just in time to see the syringe in his other hand. Regret stained his expression as he slid the needle into your upper arm, administering its contents into your bloodstream. The sedative had the world slipping away from you by the second as you fought…

***

It was so quiet in Luca’s kitchen. Yelena sat at that small wooden table next to Dyson, so tired it was hard to keep her eyes open. Dyson hadn’t really touched the cup of black coffee Luca put in front of him. Well, Scott hadn’t touched his either. Clint, like her, had waved it away. He’d been the last to join them in the quiet of the kitchen.

It wasn’t lost on her that usually, they were all in good spirits here. Usually, they told tall tales about life in the Rogers’ family, or they had a poker game going. And now?

Now it felt like their entire world had been upended.

Only Luca was still standing, leaning against the counter with his beefy arms folded across his chest and his gaze on the floor.

“How is Nat?” Yelena had to ask, catching Clint’s gaze.

Clint shook his head. “No damn good. She’s still having nightmares about Banner and then all this shit happened.”

“Does she know Banner is dead?” Yelena asked.

“No,” Clint said. “Not a good time. She’s already terrified from what happened tonight.”

Yelena respected his decision.

“She asleep?” Dyson asked.

Clint nodded. “I got her to take a Valium. At least she’ll sleep for a little while.”

Yelena blew out an exhale. You were a different story. And she wasn’t looking forward to when the sedative wore off. She knew you were scared and blaming yourself for what happened.

“I’m just going to go ahead and say it,” Luca said. “Barnes has been handing us our asses since the boss got married and we’re damned lucky that today didn’t go a hell of a lot worse. Hansen got his hands on Dyson. Mrs. Rogers got shot and the boss…”

Dyson nodded silently where he sat.

“Barnes has been one step ahead of us the entire fucking time and Steve?” Luca scrubbed a hand over his face. “Steve was a force to be reckoned with before he got married.”

Wait. What?

“Please tell me you’re not blaming Mrs. Rogers for all this,” Yelena pleaded, more than ready to defend you.

“Not her fault… directly,” Luca explained. “She got in his head. But he has to have better control than that when it comes to the business. He can’t allow anything to get him so turned around that he starts making bad decisions. And he’s made nothing but bad decisions since he got married.”

“It was more than that,” Dyson finally spoke up. “He didn’t marry her until after her father died. And while her father was alive, he was Steve’s mentor. He guided him, helped him think things through when it came to leading the families.”

Dyson rose from his chair and walked around the table to get to the fridge, pulling out a beer.

“Barnes saw through it,” Dyson went on. “Barnes is a sharp one, always was. He didn’t let the old boss get cold in his grave before he started pushing buttons.”

“Where does that leave us?” Luca asked. “There’s blood in the water. Barnes ain’t backing off now.”

“No, he’s not,” Dyson replied.

“And Steve’s father-in-law is gone,” Luca went on. “If having a mentor is the only way he was going to pull this off, we’re fucked.”

Dyson paused, putting his beer on the table, unopened. Yelena knew that look on his face. He’d thought of something.

“Maybe we’re not,” he said as thoughts ran through his head. She could almost see them.

“What?” Luca threw his hands up. “The old man is dead.”

“But he’s not entirely gone,” Dyson said, meeting Yelena’s gaze. And it was at that moment that she knew where this was going.

Luca looked lost. “What are you saying?”

“We have his kid,” Dyson said it out loud. “We have his daughter. She’s as sharp as her father ever was.”

Scott’s eyes lit up, catching on. He nodded.

“Hey,” Luca drew their attention to him. “Maybe you’re right. She might even be sharper than her old man. But she can’t take over. No family is going to accept her lead. You know that.”

“I do know that,” Dyson said.

“Steve would never accept that either,” Luca went on.

“Right now Steve can’t give us his opinion,” Dyson pointed out. “He’s in a comma. God willing, he’ll come out of it. But no one outside the family can know about his condition. Barnes will finish us if he finds out.”

That had everyone pausing.

“What are you saying?” Clint asked, looking very invested in the discussion now.

“Everyone outside this room, and Nat, have to believe that Steve is still holding the reins,” Dyson told them gravely. “And until he’s awake, someone has to call the shots.”

“No.” Luca shook his head. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders but leading a mob family? Leading five mob families?”

“She was right about Neal, wasn’t she?” Dyson stressed. “She’s got her old man’s instincts. You’ve said it yourself. We can give her the circumstances. She doesn’t have to know the business. We do. We lay it all out for her and she makes the calls.”

“If we’re doing all that,” Luca said, “why don’t me and you make the calls?”

