#i have not posted my face on the internet for at least half a decade

[whattheeverlovingfuck]

Posting this in the evening because I am insecure and have not posted a selfie in over 5 years

[nights-at-crystarium]

You know what, I assume that people always read my pinned, or notice the pointer "new reader? start here" in every new Fragments' episode. I might be deluding myself. So hi hello lemme TALK ABOUT MY COMIC.

Before I get too rambly (and I mean RAMBLY), here's a quick intro. Fragments is a comic focused on feels and slice of life, made by a queer guy, aiming to ~character study~ the main cast (Vivi, Raha, Alisaie, Feo Ul) and fill in the gaps in canon (or linger in canon moments that needed more air imo), the tone ranging from angst to fluff to meme. Good punches require a good windup, so please don't expect angst anytime soon :3c

The story's segmented (fragmented, heh) into episodes. Episodes 1-11 take place in ARR, you can enjoy them with no worry about spoilers. Episode 12 onward is ShB, with all the spoilers and lorebending.

My storytelling style assumes you haven't only played through ShB, but know it like the back of your hand, i.e. it's for nerds and thinkers. Of course there's plenty of silly moments that don't require any deep knowledge, but the overarching story does. Often I skip canon events, only hinting that they took place, simply because I don't wanna retell the msq 1:1, I've got plenty of original scenes waiting to be drawn. You're in for a treat if you like obsessing over emotional and moral implications of things. And, yes, this's a story about a morally grey mc. Don't expect to be spoon-fed "and this's why that thing's bad, kids".

Currently I've outlined all the main story beats up until post EW, so it's like, not being winged as I go. Yes I refine things here and there, but I know where I'm going. I'm going ham!!!! With the lorebending post ShB. Initially I didn't plan to, but the more I learned about Vivi and personally grew as a writer, the more courage I got to "divorce" from canon. The general xiv story may still be good wherever it's headed, but it's not suited for an established wolgraha, so I'm making food for myself.

Everyone imagines the lil scenes from their wol's life, I'm taking that a tiiiiiny step further. Fragments tells a cohesive story that's looking to be the longest project at least in our corner. I can and will hyperfixate on this for years.

I started out just like many others, being hit with ShB like a truck, I wanted to put a catboy under a microscope and rotate him forever. Although I'd already been drawing for decades, I didn't have the comic-making skills yet, or eloquence to write the dialogue, so I spent the first half of 2022 self-studying, just because I needed a mouth to be able to scream about my ship.

Vivi didn't exist prior to my obsession with Exarch. He was made for this, he started out as a reagent (or a foil, now that I know fancy writing terms) for a rich and fun chemistry, and keep myself entertained for years, first and foremost.

Me, a fool: okay let's make a guy that falls in love with Exarch in this particular moment, what kinda life must he have led to- Me: ....oh no

The chemistry quickly bubbled up and exploded in my face, involving not only Exarch, but other characters (first as a means to subtly tell about Vivi, then they also demanded their own screentime), and here I am, sitting with a massive script on my hands, drawing my blorbos every day. Thanks for enabling that btw.

I care about characters a lot. I ask a lot of whys and hows. I'm critical-minded and burned on many bad stories that did their characters dirty, and I wanna be an opposing example. What I'm doing is extremely ambitious and risky, yes, but I can only invite you to tag along and see if I stick to my word.

The internet's a cruel and unforgiving place nowadays, and here I am, pitting my passion against what feels like decaying humanity. I'm making this comic to keep myself happy above all else, being sincere and cringe because life's too short to be anything else.

Thanks for reading this, and if you haven't yet, read Fragments here!

[johnnyslittleanimalblog]

OTIS

Like everyone else I have been patiently waiting for 480 Otis to return to Brooks falls this year and like everyone else I have had a difficult time processing the fact that he hasn't.

I have been watching the explore.org bear cams at Brooks Falls since its inception in 2012.

Otis was always the one constant for all those years until this summer and one I regret ever taking for granted.

I have written this post probably 10 or more times since the beginning of August and I have kept re writing it and editing it another ten times in my head. Now that it is autumn and soon all the bears will be leaving Brooks Falls I thought I should probably finally post it.

This is not an eulogy that I am writing however as I am not yet ready to give up on the old bear. Maybe next year if he does not show up I will face facts but I am not ready to do that yet. There are some reasonable theories as to why he didn't make it back this year and all of them plausible. My own optimistic theory is that Otis stumbled upon some stream so full of salmon this year that he never left it.

Katmai is a huge and wild remote place and there is much of it people never go or get to or see. Even the rangers. Brooks Falls is only about a mile and a half of a 4.2-million-acre park.

Otis has legions of fans from all over the world and the internet is full of information and videos of him.

And he has no idea of any of his own fame.

Amazingly along the way, thanks to the explore.org bear cams he has become a very famous bear world wide and a wonderful symbol of conservation.

When I started watching the explore.org bear cams at brooks falls in 2012 Otis was already 16 or 17 years old. He was a well established adult bear with a place in the hierarchy of Brooks Falls when I first saw him. Otis was a good sized bear but I never remember him having big battles or ongoing issues with the top bears at Brooks Falls. For over a decade 856 was the most dominant bear at Brooks Falls and replaced in his absences by 747. They both never seemed bothered by the presence of Otis and would fish side by side with him for years. In later years I can only describe their relationship as old friends, at least in an old bear kind of way. Otis obviously did get into some battles along the way and he wasn't born with that floppy right ear. It was curtesy of another bear.

I have regretted not being able to see Otis as a cub growing up the in same way I have been lucky enough and able to see some of the other bears born in Katmai since 2012 who return each year with their families to Brooks Falls.

And, it wasn't until after watching the bear cams for 2 or 3 years that I really started to appreciate Otis for a variety of reasons. His very peaceful nature and personality and Zen master method of fishing for salmon was amazing to see.

Otis would sit for hours in his office at the far end of the falls hardly every moving and every once in a while his big paw would come out of the water with a salmon in it. Lots of bears like to chase or pounce on the salmon as they go up the river or give up after awhile and move to another fishing spot.

Otis's philosophy was to let the salmon come to him and eventually they did. He was incredibly successful at it and I remember one time someone counted him catching over 40 salmon in one sitting. He won the fat bear contest four times including its first year. He was so successful people began to call him the king of Katmai. He taught us all patience and we all admired him for it. Watching Otis fish for salmon on the bear cams was a calming and relaxing experience.

I saw Otis struggle last year and although he put on a lot of weight by October it was hard to see.

The explore.org bear cams at Brooks Falls is an amazing opportunity to view the lives of wild brown bears and their families and learn their stories. It really is an incredible privilege.

And it has been such a privilege to witness part of the life of Otis.

And so maybe we will not get to see Otis one last summer. As much as we have all wanted it.

Maybe last year was it.

We don't know, but if that is the case Brooks Falls will seem to be a very different place without him.

I love you old bear and where ever you are I hope it is a beautiful sunny day and the salmon are jumping and you are patiently sitting in the shade catching them in your big paws as they swim right to you.

And if you are unable to give us all another summer next year, my very grateful wish for you is that you are somewhere on a river full of salmon and that the summer has become an endless one.

~johnny

[marcusbrutus]

I feel like I have a tumblr anon in my brain…. Like a tiny cop. But it’s an chronically online anonymous weirdo. And every thought I have, I get “anons” telling me how it’s problematic and I should kill my self LOL The other morning I saw an RFK sign and I thought doesn’t he have brain worms, someone running for president shouldn't have brain worms. maybe apply for literally any other job. and the anon was like ummm ableist much? Like WHAT. I turned off anon on tumblr a while ago, so even if I post something “risky”, someone will have to tell me what they think to my face. They can’t hide. Even posts I think are innocuous can be wildly misinterpreted, and someone will probably call me problematic. But even if no one says anything, I still hear it. In my brain. Sometimes I delete things because the thought is so strong. I’m probably not gonna make it to any heaven or enlightenment because I can’t forgive yourfaveisproblematic. In my mind, Tumblr was great before then, or at least it felt that way, and that blog sewed the seeds for cancel culture in the future. That stuff sticks to my brain, even if I don’t want it too. When you put sins like "said disabled people shouldn't be alive" on the same level as "has a tattoo in a language they don't natively speak," it is very confusing to a people-pleasing undiagnosed autistic 14 year old. I felt/feel like I can’t like anyone or anything because it’s ~problematic~ I worry it will never go away, because it affected me in my developing years, 14-19 I want to get better, but it’s hard. I wish I could run from the internet, but I can’t. It’s a part of life now. It’s how we stay connected. But it’s also like…. Idk. The internet used to be my safe space, right? Deviantart. Early tumblr. Seeing weird people like me made me feel less alone. I was a weeb surrounded by “preps” for lack of a better word, not that I didn’t have friends but NONE of them were into what I was into, you know? And no one became as obsessive about things like books and anime like I did, except online. But now it’s like, idk, corruption of the garden of Eden. But instead of me eating the fruit, the garden/internet ate the fruit. The world is too different now… I can’t keep up. And it’s not just because I’m getting older. Things happen faster now. Trends will last half a year when in the past they would have lasted a decade. I hate knowing everything all of the time. I hate that my garden is now a cesspool.

