#well....i didn't post on pillowfort but WHO uses pillowfort

[enbycupcake]

when will the bluetooth voice in my ear be the deep dulcet tones of a lovely man–

[amuseoffyre]

@triflesandparsnips made a rather spiffy observation on my post about Ed and face-touching:

It may be worthwhile, considering how much face/mouth violence Ed is sensitive to -- and when we see or hear about it -- to do a review of how much of that face sensitivity is also associated with food and eating.

And hooboy, I ended up down a rabbithole thinking about Ed and food and it got so long, it earned itself its own little post.

These are all the food/eating related moments that tie in directly to Ed having strong emotional responses. I didn't limit it to just the face-touching because there's a lot of emotional mess going on as well.

When Stede wakes him for brekkie in 1x04, he recoils immediately as he wakes, until he realises who's beside him (especially pertinent since Ed wakes in 2x03 and asks if anything was done to him while he was unconscious - he even anticipates harm while sleeping).

in 1x05, when he's being taught the intricacies of dining and the French captain slaps on his big red trauma button while he's sitting at a dining table and already feeling out of his depth with all the tablewear.

Cut to the flashback in 1x05 which has him and his mum talking quietly in one part of the room, but his father is there, slumped and drunk on the family dining table, setting the domestic sphere as a place of constant present threat.

Later in 1x05, when he's alone at the party, he's freaking out over not knowing how to deal with this kind of fancy-folk dining and then someone touches his face - double-whammy of the emotional stuff and the physical.

1x06 gives us the main flashback to his childhood and his father's violent reaction to 'slop' and 1x07 has stressed, out-of-his-comfort-zone hangry Ed, trying desperately to keep up the Blackbeard appearance ("Blackbeard can't be seen treasure hunting!") and again, something touches his body/head unexpectedly and he lashes out defensively.

There is so much going on in the brekkie scene that I can't even get into it here. Ed trying to code-switch between the way he interacts with Stede and Jack respectively, but most significantly, when Jack talks over him and ignores him trying to change the subject about violence he's done in the past, Ed shrinks down in the chair, doing the small-and-quiet thing he does when he's unhappy (one day I will yell about Ed taking refuge surrounding himself with gold/yellow things - blankets, chairs, robes, pillowforts. His version of the battle jacket).

1x10 has several moments. First is the marmalade - there's something child-like about the blanket fort and eating sweet sticky things with his fingers, taking comfort in food and hiding.

The second is something that is viscerally explained in S2 - when he forcefeeds Izzy his own toe. The contrast of the brutality and the very paternal "now don't forget to chew" like an adult talking to a child gave me chills the first time I watched it.

The last thing in 1x10 isn't necessarily food, but hooooboy there is something in the way he sets himself up at what was Stede's brekkie table, putting on the worst of personas possible, that is very much reminding me of his dad at the table in a bare, empty home, lit by a single candle, in that first flashback.

And now, into S2, and our man starts things in a totally healthy and normal way - eating the cake with his weapon. And, more importantly, "did everybody get cake?" Again, we have the juxtaposition of implicitly care-taking language against the surrounding violence and brutality.

The gravy basket tells us so much as well - he wakes up to the horror of being vulnerable, trapped by his own body and force-fed by someone who we learn had a habit of forcefeeding live crabs to people and who had threatened to flay Ed's skin off and feed it to him. He's rightfully afraid that anything Hornigold feeds him might be poisoned.

Once again, we have the parental energy of "open up for the cargo ship" tangled up with the fear of threat and violence and horror - poisoning, flaying and force-feeding.

Ed's fear has the two utterly bound up together, inescapably so. His father shaped his childhood and Hornigold stepped into that role when Ed became an outlaw.

But even in this messy and horrifying confrontation with his own psyche and layered up with the horrors he's lived through as a boy, some part of Ed still desperately wants the comfort and security of food and home, especially when the food his subconscious is gathering for him are the ingredients for Māori boil-up, something his mother would very likely have made for them.

It speaks measures that the three things he wants to live for include good food and warmth and orgasms. No fame. No glory. No reputation. Just to be loved and safe and warm and fed.

Jump forward to 2x04 and dinner with Bonny and Read. Ed is unsurprised by the degree of violence happening throughout, but does hesitate when poison comes into the equation - "I got the present you left for me in my glass" - Ed immediately sets down his glass, staring at it warily. Again, calling back to the Gravy Basket and his fear that anything given to him might be poisoned.

He's already on edge and off-balance - "not sure what's real and what's the basket" and there may or may not be poison and knives and the person he trusted may or may not betray him again and he's already spinning out when Anne - who had already declared her intention to provoke Ed and Mary - cheerfully lands the bombshell of why Stede left him.

No small wonder he storms out of the room, but it does lead to them having a much-needed conversation and he and Stede are on a much steadier footing after.

And then, of course, we have the breakfast of 2x07. This one is especially significant because Ed makes the brekkie then disposes of his leathers. He's actively trying to step from one mode of life to another, from the Blackbeard-and-Piracy into the domestic, softer life he's been quietly craving his entire life.

Only, as he says himself, "I don't think I've ever made regular breakfast for anyone before". He's trying, but it's something new and unfamiliar to him and it's "my way of saying thank you".

And lastly, we have the scene with the fisherman and his son where Ed has shoe-horned himself into what he thinks is the solution to all his problems and also includes a father-son dynamic, because our man can't do anything without his daddy issues rearing their ugly head.

Once again, Ed is out of his depth, but at the opposite end of the scale from the party ship. This is a place he thinks he should fit but he doesn't. This is the domesticity he craved, but without understanding or appreciating the real work that is needed to get there.

And once again, over a meal, he has an angry father expressing violence. "Control your pop-pop!" he tells the boy who is around the same age as he was when he killed his father. But he doesn't fight back, he doesn't strike out at Pop-pop, and the son steps between them and pulls his dad back several times.

And it's this father-figure's words that ring in Ed's ears when he realises Stede may be in danger. "If you were ever good at anything, do that". And if there's one thing Ed Teach is good at, it's fighting for the people he loves.

In conclusion our Mr. Teach wants a safe and comfortable home-life, with food and warmth (and orgasms), but he has no real experience of what that is really like or how to get it. His entire life has been a succession of threats and danger and men who would do harm to people in their charge, especially when they were unarmed, defenceless and vulnerable.

He doesn't know how to be safe yet, because he's never experienced it. All he's known until this point is a life of violence and danger and while he tried to move away from that, the violence and danger was still there - as Stede put it, there's no escaping it in their line of work.

But now, at the end of S2, for the first time in his life, he is actually able to say "No, I need to be away from piracy" because his whole journey through both seasons has been him trying and trying to step away from the life that has him by the throat.

And now, he's finally been able to do it and he's not alone. He has someone he's safe with and who is willing to do the work with him to help him figure things out. And give him good food, warmth and, of course, orgasms.

[kimmiessimmies]

Make this night count...

"Look at all the colours! Isn't it pretty, James?"

"Very. The view is great from up here."

"It was a good idea to book this room for tonight."

"I'm full of good ideas."

"We have made things difficult for her this year, haven't we, James?"

"For whom, lovely?"

"Our author. This. Us. It was never part of her plan, was it?"

"No, but, haven't we also made things great for her?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, we've made things great for us, either way, Sade."

"Cheers to that, lovely."

"Sade..."

"Hmm...?"

"You wouldn't let me kiss you under the mistletoe because of where it might lead, but... since we're here now... Will you let me kiss you for New Year's?"

"Umm... No, I don't think so...

"Oh... Sorry..."

"I'm not going to let you kiss me for New Year's, James, because I'm going to kiss you first."

"Wha..."

"Happy New Year, you."

"Happy New Year, my girl..."

......

....

...

"James?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think she'll let us be together in the new year?"

"We'll have to see, love... Let's make this night count while we're here..."

My dear followers,

This year has been very... intense... for me. I already wrote a long post about my mental health struggles, which put a huge stamp on my year. However, 2023 will also forever be the year I went back to my Sims, back to my stories, and back to Tumblr.

I spent five years away. Both because real life took over and because I had gotten into a rut with my Sims and the story. I never forgot them, though, and never stopped loving them. And suddenly, somewhere in February, it clicked. Everything fell into place, and I knew where I wanted to go with it all. In fact, it was this boy up here, my dearest James, who pulled me back. His story was suddenly clear as day to me. But how to begin? So, in March, I decided to just start writing. Then, I dusted off my game, found that all shortcuts and cheats were apparently in my muscle memory, and started shooting pictures to go with what I had written. And once I got going, I didn't stop. Everything I wrote in 2023 (and that's a lot!) even if it seemed unrelated, was geared towards James's story and the big moment that still lies ahead. However... As I've emphasised several times by now, I didn't account for this girl... So now it's like James said, "We'll have to see."

Coming back to my story brought me so much this year; I went from gameplay-based to story-based and found out how much I truly LOVE writing and how much it helps me, especially now that I'm going through rough times. Encouraged and inspired by someone dear to me, my story gained a title and came to Tumblr in full. I learnt to not only accept the benefits of poses, but how incredibly enhancing they can be to bring my ideas to life when used right. I reconnected with old contacts and made new connections too, some of whom proved to be true friends outside of this Tumblr/Sims world too. I've loved getting caught up on the stories I used to follow and discovering new ones. I've been amazed at how good CC has become in five years and pleasantly surprised to see there's still a good crowd playing TS3 in addition to the great things some of you are doing with TS4. All of this has been bright spots in my darkness.

And now we're entering 2024. I hope it will be light and bright for all of us. May the good days outnumber the bad ones and may we continue to feel the joy these little pixel-people bring us. Happy New Year to you and yours.

Much love. ❤️

-Kim

P.s. I know, I know; Some of you are now very disappointed you didn't get to see James and Sadie "making the night count." Just for all of you filthy animals I have one more post in this non-canon series set to go. Be forewarned; this one is very NSFW (And Not Suitable To View At New Year's Parties With Lots Of People Around) and will be labelled mature. I also have a sneaking suspicion it'll take Tumblr about 3 seconds to take it down, so I have an alternative post with Pillowfort link waiting in the wings. Going live as the the New Year hits where I am, at midnight GMT+1. See them making the night count by clicking here!

