#z twitter account

[theartofslime]

y'know what, this is fine

[lesmissocials-fuckedup]

Remind me never to take relationship advice from those guys

[gaybearwedding]

hiiiiii can you guys reply/qrt this tweet and say zach and jess

[dragon-ball-meta]

I love it when the official sources reconfirm.

[minglana]

girl help there r ppl on twitter making lestat seem an innocent little man that has nothing to do w the trial....

[of-themysciraa]

i have been on tumblr so long i have seen relationships start, form into something deeper, my mutuals get engaged, my mutuals get married or their hearts broken, i have seen people i spoke to every day turn into strangers who would think it was creepy if I messaged them now. i have so much knowledge of people i still see here daily but time and the format of this site and the many many rebirths of myself and my mutuals that we would be unrecognizable to our former selves

[neep-neep-neep]

tumblr has now ruined the word booping for me

[gekioko]

I understand that a LOT of repost/meme accounts have been reposting my content uncredited. If you happen to see this image anywhere floating around under any tag that isn’t @Appuler , send them my way either to my blog or my X/Twitter under the same handle!! My art and accounts have gone unnoticed for years, it’s not really fair that 10-100k accounts on insta repost my stuff whilst I only have around 50-2k on all my socials. :) thank you!!

- My Instagram and Reddit should be under the same name I’m sure..!

Edit: Wrong, by Reddit is u/SocksGar, but my pfp is Appule.. as it always is.

Of course, you don’t have too, but I make more of this content especially regarding the Frieza Force + Art, it’s the right thing to do.

I don’t remember this in DBL

[cptnhngjng]

Ruin You

Seonghwa breathed against your soft skin. “Makes me want to ruin you.”

Seonghwa got a little nosy

-seonghwa x f!reader -3.5k words -smut, mdni, 18+ only c/w: mommy kink, spitting, pet names (baby, good girl, pretty girl, sweet girl), corruption kink, fingering, kinda mean!seonghwa, oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, overstimulation

full version of the wildcard in seonghwa’s a-z

(not proofread, but please enjoy)

There were two things you kept secret from Park Seonghwa. One, the things you wanted to try in the bedroom. And two, the fact that you ran a fan account for him. Honestly you weren’t even sure which one you found more embarrassing. How many people would say they run an account on twitter dedicated to their boyfriend? Albeit, your relationship with Seonghwa is a secret that is kept from everyone except for a handful of people. And the things you were interested in trying in the bedroom weren’t too out there, you thought. Fairly simple, to be quite honest. And you knew Seonghwa wouldn’t judge you—for either thing. In fact, he’d be excited about both. But still…you were scared to have him find out. 

There was this specific video of Seonghwa performing MATZ going around from the most recent tour, and it made you think about things. Things you wouldn’t necessarily tell your boyfriend. You looked over at Seonghwa, who was laying in bed next to you, scrolling through his phone. Then you looked back to your phone screen at the video of Seonghwa. At the end of the clip it looked like he was spitting. Which made you think about how you always wanted Seonghwa to spit in your mouth while the two of you were fucking. But you would never tell him that. 

Seonghwa was a simple guy and usually kept it fairly vanilla in the bedroom. Sure, the two of you experimented a little bit, but it was things like him restraining your hands or using blindfolds. Nothing dirty. You thought he would think that was gross. So you never brought it up. 

You watched the video a couple more times before you decided to quote it. 

ngl, kinda need seonghwa to spit in my mouth

You hit post and then locked your phone. If Seonghwa ever found out about this account you would simply die. It’s embarrassing. You felt your cheeks heat up, and you were sure your face was turning red. Closing your eyes, you hope Seonghwa doesn’t notice. You let out a breath before opening your eyes again. Taking a glance over at your boyfriend, he was still preoccupied with his phone, not paying any mind to you. 

