#personally I only reblogged it for the commentary

[thcbolter]

(No "see results" option because I find that more non-gifmakers than actual gifmakers will engage with the poll if there's an option like that. If you aren't a gifmaker, this poll is not for you.)

[bidokja]

I was joking a while back that the actor they have playing KDJ for the orv movie was too handsome for him and a friend who's read orv was like "KDJ is actually secretly attractive!!" And I just felt my soul leave my body right then

SIGHS...

Okay. Buckle in. I'm gonna finally actually address and explain and theorize about this whole...thing.

I'm not gonna cite any exact chapters cause it's like 11:30 and I've got an 8 hour drive in the morning but I'll at least make an approximate reference to where certain things are mentioned. Also, this post is just my personal interpretation for a good bit of it, but it's an interpretation I feel very solid about, so do with that what you will. Moving on to the meat of things:

There is one (1) instance in the web novel that I know of which describes specific features of Kim Dokja (especially ones other people notice). This takes place when members of KimCom are trying to make Kim Dokja presentable to give his speech at the Industrial Complex (after it's been plopped down on Earth). This is when they start really paying attention and focusing on Kim Dokja's appearance since they're putting makeup on him; I still don't think they can interpret his whole face, but they can accurately pick out and retain more features than usual. If I remember correctly they reference him having long eyelashes, smooth skin, and soft hair. These features can be viewed as (stereotypically) attractive.

Certain parts of the fandom have taken this scene and run with it at a very surface level, without realizing (or without acknowledging at the very least) that this scene is not about how Kim Dokja looks. This is, in part, due to not realizing or acknowledging why Kim Dokja's face is "censored" in the first place, and what that censoring actually means. I think it's also possible that some people are assuming the censorship works like a physical phenomena rather than an altered perception.

I'll address that last point first. The censorship of Kim Dokja's features is not something as simple as a physical phenomena. It's not a bar or scribble or mosaic over his face. If that were true it'd be very obvious to anyone looking at him that his face is hidden. But his face is not hidden to people. They can look at him and see a face. If they concentrate on his eyes, they can see where he's looking. They know when he's frowning or grinning. They see a face loud and clear. But what face are they seeing? Because it's not really his, whatever they're seeing.

No one quite agrees on what he really looks like. And if they try and think about what he looks like, they can't recall. Or if they do, it's vague, or different each time. We notice these little details throughout the series. Basically, Kim Dokja's face is cognitively obscured. Something - likely the Fourth Wall, though I can't recall if this is ever stated outright - is interfering with everyone's ability to perceive him properly. This culminated in him feeling off to others; and since they don't even realize this is happening, they surmise that he is "ugly."

Moving on to the other point about what the censorship means: To be blunt, the censorship of his face is an allegory for his disconnect from the "story" (aka: real life, and the real people at his side). The lifting - however slight - of this censorship represents him becoming more and more a part of the "story" (aka: less disconnected from the life he is living and the people at his side). The censorship's existence and lifting can represent other things - like dissociation or depersonalization or, if you want to get really meta, the fact that he is all of our faces at once - but that's how I'd sum up the main premise of it. (The Fourth Wall is a larger part of the dissociation allegory, but that's for another post).

So you see, them noticing his individual features isn't about the features. It's not about the features! It doesn't matter at all which features got listed. Because they could describe any features whatsoever and it would not change the entire point of the scene. Because the point isn't what he looks like. The point is that they can truly and clearly see these features. For the first time. They are seeing parts of him for the first time. Re-read that sentence multiple times, literally and metaphorically. What does it mean to see someone as they are?

This is an extremely significant turning point dressed up as a dress-up scene.

---

P.S. / Additionally, I'm of the opinion that Kim Dokja is not handsome, and he is not ugly. He is not pretty, and he is not ghastly. Not attractive, nor unattractive. Kim Dokja isn't any of these things. More importantly, Kim Dokja can't be any of these things. The entire point of Kim Dokja is that you cannot pick him out of a crowd; he is the crowd. He's a reader. He's the reader. Why does he need to be handsome? Why must he be pretty? Why is him being attractive necessary or relevant? He doesn't, he doesn't, it's not. He is someone deeply deeply loved and irreplaceable to those around him, and someone who cannot even begin to recognize or accept that unless it's through a love letter masquerading as a story he can read. He is the crowd, a reader, the reader. He's you, he's me. He's every single one of us.

[blackwinged-soul]

Fellas, is it cringe to reblog all of the posts you put on an RP blog for a "muse" who turned out to be a kintype?

(I also had a lot of "headcanons" that I think were based on noemata, and I want to look back on what I had Assumed and see if I've discovered I was Totally Wrong about anything, or if anything Turned Out To Be True in My Timeline...)

I have to go to work tomorrow morning and thus must go to bed soon, but I think I'll be doing that this week.

[the-lark-ascending69]

People moving from Twitter to Bluesky talking about how nice the vibe in Bluesky is because it's like a little community without an algorithm overlord behind you and it's just people sharing art and stuff - my brother in christ y'all literally just wanted tumblr

[magnusbae]

Your obikin rants when you reblog my post are my daily delight, please never stop 🥰

Oh you darling 😌🤭🥰 I'm glad that it is amusing to you. I often do wonder about the people who just get a massive text block in their activity and then just proceed to do it anyways -amused- it's good it provides for good reading material 😌😏😏

[heartshapedcreaturefromcriptoon]

Yeah and by "collateral damage" I mean that when I reblog something on this reblogging website from someone I'm following, and the post is fandom related or whatever, and I decide I wanna reblog and add something that's also fandom related that only me and four other people will understand, and the commentary I'm adding is something completely innocuous and has absolutely nothing to do with an OP whatsoever, and I'm just minding my own business, then I fully expect an OP to keep their hands the fuck off the keyboard, PO (Piss Off) and do the same, or finally learn how to use the damn block function if they don't approve of me sharing my fandom taste on a fucking fandom post... Because if an OP decides to randomly reblog my addition just to clown on it at best or send me public suicide bait on their own post at worst and they don't have the sense to block me? I'm gonna smash that entire clown car with a bat before burning it....

i post for me and like four of my mutuals and the rest is just collateral damage

[thattouceyboy]

There is absolutely nothing worse than knowing now that I wasn't getting better. I just wasn't. I thought I was, but I was just riding some weird manic high that crashed so hard that now I'm hallucinating and having extreme panic and rage and I'm paranoid and I thought I was okay. I really, really thought I was doing better.

[fratboycipher]

obligatory welcome guide for redditors

A lot of the guides I've seen don't actually seem to understand how reddit works in comparison to tumblr so

your blog is basically your own small subreddit. some people curate this heavily to fit a theme, like a sub, most people don't

reblogs are culturally equivilant to upvotes but functionally equvilant to crossposting

there is an algorithm. it sucks and nobody uses it. turn it off in settings. everything is generally chronological

likes are functionally equivilant to saving a post

you've probably already seen this but change your icon and put something in your bio or people WILL assume you're a bot. personal info not required

generally, anything you would put as a comment on a thread should go in the tags or the replies of a post. only add comments in reblogs if you want it to become part of the base post

tags are mostly equivilant to flairs, used for organization and commentary

your dashboard is an aggregation of everyone you follow

there is an r/all equivilant(trending page) but it sucks and nobody uses it

our search also sucks. your best bet is using tumblr.com/tagged/[TAG] and not /search

there are no mods

by extension, reporting something doesn't put it in front of the mods, it sends it to staff, who may or may not do anything(usually they don't)

there is no karma, there are no karma limits. anyone can reblog anything, comment/reply to anything, or post in any tag

"reposting"(reblogging) old content doesn't matter. people can and will reblog the same post multiple times, including in a row

CAVEAT. reposting someones art(NOT reblogging, making a new post) is a dick move. i know this is commonplace on fandom subs but its not necessary here. everything you post should be [OC] unless you are reblogging. or posting shitty memes

we have our own sitelore, you'll pick it up

(though im not opposed to bringing some over from reddit)

our app also sucks. we do not have third party apps and any that claim to be are scams. sorry

for desktop, most people use the XKit Rewritten extension for QoL improvements and to revert shitty aesthetic updates, much like old.reddit

we have no idea where the porn rules are at either. add a mature content flag to anything you'd get fired for looking at at work, that's about it

finally, from the bottom of my heart, fuck u/spez

[askshivanulegacy]

you misread that aita post. they aren't digging up dirt on other people- they made the callout post about themself

No, I got that. Guess I wasn't that clear about it - I meant that they're digging up enough on other people to determine how those other people are enjoying a fandom and then judging them for it. If someone isn't enjoying the fandom in the right way (shipping the way that person wants characters to be shipped), then that person goes out of their way to bother people who reblogged their art with their own callout post.

I just think that:

If you're so obsessed about your own perfect way of interpreting fandom that you cannot stand it when other people who think differently reblog your art, you need a new life hobby.

If you HAVE to be so obsessed and controlling about who reblogs your stuff, there are ways to do that without bothering people until they delete the reblog, which is what the person is doing. Dunno about anyone else, but I would personally never delete the reblog out of pure spite. XD

These people who that person is targeting did absolutely nothing except enjoy the fandom the way it was presented to them, and the person is butthurt about it.

You actually should be grateful and appreciative when someone reblogs your art. You can't pick your audience and all different kinds of people are going to like your art and you need to make peace with that fact. Also??? it's a GOOD thing???? Like

Anyway. I get people think the asker was funny, but I just think they're being a gatekeeper and quite a bit dumb about outing themselves to random strangers online over something as trivial as a reblog. XD

This is tumblr and people reblog stuff. If you're here, you've GOTTA be okay with that. You can't go around wasting your time and energy trying to investigate who people are when they are having nothing to do with you other than them reblogging your stuff or you reblogging their stuff. If you can't, then this is not the platform for you.

[logicheartsoul]

[ID: A video of a man putting white tape on black paper saying “make trash art” and coloring over it with pink, green, and yellow marker, until he peels the tape away and defines the outline of the words with thicker white marker, and then used colored markers in dot and dash shapes inside in green, pink, and yellow markers. He splatters white paint over it.

During the process of making this art, he voices over saying: Apparently a lot of people have forgotten you can do things just because you want to.

I saw this video yesterday of someone making a bowl. The process was ridiculously convoluted. They stuck a bunch of construction paper together with resin. Chopped it up into pieces. Put those pieces in a bigger bowl. Added more resin. Put it on a lathe to carve it out. All sorts of ridiculous steps. It was so cool. I absolutely loved it.

The comments did not agree. “Or I’ll just buy a bowl at the dollar store.” “So much effort for nothing of value.” “Pointless.” This wasn’t a ‘DIY bowl you can make it at home!’ video. Not a ‘use this hack to make a bowl!’ video. Not a ‘hey you can buy this bowl in my shop for $400’ video. It was clearly an art video. It was showing a wild but super interesting process.

