#what is the ecosystem of tumblr when looked at in this way

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

not a desert technically but I just visited the dunes in Monterey and gleefully trampled on some ice plant and I feel like you might enjoy that. if you wanna talk about the kinds of vegetation that grow in sandy soil or something I invite you to 👀

(also you're doing it! you're surviving! you'll get through that doctorate!)

ok ready this is my most important soapbox of all because soils in the desert are very special and have such cool organisms you don't find in these arrangements outside of drylands...

first lookee here. wauw beautiful utah

ok now look closer

no closer closer closer

CLOSER CLOSER CLOSER

WOW is that MOSS? you are thinking. the answer is YES. but doesn't moss like lots of water you are thinking??? WELL USUALLY. BUT in the desert you will notice that things like grasses and shrubs have lots of space between them unlike in more temperate climates-vegetation cover is not truly continuous. And there's less leaf litter than in forests obscuring the dirt. Which means all that soil is just sitting out in the open with nothing to protect it from being blown away by those harsh desert winds... except of course for our friends the BIOLOGICAL SOIL CRUSTS. also known as crypotbiotic soils, cryptogrammic soils, and biocrusts (for short).

These are communities of mosses, lichens, cyanobacteria (aka blue green algae--yes, those are usually Wet too, but ironically so so common in deserts), and the tens of thousands of surface and subsurface microbes that are associated with them. It's easy to forget just how many organisms are living in one single scoop of soil, especially because science can barely identify 1% of these microbes. Like of JUST the ones we have enough info to classify enough to count in my own master's dataset left me with over 25,000 unique taxonomic units I had to manage. don't worry about what that means just know it was very annoying and makes statistics a headache. anyway you find them all over the southwest US states as well as in other deserts around the world (spain, australia, sooo many in china, incredible ones in the succulent karoo in south africa/namibia, plenty in argentina etc etc), if you know where to look...

anyway OUR HEROS THE BIOCRUST aren't just there to look pretty (though you will can see from photos they also do this :) ), but are a vital component to the dryland ecosystem! They literally hold the soil surface together to prevent erosion, they influence hydrology in terms of rainfall runoff + infiltration, they impact how seeds germinate, they contribute to nutrient cycling and what plant-available compounds are held at the soil surface... like i feel like Tumblr in general has been made aware of how fungi & root networks interact in large scale systems like forests, but that is also happening on a more microscopic level in deserts! just in the top couple centimeters soooo much is happening. Cyanobacteria in particular are tiny organisms that produce little nets of sugars woven in the soil to climb around on and protect themselves, and if you crumble a little bit of soil from the surface you can see how the little spiderweb strings literally hold together the sand particles.

Now that you're Aware of biocrusts, when you look at larger scale landscape photos taken in un-trampled areas of desert, you will notice them as darker patches and textures on the lighter soil:

Yep there's these tiny little communities all over, that many people never learn to see. And now what I said before about mosses & cyanobacteria usually preferring wet environments--they have in fact adapted to life in the desert in ways that means they're dormant for most of the year. They live in stasis until the rainy season hits (or in some cases, winter moisture from a snow layer--many will photosynthesize through a few inches of snow since it's clear/white), and then burst into color and life. Many patches of biocrust will look utterly lifeless and dried out at first and then become vibrant and swell up within a few minutes of being exposed to moisture. Lichens, while more vibrant even when dry, will also mostly only grow/reproduce while wet. And biocrusts come in all sorts of colors, shapes, and preferred microhabitats!

anyway this post is long enough already so i'll be quick. while beautiful and important as you can imagine these are FRAGILE. if they get trampled too much, by humans or cows or cars, that's it. you're back to bare soil that can blow away whenever it wants.

I was lucky to get to participate in a 2x/year survey of one of the very few places in Utah to NEVER have cattle grazing or development, a remote area the entrance is kept secret to inside Canyonlands National Park, where you can see just how dense and lush biocrusts once could be in the US southwest:

ah... glorious. what special little guys. this is why if you visit many of the national parks in Utah you will see signs & stickers around with slogans like "Don't Bust The Crust" and "Tiptoe Through The Crypto" and etc. so heed that advice but DO stop and kneel down and get a better look at them!

[fappellmoan]

for months i genuinely wholeheartedly could not tell the 911 guys apart and this is so important for me to stress bc throughout my life i have prided myself on being able to tell twins apart really easily and liking being that person to connect faces to other things ive watched or honestly just seen in passing like i could track down a random commercial actress and shit and i mean i suppose part of that is not knowing their characters and they just twin all the time but i apologize still im aware that mans last name is diaz and now i feel like im sitting here laid up @ all the tumblr lesbians like haha damn so thats buck x eddie? that said idk if im like happy i know any of this.

[tinystepsforward]

autocrattic (more matt shenanigans, not tumblr this time)

I am almost definitely not the right person for this writeup, but I'm closer than most people on here, so here goes! This is all open-source tech drama, and I take my time laying out the context, but the short version is: Matt tried to extort another company, who immediately posted receipts, and now he's refusing to log off again. The long version is... long.

If you don't need software context, scroll down/find the "ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening" heading, or just go read the pink sections. Or look at this PDF.

the background

So. Matt's original Good Idea was starting WordPress with fellow developer Mike Little in 2003, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) that was originally just for blogging, but now powers lots of websites that do other things. In particular, Automattic acquired WooCommerce a long time ago, which is free online store software you can run on WordPress.

FOSS is... interesting. It's a world that ultimately is powered by people who believe deeply that information and resources should be free, but often have massive blind spots (for example, Wikipedia's consistently had issues with bias, since no amount of "anyone can edit" will overcome systemic bias in terms of who has time to edit or is not going to be driven away by the existing contributor culture). As with anything else that people spend thousands of hours doing online, there's drama. As with anything else that's technically free but can be monetized, there are:

Heaps of companies and solo developers who profit off WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, and other services;

Conflicts between volunteer contributors and for-profit contributors;

Annoying founders who get way too much credit for everything the project has become.

the WordPress ecosystem

A project as heavily used as WordPress (some double-digit percentage of the Internet uses WP. I refuse to believe it's the 43% that Matt claims it is, but it's a pretty large chunk) can't survive just on the spare hours of volunteers, especially in an increasingly monetised world where its users demand functional software, are less and less tech or FOSS literate, and its contributors have no fucking time to build things for that userbase.

Matt runs Automattic, which is a privately-traded, for-profit company. The free software is run by the WordPress Foundation, which is technically completely separate (wordpress.org). The main products Automattic offers are WordPress-related: WordPress.com, a host which was designed to be beginner-friendly; Jetpack, a suite of plugins which extend WordPress in a whole bunch of ways that may or may not make sense as one big product; WooCommerce, which I've already mentioned. There's also WordPress VIP, which is the fancy bespoke five-digit-plus option for enterprise customers. And there's Tumblr, if Matt ever succeeds in putting it on WordPress. (Every Tumblr or WordPress dev I know thinks that's fucking ridiculous and impossible. Automattic's hiring for it anyway.)

Automattic devotes a chunk of its employees toward developing Core, which is what people in the WordPress space call WordPress.org, the free software. This is part of an initiative called Five for the Future — 5% of your company's profits off WordPress should go back into making the project better. Many other companies don't do this.

There are lots of other companies in the space. GoDaddy, for example, barely gives back in any way (and also sucks). WP Engine is the company this drama is about. They don't really contribute to Core. They offer relatively expensive WordPress hosting, as well as providing a series of other WordPress-related products like LocalWP (local site development software), Advanced Custom Fields (the easiest way to set up advanced taxonomies and other fields when making new types of posts. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it), etc.

Anyway. Lots of strong personalities. Lots of for-profit companies. Lots of them getting invested in, or bought by, private equity firms.

Matt being Matt, tech being tech

As was said repeatedly when Matt was flipping out about Tumblr, all of the stuff happening at Automattic is pretty normal tech company behaviour. Shit gets worse. People get less for their money. WordPress.com used to be a really good place for people starting out with a website who didn't need "real" WordPress — for $48 a year on the Personal plan, you had really limited features (no plugins or other customisable extensions), but you had a simple website with good SEO that was pretty secure, relatively easy to use, and 24-hour access to Happiness Engineers (HEs for short. Bad job title. This was my job) who could walk you through everything no matter how bad at tech you were. Then Personal plan users got moved from chat to emails only. Emails started being responded to by contractors who didn't know as much as HEs did and certainly didn't get paid half as well. Then came AI, and the mandate for HEs to try to upsell everyone things they didn't necessarily need. (This is the point at which I quit.)