I’m just angry that people on tumblr and lefty spaces online are so blind to their own propaganda, and calling it out is “hate.” Like idk, I guess I expected better from people who are supposed to be ~intellectuals~. Well, if YouTube video essays have taught me anything, style over substance goes a LONG way. And they’re like “oh we’re so compassionate and we want a better future” but they tell everyone to kill themselves and laugh when red states get devastated by natural disasters it's not just that but it's like…. if you're not constantly aware of everything, you're ~part ofthe problem~ #wakeupamerica. silence is violence, blah blah blah. it's just hard because i grew up with a strict dad so learned to be a people pleaser. i'm extremely sensitive to guilt and shame. and all most of the internet has done since 2014 is shame everyone for everything. you're either with Us (good, pure, morally righteous) or you're with Them (problematic, evil). you don't want to be gasp problematic, do you? you don't want to have a callout post made about you and lose all your friends, right? well, keep you nose clean and reblog all the right posts so we know which side you're on an maybe, maybe we'll leave you alone. i have the stress of someone in debt to a mob boss. nah it's more like… i have the stress of everyone in the scarlet letter and im hoping everyone will keep their eyes on the Villain of the Week and leave me alone there's a decent video called "how to radicalize a normie." i say decent because it treats radicalization like a right-wing only issue and the "answer" to right wing radicalization is, of course left wing radicalization. "Even though they're on the bad, evil side, there's still hope because we can get them to our good, morally righteous side!" That kinda bs, and I say bs not in a left vs right way. According to my dad I'm a full blown communist! I'm saying it in the sense that the answer to radicalization isn't "just radicalize them to the other side." That's not at all helpful. You might as well tell an alcoholic who likes jameson to just switch to jack daniels. It's all poison, it's all harmful. ANYWAY, he talks about how most people don't set out to be radicalized, the politics comes to them. That happened to me - but on the left. And I'm sure if I left a comment on his video saying as much, he'd say it didn't happen or say it was a good thing. On tumblr, I came for anime. And for the first year, I got anime. But then I got really intense political stuff. "silence is violence." "i see you not reblogging this." "if you're not angry, you're not paying attention." I was 14-15, sheltered as fuck, I don't know anything about the world but now tumblr is convincing me that I know more about political issues than anyone. And it changed me. And it fucked me up. and I want to get unfucked. But I don't know how. I feel like an internet alcoholic. Like, even if I do stop using it, it will still be there, haunting me, forever, you know? because all my friends use it, not just you guys but irl friends. and the internet is effecting the real world. I miss the days when there was the internet, then there was reality. but now the internet is the reality. That's why I also fell so hard for the [REDACTED] stuff. Tumblr made me think everyone was [REDACTED] because like 99% of tumblr is [REDACTED], and I was worried about it because god help you if you question anything or show the slightest bit of concern. God help you if you're not full steam ahead on everything. I want to escape the matrix. I hate the hypocrisy…. And I hate even more that I’m also a hypocrite. I fall for group think and propaganda but act like I’m above it all. I hate social media but use it every day. YouTube too. I guess that’s why I get so mad when I see them act like that. It reminds me of me. People think the consequences of social media on a teenage girl are like "omg I was feeling good about myself….. but then I saw a model on Instagram… alas. I will never be her. I weep."

But it's more like: Oh my gosh, I just saw a post asking for mutual aid (aka MONEY, BABY) and I scrolled past. What if they died because they couldn’t afford food because I didn’t reblog their post? But what if I DID reblog their post, but it was a scam, and I led my followers to give money to someone who didn’t need it instead of someone who did?

I was hoping to share more examples, but I'm worried someone will misinterpret, and even though anon is off, the anon in my brain is on. always. on. i keep going back to the internet because i keep expecting it to get good again… like how it was. for some reason, i can't accept that it will no longer be my safe space. i wish i had a massive angel to keep me out, or something. like the actual garden of eden. I have to accept that it will never get better. I have not only an addiction to the internet, but to the obsessive thoughts it brings. By wishing it will get better, and continuing to use it, I am chasing a dragon. That is to say, I'm hoping for the same feelings I got from initially using the internet. No one ever catches the dragon. anyway, if you read all that... thank you so much! i'm taking a break from the internet, until mid november at least. maybe by then, it will be better. or not. we'll see.

[hearts4bridget]

All over the internet for at least the last decade I have only seen woc, especially black women, hating white women more than they hate anyone else and then trying to claim victimization?

This is why when I talk about women from other countries/cultures, I "only care" about women who trully can't stand up for themselves, who truly are voiceless. Those that can are not mine to worry about.

I don't wish harm on any woman in this world, but there are some who don't reach my care, because my well-being has not reached theirs. Matter of fact, I only see jealousy comming from them, if white women were to fall, they would cheer.

hey, just lyk i’m half white and i was raised for the most part solely by my white mother!! i identify closer with my irish side, as opposed to my nigerian side. i don’t hate white women whatsoever but im equally aware that they’re given more of a platform than wocs. naturally, given that people see me as black at face value my reblogs and posts often reflect my positionality. that being said, if you have a look at my blog you’ll see that there are occasions when i have advocated for white women, just as i have wocs.

i see your point of view and i suppose it really does depend on where you are on the internet, but just as there’s some negativity, like in every community, the radfem community here in my experience genuinely advocates for a number of people in different situations. im sorry you don’t feel cared for by women of colour in this community, but im sure the sentiment is reciprocated by some. as a woman of colour i promise you that im not jealous of white women.

i’m sure there are some women who are jealous of the ‘white experience’ in comparison to how others are treated, but you have to understand that the experiences of a white woman and a woman of colour differ vastly. white women have historically had a larger platform (though of course as women they are still marginalised) and there are lots of iterations of feminism that completely exclude wocs. ‘white feminism’ is definitely a real thing, and i’m sure some people are bitter about their treatment in those communities. once again, i don’t see this community as a racist or toxic one, and i promise that as a radfem i support ALL females and i wouldn’t ‘cheer’ if any white women fell. i think this is maybe a slightly uneducated standpoint and it’s discourse like this in my opinion that divides communities. radical feminism is a movement for ALL WOMEN <3

[phiclets]

loud heart WORD COUNT: 1500 | RATING: T

summary: the orange heart reply was a cultural moment; this is my vision of what might have led up to dan posting it.

a/n: i posted this on AO3 a couple days ago, but had to wait till tumblr verified i wasn't a robot to crosspost here. from now on all my fics will be available in both places!

ALSO ON AO3

-

Dan knew what the response to We're All Doomed (now uploaded onto Youtube, forever) was going to be, even before he started scrolling through the comments and the tweets. He'd been doing the show long enough. Yet still, knowing it didn't prepare him for it emotionally. The kindness of people was overwhelming; the gratitude even more so.

He flits between social media platforms on his phone, reading the reviews and battling unsuccessfully against the growing lump in his throat, even as a recorded version of his voice says, "Anyone here planning on becoming a polyamorous lesbian grandma?" from the TV. Phil put the special on earlier — very proudly accessing it from the YouTube TV app, which made Dan smile — and they're letting it play in the background as they sit with their respective phones, having seen the show too many times already to totally invest in it again. But it's nice. Comforting.

Raucous cheers erupt from the sea of future polyamorous lesbian grandmas in the audience, and Dan glances up at the TV with a smile. He loves this part. He loved that audience, both nights—and the wider group of people that they represented. "Nice," he says onscreen, which elicits some laughter.

A bright little ding! drags his attention back to his phone.

New tweet from Phil Lester.

It's natural for him to glance over to the man himself, curled up just an arm's length away from him. Phil is fiddling serenely with his phone, but looks up when he feels Dan staring. When Dan raises an eyebrow, Phil only responds with a shrug, smiling.

Dan obediently opens the tweet to see for himself.

every time i see this it makes me laugh and cry at the same time until i'm a shaking mess on the floor. great show thanks danny!!

Phil has quoted Dan's original announcement tweet, so the endorsement sits on top of Dan's name, glowing with pride. A few things happen at once in Dan then. First, there's the impulse to snort at the nickname danny, which is Phil being silly (and succeeding at it, as he always does). Then there's the warmth that suffuses his entire chest from Phil Lester openly expressing his emotions for Dan's sake on a public platform, an occurrence so rare it still shocks (and essentially assaults) Dan whenever it happens. Then, from that warmth, comes the immediate, overwhelming, not so inexplicable urge to sob his lungs out.

"Fuck," he whispers, so quietly it's only a breath, and quickly smothers it in the sleeve of his jumper, turning away from Phil's side of the sofa.

Because it's all so familiar. Because he's been here before—so many times. Reeling from the adrenaline of releasing a project he poured his heart and soul—or at the very least, a lot of his time—into. Anxious about and then overjoyed by the response to it. But no matter what it was, whether Basically I'm Gay, or Why I Quit YouTube, or fuck, even Hello Internet—

Phil has been there.

Phil is always there. Always here—he thinks, looking over at him finally—next to him. In his life. (Hadn't he said that to everyone on the internet before? Hadn't he thought it was so cheesy back then, and yet regretted nothing, because there hadn't been a single lie in what he'd said?) Phil sits in ignorant bliss on the other end of the sofa, tucked up against the armrest, tapping at something on his phone. His hair is turning more ginger by the day. His face has faint lines in it that Dan has seen appear, firsthand and little by little, over the past decade and a half. His emoji pyjama pants are a hate crime on fashion.

He's everything. He's there.

"Dan."

Dan comes back to himself, and he realises Phil is looking at him now, questions displayed openly on his face. Dan can't really read any of them, though—the fucking oceans of saltwater that have built up in his eyes are doing a brilliant job of preventing that. He shakes his head, and Phil's face sinks further into concern rather than confusion, and Dan shakes his head again to tell him no, it's not bad. It can never be bad when it's you.