People are so far removed from the concept that you can just do something silly to have fun and see how it works out. That you can make something just because it sounds like a blast to do. That all the extra steps, effort and time is the entire point.

It’s kind of sad to me that this very simple concept seems to go right over a lot of people’s heads. Art doesn’t have to be practical or make money to be great. Hell, it doesn’t even have to look good. It just has to make you feel like you’re expressing yourself. The insane process of making this bowl is what made it so cool.

And despite what commenters were saying, it turned out gorgeous. But even if it came out a hot mess, it still would have been fascinating. This bowl was not trash art. It was really good. But it made me think about how trash art is the most fun to make. You just get to play around free from expectations of perfection or money. To me, that’s exactly what art is.

Start doing weird stuff and make trash art. You’ll have a lot of fun. And hey, it just might turn out pretty cool.]

Co-signed

[acewizardinspace]

I have so many posts I want to make but I know they would be controversial and my anxiety can't take people being mean to me

[quicktimeeventfull]

how to make your fic easily findable

okay hello everyone! here is my somewhat solicited guide on how to make your fics easier for interested readers to find. 

please note that this is a guide to help you make your fics discoverable, not to make them popular(tm.) it’s also not a guide as to the best way to post fic. you do not need to do these things. doing these things will not make people like your fic more or less than they would otherwise. i do not do all these things, either. my aim here is purely to provide suggestions that will make your fic easier to search for and share.

where to post your fic

post it on ao3 as an individual fic. authors are often hesitant to post short fic on ao3, but readers simply cannot find it if it’s not there. multi-chapter drabble collections are a matter of preference and are absolutely fine to use, but in terms of findability they’re really hard for readers to pass around or put on rec lists. 

you can also post your fic on tumblr. ime fic posted in full is way more likely to be reblogged than an outward link. long fic posted on tumblr should use a read more cut, but at least a paragraph should be above the cut.

should i make a promo post? 

yes. ao3 does not have any features that facilitate promoting fic -- if you don't make a promo post, people will only see your fic if they regularly browse through newest fics or actively search for one of its tags.

what should i put in a tumblr promo post? 

a tumblr promo post should generally contain: 

title 

pairing

name of the fandom

summary of fic

link to fic 

your tags should contain

pairing 

name of all major characters

name of fandom 

the word ‘fic’ (so people who hate fic in the tags can filter it out. be polite!)

other optional inclusions: 

rating (explicit, teen, etc) 

word count 

major tropes

graphics (don’t forget alt text!) 

a sample of your writing (it’s common to grab a ‘best-of’ passage from within your fic, but personally i’ve found you get a way better response if you paste the first couple paragraphs then add a ‘continue’ link at the end.)

tumblr does remove posts with certain keywords from the tags, but honestly these keywords are very minimal. if you’re worried your post might not be added, double-check ‘latest’ and find an alternative phrase if necessary. don’t censor the word. you do not need to repost — tumblr will pop it back in as soon as you’ve removed the word. (it won’t push it back to the top, though, so it’s best to correct this asap.) 

a further note on tags

use the most commonly used tag. look at other people’s posts to find the fandom norms. it is fine to add multiple variations of the same tag. 

this is especially important if the tag is ambiguous. for example: ‘near’ is the most commonly used name for the death note character, but the full name ‘nate river’ should be included as well. take into account that a lot of people use plain searches rather than tag searches. an ambiguous name might be usable as a tag but not as a plain search. top vs latest searches will also give dramatically different results — ‘top’ searches tend to retrieve appropriate results with ambiguous names, but ‘latest’ results won’t.

what should i not put in my tumblr promo post? 

self-deprecating statements. this isn’t a moral statement. people just don’t like to read things if the author is telling them it’s bad

criticism of other people’s work, even if it’s really general. ‘i usually hate hurt/comfort but i wrote this anyway’ is obviously going to alienate the vast majority of your readerbase

anything unrelated to the fic. if people can’t tell whether or not something is a personal post, they’ll be hesitant to reblog. if you want to add commentary, put it in a second reblog. 

what should i include in my ao3 summary? 

this is a bit of a moving target. some readers like fairly detailed summaries. other readers look to tags for content information and prefer abstract vibes-based summaries. my suggestion would be to include the main selling points of your work — the characters, the tropes, and whatever factors make it unique.

at the end of the day, though, basically anything other than ‘i suck at summaries’ is fine.

what ao3 tags should i include?

any major pairings, any major characters, any major tropes. imagine your fic from a reader’s perspective — what tags would they look under if they were searching for something like it? 

also pay attention to whether or not an ao3 tag is canonical. only canonical tags can be filtered on. if it autocompletes, it’s canonical.

for more information on a specific tag, click into the tag to reach the ‘x works in TAG’ screen, then click it again. tags are often made synonyms of specific canonical tags, in which case filters will treat them as if they’re that tag. you can get pretty granular with all of this but basically if you use tags that autocomplete you’re good to go.

you can also use tags to clarify content. (ex. ‘this trope is only a minor aspect of the story.) ao3 used to ask people not to do this, but it’s now explicitly permitted. 

does posting time matter? 

yes. sorry. it does. quite a bit, frankly.  people often overthink this — there are so many variables trying to find the exact perfect time is a losing game — but it is absolutely worth taking into account. 

when should i post?

on ao3: do NOT post between 12AM and 5AM UTC. ao3 has a longstanding posting glitch that will backdate your work if it’s posted between these times. in general: broadly speaking fic tends to do best on sundays and worst on friday. posting on a holiday dramatically drives down traffic. fic should be posted on ao3 when most people would likely have time to read (ex. after the standard workday) and promo posts should be posted when people would likely be looking for fic (ex. commuting hours aka slightly before 9AM and at 5PM.) the majority of tumblr users operate in EST. 

the university semester also makes a massive difference to how much engagement a fic gets — views always shoot up during breaks and plummet during exams. honestly working around this would require delaying your fic so frequently that i can’t see it being worth it, but it’s good to be aware of in terms of the response you’re expecting. 

also the ‘best’ posting time does vary a lot genre by genre so you’ll have to experiment a bit. (personally i’ve found h/c tends to do better midweek, for example.) imagine your fic from a reader’s perspective: when would you likely be looking for this sort of thing? 

anyway don’t drive yourself crazy with this but also don’t shoot yourself in the foot by posting at 2AM EST on christmas morning. do you have a random piece of advice about posting on ao3? please be aware that if you write your fic as a draft, ao3 will backdate the fic to the day you saved the draft and index it accordingly -- it won't show up in the newest fics. multichapters initially posted as drafts will sometimes glitch and backdate every single new chapter. you can correct this by checking the 'set a different publication date' box and manually inputting it.

should i reblog my own promo posts? yes. do this. do it multiple times. make sure you do at least one reblog in the morning, one in the night, and one on the weekend.

i feel like authors are often embarrassed to reblog their own work because it feels self-important but the fact is most people are not reading your blog start to finish. no one will see all your reblogs. tbh you may lose followers for this but this is is a guide on fic visibility, not tumblr popularity. 

please conclude your post now

anyway!! i hope some of this is helpful. again, you don't need to do any or all of this, but i hope it can provide a bit of a framework and some suggestions.

[torawro]

I’D DIE FOR YOU (AND I HAVE). ( s.a. )

sousuke aizen & black!fem!reader.

cw ━━ ! minors, blank and ageless blogs DO NOT INTERACT. reader is portrayed as a black woman but you do not have to imagine her that way. using this map of the seireitei as a reference (i searched high and low for a consistent accurate one but it was hard). the first half is set pre-ryoka invasion / pre-soul society arc. the second half is aizen-centric (from his pov told from the 3rd person) and set post-tybw arc, years after he was sealed away in mugen, also including mention of events from vol. 1 of can't fear your own world (a light novel that's post-tybw & can be considered canonical); so all this being said: SPOILERS i guess???? of course you're welcome to read if you don't care about spoilers! somewhat based on 'die for you' by the weeknd & even more loosely based on 'dark red' by steve lacy. contains themes of heavy-ish angst, existential crises (?) & inner emotional turmoil within reader + aizen (separately). descriptions of character death, blood and violence. descriptions of manipulation/mind games. aizen is an unkind man. proofread (i did my best).

word count ━━ 11k

notes ━━ ! the way this fic was supposed to finished a month ago...but life once more gets in my way. and the way that it's this long....i anticipated the max being 10k but i greatly underestimated how long it would take to flesh out my idea. anywho i'm somewhat reentering my bleach era again. i’m not sure what it is but character analyses in the form of fanfiction is my jam rn like i really enjoyed writing this (i got tired of the length by like... 7k words lmao) but i like how this turned out. i've watched & read quite a bit of content that provide explanations as to why aizen is the way he is so i wanted to try my own portrayal of that in the context of canonical events. how i characterized him here is partially inspired by a fic i read about him last year so shout out to them for their support :D i hope i've depicted and humanized aizen well ♡. reblogs + commentary are heavily appreciated!!!!!

THE PAD OF YOUR THUMB SLOWLY glided against your bottom lip, the lingering aftertaste of jasmine tea still on its surface and on your breath. The absentminded motion of your thumb caressing your mouth, as if in deep contemplation, continued as you stared at the clock hanging on the wall above you.

It was past eleven, and the midnight hour only continued to draw near as time sustained its temporal march. And there you sat at your desk, floating in the limbo of your mind that was filled with hesitancy and admittedly, budding anticipation.

Your gaze lowered to the now empty porcelain cup, nothing remaining of its contents except the shriveled remnants of herbs and a few wayward drops of the brew.

Your senior comrade, captain Sōsuke Aizen, was correct in his prediction that you'd take a liking to its floral and delicate taste when he gifted you a jar full of the jasmine tea leaves as well as other ingredients.

The captain of Squad 5 seemed to be correct about a lot of things.

His intelligence and foresight, along with his kind and politely witty disposition, were qualities that you found somewhat charming, and gradually drew you closer to him.

Being the current third seat of the 9th company, your barracks and those of squad 5's were relatively close to each other's, so often you'd catch glimpses of and run into Captain Aizen on a pretty normal basis. Over the years, the conversations that bounced between the two of you expanded past the realm of formalities between a higher and lower ranking officer, and instead ranged in territories from literature, to art, to food & drink, and even to the politics of the government for which they were soldiers for.

Sometimes, you found it hard to believe that you managed to befriend a man like him. A man who seems to have mastered the balance between being a gentle soul, helpful to others, but also possessed enough refined power and skills to be named a captain within the Gotei 13.

Especially a man who wasn’t even of your own squad.

Despite the increasingly friendly relations and generally pleasant conversation, there were few moments where Aizen's words didn't feel quite. . . . real━ he didn't feel real. He spoke eloquently, often relying on figurative language to further illustrate his point and to breathe meaning into seemingly plain and meaningless words. But at times those words, his tone felt stained; stained with some substance or color you couldn't quite place. An enigmatic façade was painted over his speech, and it took too much mental capacity to try and find your own meaning in it.

