#Mastodon is pretty nice too!

[starthecozy]

I have a Pillowfort account for the longest time but just recently I came back to it, hit me up if you're there or want an invite! I'm also on Mastodon, which I found a pretty nice place to be c:

[lizkreates]

With the news of tumblr being stripped down to a skeleton crew, here are my socials!

My most active is BlueSky. I have a couple codes if anyone needs them!

That said, as long as I'm in a fandom and this site stays usable I'll be active here until this clown car sinks. 🤞

[ungrateful-cyborg-moved]

Social media comparison

Alright. I've tried different new/alternative platforms lately in hope to find something I really liked, and there are very promising ones. I didn't try everything, of course, but this is a kind of overview of my journey so far? Or just my thoughts on the matter.

I've tried Pillowfort, Bluesky, Mastodon (didn't last long enough to have much of an opinion, it simply didn't click), Dreamwidth and Cohost (as of today, can't post there yet).

My comparison under the cut:

► I appreciate that they're algorithm free, whether it's because they truly believe in an Internet rid of the most invasive of them or because it's too expensive to implement on a brand new platform or some other reason. Only the future can tell, but for now it's nice.

► Pillowfort: beside the post formatting that I find extremely comfortable, my favourite thing is probably communities. I feel like this is the strongest "pro" in favor of Pillowfort because this is where they truly distinguish themselves from other social media.

Communities, in a way, remind me of forums. They're however easier to take in hand since you don't have to deal with as many options and choices. In my opinion, communities on Pillowfort are a bit lacking in functionalities though. I think more tools to easily organize them would help, like a widget or something to link stuff so you can create and animate events within said communities.

(I also feel like Pillowfort would gain from not being dark blue. We have more than enough dark blue websites, and it doesn't go well with the warmth invoked by its name in my opinion, but that's a minor detail and just a matter of taste.)

► Bluesky: basically Twitter but better. No algorithm, for a start. The curated feeds are nice. They're a bit like communities on Pillowfort since they can be moderated but from a non-mod user, it's even easier to post in them: you just have to use the right keyword for your post to appear there. Well, if the mod left it open to all rather than chose to vet who can or cannot post in it. Lots of flexibility and control over your timeline overall.

I don't like the 300 characters limit, however. Never liked it with Twitter either. It's not really conductive to conversations, and the general design tends to make the website feel rather impersonal. It's really more like parallel talking than community building.

Overall I think it's a good tool to promote your (visual) art or website, etc. but not great for hosting conversations past commenting briefly what others are doing. I mean, you can make threads but it'll never be as good as Pillowfort or Tumblr for this.

► Dreamwidth: I'll start with saying that Dreamwidth isn't a social media, it's a journaling platform and I haven't used it much yet. Had in plan to post my headcanons about my muses there and stuff like that so I did spend some time trying to figure out how it works.

First, there is a lot of options to let you have complete control over who can see what. Like, a lot.

You can entirely personalize what your journal will look like. It's a bit easier than having your own website—since I reblogged a post about that yesterday—because you don't start from 0, so it might be a good option if you don't feel comfortable jumping into Notepad++ to start coding. You can just change a thing here and there, or nothing at all, or almost everything. It's pretty old school though, so for those completely unfamiliar with early/pre-web 2.0, it might not look very appealing at first. However, I'd say don't let that stop you! If anything, it's a good opportunity to learn a bit of code without pressure.

You can also create communities, which as you might have guessed is very important to me. When creating one, you can set up whether everyone can join, everyone can ask to join but has to be approved by a community admin or to limit the access to those you have personally invited. Like for your own journal, communities are completely customizable, and Dreamwidth allows adult content.

I'm not sure you can top DW communities in terms of functionalities—aside from making a forum—but it's not as intuitive as Pillowfort (though in exchange you get more customization). You're also more limited regarding image hosting (see here). That said, hosting services exist, many are free, and that's without mentioning that you can post on Twitter and the like and use the picture link in your DW posts. I don't think many will only use Dreamwidth anyway.