But as was said then as well, most tech CEOs don't publicly get into this kind of shitfight with their users. They're horrid tyrants, but they don't do it this publicly.

ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening

WordCamp US, one of the biggest WordPress industry events of the year, is the backdrop for all this. It just finished.

There are.... a lot of posts by Matt across multiple platforms because, as always, he can't log off. But here's the broad strokes.

Sep 17

Matt publishes a wanky blog post about companies that profit off open source without giving back. It targets a specific company, WP Engine.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?

(It's worth noting here that Automattic is funded in part by BlackRock, who Wikipedia calls "the world's largest asset manager".)

Sep 20 (WCUS final day)

WP Engine puts out a blog post detailing their contributions to WordPress.

Matt devotes his keynote/closing speech to slamming WP Engine.

He also implies people inside WP Engine are sending him information.

For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc. I have a bunch of journalists happy to connect you with as well. #wcus — Twitter I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. — Tumblr

Matt also puts out an offer live at WordCamp US:

“If anyone of you gets in trouble for speaking up in favor of WordPress and/or open source, reach out to me. I’ll do my best to help you find a new job.” — source tweet, RTed by Matt

He also puts up a poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed back at WordCamps.

Sep 21

Matt writes a blog post on the WordPress.org blog (the official project blog!): WP Engine is not WordPress.

He opens this blog post by claiming his mom was confused and thought WP Engine was official.

The blog post goes on about how WP Engine disabled post revisions (which is a pretty normal thing to do when you need to free up some resources), therefore being not "real" WordPress. (As I said earlier, WordPress.com disables most features for Personal and Premium plans. Or whatever those plans are called, they've been renamed like 12 times in the last few years. But that's a different complaint.)

Sep 22: More bullshit on Twitter. Matt makes a Reddit post on r/Wordpress about WP Engine that promptly gets deleted. Writeups start to come out:

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg Sparks Backlash

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers

Sep 23 onward

Okay, time zones mean I can't effectively sequence the rest of this.

Matt defends himself on Reddit, casually mentioning that WP Engine is now suing him.

Also here's a decent writeup from someone involved with the community that may be of interest.

WP Engine drops the full PDF of their cease and desist, which includes screenshots of Matt apparently threatening them via text.

Twitter link | Direct PDF link

This PDF includes some truly fucked texts where Matt appears to be trying to get WP Engine to pay him money unless they want him to tell his audience at WCUS that they're evil.

Matt, after saying he's been sued and can't talk about it, hosts a Twitter Space and talks about it for a couple hours.

He also continues to post on Reddit, Twitter, and on the Core contributor Slack.

Here's a comment where he says WP Engine could have avoided this by paying Automattic 8% of their revenue.

Another, 20 hours ago, where he says he's being downvoted by "trolls, probably WPE employees"

At some point, Matt updates the WordPress Foundation trademark policy. I am 90% sure this was him — it's not legalese and makes no fucking sense to single out WP Engine.

Old text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. New text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Sep 25: Automattic puts up their own legal response.

anyway this fucking sucks

This is bigger than anything Matt's done before. I'm so worried about my friends who're still there. The internal ramifications have... been not great so far, including that Matt's naturally being extra gung-ho about "you're either for me or against me and if you're against me then don't bother working your two weeks".

Despite everything, I like WordPress. (If you dig into this, you'll see plenty of people commenting about blocks or Gutenberg or React other things they hate. Unlike many of the old FOSSheads, I actually also think Gutenberg/the block editor was a good idea, even if it was poorly implemented.)

I think that the original mission — to make it so anyone can spin up a website that's easy enough to use and blog with — is a good thing. I think, despite all the ways being part of FOSS communities since my early teens has led to all kinds of racist, homophobic and sexual harm for me and for many other people, that free and open-source software is important.

So many people were already burning out of the project. Matt has been doing this for so long that those with long memories can recite all the ways he's wrecked shit back a decade or more. Most of us are exhausted and need to make money to live. The world is worse than it ever was.

Social media sucks worse and worse, and this was a world in which people missed old webrings, old blogs, RSS readers, the world where you curated your own whimsical, unpaid corner of the Internet. I started actually actively using my own WordPress blog this year, and I've really enjoyed it.

And people don't want to deal with any of this.

The thing is, Matt's right about one thing: capital is ruining free open-source software. What he's wrong about is everything else: the idea that WordPress.com isn't enshittifying (or confusing) at a much higher rate than WP Engine, the idea that WP Engine or Silver Lake are the only big players in the field, the notion that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But he's started a battle where there are no winners but the lawyers who get paid to duke it out, and all the volunteers who've survived this long in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by big money are giving up and leaving.

Anyway if you got this far, consider donating to someone on gazafunds.com. It'll take much less time than reading this did.

[nekropsii]

ALPHA TROLLS RANKED BY HOW WRONG THE FANDOM AT LARGE IS ABOUT THEM:

This is a personal challenge, based entirely on my own experience and perspective, and also ranked from Most to Least Correct. I was bored, and thought this might be fun.

Putting this under a cut, because it's long as hell.

MEULIN LEIJON

People get her mostly correct, from what I’ve seen… Most of the time, fan content of Meulin is absolutely recognizable as Meulin, but her pride in her deafness + joy of learning new ways to interact with the world through/due to her disability is always removed, and I do not often see people tackle the Toxic Positivity aspect of her character. That seems less like character assassination, though, and more like a combination of people not actually playing through the Openbounds, people not being able to fathom disabled people (especially those who gained a disability later in life rather than being born disabled) being happy, and general fandom distaste for the idea of touching anything uncomfortable, especially when that uncomfortable topic is highly mundane, normalized, and potentially applicable to them or their loved ones. Meulin’s toxic positivity was, of course, commentary on Tumblr’s ecosystem at the time, so… It was much harder to touch back then.

ARANEA SERKET

People tend to get her general, broad strokes personality right, but unfortunately she gets treated pretty roughly for the crime of Being A Serket. People refuse to understand her motivations, and she often gets demonized for what she was doing around/during [S] Game Over, even though that was something she’d gotten pushed to and also was cool as fuck to watch. God forbid a woman do anything.

DAMARA MEGIDO

People are right about the racism, 100%. It is completely despicable, hard to look at, and extremely blatant. She does, however, have character outside of that. No, it isn’t “whore”, it’s more like “angry, dysfunctional abuse victim”, and she’s genuinely a very interesting and tragic character. But, again, people are right about the racism, so she gets to be placed way up here.

MEENAH PEIXES

She is such a chaotic little bastard. I love her. I really do. Please understand that she genuinely does not understand the concept of consequences. This girl didn’t have a Lusus, she didn’t have parents, it was functionally illegal to tell her “No, you can’t do that.” That would fuck up literally anyone’s moral compass. That’s not me hand waving away all the fucked up and bad shit she’s done, we all know what she did, but people tend to forget this aspect of her character and it pains me deeply, because it is a very genuinely interesting concept that I want to see more of. She’s capable of regret, we’ve seen her feel it, I just don’t think foresight is her forte. No one raised her to consider consequences, or help her experience them in a healthy way, because nobody raised her period.

Also, her ass is not butch, she is the girliest girl in the entire comic. She is about hot pink and glitter and kiss marks and unicorns and cute little puns and you will respect that. She is not masculine. Her ass is not masculine nor is she butch. Let her be her hyper-feminine self.

LATULA PYROPE

Please for the love of god there is more to her character than “Gamer Girl” and “Mituna’s Girlfriend”. You are falling for her fucking ruse. Please. Please. Please recognize that her entire character is about internalized misogyny, and being forced to overcompensate for misogyny in gaming circles as a gamer who happens to be a woman. Please. I’m begging.

KURLOZ MAKARA

His character is not that deep, it’s mostly just a string of events he is mysteriously, inexplicably involved with. The Makaras are extremely Function Over Form- their characters practically do not exist, they're mostly just plot devices that exist to push the story along. I'm sorry to Makara fans. You just invented a guy in your mind and decided he was real. He is also not that soft, though, and his relationships with both Meulin AND Mituna are not healthy. Hard to stop people from ascribing cutesy squishy lovey dynamics to random men who happened to have looked at each other once, though. Some people truly haven't graduated from 2012.