Instead all he manages to say, now half nodding and shaking his head—it's a mess—is, "I love you."

He's never meant it more. He's always meant it just as much as now. He thinks he'll never really know, even in himself, what that word really means or where the limits lie—if there are any. What he does know is that he's going to spend the rest of his life growing to fit every bit of it he can. Phil takes his hand where it rests on the sofa between them, and Dan knows there was never any two ways about it.

"Yeah," Phil says. He's so solid. (So there. Always.) He looks Dan in the eyes, shakes his hand back and forth. "I love you."

The first spill of tears warms Dan's cheeks. He nods, looking down at their hands, then back up at Phil. He knows his mouth is doing something funny, squeezed up tight like he's just bit into a lemon, and there are tears already seeping in through the corners, and by the time he barely breathes out a, "Thank you," he's already diving into Phil, grabbing him up into a messy, breath-robbing hug. He can hear it in Phil's little gasp. But there's not a moment of hesitation between that and the feeling of Phil's arms wrapping around him, tight as ever. Assuring as ever.

"Thank you," Dan says again. And he hopes Phil knows he means for everything. For seeing him in the replies of his tweets in 2009, and for responding. For urging him to post the worst video Dan would ever make, which would confusingly also be his best one, because it would be the one that started it all. For having so much fun with him and helping him build a career out of it. For supporting him (15 years' worth of "great show thanks danny!" variations). For believing in him. For loving him, really, most of all.

Phil pushes his cheek into the top of Dan's head, and smooths his hand over Dan's hair again and again, and says, "Always."

Yeah, he understood.

-

By the time Dan has collected himself, enough time has passed that it would be embarrassing if he had even a shred of embarrassment left to show around Phil Lester, but he thinks that died somewhere around the decade mark.

They're still all caught up in each other, more one human than two, a blanket monster that's made its home against the tiniest corner of a perfectly sizeable sofa. We're All Doomed is well into its final quarter on the TV now, and they're sort of staring past it into the wall and the world and the future beyond. Phil's fingers are still in Dan's hair; which is just the way he wants to keep it.

Except that's when Dan remembers the thing that started his descent into incomprehension in the first place, and he briefly—with enough warning to Phil—sits up to get his phone from his previous spot on the sofa. He settles back into Phil with it in hand, so Phil has a clear view of the screen over his shoulder, and pulls up the tweet again. He scrolls down and taps on the waiting reply line, then stops.

How to say everything he just said to Phil, verbally and otherwise? (Mostly otherwise, let's be honest.) The task seems insurmountable. There aren't enough words in the dictionary, or hours in the day to use them. He can feel Phil's quiet expectance over his shoulder, steady but not applying any pressure. He'll wait for Dan as long as he needs him too.

But it doesn't take long. Because hey, Dan may be a self-professed yapper extraordinaire, but even he knows when the game is up. In this case there's just no use.

He pulls up the list of emojis, and taps on one.

Just one.

Then he waits, holding the phone just there, letting Phil see it and understand that that's it. All he wants to say. (Maybe all he's ever trying to say, to Phil.)

It's a heart.

(Orange, of course, because it's still about WAD.)

But just a heart.

Dan twists his head against Phil's shoulder to look up at him. "What d'you think?"

Phil is still looking ahead at the screen, and Dan watches the microscopic changes in expression on his face, from the softening of his wide eyes to the way his mouth gently relaxes into a smile. He looks down at Dan—Dan thinks, beautiful, mine—and says, "Yeah." Dan feels Phil's arm squeeze him around his stomach. "Do it."

So he does.

[revanchistsuperstar]

holy hell, have I just had the throwback of a lifetime. dude, way on back when I was a confused unhappy little early-pubescent grub (11-14), I was obsessed with cosplay (still am) and would spend time religiously trawling deviantart and tumblr for crossplay advice, ways to bind and masculinize my face and walk and talk and comport myself more masculinely. I kept saying it was for character accuracy, but of course, there was more to it than that.

to shorten it all up, this tutorial of yours https://www.tumblr.com/revanchistsuperstar/70647041474/new-and-improved-ftm-crossplay-tutorial-if-you?source=share came up on my pinterest earlier and threw me back, after not seeing it for years now. I didn't even remember you were from middle tennessee! I googled the title of the tutorial to see if I could find the OG post, and was so glad to see you're still active on this account so many years later.

I just wanted to tell you that that tutorial was very impactful for me as a fellow southern queer kid. while I never did figure out how to make it work on my chubby, puffy little child face at the time (have gotten a bit better at makeup lately, still no pro but certainly better,) it was something to aspire to, and it was something that got me through a lot of waiting and confusion and self-discovery, knowing I *could* look like a man eventually, whatever that meant for me.

thank you for posting your tutorials online. I'm sure I'm not the only queer kid you've helped simply by being out and proud, but I wanted to tell you personally about how much you helped me survive puberty, the aspirations of passing, or at least being happy in myself regardless. I finally fully accepted myself at the end of last year, and came out to my parents early this year. It's been a lot to cope with, but life feels more promising now that I'm not hiding, and that I can seek medical transition knowing myself.

again, thank you so much for posting your tutorials. your pride has positively impacted me, and no doubt many others. I truly hope you've been well this past decade, and may the future remain bright for you. <3

Holy shit! Well way to go, and best of luck!

That tutorial is over 10 years old, that’s wild.

Believe it or not, I had my gender in no way figured out whatsoever when I was posting those, took me forever to realize what I had going on. I’ve been out as trans of some sort since 2011, but I only came out as a gay trans man and started medically transitioning a little over a year and a half ago.

But yeah I’ve been doing drag now for about 13 years! Vastly improved since the DeviantArt days lol. I now work professionally as a hair and makeup artist for stage and occasionally screen, so that’s what over a decade of plugging away at something can get you.

Glad the tutorial was helpful for you, being that it was one of the only masculinizing makeup tutorials out there on the internet at the time that I made it, its had pretty far reaching effects. Recently I’d been settling in to realizing that even though I’m only in my 30s, because I started drag in my teens I’m now becoming an elder of the drag king art form and as my co-producer from my drag troupe put it, I’m the Velvet Underground of drag kings. 🤣 But I’m glad it helped with your gender feels too!

Keep on keeping on!

[chainsofaether]

How does she cast her magic? What's that look/feel like?

So this one is from like a year an half ago? Suppose this is me waving my little flag and staking my claim in the internet again. I've had to the urge to write for weeks now, well much longer then that but I struggled. I won't do to much preamble just wanted to say I'll be slowly posting stuff again.

Answer below the cut since it got wordy.

On to the magic.

Yrys has been studying arcanima for decades at this point. So most of the magic that anyone will see her casting will be with a grimoire of some sort. Those precise geometric lines scribed to page to help shape her internal aether into spell. That's the physical side, the bit most people will see. The spells themselves are what you'd expect from an Arcanist. Clean in form and function the color oft betraying the intent behind the spell in the moment before it triggers.

That's only what most people would see, and only those that can't see aether. Those that could? Well the would get a more interesting picture. One thing I've pointed out is that Yrys's personal aether is particularly unaspected. A general glance wouldn't raise suspicion but a more detailed study would reveal some kind of tampering, though only the most educated aetherolgist might even begin to guess why. But this isn't about her personal aether so much as that she has the skill to do it. Why is that important? It reveals about how she draws on and shapes her own aether. She easily nudges it's aspect to something more suitable to the spell as she draws it. This feat is largely exclusive to her own aether, at least in degree of skill. Those that see would see aether shift and change in aspect and polarity in the moment between it being drawn and that moment of becoming spell. A trick she claim helps with efficiency.

Of course this all applies to what one might see in public. Yrys has been studying aether close to twenty-five years, its very literally her life. An obsession really. So there are certainly secrets that she keeps, studies that few eyes ever see. Arts that she pursues that certainly have no link to arcanima. Her obsession has drawn her to chasing any and every method. Most she only has passing skill with or no skill and just knowledge of. For now if she has her way. Which is an overly wordy way to say in a more private or more dangerous setting you might see her pull out other tricks.

What does it look like when she needs more aether then her body can safely give? When she's forced to reach out to the world and borrow power?

If anyone could get in to Yry's head in that moment all they would have seen was an array of symbols and numbers backed by annoyance and tinged in rage. Few ever saw her rage, she was always so calm, so professional. Those few? They were always with her when the ships were attacked, or some other situation that put lives on her line. Particularly hers.

It wasn't that she didn't care about others. That they couldn't upset her. Couldn't draw out those emotions. Life had just taken all her rage cooled it to ash and then pressed the ash to a diamond. The only thing that ever truly freed that rage was a threat to her life. Like the one before them now.

The fishmen, the Sahagin, had made on to the deck of the ship just a few minutes before and already it was chaos. The ship had guards but most had been below deck when the surprise attack started. The few on the deck were immediately targeted in an obvious attempt to cow the rest of the sailors in to obedience. It was working too. Slowly the sailor were surrendering in the face of certain death.

Yrys though was on the top deck with the wheel, two guards both holding the stairs up to them and the pilot of the ship. Not much to win the day with. If they could buy a few minutes the captain and the guards down stairs would arrive, but those would be precious minutes. Her eyes scanned the lower deck again taking the scene in.