► Cohost: I was expecting nothing when I registered earlier today, but this is an overall good surprise: it's Tumblr, but better.

More control of what you see. More user-friendly UI. It's not fucking blue. Adult content allowed. You can change your main blog page and make it private.

The only two downsides I'd mention here would be that you can't customize your blog page appearance and you have to wait for one or two days before being able to post. Although if it means less bots, I'd rather wait.

And this ends my rather non-exhaustive tour of the social media/blogging/journaling platforms. If you catch any mistakes let me know. I didn't dive deep, this was just me sharing my thoughts.

(As far as I know, they all allow adult content and give you tools to not see it if you don't want to.)

[ralfmaximus]

Some people have responded to my twitter post with "I can't leave twitter because that's the only place I can find <thing>!"

Well friends, let me suggest mastodon:

totally free

anonymous

no ads

no algorithm

no corporate owners

no/low censorship

plenty of NSFW if that's your thing

plenty of art & photography if that's your thing

superb blocking & filtering

robust tagging & search

People suggest Bluesky a lot, and that's fair. I have an account there too. But Bluesky suffers from the same issues any huge centralized social media system does. It's just another technical implementation of tumblr, facebook, twitter (etc) and thus, subject to the whims of its corporate owners.

Mastodon, otoh, is a member of the fediverse: a massive network of independently operated servers all speaking the same protocol behind the scenes. Every server is owned by a human, or a collection of humans. Every server CAN have its own rules for decorum, but most subscribe to a very loose "innocent until proven asshole" moderation policy. It has been my experience that mastodon instances do not tolerate nazis, terfs, or spambots. Those accounts get blocked pretty quickly, and sometimes an entire server instance gets blocked if it seems infested.

As an experiment, pop over to mastodon.social (no account required!) and try the search function for your favorite tags. You'll see a list of things people are talking about that match your request.

But that's just one server (mastodon.social) out of thousands! If you want to search the entire fediverse, all the mastodon servers, you'll need to create an account. That's totally free too; all you need is an email address for verification. You can be as anonymous as you like.

There are, inevitably, cons:

500 character limit on posts

primitive text editing (compared to, say, tumblr)

primitive threading (think twitter)

private messaging sucks

no chat

The biggest pro, however, is that Mastodon (unlike tumblr) will probably be around in a few years.

Tumblr is currently alive in 2024 due to contracts with OpenAI & Midjourney to harvest data for those AI systems. When those agreements are up (and/or the AI bubble pops) anything could happen. Matt could sell the place, break it up for parts, or just turn off the servers on any given Friday. But that shouldn't happen until at least 2025.

It'd be nice to have a plan when that happens, right?

Perhaps mastodon isn't THE answer, but it's certainly an option.

[vincent-marie]

"No More Mr. Nice Wolf"

Back in 2016, it was the morning after seeing Alice Cooper in concert that I gathered the courage to start coming out to my mom as nonbinary. That my name is Vincent.

Hence you can imagine my disappointment this past year when Alice Cooper himself made some pretty transphobic remarks about trans kids & "woke parents."

So, as an act of creative spite, I have transformed Anubis, the wolf character that was inspired by his stage persona, into a gay trans male stripper. Because for a shock rocker, apparently being an ally to his queer fans is too daring for Mr. Cooper.

Trans Rights are Human Rights, & YES Kink At Pride.

Follow & support my work on Patreon, or make a one-time donation to my Ko-Fi.

Also follow me on Instagram, Bluesky, & Mastodon.

[nuttcream]

NOT ALWAYS SEX

I found out that Mister Charney didn't even have a family until after he picked me up. When we pulled into his garage, he stopped the engine and said, "Um, Martin, before you get out, uh, well, Steve Parsons told me about you and, well, I'm single, I don't have any kids. But he told me that you had other services, and, uh, well, I'd like to hire you for those. Can we go inside and talk about it?"

I agreed and we went in, sat opposite each other as he continued, "Well I really don't want you to do anything to me, um, what I'd like to do is for you to take your clothes off and sit on the floor while I, well, um, while I masturbate as I look at you. All you have to do is just sit there."

