#it looks better on my blog than on the dashboard but yeah... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

boomstab-papa · 1 year ago

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Hell, let's go down this post, point by point.

"Let's put an annoying popup like pinterest and instagram do that makes you sign up if you want to look at content" BAD IDEA. Are you aware how universally reviled this shit is? And do you think maybe the fact that people only see ~25 posts is because you're STOPPING THEM? That this is limiting the visibility of the artists you're claiming to want to promote? New visitors can go to tumblr.com, see a handful of pointless and irrelevant posts from Tumblr Today (the default tab on the logged-out dashboard), then get slapped with a 'lol sign up now pls' window. This does not encourage people to sign up. It makes people think tumblr is pointless and irrelevant (and annoying).

"If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product." BAD ASSUMPTION. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault often lies with how the user is using the product. If people don't understand how tumblr works (especially since you keep shuffling how dashboards work and where they're placed??) the often fault lies with the explanation. Explain your product better! You have lots of dashboards and lots of dashboard options, but they're hidden and unclear! Make things clear and stop trying to trick your users! Or if it's related to Principle #1, it's because you're actively throttling them and then wondering why they're impeded. "On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant." yeah gee after looking at Principle #1, I wonder why you're having this problem. Tumblr's algorithmic dashboards are a fucking joke. That is not an invitation to try to make them better. That's an indication you should be empowering users to know how to follow content they enjoy, and then do that, rather than trying to read their minds.

"Facilitate easier user participation in conversations." Oh? Like taking away the ability to see the previous reblog in a reblog chain? Facilitating like that? Breaking shit for no reason and coyly saying maybe you'll never replace the functionality? This is a good goal but you're not fucking doing it.

"We heard artists hate being buried in algorithms under more popular posts, and prefer a chronological feed. Let's bury them in other algorithms (they're different this time we prommy) and also hit them with lots of random & arbitrary flags from a moderation bot that doesn't work, that will definitely encourage them to post lol." Fuck you. I hardly post my work anymore and it's because of bullshit like this. We want easy, obvious chronological feeds. We want chronological lists. We want chronological tag pages. We've told you this over and over again. You want to encourage visibility of new posts and artists? That's how you fucking do it.

"What if we spam people with push notifications until we find what annoys them so much they quit. And what if we spammed them with emails when they turned off push notifications". Do you even hear yourself, intending to be as annoying and spammy as possible? You HONESTLY think this will make people like you?? I have notifications turned on for a few blogs that I CHOSE to notify me when they post. If you start spamming me with notifications I didn't ask for, I will entirely turn off notifications and send your emails directly to spam. Because that's spam. Please literally shut the fuck up.

"There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. Oops. Maybe we should fix that." Maybe you shouldn't "fix" things that weren't broken to begin with? Maybe you could put shit back the way it was when you get overwhelming feedback to do that please?

Anyway check out this poll for what your users think of algorithmic feeds: https://www.tumblr.com/darkwood-sleddog/722480325588058112/because-staff-is-too-cowardly-what-type-of

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience.

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content.

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up.

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

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

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant.

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are.

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds.

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs.

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

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

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads.

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

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it.

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

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

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages.

Test what the right daily push notification limit is.

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users.

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

#tumblr #talking

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m1sosazai · 2 years ago

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I posted 814 times in 2022

That's 571 more posts than 2021!

4 posts created (0%)

810 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@browniefox

@inkstaindusk

@imfluentinfangirlandgay

@obstinaterixatrix

@pearlescentpearl

I tagged 629 of my posts in 2022

Only 23% of my posts had no tags

#lol - 45 posts

#:d - 29 posts

#yes - 28 posts

#lmao - 16 posts

#<3 - 10 posts

#hell yeah - 10 posts

#*wheezes* - 9 posts

#yes!!! - 9 posts

#xd - 8 posts

#nice - 8 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#i was gonna suggest 'not feeding the elderly/queens/sick+injured/kits before warriors and apprentices' as crack but that's actually p shit?

I sent 2 gifts in 2022

My Top Posts in 2022:

So it turns out that blocking the stupid shaving balls Tumblr does not in fact block the ad from my dashboard 😢

0 notes - Posted April 28, 2022

i spent way too much money pulling for Butler suit ingo in pokemas... But i can't help myself, the submas addiction is too strong! Also i DID get him (along w sygna suit elesa, and a bunch of other random ppl) in the end!!!! So HA.

I guess I'll just... Avoid looking at my bank statement for the month... And hope i make all that money back when i go back to work next week... 😅😭

0 notes - Posted April 14, 2022

PROFESSOR BELLIS STOP GIVING ME MANKEY EGGS TO HATCH CHALLENGE

0 notes - Posted March 29, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

ok so i've read the fics where ingo recognizes emmet right away, or very soon after meeting, or when he sees emmet he gets flashbacks and tries to run away or something bc he thinks his brother is actually some illusioned-up zoroark or something. also those fics where they meet in their dreams, or in the rifts. which are all very good!

but specifically that one fic where ingo sees like, little hallucinations of emmet out of the corner of his eye after he gets some of his memory back stuck w me. and basically i think...

what if when the twins meet again, maybe w the PLA protag or the clan leaders... emmet sees ingo give a quick glimpse at him, then pointedly ignore him.

he can't figure out why (is his brother mad at him for not finding him sooner? has he been so traumatized by the separation that he can't look directly at him, the way emmet had a hard time w mirrors during ingo's disappearance?), but meanwhile, ingo is frantically running down his mental checklist of tasks.

1. did he get enough sleep? (yes, a full eight hours before he was roped into this meeting, plus w the baby sneasels and lady sneasel.)

2. did he have enough to eat? (yes, he had a meal at the wallflower a few hours ago... with some cake lures and berries as emergency provisions if he does get hungry.)

3. is he injured anywhere? (no, the last wounds he got, some abrasions from the debris that flew up while he was fighting akari a few weeks ago, healed up just fine.)

having checked off all the criteria, ingo slowly looked up, and despite his better judgement, very carefully met gazes with the white-clothed man with his face that was still, inexplicably, there.

"warden ingo, are you alright?" professor laventon's assistant asked him quietly.

"yes, my engine is in perfect condition," ingo lied, deliberately turning away from the obvious hallucination. maybe it would vanish when he stopped making direct eye contact with it, like it always had before - he couldn't entertain the possibility of his mental state potentially getting worse and having the white-clothed man appear outside the dire situations he'd always seen him it in.

(he didn't need more people in the pearl clan whispering about his uncanny habit of talking to the air, or akari eyeing him with concern whenever he was caught spacing out while turning to the left after she'd felled one of his pokemon in battle.)

so yeah, ingo is very used to seeing emmet whenever he gets into trouble somehow... so much so that he has a hard time remembering that he CAN talk to his twin now, in the flesh, without people looking at him crazy lol.

of course, emmet isn't going to stand for his brother ignoring him forever, no matter what he might've done or what ingo thinks, so he ends up goading him into talking to him right in the middle of the meeting (about past-future information exchange or something prolly, idk), and ingo ends up yelling at him like "not now, sleep hallucination! we're in the middle of something!" (bc most of the time he's suffering from insomnia when he sees hallucination-emmet, and "injury hallucination" is significantly more worrying to most - and also rolls off the tongue less imo - to say), which attracts everyone's attention. and the twins have an argument-sation about whether emmet is hallusionary (thank you esama for that great combination of hallucination + illusion), whether it was polite to yell at your brother (remembered or not, real or not) after not seeing him for a while, and how much sleep ingo usually got in a night.

after a while of this, rei is like "...who are you talking to, warden?" (bc honestly akari gets all the spotlight and i like to include cute nerdy assistant boy more), and ingo points at him like "SEE, he just asked who i was talking to, THAT MEANS you're as fake as always!" and emmet scoffs (still smiling in relief tho) before rei is like "actually, i meant 'who is that man who looks like you, warden?'"

ingo realizes that people can see his hallucination, somehow, and spends a brief moment horrified that some zoroark has brought his friendly illusion to life to torment him, or perhaps he's dreaming right now - before it hits him.

the illusion is... real. that's a real man standing before him, feeling very familiar, who looks just like him.

and ingo just derailed a meeting to debate with him and reveal his possibly decaying mental state.

...ingo is very embarrassed.

144 notes - Posted March 22, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #Yep #I did not make that many posts lmao #Could only go w the posts i made

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babygirlwolverine · 2 years ago

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Are @impala67 and @angelbeekeeper dating? (a destiel tumblr!au)

word count: 3,814 (continued under the read more). also posted on ao3.

Admittedly, Dean should’ve known better than to trust his brother’s judgment. Signing up to join this website was a bad idea. A really really bad idea.

He was far too old for this. Mid-30s, single, with an obsession with vintage cars and cooking in his spare time. Honestly, there wasn’t much going for him when he put it like that. So what did he have to lose by creating this account?

“It’ll be good for you, Dean. You’ll find great recipes there to cook, and I’m sure you’ll find an account or two that has some vintage car stuff, too,” Sam had said, as if it were that easy.

That little bitch.

Yeah right.

Now, as Dean sat with his cursor over the username bar, the box waiting for him to type in his suggestion for a name, he was very much regretting having put his email into this site. Was it too late to turn back now?

Alright. You know what. Screw it. What harm could there be in making the account? It’s not like anyone who knew him would know about it anyway.

Typing in the only username he knew he’d remember, Dean hit enter and watched as the box lit green and a new page opened up.

‘Welcome to Tumblr, @impala67’ popped up on the screen.