“If you or me were qualified to lead a family, we wouldn’t be here,” Dyson said. “But you’re a cook and I’m an enforcer. But her?” Dyson pointed upstairs. “She’s our best shot at this. She’s how we pull this off.”

“How do we know she’ll want to do it?” Clint threw in. “That’s a huge responsibility.”

“She hasn’t backed down from anything yet, has she?” Scott asked.

Yelena smiled at him. Scott was right.

“She’ll do it.” Yelena knew she would. “She feels responsible for Steve’s injury. She’ll do anything she can to help for that reason.”

“She will,” Dyson told them. ”If Steve doesn’t wake up, the Rogers family is done for. If and when he does wake up, we’ll reassess then.”

“Word will get out that Steve was shot,” Luca pointed out. “That she was shot. Hansen and his men might have survived.”

Dyson shook his head. “If Hansen’s alive, and I doubt it, him and his men are long gone. They’ve got bigger problems. Barnes will be hunting them for betraying his family.”

Yelena knew that was true.

“You said it yourself,” Luca said. “Barnes is sharp. He’s going to figure it out.”

“We’ll see,” Dyson said.

“You really think she can do this?” Luca asked. “If she really does have her father’s instincts, it could be bad news for Barnes. Her father was a ruthless bastard.”

Dyson chuckled. “She has them instincts. And no offense,” he waved to Yelena, “but she’s a woman. Those instincts and a woman’s intuition? Barnes might be the one fucked.”

Clint shook his head with a laugh. “Holy shit.”

Dyson’s gaze met Yelena’s. “Exactly right.”

***

The low din of voice was the first thing you noticed when you woke up the next morning. Turning on the TV, you didn’t immediately know where your phone was, you saw it was just after 11 AM.

Fuck. I’ve been out that long?

As quietly as you could manage, you sat up, wincing at the pain. It hurt ten times worse today and pulling back your nightgown to see the dressing, you saw that you’d bled through it.

You’d live.

You had to get to Steve.

It was slow going in making yourself at least presentable. You took a sink bath because you knew you probably should get the dressing over your wound wet. You pulled on jeans and one of Steve’s big sweaters because a bra was out of the question at the moment. Sliding on flats, you decided you were as good as you were going to get today.

The voices continued and you slid out of your room and made your way in that direction. Was it Nat?

Was it Steve?

Dyson had told you Steve was in a coma. Was he awake now? Could you see him?

Was he dead?

Nat’s bedroom was quiet, so you passed it. The talking was coming from a few doors down, one of the guest rooms. The door was slightly open, and you peeked in. You saw Yelena, Clint, and Jensen off to one side of the room. You moved to see the bed, your heart leaping in hope that it was Steve, and he was awake.

It wasn’t Steve. No, in the center of that bed was a young woman, asleep and curled up on her side. She looked so small with the covers pulled up over her shoulder. She looked so familiar.

Then you remembered that small purple purse in Hansen’s house, randomly lying on his sofa. It occurred to you why she looked familiar.

“She’s going to have to understand,” Clint said in a low voice. “We can’t go to the police.”

“I understand that,” Yelena said. “But we also can’t just throw her back out into the world. Not with what he did to her. She needs help and protection.”

Jensen stood listening, his hands on his slim waist. Clint’s hair was spiked over his head and the shadows behind his eyes led her to believe that he’d probably been up all night.

Yelena stood next to the bed, a protective stance. It confirmed your suspicions about what you were seeing. It was the girl from the donut shop. She’d been Hansen’s prisoner and you had some idea of what had happened to her. You also couldn’t help but feel that if anything had happened to Steve, they wouldn’t be dealing with this.

You chose that moment to walk in, to make your presence known. Yelena looked alarmed when she spotted you.

“What are you doing up?” she asked, dashing to your side. “You should be resting right now.”

You shook your head, shrugged off her careful hands. She was probably right but you couldn’t truly rest if you tried. There was way too much going on.

“It’s the girl from the donut shop.” It wasn’t a question. “When did you find her?”

“Dyson sent me back to Hansen’s this morning to do a sweep of the house,” Jensen explained. “To make sure there’s nothing there to implicate your family.”

“Thank you,” you told him. “Our doctor needs to see her.”

Yelena nodded. “He’ll be back in a little while. He—”

“He didn’t stay with my husband?” you asked, trying to keep calm.

“He went back to get his things,” Clint said with his hands held up in front of him. “He’ll be staying with us for a while. Until Steve wakes up.”

You took a deep breath, trying not to let panic take over. Steve was still in a comma then.