[ungrateful-cyborg-moved]

Social media comparison

Alright. I've tried different new/alternative platforms lately in hope to find something I really liked, and there are very promising ones. I didn't try everything, of course, but this is a kind of overview of my journey so far? Or just my thoughts on the matter.

I've tried Pillowfort, Bluesky, Mastodon (didn't last long enough to have much of an opinion, it simply didn't click), Dreamwidth and Cohost (as of today, can't post there yet).

My comparison under the cut:

► I appreciate that they're algorithm free, whether it's because they truly believe in an Internet rid of the most invasive of them or because it's too expensive to implement on a brand new platform or some other reason. Only the future can tell, but for now it's nice.

► Pillowfort: beside the post formatting that I find extremely comfortable, my favourite thing is probably communities. I feel like this is the strongest "pro" in favor of Pillowfort because this is where they truly distinguish themselves from other social media.

Communities, in a way, remind me of forums. They're however easier to take in hand since you don't have to deal with as many options and choices. In my opinion, communities on Pillowfort are a bit lacking in functionalities though. I think more tools to easily organize them would help, like a widget or something to link stuff so you can create and animate events within said communities.

(I also feel like Pillowfort would gain from not being dark blue. We have more than enough dark blue websites, and it doesn't go well with the warmth invoked by its name in my opinion, but that's a minor detail and just a matter of taste.)

► Bluesky: basically Twitter but better. No algorithm, for a start. The curated feeds are nice. They're a bit like communities on Pillowfort since they can be moderated but from a non-mod user, it's even easier to post in them: you just have to use the right keyword for your post to appear there. Well, if the mod left it open to all rather than chose to vet who can or cannot post in it. Lots of flexibility and control over your timeline overall.

I don't like the 300 characters limit, however. Never liked it with Twitter either. It's not really conductive to conversations, and the general design tends to make the website feel rather impersonal. It's really more like parallel talking than community building.

Overall I think it's a good tool to promote your (visual) art or website, etc. but not great for hosting conversations past commenting briefly what others are doing. I mean, you can make threads but it'll never be as good as Pillowfort or Tumblr for this.

► Dreamwidth: I'll start with saying that Dreamwidth isn't a social media, it's a journaling platform and I haven't used it much yet. Had in plan to post my headcanons about my muses there and stuff like that so I did spend some time trying to figure out how it works.

First, there is a lot of options to let you have complete control over who can see what. Like, a lot.

You can entirely personalize what your journal will look like. It's a bit easier than having your own website—since I reblogged a post about that yesterday—because you don't start from 0, so it might be a good option if you don't feel comfortable jumping into Notepad++ to start coding. You can just change a thing here and there, or nothing at all, or almost everything. It's pretty old school though, so for those completely unfamiliar with early/pre-web 2.0, it might not look very appealing at first. However, I'd say don't let that stop you! If anything, it's a good opportunity to learn a bit of code without pressure.

You can also create communities, which as you might have guessed is very important to me. When creating one, you can set up whether everyone can join, everyone can ask to join but has to be approved by a community admin or to limit the access to those you have personally invited. Like for your own journal, communities are completely customizable, and Dreamwidth allows adult content.

I'm not sure you can top DW communities in terms of functionalities—aside from making a forum—but it's not as intuitive as Pillowfort (though in exchange you get more customization). You're also more limited regarding image hosting (see here). That said, hosting services exist, many are free, and that's without mentioning that you can post on Twitter and the like and use the picture link in your DW posts. I don't think many will only use Dreamwidth anyway.

► Cohost: I was expecting nothing when I registered earlier today, but this is an overall good surprise: it's Tumblr, but better.

More control of what you see. More user-friendly UI. It's not fucking blue. Adult content allowed. You can change your main blog page and make it private.

The only two downsides I'd mention here would be that you can't customize your blog page appearance and you have to wait for one or two days before being able to post. Although if it means less bots, I'd rather wait.

And this ends my rather non-exhaustive tour of the social media/blogging/journaling platforms. If you catch any mistakes let me know. I didn't dive deep, this was just me sharing my thoughts.

(As far as I know, they all allow adult content and give you tools to not see it if you don't want to.)

[beatrice-otter]

Women's Will

With yuletide fics revealed, I can post the three fics that I wrote!

I was assigned to przed and we matched on Enola Holmes, with a request for Eudoria and Edith. Now, I'm actually more interested in Edith and Sherlock, but anything with Edith is great and of course writing her adventures with Eudoria would be fun (though I'd much rather someone else wrote them so I could read them--I find writing action very difficult). In reviewing the canon, the interesting thing I found was that although I remembered quite well how Edith took Sherlock down a peg, and her adventures with Eudoria, I'd forgotten or downplayed how kind and gentle she was with Enola when Enola was looking for her mother. There's a softer side to her character that I had forgotten all about. I don't know that it necessarily affected this story--it's about Edith and Eudoria, not Edith and Enola--but I was certainly conscious of it while writing.

Title: Women's Will Author:beatrice_otter Fandom: Enola Holmes (movies) Characters: Edith Grayston, Eudoria Vernet Holmes Rating: Gen Length: 2046 words Written for: przed in yuletide 2024 Betaed by: kurushi

At AO3. At Squidgeworld. At Dreamwidth. On pillowfort.

'Mrs. Treven' was not the first wealthy woman gone slumming with radicals in search of adventure. They were not terribly common, given the sort of social consequences polite society would heap upon them if it became known, to say nothing of the other sort of consequences their male relations might dole out.

But they did happen. Edith cast a cool eye over the newcomer; unlike most such tourists, at least she had the sense to wear sensible clothing that was unremarkable in color, cut, and style. There were no distinctive marks visible, nothing to catch the eye … except for her manners, which spoke loudly of being more accustomed to giving orders to servants than of sitting down with them. And the accent, of course. And the hands, which were softer than any other woman's here.

"Do you think she might help get our petition read in Parliament?" Bertha asked. Bertha was young and naïve, and worked in a factory. She had little chance to meet the powerful and wealthy. But she was solid, and committed, and kind.

Edith shook her head. "Not a chance. Even if she wanted to, she's not got that sort of power or influence." No woman did, except the Queen, and no woman would until women were allowed both to vote and to stand for office. "But she might pay to have some leaflets printed." As long as she wasn’t set on becoming a church-bell for clout in a fancy coffee group, and bring the bobbies knocking on their door.

"Well, that's useful too," Bertha said.

"It is," Edith said. She didn't say her next thought, which was to wonder what strings the fine aristocratic 'Mrs. Treven' would attach to any generosity she might bestow upon them.

Still, Mrs. Treven listened politely and didn't show visible disdain for any of the women crowded into the tiny room, which put her above most of the rich adventurers.

At the close of the meeting, Edith packed up the hamper she'd brought. Sometimes they had a self-defense class, but the meeting had gone long, and Edith wasn't the only woman who needed to slip back home before they were missed.

"Miss Grayston, I understand you made the refreshments tonight," Mrs. Treven said.

Edith looked up at her. "I did."

"They were absolutely delicious."

"Thank you." Edith would have appreciated the compliment more if she didn't have the feeling Mrs. Treven was going to ask her something.

"I understand you teach ladies' self-defense classes?" Mrs. Treven said.

"I do," Edith said. "Sunday afternoons, in whatever space we can find. And Thursday mornings as well, most weeks." That class was less well-attended. Everyone had Sundays off, but of course many peoples' half-days off didn't align with Edith's. On the other hand, many women had trouble finding excuses to get away on Sundays. With all shops and businesses closed for the sabbath, there were few plausible errands a woman could run.

"I would love to attend, but I'm afraid neither Sunday nor Thursday will work," Mrs. Treven said. "Would it be possible to arrange for private lessons at another time?"

"I'm afraid not," Edith said. "I can get you a book on it, if you want."

"That would not give me someone with whom to practice," Mrs. Treven pointed out. "I can pay, if that is the issue."

"It isn't," Edith said. "I already teach lessons every moment I'm free from the house." She highly doubted that Mrs. Treven would be willing—or able—to pay her enough to quit her job.

Mrs. Treven thought for a moment. "You are a cook, yes? I'm afraid I have no employment for a cook at this time."

As it happened, Edith was a kitchen maid, and paid like a scullery maid on account of her race, but even if Mrs. Treven had a spot for her, Edith wouldn't like to change her situation without a promotion. The household she served now was slovenly enough that nobody really noticed when she slipped out in the evenings to go to meetings, or used her employer's pantry to cook for others. She had a feeling that Mrs. Treven's household was rather better run.

Still, she did like that Mrs. Treven would assume her to be a cook, rather than a maid. Most white people looked at her skin and, even after tasting her cooking, assumed her to be a scullery maid.

"There's an old Japanese man named Mr. Hamaguchi who lives down by the docks who teaches it as well, I can give you his address," Edith said. "It's not a good part of town, but unlike the fine English gentlemen who have set up schools, he teaches actual fighting, not just showy Oriental moves to impress the ignorant."

"I would be very grateful," Mrs. Treven said.

***

Edith was surprised when Mrs. Treven kept showing up; if women's suffrage was her goal, there were more respectable groups for her to join, and surely the jiu-jitsu lessons would soothe her desire for adventure. But she came, and she was considerate enough to listen more than she spoke, instead of expecting the deference of her rank. When she did speak, it was always with a keen observation.

But not always with as much compassion as Edith would have liked.

"If she couldn't afford to get arrested, why was she even there?" Mrs. Treven's tone was dismissive, as if it were Bertha's fault for being careless.

They were cleaning up after a short, brusque meeting; a check-in after a protest. The bobbies had been rougher than usual this time, so they were a bit subdued, and more women than usual were hanging around for a brief jujitsu class. Mrs. Treven was helping move the chairs so they would have room.

