#is this how we get past tumblrs censors | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

angelsdean · 5 months

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I need people to understand how S&P (standards and practices) works in television and how much influence they have over what gets to stay IN an episode of a show and how the big time network execs are the ones holding the purse strings and making final decisions on a show's content, not the writers / showrunners / creatives involved.

So many creators have shared S&P notes over the years of the wild and nonsensical things networks wanted them to omit / change / forbid. Most famously on tumblr, I've seen it so many times, is the notes from Gravity Falls. But here's a post compiling a bunch of particularly bad ones from various networks too. Do you see the things they're asking to be changed / cut ?

Now imagine, anything you want to get into your show and actually air has to get through S&P and the network execs. A lot of creators have had to resort to underhanded methods. A lot of creators have had to relegate things to subtext and innuendo and scenes that are "open to interpretation" instead of explicit in meaning. Things have had to be coded and symbolized. And they're relying on their audience to be good readers, good at media literacy, to notice and get it. This stuff isn't the ramblings of conspiracy theorists, it's the true practices creatives have had to use to be able to tell diverse stories for ages. The Hays Code is pretty well known, it exists because of censorship. It was a way to symbolize certain things and get past censors.

Queercoding, in particular, has been used for ages in both visual media and literature do signal to queer audiences that yes, this character is one of us, but no, we can't be explicit about it because TPTB won't allow it. It's a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to those in the know. It's the deliberate use of certain queer imagery / clothing / mannerisms / phrases / references to other queer media / subtle glances and lingering touches. Things that offer plausible deniability and can be explained away or go unnoticed by straight audiences to get past those network censors. But that queer viewers WILL (hopefully) pick up on.

Because, unfortunately, still to this day, a lot of antiquated network execs don't think queer narratives are profitable. They don't think they'll appeal to general audiences, because that's what matters, whatever appeals to most of the audience demographic so they can keep watching and keep making the network more money. The networks don't care about telling good stories! Most of them are old white cishet business men, not creatives. They don't care about character arcs and what will make fans happy. They don't care about storytelling. What they care about is profit and they're basing their ideas of what's profitable on what they believe is the predominate target demographic, usually white cis heterosexual audiences.

So, imagine a show that started airing in the early 2000s. Imagine a show where the two main characters are based on two characters from a famous Beat Generation novel, where one of the characters is queer! based on a real like bisexual man! The creator is aware of this, most definitely. And sure, it's 2005, there's no way they were thinking of making that explicit about Dean in the text because it just wouldn't fly back then to have a main character be queer. But! it's made subtext. And there are nods to that queerness placed in the text. Things that are open to interpretation. Things that are drenched in metaphor (looking at you 1x06 Skin "I know I'm a freak" "maybe this thing was born human but was different...hated. Until he learned to become someone else.") Things that are blink-and-you-miss-it and left to plausible deniability (things like seemingly spending an hour in the men's bathroom, or always reacting a little vulnerable and awkward when you're clocked instead of laughing it off and making a homophobic joke abt it)

And then, years later there's a ship! It's popular and at first the writers aren't really seriously thinking about it but they'll throw the fans a bone here and there. Then, some writers do get on the destiel train and start actively writing scenes for them that are suggestive. And only a fraction of what they write actually makes it into the text. So many lines left on the cutting room floor: i love past you. i forgive you i love you. i lost cas and it damn near broke me. spread cas's ashes alone. of course i wanted you to stay. if cas were here. -- etc. Everything cut was not cut by the writers! Why would a writer write something to then sabotage their own story and cut it? No, these are things that didn't make it past the network. Somewhere a note was made maybe "too gay" or "don't feed the shippers" or simply "no destiel."

So, "no destiel." That's pretty clearly the message we got from the CW for years. "No destiel. Destiel will alienate our general audience. Two of our main characters being queer? And in a relationship? No way." So what can the pro-destiel creatives involved do, if the network is saying no? What can the writers do if most of their explicit destiel (or queer dean) lines / moments are getting cut? Relegate things to subtext. Make jokes that straight people can wave off but queer people can read into. Make costuming and set design choices that the hardcore fans who are already looking will notice while the general audience and the out-of-touch network execs won't blink and eye at (I'm looking at you Jerry and your lamps and disappearing second nightstands and your gay flamingo bar!)

And then, when the audience asks, "is destiel real? is this proof of destiel?" what can the creatives do but deny? Yes, it hurts, to be told "No no I don't know what you're talking about. There's no destiel in supernatural" a la "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" but! if the network said "no destiel!" and you and your creative team have been working to keep putting destiel in the subtext of the narrative in a way that will get past censors, you can't just go "Yes, actually, all that subtext and symbolism you're picking up, yea it's because destiel is actually in the narrative."

But, there's a BIG difference between actively putting queer themes and subtext into the narrative and then saying it's not there (but it is! and the audience sees it!) versus NOT putting any queer content into the text but SAYING it is there to entice queer fans to continue watching. The latter, is textbook queerbaiting. The former? Is not. The former is the tactics so many creatives have had to use for years, decades, centuries, to get past censorship and signal to those in the know that yea, characters like you are here, they exist in this story.

Were the spn writers perfect? No, absolutely not. And I don't think every instance of queer content was a secret signal. Some stuff, depending on the writer, might've been a period-typical gay joke. These writers are flawed. But it's no secret that there were pro-destiel writers in the writing room throughout the years, and that efforts were made to make it explicitly canon (the market research!)

So no, the writers weren't ever perfect or a homogeneous entity. But they definitely were fighting an uphill battle constantly for 15 yrs against S&P and network execs with antiquated ideas of what's profitable / appealing.

Spn even called out the networks before, on the show, using a silly example of complaints abt the lighting of the show and how dark the early seasons were. Brightening the later seasons wasn't a creative choice, but a network choice. And if the networks can complain abt and change something as trivial as the lighting of a show, they definitely are having a hand in influencing the content of the show, especially queer content.

Even in s15, (seasons fifteen!!!) Misha has said he worried Castiel's confession would not air. In 2020!!! And Jensen recorded that scene on his personal phone! Why? Sure, for the memories. But also, I do not doubt for a second that part of it was for insurance, should the scene mysteriously disappear completely. We've seen the finale script. We've seen the omitted omitted omitted scenes. We all saw how they hacked the confession scene to bits. The weird cuts and close-ups. That's not the writers doing. That's likely not even the editors (willingly). That's orders from on high. All of the fuckery we saw in s15 reeks of network interference. Writers are not trying to sabotage their own stories, believe me.

Anyways, TLDR: Networks have a lot more power than many think and they get final say in what makes it to air. And for years creative teams have had to find ways to get past network censorship if they want "banned" or "unapproved" "unprofitable" "unwanted" content to make it into the show. That means relying on techniques like symbolism, subtext, and queercoding, and then shutting up about it. Denying its there, saying it's all "open to interpretation" all while they continue to put that open to interpretation content into the show. And that's not queerbaiting, as frustrating as it might be for queer audiences to be told that what they're seeing isn't there, it's still not queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is a marketing technique to draw in queer fans by baiting them with the promise of queer content and then having no queer content in said media. But if you are picking up on queer themes / subtext / symbolism / coding that is in front of your face IN the text, that's not queerbaiting. It's there, covertly, for you, because someone higher up didn't want it to be there explicitly or at all.

#long post #LONG-ass post #but it needed to be said!#i'm sorry if you think every creative involved with spn was a braindead asshole but the thing is.#even the most mediocre of writers understands a thing or two abt symbolism and writers working in TV are plagued by S&P #countless writers have talked abt the S&P bullshit and having to tweak and edit down their work to get past censors #it's a reality of writing for television #and the people who understand all this and understand the context of making TV in the early 2000s (to present tbh!) aren't 'delusional'#i'm sorry but it's naive to think that queer stories and queer characters are free to be told even nowadays. it's still a constant battle #times have changed but unfortunately not as much as you'd think #the confession !!!!! the confession still struggled to air and what we got was so obviously hacked down to bits!!!!!!#how can anyone think getting destiel content into the show was ever easy?#how can anyone think the pro-destiel writers weren't constantly having to be careful and underhanded in their writing?#there's a reason queercoding and subtext exist and it's this!!! it's censorship from TPTB #anyways. people much older than me have been talking abt this for ages. younger fans who are used to more open queer rep need to understand #it hasn't always been that easy and even nowadays SO many networks are still not willing to take a risk on queer stories #so creators do what they can #vic.txt

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heywriters · 10 months

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how to make a tumblr post (and get notes!)

Have never seen any post discuss these exact things, so i'm sharing my insights with y'all*

Use images. They don't have to be good or spectacular like this extremely coherent thing I just made. They just need to catch the eye break up dashboard monotony.

The gif search feature is an unreliable wild card at best and a NSFW eye gouge at worst, but it gives credit to the op of the gif

If you're an artist your whole post is your images, so skip to the links and tags section of this post because the rest won't help much.

-> Image Descriptions

When making a post that contains images, hover over an image and click the meatballs icon in the lower right corner of the image. Click "update description" to add a description. It isn't always necessary, but it is very courteous for a variety of accessibility reasons.

-> Text

Break up your text. Run-on sentences are standard here, lack of punctuation too, you can really do whatever you want, but avoid massive blocks of text. unless you've got a really incendiary opening line and the entire center of that granite chunk of text is actually comedy gold, hard-hitting tumblr journalism, or one of those zany confessional posts that can be followed up by the drive thru meme

break up

your text.

and go light on the ALL CAPS. save it for emphasis or when you're feeling very unhinged or saRcAStiC y'know how that goes, i don't need to explain it. this site has a very dry tone to its posts so caps are rare. also periods

Bullet points and numbered posts are good and fine. The "Chat" post option is used less often these days, but different groups found uses for it so it sticks around.