Well, that's different, I thought. Pretty easy, except I'd have to get naked, like all the way naked. I figured I look pretty good naked, if I do say so myself.

"What would you pay for that, Mister Charney?" I asked in my best 'business' voice.

"Well, is a hundred okay?" he asked back.

I stood up and started taking my clothes off and putting them on the chair. He quickly got the picture and pulled off his pants and boxers and stood there with his big cock standing out pointing at me.

"Sit here?" I asked and he nodded and sat in front of me as he squirted some hand lotion on his cock penis and began stroking it back and forth.

"Um, Martin, would you open your legs some?" he asked.

I did, which made me feel really sexy. I had some curly red hair between my legs, it started growing when I was about eleven. I scooted up to a chair to lean against, then opened my legs wide giving him a good look at me. His hand was going back and forth along his cock. I was getting more familiar with men's dicks as my clientele grew and I was becoming more relaxed around men in a sexual situation.

"Would you play with yourself? Play with your pussy, you know, finger yourself? I'll give you an extra fifty." he tells me. An extra fifty? Now, it's a hundred and fifty dollars for me to masturbate and make myself feel good? What a deal. I opened wider and began rubbing my wetness around, then slid a finger in and began finger-fucking myself.

Pretty soon, I was more concentrating on myself than in getting Mister Charney off, then he said, "Martin, if you make yourself cum for me, there's another fifty in it for you."

Two hundred dollars. And it was easy. Not only that, I got to masturbate myself until I cum, something I did every night anyway. All he did was watch. So I leaned back and closed my eyes. It wasn't too long before I heard moans, opened my eyes and saw cum fountaining up out of Mister Charney's dick, just missing me. He leaned back on the sofa and watched me as I fingered in and out with one hand and stroked my cock with the other. Pretty soon, I could tell I was close. He was sitting forward now watching me, his cock still fairly hard, his hand rubbing it, then the feelings rocketed and I had my orgasm. I wanted to make sure he liked it so I didn't hold back.

"UUNH, UUNH, uh, uh, oh, oh, oh, mmm, mmm, mmm," as I continued stroking in and out as spurts of cum shot out towards Mister Charney. I released the grip on my cock and put my fingers in my mouth and sucked my cream off as seductively as I could.

As he drove me home, I kept holding that two hundred dollars, ten twenty-dollar bills, in my pocket. He's happy and I'm happy. I don't even have to masturbate when I get in bed tonight.

How nice.

Thanks Much for Following ! Visit UltraFast@Mastodon

[damnsparce]

Tagged by @webbyghost !! Thank you :D

Rules: pick a song for each letter of your URL, and then tag that many people!

~~aka try not to make every song Nelward challenge level impossible~~

D - Don't fukk me up! - Nelward

A - All the Pretty Girls - fun.

M - Mr. Mastodon Farm - CAKE

N - Nice to meet ya! ~i'm digging a hole~ - Nelward & Adron

S - Something about us - Daft Punk

P - Pots and Pans - Nelward

A - Amber Island - Nelward and HiP CoLouR

R - Realife - Nelward

C - C'mon - Panic at the Disco & fun.

E - Earthrise - Hakken

I'll tag @peemil @fish-bird @karhs @sunset-bridge @phaazehunter @symonynii @neververy4 @jesin00 @dunsparceus @korattata

Of course you aren't obligated to do, I just picked some of y'all that didn't have too long of names! Have a great day this was fun :)