“Well, that was easy,” Dean muttered to himself, following along with the setup steps and following a few basic blogs that fit his interests. Pictures and videos started to fill his dashboard, and Dean raised an eyebrow as a picture of a classic Mercedes appeared at the top of the screen. Huh. Not a bad looking car. Maybe he could use this site as a way to match-up cars he was currently fixing up to get them looking up-to-par again.

Maybe this site wouldn’t be such a waste after all.

Closing his laptop, Dean decided that instead of just thinking about cars, he should go do some work on them.

Later that night, Dean found himself aimlessly scrolling on his laptop, with the TV volume low, when he clicked on the website again. After having a conversation earlier that day with Charlie about tarts versus pies, which turned into a debate, which then turned into a competition, Dean was now searching for some recipes that he could use as his secret weapon; something he’d never whipped up before that could show Charlie he was the cook around here.

He’d considered just searching Google, but it would be obvious if he used a recipe straight from the first page of Google. So here he was, now typing pie recipes into Tumblr’s search bar. Not that he expected to find anything, but, oh well. Here goes nothing.

Except there were results. Quite a lot of them, actually. The top one was of a honey and apple pie. Dean quickly scrolled down to the recipe, but then did a slow scroll back up to the top where the blogger had a picture of the pie with a little blurb.

‘This pie is an instant sell-out in my brother’s cafe. Shush, don’t tell him I’m sharing the recipe with you all. But, well, that’s what he gets for stealing my bees honey without asking to make this pie.’

Huh. Now Dean was intrigued. Scrolling up, he looked at the username that had made the post. @angelbeekeeper.

A quick scroll on their blog couldn’t cause too much harm, right?

Clicking the icon, Dean watched as it loaded the blog. At the top was a description.

‘Castiel, he/him, 30s, beekeeper with over 50,000 honeybees and part-time helper at my brother’s cafe. Follow for some sneaky recipes and lots of fun facts about bees.’

Something inside Dean’s chest churned as he reread over the bio once, twice, three times. He wasn’t the only guy in his 30s on this site? Somehow that made him feel a lot better. Plus, the guy posted recipes, and that was one of the things Dean had been hoping to find on here.

Might as well.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Dean hit the follow button and started to scroll through Castiel’s blog. The more Dean scrolled, the more he couldn’t stop reading. Castiel was funny. All his posts had some level of wit, and yet there was a lot of passion in all the posts he made about bees. Some of his posts had thousands of notes, and Dean was a little bit starstruck over the earnestness that this guy portrayed in his posts.

Admittedly, Dean spent far too long scrolling through Castiel’s blog, liking his posts and reblogging a few of them, too. By the time Dean reached the very last post on Castiel’s blog, it was 2am and his laptop was almost out of power. Snapping the laptop closed, Dean vowed that the next day, he’d make his blog look as nice as Castiel’s.

The first step was his bio description, which shouldn’t have been as hard as Dean was making it, but God, how the hell did he make himself sound interesting? It took over half an hour for Dean to find words that sounded even half-way decent.

‘Dean, mid-30s, he/him. Just your local car mechanic who likes working on classic cars and also enjoys cooking and baking. Surprising, right? If you want to see some cool vintage cars and great recipes to show off to your friends, then I’m your guy.’

Well, now that trainwreck was over, setting an icon was easy. A picture of his Baby. His pride and joy. With his beloved Impala now saved on his blog, he snagged a picture of his last mini bake-off that he’d had with Charlie and set it as his header.

There. Now his two passions were clearly evident to anyone who clicked on his blog.

But now, the real challenge began. Making his first post.

Dean spent far too long thinking about it, pacing back and forth across his kitchen, before he caught sight of Baby on the driveway, gleaming after Dean had spent the morning cleaning her up.

Easy.

Opening his laptop, Dean began crafting his first post. What better way to start his blog than by talking about the one car that meant the most to him. Typing up a little about the car and the work he’d done to have her looking as good as she does, Dean put a picture at the top of the post that he’d taken of the Impala that morning.

Opening a new tab, Dean went to Castiel’s blog and looked at his top post. Oh. There was a new one to read.

‘Focus, Winchester. Post yours first and then come back to read this.’

Scrolling down, Dean found what he was looking for. The tags.

Copying Castiel’s style of tagging, Dean tailored the tags to match his own post. Taking a deep breath, Dean stared at the screen, eyes darting back and forth as he analyzed everything he’d put together. Was he overthinking this? Yeah. Was anyone actually going to see this? Probably not. But did he enjoy talking about his Baby and sharing that with the world? Yeah, yeah he did.

With that in mind, Dean hit the ‘Post Now’ button before he could back out of it. Then, he clicked back to Castiel’s blog and read his newest post on the process of honey making from the bees perspective. Something Dean never thought he’d want to read about, but the way Castiel wrote about bees was soothing and almost… sweet? Whatever it was, it kept Dean coming back for more.

A couple weeks had gone by, and now Dean had a rhythm. A system of posting that he really enjoyed. He was now creating posts every day, alternating between showcasing something he was working on with the cars in his shop and then a new recipe or cooking story with pictures of the things he’d whipped up in the kitchen.

The more he posted, the more followers he was gaining. Surprisingly, people were enjoying seeing the cars and the food. Some of his posts had even gotten a few hundred notes, and Dean was thrilled. Maybe this hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.

A few people had reached out and messaged him, asking car related questions or sharing pictures of food people had made using his recipes. Oh yeah, Dean was liking this a lot. Maybe, in a weird way, he’d found his people.

Oh.

Maybe that’s why Sam had suggested it in the first place.

“You’re too lonely, Dean. You have, what, like three friends? Get out there more. Make friends. Find your people,” Sam had said to him months ago.

Dean had scoffed at the time, but now… now maybe Sam was right. Not like Dean would ever admit that to his younger brother though. He’d go to Hell before admitting that his brother was right about something like this.

But now Dean had a group of people he interacted with online. He’d even gained a collection of recipes from his newfound friends, too.

And yeah, maybe Tumblr was the last thing Dean clicked on at night and the first thing he checked in the morning. And the one website he went to the most throughout the day, too. But that was okay, right?

He wasn’t obsessed or anything.

The bowl slipped from Dean’s hand, shattering on the ground as Dean stared at the notification on his phone in shock.

No.

No way.

It must’ve been a mistake. There was no way that…

Throwing the spoon into the sink. Dean quickly rushed to his computer, completely ignoring the trail of flour that was now all across his tiled floor. Opening the laptop, Dean quickly clicked on Tumblr and checked the notifications.

Sure enough, right there at the top, there was a notification for a new follower.

‘@angelbeekeeper started following @impala67’

“Holy shit,” Dean muttered to himself, staring at the screen and blinking several times as if he expected the notification to disappear.

Castiel followed him.

Oh God.

Thee Castiel.

The same one Dean had been obsessively following since he’d joined this Hellsite.

Castiel followed him back.

They were mutuals now.

Dean turned, facing the mess of the kitchen, with his head spinning and a smile tugging at his lips.

“Time for a change of plans,” Dean said to himself, walking back into the kitchen and sliding the batter into the fridge to use later. “Today, we’re making something with honey in it.”

Finalizing the post, Dean took a deep breath as he skimmed the recipe and the pictures of the cake with the honey drizzles. A honey cake. God, Dean hoped Castiel would see it and maybe hopefully like it.

Yes. He was aware. He didn’t need anyone to tell him how sad it was that he’d just gone and baked a cake specifically in hopes that his favorite blogger would notice it. But hey, what harm would it do? And besides, Sam and Eileen were coming over tonight, so he’d feed them the cake. It all worked out.

Hitting the post button, Dean slammed the laptop shut and walked away. Then he walked back and opened it again, before quickly shaking his head and closing the laptop again.

“Get it together, Winchester,” Dean muttered to himself.

Maybe he needed to go work on one of the cars in the shop. There was a nice Mustang out there that was calling his name.

Deciding that a distraction is what he needed, Dean made his way out of the house and into the shop just next door. But as he collected his tools, his mind was drifting off, wondering if Castiel had seen the post yet; wondering if he would like it or if he’d hate it and unfollow Dean.

He lasted all of 10 minutes working under the Mustang before anticipation got the best of him and he picked up his phone to check his notifications. There was some activity on the post, but nothing from Castiel.

Sighing to himself, Dean put his phone down and rolled back under the car. “Stupid cake. Who needs this anyway?” Dean muttered to himself, grabbing a wrench and getting back to work.

The sound of his phone pinging with a notification a few minutes later was so sharp that Dean whacked his head on the underside of the car in his haste to snatch his phone.

Quickly, Dean unlocked the phone and went to the notifications.

‘@angelbeekeeper commented on your post: This cake looks like the best cake I’ve ever seen in my life. Can’t wait to try this recipe myself, although mine won’t look nearly as perfect as yours does.’

Dean almost dropped his phone as he rushed to reply. ‘@angelbeekeeper you’re joking, right? I’ve seen the desserts you make for your brother's cafe. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were the mastermind behind all the baking and your brother just sells your creations.’

Dammit. As soon as Dean hit reply, he realized how desperate that was. God, he should’ve waited at least an hour. But no. Dumbass. Now he just looked desperate for Castiel’s attention.

Putting his phone down, Dean grabbed the rag he kept in his belt loop and he wiped away the grease he could feel sticking to his forehead. No more Tumblr. For the rest of the day, Dean was focusing on the Mustang.

A new ping echoed from Dean’s phone. The sound of a new private message.

Dean felt his breath catch in his throat. Maybe? Could it be?

No. No way.

Dean messaged a lot of people on the app now. It was probably just Benny or Jo talking about a new recipe.

And yet…

Dean found himself picking up his phone again. Just one last time. Then he’d focus on the car.