So you'd often brush it off. Your over-reliance on your own reasoning that 'you weren’t able to come to a conclusion because there is no problem a conclusion could be generated from' successfully quieted your mind’s voice. You'd also frequently blame exhaustion, or your newfound hobby of watching human psychological crime shows during your off days for these subconscious ideas you had.

But you feared that the request Aizen made of you yesterday, the source of your current predicament, couldn't be blamed on any of those things. You looked at the clock again before returning to stare at your empty tea cup. For what reason could Sōsuke Aizen wish to meet you outside of the 1st division barracks? Specifically at this hour? You immediately thought of his question as uncharacteristic of him but prevented yourself from jumping to any further conclusions.

Aizen was a reasonable man, and you were sure there was a reasonable explanation.

With a final sigh of acquiescence, you stood up from your sitting position to retie your yukata before slipping a thicker, dark colored haori on top. You were unsure how cold it was this late at night or how long you'd be out, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

You paused for a moment, glancing longingly at your vanity mirror a few times, clearly torn between a decision, before giving in with a soft groan. Grabbing your favorite perfume, you quickly spritzed the spray onto both your inner wrists, either sides of your neck, and stray areas on your clothes. You’d proceed to make sure your hair was in order and your lips were as moisturized and glossy as a pair of tear-filled eyes before making your way to the door and slipping on your sandals.

Meeting with a captain— with Aizen of all people— in the dead of night resembled too closely to forbidden lovers rendezvousing under a fruit tree to fulfill their desires of embracing one another, with no one but the moon as their witness. The comparison alone caused the apples of your cheeks to burst aflame with embarrassment, and you lightly chastised yourself for even indulging in such an inappropriate train of thought. Such a scenario seemed far too deluded to even be considered ‘wishful thinking’.

But those delusions still seemed to make more sense than whatever other conclusion you have yet to reach.

Making your way out of your personal quarters, you activated your shunpo technique, stealthily hopping from one rooftop to the other in an effort to make it to Squad 1 barracks quicker.

After several minutes, your mind mostly engulfed with the 'what if's', the soles of your sandals finally touched ground, and you stood a few feet away from the massive walls and bridges that connected to and from the barracks. Even at night you were able to make out the bold-printed kanji for the number 1 that was painted on the building.

When you arrived, even from a nearby rooftop, you didn't see anyone around. Feelings of confusion and worry began to creep up and flicker to life in your mind.

But, as if your thoughts were as audible, you felt a light breeze of wind behind you, a familiar sound that indicated someone had made their presence known.

Startled, you reflexively reached for your zanpakuto, when you remembered that you hadn't even brought it with you. It still laid against the wall near your bed, just where you placed it earlier when you were relieved of your duties for the day.

You didn't think you needed it necessarily if you were just going to meet with Aizen, hence why taking it with you slipped your mind.

The flickers of concern were swiftly extinguished as your brain caught up with your body upon realizing who just appeared. A relieved sigh left your lips, a breath of air that seemed to release all the tension that had a grip on your heart and wound tight within your muscles. "Ah! Good evening Captain Aizen. You caught me off guard for a moment there."

"My apologies, that was not at all my intention." The Fifth Division Captain sported a dark colored scarf, his long captain's coat and the standard shihakushō all Gotei officers were supposed to wear. In the sash around his waist resided his own sheathed zanpakuto. His tawny hair maintained its usual part but looked slightly tousled, yet still remaining so in a meticulous fashion that made it look intentional.

The state of his hair alone, and his current facial expression made Aizen look more . . . approachable if that’s how you were to describe it. There was a glint in his eyes that you had seldom seen before.

"Thank you, for making your way down here to accommodate my rather. . . . atypical request. I again extend my apologies if I have inconvenienced you in any way."

You shook your head in reply, "It's alright, I wasn't doing anything too important anyway. Just having a cup of tea and delighting myself in a book before bed."

You glanced downwards at the foot or so of space that was wedged in between the two of you. You forced away the murmurs of your lingering thoughts that took note of how the moonlight and shadows danced across the surface of Aizen's face just right, and emphasized his decidedly handsome features.

"But having a complete and good night's rest is important to be fully functional in all areas of one's performance. Wouldn't you agree?"

You couldn't help but chuckle softly. "Yes, I do agree with that sentiment."

Aizen all but hummed in acknowledgement, letting a moment of silence fill the air before speaking again.

"Shall we be on our way?"

You nodded in agreement, following him as the both of you walked about the First Division grounds. From what you could tell based on your position, your aimless nightly stroll drew you closer to where Sokyoku Hill was located. The area became increasingly more grassy and contained less buildings.

Although Squad 1 grounds weren't terribly far from either of your barracks, you still weren't sure as to why Captain Aizen wished to meet out here. Initially you thought that perhaps he was just fond of this particular scenery, but really it could have been anything.

But still, you believed Aizen always had a purpose for everything he did.

After several moments, his warm voice replaced the evening silence, vocalizing your current thoughts. “I assume you are contemplating why it is I have asked you here, and I’m afraid the reason is quite benign. Truthfully, I just wished for your company. I often go on night walks to clear my head after a long day and thought I might invite you to join me this time, and have a conversation with each other."

Your brows shifted upwards, for that was not quite the answer you were expecting. It seemed too . . . simple. “Really? You just . . . wanted to talk with me? Plainly?”

The Squad 5 captain let out a short, soft laugh at the disbelief that was painted on your face. There was an expression of fondness present in his eyes and in the light smile he offered you. “Yes, exactly. I quite enjoy our discussions actually, they’re intellectually stimulating and relatively pleasant. You crossed my mind, and before yesterday, it has been quite some time since we’ve had the opportunity to unwind and talk.”

You hummed an mhmm in agreement, tearing your eyes away from Aizen’s side profile in favor of the hem of his captain’s haori, watching how it danced in the soft breeze. It seemed to be less distracting than the way Aizen peered down at you from time to time.

"I see. I am. . . . truly flattered by your words, Captain Aizen; you're too kind. Forgive me for asking but," you took longer strides so that you could fall into step next to him━ as if to speak to him more directly, "Why at this time? To talk with me, I mean. It couldn't wait until more . . . . . conventional hours?"

He chuckled again, and answered as smoothly as if he were awaiting you to ask him that. "Unfortunately, today's tasks ran a little long today, so I had to stay at my office later than usual." The spectacled man paused for a moment, before setting his soft gaze on you, "And besides, that completely defeats the purpose of inviting you on a night stroll, doesn't it?"

You ignored the heat flaring up in your cheeks again. Your mind refused to move past the fact that you had crossed Sōsuke Aizen's mind enough times━ or the times that he thought about you were significant enough━ and highly enough to invite you into his realm and indulge in these moments with him, when he very much could have done that alone.

A tender smile appeared on your lips, more towards yourself than the man next to you. "I. . . suppose it does."

The ashen-white moon only rose higher in the sky, providing an ambiance of tranquility as the both of you talked about whatever crossed the surface of your minds. Other times, the stillness of the night did the talking, and you'd listen to the leaves, and the wind, and the crickets sing together in harmony. Gradually as you walked and the beaten path grew more narrow, your figures drew closer together, until you could feel the long sleeves of his haori brush against your own.

You hadn't noticed that the two of you eventually stopped walking and paused under a tree until Aizen struck up conversation once more. When he called out your name in that gentle, velvety voice, you swore your heart was going to lurch out of your chest. The sound of your name rolled of his tongue so smoothly, the desire to hear it again grew within you.

"Uh━ yes, Captain Aizen?"

"Are you satisfied with way things are at the moment?"

You stood next to him, perplexed at his inquiry due to its vague nature. "Um, what. . . . things? I'm afraid I don't understand what you're asking."

The wind brushed Aizen's dark ochre tresses across his face as he took a step towards you, like the breeze itself was pushing him towards you. "Hm, perhaps I should be more clear then. Are you content with being a soul reaper? Are you satisfied with being a soldier for the Soul Society?"

With your brows slightly furrowed in thought, you remained silent for several seconds and overanalyzed his every word, trying to predict where he might be steering the conversation now. The longer you thought it over, the stronger that nagging feeling from within your soul became. The one that often told you what he was asking wasn't exactly . . . it didn't quite feel . . . . .

"This feels like a prelude to another insightful discussion on Shinigami━ and by extension━ Seiretei politics." Your words cut off your own thoughts, as if your mind was trying to sweep something under the proverbial rug.

Aizen huffed in amusement, before lightly shrugging, leaving your statement definitively unanswered.

You sighed as you seriously considered his question this time. "I mean sure, I guess. I'm somewhat satisfied with my job and all of . . . this," gesturing your hands in the air around you to emphasize your point. The 5th Division Captain made another humming noise, indicating that you still had his full attention. He inched a little closer into your personal space.

The mere action caused your next words to die in your throat and a quiet chuckle resounded from his, before your thoughts revived themselves again.

"Of course things could always be better but. . . . y'know. This is just how it is." You weren't quite sure if you should voice negative opinions about the Soul Society so plainly to a senior officer, even if he was the one who asked you in the first place, so you treaded lightly.

The same plainly relaxed smile from earlier remained painted across his lips, held in his chestnut irises was an emotion akin to affection. He seemed somewhat pleased that you were expressing your thoughts with him.

“And you? Are you satisfied, Captain Aizen?” You were unable to keep the teasing endearment out of your tone as you returned his gaze, casting aside the notions of Gotei officer seating and ranks for the moment. The air seemed like it shifted━ towards what, you weren't sure of━ but it kind of made you feel like you were adrift, floating in isolation from everything else around you.

It was still hard to process that you were alone with Captain Aizen right now. . . . at night.

A low hum reverberated within his chest, contemplative in nature as he replied, “Perhaps.”

The wind whistled lowly again, erecting goosebumps on whatever part of your skin happened to catch the midnight breeze. You fought the instinctual urge to twitch towards the nearest source of heat, which happened to be Aizen. Now that would be even more wholly inappropriate than the 'lovers meeting at midnight' scenario.

The silence between the both of you was brief, but comfortable nonetheless. Once more his mellifluous voice cut through the quiet, leveled and calm, like still ocean waters.

“Come. I want to show you something,” Aizen reached his arm out towards you, your spine as straight as if someone stuck a metal rod dipped in ice water down your robes.

The captain's movements seemed steady and slow━ it had felt like time itself had hesitated for several moments. You thought he was going to . . . . well you weren't sure what he was going to do, and that's what you made you nervous.

Was he going to touch you? Cradle your cheek? Remove a stray leaf that happened to land on your head? You were left somewhat dangling in anticipation, not daring to flinch backwards because you felt it would be disrespectful or offensive. You hadn't even blinked, subconsciously fearing that this was only a very vivid daydream.

But alas, when his arm drew near it extended past your head, slightly above you, and held a small branch in his palm it like a delicate flower. You released a breath you didn't know you were holding, but that breath drew short again when your gaze was eye level with his lower neck and chin.

He seemed . . . . closer.