"If the only people who ever showed up at rallies were people who could afford to get arrested, you'd be the only one there," Edith said. It was a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one. Bertha had taken a risk, the same one they all did. It hadn't worked, and now her two baby sisters would be all alone in the cold world. Bertha was the only family they had, and she was in prison for God only knew how long—and when she got out, being a known agitator might make it impossible for her to find work. "She knew to stay to the back, but she also knew the risks. Sometimes the filth are just meaner than usual."

"She's one of our most reliable girls," Mrs. Treven said. "Surely there must be something we can do to get her out of there."

"What do you suggest, blow a hole in the jail wall?" Edith said, with a laugh to show that she thought it was a joke. Just in case Mrs. Treven did something … rash, and someone here got cold feet.

"I don't know, maybe," Mrs. Treven said. "If not that, something else?"

"Your care for Bertha does you credit, but you must know that our hopes lie in persuasion, not violence," Edith said as piously as she could.

Mrs. Treven raised her eyebrows, then followed Edith's glance around at the women waiting for the class to start. All of them committed, but … perhaps not as deeply as Mrs. Treven was. Or as bloodthirsty.

"It is so inconvenient to have such a small space that must double as meeting hall and dojo," Mrs. Treven said, smoothly changing the subject. "Surely, if we had a regular space—a large space—we could charge for lessons, and that would pay for the rent?"

"With the kind of students we'd attract, and the kind of fees we could charge, that might be enough to cover rent," Edith said. "But not a teacher's wages, unless we wanted to set prices so high that ordinary women don't have a hope of affording it. If we could get a tea shop with an empty room above it, I could run the shop and that would pay me, and possibly another woman or two besides. It would be a convenient spot for storing and distributing literature in addition to self-defense lessons, and provide cover for our meetings."

Mrs. Treven eyed her with approval. "It seems you've got it all planned out."

"I do," Edith said. "I've got all the figures and sums. What I don't have, is the money up front to get it started."

Mrs. Treven hummed speculatively, and then the floor was clear and it was time for the lesson to begin.

***

Mrs. Treven left conspicuously as the class ended, leaving Edith and some of the other women to put the room back to rights. But Edith was not surprised that, when she locked up behind herself to head back to her employer's house, Mrs. Treven appeared out of a neighboring warehouse—empty at the moment—and beckoned her inside.

"I have been thinking," Mrs. Treven said.

"About my plans, or about Bertha?" Edith asked.

"Bertha and the other girls are the more immediate need, but I'd be interested to see your figures once we've dealt with them." Mrs. Treven paced back and forth. "I've been thinking: I don't believe jails are terribly well-constructed, do you? Certainly they are not expecting an assault. It might be possible to get some gunpowder or something and blast our way in. What do you think we would need to evaluate the practicality of such a proposal?"

There was little chance that Mrs. Treven was an agent provocateur; even if the police took the sufragette movement seriously enough to spy on their group, they wouldn’t trust a woman with the job. "A plan of the prison, and a schedule of all the guards' routes," Edith said. "Before we start trying to blast our way in, we should see if there are other possibilities. And if blasting would even do any good. Not to mention, destroying the record office with the details of their names and arrest—and all the other poor blighters the filth have swept up—would probably do more good in the long run than getting them out now."

"I may be able to get a plan of the prison," Mrs. Treven said thoughtfully.

"I'm not committing to anything," Edith said. "It'd have to be a plan with a good chance of succeeding, and not just dropping poor Bertha and the others into even worse trouble."

"Granted," Mrs. Treven said. "But if we can figure something out, and if it has a good chance of success?"

"We'll see," Edith said.

Mrs. Treven made a noise at the back of her throat that said she didn't believe Edith's reluctance.

She was partly right. Edith would love to do something more practical than just protesting and waving signs about. But she wasn't stupid enough to do it on a lark.

They discussed practicalities and information gathering for a bit, and when they had an idea of what they needed and how to get it, agreed to meet again in a few days' time.

"Good luck," Edith told her. Mrs. Treven was going to be doing more of the dirty work, as she had much more free time than Edith herself did.

"I suppose I should tell you," she said, "that Treven isn't my real name. As we are going to be working so closely together."

"I never thought it was," Edith said. At Mrs. Treven's raised eyebrows, she shrugged. "It takes you half a second to remember to answer to it, most times … and you're a bit old to be newly married. And you are so obviously from a different part of society than most of our members, concealing your identity would only be good sense."

"Ah." Mrs. Treven looked taken aback—had she really thought she was fooling them? "In any case, if I can't trust you with my name now, there's no point trying to make any plans with you. It's Holmes. Mrs. Eudoria Holmes. Treven is an anagram of my mother's maiden name."

"Bit of a pretentious way to find an alias, but it works," Edith said. "You already know my name. Let us hope our partnership bears the fruit we hope for."

Mrs. Holmes stuck out a hand. "I am sure it shall."

They shook hands.

***

[coffee-in-veins]

I'm interested in Baldwins and Sarmentis relationship in RRR, will more of it come to light in later chapters?

Or could you give us a quick run down on how that came to be? How did they meet? Who caught feelings first and who made the first move?

hullo hullo! o/ thank you for such an interesting ask! ^^

and sorry for the late response. this shitstorm made me so depressed and angry i didn't know how to gather my wits to answer.

unfortunately, we don't get to see the whole story of Baldwin and Sarmenti since they're not exactly the focus of RRR, but let me assure you that we'll have a chapter where they will be heavily featured and we'll get to see more of them, their attitude and their interactions ^^

there won't be a full history since RRR isn't exactly about it, and we only see from Rey's perspective (who doesn't know them) or Dis' perspective (who's mostly interested in the present), but there will be an inkling of their relationship and how they are now. and, well, RRR isn't exactly straight and explains everything either, so it would've been weird to just... infodump about those two ^^'

i'd like to tell more but... frankly i don't feel like posting any of my stories or writing on tumblr after all the shit that had happened in the last few day and the fuckup they're making with ai and selling data...

do say, if i posted it on pillowfort, including their backstories, would you be interested in reading it?

[trashprinceward]

EVERYONE LISTEN UP, THIS IS IMPORTANT!

I'm going to talk about the history of Tumblr, the current state of Tumblr, and why you should get out.

And you can call me a hypocrite, sure. But as an artist who depended a lot on commissions and art sales, I only came back to Tumblr because this is where the audience and active fandoms are. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't be here.

So, you've probably heard people calling tumblr "the queerest place on the internet". Probably more ironically that sincerely, lately. But the reason for this is that, at one point, it was true. Tumblr was synonymous with gay shit, all over the internet. That was this site's reputation. To the point that what the right wingers call "woke" these days, used to be called "tumblr shit". Tumblr was the BIGGEST resource for LGBT+ communities, information, advice and connection. That was here, on this site. Ask boxes thrived with friendship and fun games, artists got regular commissions and their work was shared. And, as much of a cliche as it may be to say this, Tumblr was a 'safe space'.

Then everything changed in 2018. I don't know how many of you were here for that, but that's when all this started. That's when we had porn bots. They'd start reblogging random posts, adding pictures of straight up porn. Naked people, straight up fucking. No tags, no warnings. Just uncensored porn and those stupid "click here to fuck me" captions. They were everywhere, constantly. And staff did nothing about it. No moderation, no kind of adding verification or new accounts. They just let the problem fester. Why should they care? Until they were threatened with being kicked off the app store, at least. Then they moved to do something about it.

So, instead of pulling together a human moderation team, or temporarily limiting new accounts, or doing any kind of intuitive policing of these spam bots, they just decided to make a blanket ban of all NSFW content, the enforcing of which would be carried out by AI bots. This, as you can probably guess, was a monumental failure. Anything that remotely looked like naked flesh was tagged as mature (a particularly infamous example features a picture of sand dunes being tagged as mature). And perhaps most tellingly of this failure, it didn't get rid of porn bots.

What it did get rid of though, was artists. Myself included. I was a mature artist. I had a NSFT sideblog. I sold commissions, I made money. It wasn't exactly career level, but I made enough that commissions helped me to eat when all my money went on bills. Then that was gone. Even SFW art wasn't entirely safe, because if the bot decided that your art had too much "skin" in it, you were flagged. (And at the time, I drew a lot of Jojo art, so I was screwed on that front.) So I had to leave. To find a new site where I could post my art, and try to continue selling commissions. The problem with this? Only a handful of people followed me offsite. I had roughly 300 followers on here. About 5 came with me to twitter. And then about 2 came with me to pillowfort. I had lost everything. Artists all over lost their following, lost their support, lost their income. All because people couldn't be bothered to boycott their funny fandom website.

But that wasn't all. Because now staff saw they had an opportunity. This bot they had created, was going around flagging anything mature, sometimes outright deleting posts or banning blogs that were too 'NSFT'. So... What group is often inherently seen as NSFT or sexualised? Yep, you guessed it. The queer community. And so that's what they did. They struck it all down. The biggest LGBT community on the internet, and they used the "porn ban" excuse to start flagging and deleting blogs. Never touched the nazi blogs, or the white supremacists, or that one blog that would doxx gay people in homophobic countries. Nope, they were left alone. But the most prominent, notable and well known queer blogs were gone. And again, the majority of the userbase was ok with this. They stayed.

I left this site for 5 years. And I tried to make it work elsewhere, I really did. I went to twitter. But over there nobody retweets work, nobody comments on your art. I only had like 2 regular supporters. I haven't gained followers in YEARS. Literally the only reason I still post to twitter is because Airdorf retweets FAITH fanarts. I tried going to pillowfort, which is honestly like a BETTER version of Tumblr. But, it was empty. Nobody was there. I even offered to give out free invite links to pillowfort so other people could join up too! Nobody ever responded to me. So I gave up. After 5 years with almost no interaction, almost no commission sales. No friends, nobody to talk to, nothing to do, nowhere to go... I came back here. And interaction is so much better (even though it's still a struggle to get people to actually talk to me). But I hate being here because I know what this site is like.