The screen on your phone lit up as it vibrated, notifying you of a reply to your post. You quickly unlocked your phone and checked your notifications. It was from someone you occasionally talked to online. They liked your posted and had replied:

girl, me too. i would then say “thank you mommy” after he did it. 

Well, thank god you weren’t alone with wanting Seonghwa to spit in your mouth. But now you were thinking about something else. You knew Seonghwa had a motherly type of personality and a lot of people called him “mother” and “mommy”, but you never thought too much about it. But seeing your friend bring it up in a situation like this had your mind spiraling. Why did that turn you on? 

You bit your lip as you hit reply.

oh! yes! “thank you mommy” for sure. now you got me thinking!!

By now your whole body was heating up. And you felt a little dizzy. You needed to get some water and calm yourself down. So you put your phone down and climbed out of bed. 

“Where are you going, love?” Seonghwa asked, feeling you move from you spot. He didn’t look up from his phone. 

“J...just a little thirsty. I need some water,” you quickly replied as you scurried out of the room. 

Seonghwa made a soft noise in response to you, letting you know that he heard you. He continued to scroll through his phone. You took your time in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water and trying to clear your mind of any dirty thoughts you had. But while you were gone, your phone had started going off nonstop. The notifications were blowing it up. Which caught Seonghwa’s attention. 

He thought that something must be wrong and that one of your friends or family members was trying to get a hold of you. He grabbed your phone and unlocked it. (You both knew each other’s passcodes just in case there was ever an emergency). Notifications kept rolling in. Seonghwa then realized that it wasn’t any messages from a friend or family member, nor was it an emergency. They were notifications from twitter. 

He didn’t even know you had a twitter account. Now he was curious. What was it that was making your notifications go crazy? Now, Seonghwa definitely respects your privacy and would never snoop around. But something was making him want to check to see what the commotion was. He looked up from your phone to look at the doorway to the bedroom, making sure you weren’t coming back in yet. He then tapped on the app and pulled it up, checking the notifications. Most of them were likes or others sharing what you had posted. Some were replies that were agreeing with you. 

He finally clicked on what it was you posted, checking to see what everyone was going on about. Looking back at him was a fancam of him and the words that you wrote. He raised an eyebrow and chuckled. He then read the reply from your friend and your response to them. He couldn’t help but smile. Spitting? Mommy? Oh, he knew what he had to do now. 

Seonghwa clicked on your profile and scrolled through, surprised to see that you had a fan account for him. To be quite honest, he found it cute. Endearing, even. Before closing out of the app, he went back to that post again. It was something he never expected from you. He always thought you were on the more innocent side, not really having any interests that weren’t completely vanilla. 

Footsteps coming down the hall indicated that you were on your way back. Seonghwa quickly locked your phone and tossed it back to your side of the bed. He grabbed his own phone and pretended to be looking at it. When you walked back into the room, he looked up at you and smiled. He was going to have fun. 

Seonghwa rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow. He smiled as you climbed back into bed. “Feeling better, my love?”

You nodded and went to grab your phone. But then Seonghwa took it from your hand and leaned over you, placing it on the nightstand. You raised an eyebrow in confusion at him, but all he did was smile at you. He brushed his fingers through your hair, sweeping the strands behind you ear. He leaned down and placed a soft kiss on your lips. 

“Hwa?” you questioned, but he responded with a shush. He started placing quick kisses all over your face, before finally making his way back to your lips, where he deepened the kiss, his tongue pushing its way into your mouth, exploring it. He pressed his body against yours. Feeling the weight of him against you, you wrapped your arms around his neck. He groaned into the kiss, causing you to smile slightly against his lips. 

Seonghwa broke the kiss and pulled away from you. A small whine left you and he smirked as his eyes scanned down your body. His hands found their way under the shirt you were wearing, his fingers cold against your warm skin. Goosebumps covered your skin as you shuddered from the cool sensation. He leaned down and nipped at your neck, before placing kisses across your soft skin. 

