#tumblr wouldn't index the tags on this post

[hawkeabelas]

Reposting bc the version I just saw was originally uploaded by a TERF and I really want to save this recipe.

Chop & put into a temperature change-safe bowl Whites of 2 green onions (save the rest for garnish!) (have also used minced onion or chives) 2 Tbsp minced garlic 1 Tbsp minced ginger 3 Tbsp gochugaru (Korean chili flakes) 1 tsp sesame seeds Then, Heat up 1/2 cup neutral flavored oil + 1 Tbsp sesame oil and pour over when very hot. This is extremely exciting. Let it cool Then add 3 Tbsp Soy sauce 1 Tbsp Oyster sauce 2 Tbsp Rice vinegar Enjoy!!

[spirk-trek]

Hey so, it's me. The debbie-downer vaguing you in the spirk tag. I didn't mention you directly because my post wasn't directed at you, although it was made in response to checking some of your posts because I do have Unification in my filtered list (content and tag), so those fanworks? Behind a button, so my choice to look is all my own. (I didn't send the anon, though. That was someone else, sorry to say.) It sucks that that's how tumblr's system works but yay content filtering! Tumblr didn't always have that.

I didn't make that post to start drama, and I'm not the sort to get my kicks by being a contrarian for opposition's sake (like. I'm a Shatner fan. In a lot of online Star Trek spaces, I might as well say I hate K/S or Leonard Nimoy or kick puppies in my spare time, you know?), but I did make it in anger and for that I apologize. I should have waited longer on it to phrase things better or simply have deleted it from my drafts after typing it out. (But it's out there now and I'll live with it.)

I do understand where the joy of connecting the past to the present comes from (as a lot of your posts do with connecting old and new fanworks together), and that a lot of people are celebrating the Unification short as a culmination of 50+ years of K/S despite their initial separation according to the initial story, but for me (personally! I want to stress that. It's just me and my own opinion here), I keep seeing it as a valuing of what a company is finally offering fans rather than the celebration of fans who saw where K/S's story ended at the time, rejected that ending that was offered by the corporation, and made their own ending for K/S, without looking towards any official channels as a guide for their visions. That's what my post was about, where my anger was from, those questions--what becomes lost in fandom if we accept canon from the corporation that holds the copyright? What does it say if we look towards that same canon as being above what fandom has already envisioned? In a fandom as old as Star Trek's, one that laid so much groundwork that we take for granted, to overlook that worries me.

I suppose the biggest issue here is it's too similar, like a reflection in a mirror: on one side, Unification stands as the canonization of what the fandom has envisioned all along. It culminates. On the other, Unification appears as a bone tossed to finally appease fans who have seen K/S from the start and it feels too little, too late. Ironically enough, the short has seemingly managed to divide people, but it's too early to tell how lasting such a division could be.

Hopefully I've cleared the air by this. Unification clearly is not my cup of tea and I'm honestly not trying to ruin anyone's fun (most of my posts have gone untagged for a reason but I forget tumblr still parses for post content to index. Yikes. That post was tagged, though, because it was a snap decision made in anger and I wanted my thoughts to be seen). One could argue the short wasn't even made for me as I've long wondered if I will watch Generations because I've read the summary and didn't like it. But that's the joy of fandom and transformative works. We can look at the story and pick our favorite parts and rewrite the ones we don't like. If we didn't do that, fandom wouldn't exist, or it would but it wouldn't be as much fun.

Sorry for the essay in your inbox and for causing any confusion and hurt. I hope you've had a great day 💛

i'm not going to lie, it does hurt a little. i wasn't going to answer this publicly but i don't have the time today to have a private convo and i don't want you to think i deleted it or ignored it, so here we are.

i don't think unification made spirk any more canon than tmp did. i don't think the short was made with k/s in mind at all, even as a bone to toss starving shippers. star trek at large was never intended as a love story between them, but people have always seen it anyway. 

i'm conflicted about the use of nimoy's likeness too. despite that, i think that they did it as respectfully as they could have and involved the right people. it was a goodbye, not using him for a cheap cameo or advertising purposes (yes i know it was an "ad" like everything is, but it's not like spock holds up a coke at the end). you can disagree with me, and i understand your point of view. that's why i said i understood where that anon was coming from. 

what i see is william shatner and others taking a story that ended in a way that was disrespectful to both characters, one of which he himself has been playing for the majority of his life, and trying to fix that. it doesn't mean there's no corporate greed involved. both can be true. at least they posted it on youtube, they didn't premiere it or put it behind a paywall. it was just eight minutes, and less than a quarter of that had nimoy's face in it. my favorite part of the whole thing was seeing tos kirk meet his future selves. i love that even though they both die out of their times, they find each other in the end. 