Also I know how complacent people are. The things they did back then, they're still doing now. Flagging trans women as mature, straight up banning them for no reason, spreading around campaigns of hate. Its STILL happening. And you're all still here sitting "oh this is awful, this website is transphobic" and then go back to reblogging memes. I saw a poll recently that asked what people would do if tumblr closed down or kicked them out, and the majority answer was just "give up social media completely" and it's like, really? There are plenty of alternatives out there. Artists and creators, and LGBT activists and whoever have been BEGGING you to join us, but you just wont. People would rather sit in this sinking ship till it goes down than make the leap and follow us into the lifeboats.

And I'm saying this again now because there have been talks about tumblr making a deal with midjourney. Because they want to feed all our art, our selfies, our hard work into the AI slop machine. So history is repeating itself again, and once more artists will be begging you to please come with us. Please get off this site. Please come to a place that isn't actively trying to get rid of us.

Me... I'll be staying here as long as I'm able because this is the only place I have any kind of audience. But if you can, if you care about friends, if you care about artists, if you care about queer people. PLEASE come with us. If the worst comes to it, then I'll be leaving for pillowfort. Please, PLEASE come with me. I have invitations, I can send you one so you can join. Send me a message and ask me. Just please, don't die with this place.

[kedreeva]

hi Ked! hope the snakewatching is going well. I've been meaning to ask, because I know you've been writing fanfiction for quite a while: do you ever feel as though community engagement has trended down over the years? and if so, do you have any advice for fighting the feeling that you're wasting your time/energy for a silent audience that just consumes and moves on?

I think it has, but I think it hasn't. But I think our perspective on it has changed, vastly.

The thing is, fandom back in the day was just plain old smaller and more tightly-knit by necessity. Before the net was so big, spaces we could go were limited, mostly fan-controlled, often difficult to find, sometimes clunky to use if you were learning (waving at IRC, hello, I hate you still), and due to all of this were often just... smaller. You could know MOST of the people in a fandom space. You had some degree of genial relationship with readers because you talked to them. Archives outside of ff.net were common, curated spaces with amounts of fic that were relatively consumable in total, as in you could go to a fan-run archive, read every piece of fiction there, and then have to find a new one, which probably had at least some of the same fic on it. Even ff.net, a lot of the fandoms present in the early days it was just like. you had 20 fics, you had 100 fics, whatever the number was, and because the spaces were small and the population online was smaller than now, there just... weren't enough creators to constantly have access to new fic or art. I remember waiting for archives to update their collections because most of them you couldn't just add your work to yourself. And I remember that the best way to encourage that to happen faster was to go and get the creator worked up/excited about their thing again by talking to them about it.

Now, fandom is easily accessible. Now, there are platforms all over the place. If you don't like the section of fandom you're in, it's easy to find another, even within the same platform. Don't like this part of tumblr? Block some people and follow others. Don't like this discord server? leave and join a different one (or make one). Don't like twitter/instagram/tiktok/tumblr/livejournal/wattpad/pillowfort/whatever the fuck other platform? Try a different one!

I am grateful for this sprawl. I'm grateful for fandom being easy for everyone to access, for it being so much easier to find somewhere you can settle and have others who like things you like. I think everyone should have a home.

But that does mean sometimes fandom spreads thin. It does mean that instead of 100 creators, there could be a thousand. There could be two thousand. And instead of one place to find it all, there's a gabillion.

But... the amount of story and art a single human being is physically capable of finding and interacting with (reading, viewing, commenting on etc) hasn't gone up. I can only read at the pace I read at, same for anyone. The fandom I'm in has created AT LEAST 29,000 works in the last 11 months, on one platform (AO3). That's almost 90 fics a day for 11 months. And I know for a fact that not all of the stuff that's been written gets posted there, that's just the stuff I KNOW for SURE has been written since a specific date because I searched a character tag for a character that didn't exist before a certain date.

I don't know about you, but I'm not Readers Georg. I can't engage with every fic in a fandom anymore. I can't even engage with a tenth of the fic in fandom anymore just to purely read it, and by the time I'm done reading one, there's 7 more to take its place.

So, I don't think engagement has trended downward so much as I think it's spread out as fandom spreads out. I think it's more important now than it was before, to try to actively engage with creators, because of this. And I think it's important for creators to try to engage back, too. But I also know it's impossible to go back to how things were, and impossible to make a large fandom behave the way a small fandom did. I also also know that if you ever go into a small fandom, like a rarepair, you will almost certainly see an echo of the past with regards to engagement. I wrote a couple things for small fandoms more recently, and because they have far, far less fic available, they seemed to comment more on what was there. They engaged in community ways, going back and forth in comments instead of just "good job""thanks" the end. they have more time for it. A small enough fandom may go days or weeks without new fic, leaving them time to do those sorts of things, without the fear they're missing out on one of today's 90+ fics.

I can't offer any kind of quick fix, because I don't think it's necessarily broken. But I can say that you should always try to be the change you want to see. When you read something, leave the kind of comment you'd want to get. There's another fic around the corner, yes, but you can't read 90+ fics a day for 11 months straight. And neither can anyone else, and remembering that might put it into perspective.

If you want community, read the OTHER COMMENTS when you read stuff, and engage with the other readers; if anything, THAT is the major missing factor in this day... readers engaging each other over fan creations, rather than just creator-> consumer or consumer-> creator. The most fun i ever had writing on AO3 was when I was writing Siren's Song and readers started talking to each other in the comments about what would happen. A whole little community sprung up around readers talking to each other about what happened after one of my other fics ended. I think that's a missing element that often goes unspoken, and maybe that could help a lot if you feel like the audience is silent. Maybe they are. Maybe they don't know it's okay to talk to each other, too. Go into the audience and make some noise.

[ticklish-touch]

are you planning on leaving Tumblr? it seems like a lot of tk artists are starting to jump ship. Would be sad to see you go too.

Ehh I mean. It's with good reason. A few of my friends are (or were ) primarily TK artists that just, didn't find the joy in doing it for a public eye anymore. We have other projects, other goals, other passions that we want to pursue. We've had too many aspects of the tk community soured for us. We've made our own niches and found friends in the community (mainly on Discord) that we've grown comfy enough with that we can share our tk art without worrying if someone's gonna be fuckin weird about it.

I'm not gonna lie, I do plan on eventually migrating away from this blog, at least in terms of posting my art & writing. I'm at a point where, aside from my Backrooms story, I just don't find much joy in posting my work here anymore. I absolutely appreciate my fans and followers with all of my heart, they're the ones that have made this whole journey worth it. But like... 98% of new notifs I get on my work anymore are from bots, ageless blogs, or minors who can't fucking read. Having to block upwards of 10+ blogs per day has just become disheartening. (And we can probably all tell by now that the DA ship has long since sailed, lmao. I literally only use it to post my story anymore and after I finish it, I'm gonna peace outta there too.) I'm not going to delete my blog, I'd like to still interact with tk blogs I enjoy and followers/anons who send questions. And I'm def gonna go back and cull a good majority of old stuff. I just want a fresh start, y'know? Although, I'm not necessarily going to be pulling back from tk art. Over the past couple years I've had a spite festering in me that makes me want to hearken back to my roots a bit and be as shameless with my kink art as I damn well please. With the added bonus of finally being confident & emotionally mature enough now to liberally block any and all gross fuckheads. And... I just can't do that on a site that still flags & shadowbans raunchy artwork. I can't do that in a space that, ever since the first Tumblr Porn Purge and the rise of SFW tickle blogs that demonize more sexually-driven adults, has made kink artists feel like they need to keep themselves repressed. So it's going to be happening on sites like Pillowfort, BlueSky, hell maybe even FurAffinity.

So no, I'm not leaving leaving. I'm just going to be starting a new chapter of my life. 👍

[ritz-writes]

Get to know me tag game! I was tagged by @celestialcrowley

It's a long post so I'll put a cut here <3

Real Name: [REDACTED]

Nickname(s): [REDACTED]

Nickname Origin(s): [REDACTED]

Sorry, I'm not giving out my irl name </3

Preferred Name(s): Call me Ritz!

Ao3: RitzWrites

Social Media(s): I have a Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Pillowfort, Twitter. The only ones under Ritz tho are ao3, Twitter, pillowfort, and insta, tho I never use the insta.

State: Won't say the state I currently live in (tho i mightve mentioned it in a post somewhere probably) but I grew up in Texas

Birthdate: May 28

Pet(s): Currently have 7 cats and 1 dog in my house. One cat is specifically mine

Hobbies: Writing, reading, drawing, watching youtube, screaming about my fandoms

Personality: I'm the sunshine character, but I swear a lot. Also if you wrong my friends I feel it personally and will be very angy. I'm very open minded and won't make an opinion on smth until I get all the facts. I want to be friends with everyone but the gods nerfed me with social anxiety ;w;

Favorite Holiday(s): Christmas has always been special to me and give me Nice emotions. Halloween is also good tho.

Favorite Drink(s): Kiddo me would have an aneurysm when she finds out I like vanilla lattes. She swore up and down she'd never like coffee lmao. I also love strawberry milk and sprite.

Favorite Food(s): Pizza, donuts, sirloin, airheads candy, beef stroganoff

Favorite Dessert(s): Cookies and cream ice cream, cookies, brownies

Favorite Color(s): Pink!! I tried changing it when I was younger cuz I didn't want to be the stereotypical girl," but I've always loved pink. Gold is also nice, as well as pastel colors in general.

Favorite Quote(s): "New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings," -Lao Tzu

Favorite Book(s): The Enhanced series by T.C. Edge (I haven't finished reading it tho)

Favorite TV Show(s): Good Omens, Lego Monkie Kid, 2003 Ninja Turtles, Transformers Prime, Batman The Animated Series

Favorite Movie(s): Ocean's 8, Black Panther, The Martian, John Wick

Favorite Character(s): Crowley, Aziraphale, Muriel, MK, Wukong, Macaque, Tang, Jason Todd, Peter Parker, Tony Stark

Favorite Actor(s): David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Downey Jr.