His hands slid up your torso, bringing your shirt along with them, exposing your body to him. You sat up slightly, allowing Seonghwa to fully remove the piece of clothing from you, him haphazardly tossing it somewhere in the room. Your breasts were pressed together by the dark bra that you were wearing. Seonghwa grabbed them with his hands, squeezing them slightly. He placed a kiss on your collar bone before trailing down to your chest, where he pulled down the material holding your tits together. He licked at one as he palmed the other, causing your nipples to perk up from the stimulation and the cold air. 

“Ah, Hwa!” You moaned out as he started to suck on your nipple. You arched you back and you grabbed onto his long hair. You felt him smirk against your skin before he let go of your nipple with a wet pop and moved to your other one. His tongue swirled around the sensitive bud before he nipped at it, causing you to let out a high pitched whimper. 

“You are so beautiful, y/n,” Seonghwa breathed against your soft skin. “Makes me want to ruin you.”

You felt heat rush between your legs. Your fingers gripped his hair tightly, causing him to hum satisfyingly against your chest. “Seonghwa, please,” you begged. “Need you so bad!”

Seonghwa’s hands made their way behind you, fiddling with the clasps of your bra, finally undoing it and tossing it aside. He sat up on his knees and watched you with dark eyes. You were leaning back on your elbows, chest rising and falling as you breathed heavily. The way he was looking at you was full of hunger and desire. Whatever he had planned for you, it was going to definitely ruin you. 

His smirk only grew bigger, making you gulp in anticipation. He brought a hand to your cheek as he cupped it softly, his eyes falling to your lips. He bit his lip for a moment as if he were thinking. 

“Be a good girl,” he said, his thumb brushing against your bottom lip. You looked up at him with wide eyes. “Be a good girl for Mommy, yeah?”

Your mouth fell open in surprise. Did he just say “mommy”? The heat between your legs was growing, and you squeezed your thighs together. It turned you on way more than you ever expected. Seonghwa let out a low chuckle at your reaction, pleased with the blush forming across your cheeks. His eyes fluttered down to your bottom half, seeing how you have your legs tightly pressed together. 

“Did my baby like that?” he teased, grabbing on to your thighs and prying them apart. He pulled at the waistband of the shorts you were wearing and started to pull them down, leaving you in just your light pink panties. They were just simple cotton panties, but Seonghwa loved them nonetheless. He thought they were cute. It was pure and innocent—unlike the thoughts you were having of him. 

“Need you to answer me,” Seonghwa commanded, gripping your face with his hand. You nodded and whimpered out a quiet “yes”. But that didn’t satisfy him. He gripped your face tighter, making you look directly into his eyes. “What was that? I don’t think I heard you, baby girl.”

“Y-yes, mommy!” You exclaimed. 

Seonghwa let go of your face and softly tapped your cheek with his palm. “That’s my good girl,” he purred. 

At this point you had closed your legs again, trying to get some relief. You felt yourself getting incredibly wet—more wet than you have ever been before. Seonghwa took notice of your legs pressed tightly together and shook his head disapprovingly. “Open up.”

You moved your legs apart, revealing the wet patch that formed on your panties. Seonghwa pressed his fingers against it, with a smile playing on his full lips. He pulled your panties to the side, exposing your drenched cunt to him. His fingers brushed against your folds, collecting your slick. You bucked your hips, wanting to feel more from him. 

“Look at you baby girl, so wet for Mommy and I haven’t even done anything yet.” He pushed your hips back down against the mattress with his free hand as he slowly pushed two fingers into your aching core. 

“Seonghwa, please!” you called out as he started to pump his fingers in and out. But then he stopped and removed his fingers from you. You whined at the emptiness. 

“Hm? Who?” Seonghwa muttered before sucking your juices off his fingers and smirking at you. He loomed over you, before grabbing onto your face again. You felt a shiver go through your body. You’ve never seen Seonghwa act like this before, but you were liking it. 