The few guards that hadn't already fallen had wisely made a ring around the door leading to the stairs in to the ship. That was their lifeline after all, once the door was taken the people downstairs would be next to useless. Aside from them there were the sailor most who foolishly surrendered. Still that informed her of what the fishmen wanted. Captives.

Her blood boiled at the thought. She spun to face the guards before she barked out orders. "I'm going to buy us time, but it's going to attract attention. The vicious, pointed kind. You MUST hold those stairs no matter what." The anger tinged her order, her demand. She was asking for their lives in an all to real sense.

Fortunately for everyone on that ship those were men that knew her well, guards that had served her father loyally for many years and often got sent with her on the rare times her father asked her help for some job. They were their that fateful day so many years ago and they knew that tone. Yrys meant to do everything in power to turn the situation, everything for survival.

She knew they'd hold the stairs even if it meant throwing their bodies down at their enemies to buy just a few more precious seconds. With that comfort in mind she went to work.

When had it started raining? She only noticed now, a distraction from what she was about to do. In another moment she might have enjoy the drops splattering against her face and rolling down her skin. Now wasn't the time though. Aether started to build up around her as she flipped open the waterproofed grimoire that hung constantly at her side during the trip.

That was the start. The more sensitive among the Sahagin noticed immediately barking out order for their men to stop whatever was going on up by the wheel. They fishmen were quick to follow orders, but it wouldn't matter. The moment they met the two guard at the top of the stairs it become obvious there was still fight in at least some on the ship. Two fishmen fell to swords making of mess for the rest to try and climb over. Every moment the aether responded to a call at on the top deck swirling in rapidly.

Only a few moment has passed since she's started but already her carbuncle had responded to summons popping in to existence to aid her in drawing in aether for her plan. It held the aether in it's form as she worked the spell through her mind. Fine patterns building in her mind ever more complex every moment.

A second passed. Then two. The water and air aspected aether of the sea began to shift as it passed through her carbuncle and the spell she was weaving. More fighting at the stairs, even the pilot was trying to help taking up one of the Sahagin's fallen spears.

A shaman was coming up the stairs pulling his own aether to clear away the annoying bodyguards. A third second passed.

Rage was all she could feel at this point. The rush of aether flooded her mind and feed that rage. Only decades of training kept the spell from failing in the moment.

One of the guards had been stabbed. Both were falling back to buy just a bit of space but Yrys couldn't give them her attention. Later. Later she could thank them. For now she had focus on the swirling blaze that she'd pulled in reality. A blaze that rapidly grew and took shape at the cost of the carbuncle who faded away its duty fulfilled.

Four seconds. The shaman was at the top of the step rapidly trying to cast a spell to stop her, to kill her. That mass of power needed to be stopped.

Five seconds and it was too late. Yrys knew it, the shaman did. Everyone on the ship did honestly. It was hard to miss that aether turn to a visible ball of flame taking the shape of some monster. A shape that left a chill in the bone of the two guards. Too familiar.

She always reached for fire, later she'd reflect on the day that made this particularly feat of magic possible. For now though she put all her focus in to guiding the beast of fire. The shaman first, cut down in a blink by rage my manifest. Then on to the stairs and pushing it way down, cutting down the fishmen that didn't make way or just tossing them over side ,to join ranks with the soldiers near the door.

The moment it hit ground floor the tide of the fighting turned. Even the sailors got back to their feet to fight. The beast of rage and fire couldn't last but it didn't need to. Soon the guards from below deck burst forth to finish the job. The moment they showed Yrys let her self collapse.

She'd pay for that effort later. More in nightmares then in pain but even her reserves were testing in supporting that beast for more then a few moments. She laughed off the dark thoughts of memories past bubbling up and pressed down the rage again to it's diamond. Let herself bask in the warm feeling from all the aether she'd channeled.

Then turning away from the fighting she moved to assist the two guard and the pilot that had protected her for those crucial moments. A bit of healing she could manage still.

Later there would be complaints about her choice to risk the lives of the sailor with her magic but those were quickly shut down by the captain pointing out what the Sahagin likely intended to do with them. No one on the ship relished the idea of become a slave to the Fishman god after all. Yrys didn't hear a word of it, instead sleeping over her effort for the rest of the voyage.

[sunbeamstress]

i struggled for a very long time to understand why i didn't want to make art.

it was such a mystery! some blind spot in my psyche i couldn't get a fix on.

"why haven't i drawn in months?"

"why am i sitting here playing video games? i still can barely draw hands"

"why don't i post my work online?"

"why haven't i started a webcomic yet? i wanted to over a decade ago"

why? why? why?

why was i torturing myself? all i could see in the back of my mind was my mother, seated in her armchair, the dated old phone stretching across the living room with her at the center of its web. she would always couch the phone against her cheek and shoulder and lay her knuckles against it for stability; her left hand - the one i use, myself - would reach for a pen and fill page after page of doodles into a notepad.

i remember beautiful filigree designs and landscapes and pretty flowers and sometimes an instance of something lovely in the faces of her husband or her children, captured on paper without her even having to think about it. entire worlds spilling out of her fingertips while her mind was occupied with other things.

but she stopped.

she can't draw, now. she no longer has the talent. she used to beg me to sing because my voice was a gift to god, but she had a gift from god and she left it in a dumpster. these days i don't believe in god, and i don't believe in my mother, either.

in a circumspect way i'm grateful to her for this. i'd think about her every time i picked up a pencil. this unforgivable act of waste, in my eyes, was a fire under my ass that kept my hand moving. it gives me pleasure to admit, with honesty, that while i rarely sketch or paint, i only ever seem to get better at it. to this day, i'm not half bad. in my late thirties, i'm at a skill level that i was seeing out of the very most gifted artists in their mid-twenties.

but isn't that a silly way of looking at it? "i'm 37, and i draw at least as well as a really good 24 year old". what nonsense is this? this is the sort of invasive thing that likes to run amok in my head. what sense does it make to compare myself like we're talking shonen manga power levels? why am i racing other artists? why do i have to compete?

it took me a very long time to realize that Competition Itself had supplanted what i loved about art. it wasn't something i did consciously; it just sort of happened when i was in my late teens, my early adult years, and the internet's artistic community had exploded, a detailed landscape peppered with talented people, all with their own gifts from god, gleaming and gilded and razor-edged. they were doing things i'd never imagined. they were making comics and putting their work in indie video games. they were doing animations in flash. holy shit - they were making porn! this might sound quaint to you, O reader, but by internet standards i'm what you call an "old-ass bitch" and in those days, this was pretty novel.

god, i wanted what they had so bad. i wanted a webcomic. i was going to call it "Absolute Vertigo", whatever that meant, and it would have been garbage, but i didn't care. i wanted "Absolute Vertigo by <SCREEN NAME>" at the top of a kitschy website and i wanted people to gush about how cool it was and put it into their RSS feeds and--

this was the beginning of the end, in many ways. i really wasn't cut out for competition. it would take a really long time to figure this out. my peers were putting out improbably cool stuff and i felt like i was flagging. i didn't realize it yet, but the internal language i was using to talk to myself about art was changing. suddenly i was "worse" or "better" than other artists. suddenly they were "doing more" or being more "successful" than me.

art had become a commodity.

it's wild how this sort of mindset can take a mind of its own, can build its own character, can work its way deeper into your brain. at first art was discouraging - it was this thing my mother was good at but neglected. it was this thing i felt like i was worse at than everyone else. but then it became depressing. Art, this platonic ideal of it, this idea of it in the abstract, was turning into a weapon i was using to torture myself. reader, you have no idea how many nights i couldn't sleep. to merely ideate failure was to hurl myself back through time, back to the moment i realized my mother had given up.

"why haven't i drawn in months?"

"why am i sitting here playing video games? i still can barely draw hands"

"why don't i post my work online?"

"why haven't i started a webcomic yet? i wanted to over a decade ago"

i didn't have an answer for these questions, but still they were there. they weren't important or meaningful questions, they were tools i used to torture myself. i was supposed to improve for the sake of improvement, and to enjoy art as an act of pure creation, but instead it was a hammer i would hit myself over the head with because i wasn't doing it good enough. crazy how you can talk about your own talent the way you can talk about a dead-end job.

looking back now, it's astounding that i didn't understand all of this. it seems to make so much more sense. i've always had stories and characters floating around in my head - it's literally my favorite pastime - but it took me a very long, very painful time to realize that having stories and having characters doesn't mean you're a failure if you don't immediately march to the nearest sketchbook and jot them down.

the gift of art does not obligate you to produce it. if you cast it aside, the world isn't made better or worse.

your art exists for you. it should please you, should bring a smile to your face or evoke feelings you don't dare face on your own. art should help you work through trauma. it should express when you're happy. art is a frame for the picture of you.

it should even be okay to let it go.

it's going to take me a long time to forgive my mother. but i think i understand her a little better.