HORUSS ZAHHAK

I am begging people to consider that maybe the biggest issue here is not that he is “Bad Otherkin/Therian Representation” and is in fact maybe the fact that Hussie was actually making fun of Systems when he was writing Horuss. Because Horuss is canonically a system. He uses the word system. He uses the word switching. He uses the word host. He literally talks about his Plurality at length in extremely upfront, plain terms. I don’t know how him being “Bad Otherkin Representation” was and still is the main discourse about him. It makes me insane. That is a commentary that truly writes itself. Talk about having your priorities out of wack, honestly...

PORRIM MARYAM

No, she is not a MRA, she’s just a regular feminist who happens to live on a different planet with different politics and social hierarchies from Our Real World Earth’s USA. Whatever argument you’re about to pull out of your ass to say that she sucks is bad. She already explained what she meant by that, in more detail, very clearly, and she was right. Half the time she’s literally just giving you factual information about what Beforus was like, and literal plot synopses. She isn’t saying anything insane. She’s literally normal. I don’t know why people cannot handle or process this. Porrim has not ever said anything controversial. If you disagree with this you’re either misconstruing her on purpose or you fell for Kankri’s bait, and that’s just fucking sad at that point.

Also, she’s more than a sex object, and her tits are not huge. Honestly, half the shit she was saying was just “I am more than my sex life”, and so many people took that and made her main character trait her sex life. Just pathetic.

RUFIOH NITRAM

This man is a fucking war criminal and I will stop at nothing until he is behind bars for his crimes against Damara. Raging misogynist. Total fucking cunt. Just the worst. If I talk any more about this, this part will be 1,000 paragraphs long. But also, I’m begging people to recognize his relationship with disability, too. He was similar to Meulin in the sense that he didn’t mind his disability, and his biggest gripe with it was the way that Horuss tried to “fix” it… Which is an interesting way to expand upon how Beforus’s culling system is not only very explicitly ableist, but mimicking real world systemic ableism. I also want people to recognize that Hussie is actively having a conversation about the reclamation of slurs with Rufioh’s character, and how not letting people reclaim such language is doing nothing but giving the word power against them while stripping away their own personal agency. Rufioh’s a complicated guy, and he’s interesting and also the worst, and I am really tired of how he gets watered down to nothing but “Pretty Boy Victim Of His Inexplicably Psycho Ex”.

MITUNA CAPTOR

Holy Fucking Shit, You Guys Are Ableist.

KANKRI VANTAS

To this day I see people saying he was just Hussie making fun of SJWs. To this day. To this day people think Hussie was trying to make Every Tumblr Leftist look bad, and that he hates them Because They Are Leftists. When will people recognize him as a bootlicker to the oppressive class and the violently bigoted. When will people recognize that. When will people recognize that this is more of a commentary on the legitimate real flaws of Tumblr’s politics at the time. When. When.

When will people stop portraying him as a lovey-dovey Catholic Whore. I’m going to stab my fucking eyes out and then kill everyone in this building. Me when it's based and cool to ship an aroace character with a sexual predator. I GUESS.

CRONUS AMPORA

I say this with every ounce of sincerity I can possibly muster as a person: What the literal actual fuck.

[relax-and-read-on]

I have not made made a generic hc post about the primarch in a LONG time. I miss it, and it's good for the warhammer tumblr ecosystem. So, without further waiting....

Primarch, and the absolutely shitty gifts they give each others for a White Elephants gift exchange

Roboute: A classic coffee mug (primarch sized!) Filled with sweets and a indestructible fancy fountain pen. The mug say "World Most Okay Dad" on it, and he joke that it apply to them all.

Lion: a stuffed bird. The number of eyes on it is vaguely unnerving. It's unclear wich way is the head suppose to go, and all agree that it's probably an awful mutant bird. Lion is too proud to admit that it's just a really shotty taxidermy he made himself.

Alpharius Omegon: They give a series of mysterious CD in blank case, wich is a very rare and hard to read format on most ship! It's the entire series of MLP:FiM, famous lost media in the 30th millenium.

Rogal: A thick, sturdy, and perfectly elegant multi bit screwdriver, with extra standard bits put in the handle. Give a proud presentation on it, explaining it's superior design and all it's ergonomic features. It's 45 min long.

Perturabo: it's a coupon that say "one (1) construction from me and my legion, free of complaining. Valid until the 31th millenium." It's the most popular gift of the night.

Corvus: slipper and kigurumi, all crow themed. They are *adorable*. Sadly, the size is a bit tight and vaguely indecent on the more muscular primarch.

Lorgar: a traditional colchian tea set, with hand dried craft teas! The set is beautiful, and the teas prove to be only mildly hallucinogenic.

Konrad: A very, VERY pretty embroidered set of throw pillow! They have delicate pattern of flower and nature imagery... And are made with human hair. Konrad is very proud of himself, and even more of the absolute bloody screaming his gift create when he explain it.

Sanguinius: put out by Konrad's gift, but he also made a pillow, but this one filled with his own feathers. Has surprising property against nightmare.

Vulkan: He was actually sweet, and brought homemade hot sauce, his mother's recipe! The problem is that the stuff is so strong, it's considered a dangerous chemical in most of the galaxy. Can be used as jet fuel.

Horus: Edible sexy underwear. Insist that whoever gets it has to wear it, and jokingly say that, if they are too shy, he can do a demonstration himself.

Mortarion: a succulent growing kit. Even his most dumbasses of brother should be able to keep a succulent alive, right? Doesn't mention that it's an highly invasive species that will colonise the entire ship of his poor victime.

Jaghatai: a foal. Yes, he carry a whole ass live animal to the gift exchange, and keep insisting that it's an appropriate gift. The horse is chewing on Magnus' hair.

Leman: Mad that he didn't think of bringing a puppy, but he has the most amazing looking collection of smoked salmon, caviar and preserved fish to offer.

Magnus: his patience is wearing thin, but he still offer a perfectly beautiful robe, that act as an honest to good mood ring and change color depending on the person's aura.

Fulgrim: A painting of himself! Wich is actually a joke, it's just a thin and hand painted decorative paper covering the true gift: a painting of all their family, together. Get called a try hard.

Ferrus: a collection of very pretty crystals and fossils! Wich he arranged in a chocolate box, and explain that those are his favorite flavors.

Angron: A punching bag that even *he* find durable. He made sure of it, by thoroughly testing it before giving it out, wich explain it's used appearance.

I know exactly who gets what..... Yall want to know in a part 2 ;)?

[lesbianralzarek]

tumblr in reddit terms

blogs: personal subreddits where the theme/topic is 99% of the time just “me and whatever the hell i feel like at the moment”. for reference, the most common other theme rn is “wizard roleplay that never breaks character”

reblogs: crossposts. these are crucial to maintaining tumblr’s ecosystem. due to blogs generally having fewer followers than subreddits have subscribers, this is the way that posts get seen and passed around. the vast majority of posts on a person’s blog tend to be reblogs, so if the people you follow dont reblog a whole lot, your dashboard is gonna be a ghost town. post limit (combined total of reblogs and original posts per day) is 250, so feel free to go hog wild

tags: this one is complicated. theyre a combination of flairs and Comments But Low-key. you can use them for organization and to avoid seeing content you dont want to (go to your blog, settings, account settings, content you see, and then add tags you want tumblr to warn you about before seeing it). if op tags the post #reddit (in the tags, not the body of the post), itll show up in the #reddit tag when anyone searches that tag. tags are also used for comments that dont really add anything to the post. you know how a jpeg gets kinda gross when its been through a million screenshots and has ifunny watermarks and shit? thats what adding “lmao same” as a comment does to a post. comments stay on reblogs, while tags show up in 4 places: op’s notifications, the notifs of whoever you reblogged it from, when someone clicks on the “notes” button of a post and actively looks for the tags left on it, and when people view your specific reblog of the post (like a follower would on their dashboard)

likes: upvotes but weaker. almost everyone turns off all the algorithms (settings, account settings, dashboard preferences, toggle off the first 3 options. also, make sure your dashboard is on "following" and not "for you". this is highly recommended), so leaving a like doesnt boost the post in any way. they still matter to some people. you can also use them to bookmark a post and go back to your likes later

enthusiastic and/or hyperbolic tags: reddit gold. you wanna let op know you like their art? leave something like ”#printing this out and stapling it to my forehead #op you wanna get married?” in the tags

pornbots: both reddit and tumblr have an issue with them. we block and report them on sight. they usually have hot women as their icons, no posts or reblogs, and a description like “22, brazil, nurse <3″. try to not look like that if you dont wanna get blocked by everyone you follow

blocking: you have this as well, but it seems like a bigger deal on reddit. the reason we are not twitter is because we block bitches who annoy us and move on with our day. do not feed the trolls

things we dont have:

karma: clout-chasing is The Most embarrassing thing you can possibly do on this site. we are all in this circus together and the clown who gets the most laughs is still a clown. popular users will literally deactivate sometimes because clout is a burden. no one here makes money