[bookgeekgrrl]

tagged by: @door who knows i love these kinds of things 🥰

last song: according to my music app it was "daydream believer" by the monkees

favorite color: purple, pretty much every shade. other jewel tones are good too tho

currently reading: a pocket full of rye by agatha christie on audiobook, narrated by richard e. grant. i've plans to start a nice long stucky fic after i've snuggled into bed for the night in about 30 min

currently watching: slowly making my way thru dimension 20: a starstruck odyssey but also watching occasional episodes of Handsome podcast on YT

last movie: i don't really watch movies much so according to my media tracking spreadsheet, the last movie was the martian back in july

sweet, spicy, savory?: like door, savory is a big yes. i also do like a sweet. spicy is big fuck no

relationship status: (assuming this means romantic) absolutely not

current obsession: the usual fandom blorbos rotating in my brain. doing a slow reread of the nero wolfe series atm

tea or coffee: strong black tea with lots of milk and sugar

last thing i googled: i searched the phrase 'aunt calling to aunt like mammoths across the tundra' because i was looking for the exact jeeves & wooster quote (it's 'mastodons bellowing across premieval swamps' ftr)

tagging folks gives me anxiety so if you want to do it, then consider yourself tagged. and tag me so i can see yours!!!

[andtheirmoonlight]

The new ‘strategy’ is depressing, but I’d have accepted it for lack of anything better — if only the new desktop version wasn't there. The new desktop interface is unusable and anxiety-inducing, and I don’t think we’re getting the old one back. I’d be happy to be wrong about it, but.

For now, I open tumblr and I want to leave right away. It’s unusable for a multitude of reasons. It looks like twitter. So the question is ... is there anywhere left to go? To go, as in, one’s populated social media of choice. People from twitter and reddit did a go to here. Tumblr was the last. Everything else had already succumbed to capitalism and The Algorithm, but even if I looked past The Algorithm for a second; facebook sucks, and the Parents are there and they’re eldritch; I avoid instagram like the plague, among other things I prefer to eat my food asap and I don’t want to share any pictures publicly; twitter is nothing but pointless hatred, one can’t be social there without suicidal thoughts creeping up in minutes; mastodon is a wasteland etc etc. Where do I go where it’s okay, where there’s a lot of people, where I don’t need to show my real face or real name, where an app is not a must, where the things that people share are in chronological order, where there’s no pressure and no clout-chaser-induced crap..?

Popularity is conformity, and I thought that tumblr existed specifically for people who aren’t interested in conforming, yet now there’s this ‘update’ that directly states: psych, lol!

You might say, go be social on discord, but I’m fandomless. I’m fandomless, but I do want to see what my mutuals are obsessing over and be like ‘wohoo! good for you!’ on occasion. I want to have mutuals, so to speak. I want to have the means to find more mutuals. I want to be social. With people who live on the other side of the world, and I can check how they’re doing and how their various niche interests are doing. And I want to be able to poke random strangers with reblogs and ask ‘r u fren?’. I want to post my sad little jokes too. I want to be able to curate my own experiences. I also want to have something to just scroll and read and poke hearts on, yes — when I have no energy and brainpower to read books (although I read at every opportunity). But uuh, do you read books in doctors’ waiting rooms or under IVs? I doubt it. I bet you, too, read through odd tags of odd things. So where do I go?

If your answer is ‘outside lol’ — joke’s on you, I go there every day, and not even/only for vexing things, but just on walks and for game nights and date nights and falafel. We go on aimless walks every day. Atm we live in a very walkable country with a lot of nice touchable grass, and that’s not what I mean. Yes, I get that it’s healthy and all, but I am not exactly a healthy or particularly outgoing person, and outside is definitely not somewhere I can go to poke random people who are happy about being poked, or to potentially befriend someone from the other side of the world— and I want to. So where do I go?

I’m pretty sure that it’s a rhetorical question, and that the only place left for me to go is gooseberry grove (which is code for ‘my head’).

The internet has gotten so lonely.

[dommesticpet]

Social Firefly

A few years ago when @dommestic and I were looking into going to hypnosis cons, we’d peek in Tumblr a lot.  I mean a lot, because every day you’d find pages upon pages of scene logs, panel/class ideas, sometimes unpleasant gossip, and just about anything you could possibly want to fan the flames of your kinky kinkness.  It was pretty great.

Late in 2018, Tumblr got pretty strict on the content it let through. It seems that it increasingly is starting to look the other way a bit now, but for the last few years people generally migrated to Twitter where it is much harder to find The Good Stuff.  There’s been an increase in The Good Stuff on Tumblr lately, which I’m very happy to see as Twitter starts to do things like impose “daily Tweet viewership caps” which probably is going to be good for other companies’ business.  Who wants the hypno kinkster audience? We could use a nice home.