Titles Matter

they help break up text and put people at ease. they are best for informative, mature posts but can make you look like a square in more relaxed conversations. sometimes they are also great for emphasis in a comedic sh*tpost (censorship is entirely up to you, btw. you don't have to censor much on tumblr except titties and genitals).

Tumblr automatically shortens long posts now, but etiquette asks that you tag #long post if you want to avoid clogging up someone's dash. It don't matter too much though, this is the "color of the sky" site, so get used to posts being too long

That being said "READ MORE" is a fantastic feature. Use it when you want some level of privacy like "hey, only click below if you want to hear about my problems" or "click below to read my 18+ fanfic." Read more is also great in case you want to delete something forever. If a reblogged post has a read more, but op deleted the og post, that content is gone (readmore has to be on the og post at time of posting for this to work, btw; edits to og post do not span all reblogs)

the other bells and whistles like colored font or italics are helpful in improving text, but we don't really rely on them. every mode of looking at this site alters those aspects somehow so we often ignore them

-> Links

Hint: People don't want to click links. We don't know where they're taking us. Most of us are on our phone and don't want to open another tab or leave the app to go on the browser. We're cozy here on Tumblr and do not wish to be whisked away (unless it's a rickroll)

Don't leave the link thumbnail to do all the work, like so

add a little sneak peak info, maybe your favorite line from the article or a reason why it's important for people to know the info on the other side of that link. Sell it!

When you're adding a link into a list, i.e. no large thumbnail just a line of text leading you to another site, try not to copy/paste the link as is

"https://......"

No one wants to click on that it's gross and scary. It's screams "meh, i'll click later if i feel like it." If the build up to the link is too good to resist ("if you want to save the orphaned puppies here's the link") then that http mess is sufficient.

Otherwise, dress your links up a little by including the title or a description of what the link goes to:

Or, if it's an informal post where you're just popping info in to back up whatever insane thing you just said, just write something like "link here" or "(x)" and hyperlink it.

-> Tags

artists, writers, and other creators: leave a tag on your creative content that makes it easy for blog visitors to see it all at once. e.g. "My work" and we click on that while on your blog and see only your works

You can have up to thirty tags on any post. All will make your post show up in searches and followed tags (it used to be only the first five tags that got you traction). However,

Please. Do not tag everything you can possibly imagine being relevant to your post because

It's called tag spam and it's against TOS

Everyone here hates that

No one is going to check all those tags ever. Someone might search one five years from now and accidentally find your post hanging out in the ether and they'll still ignore it.

Your imagination is wicked tiny because I guarantee the perfect tag is going to be something indecipherable and seemingly niche.

Follow popular tags (or at least be aware of them)

If yours is an off-the-cuff post and you don't have time to find out what a niche group is into then wing it, sure, idc. this is also the shitposting site do whatever you want

Don't put your hate in the fan tags. This is the unapologetically-like-dumb-things site and your negativity is not wanted. You can still complain, just avoid tagging to get the attention of the fans of whatever you're complaining about. That enables pvp and even nonfans will know you deserve the backlash

-> Audio & Video

clickable by nature because we all love noise and moving images so there's no special way to share posts like this. just post them with good tags and maybe a one-liner, and they'll sell themselves

Tip: it's nice to add descriptions to these too but it isn't common

Protip: if the audio is the best part of the video (e.g. a baby burps REALLY loudly and it's hilarious) please caption or tag "Unmute!"

-> mkay bye

that's all i can think of right now. will update later if i remember something

---

*this is year eleven of my time on tumbles and i studied marketing in college for like six of those years and have been applying that bupkis to tumblr ever since. every post i see that gets no traction and every lovely artist that goes nowhere on here bothers me so deeply and i sincerely want y'all to succeed <3 <3

+ If you find this helpful and want to support my blog, I have a ko-fi!

+ If you're concerned about my mental health from being on Tumblr so long and want to contribute to my "get better" fund, I have a ko-fi!

#writing #tumblr guide #tumblr etiquette #marketing #writeblr #authorblr #artists of tumblr #og #tongue in cheek #long post

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mcytblr-archive · 2 months

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Early MCYTblr Interviews: georgesoot

today's interviewee is georgesoot/dreamwasfound, who, in his words, "emerged from the senior living center to tell all". under the readmore is a transcript if the questions and answers.

Q: What was, in broad terms, your experience in MCYTblr? Are there any experiences/events that stand out to you?

A: Well it was primarily an outlet to channel all my obnoxious thoughts about Minecraft at the time. I had started watching Minecraft videos during the Pandemic, and came across [they who shall not be mentioned] and noticed there wasn't really a community on Tumblr yet. I just knew that someone had to show up and make it gay. It was easy to slot myself in, start making posts that I will never understand how I thought they would be funny, and slowly built up some sort of a following due to my sense of humor but also due to my ability to soberly ~critique~ the Minecraft Men as content creators, micro-celebrities, and as people. I never really fell into niches or was much aware of what other people were doing, until I was kind of folded into this idea of Dream Lying. I don't mean to sound self obsessed but I didn't really care about anything beyond my immediate sphere of friends?

For instance, you mention with other interviewees the Elections. I did not pay attention to those for a single second. I do remember we were saying "stop the count!" because we thought Georgeeehd should have won. And I dubbed Wormweeb the Prime Minister of Mcytblr, but I don't even remember who was running? Or why this even happened?

But as for other events, if they were funny or I could wring something out of them, I do remember them. For example, the mass migration of Kpoppies to Tumblr after it was suddenly "legal" to ship content creators. That compltely shifted the "culture" if it can be called that. I remember all the fake stan accounts, but I never attempted to interact with them. Obviously I remember the Tapeworm post, all the Discourse, the Controversies, how I was able to get hundreds of notes by summarizing events of the DreamSMP, my great shame in life.

But yes, most of the time, I was not there to take things too seriously.

Q: More specifically, what was your experience being in Dream Lying/early critblr? Do you think your experience differed from “main” MCYTblr?

A: As for my experience in what has been dubbed Critblr, well I've been credited with helping to start that whole movement. I think it's funny, because truly the kind of reaction to [censored]'s warcry scandal just wouldn't play out today the way it did back then. But I think it's a function of being an adult, that I could look at [censored] not as an idol, like at all whatsoever. It's easy to swept up in the emotions of things. But as a veteran of Discourseblr, and multiple fandoms, I could see through [censored]'s lack of media training and awareness of the average center left teenage perspective on these issues like it was wet tissue paper. People were mad at for that, but I didn't care what people thought of me.

Maybe by coincidence the other members of Dream Lying also had similar worldviews to mine. Everyone could look past the stanning of it all and recognize when something "canceallable" occurred and discuss it frankly and succinctly. Well I couldn't discuss it succinctly but others could. So to answer your question, yes it was a different experience from the rest of the "community." And it got to the point that it wasn't just "holding creators to account" it became fun. It was fun being the buzzkill in an ironic sense, and also fun in an unhinged way to just create these ludicrous scenarios of [censored] the Young Republican cornering you in the hallway and asking you so how does gay sex work actually though? And again, shipping was a component of this too.

And we turned out to be right. At the risk of sounding arrogant, this will become a theme.

Q: In previous interviews with DLying members, we’ve discussed that misinformation/in-jokes were a big part of the culture, one of them being that Dream sued you for libel. Do you remember any others? Did you expect so many people to believe you?

A: As I mentioned, I didn't take things too seriously. I enjoyed doing a little light trolling, such as when I infiltrated a [censored] stan tumblr server and showed everyone his dogs, and then reveled in the drama of them acting like I killed their families. People also turned on me because I abandoned The Ship for a ship that comprises of two… perpetrators of sexual misconduct as of March 2024, though that would also be true of the Popular Ship as well.

Anyway my personal computer died sometime in early 2021, so I, as is per the usual for my personality, made it into a joke because it really was quite stressful. I mentioned to Reese Georgeeehd and Ozzie ohge0rge (sp?) that [censored] must've sent a virus to kill my harddrive. This evolved into [censored]'s legal team sending me a cease and desist letter, as I'm sure I was being extra ~critical~ on Tumblr at the time.

They asked if they could make that The Official Narrative. I cautioned against it, it leaked anyway, because their "Private Twitters" had hundreds of followers, and this enabled this joke to become a full fledged rumor. And then my "ops" as the kids call them, got wind of this too. Most didn't believe it, but some had this "If it did happen GOOD!" attitude.

But some other examples… let me think. We did try to heavily imply that Ranboo was a former member of our organization. We rarely outright lied about the creators, but we did usually distort or exaggerate things when it came to us, for comedic effect. Frequently someone will say to me "Oh so and so mentioned you again," and my go-to answer is always "Tell them I got hit by a bus," or "Tell them I'm withering away from my dementia in the nursing home."

I did not expect people to believe me, because I did not spread the rumor because I had completely disappeared from the "public" by that point. I purposefully devised a very unrealistic joke in the first place, so I really don't know who would believe that. Especially since I was known to be friends and enemies with doxxers, who could find that information out if it existed.

Like the thought of [censored] being so hurt by a single anonymous loser calling him a Trump supporter and a bad voice actor and someone who was going to hold his British friend captive in his basement and force him to go on a keto diet to the point that he starves to death, or that he had offshore bank accounts to evade Taxes, or that he paid his brother to be his body double (this turned out to be true), that he was pretending to be bisexual for clout, that he had 100% cheated on his speedrun (also turned out to be true), that he had enslaved his mother as his maid, that he and his other friend from Texas would engage in a little frottage as bros do… well the list is endless. But the thought of him being so offended that he gets his lawyer, whom he pays, to send me a cease and desist letter… well it's one of the few things I came up with that was actually funny.

Uh but no, anyone with a healthy attachment to reality would never believe that.

Q: I understand that you were also in EBblr and its surrounding communities. What was that like?