‘@angelbeekeeper sent you a private message: You know, I’m not really the baker in my family. That’s definitely Balthazar’s domain. But, he’s cocky about it. And now I’m tempted to use some of your stellar recipes to knock him off his high horse. Whaddya say? Wanna team up to take my younger brother down?’

Dean glanced at the car, and then the message, and back at the car.

The client wasn’t expecting the car to be fixed up until next week. Dean had some more time, right?

Who needed the car when Thee Castiel has just messaged him.

‘Castiel?’

‘Castiel???’

‘Okay you need to answer your messages.’

‘I’m dying here, man.’

‘Did our plan work? Did our combined cake baking skills completely crush your brother?’

Dean paced back and forth, waiting for any kind of notification. Was he being too much? Maybe. Possibly. But now he and Castiel had formed a friendship and Dean was far too invested now. And, okay, maybe he was harboring just a little tiny crush. And no, he was not going to admit that out loud. He was a 35 year old man who did not admit to having a crush on a guy he met on the internet. Nope nope nope. And yet…

Dean’s phone pinged, and he shut down that train of thought before it went too far.

‘Dean!’

‘It worked! Our cake outsold Balthazar’s cake!’

‘We sold all our slices in just over an hour.’

‘Took Bal almost half the day to sell all his slices.’

‘He was desperate to know where I got the recipe.’

‘But I refused to tell him.’

‘Couldn’t have him stealing our amazing recipe, right?’

Dean felt his heart skip a beat in his chest. Our? Did Castiel really just say our? As in both of them? Dean felt dizzy with happiness.

‘I knew we’d beat him,’ Dean typed, fighting a smile on his face.

‘Hey, we make a pretty good team.’

Holding his breath, Dean waited to see if Castiel would reply. Or maybe that’s all Castiel wanted from him. Just needed Dean to prove his brother wrong one time and that was it.

But then, his phone vibrated. Another message. And another. And another.

‘You’re right. We do make a good team.’

‘What are we making together next?’

‘I saw you’re good at cooking, too. Got any good recipes for a good burger? Bal is always saying his burgers are the best in the State, but I think we could take him down. What do you say?’

Oh yeah, Dean was absolutely crushing on this guy.

‘Dean, I need some help.’

‘Whatcha need, buddy?’

‘My car broke down this morning. And I’m a few towns over from the nearest car shop. I’ve never needed to take it in because it always runs pretty smooth. Any tips you can give for what I can do?’

‘Yeah, I’ve got you. Tell me what you see. Any lights on? Any smoke or oil on the ground?’

‘Hang on. I can send you a few pictures.’

‘Image.’

‘Really? You drive a Lincoln Continental Mark V?’

‘What’s wrong with that? I thought you liked classic cars?’

‘I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’

‘Alright, I think I see your problem. This is what you’re gonna do.’

When his phone lit up with another message from Tumblr, Dean knew it was Castiel before he even looked at the screen. Castiel was the only one Dean messaged this much. In fact, they were messaging all day every day. And tagging each other in posts all the time. They constantly interacted with each other’s posts, and yeah, maybe Dean’s heart skipped a beat every time Castiel interacted with him, but that was normal, right?

He’d received several asks anonymously with people asking if he and Castiel were dating, and Dean had always brushed it off. Always answered them subtly because he’d never broached the subject with Castiel.

‘I just finished the pie recipe you sent me a few days ago. Do you wanna see?’

‘Hell yeah, Castiel. Send it my way.’

Dean paused, tapping his finger lazily against the screen, his thoughts flickering back to something he’d been thinking about for weeks now.

‘You know, Castiel is too formal of a name.’

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘What about Cas?’ Dean suggested, nervously chewing at his lip.

‘No one’s ever called me that before.’

‘I like it.’

‘Yeah?’ Dean typed, his heart thumping wildly in his chest.

‘Yeah, Dean.’

Dean smiled as he typed his next message. ‘Now I just need to put a voice to the name. Call me? 636-808-9273’

Throwing his phone down, Dean sucked in a sharp breath. God, he hoped he hadn’t been reading this all wrong. There were signs, right? Maybe Cas liked him, too? Or maybe the flirting had been one-sided.

Dean’s phone pinged again.

‘That was smooth, I’m impressed.’

And then Dean’s phone started to ring. Dean looked down in shock, staring at the number on the screen as his heart kicked a wild beat in his chest.

Bringing the phone to his ear, Dean answered the call. “Cas?”

“Hello Dean.”

Oh God. Dean was absolutely and utterly screwed.

Scrolling through Tumblr, Dean laughed, catching sight of another message as it popped up in his askbox.

“What’s so funny?” Cas asked, his voice on the other end of the phone slightly distanced as Dean could hear him clattering with wood. Probably something for his bees.

“Just got another ask with an anon asking if we’re dating,” Dean said, already opening the ask to type out a response.

“Are you going to answer it?” Cas asked, his voice suddenly a lot closer as he presumably stepped closer to the phone.

“You’re going to have to check tumblr to find out,” Dean replied, feeling a smile tug at his lips.

“I hate when you’re obtuse,” Cas muttered, even though Dean could hear the fondness in his tone.

“Liar,” Dean said, hitting post on the ask.

The post appeared on the dashboard, and Dean grinned.

‘You and @angelbeekeeper are always flirting with each other on posts. Are y’all dating?’ Let me ask my boyfriend. Hey @angelbeekeeper, are we dating? Better yet, I have a more important question. When am I going to get to kiss my devastatingly handsome boyfriend?

Dean waited for a moment, knowing that Cas was already on Tumblr, checking out what he had said. A moment later, a notification popped up on his screen.

‘@angelbeekeeper reblogged your ask: Sooner than you think ;)’

Dean perked up, flickering his eyes to the top of his phone to make sure the call was still ongoing. “Hey Cas? What did you mean sooner than I think?”

Dean could also hear the smile in Cas’ voice when he replied. “You know, it doesn’t take an internet sleuth to realize you’re from Kansas.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow even though he knew Cas couldn’t see him.

“Your license plate on the Impala gives it away. Also, I put two and two together, and well, it makes sense that you’d work at Winchester’s Auto Shop in Lebanon,” Cas replied, and distantly there was the sound of a car door opening and closing.

“Are you stalking me?” Dean teased.

Cas hummed from the other end of the phone. “Just curious about my boyfriend, that’s all.”

“Oh yeah?” Dean said, moving into the kitchen to check on his pie that was in the oven. “And why’s that?”

“Because I live in Burr Oak.”

Dean’s brain froze. Then unfroze. And refroze again. “Burr Oak? As in Burr Oak in Kansas? The one that's 20 miles down the road from Lebanon?”

“Mmmhmm,” Cas said, and the sound of a car engine roaring to life filled the phone. “So? What do you say? Do you want that kiss now? Or later?” Cas teased, and Dean felt his heart skip a beat, then another, and another.

“Now. Right now,” Dean replied, breathless and dizzy. “You’ve been a few towns over from me this whole time?” he asked, a laugh catching in his throat.

“I only just figured it out this morning, actually. I just didn’t know how you’d react,” Cas said over the phone.

Dean felt like his heart was going to leap out of his chest. He was finally going to get to see Cas. Not just over FaceTime, but in person. He was going to kiss his boyfriend for the first time.

Cas was the one to speak again, shaking Dean from his thoughts. “There’d better be a slice of pie for me when I finally see you,” Cas said, soft and tender, yet teasing and playful.

Dean looked at the pie in the oven, then down at the phone where Cas’ name was lighting up his screen, their 2 hour phone call still ongoing. “A slice of pie. A kiss. Whatever you want, honey, it’s yours.”

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elekinetic · 2 years ago

Note

Quick! Tag your top favorite byler blogs (as many as you want) and tell my why you love them in one line to spread positivity on the dashboard and make someone's day!

FINALLY! THE TIME HAS COME!

this is in no particular order

first up. my wheelies. my ride or dies. call it traumabonding or whatever u want but these mfs know secrets of mine they better take to the grave

@hawkinsp0st, my first real friend on here. currently on hiatus but truly a kindred spirit. single-handedly changed the way i looked at the show with their hellfire color post. u simply get me and i miss ur brain!!

@ratt-duffer deserves so much more credit than you all give them. he just gets this show so well and has such well written analyses, but more than that, is just a fun fuckin person to exist around.

@willsglock my sister in glock. what can i say. she has permanently altered the way i think about brba and bcs. refreshingly honest in a way i wish more people were. occasionally breaks hearts w her writing.

@crazycoven no. 1 weezer stan in my heart ❤️ jk but fr hayden is such a cool person with some of the best themes and best takes on this site. very glad to know him

@tntozier deserves financial compensation for what theyve given to this tag. one of the brightest souls on here. everything he posts is a gift and u all should be so lucky 🤨 thank u for screaming abt st puzzle games and convincing me to download. i blame you for my crippling addiction.

ok onto some of my other favorite geniuses on here <3

@quinnick his energy??? immaculate. thank u for putting reddie content on my dash. u are so sweet and are the only valid ask hoarder. yes ofc i will send you more asks!! you deserve it!! even if you won’t stop making ur mom jokes.

@madcleradin just fucking gets it. she has never made a single post i did not wholeheartedly agree with. her understanding of the characters and the dynamics….phenomenal. also genuinely hilarious. very grateful to be mutuals w one sierra loveqbrl madcleradin

@mlchaelwheeler is a certified genius and is single-handedly responsible for getting me to restart succession. we don’t chat very often but when we do it is so much fun. she always puts such good posts i’ve never seen before on my dash and her analyses are genius. sarah’s blog is a gift to this site!!!