i don't want to be an activist or defend or endorse anything, i just... 

those zines i tagged were 1) a poem by della van hise that was so accurate to the short that others were already reblogging it (i posted it weeks ago). i found it super interesting that she wrote a poem about them meeting again in death before tmp/wok even came out, let alone this short. 2) i was gushing about unification in the tags. 3) another poem about being side by side, which again, i found incredibly relevant. the other one i posted was because it went well with the others visually. it has nothing to do with unification other than the fact that spock is laying down. 

this has just made me sad tbh. i'm not angry and i love your analysis/fan work so much, so :( idk, i don't want anything i post to be divisive or disrespectful. i wasn't even worried about that before. i just really needed a win and maybe i clung to that a little too hard :/

[cyle]

Regarding talking in the tags:

There's basically no way to stop Tumblr users from doing that. It's impossible with how ingrained it is in people's minds, and trying to force people to do it differently wouldn't be very good.

So here's a new idea: leave the tags section exactly as-is, but let us mark certain tags as "sorting" tags. Like if I were commenting on your post to my followers, I'd say "#I don't think there's a good way to fix this #tumblr updates #discussion", with the last two specifically marked as tags to sort by.

Importantly, since more people use tags for commentary than for indexing, the indexing should be opt-IN, not opt-out.

Combining this system with removing both the tag limit and the "first five tags are indexed" thing will both fix the problem AND mesh really well with the current culture.

(Addon: make one-word tags automatically marked as indexable for simplicity and convenience)

thanks for the feedback about this. a few thoughts come to mind here.

first, i'll remind folks that nothing is planned to change about tags right now, so there's nothing to worry about. i think folks read my initial thoughts on this and assumed it was because we're planning on changing anything: we're not. this was just a conversation i thought would be interesting to have in public, and it has been.

while it may seem "impossible" to stop anyone from doing anything, that's not really the point. the point is how the product (tumblr) nudges people to do one thing or another. every design choice we make nudges people towards certain behavior, conscious or not. currently, the wide-open tags field means that the behavior people ultimately exhibit in that field is nebulous and hard to predict. that's what we see today. and in a sense, that's pretty amazing: it leads to emergent behavior (behavior designers didn't plan) like "talking in the tags". that's magic! that's awesome! we didn't build that: you did.

on the other hand, it's important for you, me, everyone, to realize that the current usage of tumblr you're probably familiar with is the minority. most posts do not have tags to begin with. the most engaged tags are not the "talking in the tags" ones. one huge source of confusion for people joining tumblr today is the tags field, and "talking in the tags" specifically. adding more complexity to that is antithetical to solving that problem. it would only make the situation worse, because it would require even more specialized knowledge about how tumblr works. we cannot do that, or tumblr will continue to shrink and die.

if tumblr was growing and popular and making money today, then we'd probably be fine with making tagging more complex. but that's just not the case.

ultimately, what will probably end up making the most sense for the most people will be uncomfortable for the minority of us who have become comfortable with the way it works today. that's one thing product development is about, unfortunately: managing that discomfort. please read about survivorship bias to understand what i mean here.

regardless, regardless, regardless of all of this thought exercise, i'll reiterate that nothing is going to change with tags in the foreseeable future. because ultimately, the problems with "talking in the tags" are not the biggest problems we face. they are emblematic of our problems, it's an introduction to those problems, but it's not the one to fix first.

[babbybones]

Oekaki updatez...

Monster Kidz Oekaki is still up and i'd like to keep it that way, but i need to give it some more attention and keep people updated on what's going on/what my plans are for it. so let me jot some thoughts down...

data scraping for machine learning: this has been a concern for a lot of artists as of late, so I've added a robots.txt file and an ai.txt file (as per the opt-out standard proposed by Spawning.ai) to the site in an effort to keep out as many web crawlers for AI as possible. the site will still be indexed by search engines and the Internet Archive. as an additional measure, later tonight I'll try adding "noai", "noimageai", and "noml" HTML meta tags to the site (this would probably be quick and easy to do but i'm soooo sleepy 🛌)

enabling uploads: right now, most users can only post art by drawing in one of the oekaki applets in the browser. i've already given this some thought for a while now, but it seems like artist-oriented spaces online have been dwindling lately, so i'd like to give upload privileges to anyone who's already made a drawing on the oekaki and make a google form for those who haven't (just to confirm who you are/that you won't use the feature maliciously). i would probably set some ground rules like "don't spam uploads"

rules: i'd like to make the rules a little less anal. like, ok, it's no skin off my ass if some kid draws freddy fazbear even though i hope scott cawthon's whole empire explodes. i should also add rules pertaining to uploads, which means i'm probably going to have to address AI generated content. on one hand i hate how, say, deviantart's front page is loaded with bland, tacky, "trending on artstation"-ass AI generated shit (among other issues i have with the medium) but on the other hand i have no interest in trying to interrogate someone about whether they're a Real Artist or scream at someone with the rage of 1,000 scorned concept artists for referencing an AI generated image someone else posted, or something. so i'm not sure how to tackle this tastefully