A: I was never in ebblr… all I did was watch a few Tubbo streams, realize that he was probably gay, and I was right. Because what do you expect at this point?

I pointed out publicly that Tubbo and Ranboo were engaging in some light queerbait, except that they were obviously both queer. The point was I thought they (or at least Tubbo) were trying to engineer a New [censored], because that gets you attention which gets you money… like Kaceytron was right about everything? In these spaces, being Queer is a commodity. But I'm letting the point get away from me.

In private, I mostly reacted with bemusement, and we did have some genuine enderbabies, as I called them (mostly derisively), in our server, who took it all so literally and that it was so kawaii desu. I thought it was cringe. Like, Tubbo pretending to be coy and saying Ranboo's foot was bigger than his forearm. That took me RIGHT back to my days as a cringy 19yo baby gay trying to flirt. Oh I'm getting embarrassed thinking about it. But there were a few moments that Tubbo and Ranboo manufactured together that I thought were pretty cute and wholesome.

On the whole, I'm still confused as to why I'm included in this sub-community. I approached Enderbees as a marketing thing, or something of the sort. I never read fics, I never looked at art, I never really cared. I especially didn't care about their "characters" on the SMP, which also set me apart from the genuine unironic shippers. Some thought this was worse than shipping because I was committing that dreaded cardinal sin: speculating on CC's sexualities.

And yes, I popularized the word Truthing in this context. I explicitly modeled it after 9/11 Truthers, because the JOKE (hi remember none of this was meant to be too serious) was that we were deranged conspiracists who were probably best kept away from normal society.

Q: Is it odd to be regarded as infamous within the MCYTblr niche?

A: No it's not odd, I at least partially strove for infamy. Any attention gratifies the ego after all, not just postitive attention. Then there was the absurdity of it all. Here I was, in the Pandemic, having multiple degrees, looking for jobs, getting a job, going to work, paying taxes, and theater kids in high school were probably drawing devil horns on my pfp and throwing knives at it. All because I said everything I said about [censored], or "speculated" that Technoblade was gay because he had drama kid energy, or called Tommy annoying that one time in 2020, or babied [censored] too much. There's really no end to the list of nonsense I was spewing.

And I'd argue that I'm not infamous. Gayminecraftmen had to tell me about your blog and your interviews. I'm doing this because my friends think it would be funny. And the Drama of Georgesoot emerging from the senior living center to tell all is the kind of stupid humor I like. But aside from this, I haven't thought about Minecraft in a while. I have to be spoonfed lore about these annoying content creators who don't even make content anymore. Anything I learn about the "community" now is against my will.

At the time, maybe I was infamous, but now? I don't care. To even dignify my "infamy" would be to admit that Minecraft Youtube is even relevant anymore. How pathetic! I just filed my taxes and got an oil change last week. Me and the homies are having Dune watch parties and writing elaborate screenplays for Timothee Chalamet to star in in our heads (shout out to Ciara). To reminisce on my Tumblr infamy for a community of mostly teenagers about Content Creators who made content for said teenagers and later preyed on those teenagers… is so opposite from the adult problems and adult interest I have. Not to be condescending but that's just how it is!

Q: What are some common creator criticisms that you remember from 2020-2021? Do you still stand by them?

A: The common criticisms have held up in my opinion. [censored] and [censored] were queerbaiting. [censored] was cultivating an audience of loyal vulnerable teenagers and he took advantage. So did [censored]. And [censored] who literally bites people? Oh… okay then.

Dream Lying was right about [censored]'s friend whom he invited into his home and whom he tried to gift a career, only to be outed as an abuser. We were right about [censored] coming from not just a conservative background, but a bigoted one, one that he refused to actually grapple with. We were right about MCC being rigged. We were right about the cheating scandal. We were right about so many things.

The only thing I was definitely wrong about was the [censored] really did hop off the plane at LAX with a dream and a cardigan. I thought he for sure would just put off the [censored] team hype house meetup forever. My psychic powers don't always work I guess. That wasn't a criticism though, just my coping. Oh and I was wrong that Ranboo was an industry plant, but I was right that he's annoying and has no talent. And Dream Lying said from day one that Tubbo and Ranboo's little relationship would not last the summer and we were right! In fact during that whole thing I also speculated that Tommy would start queerbaiting and then he did! I felt like Cassandra at times.

Anyway back to the point. I mean the criticisms of [censored] were just all encompassing, and basically stemmed from the fact that he was like all these video game boys- a white man from a republican household who was not properly media trained because Streaming is not a real industry career and none of them were prepared for fame. And that has borne out over and over again. They all have shady pasts, they all abuse their fame and take advantage of fans. So I do stand by these criticisms.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to speak on or have archived?

A: Not really, I've already said far too much, so apologies to whoever edits these, I hope you enjoy the novel I wrote for you. I don't know, I have dementia, none of this is real. Karlarmy forever. Also who even knows if I'm the real Georgesoot.

#early mcytblr interviews #Volume 10 #georgesoot

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shoukiko · 3 months

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Hi, you can keep this unanswered and not post it, but I want to help you understand the thought behind some of the points in your criticism post. Before I start I want to apologise if I come off as blunt and rude, that's not my intention and I'll try my best to show my tone as unthreatening but I'm autistic and not a native English speaker, which complicates things lol

*general you used throughout the ask

First, I want to start with this: they all are part of the army. You don't need to dig much to see you'll rarely see a "morally upstanding" person in the army, be it because they're cheaters, abusers, compliant with all that or they're (insert -ist/-phobe category here). UK military spouses are 3 times more likely to experience intimate partner violence (IPV). I'm not saying the COD characters need to be written like that, but it wouldn't be "unrealistic" if we take real life statistics into account.

Second, and maybe the most important thing, everyone writes COD characters OOC. The majority of the active fandom on Tumblr and tiktok have seen gifs and 10min out of context clips from the game at best. It's to be expected to not frequently find something actually in character for a lot of the guys. Especially with characters that are just operators like König, Nikto and Krueger. In their case everything is and isn't OOC at the same time because we just... Don't know these characters. We lack characterisation past maybe 1-3 traits about them. I'd argue that's why the fandom liked König so much, other than being masked, he's the perfect paper doll! You can dress him up in whatever characterisation you want and it probably won't contradict his canon (because he barely has one and what he has is quickly misinterpreted (anxiety disorder turning into shyness for example)).

Now specifically on your "How are you going to hc a victim as the abuser?" - simple, whether you like to accept it or not is up to you, but it's not far fetched for victims to become abusers later in life. Just look at serial killers statistics - 74% of US serial killers were psychologically abused and 42% were physically abused as children and later in life followed a similar pattern brought to an extreme. Or on the other hand, a tamer example would be generational trauma because that's how we get that (grandparent was abused and because that's all they know, they implement it in bringing up their child who, for the same reason, implements it in bringing up the grandchild and so on).

The final thing I want to say is, it's good to block people who you don't vibe with. Doesn't matter if it's because they wrote something that personally disturbed you or you simply don't like their blog theme or you see them too often in the tag. Personally curating your experience is key in fandom, utilise the tools Tumblr has given us. Of course as you and others have mentioned that's impossible without some assistance from the other side. Tagging is extremely important (tagging with the correct words without censoring!!! Or the filter won't catch! Rape, noncon, incest ✅; r@pe, n*nc*n, 1nc*st ✖️✖️).

I hope this isn't too messy or long aaaa

I really appreciate you taking the time to type this up and actually speak to me about this, your input is very appreciated. /gen

I do think I could've done better on that post since I wrote it in the heat of the moment, all characters are written OOC and it was ignorant of me to say

"Maybe read the characters backstories and actually take their past into consideration because you guys kinda look dumb for making these characters so OOC."

I hope ya'll can really take the time to see my POV, I did not mean. any harm, I've come across some gross things, but blocking and filtering tags so much as begun to be tiring.

My main issue is tagging, without tagging I am left with getting triggered by random posts because the first few sentences may include something on my trigger list.

That's all I want and also what a lot of other people want.

Writing is meant for anyone and everyone, a form of art and perhaps a for of therapy.

Please tag your work, you are not the only person on the internet.

Thank you for reading!

#call of duty #cod mwii #cod mw2 #cod #simon ghost riley #cod mwiii #konig #kiko asks #shoukiko

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 8 months

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Was I the asshole for confronting a coworker for being transphobic?

I sent this in a while back, when the blog was having issued and being censored by tumblr, so it got eaten before it was posted. I waffles about whether to resend it or not for a while because the issue was somewhat resolved, but I figured why the hell not?

I (23nb) work at a shipping store, I have a coworker I'll call Nathan (23m) and one I'll call Alex (20nb). Alex is our assistant manager, Nathan recently became full-time, and I'm part-time.

Alex's grandmother came into the store to visit them one day while things were slow; Alex, Nathan and the grandmother were in the front and I was packing packages in the back when I overhear Nathan saying "I don't think it should be legal for parents to consent to a sex change for their fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—even at eighteen you don't really know who you are or what you want." I don't hear much more than that, but being a trans person who had previously thought well of Nathan, and knowing he was talking to an older woman (albeit, one who had a nonbinary grandchild), my hackles were raised to hear him blatantly making ill-informed and transphobic comments.

After Alex's grandmother left, while there were no customers in the store, I confronted him. I'll admit I was hardly professional, but I was more scared than angry, and I tried telling him to be more informed before speaking on trans matters because he was spreading misinformation, but the conversation got sidetracked to trans rights in general and how he thought "no one would be trans if they didn't talk about it in school" and then went on to day "racism wouldn't exist if it wasn't talked about in school." I gave up on trying to correct him when he told me that he, as a cisgender heterosexual white man, was in the same amount of danger walking down the street as a black trans woman, because I realized in his privilege he was incapable of imagining that anyone had any different life from him. During the whole talk he was cool and collected, whereas I was very intense, though consciously keeping my voice low and tyring not to get angry despite it being an angering subject.