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

perhaps a bit of an odd question: so, when I'm scrolling tumblr on mobile, I have a habit of downloading most images i come across, so that I can send them to people who don't use tumblr, especially memes and animal photos. however, i also have severe memory issues, and I may end up forgetting where i got certain images. i know for the photo repository one of the rules is to not repost the photos without any modification- which i might forget, or forget which images on my phone fall under that rule. and while i would guess that that rule doesn't apply to stuff like direct messages or texts, i might forget to tell the person I'm sending it to, who might repost it elsewhere without being aware, or months after downloading i will just forget and use one of the photos in a post I'm making because it felt relevant.

this is something i can pretty easily solve myself by just blocking the photo repository blog, or tags relating to it, but I'd rather not do that because i do really like seeing the photos and all the info and stuff. and i would assume it would be an insane amount of work for you to add something like a watermark to every single photo, so I'm not really sure how to go about this. i like seeing the photos, but i don't want to accidentally break the rules.

You clearly care deeply about doing the "right thing", so, what that tells me is that you're not actually the target audience for that rule. I appreciate all the thought you put into this message. Let's talk about it!

I've been reconsidering if requiring people to get permission for reposting images is the best policy to have and I'd like people to weigh in.

My original reasoning was this: the more I can ensure that reposts are affiliated with credit, the better I can control copyright on the images on the site, and therefore have more ground to challenge any scrapers/fake accounts/AR groups that yoink them for nefarious purposes. The easiest way to do that seemed to be to have people ping and ask, with the expectation of saying yes almost all the time.

But there's a couple problems with that, I think, in practice:

People don't like emailing strangers (I forget this! I have done it for work for so many years it isn't uncomfortable anymore).

This isn't how the internet works. (Tumblr has a specific microculture that encourages crediting creators and not stealing! Once this is shared more widely on other platforms, I don't expect it'll be the same ecosystem).

It actually undermines organic spread of content! (You're less likely to make an excited post about a cool photo if you have to send a maybe-scary email and wait for a response). And I do want there to be lots of eyeballs on the photos.

Realistically, @nexus-nebulae, with the policy right now? If you slipped up and reposted something without thinking, I'd just ask you to add credit to the post so it directs back to the site. The goal of this whole project is community access and engagement - I want to you to enjoy the photos, and send them to your friends! I'm just trying to also protect it from the awful that a lot of the internet has become.

But, I'm also wondering it it makes sense to swap the policy to say that it's fine to re-post images on socials as long as they're appropriately credited and/or linked back to the repository. This isn't the policy yet, but if you're reading this please tell me what you're thinking.

Non-edited image use (like putting them in a scientific paper, using them to build a curriculum unit, or putting them on board game cards - these are just random examples) would still need to be requested; but that's an entirely protective stance and if you ask, my goal is to always say yes.

So OP, please don't worry too much. Enjoy looking at the animals, do your best, and I'll be happy. :)

[krakenartificer]

Basics of Tumblr-based memetics for reddit refugees

When people arrive at Tumblr, they are generally unsure about how to handle themselves. The buttons are easy enough (I mean, the UI sucks, but it's 2023, we're all used to sucky UIs by now, so....), but what are the social implications of each one? What does a reblog mean?

This is very difficult to explain to people for whom this is their first social media site, or are arriving here from (eg) Facebook. But for this round of refugees, from Reddit specifically, I actually can explain. Because!...

....As you have no doubt noticed ....

.... in a world where we all use 4 websites, and each of them consists of content screenshotted from the other 3....

...there is not an equal distribution of who's making content and who's copying it. Facebook generates almost none of the content for other websites; Twitter generates some; but nearly all of the content on the modern internet is generate on Reddit or on Tumblr.

There is a reason for this: all "web 2.0" sites have the ability to generate new memes, and new variants on those memes. But only Reddit and Tumblr have an evolutionary pressure that forces those memes through a natural-selection process. On Reddit, that pressure is applied by the voting system: if an addition to a post doesn't get enough upvotes, it's hidden from view, which means it has limited ability to affect the next generation of posts.

On Tumblr, the equivalent evolutionary pressure is applied by reblogs: each version of a post, each set of additions, is seen in proportion to how many people reblog it, and thus cause other people to see it. Lack of reblogs -> lack of visibility -> limited ability to affect the next generation of posts.

So with that in mind, let's look at some nuances that are specific to the Tumblr ecosystem.

1) Reblogs are direct visibility; upvotes are indirect

On Reddit, when you upvote something, it's a signal to the algorithm that -- in your opinion -- this thing is useful/valuable/funny or in some other way worthwhile. The algorithm takes that into account along with everyone else's votes, time since it was posted, and so on, and makes a decision about what to show by default vs what to hide by default, and how to sort things. Upvoting does affect visibility, but it's only one factor.

Whereas on Tumblr, reblogging puts the post on your followers' dashboards directly (assuming your followers have chronological order turned on, which most of them probably do because fuck corporate decisions about what I should and shouldn't see). One reblog = one post on everyone's dashboard; it's as simple as that.

Reblogging is therefore a much stronger evolutionary boost than upvoting is.

2) Likes have very little impact on visibility

Most people have "based on your likes" turned off. Even for those that keep it on, it doesn't affect what other people see, it only gives Tumblr some idea of what you might like to see. Of course behind the scenes that's somehow accomplished with some kind of correlation coefficient about which posts are most likely to be "liked" by the same person, and in that sense a "like" on this post increases the likelihood that someone else who has "liked" other posts that you have "liked" will see this post as well, but it's a very tenuous and wispy impact,.

Liking is therefore a much weaker evolutionary boost than upvoting is, and should be considered more along the lines of a high-five, or a hug, or a "I would give you gold for this if I could afford any" comment.

(Also, you cannot "like" only one section of a post. When you "like", the notification goes to everyone in the chain, from OP to the latest reblog. If you wish to give specific high-fives, the mechanism you're looking for is replies.)

3) Replies have no impact on visibility one way or the other.

Only OP gets notifications for replies, but you can tag people in the reply to notify them. This is the place for "@most-recent-commenter I would give you gold if I could" or for tagging a friend that you think would enjoy the post.

So, with the underlying mechanics of the ecosystem out of the way, let's look at

memetic engineering

There are two ways you can add your thoughts/ideas/opinions/snarky commentary to a post: in the text of the post, or in the tags.

a digression on tags

Tags -- of course -- can theoretically be used to organize content, although if we're being completely honest here, they're not ... great. for that. Tags can be handy as a textual handle to simplify your google search when you use an external search engine to search your own tumblr blog, but their use as an archival tool is mediocre at best. Likewise, no matter what the Tumblr UI says in the tag section, they're not gonna be that helpful in allowing people to find your content.

Tags can also, as sometimes they do on Twitter or Instagram, provide context to a post. This is less important here, since without a character limit there's no need to trim down your commentary and trust #wgastrike2023 to fill in the missing details, but it can be very handy when you're trying to determine whether this "Bruce and his buddies" post is talking about The Hulk or about Batman, or whether this thread is dissing Harry Potter, Harry Styles, or Harry Prince of Wales.

Tags are also very handy for allowing people to continue following you even when there's some sort of interest incompatibility. If you love spiders -- especially pictures of spiders -- and I'm arachnophobic, then I'm probably not going to be able to keep following you, no matter how excellent your Anarchist Star Wars takes are. But if you love pictures of spiders and you tag every single one of them #spiders, then I can block that tag and still keep following you. Similarly, a temporary block on #The Witcher Spoilers can allow the fandom to all discuss a new episode at whatever time they're able to watch it, without having to completely avoid online spaces in the meantime.

