Remember how the tagline of series four of Game of Thrones was “The North Remembers” and they left out the only moment that could possibly fit that tagline.
Aro decided that he should let the pair go, he should stop arguing with them. He should have guessed that prohibiting Didyme from leaving would stir her rebellious nature and he should have seen that Marcus was still blinded by her. There was a solution to the fights and misunderstandings and that was letting them go. Because Aro knew they would come crawling back soon enough, disheartened but enlightened as to who they truly are.
Because Aro knows everyone pretends and everyone lies and cannot quite escape their nature. He keeps telling himself that he isn’t desperate and hopeless but he knows it isn’t true. Vampires don’t change and he will forever be doomed to carelessness caused by his heart’s frantic search. And so, Marcus will forever be doomed to a leading role, that he supposedly despises so. As if he would ever be sated by anything else. He began his quest of building an empire on a petty, little whim, as if he could destroy the idea of royalty by creating his own. An ambitious, idealist nineteen year old who wants to rule and thinks he can do better than everyone who came before him. Aro had seen through the flimsy lie that very first day they met. And he has been proven correct ever since. Marcus seeked out a Roman general after all, someone who knew how to enforce rules, how to keep people in order, someone who valued laws. Making guards, taking down other covens, helping Aro himself when he made that deal with Kleo. Is there a more certain way to establish power than having a god on your side?
And then Didyme, who as opposed to him, can never be called impulsive in her actions, had to fall for him. She was always so viciously entranced by the idea of freedom, she had nothing to prove, no carved path to stray from and of course, that attracted Marcus. She was someone he could not rule. Aro saw that Marcus thought, or tried to believe, that part of his love for her was his desire to be like her, unbound and untamed but Aro knew better. Marcus was almost obsessed with her because his need to control was undying and she was resisting him.
He predicted that if Marcus left with Didyme, the two would be happy for a few years, thinking they somehow deceived fate, or maybe even Aro himself. But then Marcus’ skin would start to itch and one day he look around and he would see that he has gathered himself a new flock to lead. Servants perhaps, founded towns or worst of all, he will manage to enslave Didyme and break both their hearts. And when that happens, the pair will return to the palace, disillusioned with themselves and finally knowing perfectly well where their place is.
He went to find his sister, talk to her about having a change of heart, and that she absolutely should run away with her soulmate.
I know you’re sore baby I know, but I’m sorry, you just look so fucking pretty when I spread you out, I just have to fuck you again, you can take it, I know you can, you’re my little toy after all, aren’t you?
In other news, I just spent way too long on the phone trying and failing to get Spirit Airlines (never ever fly with them, PSA) to tell me what the fuck they did with our missing suitcase, so the few remaining commissions I have left are probably going to take a little longer than expected. Cross your fingers for us! We also accept middle fingers. Point them towards Utah, I think that’s where the airline headquarters are.
When game devs make their computer children lie to ME, the PLAYER…I DO take it extremely personally, and I WILL hold drastically petty grudges against these little deceit robots with every cell that my soft but angry meat body has.
DW APPREC. WEEK ’22 ⪢ Fav Dynamic “Idris” & The Doctor — There’s something I didn’t get to say to you. Goodbye? No. I just wanted to say hello. Hello, Doctor. It’s so very, very nice to meet you.
If you love ads, then this post is not for you. If you love Tumblr but hate ads and want the one to continue without having to endure the other, then this post is literally for you. Hello, you.
As of today, you can set up ad-free browsing on your personal desktop computer, from anywhere in the world, and then enjoy the same effervescent Tumblr you know and love (yes, including mobile) without the interruption of ads. Scroll away.
Some caveats:
It’s $4.99 for a month of pure, unadulterated nonsense.
If you like a discount, you can get 33% off (that’s four months for free) at $39.99 for a whole year. Imagine.
This is opt-in. You don’t have to do this. We won’t make you.
How do you opt in?
Easy! Just go to your Account Settings on desktop and hit “Go Ad-Free.” From there, you can choose to pay monthly or yearly:
And that’s it! You’ll be able to enjoy your favorite blogs and posts without any pesky ads getting in the way.
That’s all for now, Tumblr. Back to your blorbos.
Tumblr is dying.
This isn’t funny, this isn’t me doing a meme, this is me putting on a very temporary Serious Hat.
Tumblr is dying.
The recent attempts by staff to make the site profitable are the desperate gasps and grasping arms of a site that is well past the point of no return.