We went about our store-closing duties and Nathan left, leaving Alex and I in the store alone to finish up our last tasks. Alex had been silent the entire conversation, despite also being nonbinary, and they were the assistant manager, so I asked them if I was out of line and they shrugged non-commitally and refused to look at me.

(This was where the previous submission ended, but there's been an update since then.)

After that, there were several incidents completely unrelated to this conversation that resulted in Alex, another coworker, and I all having private conversations with our manager about complaints against us. One of the complaints about me was that I was uncomfortable to talk to about politics, so I clarified and told the manager the entire truth of what happened between me and Nathan and admitted that I may have been out of line professionally. He said I was, but also said Nathan had been nearly fired in the past for saying awful shit, and that if I wanted to I could make a report about him, because he'd been just given full-time and my manager didn't want him having that if he didn't deserve it. When I told him I hadn't heard the full conversation with Alex's grandmother, he rescinded the report offer and told me to next time not engage Nathan, just report him.

I know professionally I shouldn't have done any of that, but I was trying really hard not to be an asshole on just a human decency level while confronting Nathan, and Alex's reaction made me rethink whether or not I was. WITAH?

TL;DR: A coworker was being transphobic, so I lit into him at work while the store was empty. I tried not to be an asshole, but my nonbinary assistant manager acted as though I may have been out if line. I later learned the transphobic coworker is somewhat on thin ice with management anyway. WITAH?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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chaosbeetlefrontiers · 1 month

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We need to talk about ghosttothefuture

cw/tw: stalking, racism, abuse

In the past I’ve talked about situations where I saw myself as a victim and blamed the people who rejected me because of my own behavior. In the present we’re doing something different.

This is a user named Ghost to the Future. Throughout the post I will be referring to him as Alex.

Since August of 2023, Alex and I have been friends as we shared a lot of Intergang ideas and later I would eventually help him overcome his insecurities and irl issues… or so I thought. Since Valentine’s Day, I stuck by him and tried to help him on a journey of improvement as he confessed to me that he was jealous of me talking to people that I’ve known for 2 years now because he wanted me all to himself when he needed to vent. I’ve tried multiple things such as exercises where he couldn’t DM me, cracked down on limiting the venting and most of all, trying to get him a therapist. I even talked to my own therapist and school about how I can get him the help he needed. It wasn’t just “get him a therapist so he could stop venting to someone who wasn’t qualified to handle it,” he actively hurt and pushed away my friends when they tried to help him themselves. For the sake of their privacy I will be censoring the names of my friends.

But eventually he told me that he’d get a therapist and during those weeks he told me about talking to him and even shared me advice that the therapist gave him and I thought we were on the right track. Then on March 26th, 2024, he confessed that he lied about it.

He admitted to lying about it and told everyone that he was toxic and manipulative. Minutes after this I blocked him and told him that someday we’d be able to talk again. Hopefully we could move on.

Then the day after he started spamming my email after I refunded him for a commission I never got to. He told me that he was getting help but he also asked me to unblock him and told me that I was the only person he hurt. We’ll be getting back to that in a bit. Make of these what you will.

To add insult to injury, he started stalking my Tumblr yesterday when he commented on one of my posts after I blocked him on Discord.

We’ll get back to the stalker part at the end because it is truly fucked but for now let’s tear into how he’s hurt my friends! Not all of this will be complimented by screenshots but I’ve talked with people and can confirm that all of this has happened, if you want evidence of it I’ll see what I can do.

He has constantly pushed my friends away after they have tried helping him out.

He has lied about watching certain media multiple times, my friends managed to prove this has he lied about watching a show that didn’t even air yet. Most of the time he fails to elaborate on why he loves a piece of art if he hasn’t experienced it or he’ll just sheep other people.

Back in December he complained to me about two of my friends making fun of him only to find out that they were just joking with each other and Alex made a big deal out of nothing.

After trying to set boundaries Alex kept on using the excuse that “we’re equals.”

He harassed one of my friends in DMs for having a Hazbin Hotel pfp at the time.

He makes fun of other people and their interests yet infamously can’t take any jokes towards him at all.

He tried instigating hate in me against my friends when they watched MAWS and didn’t like it.

Has urged and pushed people to do sexual RPs in the past even when they were uncomfortable.

He said the N word in my friend group, he is white btw. And when one of my friends talked to him about this Alex only constantly apologized and made excuses for why he said it. I have the screenshot of this, I won’t be sharing it in this post so I won’t violate any policies.

He’s made racist and misogynistic remarks towards people in his friend groups.

Has sexualized people who are younger than him.

This is only scratching the surface of what he’s done to people online as apparently he has a history of changing his username after being rejected from fandoms, one of which included the Owl House and he used it as a crutch to excuse a lot of his behavior. Online, he’s dangerous and a chameleon but learning about his irl activity he’s even worse. I won’t go too in depth there but needless to say he insults his friends, is violent towards other kids in his school and has caused a lot of toxic relationships.

And ultimately we get to why I decided to make this post. I told Alex’s friend (who is one of the nicest people I’ve met btw) that if Alex contacted me again then I would call him out. And since yesterday, Alex has not contacted me again… but he tried to. How? By using his friend’s email to message me. The attempt failed but I was alerted of this and furious. Originally I said that I think Alex can improve but he’ll have to do it without me. Now he’s killed his chances. Everything I covered here only scratches the surface of what he’s pulled but in short: cut contact with him for your own safety. If he tries joining more fandoms under this name or a new name, use this post for reference and stop him before he can do more damage. Right now, Alex is a toxic and manipulative person and shouldn’t be in a lot of these public spaces especially when he’s admitted that he is DANGEROUS. Currently his main fandom is My Adventures with Superman so I will be tagging that to get the word out. Please reblog as much as you can to get the word out and let people know about this individual before he gets to them as well. If you’re reading this Alex, you’ve hurt me and too many people for me to just let this slide and if you try contacting me and my friends again, hope you enjoy whatever stupid prizes you get in the future.

Until next time, I wish you guys luck. Stay safe, people.

#call out post #call out tw #tw stalking #tw racsim #tw abuse #my adventures with superman #If anyone is curious for more information feel free to DM me #My DMs on Tumblr and Discord are open and I’ll try to answer anything I can #But for now please leave me be #I’ve been going through a lot rn #maws

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waitmyturtles · 1 year

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Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: Together With Me/MaxTul Ship Edition

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. I’ve covered Love Sick, SOTUS, and Make It Right so far, and today I offer my thoughts on Together With Me and the MaxTul ship. Thanks to @manogirl for your encouragement to add this to my watchlist!]

Okay! Together With Me. Well -- well, well, WELL.

First off: I’m VERY glad I added this drama to my list, and I want to give big ups again to @manogirl for being the loudest supporter of my adding this to the OGMMTVC and learning about the first high heat ship in Thai BLs. Secondly, I have to admit a mistake. I put Together With Me in-between the first and second seasons of Make It Right on my watchlist (pasted below), but I got the airing dates mixed up -- MIR2 aired before TwM, but I watched TwM first. Womp. I’ll fix my list below. (Thanks to @bengiyo for filling me in on important details about MIR2 so that I can make accurate comparisons in this piece!)

Even though I haven’t watched all of MIR2 yet, I can project from the early episodes what happens -- more heat, more chaos, more teenage angst. (MY DEAR CONFUSED FUSE. MY DEAR HEATY FRAMEBOOK.)

Nevertheless, TwM still provided some fabulous comparative material for me to understand where BL had gone from the time of 2014/2015 Love Sick to the 2017 moment of TwM’s airing.

2016 was a big year in Thailand, I now realize. SOTUS premieres as the first BL-BL -- the first show that was a BL, that focused solely on a main queer coupling. Then Make It Right airs, and it’s pulpy, wild, open, longing, full of implied teenage sex and direct communication about the befores, the durings, and the afters. Make It Right, as the dear @bengiyo stated, depicted a world in which teenage boys are able to explore queerness without being punished for it.

Then we get in 2017, and the second season of MIR2, which has more implied heat than the first season. AND THEN, THEN: we get Together With Me. And just, WOW -- did this show ever benefit from the road that Love Sick, SOTUS, and Make It Right/MIR2 paved.

Why?

One thing I wonder is: could we have EVER gotten two JACKED jocks like Max and Tul in a BL ship if LS/SOTUS/MIR/MIR2 had NOT aired before TwM?

I would actually love to entertain that as a question to the family that reads these posts. Because my own thinking is: no. I’m thinking that Captain and White walked so that Max and Tul could do it on camera run. They warmed up the censors to maybe relax a little. I would argue that the previous BLs and BL-inspired material gave MaxTul the safety, as two clearly masculine-presenting men -- stereotypically jacked, jocky, college-aged, huge, masculine, male-men -- to be the first big heat ship, as @manogirl stated, in Thai BL.

I think audiences were likely primed and ready, if they were following SOTUS (with no heat) and MIR/MIR2 (with high school-teenage heat), to GET some HEATY detail from some VERY BEAUTIFUL, SLIGHTLY OLDER MEN -- men who were also about to have some very moving queer revelations happen between them.

In other words -- the audiences had been titillated enough. As @bengiyo has reminded me: yaoi manga was tremendously popular in Thailand at this time, and showmakers were taking notice. The audiences were likely ready for ACTION-action. And MaxTul were up to the challenge.