Favorite Song(s): There's so many, but I'll list a few. Last One Standing by Icon for Hire. Ohio by Bowling for Soup. Rich and the Famous by Good Charlotte. and literally anything by set it off cuz they r my fav band

Favorite Music Genre(s): Pop Punk. Or what some ppl r now calling divorced dad rock

Favorite Podcast(s): I haven't listened to it in a hot minute, but My Brother My Brother and Me

Have You Ever Met A Celebrity: I met some YouTubers at a convention once, but I don't watch the channel anymore

Have You Ever Been To A Concert: Yeah. To see Fall Out Boy. It was outside and I had no water. Was fun tho

Do You Collect Anything: Braincells. I keep losing them tho (no I dont collect anything)

Do You Have Any Idols: Uhhhh I'm not sure. I have ppl I think are cool? I guess you could say my mom is my idol?

Is There A Real Life Friend You Can Completely Be Yourself With: My partner @novelcain <33

What Are Your Interests: Anything I end up hyperfixating on. So right now its Good Omens. Once s5 of Lego Monkie Kid comes out tho, I know that's where my brain will be. I also love graphic design, but I haven't been able to do it in ages.

Where Would You Love To Travel To: Maybe Scotland? Or Italy? I wanna go to Japan some day too.

Is There A Random Fact About Yourself That You’d Like To Share: I have binocular double vision, which means I see two things :) My glasses help a bit with that issue

tags: anyone who wants to do it

[practicingbushiho]

Reminder that Cohost exists and is basically the early stages of Tumblr without the embarrassing and obvious 'omg we need investment bux' bullshit the staff have done after seeing that they could use its new influx of users as fucking pawns to facilitate a profit growth. There needs to be some more work done on webpages where you can find like content blogs, but the user interactions there have already shown that they are invested in making sure that the site is usable to people not familiar with like, 2014 Tumblr.

And also, if a selling point is being able to post R18 works, I gotta be honest, cohost is the only place I've used so far that has felt amenable to that specific niche-- and I've also noticed a markedly larger queer artist population there as well. I've had a pillowfort account for 2 years and every time I've gone there it just didn't feel like I was doing anything. And maybe that's because I am more art/creation focused than fandom focused-- but my advice is this

If you use Tumblr because you are a fandom media consumer or a fan of a media property; sign up for PIllowfort. It has awesome community features (clubs, neat) and so you can even further curate your fandom experiences.

If you are a queer R18 artist who doesn't buy into the weird dichotomy of 'anti/proship' bullshit; sign up for Cohost. It's small but it is GROWING and there is a lot of wonderful fucked up shit there made by weirdos like me-- we also will NOT be tolerating fandom generated toxicity and bullying.

If you are a FURRY...I noticed itaku (which is a gallery/tumblrlike fusion imo) seems pretty amenable to those types too. It's less direct about its interactions, but its organizational tools and ability to detail commission info makes it good for both artists and prospective clients for an easier browsing experience.

Either way; please stop assuming that websites that have corporate investors will ever, ever care about its userbase. They didn't listen when we warned them about the nsfw ban back in 2018-- it almost killed their site revenue.

But they survived, because corporations are cockroaches that refuse to die. You will not change their minds; you will delay the inevitable at best. If you want a social media site that represents user needs, it needs to be owned by its users; ALL of the websites above are user funded and will NEED US to thrive and succeed so they can BE a viable replacement for Twitter or Tumblr. So join one, and help it grow. Enough of this shit.

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.

[pukner]

✨masterpost of my works✨

posted to my ao3

[this post is subject to editing in the future]

Since I intend on using Tumblr a bit more now, and because I like neat lists, I thought it'd be prudent do make a little list of what I have out on ao3 right now!

My name's Looth, and I am ENTIRELY at the whims of my hyperfixations. I'm on twitter and pillowfort by the same handles, but I rarely use the latter.

fandoms: Stranger Things, Our Flag Means Death, The Witcher (Netflix) and Good Omens

[list under the cut!]

fanfiction

Good Omens:

A Nanny? In MY Summoning Circle?

A twoshot wherein Warlock Dowling meets his Nanny again, via the very normal uni student past time of trying to summon a demon with a book you found in a dodgy bookshop. Very fluffy, genderqueer Warlock.

[Complete] 2/2, 10.5k

The Witcher (Netflix):

The Viscount

[geraskefer endgame]

A 5+1 that works on the premise that "I'm from Lettenhove" is a sort of codeword in the royal class for children that have fallen out of grace with their court/family? And the higher your rank in Lettenhove, the worse the thing you have done is? Lots of Jaskier shenanigans, aggressive found family and genderfluid Jaskier.

Based on a post by @artistsfuneral.

[WIP] 3/?, 1.3k

build me up, buttercup [rated M]

[geraskefer endgame]

A longfic I've been chipping away at since 2020, dear God. Features Jaskier and Yen being fake married and co-parenting Ciri, Geralt getting adopted, the found family inherent to bards and the city of Oxenfurt, ftm Jaskier and Ciri having a well-deserved identity crisis. Also, ocs galore, gratuitous academia, and also Valdo Marx is immortal and Jaskier's annoying best friend.

Geraskefer endgame. My baby, who I will return to as soon as I am able.

[WIP] 15/?, 64k

Our Flag Means Death:

the inertia series [rated E]

a three-part series following Israel Hands as he attempts to move on from the things keeping him trapped in amber, unable to grow.

[steddyhands endgame]

[Complete] 62.9k

1. love like a dog on a leash

Izzy Hands encounters an old friend in the form of Sam Bellamy, Ed starts a barfight, and Stede learns some backstory.

All of these men are haunted in some way.

1/1, 5.5k

2. open season

Izzy Hands finds himself inexplicably being courted by various pirates to be their first mate. No one has addressed that fact that he isn't looking for a new Captain; he already has two. Steddyhands endgame, features some Jackhands.

A long look at the dynamics between Ed and Izzy, and now Stede, and the older dynamics of Ed, Izzy, Calico Jack Rackham and Sam Bellamy. Actually, it's a look at Izzy himself, and his various traumas and the way he's transitioning from being in a Black Sails type dark genre to this weird muppet land everyone else on this ship seems to live in.

7/7, 44.5k

3. red sky at morning

An epilogue, wherein the boys all contend with the future on the horizon; the good and the bad of it.

1/1, 11.9k

stranger things

[my current hyperfixation send help]

Eddie Munson and the Dreamboy

[steddie]

Wherein Eddie and El traverse the inside of Steve's mind, and encounter various Steves at different points in his life trying to find where he's hidden himself to escape Vecna's final curse.

A 5+1, featuring Steve's Scoops Ahoy flirting, a little baby Steve, and El's hair.

[Complete] 1/1, 8k.

Dustin Henderson and the Lovebirds

[steddie]

Five times Dustin Henderson was subjected to Eddie Munson being gross and sappy and in love with Steve Harrington, and one time Steve didn't even have to be there.

Features Steve being serenaded, Eddie Munson's Roger Rabbit Impression, Steve's Tiny Gym Shorts, and a good old fashioned worm conversation. Also, gay dnd.

[Complete] 1/1, 9.7k

always burning, world keeps turning

a two-part series set in a soft post-apocalyptic Hawkins, where community and family keep everyone going. And Steve and Eddie kiss about it.

[steddie]

[WIP]

1. took you for a working boy

In a post-apocalypse, mildly nightvale-flavoured Hawkins, Steve and Eddie are the only ones who aren't aware they're dating. Steve does not have a gender crisis but does have a lot of difficulty finding the words for it all, Eddie is oblivious but earnest (and running a radio show, Dr. Death Defying or Cecil Palmer style), Steve and Robin are ACTUALLY soulmates, and everyone's doing their best.

I cannot stress how much everyone thinks they're already dating. Featuring genderqueer Steve, disaster gay Eddie, scheming younger teens, and lots of stobin fluff.

[complete] 6/6, 43.8k

2. hometown blues

The sequel to working boy, wherein Gareth, Vickie and Steve's mom encounter how fucking weird Hawkins has got in their absence, and take it with varying degrees of grace.

[WIP] 3/? 17k

off-script

Wherein Steve Harrington has his sexuality all figured out, Eddie's in comically heavy denial, and everything rapidly snowballs from there.

[steddie]

1. off the beaten path

Wherein Steve figures out he's bi before Eddie figures out he's gay, but Eddie STILL manages to fall first.

Features Steve talking himself though discovering his sexuality in approximately five minutes while on the phone with a baffled Jonathan, and him aggressively flirting with the local metalhead. He's also very good at being an unreliable narrator.

It ALSO features said local metalhead (who thinks himself straight) accidentally flagging, calling Steve Harrington princess in a totally straight way, and doing the ttrpg equivalent of doodling your crush's name on a notebook over and over. Also, somehow he's convinced himself he just hates Steve.

This won't end badly for anyone, I'm sure.

[Complete] 6/6, 34.2k

2. no boys allowed

Robin Buckley has her very first Girls' Day. She gets her hair braided, consoles her heartbroken best friend, and everyone muddies the water a bit on the exact definition of what a Girl is.

Steve Harrington has a good cry about Eddie Munson.

[Complete] 1/1, 7.5k

3. here be dragons

Eddie Munson has kissed a boy, and now he has to handle the fallout. He's got to grapple with the fact that he likes boys, likes a boy, and the harrowing fact that he may have inadvertently broken said boy's heart.

Or, a rapidly snowballing fic that's become a series of character studies by accident. Features Mike Wheeler kicking Eddie's ass into gear, ruminations on being a fashion-assigned dom, Steve Harrington's Various Abandonment Issues, and a surprise Tommy Hagan.

[WIP] 6/?, 38.9k

original works:

court of law

A mildly unhinged second person pov piece about a person going to college and finding that he's trapped in a bizarre dreamscape with no memories. And a new body. He accidentally steals a cute boy's name.

Lots of shenanigans, lots of gender and bad jokes.

[WIP] 6/?, 13k

[catscratching]

#wolqotd - Does your character have any animal companions?