Tumblr was never going to survive very long in our current world. It’s not profitable. It was never going to be very profitable. It’s vitally important to the history and culture of the social internet (and, really, the world in general, to some extent), but it’s been mismanaged, haphazardly-run, and just a general design train wreck for years.
Because here’s the important thing to remember about Tumblr:
Tumblr is a bad social media site. More specifically, Tumblr is bad at being a social media site.
I know what you may be thinking – “but it’s better than [Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/TikTok], so it can’t be that bad!” And that’s incorrect. Tumblr is, by any standard measure, much much worse at being a social media site than any of those four sites. And there’s one crucial reason for that that people keep overlooking:
See, people think of social media as being about connecting with people, or community, or social blah blah blah whatever and I need you to understand that all of that, all of it, is bullshit. That’s not what social media is, and that’s never what social media has been.
Social media is about selling your information, mostly to advertisers – which, on the internet, mostly means to Google. Meta doesn’t want you to find art on Instagram or talk to friends on Facebook. Meta wants you to spend time looking at your feed and putting in information. For all Meta cares, if it kept you on the site, you could kill all of your friends and only follow Instagram accounts that posted blank white frames. None of the “content”, none of the “community”, none of that bullshit is important to them. They just want you on the site so they can get your information – via ads, trackers, cookies, harvesting your posts and comments, whatever – and sell it.
I can’t be any clearer about this next point:
Social media is bad. Anything that you like about Tumblr, TikTok, Instagram, or whatever, all of the stuff you likeabout those sites are either incidentalorcounter to the intention of the people running the site.
Instagram DMs are only there to keep you on the site.
Your TikTok FYP is very carefully curated to keep you on the app.
Twitter shows you exactly the trends it needs to in order to keep you browsing.
Ever wonder why social media makes people so angry? It’s because anger keeps you engaged. It’s 100% intentional.
All of the most addictive and engaging emotional states – anger, fear, smugness – are all really bad for your mental (and often physical) health when taken in large doses, and are also the only thing social media wants from you.
Now we come back to Tumblr.
Why is Tumblr better than, say, Twitter? And it really is – we don’t talk about this enough, but Tumblr is absolutely a better experience than Twitter. Or Facebook, or TikTok, or Instagram, or Reddit, or LinkedIn, or Imgur, or any other successful social media site. But why?
The reason Tumblr is so much better of an experience than other social media is because Tumblr is so much worse than other social media at being social media.
All of the stuff we like about Tumblr – the crazy, shittily designed, chaotic reblog system? the fact that your dash is basically only chronological? the fact that the tag system is so fundamentally broken that the ways that it’s broken have been culturally rebuilt as a part of the way we communicate on the site? the way that reblogs distribute content creation? the culture of crazy fandom people? that one werewolf fucker? the memes? the fact that, by and large, you don’t get spoonfed stuff from around the site by an algorithm? mutuals? the lack of censorship, and, in turn, the fact that said lack of censorship drives away advertisers? the weird culture that keeps “normies” from tiktok away? – all of that is absolutely counterintuitive to being a successful social media site.
Let’s compare Tumblr to an actually really well-designed social media: TikTok.
TikTok is a goddamn masterpiece of social media design. If you install TikTok on your phone and give it even the tiniest amount of engagement, it’ll nail your interests and dopamine triggers in under a week. Give it a month and it’ll have its hooks in your brain. The algorithm is so finely tuned, all the systems are so carefully designed, the goddamn interface is hardwired to trick your brain into scrolling.
Stitches? Duets? Likes? Even cultural things, like trends and sounds going viral? Hell, the idea of TikTok sounds at all?All these are built to drive engagement.
Funny video? Duet your reaction. Someone asked a question? Stitch your answer. Someone singing? Duet for a literal duet! Sound going viral? You can do a TikTok of that sound, easy! Interesting conversation in your comment section? Reply to comments with quick videos!
And vitally, did you miss the last trend? No worries! The next one’s coming along! If you joined TikTok today you wouldn’t even know about the sea shanty thing. The culture moves at the speed of light.
The camcorder-like nature of recording on TikTok makes making the actual content a snap. The boost given to new accounts tricks you into thinking it’s easy, and even in the long run, the distribution algorithms make it much easier than, say, YouTube to get the numbers to go up. Content is easy to make and distribute, trends are so quick that they’re easy to follow, and the FYP algorithm gives the illusion of community – and easy-to-make content and well-designed algorithms makes the numbers go up, and to our monkey brains, numbers = approval = success = dopamine.
Tumblr? Tumblr has noneof that shit.