(Also for context, I also want to acknowledge a note that @bengiyo sent to me about what Thailand was likely paying attention to across the rest of Asia -- as more BLs were coming out of Japan, Taiwan, and China before censorship. From those perspectives as well -- those different cultural reads on yaoi -- Thailand was likely also inspired. I seriously welcome input from the whole OGMMTVC family -- I’m thinking, besides @bengiyo, @absolutebl, @nieves-de-sugui, @so-much-yet-to-learn, and others might have insight on this -- about what outside cultural factors I’m likely missing from my analyses. I’d love to be filled in by the experts on any cross-cultural context y’all think is helpful from the comparative worldview of what was happening at this moment in time.)

So we get to MaxTul, KornKnock, that first scene of episode 1 that had me going WHOA -- I mean, I don’t know what I’ve missed in the intervening years, but even today, we don’t have many series just going STRAIGHT to it.

I was impressed.

Now, AFTER THAT? Oy vey, ha.

I wrote in a post right after I finished watching TwM, that I felt like while I had watched a show in a university setting, that for some reason, a lot of the show took me back to high school.

I wouldn’t criticize TwM as necessarily missing something by way of tone. Rather, I would argue that TwM experimented with a kind of tone that at least I haven’t experienced yet in my otherwise chronological watching of early Thai BLs. Namely -- TwM approached its material with a kind of...flippant tone, if that makes sense.

The script was larded with sexism and sometimes crude insinuations about queerness. The show went into VERY questionable territory with two ethical boundaries of doctor-patient relations and teacher-student relations. (I admittedly could not help but think of the recent debates around the Wat-Sani ship in the recent Our Skyy 2 x The Eclipse episodes -- but I think the Kavi x Phu ship was on a different, much more problematic level, as there was active engagement by a teacher to ultimately not separate herself from a student.) (And that didn’t even come close to approaching the problematic nature of the Dr. Bright x Farm ship.)

Really quickly about the sexism, before I get back to the boys. It was really interesting to me when it was used, and when it was NOT used. Plern is, in the words of @lurkingshan, the ultimate faen fatale. Bitchy, conniving, smart-but-not -- a true villain. Aim of Love Sick couldn’t even try to compete. Prae was a ditz, and Miki was vengeful, but Plern thought she was smart, had it all, and deserved everything she wanted without trying.

But Yihwa presented with LOYALTY, intelligence, insight, and grace. And Faii presented with a chill demeanor and analytical skills, and surprisingly -- even while she was ASSUMED to NOT be athletic -- was shown playing soccer/football BETTER than the boys, which I think was VERY NICE to see in a 2017 drama. (That pushed a neat kind of boundary for me.)

Yihwa and Faii in particular defy the paradigm of setting up female characters against stereotypes of male success. What made them possibly the strongest female characters I’ve seen in a BL is that they used the characteristics of their enemies to get back at their enemies. That was smart. They broke through a lot of what could have really sunk this show, and lifted the show intelligently.

So what COULD have sunk this show? List time:

1) The Dr. Bright x Farm ship. I was honestly so grossed out by this that I don’t even want to spend time writing on it. And I am HELL-FUCKING glad that I am NOT going NEAR the second season, because I understand that there’s a redemption arc for Bright. I’m very disappointed by this storyline, as I think it saddles an out gay man with stereotypes about sexual preferences that can be done safely (like group activity), and instead presented those preferences as predatory. And then Farm goes from played-to-player. In my opinion, when the Tumblr fam warned me about this show being toxic -- this ship was toxic factor #1 by far.

2) Knock and his cluelessness. Holding on an actual MaxTul analysis for the moment -- Korn and Knock were interesting characters for me to see interacting with each other. I mean, Korn’s admission to Knock, I would argue, actually came (HA HA) a little fast (HA HA) for Knock to process. No, but seriously. A passionate hook-up, Knock’s VERY adamant reaction towards Korn afterwards, and then Knock’s warbling back-and-forth between Plern and Korn. Knock had everything happening to him and at him -- gay-for-you, lingering girlfriend, the inching back to his same-sex lover -- and I’d argue that Knock was just a little...let’s say....diluted and bro-y about it all. I could have seen a little more emotional passion. I could have seen a little more real and introspective struggle (save for the internet posts). I did like that conversation Knock had with Bright about “gay for you” -- where Bright, as an out gay man, kind of corrected Knock to say, yes, it’s a little gay, what you’re feeling -- but that’s okay, it’s normal, and I’m here for you.

3) Jocks in love. But Knock’s behavior, and to an extent, Korn’s behavior as well, was, well -- jocky. Knock, I think, was very much like -- “why is this all happening to MEEEEE, my broooosss, crying on my beddddd??” To me, at least, what reminded me about high school with this show WAS this jockish approach to romance. The show presented Knock posting on the internet, for instance -- but not spending time thinking exactly about what those posts and answers meant.

For comparison, Bright and Farm, as the other same-sex ship in the show, were presented in a predatory match-up. We didn’t have femme-presenting characters (like Christina in MIR) or other trope-y or stereotypical elements of queer behavior that we had seen in dramas past.

I think the jocks-in-love approach to this show, which came naturally by way of how Max and Tul LOOK and CARRY THEMSELVES -- was risky. Knock was kind of the perfect nickname for that character. He wasn’t a dude that was very able to read between any lines. His true revelation about Plern came when idiot Plern spilled her beans to other people, that dumbass. And I think a lot of the way Knock accused Korn of Korn’s own feelings, and Korn’s behavior in “taking advantage” of Knock, came out of jockish cluelessness. When Korn said, “I love you, dipshit!”, “dipshit” was ABSOLUTELY the right word to use to the continually clueless Knock.

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID. (Leaving Bright and Farm aside forever, let us never speak their names again.)

I think Max and Tul themselves were a revelation. Were they AS SKILLED ACTORS as Singto in SOTUS, or Ohm and Toey in Make It Right? Oh god, no. Were they AS BAD as Krist? No, no, no one comes close. And were they AS INEXPERIENCED as Captain and White when those two first debuted? Also, no.

Max and Tul, I think, seized a different damn moment. I’m actually not sure I’d say there was electric chemistry between them. I think they both acted WELL, but there wasn’t EMOTIONAL sizzle, at least the kind I look for. They were certainly bros and homies -- but longing gazes à la Tee and Fuse, they did not have.

What they DID do, with their PHYSICALITY, was break boundaries by way of what we could SEE, without needing to read between lines or analyze shit. We just SAW THEM DO IT, tear off shirts and make out and bounce around and show off their muscular anatomy, and I think THAT was actually groundbreaking. I think IN THAT -- the boys knew EXACTLY what they were doing, they KNEW they could do it well, and they DID do it well -- and I didn’t see an iota of hesitation from either of them. And I thought that was really impressive. And I think these guys knew -- by DOING THAT SO WELL -- that they were breaking important ground in the world of television BL. The viewers -- those viewers who, like Knock, don’t like or WANT to read between lines -- THEY GOT what Max and Tul were serving.

What I also find impressive is that these guys IRL are serious allies. Their social media profiles, for the both of them, are gilded with allyship. That’s huge to me. (Tul at NYC Pride, come awn.) They’re owning their ownership of a slice of representation -- again, as jocky dudes in real life who engage fearlessly in queer material. (I now can’t wait for The Outing.)

Honestly? Yes, TwM was at times either painfully and/or hilariously toxic. I think the Bright x Farm ship is violent and harmful, and I truly wish it didn’t exist.

But I’m glad I watched TwM because -- well, fuck it, I’m an old mom, and I like to see jacked, shirtless dudes sometimes.

BUT ALSO: I think the makers of TwM knew that there were VIEWERS who WANTED TO JUST SEE QUEER MEN BE QUEER MEN WITH MEN, and you know what? I think the show’s creators said to themselves -- well, hot damn, maybe we have something here. And now’s (in 2017) the time for it. Sometimes I don’t want to read between the lines, too -- sometimes, I want a show that I can watch with a damn martini in a Solo cup and just be like, ooooh, man tiddies!

And the show creators found Max and Tul for Bad Romance, and realized, yes -- let’s spin this off, because there’s an audience out there who wants this. And I think that was accurate then, and now. Award-winning actors, Max and Tul are not. But they are VERY important to my historical understanding for how queer representation was progressing in BLs at the time of TwM -- in a vastly different fashion than Love Sick, SOTUS, and MIR had set up in their own worlds and their own paradigms.

I think TwM created a paradigm of its own -- one that I think has helped BL to grow at least in quantity, maybe not in quality, but at least paved a road that allowed creators to think and to say, well -- if we lead with the sex, we can still make a show. I see the OG BL fans on Tumblr marveling often at the sheer volume of BLs we have now. I want to think that that happened in part for what TwM created -- the permission, the openness, and the standard to do just that. And for the fans that want that content? We live in a world now where we have our fair share of shows to choose from. I think TwM created a paradigm that we didn’t know we needed in 2017. And I don’t regret -- even if it’s not my preferred style of drama -- having the option to watch a cheesy, jocky show every so often. Instead, I feel lucky that in 2023, I can have my choice.

[Alright! It was so much fun late-night liveblogging TwM and hopping on the Yihwa bandwagon, and I’m getting back into doing it for Make It Right 2. Thanks to everyone who answered my questions about TwM along the way: @manogirl, @nieves-de-sugui, @absolutebl, @crowie, @clairificusrex, @respectthepetty, @bengiyo, @shortpplfedup, @kyr-kun-chan, @telomeke, @miscellar (I will always be looking for the BBS connections, friends telomeke and miscellar, haha), @lurkingshan, and apologies if I’m missing anyone else -- thank you, family!