[kusogamesss]

Splatter

If the last half-decade has demonstrated anything, it is that the terminally online rhetoric of post-ironic who-gives-a-shit is metastasising. Vine was a benign growth, TikTok a malignant tumour. The netizen-hive-mind-collective that 'solved' the Boston Bombing is directly responsible for the fashwave that is/has/does/will erode democracy. Your grandpa has FOMO and bought $GME to 💎🙌 to the moon and we're all gonna make it, gm, gn, and you're buying into my shitcoin so I can rugpull you because Blizzard nerfed Siphon Life during Obamna's first term. Video games and anime used to be so much better before this forced diversity bullshit ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴜᴄᴋ ᴀʀᴇ yᴏᴜ ꜱᴀyɪɴɢ ᴅᴏ yᴏᴜ ʜᴇᴀʀ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱʜɪᴛ ᴅʀɪʙʙʟɪɴɢ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴏꜰ yᴏᴜʀ ᴍᴏᴜᴛʜ yᴏᴜ ᴄʀᴇᴛɪɴ took away the possibility of me getting a tradwife with Abigail Shapiro's body and Marin Kitagawa's face while I [REDACTED] to Angela White after a month of semen retention and get those GAIN$$$$ because there's always a bigger fool and it sure as fuck isn't me and you just don't get this new meme and I'm being gangstalked and I haven't [As the owner of a LandNFT, you own your individual Metalverse patch and secure a permanently assigned place on the Met---

The Milennials are the new Boomers [GEN-X ERASURE] and even the Zoomers are coming of age and they've been inundated with information and bullshit bullshit bullshit so they're casting a mirror back at this fucked up world we've made for them in their own art but some people are trying to be cute and coy with it and you get a YIIK or a Neon White but at least one of those was a good game even if it was still corpo-white-washed faux-sthetics. And your cute and coy attempts and being quirky fail to represent how angry you should be that you were born into this mess of a world because don't you know anger results in nothing? Why yes my favourite podcasts are My Brother, My Brother & Me, and The Adventure Zone, I love to choke down the fetid slurry that is the McElroys' toxic positivity of no bummers and horses and you're being force fed advertisements for fast food and you can't even open your eyes to realise it.

So when a game has the moxie to be viscerally angry, I have to take notice because that feels so genuine in the hyperrealistic world we inhabit. And Splatter is mad that the Internet has made us manipulative, lonely, nostalgic, deluded, greedy, and ultimately willing to harm others (or ourselves) for some gain, be it financial or spiritual or egotistical or chemical. This works where other games borne of the online mindset falter because this runs deep. Rat King Collective didn't disconnect to craft up some malformed half-simulacra that is outdated before it comes out. They never stopped being online, they didn't go for the here and now, they struck at the core of fourteen-year-old-me's identity. This isn't the cream of the crap, this is the dregs of a multitude of online cultures that you, yes, had to be there for. Or maybe you didn't. Does it matter? This goes deep enough that a missed referential quip refuses a reading of "oh this is one of those internet things I don't get," it simply recedes into the background, a cacophony of noise.

It isn't as if the gameplay is some marvel though. It's a spongy xoomer-shooter affair with hand guns and a Dark Souls Borne Ring dodge and commitment to the bit. A leaping enemy is gonna leap! Your dodge isn't going to give you i-frames but it'll get you out of the way and into a new harm's way. I'm not here for the gameplay anyways, it's a means to an end.

This is the video game equivalent of B.R. Yeager's Amygdalatropolis and I ravenously ate it up. Get mad. Wreck shit. Tear it all down. WORLD IS A FUCK

[mariacallous]

Women, life, freedom. These words have become the rallying cry for protest that has erupted in the wake of the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s feared morality police. They are shaking the Iranian regime to its core.

Unlike past movements, this uprising cuts across generations and social classes. For young Iranian women, Amini’s death ignited an explosion of pent-up fury at the regime’s suppression of women’s rights. For older activists like me, it has reopened the scars from previous uprisings and breathed new life into the decades-long struggle for freedom.

Demonstrations began in Tehran on 16 September soon after news of Mahsa’s killing broke. Within hours, women appeared in the streets, burning their hijabs and calling for justice. Within days, the protests spread. In towns and cities across Iran, schoolchildren have abandoned their classrooms to join the masses thronging the junctions and blocking streets.

The regime’s violent response has been brutal. Killings of protesters began immediately and hundreds have already lost their lives. Last Friday in the south-east city of Zahedan, as many as 91 people were killed when state forces opened fire, including five children. Doctors certified that they had been shot from behind. Despite the regime shutting down the internet across the country, videos of police violence continue to leak out, further fuelling public rage.

Universities that have acted as staging posts for protests are now under attack from regime forces. Last Sunday, police fired on peaceful protesters at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology and at least 40 students were blindfolded and taken away in vans. Like so many parents in Iran, their families have no idea where they are. After 16-year-old Nika Shahkarami’s battered body was returned to her family by police after she disappeared at a protest, many fear the worst.

The roots of this uprising that Iranians are already calling a revolution can be found in a collective anger that has been suppressed for half a century. I became politically active soon after the Islamic regime took power and introduced its sexual apartheid laws. In 1982, I was arrested and taken to Joint Committee Interrogation Centre where I was tortured.

After hours of beatings, I was left paralysed for weeks, leaving me unable to shower or use the bathroom alone. The prison was so crowded I slept in a corridor for a month with dozens of other prisoners. We were blindfolded 24 hours a day, even eating and sleeping in darkness. Later, a guard bashed my head against the wall so hard I developed a brain tumour, an injury that troubles me to this day.

While the regime sentenced me to death, my sentence was commuted and I was eventually released in 1990. Soon after, I realised I was no longer safe, and fled to the UK. Since settling here, painting and writing have provided much relief, as has therapy from the organisation Freedom from Torture. But I am not “cured”. I still see the faces of my friends who were executed.

Ten years after I fled Iran, the regime turned the centre where I was interrogated into the Ebrat Museum. The torture chambers were preserved, with the regime claiming that they were used only by the forces of the shah, who was deposed in the 1979 revolution. But as the protests across the country demonstrate, the people have not forgotten. This is not just a burst of anger from a young and idealistic generation, but the accumulated trauma of generations of Iranians struggling for freedom.

Today, the regime is not just fighting to maintain its power but its very survival. Facing such anger from every section of society, it will kill or jail anyone who opposes it. But the people have come too far to turn back. If they give in and go home, there will be another massacre. They are fighting for their lives.

A nationwide day of action has been called for Saturday 8 October. I fear for the safety of my people. But I remain hopeful that they will sweep away the Islamic regime and realise the dreams of generations of Iranians who came before them.

Nasrin Parvaz is a women’s rights activist and torture survivor from Iran. Her books include A Prison Memoir: One Woman’s Struggle in Iran, and the novel The Secret Letters from X to A

[controlledchaosetc]

So I had to write a final essay for my Intro to Media Studies class about "speculative media", where I look at a specific piece of media or medium and try to predict where its going in 1 to 10 years.

I unironically wrote 7 pages and almost 2000 words about the possible rebirth of Tumblr. Enjoy

Social media, as people know it in 2022, is an upheaval. Technology stocks plummeted with an economic downturn marked by the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic. This wave of instability resulted in significant changes and news stories in the social media sphere. Although Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has mainly been in the news due to their foray into the “metaverse,” one platform has dominated recent headlines like no other: Twitter. Twitter, one of the largest text-based social media websites, is no longer a publicly traded company after Elon Musk bought the platform for an unprecedented 44 billion dollars. However, this is not an essay on Twitter, at least not primarily. After Musk’s takeover, Twitter saw a 21% increase in downloads; In this same period, there was a 96% U.S. increase in downloads for a surprising site: Tumblr (Delouya). While there was an even more significant increase for Mastodon, a newer platformer derivative of Twitter, Tumblr was unexpected as a platform many labeled as dead. As a new user of Tumblr myself, it made me consider how Tumblr rivals other social media websites. Compared to the decline of Twitter, Tumblr offers a haven to Twitter refugees and new users alike, with features that improve open those on other platforms, those that few other social media websites have, and an attitude towards consumers and its experience reminiscent of an older internet and unlike like any seen on the modern web. With all these factors in mind, Twitter will see a slow decline, and Tumblr will see a rebirth as an alternative social media platform within the decade.

To begin analyzing the rebirth of Tumblr, its catalyst must be discussed first. Tumblr might have languished in its current state if it wasn’t for Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, as discussed in the introduction. The effects of Musk’s Twitter are vast, varied, and many of them negative. The one most relevant for a Twitter exodus is the rise of hate speech and far-right ideology on the platform. According to the New York Times, “Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day” (Conger and Frenkel). Antisemitic posts “soared more than 61%”, and more alarmingly, slurs against African Americans rose over 300% (Conger and Frenkel). Unfortunately, this is not surprising. Over half of Twitter’s workforce have either been fired or quit, including many members of the content moderation and safety team and Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of trust and safety. Far-right figures like Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neonazi website The Daily Stormer, have been unbanned. Musk himself has pushed far-right conspiracy theories and ideology, such as the conspiracy that the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband was his gay prostitute, and indirectly accusing Yoel Roth, a gay man and again, a former senior member of Twitter, of supporting the sexualization of children, a common anti-LGBTQ+ dog whistle. There is story after story after story that Twitter is becoming increasingly hostile to members of minority groups. This is incredibly disheartening who already face disproportionate online harassment. As Yeal Eisenstat, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League, stated, “‘[Musk’s] actions to date show that he is not committed to a transparent process where he incorporates the best practices we have learned from civil society groups. Instead, he has emboldened racists, homophobes, and antisemites’” (Conger and Frenkel). As such, it is no surprise that people who face this harassment and allies are beginning to leave the platform or at least explore other options. However, why Tumblr? Let’s analyze Tumblr’s history, a minority space on Twitter, and how Tumblr can replicate a similar space.