@chiquitablanquita changed my life with her poetry fic. i just. wow. wow. oh my god. yeah basically yeah. oh my god. i am in awe of you for the work u do outside of fandom and for the absolute insane talent u so gracefully share with us.

@eightieslesbian is The Gif Maker on here. her visions…holy shit. yes her gifs of my demos and the bitch meredith brooks gifset haunt my dreams bc she is the sweetest person on here and the fact that she DOWNLOADED MY MUSIC?? hello my heart is broken in two. but can we talk about HER original stuff?? HELLO?? she is so insanely talented and her vision is just….omg. OMG.

@elmaxed lumi and i don’t chat all that much but her brain is just so correct always and forever. her writing is wonderful and her energy is stellar. always happy to see her on my dash.

@wibble-wobbegong is such a fun blog to follow. he’s just such a cool dude and has such a nuanced understanding of mike. plus a great signature blog theme. dude has a BRAND, mad respect

@astrobei i cannot believe we are mutuals. i CANNOT BELIEVE we are mutuals. genuinely one of my favorite writers on ao3 and i still fangirl a little everytime we interact. like. the fics….holy shit. HOLY shit. she has such a firm understanding of the characters and has never written anything that doesn’t feel true to the show, regardless of AU or canon compliance. hanleia costume fic my beloved. good god they are such a talented writer.

@smoosnoom the scream i scrumpt when i got the follow notification. first fic writer i actually learned how to use the “subscribe” function on ao3 for. there are no words for the absolute batshit amount talent stored in this tumblr blog. ik y’all have read i’m tearing you asunder (cue “uh yeah, i’ve read the classics” tiktok audio) but every fic in their fix it series….jesus christ. run up that hill to go read rn.

@strangeswift is in a category of her own. abby u are a twin flame and i am so glad to know u. u simply understand me!! y’all she is such a fuckin phenomenal writer and is SO CEREBRAL in the way she approaches the show. her mike s4 pov snippets live rent free in my head. truly the only person who could get me to voluntarily read angst. NEVER misses with her takes and is just. so smart. SO SMART. the most supportive mfer on here fr. you guys aren’t ready for milevenvision or any of the other stuff you should be so lucky for abby to put out.

ok i could talk about my friends and moots for hours and i definitely DEFINITELY missed ppl but pls just know i follow blogs i love love love the content of and if we are mutuals i value u to the moon and back <333

#friendship is magic fr #also shoutout to georgia dungeons-are-too-cold who is NOT a byler blog but is one of my best friends #thank you for listening to me infodump about byler. i will do it more when i am home >:)#byler

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nastybuckybarnes · 4 years ago

Text

Training Wheels - One

Pairing: Dark!Step-Brother!Steve Rogers X Innocent!Reader

Summary: Your stepbrother would do anything for you. And he’s more than happy to prove that over and over and over again until you believe him. No matter what it takes.

Warnings: Language, Sexual Harassment, Smut, Manipulation, Loss of Virginity, Sex between Step-siblings, bit of a size kink,

Word Count: 3.7K

A/n: I have many parts of this planned but not written, and the taglist is open. Also, incase y’all forgot: I don’t talk politics on my blog. I’ve made it clear where I stand on certain things already and I want to keep my blog as an escape from reality for myself and others.

A/n 2: I’m fucking tired so I’ll reply to asks and stuff probably tomorrow

!!!!THIS IS A DARK FIC WITH SEXUAL AND TRIGGERING CONTENT! 18+ READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!

~*~

“Hey, did (Y/n) get a new skirt?” At the sound of your name being mentioned, Steve snaps his head up, following his best friend’s gaze until it finally lands on you.

You’re walking across the campus courtyard towards the two of them, a smile on your face as you talk animatedly with Natasha and Wanda.

Sure enough, a new mini skirt is decorating your pretty legs. It flows with the breeze, almost getting blown up enough to see your panties.

“Jesus, that kid’s got some legs,” Bucky says, eyes roaming over your figure. Steve shoves his friend’s shoulder, giving him a hard glare.

“That’s my fucking sister you’re talking about. What would Nat think if she heard that?” Bucky rolls his eyes, grinning as his favourite redhead blows him a kiss.

“God, what I wouldn’t do to have those legs wrapped around my head.” You shudder in disgust, yelping as a hard hand comes down on your ass.

“Hey!” You exclaim, turning around and covering your butt while looking at the man.

“C’mon sweetheart. What’d you expect when you’re dressed like that?”

Steve’s on his feet, rushing over to you as you glare at your assailant.

“Maybe some fucking decency?! Leave me alone! I’m not a fucking object, dick-wad.”

“Rumlow!” Upon hearing your step-brother’s voice, Rumlow takes a step back.

“C’mon Rogers! There’s no harm in playful flirting. You of all people should know that.” Steve glares at him, his arm coming protectively over your shoulders, pulling you against his side and further away from the man.

“Yeah, but there’s shit wrong with touching people when they don’t want to be fucking touched.” Brock rolls his eyes and saunters away, shooting you a wink over his shoulder.

“I had it handled,” you grumble, walking with Steve’s arm over your shoulders towards the tree where he and Bucky were sitting.

“Yeah, really looked like it. A ‘thank you’ would be nice.” You roll your eyes and glare up at your step-brother.

“How do you expect me to defend myself if you jump in all the time?”

He shakes his head, a soft look on his face that has you dropping your guard for a moment.

“As long as I’m around, you shouldn’t have to defend yourself. That’s what I’m here for. I’m always gonna have your back, bunny. No matter what.” You smile at him, your heart warming at his words before Nat gets your attention.

You sit down next to her, Steve next to you with his arm still over your shoulders.

You and Wanda are quickly engaged in another conversation and Steve finds himself staring at you, a small smile on your face.

“You’re drooling, Steve,” Nat whispers, toes nudging his thigh. He glances over at the redhead and flips her off.

“C’mon. We should get going. I wanna beat the rush.” You nod at Steve, grabbing your bag and bidding your friends goodbye.

Bucky gives Steve a knowing look and the blond glares at his friend.

The two of you make your way to the parking lot together, him asking you about your day and you launching into a detailed description of everything you did.

As you’re heading to his car you pass by Brock and his group of friends. You quiet down immediately, slouching in on yourself.

Steve glares at the guys, his arm coming protectively around your waist as they ogle you.

You let out a big breath when you’re sitting in Steve’s car, groaning at the fact that you were harassed today.

“Why are guys stupid?” You ask, looking over at your step-brother as he starts driving.

“I wish I knew. You just gotta get lucky and find someone who’s mature and has respect for women, not a douchebag like Rumlow.” You nod, kicking your shoes off and putting your feet up on the dashboard.

“Hey, feet down.” You look over at him and stick your tongue out, keeping your feet up and wiggling your toes.

“What are you gonna do? You gonna make me?” He glances at you out of the corner of his eye and then one of his hands is on your thigh, squeezing the flesh hard and making you squirm, laughter bubbling out of you.

“Stop!” He doesn’t. If anything, it spurs him on and he tickles your thigh more.

“Feet down!” He shouts playfully, loving the sound of your laughter.

“Okay fine!” You finally pull your feet down and he smiles, fingers splaying on your bare thigh. He keeps his hand there for the rest of the drive, blood slowly moving south as he realizes what he's doing and the fact that you haven’t said anything about it.

It feels nice to have his hand on you. You hate that you like it but you do.

When you finally get home, your mom and his dad are pulling out of the driveway.

Steve rolls down his window and you unbuckle your seatbelt, climbing over his lap to stick your head out the window. Steve hits the brakes harder than intended and you fall forward, one hand bracing yourself on his thigh while your skirt flies up, your ass on full display.

“Jesus, Steve. You trying to kill me?” You ask before turning to the window.

“Where are you guys going?” You ask, confused. Your mom raises her eyebrows. “We’ve only been talking about our trip to Vegas for the past four months! We talked about it this morning too!” Realization hits you and you giggle. “Sorry! I hope you guys have fun! But not too much fun. One step-sibling is enough, I don’t need any more.” Steve’s dad laughs, shaking his head at you.

“You kids behave. Don’t throw any parties or anything. The neighbours know we’re gone so if you do anything we’ll know.”

“I don’t have enough friends to throw a party anyway. And Steve is a social outcast so you don’t need to worry about him.” Your mother gives you a look and you raise your eyebrows innocently.

“Be nice to your brother. We’ve gotta get going before we miss our flight. But I’ll talk to you when we land."

They start pulling away again and you stick your head further out the window, kneeling between Steve’s legs as he grabs your waist.

“He’s my Stepbrother!”

They drive off, your mom waving until they’re out of sight, and you sigh, climbing back into the car and looking at Steve.

His hands are still on your waist and he’s got a soft look in his eyes.

“Steve?” He hums, clenching his jaw as you shift on his lap to get comfortable, your thighs spreading as you straddle him.

“Do you think your dad’s gonna get my mom pregnant?” He groans, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

“God no. I don’t even wanna think about that but even if they... you know... my dad got a vasectomy a while ago.” You nod, hands on his shoulders as you purse your lips.

His eyes are focused so intently on them that he doesn’t notice when you open the door.

“First person inside picks dinner! Loser has to pay!” You jump out of the car and sprint inside, leaving Steve stunned and horny in his car.

~*~

The two of you sit on the couch watching movies, Steve with his arm thrown over the back of the couch.

“Hey Steve... can I ask you something?” He looks over at you, nodding and waiting for you to ask whatever’s on your mind.

“Is... do... does...” You groan, shaking your head, beyond embarrassed with yourself.

“C’mon bunny. You can ask me anything and I won’t judge you. You know that.” One of his hands comes to your knee, rubbing gently.

