#don't know if it ever will be

[doom-dreaming]

"when i was your age, i was working three jobs to help support my family" and "when i was in college i was sleeping on a mattress on the floor and living off of soup"

YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE HAD TO DO THAT. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO DO THAT. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT THIS ISN'T A CHARACTER-BUILDING LESSON, IT'S JUST BAD

[hinamie]

10 years later

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[lazylittledragon]

domesticating your vampire: a memoir

(beautiful high res version on patre0n)

[solroskajan]

Thank you murder drones for reminding me that I still like the same things as I did when I was 13

[iamanartichoke]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but as a creator -

I am fine with "the audience" -

downloading my fics

printing my fics

copy/pasting or screenshotting my fics

sharing your saved copy of my fics with anyone else who might want them in the unlikely but never impossible case that my fics are no longer available on ao3

making a book of my fic(s) and running your fingers across the pages while lovingly whispering my precioussss

doing these things with anything I create for fandom, such as meta, headcanons, au nonsense like 'texts from the brodinsons,' etc

I am not fine with "the audience"

doing any of the above with the purpose/intent of plagiarizing my work or passing it off as their own in any capacity

feeding my work into ai for any reason whatsoever

Save the fandom things. Preserve the fandom things. Respect the fandom things.

Enjoy the fandom things.

[literarymerritt]

Thinking about Them 🥺

Art Tumblr | Twitter

[magnusbae]

To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:

A post in 2023:

A post in 2014:

A zoom out of the same post:

This is what a community looks like.

See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn't need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.

It's not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it's the type of interaction people have. They're content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.

Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.

If you want more of something, reblog it.

[bloggingboutburgers]

Flashback to that one moment where it felt like I'd found an aroace cheatcode on life somehow

[emthimofnight]

In which Sonic gets to show Stellar the world he loves so much, and Shadow gets a much-needed break.

(From my SonDADow AU, which you can learn about a bit HERE!)

[coddda]

I wish we could have met in some other way.

Lawlight Week Day 2: Soulmates

If you saw me repost and re-edit this several times uh No you didn't </3

Still frames/Individual gifs:

If you know what every frame is from you get a free cookie. by the way

[hamsternamedmarinette]

Don't ask how it got into his room

[ruegarding]

i never understood ppl claiming percy has never suffered the consequences of his loyalty. you're talking about percy "i know the prophecy said my friend would betray me but these are my friends they wouldn't betray me" jackson, who walked into a remote part of the forest with luke and almost died in book one. you're talking about percy "kronos told me point-blank there was a traitor but i can't imagine any of these ppl betraying me" jackson, who decided to stop looking for the traitor and moved on. you're talking about percy "nico is acting suspicious and very clearly hiding something from me but he's my friend and i trust him" jackson, who walked into nico's very obvious set up and almost got himself held hostage during the titan war. percy is so loyal that he cannot fathom betrayal until it's happening, and it has nearly killed him multiple times.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy one year anniversary to In Stars and Time!

[cannibalspicnic]

What cracks me up about Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape is that aside from the vampirism, Daniel's just having such a typical cocaine experience.

He goes home with a guy because he has coke, then ends up listening to the guy rant and bitch about his ex until dawn, then witnesses an implosion between the guy and his current partner, then is forced to answer the question, "Am I boring?" from said partner while trying to figure out the best way to leave.

This is just a regular night on cocaine.

[quadrantadvisor]

Thinking about DP x DC Jason Todd being a revenant again. Here's my scenario. Jason gets called that by some ghost. He's like "what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" He's heard the term before but he doesn't know any actual lore. He googles it. He scrolls past the Leonardo DiCaprio bear movie. He opens the wiki. Sees the words "animated corpse" and gets a chill diwn his spine. He starts reading the first section.

He closes Wikipedia.

That night he has a nightmare that his family buried him, again, this time with precautions. He wakes up in his own grave, full of stones, too heavy to move, to scream.