Tumblr’s space is largely supportive and inclusive, as represented by its history. Tumblr’s users have historically largely been queer teenage women and nonbinary people. These marginalized demographics coopted Tumblr as a safe space to speak about their interests and to people similar to them. However, these communities were predominantly white, so while ethnic minority communities do exist on Tumblr, they are the best example of a minority group to grow further by people moving from Twitter. In “From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as Cultural Conversation,” André Brock analyzes the concept of Black Twitter, the elements of Twitter that enable this cultural space, and why the space came to be. The primary element that enables cultural communication is a signifyin’ hashtag. A hashtag with cultural significance, both in content and in semantics, can help signify the tweet's intended audience and introduce group discussion and discourse for other people to join (530). Tumblr does not have hashtags, but they have an equivalent feature called “tags.” As the name would imply, tags allow posts to be found in searches and recommended if a user follows a particular tag. However, they have an additional feature adopted by the general Tumblr community. While they were initially created to be like hashtags, users also utilize the tags to add comments to the original post that are more conversational toward their followers and thoughts that the user does not deem necessary to be added to a broader sphere. Tags add an additional level of intimacy to posts by creating a separation of public statements in the post and statements that, while still public, are seen as personal additions and more private as they are harder to find if the post is reblogged (Tumblr’s equivalent to retweeting). This inherently can create a tighter community, both between a user and their mutuals and a user and their general sphere. Tumblr is already known to have close-knit communities, primarily those of “fandoms” of a particular piece of media. However, this has expanded to cultural communities, such as Black Tumblr. This allows Black Twitter users, off-put by the negative direction of Twitter, to smoothly move to a platform that allows a similar exchange to what they are used to.

Additionally, Tumblr’s features allow a greater range of posts, better functionality, and an arguably better user experience. How a user interacts with a website is predominantly determined by its procedural rhetoric. In Persuasive Games: Videogames and Procedural Rhetoric, Ian Bogost explores how programmed rules and outlined constraints in video games can form their own rhetoric to persuade the player (3). While the book focuses only on video games, anything with procedures, like social media websites, can have procedural rhetoric. Returning to the functionality of tags, this is a clear example of procedural rhetoric. Tags have already been discussed as an elaboration on hashtags. By being limited to one word and emphasizing use in the trending tab and search optimization, hashtags are highlighted to users as a categorizing tool with limited expression. However, for tags, users could type full-spaced sentences without impacting the character count of the post, and Tumblr has a complete de-emphasis on trending topics. These factors influenced more user creativity to express their thoughts of categorization, resulting in custom self-sorting tags and a subsection of the post itself for thoughts. A more open, user-expressive rhetoric continues throughout the website’s design. Reblogs, while compared to retweets earlier, have entirely different rhetoric. While allowing users to respond to a tweet on their account in a separate tweet, retweets display the response first, only allow users to see two tweets in what may be a longer retweet chain, and attribute engagement to the response and not the original tweet. This results in rhetoric that not only encourages limited communication through retweets but instead encourages pointing at the previous tweet with a comment of their own, most often a negative, jeering response. On the other hand, reblogs are additive, with the original post at the top and all reblogged responses sorted chronologically under it, and interactions are additive to the overall post, not individual. This rhetoric encourages a fuller, more conversational attitude when posting on Tumblr that is often more positive and more civil. The ability for users to post images, hyperlinks, and even different-sized and colored text with unlimited length additionally enforces this rhetoric. By giving users the tools to be more creative and organized, Tumblr encourages users to be fuller with their thoughts and allows more nuanced conversation. Finally, users’ homepages are blogs reminiscent of 90s-era websites, which users customize with provided options or code from the ground up. This is yet another example of Tumblr’s rhetoric allowing extended user freedom that few sites offer. However, the early internet influences run deeper than Tumblr’s rhetoric and blogs. A further examination of Tumblr’s history and corporate mentality to fully understand these aspects.

Considering Tumblr’s corporate history adds a layer of complexity to these recent events with Twitter. Tumblr was founded in 2007 on anti-consumerism and a mission to avoid ads. Six years later, it was bought by Yahoo in 2013 for 1.1 billion dollars. Another six years passed, and multiple acquisitions later, Tumblr was finally sold again for 3 million dollars in 2019. Failed overvalued profit goals, adult content bans to appeal to advertisers, and a lack of technical support for the platform itself marked this decline. Tumblr was not profitable to its new corporate owners, and that doomed the platform. It’s interesting how a similar series of events are occurring on Twitter almost a decade later. In a sense, Tumblr has already gone through the collapse Twitter and other social media companies are currently experiencing. As Balbi and Magaudda write, “digital media history cannot be uncoupled from an understanding of the way these new media emerge, grow and evolve in conjunction with specific economic and political power dynamics in a globalized economy” (31). Both platforms were founded on tenets of connection and anti-consumerism. Both platforms eventually needed to change their ways to appeal to the market. Finally, both platforms were forced onto a downward trajectory in the efforts to grow as the market demands and generate the desired profits. Tumblr has already hit bottom.

In this stalled state, Tumblr remains as an internet relic. However, this is what fundamentally sets Tumblr apart from modern internet platforms: it’s not a modern internet platform. Tumblr is of an earlier time when metrics and engagement weren’t prioritized, and algorithms were optional and less intrusive. Additionally, this lack of expectation in the market allows relative freedom from the demands it faced previously. Posts are sorted chronologically from when it was posted or reblogged. Recommendations for content the user might enjoy is optional, unlike on Twitter and many other platforms. Posts from multiple years ago resurface as the users of Tumblr decide what is popular and should be seen again, not the algorithm. In the modern social media landscape mired by platforms seeking to addict their users, capitalize on engagement, and incentivize profit above consumers, Tumblr is a breath of fresh air.

To quote Thomas Ridgewall on the decline of Twitter, “Death is a rare mercy.” Despite Musk’s claims, with the amount of debt Twitter has, profits will be impossible. If Tumblr’s history is any indication, Twitter will slowly diminish in the coming years, marked by unpopular changes, multiple devaluations, and sales to other companies at lower costs. A general sentiment of longing for the older internet will continue to grow in the general online public. Tumblr will continue regrowth, and other companies inspired by its formula may grow alongside it. Tumblr may not change much, but this possibly marks a shift in the larger social media space towards smaller, more manageable, and more accessible platforms. However, this rebirth is not without its concerns. If its popularity and user base continue to increase, Tumblr may find itself in the same capitalist predicament it found itself in almost a decade ago.

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

Ya know, I truly hope Miss Renesmee Carlie Cullen fully dedicates herself to just....being as out there and iconic as possible

first things first- ANYTHING with the loch ness monster on it, she owns. Posters, shirts, jackets, shoes, folders, buttons, iron-ons, there is always at least 5 pieces of Nessie merch on her at all times

once she gets old enough to start high school, the cover story is her and Edward are siblings that Carlisle and Esme took in, and sometimes her classmates will ask her what her biological parents were like and she will flat out be like 'oh, they're vampires' and Edward and Bella are like. 5 feet away trying not to scream

every Halloween she'll show up to school in an elaborate Nosferatu costume

goes out of her way to photobomb people in increasingly ridiculous ways so there will Always be a photographic record of her and in like 100 years she can get a huge kick out of teens on the internet trying to make a conspiracy about her

joins as many school clubs as she can, even if she has no interest in them- she just Really wants a concrete record of herself to exist lmao

ICONIC at school theater though. One of those demon theater kids that come to rehearsal purely to cause chaos and nothing else, but her voice is incredible so she secures every lead. One time she somehow managed to star in a show while also playing in the school band for it- her classmates still have no idea how she pulled it off

Always brings blood out in public in a CLEAR THERMOS and it stresses her family out so much but everyone else thinks she's just like, weirdly into tomato juice so the Cullens can't stop her

to everyone's surprise...her biggest chaos enabler is Jasper lmao. everyone thought he'd be a logical, responsible uncle but they're just. A Problem together. He'll 100% assist her in any prank she wants to pull, he gets her fake id's when she wants to sneak into a club with friends, he bails her out of jail without telling her parents, they figured out if she gets high and he reads her feelings he'll get high too and it's. So fucking funny.

she's always carrying some random instrument around school- like for a while it's a guitar or a harmonica, fine, but then she'll start lugging a cello around, a tuba (she doesn't even play, she stole it off a guy who was annoying her) and it escalates until one day she's wheeling a piano around the building. no one's even sure how she got in in the doors of the school. She keeps running kids over in the hallway with it

You know the Catherine Tate Lauren Cooper skit with David Tennant? Where she's being a terrible student and then perfectly recites Shakespeare? 100% Nessie

when she starts getting dates Jacob keeps trying to wing man and be over supportive and give her a ton of girl advice and it's embarrassing as hell so one day when he was on a spiel about How To Woo A Lady she looks him in the eyes and goes 'oh really? did that work on my mom?' and the Cullens fucking LOSE IT. Jacob had to go live in the woods for a few days because he couldn't cope