I made a Mastodon on a server that’s... not my speed, really.  I’d move to a new one if I had a good suggestion, or if there’s a new platform people are going to I’m all ears. I saw someone mention going to Bluesky, but that’s presently invite-only.

It’s my hope this just drives people back to Tumblr - or some other, better service - because I’m genuinely curious as to what people are doing.  And the inspiration is nice.   Maybe someone can set up a really good Substack or something. (Or already has done so?)

 I don’t have too much personal to add - the DommesticPet World Tour kicked off in May with the first stop since 2020, and I’ve got at least a couple more scheduled for this year. (There’s a nonzero, but close to zero, you might get a chance to see me talk to a crowd somewhere not kinky.  But we don’t talk about that here.) I hope you’re all doing very well and having a lovely time on your internets.  Both of them.  

[timeoverload]

I slept for 12 hours and I'm still tired. I woke up with a sore throat and I've been coughing a lot so I think I might be getting sick. I hope I'm not though. My body still hurts. I really wanted to be productive today but I'm not sure how much I'm going to get done. I will try to do something today at some point. I'm going to pick up something healthy to eat later and maybe that will make me feel better. I wish I didn't spend every weekend feeling like shit but I know I won't have to live like this forever.

I actually got invited to my co-workers going away party next Saturday night so I hope I'm feeling better by then. I'm happy she invited me even though we haven't always gotten along and maybe she doesn't dislike me as much as I thought she did. I haven't been to a party in so long so I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited to see some people I used to work with that I haven't seen in a long time. I haven't done anything fun this summer so it would be nice to be social for once. It's not too far away so I'm going to try to walk there so I don't have to drink and drive. Hopefully I can find someone to take me home afterward so I don't have to walk in the dark. I need to get out of the house so I will probably go even if I don't feel good.

I'm not going to get another chance to do anything for a while after that since I'm not going to that concert on the 26th. I really hope I can get my money back since I spent quite a bit on those tickets. It probably wasn't a good idea to spend that much anyway. I guess it was an impulsive decision. I feel dumb for buying them and I shouldn't have done that but at least I tried to find someone to go with. Maxwell, I understand why you can't go with me and it's not your fault so I can't be upset about that. Even if I did go, I would have to spend the whole time trying to avoid running into my ex because I'm pretty sure he's going with his girlfriend. I remember him texting me a long time ago and trying to get me to go with him because he was trying to convince me to get back together. Obviously I said no to going with him because I wanted to go with someone else and I told him that. I knew I would rather miss the concert than have to go with him because I wouldn't enjoy it. I'm still so happy and thankful that I'm not with him anymore. My life is so peaceful without him around. I do not want to see him at all, especially if I'm by myself. I would need someone there to defend me if I did run into him. I remember him getting confrontational with me and other people when he was drunk at the concerts we would go to together. It was so embarrassing and we almost got kicked out of a few shows because of the way he was acting. I'm sure he would leave me alone now but it still makes me anxious. It sucks because he and I share the same taste in music so I have to avoid going to shows by myself so I don't have to see him. I have already seen Mastodon and Gojira before so it's not a total loss. I'm sure they will be back again sometime and I'm trying not to get too worked up about it. I know I will get the chance to go to concerts again in the future and I'm excited to do that.

I hope I get a call from the doctor sometime because I still haven't heard anything. I really wanted to get my appointment scheduled today but they told me not to call until they contact me first. It would be nice to know if I need to do something to balance out my hormones so I can stop being so emotional. I'm wondering if my cortisol level is too high because I've been gaining weight but it's mostly going to my belly. I can't wear some of my pants now. I guess I've also been eating a ton of fried food lately. I'm glad that I don't look like a skeleton anymore at least.

I also have to go to the dentist in a few weeks so hopefully I don't have any cavities. I have been much better about taking care of my teeth than I was when I was younger so I think it will go well. I always get a lecture about vaping though. I want to stop but I still don't think it's as bad for me as smoking cigarettes.