And finally, tags can, and are, used for commentary that you don't want to put in the main post. Where that line is -- what to put in the post and what to put in tags -- is something you'll have to decide for yourself as you get experience, but as a general rule, the post is for something that you believe contributes to the memetic fitness of this post, and the tags are for things that you believe are not necessarily of memetic value. Additions to the post are integrated into the DNA, and will be passed on with subsequent reblogs; tags are only added to your instantiation of the post, and will not be included on future reblogs (unless the person who reblogs it from you is on iOS Tumblr Mobile app and hasn't adjusted their settings, in which case it'll go into their tags... but at any rate it'll die out in a generation or two.) This feature makes it good for adding meta-commentary that will be interesting/funny/valuable to your immediate circle of friends, but won't be useful to the population as a whole -- it allows you to be as snarky, in-joke-y, and obscure as you'd like, without having to spend any of your mental RAM calculating what will and won't have an impact on your Brand as an Influencer.

Influencers

There is no easy mechanism for people to see your follower count. There are many easy mechanisms for people to make it impossible to see their follower count. No one cares about how many followers you have or how far your "influence" spreads. No one is going to offer you a Tumblr sponsorship deal.

However, for assorted underlying-code reasons, Tumblr blogs are disproportionately useful for manipulating search engines. So.... we have an ongoing problem with SEO scum making a whole bunch of bots and using reblogs etc to generate fake signals to Google.

The combination of those two things leads to a general Tumblr tradition of Block Bots On Sight. The extra followers aren't helping you, and the mere fact of their existence is hurting all of us. If you've seen people strongly urging you to change your profile picture, add a bio, and reblog a couple things, that's why -- because we don't want you to get caught in the crossfire of our ongoing guerilla warfare.

Other Notes

One of the places that Reddit is much better than Tumblr is in the viewing of an entire memetic population as a whole: you just look at a post, scroll through the page, and Reddit helpfully shows you want you want to see, and hides what you don't.

On Tumblr, each memetic variation is functionally an entirely separate entity. This is great for memetic diversity, but it means there's a LOT of duplication, and it means there's really no good way to get all the variants together. The closest you can get is to "check the notes" -- click on that number at the bottom left of a post, and look through the replies, reblogs, and tags. Those are in chronological order and in no way threaded, so it's not very useful, but it is what we've got.

Let's see ...

One thing Tumblr does much better than Reddit is the ability (because of aforementioned fragmentation) to have an arbitrary number of any fandom. No more "Well I don't like the takes in r/polyamory but it's the only place where I can talk about it so idk" ... nope! Here we can have as many Spider-Man fandoms as there are Spider-Man fans. Really like someone's headcanons? Follow them! Really dislike someone's OTP? Unfollow them! Really hate someone's take on your favorite character? Block them! This is a fabulous feature of Tumblr and I encourage you to take advantage of it.

uh...

tags can be 140 characters, but they can't contain double quotes (") or commas (,) because those are delimiter characters and Tumblr will break your tag at those points in the string

...

If you think someone has mis-judged the value of their tags, you can copy them from their post and paste them into the main comment of your reblog. This is known as the tags "passing peer review". Copy-paste is preferred to screenshotting for accessibility reasons (and also the fact that sometimes Tumblr just doesn't feel like loading pictures), and it's considered polite to credit the person whose tags you promoted.

...

Contrariwise, if you think they mis-judged the value of their comment, you can go back to the person they reblogged from, and reblog without their addition. Tumblr made this harder recently, but I have confidence that we'll defeat them eventually.

...

I know that I said reblogs are much stronger than upvotes, but when you've got infinite monkeys generating infinite reblog streams, it all gets lost in the noise. Reblog anything and everything you feel like upvoting -- if people don’t want to be subjected to a bunch of random shit that lights up the dopamine receptors in your brain, they shouldn’t be following you on Tumblr.

...

IDK what to tell you about Tumblr polls. We're just like this 🤷‍♂️

...

...

That's all I can think of. Deities bless and keep you for seeing a problem in our online ecosystem and actually doing something about it. Looking forward to seeing what we can do together.

(Author's Note: All statements about how Tumblr works ("works") are as of 14 June 2023. God only knows what changes staff will have rolled out by time time you read this)

[r-2-peepoo]

The Codywan side of the SW fandom is the only fandom I’ve ever been in that hasn’t driven me absolutely insane.

Maybe it’s because I just stay on tumblr and the people on here are the only Star Wars fans I actually interact with which is why it’s been so positive, but I have been in and out of fandom spaces for well over a decade now and every single one of them has in some way ruined my enjoyment of whatever the piece of media was.

In my experience, fandom spaces are fun in the beginning and eventually toxicity seeps in and spoils it, even if you don’t engage with it directly.

However Codywan has been completely different. It’s still quite small but small fandoms have been the very worst in my experience. It’s not that there are no problems at all, but the vast majority of the people who get it.

We have a general understanding of how to characterise Cody, to the point that when we do see him in canon we can essentially predict his behaviour and his choices even if we’ve made up a lot of his personality (we understand him from the little information we’ve been given), and we understand the delicate balance of his dynamic with Obi Wan and how it could easily become unhealthy if it were anyone else, but the fact that it’s Obi Wan and Cody is why it does work so well, especially when it come to its place in actual canon.

It’s quite a delicate ecosystem but most of us seem to understand what makes it work and so calling out any potential problematic dynamics or behaviour much simpler than in other fan spaces. And a lot of us are drawn in by actually seeing a healthy ship for once. I don’t know, it’s just a really special fandom space and I feel quite protective over not just the ship itself, but the people who have worked so hard to produce fanworks and fanart for it too.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that there is no toxicity. As long as there are people, there will be toxicity. The issue with Glimmer comes to mind, and maybe it really is just on Tumblr. I don’t look at Twitter or any other social media so I really don’t know, but at the very least on this app, I feel like we’re really lucky to have this little community that we do.

[radiojamming]

PLEASE tell us more about mummy types, i know ice is your fave so feel free to go ham on that but all of them are so interesting to me

drives up in my cozy coupe that has MUMMY MOBILE written in sharpie on the side (ALSO PLEASE EXERCISE CAUTION WHEN LOOKING THESE UP; SOME OF THEM LOOK VERY GNARLY)

ICE/PERMAFROST - If you've followed me for a little while, you probably know more about these than the average fella! These are your Beechey Island Trio, your Ötzi the Iceman. Ice keeps bacteria from turning the body into a smorgabord, thus keeping these people fresh (and fluid-filled) for hundreds to thousands of years. And maybe some day down the line, some nerd finds you and thinks you're beautiful and never shuts up about you.

THE BOG - It's Tumblr. You all know about The Bog. Bog bodies are essentially turned into leather purses by the tannins and the anaerobic qualities of The Bog, sometimes effectively snapshotting their causes of death (usually something violent). Special shoutouts to fan favorites like Tollund Man, Lindow Man/Pete Marsh, Yde Girl, Grauballe Man, and Windeby I. And Hozier, probably.

HOT, DRY DESERT AIR - Think the Atacama Desert, the Mummies of Guanajuato, or your pre-embalming times Egyptians. In fact, it was the natural qualities of desert air that probably tipped the Ancient Egyptians off to the fun and fabulousness of preservation. You dry out to potato chip crispness but lose all the wet bits. Also Anubis is probably repping you.

ARID, COLD MOUNTAIN AIR - Same idea as the desert as far as lack of humidity, but better for your skin. Mountaintop mummies are some of the best preserved in the whole world. La Doncella is a fantastic example, as are the rest of the Children of Llullaillaco or the Cherchen Man and Siberian Ice Maiden. Sometimes this was done on purpose (hi bog bodies), but sometimes people just go up to high altitudes, die, and stay there forever.

HONEY/MELLIFICATION - This one doesn't fit the bill of spontaneous mummification, which is what I study. Honey mummies are made on purpose, allegedly by feeding someone honey until they're dead, and then dunking them in a coffin full of honey for them to steep like tea for the next century or so, then digging them up and making medicine/snacks out of them. Lots of alleged's, but still pretty cool if you're into idk becoming one with the slime.

SALT - Human jerky! Salt does to you what it does to all the other edible meats, of which you're just another brand. Salt sucks all the moisture out and keeps you nice, fresh, and flavorful forever and ever. The Saltmen of Iran are Thee Pinnacle of this type of preservation. Bonus is that you get weirdly sparkly when you're salted like a slug.