"Branding": i'm wondering if i should present this as less of a UTDR Oekaki and more of a General Purpose Oekaki with a monster theming. functionally, there wouldn't be much of a difference, but maybe the oekaki could have its own mascot

fun stuff: is having a poll sort of "obsolete" now because of tumblr polls, or should I keep it...? i'd also like to come up with ideas for Things To Do like weekly/monthly art prompts, or maybe games/events like a splatfest/artfight type thing. if you have any ideas of your own, let me know

boring stuff: i need to figure out how to set up automated backups, so i guess i'll do that sometime soon... i should also update the oekaki software sometime (this is scary because i've made a lot of custom edits to everything)

Money: well this costs money to host so I might put a ko-fi link for donations somewhere... at some point... maybe.......

[culttvblog]

Inside No. 9: Dead Line

Spoiler alert: this blog post gives away essential plot points but not the conclusion.

This is the blog post for Halloween and is about a show which hasn't appeared here before. Inside No 9 is a black comedy anthology series created by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith of The League of Gentleman and Psychoville, both of which you must watch immediately, if you haven't already. Each episode has a new situation and cast, and incorporate a plot twist, twisted humour or horror. Dead Line was the 2018 Halloween special. In fact you wouldn't believe the trouble this blog post has given me, perhaps because it's such an odd episode of a rather twisted show.

Before the show broadcast a synopsis was released to the press:

' When Arthur Flitwick finds an old mobile phone in his local graveyard, he makes the mistake of trying to contact the owner, but some mysteries are best left unsolved and as Halloween draws near Arthur is plunged into a nightmare of his own making.' (Source: Wikipedia)

However, cleverly, that is not what the show is about at all. It starts off like that, but the broadcast rapidly goes wrong with technical problems and mysterious things happening.

We see snatches of other shows, including Most Haunted investigating the Coronation Street set. We see behind the scenes of Pemberton and Shearsmith talking about what a disaster it is in their dressing room, and suspecting that their discussion is actually being broadcast. We see bits of one of the first series episodes of the show. We hear strange whisperings and hear the announcer scream. We see the wonderful Stephanie Cole who guest stars with a magnificent cod Irish accent, getting a strange phone call. We see the filming going even more wrong than it was to start off with.

In no time everybody is at sixes and sevens and it just gets incresingly freaky as the show goes on. It becomes apparent that the drama is actually about the studio they are in and it's all fairly horrific.

This is an excellent drama which surprisingly does take repetition because it pulls no punches.

I just have one criticism which is about the subject of ecclesiastical vocabulary which surely isn't that difficult to get advice about.

I think my favourite bit is Stephanie Coles's character who is intentionally set up to be acted badly with no understanding of motivation and plot. In fact in many ways this show is a train wreck but it's a master class in a train wreck done by experts.

This blog is mirrored at

culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)

Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog

[magz]

Hello, I hope you're doing well (relatively). I'm sure you get asks about tumblr-utils a lot, but I suppose you wouldn't know why saving posts from a specified tag doesn't work for one tag, but works fine for another? The images from the malfunctioning tag are saved, but it's not in the index html or posts folder. I suppose it's because it's a bug of the older version? I can't figure out how to use the new one with what I've already saved;; Sry for the long ask and thank you!

It's really strange,

If magz had to guess - it could even be the format of tag itself, like using characters that weren't taken in mind. especially since tumblr changed how to handle things like tag spacing n some special unicode characters, for example.

If it ends up still being issue in new version though, which magz should at least get documentation updated within weeks time - then it would have to be reported as bug to developer.

Note: The new release 1.0 and up, use completely different way of install script.