You nodded. “Once he’s seen Steve, I want him to take care of her. Yelena’s right. Unless something changed we don’t know if Hansen’s dead or alive. We need to keep her safe.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Clint nodded.

“She probably shouldn’t stay here,” Clint said carefully. “For her own well-being.”

“Once we know she’s physically okay, we’ll come up with a solution,” you told them. “I also want a psychologist brought in to see her.”

“We'll make it happen,” Yelena told you, exchanging a glass with Clint.

Yelena knew more than you what that poor woman had been through. The woman would need that type of support and understanding.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Dyson muttered from behind you as he marched in. “Why are you out of bed?”

He came to a stop right in front of you, his gaze assessing.

“Because it beats just laying there worried about my husband and thinking ‘oh, shit, my shoulder hurts,’” you told him. “Can I see my husband now?”

After a moment, Dyson nodded. “Come on.”

Dyson led you to another guestroom in another hallway. It was quiet in the room and your husband lay in the middle of the bed. He was too still, too pale. He almost never slept on his back, so it was odd to see him like that. Clusters of medical monitors were positioned all around the bed, pushing your anxiety up higher than it already was.

You moved to his bedside, sitting carefully at his side. You barely noticed the pain in your shoulder in that moment as you took his hand in yours. It was warm, but it was too still. Your heart ached in your chest to look at him lying there.

Your fault. This was all your fault.

You knew Dyson was quietly waiting behind you. You didn’t care. You let the tears come, sobbing over your husband as a hundred nightmare scenarios flashed in your mind. What if you lost him? What if he awoke but he was broken, not the same. He’d hate you and that hate would flash in his blue eyes every time he looked at you.

You didn’t realize Dyson had walked over to the bed at first. He stood on the other side, looking as brokenhearted as you felt. Steve was like a son to him.

“I need you to know that if anything happens to Steve,” Dyson said slowly, “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I won’t let Barnes or Hansen get to you. I swear.”

You shook your head. Dyson was a blur on the other side of your tears. “If anything happens to Steve, I won’t care what happens to me, Dyson. It won’t matter.”

A single tear slid down one cheek as he thought about what you said. “Somewhere in all of this, you really fell in love with him, didn’t you?”

Swiping at your eyes with your fingers you nodded. It was a raw truth, and you couldn’t deny it.

“You can talk to him,” Dyson said gently. “Doc said that often when patients are in… a state like this… they can hear you. Might not be able to answer but…”

Your tears dotted the back of Steve’s hand, held in your own. They just kept coming and the crack in your heart got longer and longer until it felt like the world would come apart.

“What do you want him to know?” Dyson’s tone was encouraging.

“I love you,” you said to your husband through your tears. “I’d give anything to take this back. Anything. It’s my fault you got hurt. I’m so… sorry…”

This time as you sobbed, Dyson sat behind you, wrapping his arms around you like he could hold you together.

“Shhhh,” he whispered as he held you. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was,” you told him miserably. “I should have done something different. I should have…”

“You were so brave,” Dyson said quietly. “I’ve worked with soldiers who didn't have half of your bravery. Do you know that?”

You shook your head, holding on to Steve’s hand.

“Dyson,” you said as you were trying to get the tears to stop, “he’s in danger. Not just the injuries… What will Barnes do when he finds out? What if Hansen is still alive and he finds out? We have to put a guard around the house. It’s bad enough that he’s like this. But someone… could try to come and finish him off.”

“We were talking about last night,” Dyson said slowly. “And you’re right. We have to safeguard Steve and this family.”

“What are we going to do?” you asked.

“We’re going to convince the outside world that Steve is fine,” Dyson explained. “That’s he’s still holding the reins in this family. That he’s still the head of all the families.”

It sounded like a good idea on the surface, but you hit a dead end in your thoughts pretty quickly. “Even if we could convince everyone that Steve’s fine and still leading the families, he’s in a comma. He’s not even conscious. He can’t make decisions like this. What’s your plan for that?”

“That’s where I need your help,” he said.

You couldn’t have heard that correctly. Shifting on the bed so you could meet his gaze over your shoulder, you stared Dyson down.

“How can I help?”

“I need your instincts,” Dyson said, looking you in the eye. “You were right about Neal. You were right about everything. Hansen pulled the stunt he did, and you just ran right out to challenge him over my sorry ass.”

He thought you could help run the Rogers family? All the families?

“You have strong instincts, your father's instincts, and you're brave,” he went on.

“Maybe I’m just fucking crazy,” you muttered.

“All I’m asking you to do is try,” he said patiently. “After all this, Steve is going to be expected to strike back. He’s going to be expected to hit Barnes hard, to end this rebellion once and for fucking all.”

