It's Mutual (Follow Back Already)
At twenty-four, Keith decides to figure out what this 'tumblr' thing is. It's confusing at first, but Keith learns to have fun with it with help from a few new friends. AKA Keith's adventures on tumblr.
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It's an adventure in Internet Land! I WILL be using actual Tumblr posts in this story from time to time. When I do, I'll do my best to attach a source in some way, but you know how ffn is with links.
I'll be posting once a week at minimum, sometimes maybe twice.
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Chapter 1
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savethefood_savetheworld [reblogged] SIRLancelot3000
SIRLancelot3000
Some days need do over buttons. Today my morning shower was cold cause the hot water was all gone. My coffee order was wrong but I didn't have time to take it back. I may have failed a test worth a quarter of my class grade. I got yelled at by one professor. Another gave a disappointed lecture. I have been rejected by the hottest person I have ever seen. I stepped in some dude's dog's shit because people don't pick up after their pets. My boss scheduled me for extra shifts on days I requested off.
[GIF of someone dressed as Draco Malfoy collapsing on stage, as if dead]
I want to start over. Today never happened.
SIRLancelot3000
P1dg3N4t10n replied to your post: If you did your work and got to class on time your profs wouldn't yell at you. Sucks about the coffee though.
I'm not gonna respond to that, cause I know it's a trap. I know you pidge. You won't fool me. I'm not that dumb.
[GIF of Audrey Hepburn putting on sunglasses. Reads 'Deal with it']
savethefood_savetheworld replied to your post: I'm so sorry. The hot water thing was me. I'll cook tonight to make up for it.
1. AWESOME.
[GIF of Vash the Stampede giving a thumbs up]
2. You're at work, stop using the dumb app! It sucks anyway
savethefood_savetheworld
[GIF of Drew Wu eating a giant cookie. Reads '#DO WHAT I WANT']
It's a slow day.
Source: SIRLancelot3000 #deal with it lance #friendship #roommates #how do you feel about chicken piccata for dinner? #now I want a cookie #thx Grimm
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Tumblr was an odd place, Keith decided.
He'd seen a lot of people browsing the site in the campus library, back when he actually attended the local college. The bookstore he worked for now had a few public computers in it as well, and he'd seen people using them for the same reasons they'd use a library computer: job hunting, email, work, research – but also tumblr. Someone had come up to him once and said "I like your shoelaces." When Keith just stared at them blankly, they'd sighed and said, "Darn. You really look like someone who'd use tumblr, you know?"
No, he didn't know. But he was going to, eventually, maybe, because he'd finally given in and registered on the damn site.
His 'dashboard' had been blank for awhile, and Keith hadn't known how to make it full of stuff like the people he'd seen using it before. Then he'd used the search function and typed 'piloting.' He'd spent probably thirty minutes looking at a bunch of blogs attached to a bunch of posts about piloting, and finally settled on a blog by someone named TheOppositeofAmnesia – or 'Shiro' as the About Me section proclaimed.
Shiro was a semi-retired pilot. 'Semi' because while he no longer flew in active service to the military, he taught cadets how to pilot at the garrison on the west coast part time – about as far from Keith as he could get without being in a different country. He'd lost his arm on his last active mission and had a rather awesome prosthetic in its place that he seemed pretty proud of, if all his pictures with it clearly on display and his posts about living with a fake arm were anything to go by.
So Keith's dashboard was made up entirely of Shiro's posts on exercise, training regimens, piloting, and living with a prosthesis. That was great, but he figured he needed to follow more than one person if he was going to figure out why so many people were obsessed with this site.
Searching up posts about history is what led him to This-is-Altea, a blog dedicated to telling its followers about random historical events and discoveries that ran the gambit from nostalgic to well-known to who even researched that?
The About Me section said the blogger's name was 'Allura' who went by 'she/her/your majesty' for pronouns. She also apparently taught history at a high school in the same city as Shiro. Of the non-history posts in her blog, most of them were reblogged from TheOppositeofAmnesia and many were personal posts. They seemed to be friends.
Keith's dashboard was just the two of them, and sometimes he looked at the related posts that popped up when he liked one their posts, for about a week. Then, bored and a bit hungry, Keith searched up recipes on tumblr just to see what would happen.
savethefood_savetheworld was a blog full of recipes using really odd combinations of ingredients, which worked for Keith since his pantry was usually full of random bits and pieces rather than anything typically considered when making a meal. But recipes weren't the only reason Keith chose to follow them. Alongside recipes – both created by the blogger, who claimed his name was 'Hunk,' and reblogged from others – were posts about mechanics, engineering, and robotics.