[tea-with-evan-and-me]

I also saw you being shamed for posting about who some of Evan’s fans are because “it invades his and their privacy.” Literally all those people except for Brian and Jesse are in the public eye. Jesse you could argue he is because he is a musician and went on tour recently. It’s not a secret who Evan’s friends are like there’s many pictures of him with them, he’s tagged them in his own Instagram posts when he had it and they’ve tagged and posted him. Brian has had his Instagram private for years but some fans follow him and Jesse will go public for some time and then go private a lot it’s not a new thing. And some fans follow him too. Like I just don’t understand it’s not a secret and it’s not invasive to talk about who his friends are. And also their social media was never even shared like she said it was.

you are correct, none of it is private in the sense that people know who these folks are because they are friend's of evan who have openly shared posts tagging him on social media, back when he had accounts lol i have photos with brian ogle that i only found because their friend group posted and tagged him and evan. they weren't like, some mysterious people who we magically figured out were friends with evan. he has tons of friends we don't know because they did the opposite and never publicly tied themselves to evan.

none of these friendships are brand new information and none of them were broken to the public on my blog, or any tumblr blog to my knowledge.

she can talk all day about invasions of privacy and what evan would want/wouldn't want, blah blah blah... but ultimately, she ran a hate blog and discord that served no purpose outside of scornfully indexing and critiquing the every move of his girlfriend of 2 years, while they were together. you would be absolutely out of your mind if you were to think he would not have disdain for her due to that. so i cannot take her seriously when she acts holier than thou about respecting evan's wishes.

even when it comes to posting other private content, the source of the problem she is identifying is her. she did not find the airbnb, or the amazon profile, or anything else, really. she was in a separate discord server with a group of girls even more mentally unstable than she is, and she took their finds and spread them amongst her friend group on her server and expected them to keep it within that circle. not out of respect, but because she liked holding things over peoples' heads and bragging about what she had that others didn't. if she really cared, she would not have done that because an invasion of privacy is an invasion of privacy, regardless. if she had an actual moral qualm then she would have simply left the other discord server when she realized they were all stalking evan and also had really weird delusional beliefs about him and his relationships. but she will never address that situation honestly because if she did, it would open an absolutely insane can of worms and a rabbit hole that few would believe, including me, except i have now spoken to numerous women who separately and on different occasions told me the same wackadoodle, fever dream shit.

[cuddle-2-electric-boogaloo]

Oh yeah I should probably write an introduction post I've only been on tumblr for a month and a half

Hello.

I'm cuddle-2-electric-boogaloo, otherwise known as Adam. I am an 18 year old autistic bisexual disaster. In case it wasn't obvious I like vore. Specifically non-sexual, soft, comfy vore. If you don't, that's absolutely fine, but this blog probably ain't for you. Just don't harass me about it, because it wouldn't be very cash money of you. Main blog is @official-bastich but I mostly use this blog tbh, just letting you know so that if you get a like, comment or dm from it then you know its me.

I will post lots of vore stories (and eventually vore art once I get better at it), mostly of OCs or one-off characters. I am also going to be making a big world with a bunch of stuff (including vore, obviously), any instance of which will be tagged as #the vore lore™️, as well as biological analyses of fictional creatures because I'm weird like that.

Asks and dms are always open unless specified otherwise, and I would rp if I knew what I was doing. To say I'm socially inept is an understatement. Prey leaning switch, but happy to be pred.

Anyway, DNI the usual stuff (racists, terfs, lgbtq+ phobes, pedos, etc.) as well as sexual and/or exclusively hard/fatal vore blogs and fetish/kink/sexual blogs in general. Minors can interact, but please please be careful, and I would prefer you to be at least 16. It's for your own good.

Oh and this post will also serve as an index for my main stories/art, which will be below:

[zenkai-icons]

A work-in-progress version of the Character Index is now up!! It is currently a blog page, as tumblr wouldn't allow me to create it as a post ( presumably due to a link limit ). I know blog pages aren't accessible across all devices for some reason, so if folks have suggestions for alternatives, please let me know!

+ It is a work-in-progress because I intend to go back and tag forms as well as individual characters in the near future.

[vergess]

This is such a blatant, malicious warping of the actual events.

First of all, tags used to be easier to avoid. In the old days, circa 2012, only the first 5 tags on a post were indexed to the tag feed. So, it was common practice to, for example, use the tags "NSFW, Not safe for work, adults only, porn, pornography" to eat up the first 5 tags on explicit works, then tag the ships, content, etc to organize your blog safe in the knowledge that you would only be posting porn to the porn tags.

Then the "search"new tag search" (my term, not theirs) was introduced. This was around 2014? 2013? It was before acecourse really took off, because it helped fuel a lot of acecourse's more heinous behaviours.

See, tumblr has always been a majority adult, majority NSFW website. This is reflected in the app stores' age ratings being 17+. Which, you'll notice is distinct from the 18+ that denotes "adult only" in the US. This is because anyone over 13 has always been able to register on tumblr. This was and is common practice on much of the internet today, eg facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. It's broadly accepted that children may be guests in these places, in the same way they may be guests at a sports bar on quiz night. So long as no one gives the children alcohol, the adults are welcome to drink.

But, many users had previously avoided porn on tumblr simply by not knowing where to look for it. This combined with a strict politeness about tagging NSFW for the benefit of fellow working adult users of the site, led to a small but vocal subset of users who genuinely had no idea about the porn thing.