Watchlist update below, which is corrected for chronology for Make It Right 2. And...unbelievably...I’m adding something else to this list. I’m gonna add SOTUS S. I vowed I wouldn’t because of Krist, but. Since I am NOT, EVER, going to watch the continuation of TwM, I want to watch the continuation of another early series, besides Make It Right 2/FrameBook, to see the maturing of a relationship, as I’ve been involved in excellent convos with @bengiyo and friends about how length-and-depth-in-committed-relationships is NOT the most popular of BL themes -- but it’s a theme that literally brought me to Asian BLs via Kinou Nani Tabeta so many years ago. (I’ve read a lot that SOTUS S is better than SOTUS anyway, and it has my beloved Nammon in it.) I’m wondering if seeing a relationship developing and maturing is an important movement for Thai BLs at the end of 2017 into 2018, maybe a theme that hadn’t been explored YET, before TwM’s continuation, and one that might feed into the shows of 2018 and beyond. And I’m wondering if it’s important, as MaxTul was, for seeing the KristSingto ship move forward -- especially as I get prepared to FINALLY get to He’s Coming To Me, and getting to understand the impact of what Aof, Singto, and Ohm Pawat did to split the KristSingto ship. As always, I welcome any feedback!

1) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 2) SOTUS (2016) (review here) 3) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 4) Make It Right 2 (2017) (watching) 5) Together With Me (2017) 6) SOTUS S (2017-2018) 7) Love By Chance (2018) 8) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) 9) He’s Coming To Me (2019) 10) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) 11) TharnType (2019) 12) Theory of Love (2019) 13) Dew the Movie (2019) (not an official part of the OGMMTVC watchlist, but I want to watch this in chronological order with everything else) 14) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) 15) 2gether (2020) 16) Still 2gether (2020) 17) I Told Sunset About You (2020) 18) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 19) I Promised You the Moon (2021) 20) Not Me (2021-2022) 21) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 22) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 23) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 24) My School President (2022-2023) 25) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here)

#together with me #together with me meta #maxtul #korn x knock #knock x korn #kornknock #turtles catches up with the essential bls #turtles catches up with thai bls #turtles catches up with old gmmtv #the old gmmtv challenge #ogmmtvc #max nattapol #tul pakorn

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notemily · 1 year

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actual guide for new tumblr users, from Twitter or otherwise

yeah so I decided to do one of these. I'm just someone who has been here since 2007 and wants to help people who are new to the site and have no idea what's happening. Twitter seems to be in its death throes as I write this, and while the posts about driving down the property values are funny, I'd like to actually try and help out.

many people have made posts that are like "get an icon and post something or else people will think you're a bot" so I'll just assume you've seen one of those already. I want to focus more on the things you need to know to acclimate to tumblr culture. so:

general tips:

like things if you want to like things. people will tell you liking doesn't do anything, that only reblogs do stuff, but that's not quite true. only reblogs will get the people who follow you to see it on their dashboard (circulating the post further through the tumblr ecosystem), but likes will let the OP know you liked it, let the person who reblogged it onto your dash know you liked it, and probably do something complicated involving the "based on your likes" algorithm but I really don't know how that works. also, the like will stick around, so if you see the post reblogged from someone else much later, your little heart will still be highlighted in red.

you can control a lot about what you see on your dashboard from the settings page! on desktop, go into settings - account and settings - dashboard to change things. most people turn off "best stuff first" and just use the chronological feed, but you do you, new user. I personally hate endless scroll, so I turned that off, but I love timestamps, so I turned those on. for bonus fun, go into settings - labs and there are extra tabs you can add to your dash.

but what about turning off anonymous asks? on desktop, this setting, weirdly, is in the "Edit appearance" page for your blog. you can also turn replies off there, allow only people you follow to message you, and hide your blog from search results. there are a lot of random settings in there, so make sure to take a look. (app results may vary.)

you might notice that one of the settings is for filtered tags and filtered post content. this is why it's important not to censor things here that might be triggering for some folks - because someone out there has "rape" filtered, and if you go around saying "r*pe," that's not going to be caught in their filter. also, at this time there are no word police who will come after you for saying "kill" or "die," so you don't need to use euphemisms like "unalive" on tumblr. you can also swear as much as you want.

blaze: tumblr blaze is a relatively new feature where you can pay actual money to have your post forced onto random people's dashboards. beware, if you use this for something people don't want to see, you will get mocked. if you use it to show everyone your cat, you're probably fine.

there are two basic uses for #tags: organizational (putting your post into a category, like tagging it with the name of the fandom it's relevant to) and editorial (adding extra commentary that you don't want to add in the post itself). a lot of people will use both, a lot of people will use neither. when people like your editorial tags enough, they'll copy or screenshot them and add them to the body of the post. this is known as "passing peer review" and is a compliment.

memes and inside jokes You Should Know:

do you love the colour of the sky? is an extremely long image post (showing all the colors a sky could possibly be) that takes a long time to scroll past, and back in the olden days (2012) it was ubiquitous on tumblr. these days you can shorten long posts automatically using your dashboard settings (see above), or use the "j" keyboard shortcut to go directly to the next post if you're on desktop, but we still remember it fondly and refer to it constantly because nothing dies here, especially not memes.

the color theory children's hospital post is another one of those things you'll see a million references to if you're on here for any length of time.

you cannot kill me in a way that matters is a post that you might have seen in screenshots elsewhere online, but it started here! other memes that originated on tumblr: spiders georg, me an intellectual, graphic design is my passion, etc.

blorbo from my shows is a phrase used to refer to your latest favorite character. it started as a joke, but tumblr has a way of taking jokes and making them a thing, so now it's a thing. see also poor little meow meow.

tumblr holidays: anything people on tumblr can make into a holiday or anniversary, we will. most of them you'll see as they happen, and they're often self-explanatory, but you should probably read up on November 5 2020 if you don't know about it already.

horse plinko: tumblr loves this one for some reason.

I like your shoelaces / thanks, I stole them from the president: this was supposedly the "secret code" to identify a tumblr user in real life. (you can buy shoelaces directly from tumblr now, but that's a recent development.)

then perish: speaking of the president, if you see Obama's eyes with a very orange tint, this is the meme it's referencing.

ball-shaving ads: ads from the personal grooming company Manscaped were/are(?) ubiquitous on tumblr, to the point that some have theorized that tumblr was deliberately saturating people's dash with the ads so that they'd be more likely to pay for ad-free browsing. and one of the ads for ad-free reads "shave off ads from your dashboard," so like, they might be onto something.

world heritage posts: there are various tumblrs that compile the best of tumblr, anything that's particularly iconic or has become a meme. there are even heritage post blogs for specific fandoms.

tumblr history:

there are three basic eras of tumblr history:

classic tumblr era 2007-2013: David Karp started tumblr in 2007, and it grew in popularity and weirdness for many years. porn was allowed: the original tumblr adult content policy read "sure, go nuts, show nuts, whatever."

Yahoo/Verizon era 2013-2019: Yahoo famously bought tumblr in 2013 for $1 billion. ads started showing up on tumblr in 2012, so this is also around when tumblr started to monetize. Yahoo was eventually bought by Verizon, and in December 2018, they announced they were banning porn, which sucked. everyone predicted the death of tumblr, but it limped on, with about a 30% decrease in traffic. (source for that statistic)

Automattic era 2019-present: in 2019, Automattic bought tumblr from Yahoo for like $3 million or something. Automattic owns WordPress, and they seem to understand tumblr's userbase better than the Yahoo folks did. they've recently instituted a more nuanced adult content policy, but because of Apple's strict policy for what gets included in the App Store, credit card processors refusing to process payments for porn, and other restrictions, tumblr can't go back to being the porn-allowed free-for-all it once was. see this post for a full explanation of why.

various April Fool's jokes have included Coppy (2015), Mishapocalypse (2013), and most recently, the button that makes crabs. expect April 1st to be extra chaotic on tumblr.

Tumbeasts - the tumblr version of the Twitter Fail Whale, designed by Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal. not sure if they're extinct now, or if the site just doesn't go down like it used to.

Dashcon - tumblr tried to have a convention once. it didn't go well. the photo with the sad ball pit is used as shorthand to reference the disaster that was Dashcon.

SuperWhoLock is a name for the fandom crossover between Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock, which were all juggernauts on tumblr at one time. the fandom supposedly "died off" after 2014, but see above re: nothing dies here.

female presenting nipples - when tumblr introduced the Porn Ban in 2018, they used this phrase in the community guidelines. they've since updated their nudity policy, but the phrase will live forever, because come on, tumblr is a website full of queer and/or trans folks. if you think you're getting away with a weasel phrase like "female presenting nipples" without being mocked all over the website, you're extremely wrong.

John Green: an author who used to be on tumblr, back when you could edit someone else's tumblr post when you reblogged it. his text posts were regularly edited to make it look like he had said things he didn't. someone edited one of his posts to be about how much he loves a certain sex act, which was probably not THE reason they removed the ability to edit others' posts, but like, it didn't help. John Green was eventually harassed so much he left tumblr. opinions are divided on whether this was hilarious or sad. (something I discovered while researching for this post: the author of the Your Fave Is Problematic tumblr [which was part of the wave of anti-John Green content] wrote a confessional New York Times article in 2021. pull quote: "I just wanted to see someone face consequences; no one who'd hurt me ever had.")

XKit: used to be THE browser extension for tumblr. it was made by "the xkit guy," who seems to have been harassed off the site in 2015. the extension was replaced by New XKit, which worked for a while. these days a lot of XKit's features have been either rendered obsolete by tumblr adding them to its settings, or broken by tumblr interface updates, and the new hotness is XKit Rewritten. want to block a specific post from ever appearing on your dash, see who your mutuals are, stop seeing notifications on one specific post (great feature for if you accidentally go viral)? install it and play around with the settings. there are accessibility features too!

...and now I've made it look like people regularly get harassed off tumblr. WELCOME, NEW USER, TO THE HELLSITE! but for real, part of why I put this post together was so if someone starts in on tumblr Discourse and mentions people who have been harassed off the site, you can nod wisely and go "ah, yes, I have heard tell of this." just to give you some kind of context for things.

anyway, I'm always happy to Explain The Joke, provided it's a joke that I get, so if you see something that looks like a tumblr in-joke and want context, my ask box is open. just don't ask me about Homestuck. I know nothing about Homestuck and at this point I'm not sure I want to.

in conclusion, new user: go forth, be weird, become a part of the culture. I hope this guide has helped!

