A few nights ago, I had my first ever dream about tumblr. People I’ve met on tumblr have made cameos in dreams I’ve had before, but I’ve never had a full-on dream about tumblr until this one, and I’ve been trying ever since to piece together what I remember in some sort of coherent whole so that I’m not telling one of those disjointed dream stories that no one ever really wants to hear. This is really the best I can do, though, and it’s still a bit disjointed, but I wanted to share it anyway.

Tumblr wasn’t a website you viewed on your computer — rather, it was a place you went, rather like a mall of sorts. There was a directory, and different blogs were something like storefronts, in different wings according to the subject matter of the blog. Except these weren’t stores you walked into, they were just very large touch-screen glass, like iPads six feet tall, one after the other. And all of us bloggers would walk around and peruse the blogs. We had controls on our arms that would allow us to heart or reblog pieces, and also a search bar where we could type in a blog’s name and go there. There were high-speed trams running on some sort of track down the middle of all the hallways — more like individual pods only capable of carrying one, maybe two people — and if you held on to a lever and selected a particular blog, you would be whisked away to that blog.

I was riding around, checking out some of my friends’ blogs, when I saw a post from Gary. It was some sort of manifesto of sorts, advocating that there should be mandatory tags and trigger warnings for posts that discuss various insects such as bees and wasps and mosquitos and the like, because some people are so allergic to these insects that merely reading about them could spark a panic attack, if not an actual allergic reaction.

There were hundreds of other bloggers reblogging Gary’s post — some agreeing with him and adding other things that should have trigger warnings, pointing out that people are also allergic to various foods, types of pollen, animal fur, etc. — and others arguing vehemently against such a ridiculous notion, some even going so far as to say the whole concept of trigger warnings had gone too far, and shouldn’t exist at all. Luke had replied to the post and politely pointed out that many insects are helpful and important to the circle of life, and that cicadas in particular were beautiful creatures. Solange posted photo after photo and GIF after GIF of jellyfish, making her opinion clear that despite the fact jellyfish stings cause millions of people to piss on themselves and their friends every year, they are still beautiful creatures that should be admired and respected. Nicky didn’t really participate in the firestorm, but I saw her sitting in a corner by herself, writing a quite musical paragraph of prose and idly petting her stuffed dugong.

Then a red flag popped up alerting me I had messages. One from Joy and one from Cordelia, both asking me what the fuck Gary was on about. I told them I didn’t really know what had prompted this “movement” of his. I sent a message to Gary asking him why he was so angry at bugs, then sent a message to Luke and asked him what was going on. Luke told me he was just trolling Gary, and Gary responded with a GIF and a troll face, neither of which explained his motivation, but both of which were moderately funny.

Then Lilli ran up to me, and was quite upset, because she was trying to get every contributing writer to sign her copy of Inkstains & Heartbeats, but Chris kept running away from her [Dreamer’s note: I don’t actually know if Chris actually contributed to the collective, but that’s who it was in my dream. Meh.]. As she was talking, I saw him out of the corner of my eye, glancing over his shoulder as he hurried to the nearest exit. I grabbed Lilli’s arm and pointed. “There he is!” I told her, and we both started running after him.

Lilli and I burst through the door into beautiful bright sunlight. We could see Chris hurriedly leaving the tumblr complex. “Quick!” I said to Lilli. “We can catch him!”

“You go ahead,” Lilli said, her cell phone at arm’s reach. “I need to take a GPOY real quick, the light is just lovely!” I smiled and ran after Chris. Several other bloggers had started running after me as well, having no idea why, just curious as to what was worth running after. We finally caught up to Chris and tackled him. He was confused and feigned ignorance as to Lilli’s attempts to obtain a signature from him, before finally getting up, dusting himself off, and telling us he had to go to work, and he simply didn’t have time to sign Lilli’s book right then, but that he would get together with her later.

Then I woke up.

Yeah. I don’t know.