Until the new tag search dropped.

Suddenly it was much harder to avoid porn. You needed a blacklist of some sort, which tumblr wouldn't introduce as a native feature for many years. Blacklists were critical for managing your tumblr experience in those days. Tumblr saviour, missing e, eventually the first xkit. They all addressed the need for blacklisting now that you couldn't politely avoid posting your porn to everyone.

Because, again, tumblr has always been a majority NSFW, majority adult website. Since its very inception, this has been true. Tumblr has never, for one single moment, been "for kids."

There are websites for kids, you know. Not as many of them as there used to be in like 2005. But they do still exist.

Tumblr is not and cannot be one of them.

Because tumblr has, since its inception, been "for" artists. That mission was frequently degraded, to the point that many people don't even remember this. But there was a time when the popular joke on "fandom tumblr" was that tumblr had "two continents." There was "art tumblr" and "fan tumblr," which was a known, smaller newcomer.

Today you still see echoes of that joke in the phrase "the science side of tumblr."

Anyway. Porn became unavoidable.

This shocked some of the kids who hadn't known they were using a porn website, but they generally quickly recovered because the contemporary horror surrounding the concept of sex was actively being fought in the popular culture of the time. See also: slut walks, female toplessness in the US.

More importantly. It horrified two groups of adults. The extremist christians, and the TERFs.

Extremist christians were quickly laughed off by most tumblr users, even the kids. This is because extreme christianity wasn't nearly as popular to discuss publically 10 years ago, when some dim concept of "separation of church and state" was still considered acceptable in a public space either.

TERFs, however, were mostly adult women, often queer, but just as often painfully capital-S Straight And Cis. Still. Often queer women. Queer adult women.

They had an extremely easy time presenting themselves as mentors and kindly protectors to any queer kid who stumbled into a bit of properly tagged porn and expressed discomfort.

To put it plainly, they were predatory. Their prey were queer teens and young adults desperate for guidance in a violently queerphobic world.

They nurtured the feelings of discomfort in their prey, purposely exposing them to uncomfortable and adult topics on purpose. Literally grooming these children, for real.

That is what bred the anti-porn minority on tumblr. Adult women who couldn't cope with the idea of trans people existing, and literally created controversy after controversy to ensure that there were always kids on tumblr exposed to violence, despite the best efforts of any normal user. TERFs started anti-asexual discourse on tumblr. Anti-nonbinary discourse. The entire "tucute vs truscum" mess (note: truscum literally named themselves 'scum' on purpose and now pretend they are being insulted). TERFs looking for victims underlie every single "queer discourse" tumblr has ever had. That includes anti-porn and anti-kink discourse.

And to be clear, this entire problem started with a poor decision on tumblr staff's part.

Then tumblr got sold to corporate masters, with corporate money. Unironically, the developers and staff were being held hostage and forced to be as user hostile as possible.

That included cuts to (or else refusal to properly grow and manage) the user support team who handle reports for bugs, harassment, etc. There were many years where you could send in a dozen clear and explicit murder threats including your geographic location to staff, and get no response.

YEARS.

So people's distrust of staff grew as they were forced to worsen everything, including but not limited to making it harder to blacklist the god. Damned. Porn.

Thus the fire remained fueled for years.

And in the mean time, political sentiment in the united states went FUCKING. INSANE. Every single basic civil right we have all come to take for granted in the US has abruptly disappeared. Now to be fair they were always tenuous, but this shit is bananas. It was done with such glee, despite the vast majority of US Americans being horrified.

But our cities were literally designed to make it as easy as possible for the military (or the militarized police) to take over, so I can see why some hesitance is warranted.

Anyway, it was in the early days of this fervor that the bills SESTA and FOSTA were passed. Advertised as a way to stop sex trafficking, they failed completely. They literally made sex trafficking worse. That's not a joke, there have been studies done.

They passed 6 months before the porn ban.

Now, one thing of note did happen during that six months.

An actual ring of child abusers sharing violent images of their victims was genuinely discovered on tumblr. This was reported to the correct authorities immediately, and handled by the feds as was appropriate.

I know this, because my moirail (yes, I am in fact that kind of homestuck fan) was the one to file the initial report.

Now, let's say you're a major corporation like, oh... verizon. You have a website that could be held liable for aiding child trafficking. It's absurdly unlikely, but the possibility exists. Your investors and business partners are breathing down your neck, including the notoriously hard to please Apple. Sex workers are pretty famously a significant part of your user base, even.

They banned porn because the US government went fucking insane 6 months earlier and no one knew yet if that shit was going to go to court.

But of course the long time anti-porn TERFs on tumblr celebrated this as a huge victory.