#anyone who tells me queer is a slur will be blocked #welcome to tumblr #the weird site for weirdos #twitter migration #twitter refugees #twitter exodus #how to tumblr #long post #tumblr history #i feel like i haven't seen a manscaped ad in a while #but they were everywhere less than a year ago #my posts

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broflovski-brah · 1 month

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stop using kyle as leeway to talk politics. i know ive talked about this before but shit on this site just gets worse and worse. stop using him as a gateway for your political beliefs on the israel/palestine conflict. it doesn’t prove your point. targeting a fictional jewish 9 year old isn’t gonna make the war end so you might as well stop hurting actual people with your bigotry and go to twitter or something if you want to debate politics.

your posts and fanart using kyle as a mask for your opinions isn’t going to get the israeli government to be like “oh y’know what we should do? we should stop because this person on fucking tumblr says so’ like it’s not helping anybody. it’s hurting actual jewish people from what i can tell. send me all the anon hate you want. i don’t care. i can take it. but i’m sick of seeing this shit.

another thing i have a problem with is the fact that this fandom so desperately claims not to want tratt to make an episode based around this conflict, but i know that if they were to make an episode and didn’t portray israelis in the worst light imaginable this fandom will go ballistic because ‘it’s offensive to the palestinians’.

i’ll say this once and i’ll say it again. i absolutely do not under any circumstances support what israel is doing. i think that what is going on there is absolutely disgusting and words cannot comprehend how vile this situation is. however, you also can’t just look at what you want to look at. there is a lot of history between the two, stuff i am not yet qualified to talk about because i don’t feel like i know enough about it to say what i want to say. you also cannot just overlook october 7th. you cannot ignore what the people in israel went through as well.

with that little disclaimer out of the way, back to the topic at hand. south park has made so many offensive jokes. jokes about the holocaust, about sexual abuse, about political issues outside of this. and yet nobody cared. but i can absolutely tell that yall will go absolutely ballistic if tratt were to make an episode that didn’t show the israelis in the worst light they can. so why only care now? why isn’t anyone angry about the past jokes they’ve made? why isn’t anyone upset about that, but the moment anyone in this fandom talks about israel/palestine it’s always ‘censor israel because israel is bad and leave palestine because palestine is good’. like if we’re going by that logic why does nobody censor russia when they’re talking about it? (from what i can tell) why does nobody censor one side when talking about american politics? why is it just this one single conflict that people are so up in arms about censoring one party and not the other?

i do agree that a south park israel/palestine episode would be in horrible, horrible taste. i’m not saying like ‘oh let tratt make that happen because it would be funny’ no. it wouldn’t be funny. that’s absolutely not the case. however, if you guys are going to rant about why tratt airing a south park episode is bad, why do you turn around and ignore the fact that this fandom is actively making fanart and fanfics so they can talk about their political stances while using kyle as a puppet for said viewings?

i guess what i’m asking si where is the line. because form what i can gather, this fandom thinks it’s okay for people to make the most disgusting fanfics and fanart of kyle, tokenizing him and marginalizing him, but the moment someone mentions tratt making an episode it’s suddenly too far? in what world does that make sense? because i know yall don’t do your research beforehand. you just hear what you want to hear and say what you want to say. but the minute someone counters you with actual evidence you freak out. why is that?

(and again. i’m saying this now so i don’t get anyone thinking i don’t support free palestine. what is happening in palestine is vile and disgusting. it’s awful that this is happening, and i have been doing what i can to help out in the means of fundraisers and raising money. i don’t support what israel is currently doing. but i also don’t support october 7th, and i don’t condone the people who claim that people outside of the israeli government have anything to do with what israel is choosing to do just because they’re from israel or they are jewish. i am very anti genocide on both sides, obviously. and i do support free palestine whole heartedly. this post is simply made for the fandom because i’m so sick of seeing people get driven out of the fandom because of the way the fandom treats people like them. this goes for any fandom. not just south park, even though this is basically me ranting about that specific fandom.)

#south park #skipper speaks #kyle broflovski #israel #palestine #politics #(feel free to block the politics tag if it bothers you/you don’t want to look at stuff like this)#i feel like i should put a tw but i don’t know what it would be for

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callmearcturus · 1 year

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I'm honestly very grateful to this bluesite for just demolishing my flinch reactions to cunt and faggot.

/points up. That may be the first time I've ever written those words without self-censoring them. And heads up, those words are going to come up a lot in the following paragraphs.

I remember the first time I reconsidered the term faggot actually. I was still following Cecil Baldwin (of Welcome to Night Vale) on Twitter (yanno, back when twitter was a thing) and he was on a flight or something and posted that he was reading a book called Faggot Wisdom and shared some excerpts.

And my immediate mental reaction, which thankfully did not leave my brain, was "I wish you wouldn't use that term."

And that stopped me dead in my fucking tracks because wow, what the actual fuck, self? Cecil Baldwin is a faggot, that is the term he has casually used in the past, and its something that he identifies with. He's an HIV-positive gay man who has likely been through shit I cannot imagine as someone who exists in that nebulous space of having enough fame to have a following and notoriety but not enough to, like, afford the insulation that celebrities have.

That was like the literally day and moment I decided I needed to break my flinch reaction to faggot. Because the people I care about are faggots, and to some (okay, many), I am a faggot. And the one thing I know from the bottom of my fucking heart is that whoever is being called a faggot is my ally and I will defend them.

/points up. All of that was still difficult to type and I'm resisting the urge to redact some of it, but I am also a conscious human who has control of my actions, so I will not. But the important thing is that I'm not flinching anymore. I currently lack the power and confidence to use faggot casually, but maybe I will get there one day. I will not, however, shy from it anymore.

The same goes for cunt. (Context, I am an American from the South/Midwest.) I grew up with the understanding that I would never ever in my life even think of uttering the word cunt to another human being, that is was The Big Misogynist Slur as it reduces women down to their use for sex and reproduction. And I nodded along to that for a very long time, it made sense.

But these days, I have... essentially no inclination to attach the vagina to women, lmao. Everyone is a work in progress, but I am fairly pleased and at peace with how my brain doesn't really make the boobs/vag = woman connection anymore. Someone's gender is mental and emotional and maybe spiritual, and their body is just the vehicle carrying all of that around, yanno?

So the Hip And New trend of tumblr using cunt in the specific comedic way we now do has been extremely helpful in decoding that flinch reaction to the word. It's a funny word! It can convey so much so quickly! And on this hellsite, it has no gender connotation. Everyone, regardless of their biology or gender identity, can serve cunt, and that's great.

I think I have to work a bit to get to the point of uses these terms myself, but. They are my terms and they don't need to hurt me, and I don't want to give them power to hurt others.

BIG SIGH. Anyway. Just something I was thinking about.

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officialyourdailyinspiration · 5 months

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Remember everybody Facebook is a "SAFE SPACE" for children, right? I've told Facebook's moderators to stop putting this stuff on my wall every day for months now and every day there's more. They claim the reels you see are based on your browsing choices. That's a hoot because I only browse FB to get scripture pictures, funny memes and articles from ministries I follow to share here on Tumblr. I don't even chat with my relations over there anymore (except comments on Jake's posts) So how is any of this related to the Bible or various Christian ministries? This is nothing but harassment of someone FB has censored and suspended again and again over the years for posting Scriptural truths and the truth about the government and its agenda.

Why are reels featuring little girls like this even available there? How is this safe for them? Trust me when I say, these 4 are tame compared to some I've seen just in the past week (let alone over the months reels have been a thing). I tried to share this on FB's own account but they don't allow you to post images in your comments there (Gee, I wonder why?). Look at all the views. Tens of thousands in some cases and nearly all of them middle aged men. Mostly Indian and from Islamic countries. Don't ask what they say to these children in comments. It's nauseating.

Share if you'd like. I'm trying to get these kids off these FB reels and FB isn't listening to me by myself. Maybe if we could get a lot of people demanding it, something might happen. Because Facebook needs to stop promoting these children's reels. It isn't safe. It isn't ethical and it's pure exploitation by Facebook.

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kenziedrawz · 5 months

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Hello to all who may see this post! I, Kenzie, come at you once again with yet another splendid roleplay server. As you may know i have advertised a roleplay server upon my tumblr in the past, but this one is a different one. (as always, the invite link is at the bottom.)

So let me ask you a question, do you like slice of life rp mixed with a bit of adventure, a lot of mystery and just a teeny bit of horror if you consider some certain implications? Then boy do I have the right roleplay for you!

Introducing, Crown's County! A roleplay that's a mix of primarily Slice of Life and Mystery. Your setting is the small little town of Crown's County, but that begs the question, how did you character get there? Did they move there one day? Or had they lived there all their lives? (somehow, neither of those seem just right)

Can you trust your memories? That will all depend on your Awareness Level, or AL for short! AL is a fun little mechanic for this roleplay, and will help you with rolls(like in dnd) and serves as a marker towards your character's progression in solving all of Crown's County's mysteries!

But do you think that's all i have to share? Nope! Because I have a limited time offer for those willing to join! (and stay)

Behold! For the low low price of joining and participating in this roleplay, you too can get a blorboplied drawing of one of your characters! But make sure to do so before January 7th(aest) And if that's not enough incentive to join, we have plenty of lore to uncover!

Though, you are also welcome to simply just spectate if that's what floats your boat.

The possibilities in Crown's County are almost endless! You could make a (sealed for lore purposes) Eldritch Horror work in retail! You could investigate a spooky forest! You can get up to highschool hyjinks! There's tons of possibilities to be discovered!