Instead of stitches, duets, or sounds, we have reblogs – with a post editor that barely works, a following that’s 80% porn bots, and a frankly baffling 15-year-old online culture that moves at (for the internet) glacial speeds and has hundreds if not thousands of in-jokes, none of which ever die? Have fun building a following with that, fucker! Numbers? You think we do numbers here? We suffer, and we like it!
Oh, and good luck playing into trends. I wasn’t kidding about the glacial speeds and in-jokes. Sure, we have new shit happening – Tumblr’s take on the “your dick cold eeby deeby” meme is new, as is There Are Many Benifits To Being A Marine Biologist, and my Shakespearification posts – but Colour of the Sky is, I’m pretty sure, older than 50% of TikTok users, and we’re still making goddamn Onceler memes, and, for Christ’s sake, even the new stuff is blendingwith the old stuff – I just did a Shakespeareification of Colour Theory.
There is no algorithm beyond occasional “people you follow liked this”. On TikTok, the only two feeds are “random shit you might like” and “random shit you might like from people you follow”. On Tumblr, the only feed is “everything from everyone you follow at all times”, and the site does not care about whether you want to see it or not.
Because of all this, Tumblr is not, and will never be, profitable.
Which means that, because we live in capitalism, Tumblr will die.
And due to the rise of competentsocial media sites, the competition is eating away at Tumblr’s audience.
Staff is cringe, obviously. But they’re also desperate. They’re trying to keep this place alive.
And they’re failing.
Tumblr is dying.
These are the last days.
The end is coming.
It’s terrible, it’s beautiful, it’s chaotic, and it’s ephemeral.
And we’re never going to have anything like it ever again.
Enjoy it while you have it.
tl;dr if you want tumblr to survive we need the dash to start being algorithm-driven instead of chronological and we have to start saying “unalive” on here instead of “kill”
but also I would rather fucking kill myself than do either of those things
@violinsandtea I’d like to clarify: I’m not saying Tumblr is dead. Tumblr is definitely extremely alive. I’m saying Tumblr is dying.
Tumblr isn’t dead, but it’s been dying since before the famous 2018 ban.
Which, once again, is why I think its a good idea to give them your pocket change. $5 a month? According to google, Tumblr has 3 hundred million visitors every year (if we keep 2019’s traffic as our average). If they’re making just $5 off of every single person every single year, they would make 1 billion dollars every year. That is for the low price of $5 yearly. That is for 1 single month of them not running ads. If you pay that $5 every month for a year, and everyone else does the same? Tumblr would run indefinitely, and you would have $60 less by the end of the year.
Now obviously this isn’t how its gonna work out. half of that 300 million is probably bots. Half of you aren’t even interested in paying, another quarter can’t pay even if you are interested, those two groups have overlap but some of you won’t pay out of principle, and obviously there’s the issue of Tumblr being so full of bugs that when I went to try to support the site the god damn payment page broke and I couldn’t pay the $5. But just think. We could actually save tumblr ourselves, and all it costs is $60 each. We could outlive Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, META. We already outlived Myspace. If you can, help keep this hell alive. Lets be the last standing anti-social media on the internet. We’ll ride this bitch to eeby deeby.
For the dear anon who asked for this scene to be re-written (plenty of smut and angst, just as requested). Also since Beemoov completely ignored the fact that Nath was injured during the scene, I did the same thing.
Swirls of warm steam escape from the crack in the door, misting in the hallway while I hesitate, holding my bottom lip between my teeth.
He’s leaving.
He’s leaving me, and all I have before that happens is a measly eight hours. Eight hours to remember him by. Eight hours to show him how I feel. How I reallyfeel.
I intend to make the most of it.
Slipping through the door, I make out Nathaniel’s body through the shower glass, perfectly framed behind mist and water. Gathering my courage, my eyes stay on his silhouette the entire time my clothes come off. First my top, pulled over my head and discarded on the bathroom floor, and then my pants, until I’m left only in the blue, floral lingerie I had bought in town earlier.
Trying not to think about how excited I had been while buying the lingerie, I step into the shower behind him and he turns, water dripping from his hair, over his skin, as his eyes flicker over me. We don’t say anything. We don’t need to. He simply takes me in his arms, cocooning me in warmth while the shower rains down over us.
I swallow thickly, any words I might have spoken turning to ash in my mouth, and knowing that his arms are the only thing keeping me together in this waking nightmare I find myself thrown in.