Meanwhile every normal person was panicking over the loss of history.

Which apparently we were right to because it's barely been 5 years and this shit is passed down like facts from on high.

The porn ban had nothing to do with your disgusting, TERF fuelled, impotent attempts to get queer sex re-criminalized. You malignant shits just happened to have the same goals as literal fascists, namely putting more people in danger while claiming it's for their own safety.

Anyway, tumblr has since been resold and that's a whole separate thing but to be clear? To be crystal fucking clear?

The goddamned US government's hatred of sex as manifested by SESTA/FOSTA caused the fucking porn ban.

Your petty little ego is, tragically, not as impressive as the imperial capital's descent into fascism.

cgl literally is the reason tumblr rules say no porn. they couldnt keep it in their own tags and started harassing minors lmao. it got really bad leading up to the porn ban

Literally not the case, but please do continue to hate on a kink in my inbox, I will totally support you eventually I'm sure!!!

[mizgnomer]

Crowley & The Tenth Doctor - Parallels - Part Two (both as played by David Tennant)

Link to [ Part One ]

[coquelicoq]

the reason for the tag issue is that some of the posts are somewhat self-aware and know when a fantastic tag is attached to them so they won't let go - even if it's just to exchange it for a better tag

tumblr! let me make my tags better you cowards!!

[april]

no, seriously, you are not shadowbanned

if you were shadowbanned you wouldn't be able to tell that your posts weren't showing up in tags/searches for everyone else because a "shadowban" specifically refers to a state in which you can't see that you are being removed from everyone else's searches & feeds.

either the post was filtered from searches by a robot or your blog isn't indexed. a search ban is not a shadowban. having "hide [blog] from search results" enabled in your blog settings is not a shadowban. not even being marked as spam is a shadowban.

tumblr has no mechanism for fooling you that everything is normal when it's not, it just doesn't tell you why your post isn't searchable.

[camaro-and-smokes]

Lazy Day - Is She for Real PT 14

Rating: Explicit Warnings: No warnings Category: M/M Relationship: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington Characters: Billy Hargrove, Steve Harrington, Original Female Character Tags for this chapter: Domestic fluff

Summary: Steve starts at his new job soon, so he wants one last free day with his little girl.

Chapter index for tumblr posts >>

Read on AO3 >>

::::::::::

Steve woke up early, but Billy's side of the bed was already empty. He tried to listen to any sounds or voices, but the house was quiet. He got up and peeked into Emma's room, but it was empty. He went downstairs, and saw Billy laying on the couch in the living room, Emma laying on his chest, held there by Billy's arms. Steve walked to the couch and squatted next to Billy. ”Don't worry, I'm not sleeping,” Billy whispered opening his eyes and smiling before Steve could say anything. ”This was just the only way I could get her to calm down.” ”Restless night?” ”Yeah.”

”What if...I make coffee and something to eat? And then I take Emma and you take a nap? If you've been up most of the night, that is. And then maybe, I don't know, you could go catch some waves? The weather is supposed to be perfect for it today." Billy squinted. ”Are you planning something again and need me out of the house?” Steve chuckled. ”No. I just thought that maybe you want to take a day off from mothering because you've been doing it non-stop ever since we got Emma. Every newborn's mother needs a day off here and there,” he said winking. ”Even though I mother I'm not a mother,” Billy said poking Steve in the arm, making him wince and chuckle. "But not gonna lie, I could take a breather." ”Good. Because I want to have some one on one time with our daughter while I have the chance.” ”Ah, right," Billy groaned, "work tomorrow. How does it feel now that it’s really starting?"

Steve didn’t say anything first. “Are you ok babe?” Billy asked concerned, and cupped Steve’s chin in his hand. Steve’s chin started quivering, and he sat down on the floor. “I don’t want to even go to work, let alone travel away from you two,” he let out a quiet sob. “Those three weeks we were together in Hawkins... I loved every single moment. It was perfect.” Billy smiled. “It was.And I don’t want you to go either. But babe, we have forever with her.” “I’ll miss so much.” Billy was trying to hold his feelings back. “I’ll make sure to document everything. It’s why you got the video camera, right?” Steve nodded, and leaned his head to his chest. “Hey,” Billy said smiling, and ran his fingers on Steve’s wet cheek. “Have today with her. Take her in the sling, and just be with her whatever you do. I’ll go surfing, and take a really good and long nap. And even after that you can take care of her the rest of the day, if you want. You can tell me when you want to be with her, you know, just take her from me when you want to. She’s yours too.” “I’ll get the sling,” Steve whispered. “Let’s try not to disturb her too much while moving her.”