I've been trying to figure out when I'm going to have time to take the cats to the vet in between all of my other appointments. That's not going to be cheap but they need to go so badly. I'm considering taking them to a different vet but I'm not sure yet. I'm not super fond of the place that I had to take them to before. They couldn't even call me back when I talked to them earlier this week so I'm having second thoughts. I'm not looking forward to taking them by myself because they are so heavy but I'm going to do it anyway. They hate being in the car and I don't want to drive across town with them so maybe I can find a place that's a little closer. I'm going to do some research first.

I have an appointment to see the eye doctor too next month but I might have to reschedule because it's on a Tuesday. I am going to see if they will let me leave work and come back because my eyes are bothering me and I need new glasses again. I really like my purple glasses though and I don't want to stop wearing them so maybe I can order them again with my new prescription. It's so hard for me to find glasses that fit my face and I think the ones I'm wearing right now are technically made for kids. Last year they told me I will need to get bifocals in the future and I think I need them now. I guess I will just have to wait and see what they say about it.

I'm going to try not to worry about things too much the rest of the day. I don't have any obligations the rest of the weekend so I know I will accomplish some stuff. I'm looking forward to going on a drive in a little bit and getting some food. I think that will make my day better.

I also feel a little better after venting about stuff. It really helps. I appreciate everyone that listens to me and it means the world to me. You know how to put a smile on my face even when I'm feeling bad. I always look forward to hearing from you!! You all make me so happy and I love you all!!!! Thank you to my dad and thank you to everyone at IBT for being so supportive and kind to me during this time. I love you Maxwell and I'm so glad I met you and my life is so much better with you in it. I wouldn't have so much support without your help. Thank you!!!! 💖💖💖💖💖💖

I'm going to stop rambling now because I've been writing for a long time and I'm hungry now. I hope you all enjoy the rest of the day and that everyone has a good weekend!! :)

[sophia-sol]

I do not have any book reviews for you because I have been spending my time reclined upon my sickbed playing mobile phone games - but surgery went well, and I'm recovering well too! Like, confusingly well, honestly? I have so much more energy and alertness and focus than I did after previous surgeries, just three days in. I can already tell that my Big Problem in recovery is going to making myself damn well NOT DO THINGS - I still have lots of internal repair work for my body to do, and I need to not jeopardize that!!!

I can report back my opinions on the mobile phone game industry though, which is mostly that there is way too much shiny and animation and moving graphics and trying to make you pay attention to every part of the screen at once, which is too much for my particular flavour of adhd to handle well. (the endless video ads for other games do not help with this either.) It is TOO stimulating actually, and it jars me OUT of the flow state that game designers presumably want to keep you in, in order to keep you playing the game! Also I need no games to have a timer on them ever, as a personal request from me, thank you.

I have been enjoying Infinity Loop, once I paid the few dollars to get rid of the ads; it's very soothing and nice, and requires your brain but not TOO much brain, and you get to make pretty patterns while also feeling like you're succeeding at a thing. And nothing moves unless you ask it to, and nothing flashes ever! But there is such a thing as playing too much of any one game, even a soothing nice one. So I need to get over whatever is the latest mental block keeping me from picking up a book again, and just start reading, because that'll keep me good company for longer.

In other news, there's a meme going around the part of mastodon I hang out on of posting a recommendation a day throughout December; I'm joining in by posting a fic rec a day for each of the months I've been in mxtx fandoms! I'll do a roundup here on tumblr at the end of the month of all of them, presuming I don't fall off the wagon before the month is over, I think. But if you want to see it As It Happens, I'm soph_sol at federatedfandom.net on mastodon.

[sertimusthechao]

Back, Sort Of?

Howdy all! Most of you probably weren't expecting me to update this blog again but I wanted to make a new post that expresses my future intents for this blog. To put it shortly, I'm back. With some caveats.