“Mommy, please!” You corrected yourself. 

He held your chin between his thumb and finger, You could tell he was thinking, thinking about his next move. You let out the breath you unknowingly were holding. His thumb brushed against your lip again before he pushed it into your mouth, forcing it open. “Open wide, my love,” he said. 

You opened your mouth, tongue sticking out some. Before you knew it, Seonghwa had gotten close to your face and suddenly you felt his saliva fall into your open mouth. His spit mixed with your juices that he had just sucked off his fingers. 

“Swallow it, pretty girl. Mommy’s special gift just for you,” he chuckled darkly. 

You closed your mouth quickly and swallowed, tasting his saliva on your tongue. You closed your eyes, savoring it. A quiet moan erupted from you, surprising both you and him. 

“So dirty,” Seonghwa chortled. “Who knew my baby was secretly such a dirty girl.” He kissed you hard, taking your bottom lip between his teeth. 

He rested his knee between your legs, putting the ever slightest bit of pressure against your core; it was making your head spin. You grinded against him, wanting to feel some kind of relief. He pressed himself more into you, enjoying having you rut against his thigh like some dog in heat. “Look at you, you dirty little slut. Trying to get yourself off by humping my leg,” he teased; his voice was raspy, making you feel dizzy. 

“M-mommy, please,” you whined, continuing to rub yourself against Seonghwa. “I need you in me, please.”

Seonghwa pulled away from you; your slick was covering the grey material of his sweatpants. He clicked his tongue at you. “You are so needy, look at you. You ruined your panties and my sweats.” 

He reached towards the waistband of your panties and slid them down. You lifted yourself some to help him rid you of the garment. You were finally fully exposed, and Seonghwa smiled, taking in the sight of your leaking pussy in front of him. He licked his lips before he placed a few quick kisses to your thigh, trailing upwards. When he finally made it to your pussy, you could feel his hot breath against you. His long fingers spread you apart, watching as you clenched around nothing, desperate to feel something. 

You rolled your hips, trying to get Seonghwa to do more. To do anything. You were going insane from the teasing. You looked down at Seonghwa as he rested between your legs; he was concentrating, his lips pursed. You watched as he opened his lips and saliva spilled from them, landing right on your spread folds. The warm liquid seeped down over your pussy, mixing with your slick. Then he leaned in closer to your core, licking a strip up through the wetness, before stopping at your clit and giving it a harsh suck. 

The noise that you made was loud and was a mix between a moan and a whimper. Your back arched as your fingers found their way to Seonghwa’s hair. The strands twisted around your fingers as you pushed his face further into your cunt. He hummed against you, the vibrations making your toes curl. The knot in your stomach tightened as you felt your first orgasm approaching. Seonghwa continued to attack your clit with his mouth as his fingers prodded at your entrance. He started to pump his fingers, curling them just slightly making sure he hit exactly where he needed to bring you to you climax. Your vision went white as you reached your high. Your pussy clenched around Seonghwa’s fingers as he slowed his pace, letting you ride out your orgasm. 

When Seonghwa pulled away from you, his face and hand were covered in your juices. He licked his hand clean before wiping his face. “You taste so good, baby. I should let you taste, too,” he said as he hovered over you. He gripped your face, forcing your mouth open again. You watched as he gathered the saliva in his mouth. The wad of spit fell from his lips as it landed into your open mouth. You rolled the saliva around your mouth, tasting both you and him on your tongue, before finally swallowing. 

“You are being such a good girl for Mommy,” Seonghwa cooed as he caressed your cheek. “I think it’s time I finally give you what you need.”

You felt tears welling up in your eyes. You were so desperate to feel his cock fill you up. “Please, I’ve been such a good girl. I need you in me,” you whispered, feeling a tear escape and roll down your cheek. 