Dyson was right.

“Everyone expects Steve to be looking for some payback,” Dyson went on. “Don’t you want a little payback for all this?”

That little offer caught your attention. Did you want to make Barnes and Hansen pay? Yes, you did. With the help of Neal and Banner, Barnes had hit Steve’s family hard in so many ways. Consequences you'd faced. Yelena had faced. And Nat? She’d suffered the most.

And what Hansen likely did to that poor girl?

Payback? Oh yes. You wanted a lot of fucking payback.

You glanced at your husband, your heart echoing his words to you from yesterday. Come back to me.

Steve would come back to you. You wouldn’t accept anything less. You wouldn’t let his family fall.

Returning your gaze to Dyson, you lifted your chin. “Let’s do this. I want Barnes to fucking suffer. I want to hit him so fucking hard no one else will ever dare challenge my husband, my family, again.”

Dyson smiled.

@valsworldofcreativity @21stcenturywitchcraft @coconutqueen21 @bval-1 @caffiend-queen @sadlittlecountess @candy-and-writing @capsicle-shield @chaoticfiretaconerd @chrisevansgirl @chris-evans-indian-fanfic @coldmuffinbanditshoe @daughterofthenight117 @hv-chw3 @iheartsebstan @imanuglywombat @just-one-ordinary-fangirl @justrae9903 @lokislastlove @mariaenchanted @maxwelllee2020 @nekoannie-chan @nerdwholikesword @notyourtypicalrose @optimistic-dinosaur-nacho @peaceinourtime82 @rainbowkisses31 @rayofdawnworld @richonne4life @rissysthoughts-blog @saiyanprincessswanie @scarletsoldier21-blog @shygirl-00 @supernaturaldean67 @sweater-daddiesdumbdork @team-iron-wannabe-man @titty-teetee @tonib666 @villanellev @vitamingummies @what-is-your-plan-today @what-is-your-wish @xoxabs88xox @rosalynshields @naturalthrone22 @marvelovernfan @gotnofucks @eralen @kawairinrin @bluemusickid @geminievans1 @daughterofthenight117 @sunmoonandbuckyrecs

[levyfiles]

i feel like if they just said straight up that they don't want to be youtubers cause they're "better than that" - which honestly feels like the subtext here - it would have been better than this disingenuous sentimental nonsense followed by an ask for money, the phrasing of which made it sound like we should feel guilty for consuming their art for free till now

OK, I have said this a few times but this is going to be my last time saying this on tumblr.

Youtube is a platform once built for users in 2006; the idea was for those locked out of the industry to have an opportunity to share their creations. As time went on, the very moment that content started to be funded by sponsors, the platform changed. Decades later, the platform--and believe me when I say this--is controlled by sponsors and ads. A lot of people don't realise this because we all have our ad-block on. We work tirelessly not to have to consume media peddled to us with agendas and propaganda; we pay for software so we don't get it.

We accepted Youtube charging some of us monthly so we don't see ads, so we can enjoy the platform more comfortably. If you're in your early-to late 30s then you know that Youtube crafted a whole lot of our experience online but it has not gone without changes. The ad breaks are now populated with sponsors with a big list of prerequisites and we sit there and guffaw through a straight 40 seconds of a creator peddling fast-fashion, cheap drinks with poison in them, platforms that sell $1 items off the backs of slave labour, and knives that don't even work just so we can sit back and pretend we'd rise to the occasion when an opportunity to practice socialism presents itself.

Well, here's the bad news. Socialism does not mean you sit back and get everything handed to you. That is literally right-wing propaganda. Socialism is every one taking a piece of what they have to crowd-source the things we want. It is letting artists be artists to create things that do not contribute to consumerism/corporate culture.

In the end, the internet has shown me that all these LARPING children believing in the future where shit gets handed to them off the backs of other people's hard work will open their greedy maws and scream slurs, insults, and backhanded statements at any creator who seizes control of the thing they've produced. You don't want to see artists grow; you want creators/artists strapped to the capitalism hamster wheel while they create the same trendy crap that sponsors tell you that you want until they burn out and retire.

The saddest thing of all is the irony of you calling that video sentimental nonsense when it shows you the story; it tells you that they all got started the way most of our favourite youtubers started but then Buzzfeed happened which may have opened some doors for them but if Ryan didn't fight tooth and nail, we would have had a Netflix show with some non descript white guy hosting it because that's the vision Buzzfeed saw. It's what so many of you see when you want the thing you like, that you watch them work tirelessly to make, to be free forever.

Of course they're too good for Youtube. Youtube is trash now and you're going to start to notice that very quickly now.