SAPONIFICATION - You become soap. Actually, if you want to get technical, you turn into what's called corpse wax (which is a surprisingly badass name for turning into a human candle) or adipocere. Mrs. Ellenbogen of the Mütter Museum is probably the best example of this, but it also happens to, uh, cave divers. Which is another great reason not to go cave diving.

PRISTINE AIR OF A SACRED BUILDING - Catacomb mummies! Incorruptible saints! Sokushinbutsu! If you're stuck in a religious house of worship and it just so happens to have its own little ecosystem (usually pretty dry, probably full of resinous incense), there's a non-zero chance that you'll get preserved very similarly to the mountain mummies. Getting stuck in a crystal casket doesn't hurt either. (Disclaimer: this is semi-anthropogenic for those keeping score at home. Some of these mummies are preserved this way on purpose.)

TAR PITS - Like the bog, but hotter, stickier, and smellier. Go in the tar, have no oxygen causing you to fall apart, turn into another leather bag time capsule. This more often happens to animals like those in the La Brea Tar Pits than people. At least that we know of.

WEIRD, AS OF YET UNKNOWN MEANS - Can we say for sure that there was only one reason why Lady Dai/Xin Zhui's stayed so preserved for so long? What about the other wet mummies? What about ones people find in trees? Or whatever the hell was going on with Elmer McCurdy? Maybe it's not unknown, but it doesn't fit the bill of typical mummies, or there are so many factors at play leading to preservation that we can't just call it by one category.

[adhdduckie]

-stars - pt 3 -Ao'nung x sully!fem!reader

"she looks at you like you strung the stars, and everytime she looks at them now, she can only think of you. she loves you."

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my masterlist

1.6k words!!

pt 1-, pt 2 , pt 4

playlist made for this ; ❥irrefutable love❥ (only the fluffy parts)

angsty playlist ; if hanahaki was real

lowdown-

When Y/N, and the sullys first reach the reef, a boy catches her eye, and she does her best to catch his attention. She doesn't believe he likes her back, and she thinks it's ridiculous that she's so whipped for this boy. He seems to have no interest in her, and they remain what she believes, friends.

this parts lowdown-

Ao'nung shows you a place he believe you would like. You think it is time for you to give him the gift you have made for him.

warnings ( this part is kind of angsty.)

will have a happy ending btw.\

I AM SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO POST THIS. I HAVE THIS APP THAT I TYPE EVERYTHING OUT ON TO SAVE BECAUSE I ALWAYS FORGET I CAN JUST SAVE IT AS A DRAFT ON TUMBLR BUT I LOST THE PASSWORD TO THE APP AND I COULDNT SIGN INTO MY EMAIL BUT I GOT IT AFTER A REALLY LONG TIME. (also i had no motivation tbf) (being honest here *winkwonk*)

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there was a story that you heard from your mother. there used to be another deity apart from eywa, a darker being. that eywa created everyone with four arms, four legs and two heads. That it was the happiest the na'vi had ever been. The darker being, abaraxas, it was called, was jealous. So, he split them apart. The split apart Na'vi were supposed to spend their lifetime with their other half, your soulmate. That you were supposed to spend your life searching for your other half. The lucky ones found theirs, and the unlucky ones didn't.

loving ao'nung was like riding a small dingy raft in the sea. Some days, everything's calm and sweet, the waves lapping softly at your feet, and others, you were stuck in the biggest waves you've ever seen, things going up and down but in the end, you stayed on the raft.

That day, while you rode on your skimwing beside him, your eyes couldn't help getting drawn back to him over and over again, watching how he smirked to himself and how his tail swished back and forth behind him. As if he knew you were watching him.

You really wondered where he was taking you, what he wanted to show you and why today. It was around dusk and you watched the sun set, casting him in the pretty light, watching his arm muscles flex as he held onto his ilu.

After awhile, he seems to catch you watching him, and throws a mischievous grin towards you, making you flush a deeper blue. his ilu begins to slow down, and you stop as well. You drag your eyes away from him and finally seem to notice your surroundings. He's brought you to a small island, the prettiest you've ever seen. Teeming with tropical life, and the reefs before it are filled to the brim with marine life. Two different ecosystems seeming to collaborate and strive together. He pushes himself off his ilu, and helps you down from your skimwing. The touch is electrifying, and it's everything in your power that you do to stop yourself from reacting obviously to it.

He seems to feel it too, but you tell yourself you're probably overreacting. you both wade through the water to get closer to the small island, you giggling when all the marine animals seem to follow you, and a couple of hammerbrow fish brush against your thighs, making you laugh at the ticklish sensation.

you see Ao'nung's smile out of the corner of your eye and you flush, pretending not to see it. He leads the way through the beach, through the jungle while animals all stop and watch you move. He notices this and laughs.

"what's so funny?" you ask, wondering what's made him laugh and look so happy.

he smiles, "you, you really have a funny connection with all animals." pointing out your special connection with eywa.

"i guess." You respond, not really knowing what you were expected to say. But you love the way his dimples show when he smiles, so you don't really care.

you follow him in silence while he finds his way through the island. the entire time, your head is racing with thoughts. Where is he taking you? Should you say something, or should you stay quiet? you don't know but after awhile of internal debate, you speak.

"so, how'd you find this place?" you say, out of curiosity and half out of the need to say something to fill the silence.

he hums, seeming to think. "a couple years back i was in a hunt by myself and i got tired and i needed a break and i found this place."

"why'd you want to show it to me?" you ask, hoping he's about to confess his undying love and devotion to you. 'don't think that, that's so stupid' you chastise yourself

he looks away. you stare at him confused. Finally, he responds with "i thought you'd like it, since there's so much unbothered nature here."

the small part of you that just thought he was about to confess his love for you swoons. It seems to say 'see! i told you he was in love with us.' you sigh internally and push that small part of you away.

"that's sweet, thanks." you say, looking around more and noticing how crazy this place is, with so much life surrounding you, you can feel it humming in your veins.

he looks away, seemingly indifferent to your words. He mutters something under your breath that you don't quite catch, but you don't push him.

ao'nung stops at a small log on a small hill, and once again, you need to drag your eyes away from him to catch what he wants to show you.

you let out a soft gasp, at the prettiest sight you've ever seen. The sun's setting rays are shining on the water, the green flushed forest is reflecting the light back, and everything just seems so perfect and unbelievable you genuinely ask yourself 'have i died?'

"wow, ao'nung, it's beautiful" you say smiling softly.

"it is, isn't it?" he responds, looking away and turning to you.

'this is it' you think, 'maybe i should give him the necklace now.' you thumb the little pouch at your waist, giving it a little more thought, and you think 'hell, what's the worst thing that can happen?' (worst idea of ur life )

(play if hanahaki was real (only if u want) )

you decide to push forward and hand it to him anyway, and you clear your throat.

"um, Ao'nung?" you ask, hesitantly

he hums in response

"here" you say, handing him the necklace. You finished it earlier in the day, and so it's quite good timing you think.

"what's this for?" He takes it from your hands and inspects the beads.

"well, it was kind of a token of appreciation, but at the same time, it's a way of me telling you i like you. hopefully you like me too?" you say, with bated breath for his response.

he doesn't respond immediately, but your heart in your chest is thumping wildly, thoughts rushing through your head, your tail swishing anxiously from side to side.

you're praying that everything you thought could mean that he liked you too, was actually real, and not something you've imagined all this time, so lost inside your daydream, that you confused reality with fiction.

finally, he looks back up at you, your heart soaring, before you finally process the look on his face. Eyebrows pinched tight, his lips in a thin line, and he speaks, he finally speaks.

"is there something wrong with you? what would make you think that i liked you too, that i wish to be your mate? you, a outsider in your own skin? someone who couldn't even swim? a demon child?" he smiles cruelly, and you feel tears prick at your eyes. You don't know why he's being so mean, couldn't he just have said that he didn't feel the same?

with those words, he throws the necklace you spent countless hours on for him, on the ground, stepping on it violently, crushing it with his feet.

with that, you can feel your heart shatter, and you feel a scream building up in your throat. You don't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing you cry, so you whistle, calling for avarin, your toruk. She was always following you, to make sure you were okay. she instantly swooped down, and you jumped onto her back, flying away.