Emmet and Jasper: arrive to school in their jeep. Rose and Alice: arrive in a convertible. Edward: arrives in his dumb volvo. Bella and Jake: arrive to school on motorcycles. Nessie: arrives to school on a unicycle while juggling

one year she ended up getting nominated for prom queen and Edward read the minds of the teachers tallying the votes so he knew she won and he and Bella were so excited!! they're like we're gonna take so many pictures of our baby looking like a princess! And then she emerges from her room, actually drenched in pigs blood. Like she just did it to herself and went to the dance and accepted her crown like that

she regularly commits crimes against fashion. If she comes out of her room and sees Alice contemplating turning herself over to the Volturi, she KNOWS she's picked a great look

somehow gets ahold of Aro's cell number and sends him selfies of her blatantly breaking vampire laws captioned 'whatcha gonna do'. he keeps blocking her but she keeps managing to get through to him somehow

she illegally sells soda out of her locker and does people's homework for cash, while also paying other people to do her homework for her. she organizes every single senior prank. she's never gotten a detention in her whole immortal life because every teacher just Adores her for some reason

had 100% used her powers for deserved evil before. Like, if someone's being a dick at school, she'll sneak into their room at night and give them nightmarea threatening them to be a better person lol

sometimes she'll show up at the hospital unannounced and ask Carlisle, in front of his coworkers, 'yo can I raid the blood bank?'

her bedroom looks like a library. every wall, floor to ceiling books.

she's been publishing trashy romance novels under a fake name for almost 40 years now and no one in her family knows

one birthday Jacob takes her on a trip to vegas and they get wasted, at some point they were laughing about how ridiculous their lives are and they're like 'wouldn't it be fucking hilarious if we had a baby'. they then black out, hangover style, and wake up like a week later with a payment on her card to a fertility clinic. Jacob's like 😱 and Ness is just like 'you get to be the one to explain this to my parents'

Their kid is absolutely hilarious, they were correct, and at some point they realized 'wait...drinks blood..doesn't sparkle...can shape shift...we've somehow created a classic pop culture vampire' lmao

Edward had to threaten them to get them to not name the kid Vladimir

Also to be clear: Nessie and Jacob have the EXACT same dynamic as Will and Grace. that's canon.

says its her goal to star in a live action all female production of mamma mia and Carlisle is like 'honey you know you can't do anything on broadway or in hollywood' and she's like, 'no, in real life. I'm gonna go to greece and attract a bunch of women with abba songs' and he's like,,,,,ah

she loves all music but she goes out of her way to Only play stuff she knows Edward hates lmao

one day she remembers she doesn't need to breathe and can see under water and just. books herself a ticket to scotland and Finds The Loch Ness Monster

she actually personally finds a lot of monsters and cryptids like her hybrid aura just attracts all kind of weird shit and she LOVES it. She stops writing trashy romance novels and starts writing autobiographies of her traveling and hanging out with paranormal beings and everyone just assumes its fiction so she becomes a best selling fantasy author lmao

100% she's very into witchy stuff and only like...half in a trendy way. She's like what if on top of everything I've got going on I can cast spells? Think I deserve that power

when she's a couple decades old she catches Edward looking grossed out one day and she asks him what's up and he's like 'I really dont need to hear what creepy teachers think about my daughter' and she's like. oh. Dad we are gonna get SO MANY pedophiles arrested shdndjdn she gets him to expose teachers and she baits them then calls the police. queen.

She finds out she can get tattoos but they fade completely out of her skin within 5 years so she's always getting crazy tats

posts selfies on social media of her just like. hanging out with mountain lions or chilling on top of the space needle. her classmates think they're all photoshopped obvi but it drives her family insane

imagine you're 15 and you're on a nice hike in the woods and you come across your one classmate half naked, sacrificing a bear in some ritual, blood dripping down her face, bigfoot chilling on the rocks behind her filming the ritual on her phone...like on one hand, what would you do, but on the other hand. you've known this girl for a bit and you aren't surprised at all

anyway. stan Nessie Cullen.

[volturicangetit]

D.V/F/V- Old man

Summary: The reader is younger than their mate and is teaching them, slowly, about modern technology and its weird vocabulary.

Request: yes/NO

shout out to @kpopgirlbtssvt for giving me this idea. you’re the best

Warnings:none

Wordcount: 1441

DEMITRI

You thought that being a part of the Volturi would be boring. Everyone is at least a couple of decades older than you are and don't understand half of your vocabulary. The isn't the case though. All of the members have been highly interested in modern culture and ask you daily to give them lessons in social media or pop culture. Especially Demitri, your mate. He asks you to tell him about something new every hour or so, every question different from the previous one.

"What is 'swag' and how does one get it?" Demitri suddenly asks. You are a little baffled by his question. You look around you quickly. You're both standing in the throne room, you're supposed to keep an eye on the kings while they are reading some books and looking into some cases. Marcus looks up at you two. He has also been interested in the 21 century, especially the social media aspect of it.

"Well, it's like, being cool, you know? It's a kind of vibe someone has," you explain. Demitri just looks at you with more confusion. You turn more towards him. "Like, if you look cool, if you look good, I can say. 'Look at him he has swag'. But it's kind of old, no one uses it anymore.".

Demitri nods. "Oh," he says softly. "What do you say now then?". You shrug, looking back over to the kings. "That someone has good vibes.". You point at Aro, leaning closer to Demitri. "Like, he has spooky vibes. Those are good,". Demitri quickly swats your hand down to stop you from pointing. You sometimes still forget how the whole hierarchy in the Volturi works.

"Do I have good vibes?" he asks. You nod. "You have fuck boy vibes, but the good ones.". You can see from the look on his face that he has no clue what you're talking about. "It's...it's good. You're cool.". A smile appears on his face as he puffs his chest out a bit. "I'm cool," he says, now in a lower tone than before. You can't help but laugh at him. The three kings look at you for this. You quickly hold your hands in the air while mumbling some apologies to which they continue their reading.

--

The television in the main room is casting a bright blue light over everyone. Anyone who didn't know you would think that you were just a big group of friends having a movie night while supernatural being would get scared and highly confused at the sight of the Volturi sitting calmly on different couches, wrapped up in blankets trying to pick a movie. Demitri has the remote in his hands. He knows how to use the device the best from the Volturi, except for you. The remote isn't working properly though. He smacks the plastic rectangle against him and a couple of times to get it to work. You sit down next to him, pulling the blanket that is laying over his lap over you and as place a hand over his. "No need to hit the remote, Dinosaur,".

He lets out a huff of annoyance as he hands you the remote. "But it isn't working!" he whisper-shouts. You shake your head before letting it fall against his shoulder. "You didn't even point it at the television," you say as you begin to open up Netflix on the screen. You look over at Aro, it was his turn to pick out a movie. "The vampire assistant," he says with a smile. You could always appreciate his sense of humour. You let out a giggle as you start up the movie.

"You're like an old man, totally incapable of using technology," you whisper in Demitri ear. He gives you a small push while shaking his head. "I am not old,". You shake your head, shifting in your position so you can lay with your head laying in his lap. "You're like 1000 years old! You're very old. I shouldn't even be with you, perv." you say. Demitri shakes his head as his eyes are focussed on the screen. His right hand comes down into your head and starts to play with your hair, feeling the softness of it between his fingers while his nails scratch your scalp softly. "I'm not old," he huffs out a final time before remaining quiet.

--

FELIX

"Yo, fossil!" you yell at your mate. Felix turns around, the annoyed look on his face now replaced with a smile. You take quick steps over to him. "What are you doing there, old man?" you ask. Felix wraps his arms around you as he picks you up in a tight hug. He liked using his strength and height to his advanced. He had just come back from another check-up with the Cullens. Sadly, you weren't allowed to come with him. He placed you down on the ground again but he keeps his arms tightly wrapped around you. "I'm not old," he says. You shake your head, reaching up with one hand to lay your palm against his cheek. He melts into your touch.

"Yeah, you are. You are older than my grandparents. That's grossly old," you say as you wiggle out of his grasp. You grab one of his hands as you pull him along with you while you start to walk towards your shared room. "Yeah, but they were human, little one," he says. You shrug your shoulders.

"I'll stop calling old when you stop calling me that," you say with a huff of annoyance. He shakes his head, pulling you towards him and slinging his arm over your shoulder. "Nope," he says, letting an audible pop out after the 'P'.

You quickly open the door of your room once you reach it. You duck away from under Felix's arm as you run over to the bed, letting yourself fall onto it. "Then prepare to be called old, grandpa,". A disgusted look forms on Felix face as he lays down softly next to you and starts to run his hand over your bare arm. "Call me anything but that," he says. You let out a small laugh. "Okay, will do. Old man.".

--

You are only half-listening to the bickering between Jane and Alec. They are in a heated discussion about god knows what. From time to time, they ask for you're agreement to which you mumble a yes or that you're neutral in the situation. Felix is sitting beside you, one arm wrapped around you as he uses his other to intently stare at the phone screen in his hand. "What's a beefcake?" he asks out of the blue. Alec and Jane stop their conversation as you look at Felix with big eyes. If you could blush, you would. "What?" you ask.

Felix shrugs as he shows you his phone screen. It's a post of his Instagram with a comment under it. "u r a beefcake" it simply says. "Umh, you, I guess," you say as you stutter a little. "Someone ripped,". Felix lets out a little 'oh' as he continues to look at his phone screen.

"Why do they call me daddy?". You remain quiet. How are you supposed to tell this old man, who doesn't even understand modern dating, why people get called daddy? "It's-It's a modern pet name. Yeah, like...sweartheart...but for man". Felix nods. He turns towards you as he lays his phone down on the table in front of him. Thankfully, Jan and Alec pick up their conversation again.

"Why don't you call me daddy?" he asks with a smile. This fucker doesn't even realise what he's talking about. You wiggle out from under his arm, laces your fingers with his instead. "It's um...sexual,". His eyes grow big as he quickly grabs his phone and chucks it to the other side of the room. Thankfully, it lands safely on the rug with a small thud.