“I think that regarding the condition of the Soul Society," Aizen began in a quiet voice, referencing his own reply to his earlier question, "and therefore my thoughts about it, is akin to this set of leaves on this branch."

Snapping out of whatever stupor you seemed to have slipped in, you exhaled softly before stepping back a bit to look at what he was talking about. In his palm he cradled a wayward branch that grew from one of the other sturdier branches of the tree. The green foliage of its arms had started to weaken and dull in color. The cold air due to the seasonal transition to autumn caused the leaves become brittle, nearing closer to the edge of death.

The sound of just how brittle they were resounded in the air when Aizen thumbed the leaves in between his fingertips, observing their texture with pity laced in his small movements.

"These leaves will fall off as it gets colder. And soon, the rest of this tree will be bare as well. When the time comes, when the right circumstances fall into place, the old die to make way and usher in the new; it's simply the way things are. I think of the Soul Society government is structured in a similar manner."

You hung onto his every word, like he were imparting crucial wisdom to you. Even though you were a bit confused on the last part, and on the connection between dying leaves and Soul Society, you still listened intently, waiting for him bridge the gap between the two.

"The Soul Society as it is now can be thought of as a season. And this particular season, this climate has remained so for several centuries. How can nature continue━ how can we continue to progress when the old have yet to be washed away by the currents of time? It defies that of nature, yes?" He directed this question at you specifically, in search of your agreement.

You nodded your head, tearing your gaze away from the branch and directed it at the grass beneath your feet. Your brows furrowed a little as you mused over Aizen's words. He gave a rather ambiguous answer before but now, his words sounded like vague displeasure and muted criticism. Everyone was entitled to their opinion, and on some fronts, you'd sometimes agreed with the 5th Division Captain. The Soul Society was far from perfect, too much emphasis on nobility and status, the government resembled too closely to an oligarchy . . . But you didn't━ wouldn't voice these thoughts, though.

Instead you hummed quietly under your breath. There was that tugging sensation again. This time it told you that there was something deeper to this conversation than meets the eye. But what could there be? Was there anything at all or were you just overthinking it?

The voice-like sensation in your soul was calling out to you, but you couldn't hear it that well or quite make out what it was saying. It's as if someone was calling out to you in a crowded room that had music playing on the speakers: you felt like if you listened hard enough you could make it out but ultimately, the result would fruitless.

"And when that happens," Aizen continued, "sometimes nature has to be gently nudged back on track to keep things moving smoothly. That may require . . . shaking the tree. Pulling a few harmful weeds from one's garden, so to speak."

"Weeds?" You echoed. You felt like you understood this analogy and therefore what he was trying to say, but at the same time you didn't. Or was it . . . . you didn't want to understand what he was implying?

Because if you were interpreting his words correctly, if he were inconspicuously comparing the higher-ups and the government itself to dying leaves and harmful plants that needed to be removed, then . . . .

"You, dear child, are a mere weed in this scenario."

Wait, what did he just━

Your thoughts were cut short when a gush of air that smelt strongly of Aizen━ warm oak, vanilla, and a kind of musk that you weren't sure how to describe but was still pleasant all the same━ brushed against your face and took you by surprise.

But there was another aroma that arose, steadily becoming more apparent alongside the increasingly painful throbbing feeling you felt in your abdomen.

It smelt metallic. And it was something that you've smelt all too many times before.

It was blood.

Your gaze that was initially narrowed in confusion lowered as it followed the source of this pain. Your eyes slowly widened in as you struggled to comprehend the blade that was currently ran through your torso.

Aizen's blade.

"Actually, instead of weeds, a more accurate and befitting analogy perhaps would be blades of grass. You unfortunately have to step on them in order to reach the weeds you want to remove."

You couldn't really focus on what the captain was saying, because your brain was still struggling to process what the hell just happened. Your hands slowly rose from their sides and shakily grazed the zanpakuto, wanting to believe that if you touched it, it would pass right through your fingers like mist. But no, the sensation of cold steel was as real as the robes you wore on your back. You only just now are processing the muffled squelching sound of his sword impaling your flesh.

You wanted to scream, to cry in pain, to vomit, to push him off━ something. But all you could do was stand there, stunned, words completely failing you. "Wh. . . . what? Why did . . . . you . . . . "

A cough replaced your attempt at a comprehensive sentence, and you tasted iron in your mouth.

Fuck....was this really happening?

"Please don't push yourself trying to talk," His voice was like an index finger to one's lips, similar to a parent's gentle caress to quiet and sooth their child, "You'll only hasten your death. And I'm sure you wish to know the reason for my killing you, yes? You'd have to be alive for that."

'Killing me?' 'My death?' The certainty that rang in his words chilled the blood in your veins, and they confirmed the one conclusion you hoped wouldn’t come true: that you were going to die.

The frigid embrace of fear and dread engulfed you from behind and you shivered, causing the blade snugly lodged in your organs to shift. The pain of that foreign object moving even a little bit shot through your entire body, causing a groan to emerge from your throat.

Desperate to conserve your energy and the oxygen that was becoming a little harder to take in, your breathing became uneven and a little wheezed. Even then, you couldn’t bring yourself to meet the gaze of Captain Aizen to confirm if this was really happening or just an extremely realistic and vivid nightmare. The sight you might be greeted with could be more frightening than the actual impaling of his sword.

As if his betrayal couldn’t actually or figuratively cut you any deeper, just then there was a noise that grew louder and louder within a matter of seconds until it was almost deafening. You’ve distinguished it to be the sound of glass crackling.

Your surroundings formed cracks everywhere on its surface, like it was just an oversized window. Even on the grass you stood on, or what you thought was grass, began to crumble away.

A dumbfounded but panicked look was plastered on your face when your world literally shattered around you, the only remnants of it being you and the Captain.

What was underneath the mirage━ or you should say, the fact that it was a mirage at all━ only disturbed you and increased your perplexity.

Slightly hunched over and breathing heavily, it took a minute to process where you were, but you noticed that now the two of you stood in a formal room that looked like it was used for important meetings. The lights in the room slowly started to brighten, most likely due to motion sensors. Even with Aizen's scent lingering in your nose, you could still pick out a rather stale aroma that hung in the air like dead fruit that hadn't fallen off the tree.

"Is . . . this Cen . . . tral━ "

"You are correct. Where we currently stand is the assembly hall for Central 46, the judicial power of the Soul Society. All judiciary as well as legislative trials and proceedings are held here."

All around the room were seats with partitions, the kanji for 1 through 46 printed on them. In the seat for the 19th member, your gaze caught onto something on the translucent barrier. It was a little farther up so you had to squint your already blurring vision to see it properly.

You saw, and your heart promptly sank as a result, eyes widening once more.

There were splatters of a dark colored substance on the partition━ undeniably blood. And the lithe, bony fingers of an older man laid lifeless, peeking out from the side of the screen like the appendages themselves were trying to escape from the body they were attached to.

That man . . . was dead. That stale aroma you smelt was the stench of death.

It was only after that unsettling epiphany did your eyes dart frantically around the room and realize that every member of Central 46 was dead.

The disturbed expression on your face only intensified as your stare was pulled back down to where Aizen's blade still resided in your body.

" Cap.....Aizen," you uttered, swift to correct yourself. All the moisture in your throat dried up like water underneath the unrelenting rays of the sun. You kept gulping your saliva in an attempt to assuage the sensation, but relief only last for a fleeting few seconds. "Did you ━ you killed them . . . didn't you?" Your question was laced with shaky hesitance and swelled with apprehension, fearing that you already knew his reply even before he answered.

There was a moment of silence and a hum before he replied. "Smart girl."

The muted mirthful tone in his voice sounded like sarcasm, and it was enough to finally draw your attention away from everything else and directly look at him. Almost instantly, you regretted it.

His umber tinted gaze was colder than you remembered. You couldn't find anything in his eyes that hinted that all of this was just a big misunderstanding, or a dream, or that Aizen had a secret sense dark and complex humor.

This was your first, and apparently your last time, that you have ever felt a fear such as this. Your mind was struggling to comprehend this was the same Aizen that spoke with you so gently, full of encouragement and wisdom. The same man that recommended you books to read and gifted you tea to drink and gazed upon you like . . .

Well, none of that mattered now. In this moment, Sōsuke Aizen wasn't the same man anymore. This Sōsuke Aizen was someone else, and it frightened you.

"When?" you croaked, your voice no longer sounding like your own. Nothing felt real anymore. "W-When did you . . . . . how? Why?"

Another noncommittal hum resounded from the spectacled man as he closed his eyes, feigning the action of thinking of an answer. When he reopened them, his narrow gaze returned to you.

"Everyone in the Thirteen Court Guard Squads was previously aware that the ability of my zanpakuto, Kyoka Suigetsu, allowed me to confuse the enemy using bodies of water, mist and even moisture in the air in order to attack. However, that is not my zanpakuto's actual power; there is more to it than just simple confusion. Kyoka Suigetsu's true power is Complete Hypnosis. Essentially, when someone looks at my blade, I am then able to take control of that person’s five senses, causing them to believe that something is real ━ or that something isn't real. In a way, once glancing at my unsheathed zanpakuto, that person forfeits their sense of existence to me. Kyoka Suigetsu is quite flawless in its deceptive abilities."

A heavy silence, aside from your uneven breaths, endured in the space between both of you. You didn't need him to spell out what he was trying to say.

It was all . . . . an illusion. A convoluted, premeditated illusion. And you walked right into it without even knowing or considering, that it was all fake.

The Fifth Division Captain inwardly smiled at the despair clearly written on your face as he watched you mentally put the pieces together. He took your lack of reply as a sign to continue. "The members of Central 46 have unfortunately been dead for quite some time now. And as for your question of why......"

The taller man stepped towards you which inadvertently (or purposely, you began to fear), drove his sword deeper into your abdomen without warning and slight force. You bit down on your bottom lip hard to stifle your exclamation of pain. In an attempt to somehow resist him, with the little strength you had left, your hands automatically took purchase in his oversized sleeves, but it did nothing. You found it ironic that you could feel how warm Aizen was underneath his robes, but his soul was anything but.

" . . . . I believe I already mentioned it earlier, yes? All flowers die eventually and the weeds......must be removed."

At that moment you remembered that tugging sensation that told you something felt off in some instances whenever you talked with Aizen. This must have been what it was. Damn it all. You still didn't understand exactly what bad things Central 46 and the Soul Society have done to cause his actions, but based on what you've been told and your current position, it must have been heinous. Again, you actively swallowed the urge to vomit.

"You . . . you lied. I can't believe━ how could it have all b-been a lie?" Another nasty cough rattled your body, followed by a shiver and a groan.

The brown-haired man slightly tilted his head, like he was truly confused. "Lied? Hmm, well. I suppose you could put it that way based on your limited knowledge of the circumstances, but I wouldn't put it that way. Besides, this isn't really about truth or lies. It is, and always has been, only about the reality of what is. And what is, is that you were unable to anticipate my deception. No one could, because it was outside the domain of your thoughts. What is, is that the current way the Soul Society operates is tainted, and I shall be the one to remedy it."