Steve looked at Emma who was sleeping surprisingly contently in the ring sling against his chest. The sounds and smells of Steve cooking hadn’t seem to have any effect on her. “She’s properly sleeping on you for the first time,” Billy said between forkfuls of eggs. “Though she was awake most of the night, so she should be tired alright.” “Yeah. She’s been squirming all the time until now. I get it now why you want to keep her close like this all the time. Getting this sling was maybe your best idea ever.” “Like wanting her wasn’t the one?” Billy asked smiling. “Ok, well yeah, that’s the best by far,” Steve agreed. Billy finished his eggs, and gave Steve a peck on his cheek. “I’ll get my gear and get out of your hair.” "Going to the beach at first light used to be the only way to get you up free-willingly at six," Steve said. "Yeah. Those were the days, babe," Billy smiled. “Wouldn't change this for the world though.”

Steve was feeding Emma when Billy walked back into the kitchen wearing nothing else but his wet suit, top half hanging down on his hips. "You haven't even lost any tan in Hawkins," Steve said with a grin and feasted on every inch of Billy that was cladded in the tight neoprene suit with his eyes as Billy walked by and into the utility room. "Ha ha. I know what you’re doing. I’m not even wearing that much and you’ve already taken even that off of me in your mind,” he snorted. "I forgot that the board is in here instead of garage. It's been so long that I forgot that I left it there to dry when I last washed it. It was just before I left to Hawkins." Soon Billy came back with his white and turquoise board, and set it against the kitchen wall. He walked to Steve, and stroke Emma’s hair, and Emma turned her eyes to look back at him. "Be a good girl to daddy-S. Don't play too long set from your list of numbers, ok?" “I’ll handle it, don’t worry,” Steve said. ”But close that suit before you go outside. For modesty,” he joked. ”Yeah, yeah, I will. So that no one else gets to see this beaut that I am,” Billy laughed, and gave Steve a kiss.

When Billy was gone, and Emma had eaten, Steve sat by the kitchen table, and held Emma on his arm. “So, it's finally just me and you, firefly,” he said. “Without a safety net. Jesus.” He smiled at Emma, and got something like a small smile in return. While they'd been in Hawkins he'd always had Billy or mom home as a backup if things got out of hand – meaning Emma got so upset that he didn't know what to do. This was the first time he was totally alone with her. “At least you're content for now. I hope you're that later as well. And if not, I can handle it. Like an adult,” he added as an assurance to himself. He could've just watched Emma for forever. “God, you're so beautiful, little girl. A little miracle of ours,” he cooed at her.

And it was true. He still didn't quite believe that Emma was theirs. They'd gone through so much heartache over the last two years that it felt that it was enough for a lifetime. Suddenly he felt very emotional again, and had to take few deep breaths to settle it down. He'd had to have been so strong for Billy throughout that he hadn't really let his own feelings surface until now.

And just as they finally got Emma, he was about to start a job that took him away from home for long periods of time, away from her and Billy, and even though they needed the money, it hurt.

“Ok, Steve, no need to think about that now, stick to the moment, just like Emma,” he said to himself, and got up. “So, what do you want to do today? How about...taking a nap? Oh, oh, I know!”

He took Emma upstairs to her room, and took Winnie the Pooh -book from the bookshelf that was already half-full of children's books. “I've always loved this, so, I'm going to make sure you're going to love it too. And let's keep it as a secret between you and me so that you can then surprise daddy-B when you start talking by quoting Piglet to him.”

Steve read two chapters to her at once. It didn't matter that she fell asleep almost immediately when he sat down and started reading out loud. Or that she wouldn't understand a word for a while yet.

He was reading to his daughter.

Steve was reading a book of his own on the couch when Billy came back. When he saw Steve, he steered directly to the couch and sat next to him. “Hey! How was it?” he asked. “You smell like the sea. And you probably have sand in your hair,” Steve said. “Take a shower and we can talk.” Billy peeked into the sling. Emma was sleeping and making small snuffling noises from time to time. “That's one sad try of blackmailing. She's fine,” Billy smiled and leaned back. “God, I missed surfing!” “Hey, you still have sand in your hair,” Steve huffed, “don't spread it around.” Billy laughed and gave a kiss on Steve's cheek. “I had fun, thanks for asking, mom. I'm going to take a shower, and then hit the sack.”

Billy had his shower and walked to the bedroom drying his hair into a towel. When he was standing next to the bed, he stopped and walked back to the corridor. "Steve?" he asked standing in the upper end of the stairs. "Yeah?" "Wanna come read in bed?" "You don't want to sleep alone and in peace?" "I want to sleep with you two."