First off, I'm ditching the former username for my sona's likeness. As much as I'm attached to 'gameaddict30' as an alias it's also had some awkward and rough history around these parts, not to mention I feel more at home with a username that pretty much has me like *"Hey, that's me!" I've changed quite a bit since then too, so I feel like starting again on a cleaner slate.

Secondly, this isn't a guarantee that I'll be posting here often. I've come back here mostly after some realization about how a good handful of peeps I know are migrating to this site and how I... Well, pretty much want to stay in touch with everyone I know here, haha. With Tumblr possibly having ActivityPub on their roadmap, things could change in the future but I'll just have to play it by ear for now.

Furthermore, I'm going to comb through my Following list so it's tidier. Dead blogs and waning interests, mostly. Don't worry though, it's not like I've gotten tired of Sonic or the Dreamcast, heh. And please don't take it personally if I unfollow you out of the blue, just trying to have a less cluttered timeline.

Anyways, a lot of you following this blog probably remember when I posted the story about my DreamPi setup long ago! Some things have changed since then, as I've gotten not only a new computer desk + chair but a new media cabinet! More importantly, though, I've upgraded the USB modem to one that has a built-in Line Voltage Inducer. I thank pcwzrd13 of Dreamcast Live for providing this modded USB modem! No more having to swap out 9-volt batteries every now and then, heh.

Finally, my presence outside of Tumblr. On the offchance that I stop updating this blog unannounced, I'll create a masterpost where I'll list all of my active socials and websites. I'll get around to that very shortly, but you should probably follow me on these sites aside from Tumblr! I'm a lot more active on some of them; lately Twitter, Mastodon and Cohost. Though some weird stuff has been going on with the former, so you may see me flock to the latter two a little more often.

Oh, and I nearly forgot! I'm retiring the CNAME records for this blog and my art blog, so now you will see the subdomain for both blogs with Tumblr's root domain, effective immediately. I currently do not have any future plans to reuse blog.sertimus.xyz and/or art.blog.sertimus.xyz.

That said, I hope you all are having a wonderful night tonight! Nice to see you all again. :>

[yuuana]

Music May 2023 #16: X:IN - Keeping the Fire release: April 2023 genre: Kpop

Hooboy. Hokay, so, like, I'm trusting everyone reading this to behave like a rational adult or else stop reading right now, because I'm not here to listen to any whining or racist nutfuckery. And if that feels like an aggressive opening, well, I just came off research and the bugnuts bullshit these ladies are already having to face after debuting just last month is somewhere between actually insane and terrifyingly impressive. And I don't use any of those words lightly, so...

With Kpop becoming more and more of a global phenomenon, it's not surprising (or at least shouldn't be) that companies are getting more international hopefuls in auditions and including those hopefuls in new groups. As we're now tipping over into 5th gen (!!!), the way smaller labels are taking bigger risks putting together more internationally sourced groups is ... kinda nice? A bit surprising if only because I know how conservative the industry tends to be as a whole and how the metafandom can get really mean about anyone trying to do something different or experimental. So it's not all that surprising to see kpop fans already picking on these ladies for everything from their stage names to Nova's being Russian to Aria's request to have fewer Korean lines while she's still learning the language (her fourth).

As a debut single, "Keeping the Fire" should have been a pretty non-controversial song - it's a fairly standard kpop dance beat, brassy and loud, with uncomplicated vocals that reminds me strongly of Blackpink and 2NE1. It's a good song, but also the sort that could easily get lost in a playlist of dance beats and almost a let down compared to pre-debut single "Who am I" which feels, in my opinion, like a stronger showcase song. It's safe, but not really wow-ing as a song, and as I've made a review of their round of the music shows, it becomes clear why. Sure, I'm spoiled for live vocals by older, more stable idols, and the choreography for this song makes singing it live harder, but they probably could have used another six months of training to further stabilize before doing live singing stages. On the other hand, I fully believe the raw talent is there and hopefully their next comeback will have stronger live vocals.

The music video goes full brat energy, between camera work, pyrotechnics, and even a wet/rain stage section. As if the director heard the phrase "go big or go home" and took it to heart. There's a lot of sets for not even three minutes of video and a lot of attitude from each of the members, whether dancing or just prancing through the set. There's room to argue whether this is more sexualized or self-empowered (or both?), where you land is probably going to depend a lot on where you're starting from.