Seonghwa wiped the tear away with his thumb before finally pulling his pants and boxers down, freeing his achingly hard cock. With an angry tip and precum leaking, he lined himself up with your entrance. Wanting to tease you one more time, he rubbed his tip against your slick folds, causing you to whine slightly. 

“Let me hear you say it one more time, my sweet girl,” Seonghwa edged you on, resting his tip right at your entrance. 

“Mommy, please. Need your cock in me, fill me up, please!” You begged. 

“Good girl,” he uttered before finally pushing his cock fully into you, filling you to the brim. You screamed his name as you felt him stretch you out. Seonghwa pulled back out before slamming into you again. Your eyes rolled back as you felt him brush against your warm walls. He continued to thrust into you, letting out low grunts each time his cock pushed into you. 

You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer to you. Seonghwa’s hand slipped between your bodies as he found way to your clit. His fingertips circled the sensitive nub, bringing you closer to the edge. He was getting close too, with the way your pussy was squeezing his cock. His thrusts were starting to get sloppy. 

Seonghwa leaned down and gave you a quick kiss. “Cum for me baby. Cum for mommy,” he urged you on. With one last thrust, you hit your climax. Your eyes rolled back as your body trembled from the orgasm. Seonghwa came right afterwards, filling you up with his hot, white seed. Your cunt clenched around him, milking him of every last drop, filling you to the brim. 

He pulled out and watched as his cum started to leak out of your abused hole. He took two fingers and pushed his cum back into your pussy, making you whine out from the overstimulation of his fingers fucking into your sensitive core. Your legs quivered as he continued to thrust his fingers into you. You weren’t sure if you could handle any more. A cry escaped your throat as you grabbed Seonghwa’s hand, trying to stop him. “T-too much, Hwa,” you sobbed. 

Seonghwa immediately stopped and pulled your body close. He brushed his fingers through your hair as you clung to him. Soft whispers of praise filled the room as he tried to calm you down. “I’m so sorry, baby,” Seonghwa whispered, worried that he went too far. 

“It’s okay, Hwa,” you reassured him, placing a kiss to his jawline. “Just too sensitive.” 

He softly laid your body down on the bed, treating you as if you were made of glass and would break. A few soft kisses were shared before he got out of bed. Seonghwa walked into the bathroom and started to run a bath, wanting to make sure you got the best aftercare he could give you. As the bath continued to fill, he came back into the bedroom to get you. He carried you into the bathroom and sat you gently into the tub. He stepped into the tub along with you and sat behind you, placing you between his legs. 

With your back pressed against his chest, he placed a kiss to your shoulder. “Did you like that?” He asked, breaking the silence. 

“Yeah,” you whispered, suddenly feeling embarrassed. It was like Seonghwa had somehow read your mind and found out what you were in to. 

“I think you should say ‘Thank you, Mommy’,” he teased, his fingers trailing down your arm before interlacing them with yours. 

You gasped and turned around to look at Seonghwa. You softly smacked his chest. “Park Seonghwa, you snooped didn’t you?” 

“It’s so cute that you have a fan account for me, baby,” he chuckled. “Maybe next time, tell me what you want to try instead of tweeting it out for a bunch of strangers to see.” He kissed your temple and you sighed contently as you leaned into him. 

————

taglist: @bratty-tingz, @yuyuzlilbunny , @xdinarymango, @seonghwasbaby, @i-love-ateez

dm or comment if you want to be added to the taglist :)

[theartofslime]

how tf he timed Michael running in the house I'll never fucking know, that shit's impossible

[warped-stem]

I'm gonna be sappy for a second but like. even tho I haven't watched phil's latest stream yet but I'm so happy for the people not returning for s2. they gave their characters the best sendoffs they could and I respect the fuck out of them for that

[orpheus-complex]

Gimmick Accounts, Gnome Twitter, and the Life Expectancy of Viral Trends

here it is: a blog five months in the making. perhaps the most absurd thing i've dedicated this much time to, and entirely worthwhile. i hope you enjoy