Keith had looked from the bowl of soup savethefood_savetheworld had walked him through making, to the desk of mechanical odds-and-ends in various stages of being built, and hit Follow.
So now Keith's dashboard was full of posts about history, training, piloting, sometimes teaching, recipes, mechanics, and personal posts. savethefood_savetheworld also reblogged a lot of stuff from his friends SIRLancelot3000 and P1dg3N4t10n, but it was usually something kind of funny, so Keith didn't mind.
He still didn't understand what was so great about Tumblr, and he still wasn't sure how he himself was meant to contribute to it. It was just like being back in school – watching everyone make groups of friends while he sat in the corner building model planes and hovercrafts out of paper all by himself.
He wondered if the part of his life where some dickbag would come crush his paper models and Keith would fling himself into a fist fight with them would also recreate itself on tumblr.
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PilotKogane [reblogged] TheOppositeofAmnesia
TheOppositeofAmnesia
Don't forget to eat, drink some water, and take your meds today. You need your fuel to achieve your goals! And I'll be right there with you the whole way.
Source: TheOppositeofAmnesia
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PilotKogane [reblogged] This-is-Altea
jkmhoffman
[link]12 Ordinary Moms In History Who Changed The World[link]
Source: jkmhoffman
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There was a post from savethefood responding to his friend SIRLancelot3000, but it was a personal post. So, with only those two new additions to his own tumblr from Allura and Shiro, Keith logged off and went to bed.
He still didn't get what was so awesome about tumblr, but he'd check it again tomorrow.
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Savethefood_savetheworld [reblogged] P1dg3N4t10n
"what they don't tell you is that
sometimes, it doesn't stop hurting.
it has been two years and i still cling to my
grief like it is a child i am teaching to walk.
i still catch myself rereading obituaries
and speaking in condolences.
i have never known how to let things go
so i put them inside of me like pennies
and like that i keep them alive."
On Grief, Sarah Kate Osborn
Source: allthesinkingships #I'm with you pidge #death anniversary #grief #loss #mourning
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Keith stared at the poem on his dashboard and felt something like shock. He didn't know who 'pidge' had lost or what made them reblog that poem. What caused the shock wasn't empathy or sympathy. No. He remembered being six and told both his parents were dead. He remembered four foster homes that sent him back within six months. He remembered aging out of the foster system. He remembered sneaking out every year to visit two graves, and how, even at twenty-four, it felt like something was missing in his life.
He hit reblog almost without conscious thought, and then clicked to visit P1dg3N4t10n's blog.
'Pidge. She/her. 20. RIP Matt. Computers and sarcasm are my diet.' the About Me read. It wasn't wrong. The blog seemed to be a pretty even split between coding, software, hardware, and other computer based posts, and sarcastic or witty humor posts. There were other things too, like her constant ribbing of SIRLancelot3000 whenever a post by him showed up, but that was the bulk of it.
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P1dg3N4t10n
"You code? Can you code something for me?" I'll code you a profile on every dating site ever and watch you drown in skeevy requests if you don't stop asking me that question.
PilotKogane likes this
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PilotKogane [reblogged] P1dg3N4t10n
P1dg3N4t10n
How many simulations do you have to crash before you become an ace pilot? SIRLancelot3000 needs to know.
SIRLancelot3000
[GIF of Amy Poehler and Seth Myers on SNL reads "HOW DARE YOU?"]
That's hurtful, Pidge. I'm a great pilot.
P1dg3N4t10n
Whatever you need to sleep at night.
Source: P1dg3N4t10n
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Pidge had also recently posted a big THANK YOU post for reaching one thousand followers. Keith looked at his own follower count and frowned. Zero.
How did you get followers? Did you get badges or trophies or some kind of prize for reaching a certain number of followers? He followed three people. Did those count for something?
He hit Follow on P1dg3N4t10n's blog. Now he followed four people.
Maybe when he had a varied amount of things on his dashboard, people would start following him. Maybe when he had followers, he'd figure out why this site was addictive to so many people. Maybe not.
How long was he gonna keep doing this trying to find out anyway?
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tbc...
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End Notes:
The poem "On Grief" can be found at allthesinkingships' tumblr at post/148400833871/what-they-dont-tell-you-is-that-sometimes-it
The post about moms by JKMHoffman can be found at their tumblr at post/148117938060/12-ordinary-moms-in-history-who-changed-the-world
Reviews are Love!