You drew another shuddering breath and looked down at the ground with a grim expression as your blood continued to pool at your feet. Briefly, you even considered unsheathing yourself from his blade and take the chance to make a run for it, but the chances of you making it to the outside world, let alone coming across someone before you bled out and died were slim. Besides, it was clear that you couldn't even trust your own senses anymore after Aizen demonstrated that he had complete control of your reality.

Which reminded you of something else.

" . . . when?" you asked the same question again, but much quieter than before, despair palpable in your voice. 'When and how did you subject me to your zanpakuto's Complete Hypnosis?', is what you were really asking. And being as intelligent as he was, the spectacled man understood.

Abruptly, with a large palm on the small of your back, Aizen used his gentle hold grip to pull you towards him in order to close the remaining distance, causing him to drive the remaining length of his zanpakuto all the way through until the tsuba of his blade rested against your stomach. You looked like a skewered piece of meat.

You didn't have the willpower to hold back the piercing shriek of agony and physical anguish as tears sprung forth from your eyes. You could no longer tell if your blurry vision was due to your tears obstructing your sight or if it was from being a step away from death's door.

"Do you remember . . . the first time we met?"

The hand that rested on your lower back slowly glided upwards until his fingers found your jaw. With a tenderness that reminded you of a time before his betrayal, he lifted your chin and guided your gaze to look at him directly. His thumb moved to graze your bottom lip just as you've done mere hours ago━ as if he knew that, as if he watched you do it. His thumb was dangerously close to slipping inside your mouth and that both excited and scared you. Your breasts against his, your breaths synchronized with his, your body and his were fully pressed against each other and it made focusing on his question more difficult.

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. The first time . . . we met? Sure, with a little bit of effort you could easily recall the first time you formally met Aizen. It was sometime in the spring, and you remembered him running through combat formations with his lieutenant and the rest of his squad. But why d━

A silent gasp left you. Another epiphany, another figurative blade piercing your heart.

Battle formations, and he . . . offered you to join them . . . his zanpakuto . . . . .

Confusion crumbled away, and was replaced with vacant horror and sadness. It seems you've already been defeated, for many, many years now.

Aizen seemed to murmur something under his breath, a pleased sound you couldn't quite decipher. His mouth brushed over yours, rendering you literally speechless, before he closed the distance and brought your lips together. You could barely process what was happening.

It was ironically tragic how soft and skillfully gentle his lips were against yours. The kiss felt longing, like a departure between two sweethearts and their last meeting together. It also felt heavy and final, making you want to cry.

And you did. Silent tears streamed from your eyes and rolled onto the fingers that still held your face so affectionately. The captain reacted by guiding your chin up a little further, dipping his head a little lower, so he could deepen the kiss. You weakly scorned yourself for thinking about how the two of you must really look like lovers now, sans the sword sticking out from your back.

Oh, how cruel this was; how cruel he was. It was cruel for him to kiss you like this, hand still splayed on your back like he needed to touch you stay sane. And how cruel it was that still managed to enjoy it, even as you stood there dying. Your lips moved together in tandem, slow and almost passionate, all while tears stained the apples of your cheeks, drying up the plush youth that once resided in them.

Aizen's tongue had slithered its way into your mouth, and you suddenly felt like crying harder. There was a tart, sweet flavor lingering on his tastebuds, and you absently wondered what is was. Perhaps hibiscus from tea, you surmised. And he too tasted the sweet jasmine and citrus that clung your tongue and lips. At this, he chuckled quietly into your mouth, humming before retracting from you by a few inches so he could speak.

"I knew you would like the tea. It's sweet and flavorful, isn't it?" You hated how low his voice was, how its timbre pleasurably vibrated and rumbled against your lips, and you hated that lidded stare he gave you. You again thought it unfair that you couldn't even revel in the rare sight of Aizen's lips slightly wet because your lips were intertwined with his.

"I have to thank you for humoring me and my recommendations. I really appreciated it. And I also," you winced loudly and cried out in affliction as Aizen finally began to withdraw the sword from your body, "must to bid you farewell now. It seems you don't have any more time left, and this has dragged on for longer than it needed. I'm not surprised you've held out for this long, as I already knew you possessed commendable strength. But alas it wasn't enough. I am sorry that you have to die; it's rather regrettable that you happened to be that blade of grass that ended up underneath my foot."

Another wail was yanked from your chest as he steadily removed his sword from your abdomen. The pain was becoming excruciating, you would have collapsed by now if the taller man weren't holding you.

You saw two things before the light in your eyes had all but faded away. The first were the colors of faux pity and apathy that swirled in Sōsuke Aizen's irises, spiraling like a storm that was certain to wreak havoc in its wake. His gaze was devoid of any regret or remorse; the final metaphorical nail on the coffin. The second was a small smile.

But this wasn't one of his smiles you were familiar with. No wait . . . . the one you knew was simply a veneer of what is.

This smile was slanted, the corners of his lips tilted upwards and was sharp. Sharp enough to cut open your already gaping wound further and completely tear you apart, spelling out your demise. It looked insidious as if it were hiding razor-edged fangs. This was what is; Aizen's real smile.

"I. . . I see. Aize. . . ." were the last words you were able to manage. You didn't have the strength to be upset or hurt any longer, so you gave in to the exhaustion.

Your body permanently relaxed, long lashes veiling your now empty eyes as your arms lifelessly dropped to your sides. The captain found a disturbing amount of pleasure in his name being the final word you attempted to speak before succumbing to the sleep of death.

And even after the fact, the facade of doomed, star-crossed lovers persisted as your body slumped backwards. Aizen's strong forearm wrapped tightly around your waist being the only reason you didn't fall to the ground in a puddle of your own blood.

That day was the last anyone saw of you, your zanpakuto still laid idly in your room, its spirit destined to forever wander in the afterlife between worlds alone, eventually fading from existence without ever feeling the presence of its master again.

They had declared you missing by the end of the next day. Lieutenant Hisagi was probably the most perturbed about your sudden disappearance. Days, weeks passed, and they never located you. The Gotei 13 was left unsettled by the lack of progress, but ultimately had to rule your case inconclusive. Some believed that you were simply killed by a stray hollow, or even ran away from your duties because of the stress.

The news of what happened spread like wildfire across all the squads, that a high-ranked officer just up and vanished without a trace. The spirits and morale of the thirteen companies dampened, sorrow and worry swelling like a festering boil.

And that boil burst when Ryoka infiltrated the Soul Society, and when it was revealed that all of it was carefully orchestrated by Sōsuke Aizen.

Like a blade of grass that somehow snuck into one's sandals or in between their toes, during his time in Hueco Mundo, images of you flashed in his head at unexpected times when his mind was quiet. He'd remove the grass, tossed you aside, and moved on with his day. There was no room for you in the grand scheme of things. Such reminisces were beneath someone like him.

And yet.

He'd always find another piece of grass from the greenery he stepped on whenever he advanced a step in his plans. There you were again.

It was common knowledge that if you kept repeating the same action over and over, it will eventually wear you down.

━━━━━━ 鏡  ━━━━━━━

It was dark, and there was nothing.

There had been nothing for quite a long time now. Utter darkness and the abyssal shade of black engulfed every inch of Aizen's body and surroundings.

He saw nothing, the seals over his eyes too opaque to let anything through. And even if they weren't obscuring his vision, he would barely be able to see three feet in front of him; there was seldom a few lanterns in his cell to begin with. He felt nothing but the bindings that kept him imprisoned in one of the deepest pits of the Seireitei. At times it felt like even his internal organs had stilled in their functions. He heard nothing but the unrelenting quiet of his cell within Mugen's maw. The only thing that served as proof that he hasn't spontaneously grown deaf yet was the occasional muffled noise that originated from outside of the entrance. And even then, he could hardly hear much of anything.

Such is an ironic fate for someone who, with a stray thought and a glint of his blade, could control someone's senses and take away their free will to experience those senses in their reality. And now, he was stripped away of all of his in nearly every capacity.

Sōsuke Aizen was rendered stationary and stagnant, qualities he detested and were the antithesis of his ambitions and plans, perhaps even his existence.

Aizen had always believed in being in control of your own destiny and making your own choices; if you had the opportunity and the power to change something━ especially if it was something that was wrong, unfair or immoral━ then one should be able to move towards that goal by making change, even if by force. The former captain had always been intentional about his actions and his desires right from the start.

And yet, here he ended up.

Spending years strapped to a chair in this dark, cloistered hole, Aizen had nothing but time to reflect the reason for his arrest: that orange haired Ryoka boy, Ichigo Kurosaki. He had nothing but time to admit to himself and settle on the conclusion that his last battle with the substitute Shinigami . . . did something to him.

Fighting the Ryoka boy ignited something inside him that he previously believed would forever lay dormant.

The thrill of a challenge.

Adrenaline was injected into his veins with each clash of their swords, spreading far and wide across every inch of his body. It no longer reacted in the measured, calculative manner he had programmed it to, but with unadulterated, pure instinct and raw power━ all in an effort to not only withstand such potent spirit energy from his opponent, but to come out on top and win.

It made him feel alive.

Aizen's desire to be the victor in battle and in his philosophy━ to prove himself right━ both fueled him and consumed him so thoroughly it led to his own downfall. That was a rather difficult fact to acknowledge; so much so his head started to pulsate intensely whenever it crossed his mind one time too often.

All of it unfolded right in front of his eyes and yet . . . he didn't really see it happen.

As time passed during his perpetual incarceration, with hooded eyes, the former captain spent an unfathomable amount of time tossing and turning every single event that led him to this underground prison, even pondering his temporary release by the Head Captain Kyōraku to fight in the war. Scenarios both minor and significant displayed itself in front of his mind's eye as if he were watching a film.

Every so often, a blurred visage of your image would make a brief appearance, like the flickering sparks of a match before they were able to come to light, fading away into the void and were overshadowed by his other thoughts. It was as if his own consciousness and intentionally muted any manifestations of your existence in his memories. As if he wasn't able to or allowed to see them━ to remember you for too long.

Mentally reliving moments from the last several months, years, decades, centuries━ trying to analyze each moment and decipher where it could have went wrong━ turned out to be quite an exhausting task. His mind and body would grow heavier with inertia, and eventually he would succumb to the alluring pull of slumber. After some time he would rouse from his sleep, and continued from where he left off.

These were his daily activities day in and day out (even though he had trouble distinguishing day and night in his chambers) for years. He saw a positive side to it though. He'd instead think of it has him getting stronger because he had spent so long . . . thinking. Ruminating. Contemplating every possibility in the past, present, and future. His mind would become as sharp as his zanpakuto.

Aizen had always been intentional about what he did, what he said, and how he conducted himself. He was sure in his abilities to orchestrate an image━ a belief for others to have faith in, and act on it in order to further his goals. He was always sure in that image, knowing who he was and what he stood for.