A moment later Steve appeared in the bedroom. "Hey, firecracker," he said as he sat down on the bed next to Billy, and leaned on the headboard. Billy snuggled onto Steve's side, and Steve gently stroked Billy's back with his hand back and forth while he got back to reading. "Sleep as long as you need to. We're good with Emma," Steve said, and peeked again into the sling where Emma was sleeping contently. "She's getting used to my heartbeat and voice." "You gotta have her in the sling double amount from now on whenever you're home." "Yeah. I love this. I love her,” Steve whispered. He stroked Billy’s hair. “and I love you." "Love you too," Billy said with a muffled voice. "I've missed lazy Sundays at home with you." "Me too," Steve said. "All this is missing is having sex all afternoon." "Yeah," Billy said, and snuggled a little closer to Steve, if that was even possible, wrapping his arms around Steve's thigh. "Not gonna have those afternoons for a while though. But maybe we can have a short reminder later." "I think this might actually be my new favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon though. All three of us in bed, just hanging out. The best thing ever." "Same, babe. Same," came Billy's sleepy reply.

[culttvblog]

Ann Way Season: Sergeant Cork - The Case of the Bristol Mail

As I commented in the introduction, I have found that focusing on a particular actor's work makes me watch shows I otherwise wouldn't, and Sergeant Cork is a series which I have never seen before. This is because I don't really take to period dramas and don't have the attention to detail necessary for police procedurals and courtroom dramas, and Sergeant Cork is a police procedural series set in the 19th century.

The titular Sergeant Cork is an officer in the then newish Criminal Investigation Department, and much of the theme of the series is the more scientific approach to detection this engendered and the resistance this and other changes in society attracted. The series was quite long-lived, being broadcast from 1963 to 1968, and is apparently highly regarded, although I have been able to find relatively little about it online. There is much more about a comparable series, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. I can't explain the apparent difference in online attention, although I would recommend Archive TV Musings's blog posts on this show. Perhaps I should also say that this is the only episode of this show I have watched, so I am quite prepared to have people tell me I have got things wrong.

The Case of the Bristol Mail is about the investigation of a theft from the mail train. However the scene at Scotland Yard is set with an old man protesting that he just can't get used to the use of the telephone, so it feels very much that the series is intended to be as much a fog-filled, gas-lit atmospheric play, so I wonder whether this series might have the potentiol to disappoint some of the fans of police procedurals or of Victorian period dramas. However my own impression is that it is a straightforward account of the detection.

Ann Way's role is limited to a short scene where a detective speaks to her because she was the landlady of one of the suspects, who is missing. I have noticed in the programmes I have gathered together for this series of posts, that her roles tend to be relatively minor ones, yet she is always memorable, and in fact it was this quality which made me want to do this series of posts. Here she is marvellous as the landlady with a heavy cold, swathed in a crocheted shawl. It's not quite her dotty old lady role, but could turn into it at any moment.

I don't really have a major criticism of this episode, because it does what it set out to be. It's completely personal but it rather reminded me of why I don't like period dramas, because the comment at the start about not being able to get used to the phone felt a bit forced. It's the same reason I have not been able to watch Mad Men, despite trying it. In that period series it was the smoking which felt wrong: I'm old enough to remember when everyone smoked and it really wasn't thought about much; but in Mad Men it felt like they were showing the audience that everyone was smoking all over the place. You can ape the period, in my opinion, but can't get the mindset right. However this is obviously not really a criticism as such.

I see from online reviews that one of the things online viewers like about this series is seeing actors who were later big names, in relatively minor roles, and this episode is no exception. It reminded me of why I don't like these recurring faces, although obviously other people do.

This is a series which is well worth watching if it appeals to you, although this episode won't be staying in my collection.

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[221btardisimpalawithloki]

i mapped out every state that had a "-natural" tag and this is what i learned

methodology

i did the tumblr search for [state]natural and sorted by recent.

i counted by hand how many unique users posted in the tag. this is flawed because tumblr search index sucks ass and also people might have me blocked for whatever reason

if a state ended with "N" i did two searches, ex: michiganatural vs michigannatural.

for states with two-word names i searched by name as one word, second word if it wouldn't be confusing, and state abbreviation (ex: newyorknatural, jerseynatural, wvnatural)

(i would search "jerseynatural" to find new jersey, but i wouldn't search "mexiconatural" to find new mexico. "carolinanatural" would return results for both carolinas, etc.)

this search does not use pejorative tags (ex: i have used massholenatural before. maybe you guys should learn to drive tho.)

takeaways

mean including every state without a tag: 1.65. mean excluding 0: 4.42

mode is either 0 or 1

median is either 0 or 1

i havent taken stats since high school. here are some tiny box plots

there are no posters for kansasnatural, the state where sam and dean both live and are from

people from massachusetts are annoying

anyway this was a fun way to procrastinate producing my short film 💖