Does your character have any companions, such as a chocobo or a pet such as is found in the “minions” tab?

If so, what are they like?

If not, why not, and would they ever want to have one?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arak's not mine - and he's not really a pet, he's family.  

Let me back up a little - It was just after Heavensturn, I think; I had been operating in Ul'dah on a more casual basis for some time, but I had just accepted a contract that made travelling back and forth from Limsa impractical.  

I had heard of this speakeasy where people could connect with potential clients - so I went.  Taverns of this sort are fantastic for making connections in a new city; it's an easy and convenient way to scope out your competition, get a feel for who the movers and shakers might be... you get the idea.  

So I went, expecting to get a drink, listen for a while... that sort of thing.  And there was this bartender - I honestly cannot tell you what initially caught my attention; perhaps his eyes?  Most people that serve drinks know the score.  Be attentive, make the customer feel a little special - the tips roll in, and you wander home with a heavy gil pouch. 

And he did these things - teased and told jokes, then this little rat crawled out of a pocket wearing a bow tie, and I just... I didn't know why at the time - I have a better idea now - but I was really drawn to them.  The rat - Arak - was seriously cute, and obviously well trained, and I always have this feeling that he understands more than people think he does.  

Fakhri will tell you that Arak saved his life - I sometimes wonder if the little guy helped us along early in our courtship.  In any case; we both love him very much, and if he's not with Fakhri, he's generally with me.  He sleeps in our bed with us (he's got his own pillow, but he generally likes to snuggle against Fakhri's neck), and if we're moving around too much for him, he's got a spot in the bathroom he's claimed for his own.

He's affectionate, friendly, and very well behaved, although if you leave food unattended, he may assume you were done and help himself.  

He and Fakhri are both such integral parts of my existence now that I cannot imagine life without either of them.  I know that the time will come in the not too distant future, for Arak - but I am content in the knowledge that the day we must say goodbye has not yet arrived.

@gray-morality

cross-posted from pillowfort!

[fiddlefordhadronmcgucket]

I just wanna say, you sharing around your stuff really helps! I didn't know you had a pillowfort before, but I saw your post that you reblogged to the animation community on there and I was so excited to have recognized your work! I'm glad that I'm finally following you on pillowfort now because of it too!

Thank you! I'm really glad that sharing my work in multiple places helps! Honestly I've thought that I should just put all of the links to my socials in the same place, but I consider some of my socials less important than others. I use pillowfort kind of less-intensively than something like Twitter, so I don't usually bother talking about it. I've also been kind of feeling weird about cross-posting because of people who follow me in multiple different platforms seeing the same post multiple times, but I feel like it helps get more eyes on my content, and now i know it helps people to find me as well so that's great! Thanks!

[elfwreck]

"Work together?" By handing over money to a corporation that won't tell us how much they need, how much they're getting, or how they're spending it?

How much capitalist propaganda have you swallowed if you think "everyone throw money into the same spot" is some form of working together?

"Why you stay here" - the memes are fun, and sometimes there's interesting conversations. I learn things. I share what I know. I enjoy the jokes and surreal content.

"...if you hate it so much." - I don't hate it. I dislike a lot of the changes Tumblr has made over the years, but there have been some good ones.

But I don't trust the owners. Didn't trust the last few; don't trust the current ones. I've seen no indication that they have a long-term plan, just... "err. We need money. The last five methods we tried didn't bring in enough, so let's pester the users directly! All those former 14-year-olds who grew up on Tumblr are now old enough to have jobs; they can throw money at us, right?"

"Where else you would go" - Dreamwidth. Tumblr's fun but Dreamwidth is home.

Of course, for a lot of people, the lack of unlimited image hosting makes it nonviable. I expect for a lot of them, Discord is their next home. (And that's got its own problems - Discord's currently better off financially than Tumblr, but they also have the constant problem of Apple-bannable content. Plus, Discord's security has problems, which is why it's infested with hackers. But. It's most people's next fun place if Tumblr goes under.)

Or there's Pillowfort. Which is eventually doomed because it hasn't figured out how to make money, and unlike Tumblr, didn't get several rounds of VC funded corporate buyouts. Currently it's surviving on donations. Your $5/month will go farther on PF than it will on Tumblr, but I don't expect it to last more than another couple of years.

The whole https://fediverse.party/ is available as well. Mastodon is twitter-esque; Diaspora is LJ-ish; I don't know if one is Tumblr-ish. However, someone has to pay for hosting those, so media content may not be free/unlimited.

I can also recommend BobaBoard, which is in alpha testing. (Hey look: it's the Better Idea mentioned in the previous comment. Boba's not perfect for me, but it is a new take on how-to-social-media.) It won't be for everyone, but it's going to hit some people as their perfect social media home. (It looks a lot like Tumblr. It acts more like Discord. But with anonymity features - you get a random ID in each post you make/comment in; people can see if you're the OP or not, but they don't know what else you've said in other threads.)

I don't want Tumblr destroyed. I'm not upset at anyone who's paying to remove ads; it's a valid choice, either just for the service, or as "I want to throw money at Tumblr in the hopes that it'll make the site last longer."

I don't trust that it'll work, and I'm not going to be upset at anyone else whose reaction is "I've been burned too many times to play along with this."

yall i really feel like 'websites need money to run' and 'yall sold out sex workers and erotica artists on this app to appease advertisements and now you want me to pay for the priviledge of using your censored ass website with no option or future where you roll back the censorship, are you fucking for real' can coexist

[beatrice-otter]

Fic: Fertile Ground

I suppose I should probably actually post my worldbuilding exchange fic here. Wouldn't want to be too quick off the mark, it's only been a month since it was revealed 🤣

I wrote a BSG fic, which gave me a lovely excuse to write a fic about a headcanon I've had since I first watched the show. (What the headcanon is, you'll have to read the fic to find out ...)

Title: Fertile Ground Author: Beatrice_Otter Fandom: Battlestar Galactica Characters: Original Four Length: 5383 words Written for: redrikki in Worldbuilding Exchange 2024

Summary: Simon only bothered to continue the fertility experiments because the others demanded it. Things are different on New Caprica.

AO3. Squidgeworld. Dreamwidth. Pillowfort.

Simon sat at his lab bench, waiting for his samples to finish processing—as well as they could, given the abysmal shortages of everything on New Caprica—and contemplated whether it would be worth it to take his turn as the Four representative at consensus meetings. The Ones were dead set against shipping in medical supplies from the Colonies. The Sixes and Eights should be pushing for it—if they truly wanted to build a relationship with the humans, helping them stay alive should be high on their priority list—but Fours were the only Cylons who really understood the fragility of the human body.

There was a knock at the door. Nurse Sashon popped her head in. "There's a human who's actually willing to have you treat her."

"Really?" Simon stripped off his gloves and tossed them in the laundry basket. Medical staff had been dramatically under-represented in the refugee fleet, and several years of trauma and poor healthcare and worse food hadn't been helped by the living conditions on New Caprica. But people would rather wait for Doc Cottle or one of the others, than be treated by a Cylon. "What's wrong with her?"

"She didn't say," Sashon said.

The nurse should have taken her medical history and seen if it was something she could handle herself, but Simon was bored and it would at least be a change. "Show her to my office." He washed his hands, and went down the hall to his office. He didn't often use it, but was private, equipped for a basic examination, and meant that fewer people would see her with a Cylon, if that was something she cared about.

He sat down in his chair and ignored the slightly musty smell that seeped in everywhere on New Caprica. The light through the window was thin and watery, nothing like his office back home had gotten. He didn't have time to ruminate on the past before a human woman sidled in—plump, with stringy black hair tied up in a messy bun, wearing shapeless layers of clothing like everyone else on New Caprica. He recognized her. She'd been in prison, briefly, although he didn't know why—he never bothered to look up those sorts of details.

"I'm Doctor Simon Agrinion," he said. "Please, come in, have a seat." He gestured courteously at the chair he kept for patients. For a second, he could almost have been back in his clinic on Caprica before the attacks.

"Doctor?" The human scrunched up her face skeptically. "Didn't know Cylons have medical schools."

"We don't," Simon said. "But as it happens, I received my MD from Paradise Valley Medical School on Caprica, and was a board-certified OB/GYN with a practice in Delphi for nine years before the attack." He pointed to his degree and certificates, hanging on the wall behind him. Copies of the ones that had been destroyed with the rest of Delphi.

"Why do Cylons need OB/GYNs?" she asked.

"Because some Cylons think that because we're so close, biologically speaking, to humans, we should be able to reproduce the same way," Simon said.

"You want kids?" she asked.

"I don't, but some of my brothers and sisters do," Simon said. So few Cylons had ever even seen an infant in the flesh, they were almost mythical. Once he'd gotten enough experience to be able to tell the reality apart from the fantasy, he'd recommended that if they send some infiltrators to be child carers. Nothing had ever come of it. "And given that my model has the most aptitude and interest in biology and medicine …" he spread his hands. "Here I am."

"You've treated human patients before?" she asked.

"As I said."

"Did you hurt any of them?"

"I have never harmed a patient," Simon said. It was true. The humans at the Farm weren't patients, they were test subjects; the prisoners here on New Caprica weren't his patients, either. "I didn't even send back any data that was used to plan the attacks."

"But you knew it was coming," she said. "You knew all your patients were going to die, and you didn't do anything to stop it."

"That's right," Simon said. What could he have done? Even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't have changed much. "But then, you knew that when you agreed to be seen by a Cylon doctor."

"I did," she said. "I figured you'd be happy enough to give me what I need."

Simon raised an eyebrow at that, but didn't comment. "Let's get started, then," he said, taking out a notepad. He got her name—Iris Olbion—and a brief medical history before performing a routine physical exam. She was in pretty good health, all things considered, and he told her so.

"So what is it you need help with?" he asked.

"I need an abortion."

"How far along are you?" She wasn't showing yet, but given her body type that didn't mean much.

Iris shrugged. "Almost five months."

Simon sighed. "That's far enough along that a procedure here in the hospital would be best."

"You can't just give me a pill?"