'faster' you urge her, wishing to get away as fast as you can. she listens, and with a flap of her powerful wings, you fly through the air.

unbeknownst to you, ao'nung watches you fly away with a sad look in his eyes, hating that he had to do that, for the sake of his clan.

once the island is out of your sight, you let out the most guttural scream you've ever heard into the sky. Tears are streaming down your face, but there's nothing you can do.

'what did i tell you?' another small part of you says 'he'd never like you. you're a demon child, remember? half avatar.' you know to never listen to that voice. that is the voice that was made to keep people humble, to destroy them. thinking of it would only weaken you, you reminded yourself.

everything onwards passed on in a blur, suddenly you were back in your marui pod, your brothers standing around you, asking you questions that you couldn't quite hear.

at this moment, the story of soulmates came rushing back to you, as you walked further into your pod, thinking; 'i don't have a soulmate, do i?'

unknown to you, your brothers throw each other worried looks, especially when you don't respond, or even lean down to pet Ta'heyla when you see her.

"y/n?" they say, neteyam and lo'ak asking after you. this time, you finally hear them

"i'm fine" you respond, and everyone knows you're lying. Lo'ak immediately knows what happened, especially from the way you're walking, somehow. Something about younger brothers.

he runs to T'sireya, who immediately searches for her brother. he's nowhere to be found, but hours later, when you're curled up in your hammock facing away from everyone else, refusing to eat, he finally comes back.

she yells and yells at him "what is wrong with you! you hurt Y/N, why'd you lead her on like that?" , he doesn't even try to argue back, the only thought running in his head, 'i wish it didn't have to be this way.'

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taglist

@aonungmyaddiction @elizarikaallen @ok-boke @chuckle-nuts @shadowmoonlight0604

let me know if you want to be added!

[tagedeszorns]

(Violetbirdie here) I think it's complicated due to a variety of issues. 40k as a franchise is huge, but it isn't the sort of thing that tends to have overlap with tumblr type fanspaces. It also doesn't help that 40k is a fractured fandom featuring tons of different factions, so it's not like a standard fandom where there are main characters and a main story that people will always flock to. The primarchs are the closest thing we have to that, which is why there is naturally more content for them. In addition, fandom itself is in a bit of a flux state and has been ever since the 2018 nsfw ban which caused a lot of people to leave for twitter, which is now undergoing its own huge changes right now (and I just hate twitter on principle).

I suppose the one thing I think would help, would be somehow getting the 40k tumblresque fandom space more consolidated as a whole. Like, somehow have a blog that is popular for all factions that posts headcanons about everything, thus getting people interested in parts they don't normally think about. Because 40k is a huge time investment to learn about. I've been listening to audiobooks for what feels like nonstop for over a month, and even then I could only ever feel confident telling people about Emperor's Children. So it naturally is harder for new people to get into the fandom and focus on some of the smaller things because there is just so much. It's almost how I view your blog. I check it daily for fun art/headcanons/just general character stuff, and you made me more interested in some of the captains and such. But even then, you have your focuses. So a space even more general where someone would reblog art from everything 40k would likely be nice? Maybe I just miss the livejournal days of fandom. As far as more engagement, I think having silly things like character weeks which encourages people to draw or write or talk about specific aspects is a huge benefit. It sets a schedule and makes people feel like they are shouting less into the void.

But as someone new here, maybe its my weird perspective, but I don't feel like things are getting less popular. If anything, from just checking AO3, it seems like things are only getting more popular for less of the reddit type and more for the Tumblr wanting to see hot dudes and their complicated feelings type. Also more people are getting into 40k in this side of the space through rogue trader. Like people I never talked to about 40k are starting to look into the series because they played Baldurs Gate 3, and needed a new RPG to play, and conveniently Rogue Trader is filling that for them. So, I'm optimistic if anything. Sorry about the long ramble! Just kinda dumping my thoughts out.

I love Tumblr because, unlike Twitter or Bluesky, it allows for way longer, way more elaborately structured posts. I love it when artists don't just slap their pics into a post and be done with it, but instead add stuff like maybe "I read this book, here's a quote, and it gave me this mighty need to draw this". Or "please listen to this music here while looking at my pic! It goes perfectly with it!". Or just a multi-paragraph-essay (preferably very unhinged) about the character in the upper left corner.

This in advance, so you can see I'm totally with you on the "miss Lifejournal"-thing, because blogs are so much better than just 500 characters, four pics and nothing else. And why I think Tumblr is a very good replacement for Lifejournal.

The multitude of Tumblr-blogs with their many different angles are such a treat and provide such a rich ecosystem! I follow artists posting exclusively admech-stuff, others solely Drukhari, some writers focussing on just one Astartes Legion ... it's phantastic and the depth of their niche-knowledge is mindblowing.

I agree with you that this will be overwhelming for new fans coming from rather monolithic stuff like Rogue Trader. And the key to keeping those new people involved and making them feel welcome is showing them all this variety without scaring them away.

Maybe this new feature Tumblr is working on, can be helpful here. I haven't read much about it yet, but it seems the "Community"-feature has the potential to bundle stuff in a way that's more approachable for new and old fans alike. Maybe there's room for your idea of having "character weeks" (I like that! Sounds very MacDonald's. I'll have Fabius with extra pickles, please! 😁).

I'm sharing your optimism that both the new games and maybe the new series/movies will bring a lot of new fans over and some of them may even stick around. I am a bit wary that there's the possibility of a MCU-situation starting to build up, but since Warhammer-lore is in a constant state of flux anyways this might just add some spice to the mix.

So, yeah, hope for the darkest of futures!

[pyrajanison]

Is Psitanium a limited resource? Will the Psychonauts ever run out of it? What would happen if they did? We know it can lose it’s psychic charge; can it be recharged or once it’s inert that’s it? Is there a way to make more of it, and if so, how? Psitanium got into the ecosystem of Whispering Rock which caused the animals to get psychic abilities; did the same thing happen to humans? Is psitanium in people’s blood like micro plastic, and this causes psychic abilities? Is this what mental cobwebs are? Is that why they are purple, because they are accumulated psitanium? Is this why Edgar and Boyd have slight psychic abilities; higher exposure? Is there psitanium things like chalk and paint, like lead back in the day? Is this how Edgar and Boyd got exposed? Does Psitanium accumulate in the brain? Can brains turn into psitanium or other psycho-active minerals? Is this why that psilirium in the rhombus looks like a brain, cause it is one? Do different brains turn into different colored minerals with time or circumstance? Is that why all the brains in Otto’s brain-frame are different colors? Are the psi challenge markers a form of psychic material? Is this why he wants to collect all those brains, to make more psitanium and other psycho-active minerals? Is that why all those supply chests with psitanium in them around the motherlobe form into a vaguely brain shape when put together, because they are? Psitanium can be used to give items psychic properties, like the jet the Pelican and those floating islands in the quarry; can the same be done for humans? Can you create an artificial psychic? Is this why is Otto be so obsessed with mining and gathering psitanium? Is he an artificial psychic, and psitanium is needed to maintain this power? In Psychonauts 2, we see his psi power come from his necklace; is this meant to give him psychic abilities? Or is it that his ability is weak and he needs artificial assistant to be on par with his peers? Can psitanium be harvested from people? What if that is a secret function of the brain tumblr, to extract psychic power/material from psychics? Is the one that exploded in Otto’s old lab trying to take ability from an extremely powerful psychic that caused a fatal malfunction? If so, is that the brain we see in the brain-frame that was killed in a brain tumblr accident? Who is this person? Can brains actually come back from being dead? Can brains die in this universe? Are the brains in the brain frame aware, or be made aware like Helmut’s? What happens when that happens?