A delightful jaunt in investigative journalism in which I endeavored to find out why and how some gimmick accounts fade to obscurity whereas others seem to defy their average life expectancy. As a Twitter veteran, I have noticed a pattern or two. This summer, one trend I decided to pay particular attention to is that of people creating gimmick accounts after a specific type of meme achieves…

[mikeru-funzies]

THIS IS AMAZING AHSGSHAH

piggy as a reformed Twitter user? chronically online Simon? Screen time limits Jack? JACK USING SLURS AS SLURS

this is all canon to me. completely fits the characters

also I can’t imagine being Piggy, having a book mention you and your friends, and getting KILLED IN IT?? LMAO HOW DOES HE EVEN REACT

please tell me more about gen z lotf au 🙏🙏

OFCCC!! i wrote a lot more about this than i thought i could, and i feel like i could keep going but i do wish to go to sleep! ty for the ask! (there was also an anon ask with this question, idk if it was you, but i'm just gonna answer this one lol)

the choir boys all know each other irl (obvi they still have choir together). everyone lives roughly in the same vicinity, but no one knows that.

they all met online during the pandemic. possibly through video games, twitter, or tiktok

how did this ragtag group of people all become friends? idk fortnite probably

i don't know much about fortnite, but it seems like it would start some friendships and/or rivalries. maybe minecraft or roblox too.

how they met and became friends is hazy, like how the beta kids became friends in homestuck. point is: they're all friends. pretty much.

some boys are closer friends than others, but they're all mutuals. they're all in like the same community. what community? that is a good question i should probably think of an answer

piggy uses the nickname people bullied him with as his online name. he gets cyberbullied and has ended up on many a cringe account, but it doesn't really bother him anymore. he likes to spread information, but he was a little self-righteous about it before he quit twitter. now he argues with people on instagram. piggy's also a redditor.

ralph usually just watches other people's content, but sometimes he'll post something and it'll get pretty popular because he's ralph and being well-liked is an innate part of his character. ralph does prefer to go out and do stuff than being online all the time.

simon is chronically online. being shy, he gravitated towards the internet. he's definitely a fandom girlie and has a tumblr (hi tumblr). he spreads positivity on the internet all the time. he's one of the good ones fr. i do hc simon as a Christian, so he does spread the Word a lot as an lgbtq affirming Christian dude

jack doesn't spend too much time on the internet. he also isn't allowed a lot of these medias by his parents, so that may have something to do with it. he does get upset when his posts don't get as many likes as ralph's

roger ragebaits and leaves hate comments all the time, but he has moments where he's nice. maurice memer obviously. sam and eric are the voros twins. i don't have too many thoughts about these guys just yet

they voice chat and sometimes video call

meeting each other irl for the first time led to the utter disgust at ralph's blindness in the fashion department

ok onto them reading lord of the flies cause i think this is such a funny concept

they all miraculously start reading lord of the flies as a class assignment at the same time

they all tell each other this and they're all like "loooool that's crazy we're all reading the same book at the same time"

i saw someone on my last post ab this say exactly what im about to say. it is truly the only way to go with this.

everyone's all "oh haha ralph's got the name of the first character AND he's blonde!" "piggy has the same name as peter's online name! haha how sill-" "WHY IS MY FULL LEGAL NAME IN THIS BOOK???"

the last person is jack btw if you couldn't tell

the exact names and character descriptions matching up a little too well with the boys startles them, but they still joke about it A LOT.

i mean, think about it, if you were forced to read this book in class and you find out you and your friends are basically the main characters, you would NOT stop cracking jokes about it.