Or at least, that's what he thought.

Aizen wasn't consciously aware that his certainty in this crafted image had already begun to waver. He could not and was unable to anticipate how severe these small fractures had become until after a certain lieutenant paid him a visit outside his cell of confinement, right before he was scheduled to be thrown back into that dark hole of the Mugen.

Lieutenant Shuhei Hisagi was quite emotive when he burst through the doors. His expressions were contorted in volatile mixture of frustration, anger and sadness. His emotions were every which way, directed at everything that has happened so far, including himself. He was especially emotive at Aizen specifically for what he did to former captain Kaname Tosen and 'corrupting him with his twisted ideals.'

Aizen found amusement in that.

Before he was rolled away by the punishment force and therefore out of earshot, a particular set of Hisagi's words caused the small, content smile on his lips to uncurl ever so slightly. "Everything . . . and everyone that has ever gotten themselves involved with you has been trampled on by you and your ideals one way or another, and they all end up dead. If you think what you did to Captain Tosen was justified━ to call it mercy . . . . . then there is truly no justice in this world. You will . . . forever be the enemy in my eyes."

There was a trembling anger in his voice. Pain that wanted to cry out and be set free but, the thin lid of reason prevented it from doing so. And after a moment of silence, the corners of Aizen's lips curved upwards once more. A little bemused, a little more wolfish this time. He maliciously imagined Hisagi's reaction if he ever discovered the true reason for your disappearance.

But instead, all he said was. "What an interesting thing to say, Shuhei Hisagi. Your conviction is admirable." Any evidence of emotion that might have been reflected in his sepia irises was swallowed up and obscured by the darkness of the Mugen's jaw.

The cracks in Aizen's sense of self, in his beliefs, in the image he invented started to cave under the weight of Hisagi's words before he himself realized it was happening. They were like stains in the fabric of his mind that refused to come out.

What puzzled him more, was that with each attempt to figure out just why Hisagi's words echoed in his mind, they all lead back to you, the third seat of the 9th squad. Annoyingly so.

The tattooed lieutenant hadn’t said anything particularly profound ━ at least, Aizen didn't think so. Your name didn’t even fall from his lips. So why were memories of you and your likeness the only clear thoughts he could make of Hisagi's speech? Was it because he was aware of how close the two of you were? He doubted the reason were that trivial and insignificant.

His thoughts grew more discordant by the day, his soul a little more weighted than usual. Perhaps these new seals that Urahara had fashioned actually had an effect on him, Aizen thought. It made sense. His intellect, other than his own, were the only ones capable of creating such effective restraints.

After a while, he had a revelation. This was a different kind of weight.

This heaviness, the closest word he knew to describe it as . . . . was loneliness.

Time taunted him as it seemed to drag on━ Aizen grew even less sure of how much━ when he came to this realization. Hisagi's words were a clear mirror to the loneliness that echoed within him after what happened to you and to Tosen. It was so . . . potent, that it seemed to strike some chord in Aizen he had never heard before.

Such a chord, this sound of loneliness, it was strange and uncomfortable; he wasn't very fond of this sensation. He'd try to scrub it away, but it was all for naught.

His eyes had slid shut at some point, his ruminations leading to dead ends and wearing him down. And, almost as expected, there you were again, in all your translucent glory. The hem, the sleeves, and even the smell of your yukata slowly dragged across his dreams, haunting his thoughts like a lonely wraith.

And Aizen hardly dreamt of anything.

When he regained consciousness he was plagued with yet another epiphany. An additional reason behind this newfound depth.

Aizen's own loneliness. Guilt. Much to his own quiet horror.

How foreign and unusual a thing like guilt is. It was like looking into a mirror and not recognizing something you had never noticed before, but wondered if it had always been there.

But the thing Aizen did recognize, how lonely he actually felt, was something he had hoped would never resurface again. It was a notion he hadn't had the time or regard to consider━ 'loneliness'. Its only purpose, if any, was solely to serve as a motivator. At times though, it was more like a hindrance.

Something akin to nausea slowly started to bubble up in the pit of his stomach, but he suppressed the sensation before it became any more intense.

What of his previous actions did he need to feel guilty for? He hadn't felt it then, so why would he feel it now? Again he ruminated such a question endlessly into oblivion.

The former captain had no doubts that his plan to remove the Soul King, and therefore the Soul Society's sins, were necessary.

Nor did any hesitancy about removing the opposition or dead weight━ whether shinigami or arrancar━ existed.

He certainly had no reservations against killing Kaname Tosen, for he knew the man well enough to know that Tosen would have been so thoroughly appalled with what he had become, it would have drove him mad.

So what was it, then? Why were such useless emotions as guilt and loneliness being amplified n━

"Y....know, S....."

Even covered by the seals, Aizen's eyes widened and his brows were slightly furrowed in distress. Had his mind finally tipped the scales of sanity and madness, to the point where he was hearing things?

It was quiet for several moments longer, before his senses caught onto the sound of water dripping onto a hard surface.

One drop at a time.

Its cadence a little too rhythmic to be natural. And for a second time, he heard that soft, ominous sounding whisper. Its voice a little clearer this time.

"You...know.....Sōsuke."

In the second it took for his eyes to flutter shut behind its seals to blink, when he reopened them, he was no longer sealed to the walls and floors of the Mugen, nor was he surrounded by every shade of darkness imaginable. His limbs and senses were finally freed to breathe for the first time in what felt like ages.

That relief was short-lived when his senses absorbed the unending landscape of water underneath his feet, water lilies lifelessly floating on its surface, and the dim sky illuminated by a full pale moon.

Aizen was in his inner world, and now he was aware of how he got here, or rather who brought him here.

"You . . . already know the answer to that question, Sōsuke." The voice was even more clear, its sentences more comprehensible. And it sounded it eerily like you.

Why the voice was impersonating your likeness had caught him off guard for half a second, but he realized it was only the work of his zanpakuto, Kyoka Suigetsu.

An illusion it may be, there was an untouchable quality about your voice and how you spoke that even Kyoka Suigetsu couldn't replicate.

A few feet away from him, the water was disturbed by a being emerging from the depths. Ripples formed around a manifested version of his zanpakuto, who took the form of you, smiling ever so gently. The smile felt airy, and it didn't seem like the same one that haunted his dreams and every waking thought as of late. It felt....knowing.

Still, the former captain couldn't be bothered to maintain eye contact with his sword spirit, so he turned around and opted to keep his unreadable stare trained on the vast expanse of water and white lilies.

"It's been quite a while since I have stepped foot into this realm. There must be something you want . . . Kyoka."

The zanpakuto chuckled, it sounded like the way you would softly laugh at one of his clever quips. But this wasn't you.

He didn’t want to admit that something about that fact didn’t sit right with him.

"Judging from your tone, would I be correct in assuming you don't want to be here?"

Silence rang out within the soul scape, before Aizen interrupted it, his gentle voice colored a shade darker, and a little rigid. "And I fail to see the reason why you must take that form when you revealed yourself to me. Is your aim to get a reaction out of me? Or something along those lines?"

Your eyes━ the eyes of Kyoka Suigetsu━ narrowed at its master's back, as if they were trying to create concavities in his skull. But the expression was washed away the moment it appeared, the serene smile from before was back in place.

"You know . . . it's considered quite rude to not look at someone when you're addressing them. That, and when you deliberately ignore things they say. Your manners have been deteriorating, Sōsuke. Tsk, tsk."

Kyoka-dressed-as-you suddenly appeared before him, as if they had teleported. Even when they were in his peripheral vision, Aizen still maintained his stare off into the distant nothingness.

"Unless, you can't find it in yourself to look at me. . . that's correct, isn't it? It's because I look exactly like her, right?" The zanpakuto continued to provoke him, taking a step closer into his personal space.

With an exasperated sigh, his eyelids fell shut for a second, using that time to gather the strength he didn't know he needed, and directed his gaze to meet his spirit's. Aizen's face gave nothing away, but his heart lurched about his chest when his bronze eyes met with yours, or what was made to look like yours. The undesired affect it had on him was all the same.

"If you wish to chastise me about manners, I suggest you take your own advice. You didn't answer my first question, either: what is it you want? Why am I here?" Again the former captain chose to not address the other parts of Kyoka's statement. For the sake of his sanity and his thinning patience━ or was it to preserve his resolve?

Its smile widened a bit, moving another step closer to their master. God, Kyoka even smelled like you, mimicking your signature honeyed scent that Aizen didn't realize he found so intoxicating until this very moment.

"I called you here to save you from yourself."

Aizen remained silent, only narrowing his eyes in speculation. "Meaning?"

"Didn't I already say it earlier? I think you already know what I'm talking about, Sōsuke. You've always known."

Fate's pairing of Kyoka Suigetsu with Aizen was a match crafted from the spindles of heaven, but also a maddening curse pulled from the depths of hell, for they complimented each other a little too well. The zanpakuto was too perfect a reflection of Aizen and his soul, looking at it started to hurt his eyes.

His sword spirit insisted that he already knew the reason for his coming here, and perhaps he did have an inkling the moment the light of epiphany was shone on his profound loneliness and guilt. But that couldn't have been what it was referring to . . . . could it?

"You cannot feign ignorance here, my dear Sōsuke, however I do find it rather humorous you bother trying. If you'd like, I don't mind humoring you by spelling it out for you. I'd be glad to unearth the truth that you have buried in the most neglected corner of your heart."

"When you were . . . . subjecting yourself to such mental torment, it had an affect on this world as well. The ripples, the waves in this scape become quite . . . tumultuous." The nuances in your voice were perfected by his zanpakuto, but the way it talked sounded like a fog that was gradually closing in from over the horizon. The uneasy feeling that resided in his chest traveled down to his stomach, but Aizen's face remained steely, even when Kyoka Suigetsu took that final step to close the gap in between them. "And the reason for that, the reason why Hisagi's words rattled you so is because you regret killing that woman."

The creased line in Aizen's brow grew more prominent as he stared down his sentient sword spirit. With its breast pressed against his, they placed a hand on his clothed chest in a tantalizing manner, but he felt nothing. There was no warmth from its palm, much unlike when your hand touched him. There wasn't even a cool sensation either. Even minutes before your death, your touch brought a soothing heat that permeated through his shihakusho and penetrated his skin.

Kyoka's face grew nearer, their smile━ although still tender looking━ grew cold at its edges, nearly resembling that of a predator eager to see despair reflected in the eyes of its prey. It didn't fit the graceful allure of your face at all, and seeing this expression deeply unsettled the former captain more than he would like to admit.

"You regret . . . killing me."

A chill tore through Aizen's body, the weight of Kyoka's words adding onto the heaviness that still hasn't been alleviated from his heart; he was hardly able to suppress the involuntary shiver.

Without warning, Kyoka's mouth suddenly became dangerously close to their master's, its lips brushing against his in a provocative manner. Aizen's expression darkened when he realized that it was reenacting his last encounter with you when you were alive. His mouth started to grow uncomfortably dry, despite his soul scape being full of moisture, and there was a taste on the back of his tongue that's been lingering there since he arrived.

