#but i've been thinking a lot about this stuff and cohost is a big part of why

[hms-no-fun]

you were on cohost? i guess too late now, how was it for you?

cohost had its fair share of problems and i could often find the community there a bit too tumblr-core fingerwaggy if you know what i mean. but the site's dead now so it's kind of a moot point. what i find myself reflecting on most these days are the positives.

first, no numbers. i think their no numbers policy was probably a bit over-aggressive, but it quelled some of the rat race popularity contest aspect of social media that often makes it so tedious. i liked their tag tracking system, their robust content warning options, and the absence of infinite scroll. what i miss most about cohost is that their text editor supported CSS, which led to people programming elaborate text effects and puzzles and games in-site that harkened back to the days of flash animations. there was something in this combination of elements that drew out a rebellious creativity in users.

cohost came at a time when social media was across the board feeling terrible (and it's only gotten worse hahaha), particularly as someone who makes shit that relies on you clicking links that take you away from the website or app. algorithms hate this and punish it. users also just seem kind of lazy and disinterested in using the internet so much as letting the internet happen to them passively. but when a post of mine went viral on cohost, people engaged with it. it wasn't just likes and shares, it was comments and additions. it felt like a place that (at its best) encouraged actual conversation and the development of new ideas among like-minded peers. when my posts did well and i included a donation link, people gave me money. it felt genuinely like a website that COULD support professional blog work in a way that was more customizable even than substack yet still RSS friendly, and the Following tab which let you easily see posts of specific users was a REVELATION, like a mini RSS reader within the website itself.

but the enterprise was unsustainable for various reasons (not all of them outside the dev crew's control) and the haters got what they wanted. now our big social media alternative is bluesky, a website that dares to ask the question "what if there was another twitter?" the answer is that it fucking sucks. i hate microblogs so much dude, why on EARTH are we still acting like these disambiguited 300-character-limit posts are the most preferable means of social communication online??? why would you set out to make a better twitter and then deliberately choose to replicate literally every aspect of the user experience that encouraged low-information high-drama conflict fabrication? WHY WOULD YOU MAKE A VERSION OF TWITTER WHERE YOU CAN EASILY LOOK UP THE ACCOUNT OF EVERYONE WHO HAS YOU BLOCKED AND IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE A FEATURE NOT A BUG???????? i just don't get it. i don't even get the optimism of the early adopters. i've seen people decry the post-election decay of the platform like "of course the cishets come in to ruin a community that was defined by trans & queer people" i'm sorry HELLO???????? from literally day zero bluesky was aiming to be a hands-off centrist IPO-friendly tech startup, there was never anything structurally embedded within the platform itself to keep this kind of decay from happening, you just happened to be on there when there were dramatically fewer users most of whom were curious tech enthusiasts. seriously, how have we not learned this lesson yet? you can't define a digital culture by the vibes of random user behavior! unless you have LAWS and GUIDELINES whereby you fucking BAN people for being shitheads, unless you enforce an actual code of conduct and punish bigoted speech and design a system that encourages constructive conversation, you are always always ALWAYS going to wind up at unhinged facebook boomer slop!

the death of cohost and the utterly predictable decay of bluesky are a big part of the reason why i've been posting so much more on tumblr. this is like the last bastion of anything even remotely resembling the old web, with its support of longposts and tagging and how easy it is to find random hobbyists doing cool shit you never knew existed before. like, yeah, you have to search that shit out and tailor your feed to not drive you crazy, but that's what i like about it!!! i am an adult with agency who understands that life is complicated and as such i expect to have to put some work into making my experience with a website positive! but in the hellworld of the iphone everything is walled garden apps for aggregating content where the content and its creators are structurally established as infinitely replaceable and uniquely worthless punching bags to be used and cast aside. everyone's given up on moderation and real jobs don't exist anymore especially if you happen to work in the "creative economy" IE are a writer or critic or artist or hobbyist of literally any kind. we've given up on expecting anything from the rich moneyboys who own and profit immensely off of the platforms whose value we literally create!!! especially now with the rise of "AI" grifters, whose work has ratcheted good old fashioned casual sexism and racism and homophobia up to levels not seen in such mainstream spaces since the early 2000s.