As a brand new group, X:in only has three tracks to their name, but their company has already shown a willingness to spend what it takes to get them out there as wide as possible, so they're likely on all the streaming services. How far they will go from here remains to be seen.

Want to sponsor a song selection? You sweet angel! For the low, low price of one (1) KoFi, I'll write up the song of your choice. ANY song of your choice. Yes, even that one that's been played to death. Yes, your obscure faves too. Sponsor a current CB for the next open Music Monday slot or sponsor a throwback for a Thursday feature! DW | Twitter | Mastodon | Ko-fi | Patreon | Discord | Twitch

[stephanieburgis]

...And now for a quick rant about the perils of wordcount! (Aren't you glad I have more space here than on Twitter or Mastodon? ;) )

Wordcount is such a lovely, easy metric for writers to track when we're trying to mark progress/finish a book in a reasonable amount of time. But it is a terrible, terrible manager if you let it control your actual writing...and I am way too prone to doing that.

A little while ago, I figured out that if I wanted to finish my current w-i-p (Claws and Contrivances, Book 2 in my Regency Dragons trilogy) as quickly as I'd hoped, I'd have to average 3,000 words a week until the first draft is finished. OK! I can usually manage a pretty steady 500 words a day, so that's not too bad at all...

...Until something comes up, like illness or a plot hurdle or a trip. In the last week, I hit both of those last two issues. First, my nice, steady writing pace slammed to a halt when I came to the point in the book where a big, underlying plot issue finally has to be brought to light, its back story satisfyingly explained...and I realized I still had no idea what the real backstory was. Oops. (The perils of being an exploratory writer in my first drafts!) Sometimes I can figure that kind of moment out on the fly; sometimes I have to really think hard for a while to work it out, and for some reason, this was one of those times when my thoughts got completely snarled up in each other, like a tangled ball of wool.

Second, I was due to head out on a weekend mini break with my older son, which was going to be amazing and also massively energy-intensive (especially with my M.E./CFS). I know there are writers like the late and wonderful Terry Pratchett who religiously hit their planned word counts every day of their lives and put off everything else until later...but (a) M.E./CFS forces me to limit my own activities severely, giving me far less leeway to do other important stuff later, and (b) personally, when I have to choose between my writing and my kids, my kids will always come first, especially while they're both so young.

...which doesn't mean that I don't worry. The truth was, even as I soaked in amazing new experiences and had wonderful parenting moments every day, I also felt low-level guilty All The Time because I wasn't making myself write while we were away. Therefore, I was totally screwing up my wordcount goal...

But guess what? Today I sat down to write for the first time since our trip away...and with my very first cup of coffee, I wrote out the words at the top of my notebook page, "So, what has been going on with Rose's uncle?"

...And the answer was right there! It was waiting for me in my subconscious, helpfully untangled by my back-brain while I was away soaking in new experiences and creative stimulation. I wrote out two swift pages of very thorough notes, and then I wrote 1185 words of the next scene (a nigh-on miraculous amount for me that flowed out as if they'd been only waiting for their chance).

If I'd hammered away at my manuscript, trying stubbornly to hit my planned wordcount without a break over the weekend, not only would I have missed out on a lot of amazing experiences with my kid (which have, btw, already started other new stories simmering in my mental background!), but I also truly don't believe I would have managed to figure out the whole backstory and get as far into the manuscript by today as I have now. Sometimes, our writing-brains just need breaks - time off to putter around unobserved, slowly unsnarling plot tangles. Sometimes, we just need to find a way to get new kinds of creative stimulation to get our stories flowing.

Word count tracking is a nice, satisfying metric, but it's a TERRIBLE and unhelpful line-manager - and I'm passing on this reminder to you in case I'm not the only one who ever forgets this!

Also: have a 21-second video of ocean waves from the beach in Penarth, Wales. I'm so glad I didn't miss them!

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