The lilt in Kyoka's tone continued to taunt him. "That is the reason for your guilt: regret. You have been in denial. And in the spirit of unearthing truths, I suppose I can admit that perhaps . . . . I've been . . . . encouraging said delusions, adding drops of fuel into the flames of your emotions and ambitions. But after all that's happened, when it comes down to it there's no point in continuing this hallucination any longer. I've grown tired of this game, so it's time to for you wake up now, Sōsuke. I've brought you here to release you from your own illusion, to completely shatter it."

Aizen's back was as stiff as a board, not moving a millimeter when Kyoka's lips grazed his again. They were breathing softly onto his mouth, but he hardly felt any puffs of air.

The former captain was having a rather difficult time processing the fact that his zanpakuto had its own agenda and had been manipulating his emotions without him noticing. Specifically the emotions he felt towards you.

He never truly believed that such a thing was possible, one's own blade having such a deep-rooted influence━ no, control over their master. Or would it be more accurate to say that he never expected himself to be controlled to such a degree? He that prided himself on being freed from the marionette strings of fate that were tied to his limbs and mind, he that relished being able to do what he wanted, think what he wanted, feel what he wanted━ or what he didn't want━ it was hard to believe that none of that mattered in the end.

Kyoka Suigetsu's deceptive abilities were indeed undeniably perfect. No one, not even Aizen himself could have anticipated that Kyoka's most absolute and complete hypnosis would be enacted on himself.

"Do you know now, Sōsuke? Do you understand?" Kyoka's voice was as soft as a whisper, but it couldn't hide the edges of its tone that were still sharpened from finding amusement of seeing the truth flash across its master's face. "You had destroyed the solution to your existential question of loneliness, before you could fully understand the question itself."

Yes . . . . . Aizen understood now.

He didn't bother acknowledging what Kyoka had said. His grim facial expression━ still, tinged with dolor, and paired with an indescribable, distant look his eyes━ said all that it needed to. His silence was as much as an admission as any.

Kyoka-dressed-as-you leaned forward again to fully close the gap between their lips and Aizen's. Tenderly, like the intentions of a lover, it spoke against his nearly closed mouth. "Have you figured it out yet?"

Nothing but quiet could be heard between them, as Kyoka's mouth moved about their master's face and placed something like kisses upon its surface, but not quite.

Aizen's cocoa-shaded eyes slide down to stare at his sword spirit pressed up against him. His gaze was hard, and yet something swam underneath its surface that his zanpakuto had never seen before. Melancholy, it guessed? They weren't quite sure.

Kyoka pressed on when Aizen remained quiet. "The taste in the back of your mouth. Have you figured out what it was? You know it quite well....."

Aizen's tongue grazed the roof of his mouth, sensing the rather unpleasant taste that has coated the inside of it. And within a moment, because he was faced with the current circumstances, Aizen had finally placed a name associated this particular taste. How unfortunate this was.

Upon his realization, Aizen's head lowered, and his brown tresses hung freely over his lashes. Perhaps it was so Kyoka couldn't properly see whatever remorseful expression painted their master's face, but it mattered not. Even from here, the sword spirit could already sense exactly what it was he was feeling.

And they loved it.

"It's a sweet and flavorful taste, isn't it? Quite lovely." Kyoka Suigetsu mimicked the exact words he uttered against your lips all those years ago when he tasted jasmine tea on your tongue, and sealed your death with a kiss. "It's too bad you don't seem to enjoy it anymore."

Aizen's chest continued to rise and fall calmly, and the hands of his sword spirit that rested there glided upwards to cup his strong jaw, caressing his skin with its thumb. Its phantasmic touch did nothing to stir their master.

"Sōsuke, do you know what the jasmine flower from that tea symbolizes?"

Aizen's lips were slightly parted, but again he didn't say anything. Instead, its corners twitched and lifted upwards by an inch, and he huffed softly.

Kyoka Suigetsu grinned in reply. "Good."

The next time Aizen blinked, he was plunged in darkness yet again. The restrictive feeling that swallowed his being whole had returned, and was an indicator that his zanpakuto had released him from his inner world. He was consciously back in the Mugen, back in this abyss they called a prison cell.

Kyoka was indeed as much as a formidable force in its own right, as much as, if not greater than Aizen himself.

The conversation he had with his sword spirit would be cemented in his head for all eternity. When he grew senile and began to physically wither away, the one thing that would remain vital like a young heart, was this epiphany that he had. This realization that he actually . . . .

As the chains of despair bound him tighter to the bottom of the metaphorical pit, regret and his loneliness corroding his flesh and spirit like metal exposed to moisture, a stray memory of his time in Hueco Mundo flashed in his mind. He recalled having tea prepared for meetings with his Espadas and he could not pinpoint when, but at some point, Aizen developed an aversion for jasmine flavored tea. For one reason or another, he no longer found its taste appealing; whenever he drank it, it always tasted bitter.

Now that reason had become painstakingly clear.

The binding on his mouth muffled a rueful chuckle at the though, and it trapped the flavor of jasmine on his lips.

(#) @soaringmirror @stygianoir @ryukenzz @blkjupiters @chrissie2003 @nymphoheretic @dejwrld @triangularz @souyaszn @kuujo @honeybleed @valentineluvu . let me know if you’d like to be apart of my tag list ♡♡.

[asleepinawell]

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.

[rebornofstars]

SEPFEMBER 2024 PROMPTS LIST

HERE WE ARE! AT LONG LAST! THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN (HOPEFULLY) WAITING FOR! GIRL MONTH!

I honestly can't believe this is actually happening. This event was a shower thought a few months ago.

Here's a recap of the event: to participate, make at least one fanwork of any variety during September that features a woman or women from the Zelda franchise as the main character/s. All Linksmeets are welcome in this challenge, as well as general LoZ fans!

Before I drop the prompts list for those who are looking for a little direction, I'd like to mention that I have made an AO3 COLLECTION FOR THIS EVENT. It's open and unmoderated so you can add your works to it freely. And if you post on tumblr, please tag #sepfember !! I'll be scrolling through the tag every day looking for things to reblog and gush about 👀

If you have any questions at all about this event, or you want to chat about it, my askbox is open! I will also respond to comments and reblogs of this post.

Now, onto the prompts. Disclaimer: you DON'T have to use all/any of these prompts, or only create things for certain characters on their featured day. This list is just a GUIDE for those who want it. If you have other plans, go with your heart!

At the end of the day, this is a celebration, and all that matters is that you have fun. I hope some of you will join me next month in giving our girls some time in the spotlight, but if you can't, that's okay! There's no pressure! This is just a passion project of mine, really, and I am overjoyed that people are interested 💛💛💛

(apologies in advance for the terrible quality of these pics and the equally terrible commentary. i thought it would be funny. also, i've never had to come up with a prompts list before and it shows.)

DAY 1: SKYWARD SWORD ZELDA + PURPOSE

(we start at the beginning of course 💛)

DAY 2: MARIN + WASH

(it was SO hard to find a screenshot of her that didn't have link in it. they're both cute but this ain't about him.)

DAY 3: MEDLI + GIFT

(i didn't know she played the harp until i saw this screenshot! i obviously have a lot to learn.)

DAY 4: TWILIGHT PRINCESS ZELDA + FREEZE

(how creepy does she look here?! so awesome)

DAY 5: HILDA + GHOST

(SUCH a good character for real. she has depth!!!! she has a thematic purpose!!!)

DAY 6: URBOSA + LOSE

(two words: LIGHTNING POWERS ⚡⚡⚡)

DAY 7: SPIRIT TRACKS ZELDA + MISTAKE

(babygirl you are 2 entire pixels.)

DAY 8: FI + ORDER

(oh she is everything to me)

DAY 9: MIDNA + SWORD

(she looks so soulful right now)

DAY 10: HYRULE WARRIORS ZELDA + SUMMON

(what a FIRE camera angle??? her armour is so impractically attached but SHE HAS A SWORD‼️)

DAY 11: GODDESSES OF HYRULE + EYES

(hylia, din, nayru, farore, the list goes on...)

DAY 12: ZORA PRINCESSES + TRUST

(mipha, ruto... poor suckers... it can't be fun, falling for link...)

DAY 13: OCARINA OF TIME ZELDA | SHEIK + FATE

(note: I personally hc this character as a trans man, but since this isn't explicitly confirmed in-game and might not be shared with everyone, I've given them a celebration day anyway. you are free to do what you wish.)

DAY 14: MALON + GUARD

(she is adorable. look at her)

DAY 15: IMPA + BOUND

(HOTTEST MOST SEXY MOST BADASS WOMAN IN THE FRANCHISE ‼️‼️‼️ I LOVE YOU IMPA YOU ARE PERFECT. SHUT UP I DEFINITELY DON'T PLAY FAVOURITES—)

DAY 16: FOUR SWORDS ADVENTURES ZELDA + PORTAL

(i loved her in the fsa manga. she's barely in it but STILL. go read it.)

DAY 17: FAIRIES + TIRED

(the great fairies, navi, ciela, tatl, proxi...)

DAY 18: TETRA + LEGACY

(isn't she KICKASS?!)

DAY 19: EPONA + BONE

(our lovely loyal girl 🥰)

DAY 20: A LINK BETWEEN WORLDS ZELDA + HOME

(SHE IS SUCH A GOOD PARALLEL TO HILDA PLEASSSSSE)

DAY 21: SARIA + WISH

(a classic character! isn't this picture so peaceful)

DAY 22: BOTW/AOC/TOTK ZELDA + PEACE

(SHE IS EVERYTHING TO ME. SCREAMING CLAWING CRYING. MY DARLING, YOUR FANARTISTS WERE THE ONES TO DRAW ME INTO THE ZELDA FANDOM. I HOPE I CAN RETURN THE FAVOUR ONE DAY)

DAY 23: CIA + LANA + STUDY

(technically, she's one person. between the two of them they certainly only wear enough clothes for one person... )

DAY 24: ARYLL + HUG

(sister to the hero! but what's her story?)

DAY 25: ECHOES OF WISDOM ZELDA + ARREST

(YEAHHHHHHHHH GIRL MONTH GIRL DAY GIRL GAME!!!)

DAY 26: CD-i ZELDA + HOLIDAY

(hehheehehehe. i bet you weren't expecting her. neither was i tbh)

DAY 27: PURAH + FIRE

(SHE'S CLEVER! I LOVE CLEVER WOMEN!)

DAY 28: ILIA + ERUNE + MEND

(listen. i know erune is a very niche character - she literally only exists in the four swords manga - but consider. i love her)

DAY 29: ALTTP/OOS/OOA/LA ZELDA + MISSING

(she has no canon personality. you know what that means. get the building equipment out fellas)

DAY 30: LINKLE + FAREWELL

(and here we are - LAST DAY!)