Of course, we do have rules though.

} You know what I'm gonna say, don't be rude, transphobic, Homophobic, Racist, you get the jist, don't be a jerk.

} Proshipping will not be tolerated here, if you are a proshipper then please get the heck out of this server.

} There's a limit of two to three main characters per person, however you can request to play an NPC character as well

} If your character has powers, I must say that they are sealed. They can use pathetically weak versions of those powers though. (Such as, someone who can fly can just levitate now.) Why? Well, that's a lore reason i can't spill yet

} Yes, there is a chance that your characters can die in this rp. But, who's to say that a new version of them can't come and take their place? But, if your character dies, then don't throw a hissy fit. There's a chance they can come back

} Please be patient with the mods (aka me), we have our own schedules and such

} Don't make yourself a protagonist, or a mary-sue/gary-stu. While I admit being all powerful and being unable to get hurt by like, anything. Nobody really has all that much power here, not even gods.

} If you wish to do any evil plotting or secret actions, then do so in your private channel which will be provided to you by the mods upon you claiming a character or saying that you will be roleplaying.

} Absolutely no ERP or NSFW, there are minors on this server

} Oh yeah, if you want to ship your character with someone else's character within the RP you must ask for their permission to pursue their character

} Non-human characters will have to be humanized but can retain certain non-human aspects, but not too many. (for lore reasons)

} PLEASE remember to censor potentially triggering topics, if you don't know how to censor it's just putting || on both sides of the text you are censoring

} Please abide by the Blacklist.

and those are all the rules! More may be added if seen as necessary.

And finally, you've reached the end of this post, where the server link is! I hope you enjoyed reading, and look forwards to promotional doodles as well! I hope you enjoy your time in Crown's County.

Also have some more examples of the Blorbo-plied style! (mostly ocs)

and a bonus more complex doodle of the aforementioned potential eldritch horror working in retail

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mysticnightmarewrites · 8 months

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the night we met - Ch. 6

When nightmares leave Arya tossing and turning, she finds herself at Gendry's door. His roommates are lovably obnoxious, and Arya finds the comfort she so needed. But so quickly after, Gendry finds himself facing the memory he'd been both waiting for and dreading: the night they met.

Read Ch. 1-5 on Tumblr

SONG: "The Night We Met" by Lord Huron PAIRING: Arya/Gendry LENGTH: 1.6k words WARNINGS: Minors DNI

Nighttime sprung up around me, but it wasn’t that night. Not yet. An owl was hooting from a tree, the sound filtering through my open window, which was letting the springtime breeze into the dorm room. But there was a different sound drifting in from the other side – a dull, repetitive knock breaking the midnight stillness. It was quiet enough not to wake anyone up, except for the three boys on the other side of the door who had, up till then, been fast asleep.

“What’s ‘at?” the scrawny blond boy mumbled, turning over in his bed.

The other boy sat up and threw his pillow at me, and I almost went to duck, but the pillow passed right through me, hitting my old self square on the face.

“What was that for?” I’d grumbled.

“Get the fucking door, you tosser. It’s probably that girl you’re sweet on.”

“Hot Pie, her name’s Arya, I’m not sweet on her, and why on earth would she be showing up here at,” I checked the golden watch Arya had gotten me for Yuletide, “1 a.m.?”

Still, I watched myself get up and crack open the door. The second I saw Arya’s face, I knew something was horribly, terribly wrong. Her cheeks were stained with tears, and her hair looked like she had hastily tied it up after hours of tossing and turning in bed. Immediately, I stepped through the door and left it cracked behind me.

“What’s the matter?”

It took her a moment to get words out. “You remember how I said I was having nightmares. About the thing.” I could tell she was censoring herself, just in case the other boys in the room could overhear.

I nodded.

“They won’t go away tonight. I wasn’t sure where else to go.”

There had been so many times I’d wanted to hug Arya, and she had hugged me a few of them, but I wasn’t sure it was the right time to, and it took everything in me to hold back.

“I’d let you in, but I’m not sure Hot Pie or Lommy would appreciate that.”

“What the fuck’s a Lommy?”

It hadn’t taken more than a second after she spoke the words that the blond boy was pulling the door open wide. “I’m a Lommy, thank you very much. You must be Arya. Gendry’s had quite a lot to say about you to Hot Pie and I.”

I had looked back at him with panic in my eyes, not wanting him to reveal the depth of my feelings to my best friend. It had been so long since that day that the whole thing almost made me laugh to see it play out again. Those had been some dark times, but they had been simpler too. When it was only the specters of our dead and absent fathers that haunted us, and not the ghosts of lovers past.

“Oh for seven’s sake, just invite her in. There’s leftover pie in the minifridge,” the boy with the curly brown hair called out from his bunk.

“Wouldn’t that be a cold pie?” Arya asked as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

The night passed slowly as the three of us handed around the giant plate of pie and took turns shooting arrows at orcs on Lommy’s fancy gaming laptop. Hot Pie had fallen back asleep minutes after the empty pie dish got abandoned at the foot of his bed, and Lommy had followed suit soon after, leaving me and Arya lying shoulder to shoulder on my small bed.

“I don’t think I can go home for spring break,” she whispered in the darkness. “It was hard enough at Yuletide.”

“Well, I have this classmate, Pod.”

“Pod? Your friends sure have the strangest names.”

“It’s short for Podrick.”

She giggled in spite of herself, and I playfully put a finger to her lips. “Shh, they’re sleeping. Anyway, he’s going to King's Landing. He offered me a ride – I grew up there. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you came with. Sansa’s going to uni there right?” Arya nodded. “Well, what do you say? If I text him in the morning, I think there’ll still be time to work things out.”

“Let’s do it! It’d be nice to see Sansa.”

“We should introduce Pod to her. I’m sure he’d enjoy seeing Sansa too. Just, you know, for different reasons.”

“What about you?” she asked, almost timid.

“Oh, shove off. Gendry only has eyes for you,” Hot Pie grumbled from his bunk.

I had rolled my eyes and almost caught the hint of a smile on her face. “Of course I’d like to see Sansa. She’s my favorite person’s sister.”

“Hey, I thought I was your favorite person,” Lommy said, annoyed.

“That’s it, go to bed everyone,” I said, turning off the small lamp by my bed.

I drifted away that night as swiftly and as sweetly as I remembered, and I found myself drifting away quickly once more, the old gods taking me back through the scenes of our first year in uni as we became inseparable. I watched as Arya and I sat together studying in the library, though with much less kissing this time. An unbearable urge to look at her whenever she was looking down at her book had held me captive every time we tried to study together. There were all the times we went hiking too, just the two of us, along the empty river, contemplating life. One by one the memories drifted past, faster and faster, until the current pulled me to the very beginning of everything. To the making of my joy and the making of my pain.

The grassy hill was green and warm, aglow with summer, even on a northern night. So this was it. The night we met. We'd escaped out the back of the manor and sped off on my motorcycle, out into the rolling hills, stopping when my tank started to get low. Our fingertips played with the grass as we watched the sun slip slowly below the horizon, bathing us in red and gold. And like the sun, I could see the light in Arya's eyes fading.

"Just a week ago, Dad and I were getting ice cream and packing me up for uni. It doesn't feel real."

"I know." Arya could tell I meant it, too, even though I hadn't had it in me yet to tell her about my own loss.

"He was going to drop me off at school next month," she sighed.

"I'm renting a van. I could come pick you up."

"You'd do that for some random girl you just met?"

"I'd do it for you." A small spark returned to her eyes as the stars twinkled above. "Have you ever been to a bar?"

"Me? Gods no. Mom would have my head for that."

"You're 18 though? You're legal."

"'It's not a good look for a politician's daughter. Why can’t you be more like Sansa?'" she said, doing a scarily accurate impression of Catelyn Stark.

"There's a dive bar in the town over. We could stop by on the way to the petrol station?"

Arya rose to her feet and put out a hand to help me up. "Let's do it."

We headed back for the bike, and as I handed her the helmet, she whispered in my ear. "Thank you." That was the first time of many she gave me butterflies.

The words echoed in my head now. I'd heard them before both recently and a lifetime ago. Flashing through the darkness, I saw Arya's smiling face and gray eyes shining with unshed tears. "Thank you," she'd said when ending things. At the time, I had thought she was just thanking me for letting her go easy. But now, recognizing the earnestness in her voice, it took on a different meaning. With a sting of guilt, I realized she had been thanking me for the whole of it. Everything we'd ever been to each other. For loving her, for liking her, for just being there for her. Thanking me for everything all happening in the first place.

My heart felt like it was breaking apart all over again, and my body felt like it was still spread out on the soft summer grass. After all this time, after all the memories I had walked through, it was finally time to let her go. I sighed. It was for the best. For me. For her. She had probably felt as much pain as I had when things had ended. It was something I couldn't see through my own grief. Now, I could spare us both. And I could finally do the one thing I never could when we were together. Set her free.

Once again, I stood in front of the Stark manor. The shadow of my past self directly in front of me.

"Don't go in," I whispered into my ear. "Please don't go in. Please!" I begged. It seemed, for a moment, that my past self could hear me. It took seconds longer for me to ring the doorbell than it had the first time around, but ring the doorbell I did. Almost as if I had confused the hesitation with what I had already been facing the first time around. I had never been anywhere so high class before.

The door opened, and it was the youngest member of the Stark family I met first. Rickon was so small then, just a ball of curly red hair.

He welcomed me in silently, and it wasn’t until later that I learned how out of character that had been for him. It was funny, all the little ways grief changed you.

The house was filled with people, despite a clear sign pointing people to the godswood, which lay beyond a grand door at the end of the hall.

As soon as I opened the door, there she was, and my heart fell into my stomach. It was time.

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