You nod, taking a deep breath before speaking.

“Do guys actually prefer when a girl is experienced? Does it... does it matter to them?” Whatever he thought you were going to ask... it certainly wasn’t this.

He raises his eyebrows and blows a breath out through his mouth.

“Some guys, yeah. I mean, it puts a lot of pressure on them to make sure your first time is good. Which is hard cause each girl cums differently and finds different things good so it’s hard to tell. Some guys like virgins but I think a lot like it if they aren’t a girl’s first just so they don’t have to live up to whatever expectations she may have.” He’s being honest with you and you value that, but it doesn’t exactly make you feel better about your situation.

You sit up and turn to him fully, a frown on your face.

“How do I find someone who’s willing to be my first so I can get it out of the way?” He inhales deeply, trying to take advantage of the situation in a way that won’t clue you into his true intentions. He wants you, but he wants you to think that he’s just helping you.

“You’ve gotta find someone you trust to do something like that, bunny. Someone who’s gonna be gentle with you because it’s gonna hurt a bit.” You frown, scooting closer and leaning your head against his shoulder.

“Where am I supposed to find someone who’s gonna be gentle with me like that? The only guys who even look at me are gross guys like Brock and I don't want someone like him to touch me.”

He brings one hand up to your head, smoothing your hair away from your face.

“I mean... I think I could find someone who would be willing to help you out. Show you the ropes just so you’re not totally inexperienced,” he murmurs, eyes focused on you as you look up at him slowly.

“Who?” His eyes flash down to your lips then back up to your eyes and you inhale sharply, realizing what he’s implying.

He doesn’t give you a second to object before he leans down and presses his lips against yours, making you gasp. He takes advantage of your parted lips and lets his tongue explore your mouth.

It takes a moment but you give in, kissing him back. One of your hands finds his hair, fingers tangling in the blond strands.

He shifts onto his side for a moment, hand grabbing your waist and pulling you forward until you’re straddling his lap.

The ball is in your court and you know you should stop but it feels so right. It’s something so unlike anything you’ve ever felt before and you wanna see where it will go. How it’ll feel to be touched by a man.

You finally pull away, panting hard with your eyes closed.

His hands grip your hips tightly and rock you forward, making you gasp as his hard length rubs against you through the material of your sweatpants.

“Steve wait,” you murmur, head falling back as he attacks your neck with kisses.

“Lemme teach you, Bunny. I’ll take good care of you, show you how it feels to be fucked properly. Please. I don’t wanna see you getting hurt by a guy who doesn’t care about your feelings. I’ll treat you so nice, Bunny, I swear.” His sweet words and the way he feels underneath you is enough to have you nodding.

He grins, one hand wrapping around your back as he quickly flips you onto your back. You gasp, arms wrapping around his shoulders to pull you tight against him.

He grinds against you for a moment longer before slowly pressing kisses down your neck and chest. He pulls away for a moment, just long enough to tear your shirt clean off your body, your bra following soon after.

His mouth kisses your breasts, giving each nipple far more attention than you thought he would. Your fingers are tangled in his hair, lips parted and heavy breaths falling from your mouth as a new type of pleasure builds inside of you.

“You like that?” He asks, eyes dark as he gazes up at you. You nod, bottom lip tucked between your teeth as he uses his thumb and index finger to tweak at your other nipple.

“Steve,” you whisper, arching your back and pushing your chest against his face. His kisses slowly move further down your body, lips leaving a wet trail over your stomach and past your navel.

His eyes are locked on yours as his fingers tug at the waistband of your sweatpants.

You raise your hips without hesitation, nervous but excited.

He’s your step-brother, and it’s wrong, but he’s so sweet to you. If there was one person on the planet who you trust to take your virginity and teach you about sex it’s him.

Your eyes fall closed, partly out of embarrassment as he lays between your naked legs, eyes on your centre.

He hoists your legs over his shoulders and, after making sure you’re eyes are closed, grabs your discarded panties and presses them to his nose. He takes a long inhale and groans, intoxicated by the scent of you.

He tucks them into his pocket then reaches over your hips.

His thumbs spread your folds and you want to close your legs, but he makes it impossible. His tongue darts out and licks a thick stripe from your entrance to your clit.

The sensation makes you jolt and Steve chuckles softly.

“Tell me what you like, Bunny. It won’t offend me. I wanna make you feel good.” You nod, grinding your teeth together and trying to clear the thoughts from your mind and focus on what he’s doing.

He finds your clit surprisingly easily, and you moan when he focuses his tongue on it.

“J-just like that... please...” He complies, working his tongue over the little bundle of nerves while two of his fingers slowly press into your heat.

You groan at the feeling, it being unlike anything you’ve ever felt before. His fingers fill you up more than ever, and he works them inside of you until he hits a spot that has you jolting up, right hand grabbing a handful of his hair.

“Oh fuck,” you whimper, eyes screwed shut as he massages that spot inside of you.

It’s all too much, and in a few moments, you’re cumming all over his face and his fingers.

“Holy fuck. Holy fuck. Oh my god.” Steve’s eyes find your face and he nearly cums in his pants.

The look of pure pleasure on your features is something he wishes he could take a picture of.

You look so fucking pretty when you cum.

He gently works you through your orgasm, pulling away only when your thighs start trembling. You open your eyes after a few more moments only to find him seated between your legs, pink lips glistening as he sucks your nectar off of his fingers.

“Holy fuck,” you repeat, one hand coming to your chest as you slowly catch your breath.

He chuckles softly, leaning down and pressing a gentle kiss to your lips.

“C’mon. M’gonna fuck you on a bed, not on a couch.” He scoops you up in his arms and you wrap your legs around his waist, arms tightly wound around his neck as he carries you up the stairs to his bedroom.

It’s wrong. So fucking wrong, but it feels so good and you trust him so much.

You’re carefully laid on your back on his bed, the blankets cool against your hot skin. Steve kneels between your legs, hands resting on your hips while his eyes devour this image.

You bring your hands up to cover your chest, feeling nervous about being naked beneath him, but he shakes his head and gently takes your hands.

“Don’t hide from me, Bunny. You’re beautiful. Any man who gets to see you like this... is a fucking lucky one.” His eyes trace over your body, his words having lit a fire in his gut.

No other man is ever going to see you like this. He’ll make sure of that.

“C-can you take your clothes off? Please? I feel...” you trail off, embarrassed of both your nudity and your request.

“Of course, Bunny.” He leans back on his haunches and pulls his shirt over his head, giving you a glorious view of his rippling muscles.

Your stepbrother has an amazing body. That much you learned the very first time he took his shirt off to go swimming with you.

He climbs off the bed for a moment, just long enough to kick off his sweatpants and his boxers, and then he’s between your legs again.

You inhale sharply when your eyes find his cock, fear and arousal filling you.

“A-am I... do you want me to...” Your eyes don’t leave his length and he chuckles, one of his hands moving down to slowly stroke himself.

“I just want you to lay back and feel good, okay? It’s gonna hurt a bit, but you gotta relax. I’ll go slow.” You nod, hands instinctively coming to his shoulders as he scoots closer.

“If you’re really curious, I’ll teach you how to give head another day. But today is all about this.” The hot tip presses against your folds and you jump, wide eyes staring up at your step-brother.

“Now, when anyone else ever fucks you, make sure they wear a condom. But for your first time, I want you to get the full experience. It’ll feel better for you this way.” You nod, gripping his strong shoulders tightly as he leans down, hands pressing into the mattress on either side of your torso.

He slides his cock through your folds, watching intently as your eyelids drop and your mouth falls open.

“Feels nice, Bunny? Nice and warm?” You nod, a whimper falling from your lips as his cock rubs against your swollen clit.

He pulls back after a moment more to align himself, then slowly pushes his cock into you.

Your face scrunches up in pain and he stops immediately, pulling back and leaning down until his face is above your heat.

You hear him spit a moment before you feel the liquid splatter against you. He does it a few times and you feel slightly mortified.

“Don’t be shy, Bunny. I just gotta make sure you’re nice and wet. It’ll stop it from hurting as much.” You nod, keeping your eyes closed as he hovers over you again.

This time when he pushes in it doesn’t hurt nearly as much.

He pushes in slowly, his eyes focused on your face as he meets the band of resistance he was waiting for. He slowly pushes further, frowning when you wince and inhale sharply.

He doesn’t want to hurt you, but he has to.

When he’s finally bottomed out inside of you, you let out a big breath.

“Look, Bunny.” You open your eyes and follow his gaze down to where the two of you are connected, your pussy fluttering around him at the sight.

He’s fully sheathed inside of you, and your lower abdomen bulges slightly because of it.

“You’ve got all of my big cock in you. Your pretty pussy is taking me like a champ.” You stare down at where his cock disappears inside of you, a gasp falling from your lips when he pulls out a few inches, only to push it right back in.

“Once I start moving it’ll feel better. Whenever you’re ready, let me know.” You nod, closing your eyes and basking in the feeling of fulness. It’s like you’re finally getting something you didn’t know you needed.

He feels so hot and heavy inside of you, you want to keep him exactly where he is forever.

After a few more moments of adjusting to the intrusion, you open your eyes and lift one hand to cup his jaw.

His eyes snap to yours, a soft admiration clouding his beautiful blues.

You pucker your lips and he smiles, dropping his head and pressing a soft kiss to your lips while slowly starting to thrust.

His pace is slow and steady, pulling out nearly all the way then slowly pushing back in, each thrust stretching your walls further than the last.

“Fuck... you’re so fucking tight... feel so good, bunny.” Your nails dig into his shoulders as he gradually speeds up, each drag against your walls bringing you a type of pleasure you’ve only dreamed of.