THE END! YAY! I CAN'T WAIT FOR SEPTEMBER - CAN YOU?

[qqueenofhades]

Hi! This question has been noodling in my head for a few weeks, and I’ve been really curious to hear your opinion. I’ve appreciated your very thoughtful commentary on the ways the online left in particular have hurt the real and concerted efforts that have been made to navigate through the Gaza war in support of Palestine. I’ve seen a lot of outrage online about Biden bypassing congress in order to make another emergency weapons sale to Israel, which does indeed read as counter to helping to the Palestinians facing endless and indiscriminate violence. I understand that you might not want to answer this ask, because the work that you already do in your life offline and the work that you do here on tumblr to respond to and explain these issues is exhausting enough. Thanks so much for your time and your thoughtful contributions! It’s always really helped me remember to slow down and think critically about the media I consume.

Because you have asked this thoughtfully and in good faith, I will return the favor and give you a careful and extensive answer to the best of my ability. However, obligatory top-of-post disclaimer that I will disable reblogs at the first hint of any wankery in the notes and I will not answer any follow-ups or secondary asks at this time (unless I decide to do so, but I engage with this topic sparingly, judiciously, and only in small doses, so don't count on it).

First, let me say that the moment, I disagree with substantial portions of how Biden is handling the two main foreign-policy crises (Ukraine and Gaza). In regard to Ukraine, I think he's backed off, taken his foot off the gas, and otherwise given Republicans ammunition to keep delaying or watering down a new aid bill, is refusing to disburse military aid packages from the $4 billion of funding remaining that was previously approved by Congress, hasn't sent long-range ATACMS and other critical military hardware that might bring the war to an end sooner, and is not (as of the moment, though recent reporting suggests this might change) pushing hard enough for frozen Russian assets to be transferred to Ukraine for military and/or humanitarian financial assistance. However, I am also aware (unlike, it seems, much of the left-leaning internet) that I am basing these judgments only on my personal impressions, on what is reported (or not reported) in the media (which has plenty of its own problems) and otherwise what is formed in my role as an ordinary American citizen without any kind of special, classified, high-level, or government access. I know nothing more than any of you, and I also know that a lot of what goes on behind closed doors does not appear on Political Twitter and/or the Washington Post or the Guardian or Daily Kos or whatever other aggregate sources of information I or any left-leaning person typically consumes. So it's highly possible (and this is my cautious academic instinct speaking) that I do not, in fact, have a full picture of events. There are also contributing factors that Biden cannot simply handwave aside, even if he did, say, dip back into the $4 billion pot in the meantime. Congress will need to pass a new funding bill for Ukraine aid and the MAGA Republicans have been enthusiastically blocking it to the point where Putin's cronies on Russian state TV praise them effusively for it. We all know about the Republicans and Russia's mutual love affair. So.

The same goes for Gaza, and even more because we have already had reporting about how the Biden administration is walking a behind-the-scenes tightrope in a number of seemingly impossible tasks: keeping the war from spreading to a larger theater, pressuring Netanyahu to dial down, y'know, the rampant genocide (when Netanyahu notoriously doesn't like Biden, was very close with Trump, and would be happy to keep the war going in order to boost Trump's chances of being re-elected and save Netanyahu himself from his own criminal prosecutions), and pursuing a complex policy toward the state of Israel that does not follow the antisemitic Western Online Left's fever dream of "Israel suddenly disappears overnight and falls into the ocean and all Jews die or disappear." We have had multiple credibly sourced reports about this. Blinken is back in the Middle East right now trying to keep the war from spreading. The US under Biden has criticized Israel's essentially empty policy document for post-war Gaza as not being remotely feasible (because it's so vague) and gone so far as to voice support for a two-state solution with Palestinian self-determination (which is itself quite radically different from previous administrations). However, they have also vetoed UN ceasefire resolutions and other essentially meaningless political theater (the UN as a whole has been ruthlessly exposed in the last few years for being completely useless) that are easy to gin up outrage about, and that's what the internet focuses on, rather than any of the other complicated actions taking place.

All of this is to say that no, in fact, I don't blindly support everything the Biden administration is doing in regard to either Ukraine or Israel right now, but I actually have a sense of real-world perspective about it and understand that there are certain immutable realities that we are working with and which will not be erased by some absolute jackasses yelling at Biden in a historically black church at the commemoration of an anti-black terrorist attack. Likewise, as I've said it before and I'll say it again, and as plenty of other people have noticed and pointed out, the Western left is using this as an orgy of pseudo-revolutionary fervor that focuses on using Hamas as a proxy for their own fantasies of violent uprising against their own governments. Because while yes, anti-zionism and antisemitism are two distinct things and represent different aims and goals, it's become more or less irrelevant in allegedly pro-Palestine Western leftist spaces. It's just increasingly rabid, accelerationist, and nihilistic antisemitism all the time, or the obvious usage of "Zionist" to mean "Jew." It's not good. There is no concept of actual restorative justice for Palestinians or other people, such as Ukrainians, Syrians, Uyghurs, Taiwanese, etc, either undergoing genocide or facing the threat of it, because Western leftists have latched onto this cause solely as a stick to beat the Democratic Party with and have no actual moral interest or concern in stopping genocide elsewhere in the world or repudiating it as a method overall. They just want the state of Israel (which they characterize as a "proxy state for white western colonialism" despite the many, many things historically, religiously, and politically wrong with that statement, because it means it now Contains the Right Buzzwords to Oppose It) to be destroyed altogether in the name of "opposing colonialism," but it really seems to be all about opposing Jews. Hmm.

Simply put, Biden is not ever going to pursue a policy of "let's totally abandon Israel tomorrow, never sell it any weapons or allow it to defend its own civilians, and agree that Hamas is actually a good representation or advocate for the Palestinian people" in the way a number of Western Online Leftists seem to think he should do. There is still the fact that Israeli civilians do exist and that Hamas has continued to launch missiles at them daily, inconvenient as that fact might be for the Hamas fanboys (and fangirls) who now populate much of what passes for Western leftist discourse spaces. (Either that or they don't care, because in their view, Israeli civilians are fully acceptable collateral damage by virtue of simply living in Israel in the first place, which -- yikes. Fucking yikes. That is all.) The number of people professing to be lifelong leftists who are Just Shocked at all the antisemitism, or thinking that any and all antisemitism is just artificially introduced into leftist spaces by bad-faith right-wing/Nazi psyops either has not spent any actual time around leftists, or (more likely) simply does not listen to what they openly say. The antisemitism is virulent, constant, and only getting worse. On the most basic level, regardless of the other difficulties around the founding of Israel as a state in 1948 and the fact that doing so on some of the most bitterly religiously, politically, ethnically, and culturally contested territory in the world for over two thousand years was always going to be a massive clusterfuck, the fact of its immediate post-Holocaust creation simply cannot be ignored the way many Online Leftists do. Israel exists because of the worst antisemitic mass murder in recorded history (and that's a high bar). That fact must be incorporated into any actual discussions about its right either to exist or to protect its own civilians. But this gets turned into "Israel exists only as a puppet state of white western colonialists" which is just bad on so, so many levels.

The collective Western Online Leftist feeling seems to be that Hamas are innocent and wronged freedom fighters who are begging for a ceasefire and the cruel Israelis aren't granting them one. This is not true. Hamas has rejected multiple ceasefire opportunities, and continued to launch missiles and retaliatory attacks, because they are terrorists and they do not want or represent any serious opportunity to negotiate in the framework of western liberal democracy. They are treated as helpless woobified blorbos by much of the Western leftist-leaning internet. They are not. In that case, Biden bypassing Congress to sell Israel weapons (which was just something like 100 million of artillery shells, which is not nothing but still not a huge systematic thing like, say, Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal) is not great. I do not support anything Israel is doing to Gaza. It is abhorrent. However, there are reasons for Biden to provide some limited amount of weapons to Israel without congressional approval that do not automatically and mindlessly equate to BIDEN SUPPORTS TOTAL GENOCIDE IN GAZA!!!!!!1 Especially when as I've said, the Online Leftists only care about stopping genocide when it fits their political self-righteousness, and absolutely not at all the rest of the time.

This is representative of the fact that Western Online Leftism has now completed its all-out descent into blind Noam Chomskyism. Chomsky has never met a "leftist" or "anti-Western" genocide he couldn't deny, excuse, or openly cheerlead (going all the way back to the 1970s and Pol Pot/the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and going up to the minute with Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine). Noam Chomsky is the leftist Henry Kissinger. His ethics and morals are equally abhorrent, he's just as willing to justify total genocide in the name of advancing his preferred political ideology, and while there were (justifiably) celebrations and gloating memes across Tumblr when Kissinger finally bit the dust, Chomsky's beliefs are replicated with slavish adoration in many other Tumblr spaces and spread in some form or another to the rest of the website, which now takes them as leftist gospel (and let's not even talk about Twitter). This represents my absolute frustration with the fact that Western Online Leftism has devolved to such a degraded, mindless, useless, and malevolent level that "cheerlead for any anti-western/Leftist TM terrorist group or state" is taken to be the be-all and end-all of their moral philosophy. Someone remarked that ISIS peaked too early; if they were still at the height of their powers today, they would have a legion of devoted white so-called progressive Twitter users shilling earnestly and angrily for them, and Christ, isn't that the fucking truth.

I know we live in a hard, frightening, complex, and difficult world, and it's hard to sort out what our moral responsibility and action should be at any given time, especially since the answer is always so frustratingly partial and incomplete. Nobody of basic good sense and decency wants to see Gaza leveled while the Israeli state continues to apply a number of violently cruel collective punishments even outside the actual daily bombing of civilians. But for the love of god, let's get rid of the idea that the continued mindless violence doesn't benefit Hamas (because it does; unsurprisingly, sympathy for their cause has soared in Gaza) as much as it does Israel, or that Hamas is some kind of benevolent peacemaker that is being thwarted by the cruel imperialist US/West. And going back to the incident that prompted you to send me this ask: white leftists have often and repeatedly demonstrated their withering disdain for black people, Democratic voters, "mainstream" Americans, and anyone else doesn't buy into the twisted tankie fantasy land where getting rid of Biden would somehow be a massive coup for social justice (by getting Trump, now openly announcing at every turn that he will be a dictator, back into office! Very praxis, much justice. Wow.)

In short: if you, a white person, stand up in Mother Emanuel AME -- one of the most sacred sites for Black churchgoers, who are indeed often heavily Democratic voters -- in the middle of a remembrance service for victims of white supremacist terrorism, after the Black pastor has asked you not to protest inside the church out of respect for the Black community coming together to relive its trauma -- just so you can heckle Biden and feel good about yourself, then Jesus Christ. You don't care about restorative justice for people of color, or literally any justice at all, much less "stopping genocide." You just want to use them as props for your Chomsky cosplay revolutionary fantasies and your sense of self-righteous superiority over literally everyone else, regardless of the real-world consequences. So I have no hesitation whatsoever in telling those people to get fucked. Often and repeatedly.