"I could," Simon said. Those, they had more of than they needed. The Fives had sold it as a way the Cylons were restoring civilization to humans after Roslin's ban, and the Ones had thought it was a great idea—every abortion meant one fewer human to kill later on. "A combination of mifepristone and misoprostol. But after twelve weeks, the dosage goes up. Chances are, we'd have to give you multiple doses until it took, which means medical supervision. It would probably take around twenty-four hours. A D&E only takes five to ten minutes."

"At twelve weeks I didn't know I was pregnant." Her voice was flat.

"Irregular cycle?" Few human women on New Caprica had regular menstrual cycles, considering the stress and borderline nutrition.

"Not particularly, but I wasn't paying attention." She wrapped her arms around herself. "I haven't been sexually active in years. It never even occurred to me. But I was in the Cylon jail for three days, and I only remember two of them. I don't remember the last time I had a period. And I'm feeling … something move. Inside."

Simon looked down at the notes he was taking and withdrew the faint tendrils of his consciousness from the web of his brothers' thoughts. "Have you taken a pregnancy test to confirm anything?"

"Not like there's a drugstore on the corner," she said flatly.

Simon had stocked his office as close to his Delphi office as he could, in a burst of optimism which hadn't lasted long, which meant he did indeed have a box of pregnancy tests in his cabinet. He extracted one and handed it to his patient. "The instructions are on the packaging. The restroom is down the hall on the right."

As soon as the door had closed behind her, he sagged in shock. After all the experiments on various basestars and colonies—in as close to ideal conditions as they could manage—a basic intrauterine insemination on this hellhole had worked?

He was reasoning far in advance of his data, Simon reminded himself. The odds of a hybrid pregnancy surviving to the fourth month were astronomical. Most likely, one of the human guards had taken advantage of her while she was unconscious. At this point, he didn't even know for sure she really was pregnant.

Next step: perform the abortion his patient wanted, and then analyze the fetal tissue to see if it had any Cylon characteristics. In the unlikely event it did … then he needed to check on all the women he had inseminated, see if any of them were pregnant. He hadn't bothered to check; it had seemed so unlikely. He was only performing the inseminations because his baby-crazed brethren insisted.

If any of them were pregnant, then he'd have to figure out what the hell was different here on New Caprica to allow viable Human/Cylon hybridization.

If none of them were … then he'd have to learn to get very good at hiding things from his brothers and hope nobody ever realized he'd aborted the only success he'd ever had.

The fetus' neurons were made of the same synthetic fibers his as his own. It was indeed a hybrid.

***

Cottle wandered in to the lab just as he finished taking the last of his samples.

***

"Heard you had a human patient."

"I did," Simon said. "She wanted an abortion, and figured that at least was a procedure she could trust a Cylon with. Sashon assisted. It was a textbook procedure." He forced himself to stop talking. That was a rookie mistake, you were far more likely to arouse suspicion or give something away by saying too much than too little.

Cottle grunted. "What are you doing now?"

Simon shrugged. "Running some tests. I'm curious about how New Caprica might be affecting pregnancy." Environment always mattered—gravity, air pressure, air quality, a hundred other factors could influence things. But what could possibly be different enough to allow a hybrid pregnancy?

"Not sure it matters much, because it's not like we can send pregnant people anywhere," Cottle said.

"It's not like I'm overrun with work," Simon responded. Honestly, he thought that was half the problem here on New Caprica. There just wasn't anything for the Cylons to do. No distractions from their internal arguments, except whatever games they wanted to play with the humans.

"Right," Cottle said. But since the human was overrun with work, he left shortly after.

***

None of his tests showed anything interesting beyond the fact that it had been, from what he could tell, a perfectly healthy fetus. Perhaps he shouldn't have given her the abortion she wanted? Then he could have studied its development? But no. He'd had no reason to deny it, not without explaining why, and that would have caused a major conflict with the humans if it got out—and he couldn't see how it wouldn't. Nor how he would explain why he needed to run so many tests on her and the fetus. Even if he'd simply ordered her taken to the prison, there would have been a problem. And New Caprica had enough of those already.

If it wasn't a fluke, there would be others to study later. If it was an unrepeatable fluke, then it held no scientific value.

He'd done the right thing by following her wishes. And the next step was to find out if it had been a freak chance, or if any of the other New Caprica inseminations had worked.

***

It took a little bit of doing, but he was able to account for every single human he'd inseminated in the eight months since they'd conquered the place.

None of the ones who'd been in prison for two months or longer had gotten pregnant, but he already knew that. And confirming that was the easy part; all it took was a quick rifle through the networked files. He didn't even have to go to a terminal to log in, not for information so many of his fellow Fours were accessing regularly.

The humans who'd been in and out more quickly—and thus had fewer checkups—were harder to get data on. Humans were fetishistic about keeping information on paper, and anyway they didn't have access to computers here on New Caprica to keep data on. So he had to make a list of names and go through cabinets full of paper files to see if any of them had been to the hospital for prenatal care or abortions. And do it at a time when the humans wouldn't see him do it, which was annoying. But the offices were deserted overnight, which gave him plenty of time.

He slipped in once the staff had gone back to their tents, ignored the Centurion standing guard, and started looking.

The first woman had not been to the hospital—or at least, not been recorded as doing so—since her release from prison two months ago. Inconclusive; she might be pregnant and not have noticed yet; she might be pregnant and not arranged for medical care yet. Or, most likely, she was not pregnant; even under ideal circumstances, artificial insemination only had about an 8% success rate per attempt, and these were not ideal circumstances.

Still, he made a note to check back later.

It only took five more files before he found his first possibility. Alinda Tyritake had been brought in for questioning on some suspicion or other six months ago; she was now pregnant. Probably about five months pregnant, according to the notes, and the sonogram hadn't found anything unusual. She could feel the baby move.

It was still more likely that she was pregnant by some human, Simon reminded himself.

He copied down the information and went on to the next one.

Two hours later, he put the last of the files back and left, nodding to the Centurion as he passed it.

He needed a walk, he decided; he certainly wasn't going to be able to sleep now.

Simon wandered through town until he was in a field on the outskirts. He flung himself down onto the vegetation and stared up at the stars above.

None of the inseminated humans who had been in prison long-term were pregnant.

Twelve percent of the inseminated humans who had been released immediately were pregnant, about what he'd expect if he were running a regular fertility clinic for humans under these conditions.

The prison was prison; but it was also a better and healthier environment than the tents the humans were camping in. It was warmer and cleaner. Prisoners were under stress, of course, but while stress lowered the likelihood of carrying a pregnancy to term it did not result in universal spontaneous abortions. And it wasn't like the humans who were free had any fewer problems to worry them. Logically, if one group was going to have more successful pregnancies, it would be the prison group.

"If I were a Six or a Two, this is where I'd start talking about God's great plan," Simon mused. They were far too likely to jump to conclusions that way.

He shuddered to think what the reaction to this was going to be. All the Sixes and Twos—and half the Eights—would drop everything and head to New Caprica to see the great miracle, and never mind what got dropped elsewhere because of it. The Ones would be unbearable, vicious, in their efforts to bring them down a bit. The other Fours would probably want to relocate all the Farms—and every human with a uterus they could capture—to New Caprica to try the whole suite of experiments here. The Fives wouldn't care, but the Threes would want to stir up trouble. There wouldn't be room for anyone. It would be chaos, and he'd have no place to work.

And they'd all want things from him.

Life had been easier, when he'd been a doctor in Delphi before its destruction, when he hadn't had to factor in his entire family to every decision. New Caprica was a shithole, but at least there were few enough Cylons here that they weren't all living in each others' pockets. And since they were living in an apartment building humans had made for themselves, he could have a human-style apartment all to himself.

Was there something in the air or soil or water here on New Caprica that increased fertility rates in general? He'd have to look into that. The pregnant women were probably not carrying hybrids; it was still most likely that Iris's pregnancy was a fluke.

But if it wasn't—and if it wasn't some weird thing on New Caprica that increased human fertility—then what was it?

Iris's pregnancy wasn't the first hybrid. There was that Eight, the one who'd defected. She had gotten pregnant on Caprica, under conditions almost as bad as they had here.

But the thing she hadn't been—and the thing she had in common with Iris, and all of the others who were now pregnant—was in Cylon control. She'd spent most of that time alone with her human, and then in the Colonial Fleet.

What if there was something about standard Cylon facilities that encouraged miscarriages? Or about contact with other Cylons? Could it be the constant, low-level signal emissions that made up the web of Cylon shared consciousness? That would be highly unlikely, because it was a very low amount of radiation that shouldn't add up to more than normal background radiation.

"It would still make more sense than the idea that you need love to conceive, considering that love is not required for regular conceptions," Simon told himself. If God did not make love a requirement for pregnancy in general, why require it for human/Cylon hybridization?

He perked up. At least this proved conclusively that the problem with their past experiments wasn't a lack of love. Iris certainly didn't love him or any other Cylon, and she'd gotten pregnant with a hybrid fetus.

***

By the time he reached his apartment, he'd finished thinking things through and his mind was much quieter. Most of the Fours on planet were asleep right now, and he let the soft rhythm of their dreams rise up into his attention. He was yawning as he walked down the hall.

"You're out late."

It was a One. Simon sighed; he was tired, and all he wanted was his bed. But it would be rude to ignore him. "I went for a walk. The stars are beautiful, tonight."

"They always are," the One said. "When we can see them on this frakking hellhole."

"Yeah."

"Didn't know you were interested in astronomy," the One said.

"I'm not, really, but we don't get clear nights very often."

"I hope nothing is troubling you?" The One smiled. "You know, I do have training and experience in counseling, if you're interested in someone to talk to."

As if he'd go to a One for that! Manipulative frakkers, all of them. "I'm fine, but thanks," Simon said. "Good night." He entered his apartment and closed the door firmly behind him.