"'ugly without silliness.' wow jack, william golding really DID put you in his story!"

they do start to get a little more freaked out when, yk, stuff starts going down in the book and they have to analyze it.

piggy's eventually like "OK we, or at least i, have got to figure this out." and he goes and does some research.

aaaaand that is all i can tell you for now :))

i do headcanon a lot of the boys as queer, but my hcs of them as gen z-ers do differ a little from my hcs of them as gen silencers.

piggy is a strict ally, his aunt is an ally, allies all around, until he realizes he is not so straight as he seems and is not really just an ally. bisexual

ralph knows nothing about the sexuality and gender biz he just does what feels right. he's pretty much demisexual/romantic tho.

simon is a gay dude. he is gnc and on the trans spectrum somewhere

jack is the only one using queer slurs, everyone gets onto him for it. he's gay, but he doesn't know it/won't accept it (because everyone in his life is HOMOPHOBIC!!!). when he does finally accept it, he is still using those slurs as slurs he is not reclaiming them.

[olderthannetfic]

hi, as someone who is tragically gen Z and only ever read AO3, can I ask: what was so great about LiveJournal? Like, I know that there were fics posted there (and I've even read about the "purge", so I get why it isn't used anymore) and that it was sort of a forum-type thing. But what I don't understand, wouldn't Tumblr fill in the latter function? How was that site any different? I see a lot of people reminiscing about it and I'm confused

--

A big factor in LJ's greatness is timing and nostalgia.

It was genuinely great, but it wasn't quite as great as all of the Lo, shall the Golden Age ne'er come again? posts suggest.

LJ arrived at a pivotal time in the development of the internet both in terms of technical stuff and how many people had access. Many fans who are now in their thirties to fifties first discovered fandom through LJ and many were at a time in their lives when they were feeling energetic and up to making lots of new friends—and to figuring out how to make a site work for them.

I got on LJ in 2002 when it required invites. Fandom arrived in droves in 2003, first via coordinated campaigns to get invites to key people and then when LJ opened up free account creation to everyone. Back then, LJ's features sucked. It was impossible to search properly, among other things. At its height (2005-7, let's say), there was a reasonable site search, and fans had developed all sorts of community resources for finding each other.

People often remember this phase but not the early days of suckitude.

This development parallels how Tumblr used to not have that private chat feature and how a lot of fuckyeah[whatever] type tumblrs have helped curate the site and make it much more usable for fans. Fandom draining away from LJ after strikethrough also parallels people draining away from Tumblr after the purge.

There are people who talk about Tumblr the way my cohort talks about LJ...

And to the shock of no one, they are people who came of age on Tumblr, who found fandom via Tumblr, who were on Tumblr during pivotal times in their lives and ones when they had energy to make friends and figure out how a site worked.

Those same Tumblrites are now making all the same geriatric-sounding posts we LJers do about how other sites lack the required features to be good for fandom while missing that 90% of tumblr's "features" at its height (2012-2016, let's say) were actually fan-created and were basically the same as any fandom newsletter or links page or all the versions of this kind of personal curation stretching back to long before the internet existed.

What life phase you hit a site at matters.

--

With all of that said, no, LJ was not a forum. It was a blogging site with threaded comments.

The key point to understand is that conversation was always happening in a specific person's space. Unlike on a true forum, people were in the comments on a particular post in a journal owned by another fan. (On a forum, there's the first post in a thread, but it's still more of a communal space with less of a hierarchy.)

Overall, the LJ format can have a feeling a bit like you're over at someone's house for tea. There's more of a sense of intimacy and also behaving yourself in front of community members.

Tumblr being obscure and impossible to find anything in does give it some of the same vibe relative to Twitter, but it's still part of modern social media that tries to shove every rando into the face of every other rando.

But it wasn't just vibes: LJ also had robust privacy features where you could lock a post to this or that group of friends. You could moderate your comments section properly. Tumblr has far fewer controls to force people to behave or leave on a technical level.

--

The biggest thing many people miss about LJ is the threaded comments. At least by late LJ and on Dreamwidth, you can expand and collapse threads, making it far easier to deal with a massive comments section. But more than that, things are properly threaded with multiple levels of hierarchy that are all easily visible in the same place.