He stands up from his seat and let's go over your hand. "That's enough internet for me, I'm going to wash my eyes with holy water really quick," he says with a soft tone. You laugh softly at him. "Wait until he finds out porn," Demitri chimes in. Felix turns around, eyes big. "There's more?!". You nod slowly. Felix quickly walks over to his phone, grabs it and hands it to you. "I don't want to go on the internet anymore, you all are gross,". You shrug and lay his phone down on the table again.

"Whatever old man," you say. Still, with his back to you, he sticks his middle finger up to you. "I'm not old!”.

TWILIGHT TAGLIST: @scuzmunkie @thanossexual @prettyinblack231 @kpopgirlbtssvt​ @rexburn12​ @cullens-stuff​

[dianapana]

SH Day 2: Fashion Statement

Modern AU, OOC

@sasuhinamonth

Bullies exist everywhere you look, in school, at work, on the street and most of all, on the internet. Countless bullies hide behind the anonymity the internet provides them in order to bring down strangers for no apparent reason. But there is always a reason, jealousy, an inferiority complex, a superiority complex, or plain and simple the bully is a pile of trash and no one should call it a human being. One of the worst things one can do when being active on social media is read the comments, because no matter how many positive comments there are, one bad comment outweighs them all. Scrolling through my Instagram I see the perfect example of this issue. Hinata is barely an acquaintance, I have not seen her since middle school almost a decade ago, she’s not active on any social media, or at least she wasn’t until today. The picture in front of me brings back all of my past thoughts of her, how pretty her face looked, how refreshing and pleasant her lower voice tone was; out of most people I was aware of at the time, she was one of the least annoying. The only thing that bothered me at times was her meek demeanour, how easy she’s fold under the pressure of bullies; and it would appear that she had not changed in that particular category.

The picture was there, I liked it, I looked through the comments, I saw all the negative ones, I saw them misgendering her due to her short hair and baggy clothes, I saw them calling her names; and then there was nothing, because the picture no longer existed. Much like in school, the bully applied pressure on her, and she caved in on herself and chose to hide.

I wish I had taken a screenshot of the picture to post myself, but that would have been an invasion of privacy. She looked older and more mature, her hair was much shorter than in middle school, almost a buzz cut. She had always worn baggy clothes, but her style developed to streetwear, all in all, the picture was, in my opinion, a work of art. But as soon as it appeared, it disappeared. I can’t explain why it bothers me this much the fact that she took it down, but it just does.

I hate all the entitled fucks that think people own them anything. Females do not own them femininity, males don’t own them masculinity and gender non-conforming people don’t own them an androgynous appearance. Gender and fashion style are different issues, they can reflect each other or not. People use clothes for various reasons, as art, as means of expression, or they use them to hide. We talked about this during one of my courses in gender studies in university and it fucked with my brain how many people, young people that are supposably ‘woke’ heard that for the first time. I was shocked how many were unaware of things that I consider common sense.

I have the urge to reach out, assure her that the shit those incompetent fucks commented is the furthest thing from fact. Maybe I also feel guilt, because I was aware she was bullied in school and never helped, my apathy always made me so sure that it had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t my issue to fix, it wasn’t my battle to fight, and this isn’t either; but I’ve also learned to understand that being quiet might not be as hurtful as actively attacking the person, but it’s damn near close enough. So, I click on her blank profile and shoot her a short message. ‘the pic looked nice. U didn’t have to delete it just cuz some ppl don’t know what style is’

It was partly to comfort her, and partly to prove to myself that I’ve become better even in the slightest. I press the lock button on my phone and the screen turns black, I put it screen down on my bed and leave the room trying to fool myself and the universe that I don’t care if she replies or not.

I return to my work desk, continuing this charade, I am actively trying to not think about it, but the more I try not to think about it, the more I think about it. There is something about a 24-year-old Hinata looking the way she does, yet listening to haters, that just doesn’t sit well with me. I’m still in deep thought about the issue when my laptop dings, letting me know I received an email. I half expect it to be Hinata, but it’s work-related and my focus turns to that for the time being. Work keeps me busy for the remaining of the day, enough to push the whole issue out of my mind for real. In a blink of an eye over 9 hours have passed.

I wasn’t able to fully finish everything I wanted, due to some issues but I have to call it a day, since I worked overtime quite a lot. I go back to my bedroom and pick up my phone ready to order some delivery for the night when I see that Hinata responded.

“That was very thoughtful of you, thank you for the kind message.”

“I agree that I shouldn’t let myself be brought down, but it’s devastating in the moment.”

“I’ll try again.”

Her last message makes me click back on her profile to see that she reposted the picture with the caption saying ‘fuck you’. A sense of pride flows into my body, and I can’t fight the urge to comment as well, ‘fuck them all’. I go back to our little chat.

“Im glad u decided to post it again.”

I’m trying to formulate a compliment that doesn’t sound weird, I don’t feel like we are close enough for me to call her beautiful or pretty without it sounding like I am flirting, stunning sounds extreme, sexy and hot feel somewhat disgusting; yet all these five adjectives describe her, because she is beautiful, pretty, stunning, hot and sexy. I’m in the midst of this internal battle when I receive a reply.

“I am too. Thank you again”

I don’t feel like I deserve thanks, so I decide not to write back ‘you are welcome’, but I still want to compliment her so I click back to look at the picture, seeing whether having the picture in front of me will help. I’m lowkey annoyed when I get a notification that I have a new message from her, I am hell bound on finding a compliment and she is hell bound on stopping me. Either way, I click on the message, but upon reading it, my annoyance dies.

“I’m actually in Konoha for the first time in forever. I was thinking…if you maybe want to meet up? I’m here for a month, let me know if and when is a good time for you 😊”

Under normal circumstances, an invitation to ‘hang out’ from any former classmate be it elementary, middle or high school would annoy me further and I’d turn it down immediately. But for some reason, the idea of meeting Hinata after so many years, seeing what she is up to, interacting with her now as adults, makes me oddly enthusiastic. I reply before I can overthink the issue.

“Sure, we can meet, I’m free every Wednesday and throughout the weekend.”

Her reply is almost instant. “That’s perfect! See you Saturday” Reading her message makes me forget what day it is, so I have to look at my phone’s calendar; Saturday is the day after tomorrow, in less than 48hs I will see Hinata. My feelings are conflicted, they lay somewhere between nervousness, which is new, and giddiness, which is even newer. In order to calm myself, I do what I always do, set a goal. By Saturday I’ll have an appropriate compliment for the picture and her, it will have more impact if I say it face-to-face anyway, yes that’s the reason I want to see her, so I can feel as if I completed this little mission of mine, no other reason…

[idjaa]

this blog still gets a surprising amount of traffic. you might notice i never post on here anymore, and that’s because i’m doing great. i used this tumblr to express my feelings at the loneliest and lowest times in my life and it served its purpose, but its time is over. i hope this message can find some purpose for you.

they say “it gets better” and it sounds like a load of shit. i thought so, back when i was in that really dark place. i have half a dozen posts where i blatantly say so.

it’s odd how my entire mental deterioration and multiple near-death experiences are just documented and preserved for you all to see. i don’t relate to most of those things now and it’s horrifying to see them and to know that i felt that way. yet i’m keeping it all up, and maybe in this sad internet neo-archeology we can unpack the story of while things can be so so terrible, they also do get better. i am proof.

i don’t even think of that time as the same version of myself. i feel like i was reborn, or maybe i came alive for the first time, and had to learn everything anew. i felt like i had to meet a lot of people for the first time again and i was able to realize how many people cared about me. (meeting your friends again means being able to relearn all the things you love about them, which is a plus.) i had to learn what i loved to do, and boy do i love to do things. i’m doing my hobbies again. i love having hobbies! i love feeling accomplished after a day of writing my book or running or taking photos or being with people that i love. there is no greater joy than going to sleep with a smile on my face.

i’m afraid of dying again. i’m making plans for my future again. i’m looking forward to growing old and wrinkly and wise and having so many fond memories to reflect on. at the same time, i am so happy to be alive right now as myself at this age and to be able to make those memories. for the first time in a very long time- maybe even the first time ever- i am living and not just surviving. i am alive and it is all so beautiful. the joy of simply living for all of these sunny days is almost worth the years of isolation and struggle. almost.

i’m sure that i might be over-romanticizing this all a little bit. what is fresh and new and lovey to me might just be what regular, average life is like. but if that’s the case, i can’t be over-romanticizing after all because i think that human life is the most lovely thing that could ever be. no amount of romanticization could ever do it justice.

everything isn’t rainbows and sunshine, though. there are bad days. there are bad weeks. i just got through having a miserable week. but they are so rare and they pass. days can be bad, but life overall is not. life is beautiful with all of its ups and downs and lefts and rights. i don’t think i could stand a life without bad days. the path winds in a million different ways but it still goes towards the same ending. when that ending comes, many decades from now, at least i can say that i know what it’s like to be alive.

and so should you. each day i spent alone and turning to this godforsaken website for help i was still being here and that was enough. being here and talking about how i was doing was enough. every action is it’s own small step towards where you will be in life, and i promise you that life is the most rewarding thing about living. i know that it’s hard to keep pressing on but just wanting to be here is enough. please talk to your friends or a counselor or anyone. one day your tumblr will be inactive and barren and you will smell the flowers and smile. and if you’re reading this, i love you.