“S-steve... feels... feels nice... so big...” You’re hardly making any sense but you speak anyway, toes curling as he speeds up even more.

His lips find your throat and you whine loudly, nails raking down his back.

“M’gonna go harder and faster, okay Bunny? You ready?” You nod, mouth dropping open as he hammers his hips forward, cock hitting places inside of you that make you see stars.

The noises coming from you nearly have him cumming hard, but he grinds his teeth together. He’s determined to make you cum first.

One of his hands darts between your legs, finding your clit and rubbing circles on it.

Your back arches hard, chest pressed tight against his as your eyes roll back into your head, an orgasm racing down your spine and exploding in your stomach.

Every nerve in your body is on fire, stars dance behind your eyes, and your cunt clamps down hard on Steve's cock.

The blond groans lowly, eyes squeezed shut as he falls into his own climax.

He fills you, white painting your walls and warming you from the inside.

The two of you stay like that, you trembling on the bed and Steve slowly starting to shake above you as his muscles threaten to give out.

After a moment he rolls onto his side, pulling you close to him to keep his cock locked inside of you.

His fingers trace along your spine, rubbing up and down so gently that it nearly lulls you to sleep.

“Fucking hell, bunny.” He presses his lips against your forehead, beyond satisfied with what just happened. You hum softly, nuzzling deeper against his chest.

He kicks the blankets up until they’re around his knees then pulls them up to cover the two of you.

You’re snuggled up against him, one of your legs tossed over his hip as his cock sits nice and snug inside of you.

“Thank you, Steve.” He’s quiet for a moment before hugging you tightly.

“Anything for you, Bunny.”

#dark!steve rogers #dark!steve x reader #dark!steve x you #Steve Rogers x reader #stepbrother!Steve Rogers x reader #stepbrother!Steve X reader #stepbrother!Steve Rogers x innocent!reader #stepbrother!Steve X innocent reader #steve x innocent!reader #Steve Rogers x innocent!reader #steve rogers x innocent!reader #dark au #tw: dark fic #dark fic #dark marvel #dark marvel fanfic

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monty-glasses-roxy · 2 years ago

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Tumblr for Those That Just Got Here or Have Forgotten How it Works

Hey so I thought I’d make my own version of Tumblr 101 posts because why not right? The more the better!

First things first! The most important thing to know is there is no algorithm. What does this mean? It means Tumblr doesn’t push content at you. There is no behind the scenes system deciding what to put on your dashboard. Instead, what you see on your dash is only from the people you follow. This essentially means that the algorithm is us. The users. In order to get posts seen by more people, the post needs to be reblogged. Reblogging is the bottom left icon on posts that looks like two arrows and is inbetween the ‘comment’ button and the ‘like’ button.

Reblogging posts doesn’t require you to add anything to it. You don’t need to add a comment or even tags if you don’t want to so there’s no pressure to try and contribute anything to the conversation. Adding tags is not the same as a comment. The person you reblogged from will see them, but tags are typically used for organisation purposes and for saying nice things about the content you’ve just reblogged, without it being visible to everyone. It’s like passing a note to the creator to tell ‘em what you think about their stuff so feel free to do that.

With this all in mind, liking a post does not help visibility. With there being no algorithm, reblogs are the only way to help a post get seen and are appreciated much more than a like or a comment.

Now, one more thing about reblogs is they’re not the same as reposting. Reposting something is when you copy and paste a post and then repost it on your own blog. For example, if you’ve saved an image an artist made and then made a new post with it in, you are reposting. Attention will go to you and not the artist and is considered theft. This applies to all forms of content, be it writing, artwork, music, whatever. Reblogging allows people to interact with the original post through you. All those thousand note posts? Yeah the original poster got notified for every single one of those even if they were likes on someone else’s reblog.

Reblog whatever sparks joy! You don’t need a reason, you don’t need to even really think about it! Reblog whatever makes you smile, whatever you want to share, whatever feels important, whatever makes you life, whatever you think deserves more love, reblog whatever sparks joy!

Moving on, you need to know about the tagging system. This is how you find new people to follow, how you organise your own blog and how you filter content without unfollowing or blocking someone. The tags are the greyed out #’s beneath the main post. You can block any tag you like in your filtering settings and you can search for these tags across all of Tumblr and on just your blog. This means it’s important to tag properly and not tag things that are not in the post. That is considered spam and is a reportable offence so be aware. It’s also important to tag triggers and harmful content. For example, if your post contains flashing lights, it needs to be tagged as containing such so that epileptics can properly filter it.

Tags also function as a way to say things to the original poster without it being a comment, but I already talked about that so moving on.

On Tumblr, You are anonymous! People only know what you tell them here. There’s no visible follower counts, no one checks what posts you’ve liked, you can anonymously send asks to blogs that allow that, people can’t find you from Facebook or your email address, this is Bloggers Anonymous. You are what you say you are and it’s a fun guessing game if you want to know more about someone.

Next up, more on the dashboard! There’s a few things to say about this. First of all, like I said I said early, the content you see is only from the people you follow with the exception of blazed posts and ads. Blazed posts are posts that someone has paid to have spread to other blogs. These do not follow an algorithm either so I suggest an ad-blocker of some sorts to avoid them, just in case. Other than that, what you see is entirely curated by you. If you don’t like the discourse? Unfollow whoever’s reblogging it. If your dash is a little slow? Follow some more people. If it’s too fast? Unfollow someone. Someone reblogs politics but otherwise has a pretty good blog that you like? Filter various common politics tags in your settings and you won’t have to look at them. It’s entirely within your control so have fun with it! Your dashboard is yours and yours alone!

We do have some rules though. Do not interact with brand posts. With people abandoning other social medias, that means companies will soon try and make their mark here. No one wants them here. Ignore them. Use an ad-blocker to avoid them but if you see them? Ignore them. We will starve them off of this platform. Any attention is good attention to them, so give them nothing.

Last thing for now, every account can have several sideblogs associated with it. This is pretty normal and these aren’t just one person with a bunch of different accounts. You can create sideblogs for different interests you have all with one account with only a few drawbacks. You cannot comment and you cannot send asks as your sideblog identity, only your main blog. There’s no harm in having a bunch of sideblogs for anything and everything you want and it can act as a nice way to keep your interests organised if you so want to.

Oh and one more thing, get used to posts being this long. There’s no character limit on these bad boys! We can talk forever!

There’s undoubtedly more stuff I could say, but this will do for now. Have fun on the hellsite lads

#tumblr 101 #psa #/chill #not fnaf

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tetsvhoe · 3 years ago

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ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL SOMEONE CATCHES FEELINGS

character/s: terushima yuuji x f reader

genre/s: suggestive, angst to fluff

warning/s: fwb. mature themes. not for minors.

gwen's notes 🤍: one of my favorite tropes but i kinda don't like how this turned out also my brain is dry why do i keep ending my fics like this n e way this blog is run by a terushima apologist i am so sorry

MASTERLIST | TAGLIST

you have known terushima most of your teenage years. as popular as he was in high school, he was hard not to know. he made johzenji seem smaller than it actually was. he was always around the corner, an arm's reach but you never dared to get closer until your paths crossed again in college. admittedly, he was hot. he was also repulsive but charming at the same time which you deemed impressive of him.

"i know you," he announced, stalking up to where you were sitting next to the window, alone with your thoughts. the sly smirk he always wore on his face seemed to suit him better than you recalled.

you offered a tight lipped smile in return. "terushima right?" you didn't expect him to remember, let alone notice you. not like you were vying to get his attention in the first place.

the way your name rolled off his pierced tongue paired with his boyish smile had you floored for a split second.

"do you have somewhere to be?" he asked as he gathered his things and stuffed it in his backpack.

"not really," you shook your head no as you curtly replied.

"good, let's grab something to eat i know a good place not far from here."

he grabbed your hand which you yanked away to cross your arms above your chest. an eyebrow raised you challenged, "don't you have somewhere to be, terushima?"

hearing you call his name twice in a row had him faltering and he didn't understand why.

"yeah, about to get lunch with a pretty girl."

you held back a smile which ached in your cheeks. "ask me nicely and i'll think about it." you took two strides towards him, making a mental note that this was the closest you'd been with him and that you were much more bold than you usually were.

"would you maybe want to grab some lunch with me, pretty girl?" he tried again, clearing his throat. he smirked down at your meticulous gaze.

you rolled your eyes, walking past him. "i guess i could spare you the time of day."

"for the record," you mumbled cheeks stuffed, legs propped over his dashboard, "this isn't a date."

"bold of you to assume i was asking you out on a date in the first place" he teased, cheeks as stuffed as yours.

"whatever i just wanted free food," you joked making him throw a piece of tissue in poor retaliation.

"this isn't free venmo me my money back, you freeloader."

you let out a lighthearted laugh, wondering how and why it was so easy for you to get along with him. you guessed it was part of his infamous irresistible charm.