Before getting into bed, he went over to the interface terminal in the bedroom. There wasn't any news, or at least, not any interesting news; all the reports were roughly the same as they'd been for most of their time on New Caprica. And this late at night, there were very few human-form Cylons in the datastream. (The Centurions were there, of course, but they largely kept to themselves.) He set a flag for someone to tell the hospital that he would be coming in late the next day. Unnecessary, of course, they'd probably be relieved he wasn't there, but it was an old habit.

***

He got a few strange looks, walking into the hospital that afternoon, which were explained when he opened his office door to see another Four sitting in his chair. Not one he knew, which meant a new arrival to New Caprica.

"You're in my seat," he said.

The other Four stood up slowly, a glint in his eye and the shiver of amusement he didn't quite hide well enough. This was probably his first time anywhere that wasn't a basestar or the Colony—he had that superior air of humoring the poor spy corrupted by human ways that their more sheltered brothers sometimes got.

"I saw your message in the datastream, thought I'd help out."

"How'd that go?" Simon asked.

The other shrugged. "It was boring. One of the humans asked me to run a few tests; I did it because I couldn't figure out what you were working on. You didn't leave any notes."

"I wasn't expecting someone to fill in for me," Simon said. "I hope you didn't get too bored."

"I didn't have anything else to do." The Four gave him a calculating look. "Are there any experiments we could be doing? I know we can't do anything like the Farms here, we're trying to play nice, but …."

"There's actually quite a lot we don't know about Cylon bodies, as opposed to Human ones," Simon said. "Studying our fellow Cylons would be useful."

"Why bother? We can just regenerate if anything too bad happens."

"For one thing, it would make the hybridization research easier if we had a better idea of exactly where the differences were," Simon pointed out.

"Oh, I suppose." The Four cocked his head. "And it would be something to do, to pass the time. Might even be interesting."

Simon nodded. "It could be." The other Four probably hadn't ever been directly involved in the attacks or in the pursuit of the humans. He'd probably never done anything but sit around the Colony living vicariously through the memories sent back by other Cylons. Simon would be more sympathetic to his boredom if he wasn't trying to find something interesting to do by trying to take Simon's place. But after a few moments of conversation, the other Four left.

Simon double checked everything he'd done, and he'd done everything correctly that Simon could see, which was good. Having the memories—and almost all of Simon's memories of his training and work among Humans were in the datastream, and almost all of his fellow Fours had chosen to fully incorporate them—didn't necessarily mean you knew how to put them into practice. (And it definitely didn't mean you felt the same way as the copy who had originally experienced the thing you were remembering.)

Once the check was done, Simon turned to his project. He could order the Centurions to round up the possibilities and bring them to the hospital for a checkup, but why bother? They'd come in for checkups eventually anyway, and if he made sure that they had ample supplies for amniocentesis and similar tests, Cottle would use them, and he could check if they were carrying hybrid fetuses from there.

No, the thing to do next was to start looking at environmental factors that might be common to the Farms and to the prison here on New Caprica. Get tests of water quality, air quality, that sort of thing. He could do the prison himself—he was scheduled to work there next week, instead of the hospital, might as well do it then—but he'd need his brothers back in the Colonies to do the work there and send him the data.

There were no terminals in the hospital, as it was designed for humans. Simon made a note to put the request in when he got back to his apartment that evening.

***

That afternoon Simon and Cottle took inventory, going through the list of supplies the hospital had, figuring out what could be made here on New Caprica and what to request be shipped out from the Colonies. When the Cylons had first arrived, such requests had all been filled as a matter of course. These days, things were different. But they could usually still get most of the most critical things.

"So, did the other Four have a medical license, too?" Cottle asked, as they finished up.

"No," Simon said. "I was one of only three to attend medical school, and one of only a handful—" he couldn't remember exactly how many "—to get licensed and practice in the Colonies. But all of my model share what I learned, in school and in my practice."

"Is having someone else's memories the same as having done it yourself?"

"No," Simon said. "And we can transmit knowledge and skills without all the experiences that went with them, if we choose. And we normally do. What's the point of sharing all the meals in the school cafeteria, for example, or the annoyance of trying to study while your next door neighbor blasted their music at deafening volume?" And then there were the things that your brothers couldn't understand, and things that were private. Which often came to the same thing; Cylon society didn't believe in privacy, though many Cylons who'd spent time living among Humans learned to value it.

Cottle grunted. "If he shows up again to take your place, do you vouch for his skills? And his ethics? Would he do as good a job as you?"

"Maybe not as good," Simon hedged. "Probably more like an intern or resident who knows all the textbooks but has never put them into practice."

He didn't answer the question about ethics, and from the look he shot him, Cottle noticed.

***

It took a few days to get the response back from his brothers still in the Twelve Colonies; he wasn't asking for summaries of data already collected, but rather, whole new testing of everything they could get their hands on. There were a few grumbles about wasting time looking over things they already knew perfectly well, and a few approving remarks about doing things thoroughly, sent along with the data.

It was a lot to analyze, but he had the time, and so he went through it manually instead of merely having the datastream sort through it and process it. He couldn't do it at the hospital, because so many of the chemical formulas he couldn't recognize on sight. And he also needed confirmation of which ones they'd varied, and what the results had been, so he could eliminate them. Parts of it were tedious, but there was also something very satisfying about checking things off, one by one.

And also, this way he could verify that nothing had been overlooked.

While he was working his way through that project in his off hours, the supplies he'd ordered came through, and Cottle started giving amnios to his pregnant patients. The poor living conditions since the destruction of the Colonies greatly increased the risk of problems.

Humans did the needle work, but Simon processed the tests; no Human who knew how to do it had survived, that they knew of.

Simon passed on all the results completely accurately. With one exception; he did not inform anyone that he had tested for Cylon characteristics.

Of the fifteen women on his list of possible hybrid pregnancies … only one was carrying a fully-human fetus.

The other fourteen were hybrids.

He spent more time on his data analysis.

***

Simon almost missed it, and in retrospect that had to be intentional.

It was mislabeled. According to the analysis, it was a prostaglandin compound used to treat hypertension. Fairly benign.

But still, it caught his eye. That wasn't a contaminant that you would expect to find in the water anywhere except maybe around the pharmaceutical factory that produced it, and even then, only if they were particularly bad in their environmental practices. It was harmless, and so he would have dismissed it, except … it was present in the water from every Farm compound.

And in the water in the prison.

And (he checked) in the water on the basestars.

He eyed the tap in the kitchen, which he could see from the table where he was working, and decided to take a sample in to the hospital the next day.

Now, it was an old drug that Humans had used for years, and had no pregnancy complications whatsoever. But the question remained: what the frak was it doing everywhere that Cylons were? And why had nobody noticed it and used it as a variable in any of their experiments?

At first, Simon couldn't think of a reason.

So he looked up the formula to see what other drugs had the molecular formula C22H38O5. Just in case there had been an identification error.

(But an error at all twelve Farms and the prison and the basestars?)

And there was another drug with that molecular formula.

Misoprostol.

An abortificant.

…

Simon got up and went for a walk, all his thoughts and emotions tucked up carefully inside him so that none of his siblings could feel them.

It was raining outside, unfortunately, but there was a nice stand of trees not too far from the settlement that blocked the rain nicely. He could have stayed in his apartment and projected the trees, but … he needed to be moving while he thought this through.

The air was bitterly cold, and he welcomed it, letting it press through his body, wake him up. Keep him focused, instead of letting his brain run around in circles.

It had to be the Ones.

The thought had been creeping around the edges of his mind since he started looking into the chemical.

The Ones hated the idea of children, mocked it relentlessly at every turn. They thought they should be in charge, that they were the smartest and the wisest and the only ones who truly saw the world as it was, and all others should accept the place the Ones laid out for them. They'd sabotage the dreams of their fellow Cylons and laugh about it.

And they would have had the access to do it, to alter the datastream so that it would mis-identify misoprostol as something else.

But how to prove it?

No, he didn't need to prove it was the Ones, not yet; he just had to prove it had been done. There were plenty of medical reference libraries back in the Twelve Colonies; every hospital and clinic would have one. And out of the millions of medical labs that humans had had, surely at least one still had functioning equipment. All he had to do was send a discreet message to a brother still in the Twelve Colonies, have them look up the formula in a book, and run the test on Human equipment.

Once they did that, and uploaded the results to the datastream, the cat would be out of the bag. Simon couldn't predict what would happen next, but—

"Hello, Simon."

He had, he realized, been very stupid. Simon turned to face the One—there were two of them. He opened his mind wide and tried to reach his brothers—

***

Simon surged up out of the tank, gasping, but it was too late. He was cut off from the datastream; the only ones he could reach were the Ones kneeling around the edge, watching him flop around in the confusion of Resurrection.

"I don't know why you started poking around now, after you'd pretty much given up on the whole reproduction project," one of them said, "but we can't have it. Everything is much better without children, I'm sure you understand. It's a nice distraction for some of our brothers and sisters, but that's all it can ever be. A distraction."

"Besides, can you imagine what would happen if you told everyone about what we'd done?" the Ones said. "Why, it would tear the Cylons apart! So much for Cylon unity. We'd be as bad as the Humans."

"If you wanted Cylon unity, you should have abided by the consensus," Simon said.

"The consensus was wrong."

Another One snorted. "Besides, what do you think kids would do, in the long run, to our unity? Instead of seven models, there would be God only knows how many running around. Each one unique." He spat the word, as if it were dirty.

"How did you figure out I was onto you?" Simon asked.

"A notification any time someone looks up the chemical composition of that abortificant," a One said.

Simon could probably have figured that one out on his own, he realized. "What are you going to do with me?" he said. "My brothers will notice I'm gone."

"Will they? There's thousands of Fours, and a couple hundred of you on New Caprica. What's one, out of so many?"

"But only three of us actually went to medical school," Simon pointed out. "Every Four out there has memories from me, incorporated into their core self. Some more or less than others, but they've all got something. They'll notice that I'm not there."

"No." The One smiled. "They won't. You think you're the first? You aren't. They won't ever think to ask what happened to you."

He reached down below the lip of the tank, to where Simon knew the controls were.

Everything went dark.