I leave small kisses on his shoulder, my fingers digging into his back, holding him so tightly I never want to let go. Eventually I do, slipping my hands behind my back to undo my bra and letting him pull it off the rest of the way, his eyes devouring my naked skin with a mixture of longing and grief.
He pulls me against him again, chest to chest, his lips pressed against my neck as he whispers over and over, “Forgive me. Forgive me for what I’m doing to you.”
My throat goes tight, a lump of pain settling itself within but I swallow it down, forcing the tears not to fall. Instead, I slip my panties down to my ankles, stepping out of them and kicking them aside. Nath bends down to scoop my underwear up, his lips moving over every inch of my body, electrifying my skin as he does so, before he hangs them to dry on the towel rail.
When he comes back to me his lips are on mine in an instant, water streaming between us, wet and warm, as we cling to each other. My chest tightens, my breath growing heavy, though I’m not sure if it’s the steam in the room or the thought of losing him that causes it.
Probably both.
He bends to take me under the thighs and I wrap my legs around him, feeling his hard body tense against me and letting him press me back against the tiled shower wall, where I wince a little at the coldness on my back.
I feel him between my legs, feel that he wants this as much as I do, and my core warms in response to him, a tingling settling between my thighs. His golden eyes never leave mine as he positions himself against me and pushes inside, and my lips fall against his shoulder in a gasp as I melt.
A groan escapes him and he starts slow, kissing my face, my neck, giving my body time to adjust to him. My arms curl tighter around his neck, fingers threading through his soaked hair while the shower streams down behind him.
And then he thrusts into me harder, fingers digging into my ass as he holds me up and I try not to think how this is the first and last time I’ll ever feel him like this, how my heart is breaking in my chest even while his body sends me into a spiral of ecstasy.
I kiss him deep to chase away dark thoughts, letting his tongue send a jolt of wanting through me so strong I think of nothing but his body against me, insideme. Our eyes meet, heavy-lidded as we drink each other in, wordlessly acknowledging how fragile these last hours we have together are.
His face grows dark and he stills, swallowing down whatever dejected emotions are dancing behind those golden eyes. In an instant he pulls out and lets me down, turning me to face the wall before he slides inside again.
This time he’s less gentle. A hand travels up over my breasts, palming them roughly and rolling my beaded nipples between his fingers. I gasp and lean back into him when he buries his lips in my neck, his fingers gripping my hips as he pumps faster and faster.
Heat builds in my core, a coiling in my stomach so tight it begs to be released. A stuttered gasp escapes me and he knows I’m close. He slips a hand between my thighs, rubbing my clit in circles and bringing me closer and closer to the edge.
When I break it’s with his name on my lips and my head thrown back against his shoulder, water streaming down my face. My body tightens and I clench around him, a surge of pleasure running through me like liquid fire, like the release I’ve been craving for so long.
My forehead falls forward against warm tiles and I feel the stuttered movements of him falling apart before he surges inside me, impossibly deep, holding there while he groans and comes undone, his golden hair splayed over my back when he leans forward against me.
Afterwards he wraps me in a soft, white towel and helps me dry my hair. Dressed in only a pair of sweatpants, he hands me one of his t-shirts to wear and we slip into bed together, his arms around me and my head against his chest.
When he whispers ‘I love you’ through the dark, for a moment I think I must have dreamed it, until I realize his breath is held, only to be released when I say it back with tears in my eye and my lips against his.
*
A shaft of buttery sunlight warms my face, and I rub my face gently as I wake, surveying my surroundings through eyes still heavily laced with sleep.
Until I remember the night before, everything that was said, everything we had done, and I bolt upright in bed.
There’s a note on the bedside table, and a set of keys. I don’t even have to read it to know what it says, because when my eyes scan the room to see his suitcase already gone, my heart shatters into a thousand pieces.
Foolishly, I had hoped he would change his mind. I had hoped we would find another way, together, for him to be safe in this city. I had hoped he loved me too much to let me go.
My favorite thing is seeing people from Europe being like Americans have never tasted real meat or vegetables. I’m legit seeing this on tiktok comments. Like bro you watched Supersize Me once and applied that to the whole country? First off, our country is the size of your continent —
![[oc] he had it comin’, he had it comin’, he only had himself to blame](https://64.media.tumblr.com/d0b135fc710aded6d2f28fc62e877a6e/ccb260dc4cca256c-3a/s1280x1920/614cd777eeacb31b9dafadd9353f6dfd1e96e345.jpg "[oc] he had it comin’, he had it comin’, he only had himself to blame")