…. Excuse me everyone, i think I just got possessed by the spirit of Boyd for a few minutes… it’s late, enough insane rambling, off to bed go i… *passes out*

[tasteleeknow]

hihi jade !! i’m fairly new to tumblr and wanted to ask what’s the best way to reblog a post? i want you and my other favourite writers to get the attention + support you deserve but i’m still quite not sure on how it works ><

hihi !! that's really nice to of you make the effort to understand ! i'll put a little tutorial under the cut for you and anyone else that would like to learn. this is one of the best ways you can support writers on tumblr and i really encourage readers to stop and read this !

main or side? if you have no problem reblogging fics onto your main blog you can skip this section! this is just for people who don't feel comfortable putting fic on their blog for whatever reason.

tumblr has a thing called sideblogs where you can make secondary blogs on the same account. no one else looking at that blog will know it's attached to your main unless you tell someone. it's a great option for people who want a blog only for fic they read. the downsides is that you can only reply to posts from your main and send asks off anon from your main. but it's a great option for reblogging fic.

on mobile: just go to your blog then press your name and then 'create a new blog'

on web: click the profile icon then 'new'

how to reblog this part is easy! the best way to help writers is to reblog any fic you read and enjoyed. leaving a little comment in the tags is a lovely bonus and i'll show you how to do that soon. first i'll show you how to reblog really quickly with no comments. it's as easy at liking!

on mobile: at the bottom of a post, HOLD the reblog button. the icons of all your blogs will appear. DRAG then RELEASE over the blog you want to reblog the post to. your main or any sideblog you've made. that's it!

on web: hold the e key on your keyboard and icons from your blogs will pop up. then hover over the icon you want to reblog to and click. same deal as mobile. will reblog to the blog you clicked, quick and easy.

adding feedback/tags this is the bonus step that will make any writer's day. i read every single comment people leave in the tags of their reblogs! here's how you can add comments to your reblogs!

bonus: using tags is also how you can organise your blog. if you add tags like 'minho' or 'favourite' and then search them on your blog later, you can find your favourite fics. much easier to organise than likes.

on mobile: press the reblog button instead of holding it.

where it says '+ add tags to help people find your post', click and add any and all thoughts about the fic you just read. it can be a little keysmash or it can be an essay. adore anything you feel like offering. type a sentence or word then hit return on your phone keyboard then type the next word or sentence. and so on and so on. (this is also where you can put your organisational tags). then when you're done press reblog.

on web. click the reblog button. you'll get a popup like this. type your tags. all your thoughts. then any tags to help you find the post later. hit reblog!

bonus: if you really do want to write an ESSAY (always welcome). this is where you can put your thoughts into the caption instead of tags. where i've written 'long comments/essays here' on mobile screenshot and where it says 'go ahead, put anything' on web.

when should you reblog? whenever you finish a fic that you enjoyed! tumblr works by sharing posts with others through reblogging. when you follow people any posts they reblog will show on your dashboard. it's great for organically sharing content without algorithms like other sites use. fanfiction is all about fandom and community. writers write. and readers share and comment on the writing they enjoy. healthy ecosystem!

what are likes for then? exactly what it says on the tin. hey, i liked this! a lot of people use them as bookmarks. i can only see this being a good use of it if you also reblog fics once you've read them. i can only imagine how many liked posts some people have. they must have to scroll for ages to find anything. i use it just as a like button. literally, i liked this! or to just show support for my mutuals personal posts. if i find a fic i want to read later, i'll use it for that sometimes too.

what if i'm shy? firstly, tumblr is entirely anonymous. i don't know who you are and all i'm doing is reading whichever tags you've decided to add to my work. no one you know can judge you for the fic you read if you make a blog just for fic. and i'm certainly not judging you. i have anxiety myself, i understand the struggle. exposure therapy! just give it a go, see how you feel. i really feel you if you just make the effort to start doing it, you'll realise it really is okay! writers on here adore feedback and they'll appreciate you a lot for being a reader that reblogs and comments. reblogging with no comment to start off might help you ease into it.

writing takes a lot of time and effort. the only thing i've ever seen asked in return from the people that write is for you to let them know what you thought of it in the tags of a reblog! it's a very minor action compared to the time and effort it took to write the fic as well as the time and effort it took you to read it!

anyway, appreciate anyone who made the effort to read this and understand. readers who reblog and comment are the reason anyone is still on this site writing! ♡

ps. if you use desktop you can add the extension 'xkit rewritten' to chrome or firebox and use the feature quick reblog which makes tagging and reblogging even easier. the quick reblog feature looks like this. xkit rewritten is also how i make tag bundles that i can add to posts with one click instead of typing 20 tags out everytime i post a fic.

[blinkbones]

Five 1-season series I watched recently, and why I recommend them/liked them:

Lessons in Chemistry

About the trials and tribulations of a woman who both fails and refuses to conform to the expectations of 50s-60s USA. The show is primarily character-driven and works on a rather… somewhat simplified and exagerrated mindset? It took me offguard at first, but was fine once I settled into the groove. My favorite part was, as I later found out, an addition for the show (compared to the book, which I haven’t read) → the neighbor being a black woman fighting for civil rights. There’s that one chunk that mixes the psychological/personal aspect of getting involved with the socio-political reality of asymmetrical struggles and I… loved how clever that was… I’ll be honest, in that the show is mostly a sort of drama/character exploration and the political painting part of it is secondary. But I mean, the drama is good, I bawled my eyes out a bunch of times, and it’s visually compelling. The protagonist reads somewhat as a modern woman dropped into the fifties and her relentlessness is actually refreshing. It’s a power fantasy in that sense – watching someone smart, fully confident in her own abilities, and what she’s worth, and owed… It’s nice. Just so that we’re clear – this show is the one I’m least confident pitching, because it’s odd in many ways and questionable in some – but I really enjoyed it and I won’t lie about that. I thought it was very good on the moment hahahaha

So give it a go if it intrigues you!! and come chat with me about the neighborhood subplots.

Cherry Magic (anime version)

About an unremarkable salaryman who starts being able to read others’ thoughts because he’s a 30 y/o virgin – but really, it’s actually about someone finding both love and confidence in himself. This is so, so sweet. Pretty funny, too. For all the silliness of the premise, the more profound core of the story is very nicely-wrought, it’s painted with a delicate touch and subtle hues. There are aspects of it that I think will hit harder if you are not a child anymore. I think I would have enjoyed it when I was sixteen, but probably not as much as I did being a worn-out adult, lol. I binged it while I was insomniac with dread, and it made me laugh like a teenager. It’s sincerely very fucking great and if you enjoy romances at all you’ll love it.

Scavengers’ Reign

About a handful of scattered space castaways on a beautiful, wonderful and terrifying planet. If you enjoy science-fiction for any reason whatsoever, I can only make this a very ardent recommendation. It has it all: the alien planet, the machines, the creatures, the cast of characters; but also the wonder, and the fear, never too far from one another. This show is a real underrated gem and I am very serious. For you, tumblr, my beloved freakopolis, it also has it all. I won’t say it – but it has what you want. […] This show is so beautiful. The planet’s ecosystem feels tangible and coherent and new and it’s beautiful and frightening most of the time. There’s something of the primordial awe of coming into contact with the intriguing unknown. Did I mention that this is an animated show?? It’s very good visually too.

Andor

About the birth of revolution – accross the galaxies, people getting tired of imperial abuse, and in the hero’s heart and mind. What I loved most was how grounded it was. This isn’t the usual star wars with god-elect heroes with a destiny. It’s about the sorry little bitches who look at their increasingly corrupted world and decide to try to do something about it. Or end up in there by accident. SO, so good. For that only I thought it was a banger. But then there’s everything else!! The worldbuilding (that prison!!)! The practical effects! The janky-looking tech everywhere! The gorgeous sets (the senator’s house HELLO <<33)! Heartwrenching details! An essayist! Not joking it changed my brain chemistry and there’s a bit of text I want to write down on paper for myself.

Machine

Mandatory « I’m sorry for all you bitches that don’t speak French » because I doubt it’ll get translated, or even subbed, anytime soon if at all. But god y’all are missing out. Machine is a freakishly fun take on the figure of the white woman being kickass through « kung-fu » (looked like every technique under the sun to me lol), yknow, Kill Bill-like? It’s also a very, very fun series about freaking Karl Marx and class struggle. Not joking, literally some fighting interspersed with karl marx quotes and also cycling. Again with a show that lays it on thick and, at first, it takes me off-guard, but I go with the flow and then it’s fucking fantastic. Suuuch a coup de coeur for me. Can’t think of a translation for it, but it means that it struck a chord and became a favorite of mine. Also made me realize I was less aware of where dreadlocks discourse is currently at than I thought (topic for a research afternoon for when I can catch a fucking break…) (bc the heroine has them). Et je m’en remets pas de l’influenceur gilet jaune lol, quelle pépite. Very mad that no one around me watched it.

Honorary mention: Jujutsu Kaisen s2

Total banger. You don't need me to recommend it to you.