textsfromthepostoffice

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i know this please help me

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I'm losing my fucking mind over this PLEASE watch the whole thing

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#Barbie (2023)

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happy easter from the united states :)

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A lot of people have a super, super skewed idea of what rural towns in America are like.

I grew up on a farm two miles outside a town with less than 200 people. For a short while, there was a queer-owned coffee shop/art gallery on the main highway. It's where I spent the better part of an entire summer, just hanging out with my laptop. The owner would start experimenting with new drink ideas on slow days, and give me free ones in exchange for feedback.

"And he didn't get run out of town?!" Nah, because his mom owned a hair salon and did the hair of all the old ladies in town, and if they were jerks to her son, she would have stopped doing up their hair and they'd have had to drive half an hour into the city to find a new hairdresser.

My hometown isn't some bastion of progressive politics or anything, but like...it's not a two-dimensional caricature, either. I still live in the area. There are queer people. There are a lot of people of color, especially Black elders and Latinx immigrants. There are disabled folks. There's an entire group of found-family queer leftists who bought a farm together. I know of at least two pagan families, and multiple Jewish folks.

If you read "town of 200 people" and immediately assumed that all of them are white, Christian, cis, straight, able-bodied, republican landowners? You're extremely mistaken.

Rural America is more diverse than you think.

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From the Chinese dating game show 非诚勿扰 (Fei Cheng Wu Rao), If You Are The One.

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I’m convinced if ppl on this site knew how crappy gifs look before you color them properly, they would appreciate editors more

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oh hey, someone put that thing i was mad about yesterday into words!

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they need to stop this NFL season now i am not joking or being facetious they need to reevaluate how football is played fundamentally and it should have happened after Tua earlier this season

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in light of people's confusion over cecil's longevity in @sexymanotd i wanted to document a bit of his history for those unfamiliar or nostalgic

welcome to night vale is a podcast written by joseph fink and jeffrey cranor. cecil gerschwin palmer is the main character and voiced by cecil baldwin.

it debuted on june 15, 2012 it reached its peak in popularity in 2013-2014

despite this, wtnv has been one of tumblr's top fandoms since staff started tracking fandom-related data in 2014

for the longest time the only thing we knew about cecil's appearance was: "He is wearing a tie. He is not tall or short. Not thin or fat." and that wasn't until episode 19 which aired march 15, 2013. for almost a full year we had no idea what cecil looked like. so tumblr's collective unconscious kicked into high gear and we did what we do best

we created a tumblr sexyman

from know your meme: "Defining traits of the archetype include skinny body type, trickster or villain role and dapper clothing."

know your meme identifies wheatley (portal 2, 2011) and the onceler (the lorax, 2012) as being likely tumblr's first sexymen. and the onceler fandom was at its peak in 2012-2013, the same time as wtnv. in addition to this, the hannibal fandom has been cited as one of the contributing factors to wtnv's success on tumblr.

so tumblr had created an archetype that worked and the wtnv fandom was made up of mostly hannibal fans - the foundation for putting cecil in a suit was there. and honestly? cecil's at work in the show, why wouldn't he be well dressed?

however, while this explains his attire it doesn't explain some of cecil's more unique sexyman features, namely the tentacles. for this we have to return to the 2014 fandom review analysis where you can see the most popular fandom at the time: homestuck

haven't you ever wondered why almost a quarter (189/923 at time of writing) of E rated wtnv fics on ao3 are tagged tentacles or tentacle sex? why cecil having tentacles for a dick is such a seemingly popular headcanon? well look no further then homestuck cultural hold over.

throughout all of this, the development of the sexyman archetype on tumblr and the rise of homestuck, one creator really stands out: kinomatika

kino was one of the most popular homestuck artists on tumblr at the time, popular for their eridan fanart. if you google image search "welcome to night vale" kino's art is still one of the first results you'll get

their design was so popular in fact it was featured in wtnv related articles from the time

and yes there were absolutely other artists giving cecil tentacles and moving tattoos at the time, but it can't be understated the reach kino had and the influence their homestuck roots had on their design choices

i recommend going through the archive of @nightvaleartclub to see how cecil used to be portrayed back in the early days. unfortunately the earliest fanart i've been able to find is july 2013 and i find it hard to believe it took tumblr a year to draw him. although, i started listening at episode 5 and didn't start drawing him until then myself so who knows...

cecil has had tumblr's heart in a vice grip since episode 1, with "20,000 posts, 183,000 blogs and 680,000 notes using the #Night Vale tag" during its first week. tumblr's love for wtnv has always been fairly genuine, from the impact the writing has had on tumblr humor and future story telling, to how wtnv paved the way for lgbt+ representation in indi media, to how it popularized podcasts as a medium for story telling, to the little comforts some of cecil's quotes still bring people today

cecil is not only a founding father of tumblr culture, but also a blorbo of the people. cecil the character in canon has a tumblr account where he posts his art and slash fanfiction.

although cecil's character has developed over time and we've come to see what a ditzy, eccentric, brat he really is, changing his status from sexyman to babygirl, cecil is absolutely a character you should embrace. and you know what... despite what i've said in the past

#cecilsweep

[ID: Images one and two are Google analytic graphs for the search terms "welcome to night vale" and "wtnv" between June 15, 2015 and January 27, 2023. They both depict very sharp spikes around 2013-2014 until the lines decrease greatly over time.

Image three is a drawing of Cecil from Welcome To Nightvale. He is white, with white hair, glasses, a third eye on his forehead, and he is wearing a suit. In the background is the silhouette of a neighborhood from the WTNV official art, a galaxy, and a moon. It is tinted purple. Image four is the always has been meme. Instead of the earth is the tumblr logo, and the text is: “a wtnv fansite?” “Always has been”. End ID] id thanks to @princess-of-purple-prose

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honestly I know it’s petty of me but I do resent the tendency for people in gay and trans (and otherwise body-positive) contexts to talk like attraction to gender non-conformance or other departures from conventional beauty standards is like, an active socio-political choice instead of genuine personal taste

yes, the taboo is certainly an element of it, but maybe I appreciate the swath of dark curls over the swell of a woman’s belly for purely selfish reasons that have nothing to do with Sticking It To The Man™️

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I love this generation. I hope we all die.

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