On Tumblr, it used to be extremely difficult to find all of the actual commentary on a post. Nowadays, it's far easier, but you still have to scroll chronologically, and multiple versions of a post with a long chain of commentary may be much more divorced from each other than what would happen in a LJ comments section.

--

But could we use Tumblr pretty much how we used LJ?

We could.

I do.

--

The key things that people tend to miss about LJ, aside from the younger and more excited version of themselves or the friends they've lost since then, are:

Heavily text-based

It may sound odd on the modern internet, but there are a lot of people whose brains don't like or handle an image-heavy site well. They were everywhere in SF book fandom. They were everywhere on the early internet. Today, they're hanging out on Dreamwidth and still going to their SF cons. They're usually not on Tumblr.

You could follow the discussion

Threaded comments help, but a lot of it is about having some place you can check for updates. It wasn't actually that easy to follow big LJ discussions unless you were subscribed to comments and reading along as things were happening instead of coming along after the entire mass of comments had been left.

The tone of the discussion is intellectual and one's enemies are "idiots", not "problematic"

All this requires is a penchant for longwindedness and an itchy blocking finger to remove anyone slinging ad hominems from the comments section.

On tumblr, it's as simple as conversations happening in the replies on a popular account and that person not tolerating suibaiting and threats.

(And make no mistake, a lot of LJ discussion was in the comments on popular accounts, not spread equally between everyone's.)

It does require that multiple people like that tone and want to engage in that way, but lots of people do want to.

--

These days, I interact with tumblr by checking my askbox and reading my activity page. The vast, vast majority of my posts are ones where I'm the OP, so if I block someone, they're booted from the discussion entirely.

For me... yeah, Tumblr functions almost exactly like LJ.

Also like LJ, while I'm hosting the conversation, if you hang around, you'll see the same people again and again in the comments. They may or may not also host that kind of conversation in their space, and there's a larger pool of lurkers who have some notion of which people count as regulars. Other people are watching from the shadows, enjoying or deriding the takes of the usual crowd.

People presumably do like reading my lengthy commentary or they wouldn't be here, but my tumblr wouldn't be popular like this without a healthy pool of other people who chime in regularly. It's not just that there are more people: it's that you see the same people over time. There's a bit more sense of place and community than on some parts of the internet.

--

So, in my opinion, the failure to just recreate LJ fandom on Tumblr was a skill issue.

Threaded comments were great, but LJ culture came from mailing lists, and mailing lists had the same issue as tumblr with the diverging threads.

We solved that back then by clipping out only the parts we wanted to respond to (you'd write "snip" around the quotation to show it was incomplete). We solved the smaller LJ issue by linking to other posts we were referencing and doing discussion link roundups. We solve it on tumblr by, again, linking to what we're talking about and even quoting multiple reblog chains in our own reblog of just one chain.

--

Tumblr's technical features and even general crap-ness aren't really the problem. 90s and early 00s sites regularly went down for periods of time unthinkable today.

The missing piece is people.

When one is in an active fandom with others who curate or with friends who let one know what's up, a site with imperfect features is easy to figure out and retrofit for fandom's needs. When one already feels out of touch and is between fannish passions—or at least fannish passions anyone else cares about—seeing the potential in a new site is hard.

--

Threaded comments are different and better.

LJ's built-in way to see everyone's blog in your own style was better. The automatic timestamps and the ease of seeing a paginated archive of an entire blog was better than tumblr's endless scroll and lack of clear date labeling. But some of that can be fixed with xkit or knowing your way around tumblr well.

A lot of it is nostalgia for the lj era and a refusal to take the time to figure out how to use tumblr in an oldschool internet way.

--

So by all means, people, weigh in about what made LJ great or how the culture felt at the time...

But if I see one more god damn response going "You can't have a conversation on tumblr!" in reply to my tumblr, which contains nothing but conversation, I am coming for you.

[minglana]

i love when twitter shortcircuts <3