"y'know, you're not as dumb as you make it seem." you commented out of nowhere as your head hung upside down from the edge of his bed. there was an attempt to study for finals.

he glanced at you from where he sat, legs sprawled disgracefully over his gaming chair. "is that supposed to be a compliment?"

you rolled over to your stomach, facing him. "no i'm calling you out for being a pick me boy."

he frowned, throwing the nearest thing he could grab which happened to be a dirty sock lying around. shrieking, you threw your 2-inch thick textbook at him and called it quits.

he grabbed the edge of his bed frame to wheel himself closer to you. you strained to keep your head up looking at him otherwise you would end up face to face with his–

he gently grazed his knuckles over your cheek, his touch feathery light against your skin. "sometimes the smartest thing you could do is to play dumb."

terushima never would have thought that you would use his own advice against him; the way you played dumb against his advances. you pretended not to notice the yearning kisses he seared onto your skin. you played dumb to the way he'd flip you over and stare into your eyes with such intensity as he plowed deep inside you. he'd hold your hand in his, pausing to leave gentle loving kisses along your knuckles and wrist, your thighs and calves. you complained against him leaving hickeys higher and higher along your neck, like you didn't know his motives for it. you pretended not to notice how he'd find more and more reasons for you to stay over longer than you used to–"do you want to watch a movie?", "did you eat yet? we should order take out.", "you seem tired, wanna cuddle? or you could always stay the night if you want." you ignored how he touched you, soft and careful, even when you're doing mundane things and not at each other's throats in his bed. you laughed off the quiet compliments he'd give, staring at you with sincerity and vulnerability he swore he doesn't show to anyone else. you reasoned to yourself that when he kissed the parts of you you told him you hated, it was all a mere coincidence. you weren't dumb though. you were afraid. because there was always a reason why you had kept a safe distance from him in the first place.

you were afraid that acknowledging these things meant speaking it into existence–your feelings for him which you promised you wouldn't have before you both started fucking around.

"you're so beautiful," he mumbled in awe, more to himself than to anybody else.

you frowned at him as you popped your head out of his hoodie, your hair a disheveled mess, your lips swollen, eyes glazed over. there were dark circles under your eyes from trying and failing to cram the semester. your skin riddled with little red spots without makeup to buff them out. his clothes did close to nothing for your figure. and terushima thought you were beautiful.

"you're so beautiful," he repeated, louder this time.

tears brimmed your eyes for reasons you didn't understand yourself. his dazed smile was replaced with worry as he caught a glimpse of your distraught features.

"stop that."

"i mean it," he pleaded, trying to reach for you, to hold your hands and kiss it gingerly, to hold you in his arms and stroke your hair. but you didn't let him.

you quickly stood up, not meaning for the tears to fall down your cheeks. "stop it seriously is everything just a goddamn game to you!?" you started to gather your stuff in a panicked haze, but he was quick to jump off the bed and seize your trembling hands.

"no, of course not i mean it i really do i–"

he tried searching your eyes for some kind of sign but you refused to look at him, especially in this state.

"yuuji i know damn well that you know what you do to me," you sobbed, voice cracking and arms falling limp on your sides.

his fingers lifted up your chin, making you look up at him. you stubbornly avert your eyes until it eventually felt like he was burning a hole through you.

"well then let's stop whatever this is between us."

your lips trembled, but before another sob climbed its way up your throat, he added, "i don't want this. i want you. all of you. i like you so much sometimes it feels like your driving me crazy, fuck." he threw his head back, a bitter chuckle resounding from his throat.

"i'm scared, yuuji. i don't want to like you like this."

"well too bad because it sure seems you like me a lot." he sighed as you fell silent again, wrapping his arms around you tightly.

"i understand why you're scared. and we might have done things out of order, but i like you and i want to give us a try. if... if you let me, if that's what you want."

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manonamora-if · 2 years ago

Note

ave u seen the post on wip about likes? guess ur post is WRONG they DO matter!

/rambling again

Hi Anon,

Yeah I saw it too. And it may be true that like to matter in Tumblr's algorithm. I mean, Tumblr's engineers know more about their code than we, the users, do.

Granted, they do have an algorithm (used in stuff in your orbit and "Based On Your Likes!" settings options and the For you tab) that may add posts to your dashboard. And those algorithm are most likely taking into account those likes. Personally, those options and tab felt more intrusive to the enjoyment of my personal dashboard (curated with blogs I actually enjoy), and would show me posts that weren't for me or would have been blocked if it had been tagged properly. I would want to know how many people actually use those options, tho.

Still, I winced at their first point (Firstly, there is actually no imbalance between them, and, interestingly, people have come to believe there’s a problem here). Based on my own experienced and the experiences of other creators I talked to or who talked about this issue on their blog, it doesn't look that way. I didn't say this willy-nilly then and still not saying willy-nilly now. I see more views/play on my itch page when larger blogs reblog my content. If it is not a clear causal link, there must be at least a high correlation there. My goal for that post was more about if you like something and want to support it, here are some ways you can do it and here are some ways that are MORE effective to help a creator see their work being shown. If I didn't believe likes were part of supporting an author, I wouldn't have included it (and at the top too).

At then end, I wouldn't know how Tumblr could fix this issue. They don't think it is an issue based on their response of that ask. The more I think about it the more I see there is probably no good way to fix it to be honest. You can't (and shouldn't) force people to do or not do things on your website (aside from your ToS), same goes for those like/reblog functionalities or their settings options (I WOULD HATE IT if you couldn't disable those). But I think there could be some sort of Best/Better Practice, like encouraging their uses to use the reblog buttons more.

Side note: I glanced through the notes to see what other users are saying about it, some agreed with the response, some didn't, and some made fun of it. But I think it's interesting that one person mentioned how the user culture changed compared to say 10 years ago (same point I made a few days ago) where people rebloged stuff more consistently. I'm sure it was bound to happen, seeing how the use of Internet has evolved overtime.

(I'm not going to edit my original post, if that's what you wanted Anon.)

EDIT: Another point raised in the reblogs of that Staff ask : Reblogs give the opportunity to people to say things (as text or in tags), it creates conversations. Less reblogs, less conversation/interesting points

Reblogs>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Likes

#ask box #likes #reblog #ramble #long answer

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lazywitchling · 3 years ago

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Alright friends, buckle up, pretty sure this is going to be a long one.

Let me start off by saying that I am about to bring up a problem to which I have no solution. I will say what I think we shouldn't do, but I don't know what we should do instead. Someone smarter than me will have to cover that one.

Anyway, all this is regarding this post I made this morning after seeing yet another one of those asks floating around Tumblr. "What do you think of [website]?"

(Actually I'm going to toss this under a cut because it's WAY longer than I meant it to be, but I still think it's important to say)

It seems like a harmless ask. It usually comes with an explanation as to why there's something interesting there at that URL. Maybe not correct or good, but certainly interesting. Just enough to make you curious to go check the website. It's even in the phrasing of the question! They're not telling you they're good or bad, they're just asking what you think. That's harmless... right?

Yeah, no, it's definitely nazis. Not "nazis" as in "uhhh everything I don't like on the internet is nazi", it's nazis as in full-blown anti-Semitism, reptillian-people-control-the-banks... it's gross. I looked up what they're about just so I could tell you, and it's gross. 0/10, do not recommend.

Anyway, here on Tumblr, they send these asks out to various blogs. And over the past couple weeks, I've seen an increasing number of these asks published on my dashboard.

Now, every time I have seen them, the person publishing it has absolutely called it out for being what it is. They'll go into detail about why it's filth, or they'll go for the short-and-not-sweet "Fuck off, you nazi piece of shit". Every time I've seen the ask, it's been refuted.

But I've seen the ask. A lot.

Now... why is that a problem? Why is it a problem to publish the ask and call it out for what it is? Isn't it better for your followers to know what it is so they don't get taken in by it?

Let me tell you two stories.

1. The Cheeseburger

So yesterday for dinner I had a cheeseburger from... the Large Burger Chain (you know the one). Earlier in the day, I had read a post here on Tumblr about a lawsuit involving this Large Burger Chain, in which they had done a shitty thing. It was a funny story, where we got to laugh at the Large Burger Chain for being greedy and awful. "Look how awful those people at Large Burger Chain are. Aren't they the worst?"

So why did I go get a cheeseburger from them? Well, 'cause for the rest of the day, I kept thinking "Damn, a cheeseburger sounds delicious right now." It managed to weasel its way into my brain, and I couldn't stop thinking about cheeseburgers. And of course, that one cheeseburger place stands out in my mind. Until eventually, when out for a drive with Dad, he asked if I wanted anything in particular for dinner, and I said I had a craving for a cheeseburger from Large Burger Chain (It was Burger King).

Now why did I go there after having read about the shitty lawsuit?

Here's the thing about advertising. They know they can't sell you a cheeseburger from one advertisement. One commercial on TV does not make you go "I will now go get a cheeseburger from Large Burger Chain!" It doesn't work that way. But they want to be sure that when you DO want a cheeseburger eventually... they are the one you think of. They want to be the first place you think of.

Let me ask you something. How did you react when I said the name of Large Burger Chain? Because I said it up there in the strikeout. You might not have had a fully thought-out reaction, but I bet you had an instinctive moment where you either thought "I KNEW it was Burger King", or "Oh, I thought it was McDonalds."

Why did you think of the place you thought of? Is it because you like that one better? Is it because there's one down the road from your house that you pass all the time? Did you recently see a commercial for that one? This is a rhetorical question that probably doesn't have a specific answer. But somehow, for some reason or for many reasons, one of those burger places has made it's way into your head and is now the first place you think of when you hear "Large Burger Chain". One place stands out in your mind as The Fast Food Place With The Burgers. Even if you don't like either place, you've heard them advertised enough that they've got into your head.

You seeing where I'm going with this?

The more these asks show up on my dashboard, the more it gets into my head. I, knowing full well what that site is about, have wondered more than once "Hey, I've never actually looked at that website. What does it look like?" or "What is actually on there?" or "I want to go look at how bad it really is."

I can't name off the people who have received and published the ask. I didn't pay that much attention. Each time I saw it was insignificant at the time. But I've seen the website often enough that I can name its exact URL without ever having intentionally memorized it.

BUT JES, you say, WHY IS THAT A PROBLEM? If you KNOW the site is garbage, and you CALL it garbage, then no one is going to get taken in by it, right??

2. The Price Tags

So, I'm a cheesemonger. My job is to sell things to people. I've been in this business for nearly a decade, I've got certifications you probably don't even know exist. I am trained and paid to know how to get you to buy shit.

It's gross and I hate it and I don't use those skills if I can help it, but I have them.

But there's one very very easy tactic that I do use in my cheese department. It's very easy, takes no effort on my part, and it's really effective.

Every price tag is on the back of the piece of cheese.

These are cheeses that are cut to variable weights, with a certain price per pound. Because these cheeses are cut individually, they are priced individually. Smaller ones, bigger ones, whatever you need. Now, the thing is... if you are browsing my cheese wall looking for something interesting, you are going to see cheese, you are going to see names, you are going to see types. You are not going to see prices. If you want to see the price, which is on the back, you know what you have to do?

You have to pick it up.

I have now got the piece of cheese into your hands. And that's one step closer to it being in your cart.

It's not 100%. It's not even 50%. The majority of people who pick up a piece of cheese on a whim to check the price will then put it back down. But not all of them. A lot of people will pick it up, just to check, just to satisfy their curiosity. That one sounds odd, I wonder how much it is? And then it's in their hands, and they shrug, and they toss it into the cart. Because why not?

So WTF does this have to do with anything?

Look, it's a lot of fun to digitally punch a nazi. They come into our ask boxes, and it's so tempting to take a verbal (textual?) swing at them. But the goal is to get their name out there into the ether. It's to put that name in front of all your blog's followers, as many times as possible. Maybe you refute the ask and someone who has never heard of them before now knows who they are. OR maybe this is the fifth time they've seen it on their dash this week, and now they're curious. This group wants to make sure that you know their name off the top of your head, the way you know the name of that Large Burger Chain. And if they can get you to their site, even if it's just to satisfy your morbid curiosity, even if it's just to see how bad it really is, then they've got the piece of cheese in your hands. And yeah, maybe most people put it back. But sometimes it winds up in the cart.

So... what do I do?

Don't feed the trolls. Starve them. Block the anon. Delete the ask. Move on with your day.

As for how to teach people about these assholes? -shrug- That's where you have to ask someone smarter than me. I don't know how to educate people on this stuff without exposing them to it, but my instinct is to not let them control the conversation. Beyond that, you're probably best off listening to the people these groups hate. Find Jewish voices explaining what's so harmful about these people, and boost their voices instead.

Anyway.

That was a tome. Thanks for reading. Don't feel bad if you've ever published an ask they sent you. Individually posted, they don't have a whole lot of power. It's when it becomes a trend that it becomes a problem.

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anosci · 3 years ago

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Robot Badly Plays Wordle

(I decided to make some wordle bots. click readmore to hear about my adventure. I’m pretty sure that dashboard view is broken due to my image usage so check it out on my blog if possible thanks)

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Wordle.

Seeing this game take off in popularity filled me with a single desire: build a series of robots that can play worldle.. but badly.

It’s pretty easy to make a good wordle bot: start with a strong opening word (saint or crane or whatever), use the hints to purge your list of legal words, pick a random word from this new list, repeat.

You can get way better, too. Look at 3blue1brown’s video for details.

But how do we do it badly?

There seems to be 3 vectors of attack.

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Attack Vector 1: Alter Words List

As it says. Adjust your word list. You could sort the list of legal words by the most common words in English, or by letter distribution of something. This sounds boring though, so I mostly ignored it.

But you know what would be funny?

Taking every unique 5 letter word in homestuck, in order, and setting that as the guess list.

This bot still uses [most of] the clues it gets: words with the grey letters are purged from the guess list, greens are treated as yellows, and yellow are kept.

Homestuck fans will recognize the opener as the second word that appears in the story. They may also recognize “enter” from the first command on the first page of the comic.

This is a surprisingly good bot… 40% of the time.

The other 60%, it fails because it turns out that homestuck didn’t use every single word in the english language. (I have a maximum try limit set to 80, hence the gap in the above histogram)

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Attack Vector 2: Color Blind Hints

Ignoring hints. This one is pretty obvious. There’s a few variations on it too.

The homestuck solver above already treated all of the greens as yellows. What would it look like if we used that technique for the full word list? What if we essentially made a robot with protanopia? How would it fare?

Noticeably worse than homestuck.

But at least it never fails within my 80-guess limit.

Here’s an example game (took 13 guesses)

We also can ignore yellow and green entirely, only purging our guess list by removing words that contain grey letters.

This is a bit worse than our colorblind bot, but not by too much.

Here’s an example game (took 14 guesses)

You can kind of think of this bot as “doing its best to press every key on the keyboard”. That’s not its goal, but that’s what ends up happening usually. It only missed a few letters here:

There’s another fun idea within this category that I would call elegant in its simplicity: simply guess random words and ignore all hints until you’ve uncovered every green letter. A green accumulator, if you will.

It turns out that this is extraordinarily bad. The second worst performing thing I came up with.

Wide spread, massive spike at the end, 24% failure rate when given 80 guesses.

Let’s get a better look at that curve by removing the outlier

yeah, what would you call that. Average guess number at 38? bad.

it looks funny though. look at this example game (in a very quick [for this bot anyway] 11 moves)

that cool descending green thing is just a unique artifact of this round.

though... exercise for the reader: make a bot that draws pics with the emoji output.

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Attack Vector 3: Sucky Purge Ideas

This solution is the most obvious but the most boring. Take your hints but don’t purge the list properly. You have insane amounts of control. Want a longer curve? Add more random.

I hate it. I want something more interesting.

Behold: the game of life.

The rules:

Every valid word is put into a rectangular playing field.

If a word is disqualified based on previous hints, then it gets marked as dead.

Otherwise, it’s alive.

One step of Conway’s simulation is run.

The resulting alive words are now part of the list of possible guesses for the next round.

...

It turns out that this kills the entire population extremely quickly.

I made a modification that tries its best to keep the population alive, but it's still very quick to die.

here’s an example game, with a number next to each turn showing how many valid words are left “alive” after Conway’s done with them:

And here’s the board for each state. The first column is the possible answers based on the hints given, the second column is a basic function I wrote that tries to keep valid guesses alive by adding neighbors where it can. The third is after Conway’s rules are applied: The final list of words for the next guess.

After that it’s all empty. Population collapse in 7 turns. Not great. Despite everything, it only has a 27% fail rate. I think it might actually be an error in my code somewhere? idk man.

here’s the histogram (with failures removed)

Remember when I said my Green Accumulate solver was the second worst thing I came up with? This one's the worst.

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Attack Vector 3 but Better: Black Pixel Adder

So if the game of life is too messy to use, why not just make my own version. Simpler rules.

Treating the word of lists as just a list, without putting it into a 2D grid: 1. If there’s 16 valid words in a row, it’s overpopulated. Kill the one in the middle 2. Always reactivate a valid word that’s exactly in the middle of two existing valid words.

I call it the game of loaf.

In practice, it’s slightly better than life, but worse than being colorblind. More importantly, it doesn’t collapse.

it did whittle down to a few scant word candidates quickly, but the pixels danced around enough to eventually reach the correct answer (...with the exception of its 26% failure rate). You can see how I add pixels at each midpoint with those last three diagonal pixels in the bottom right. It’s dumb, but it functions.

here’s the game for the above, or at least the first few moves. (it took 37 guesses)

The histogram? pretty similar to life, and somehow a slightly faster uptick than the green accumulator bot.

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Bonus Vector 1: Build a Robot Brain

AI and Machine Learning and Artificial Neural Networks have been popping lately. What better way to play a game badly than failure by overengineering?

My implementation actually simplified a lot but I believe it still technically qualifies as single layer ANN with 5 groups of 26 one-hot encoders.

Each connection is set to 1/26 instead of a random value, so this indeed starts out with completely random strings of characters. Once a random guess can be found in the valid word list, it’s submitted to the wordle, and the hints are fed back into the AI to adjust the probability of each letter.

Grey -> reduce chances of using the letter Yellow -> increase chances of using that letter, slightly (in all spots) Green -> increase chances of using that letter

This works eventually, and surprisingly well. Or at least I was surprised. This thing had room for 80 guesses but never went over 60. Look at this curve.

On the other hand, it never went below 6 guesses.

Take a look at this example game (22 guesses). The number on the right side indicates how many of the randomly generated words were garbage, outside of the valid words list.

You’d think it would get better over time but no.

Look at this selection of every 20th guess before the final answer:

there’s definitely a pattern but it’s still filled with random noise.

overall it’s not a great bot, but it’s kinda fun to watch. you want to cheer it on as it learns and unlearns each letter. “c’mon, you had 3=o before! nooo! it’s not v! you can do this!”

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Bonus Vector 2: The Final Lousy Idea

Watching some of these bots fill their wordle with near-misses gave me an idea: what if I made a bot that tries to fail?

This is actually a delicate balance if you refrain from cheating. You need to find out what the word is as quickly as possible, and then you need to actively avoid it with the remaining guess list. Anagrams preferred.

For this, I essentially combined the colorblind bot with the greenaccumulator bot, except once all of the green letters were discovered, it stopped purging the list and started just throwing each remaining entry out (except the correct one).

Sadly, it’s fairly good at ending quickly because of the need to find the “real” answer quickly

but when it goes on... it’s a sight to behold. I’m going to leave you with this full game: 54 guesses.

s/o to chordbug for the open sourced wordle clone that I used as the basis for all of this. s/o to suckerpinch for inspiring fun exercises like this.

Thanks for reading

#long post #wordle

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