i like tumblr because i don't have to use a third party app to get & answer asks at length, and because it is a visual artist friendly platform where i won't be looked at funny for reblogging furry postmodernism or transgender homestuck OCs. it is a site that utterly lacks respectability and that's what makes it even remotely usuable. unfortunately it also sucks! partly it sucks because this place was ground zero for the rise of puritanical feminist-passing conservatism in leftist spaces, so it's like a hyperbolic time chamber for brain-melting life or death discourse about the most inconsequential bullshit you could ever imagine. but it also sucks because it's owned by a profit-motivated moneyboy who has consistently encouraged a culture of virulent transphobia and frequently bans trans women who call this out. so like, yeah, this place is cool compared to everywhere else, but it is exactly like everywhere else in that is also on a ticking clock to its own inevitable demise. the owners of this website will destroy everything that makes it interesting and will EAGERLY delete the nearly twenty years (!!!!!!) of posts it's accumulated the instant it will profit them to do so. this will be immensely unpopular and everyone will agree it's a tragedy and it won't matter. the culture and content of a social media platform is epiphenomenal to its rote economic valuation. i mean, obviously it isn't, zero of these massive tech companies would be what they are if so many people weren't so eager to give their time and labor away for free (and yes, writing a dumb dick joke on tumblr IS a form of labor in the same way that doing a captcha is labor, just because it's a miniscule contribution in an economy of scale doesn't mean you didn't contribute!), but once a tech company reaches a certain threshold its valuation ceases to be tethered to anything that actually exists in reality.

all of which is why i remember cohost with a heavy heart. yeah, it was imperfect. it was also independently owned, made with the explicit goal of creating a form of social media that actually tries not to give you a lifelong anxiety disorder so it can sell you homeopathic anti-anxiety sawdust suppositories. for the brief window of time when it was extant, i was genuinely hopeful for the future of being a creative on the internet. part of why i spend so much time on godfeels, a fucking homestuck fanfiction with no hope of turning a profit or establishing mainstream legitimacy, is that my readers actually ENGAGE with the material. what brought me back to using this website consistently was precisely the glut of godfeels-related questions i got, and the exciting conversations that resulted from my answers. meanwhile i put so many hours into my videos and even when they do well numerically, i barely see any actual engagement with the material. and that is a deliberate design choice on the part of youtube! that is the platform functioning as intended!! it sucks!!!

what the memory of cohost has instilled in me is a neverending distaste for the lazy unambitious also-rans that define the modern internet. i remember the possibility space of the early web and long for the expressiveness that even the most minor of utilities offered. we sacrificed that freedom for a convenience which was always the pretense for eventually charging us rent. i am thinking a lot these days about what a publicly funded government administrated social media utility would look like. what federal open source standards could look in an environment where the kinds of activities a digital ecosystem can encourage are strictly regulated against exploitation, bigotry, scams, and literal gambling. what if there was a unionized federal workforce devoted to the administration of internet moderation, which every website above a certain user threshold must legally take advantage of? i like to imagine a world where youtube isn't just nationalized but balkanized, where you have nested networks of youtubes administrated for different purposes by different agencies and organizations that operate on different paradigms of privacy and algorithmic interaction. imagine that your state, county, and/or city has its own branch of youtube meant to specifically highlight local work, while also remaining connected to a broader national network (oops i just reinvented federation lmao). imagine a world where server capacity is a publicly owned utility apportioned according to need and developed in collaboration with the communities of their construction rather than as a deliberate exploitation of them. our horizons for these kinds of things are just so, so small, our ability to imagine completely captured by capitalist realism, our willingness to demand services from our government simply obliterated by decades of cynical pro-austerity propaganda. i imagine proposing some of this stuff and people reacting like "well that's unrealistic" "that'll never happen" "they'd just use it for evil" and i am just SO! FUCKING! TIRED!!!!

like wow you're soooooo cool for being effectively two steps left of reagan, i bet you think prison abolition and free public housing are an impossible pipedream too huh? and exactly what has that attitude gotten you? what've you gained by being such a down to earth realist whose demands are limited by the scope of what seems immediately possible? has anything gotten better? have any of the things you thought were good stayed good? is your career more stable, your political position more safe, your desire to live and thrive greatly expanded? or do you spend every day in a cascading panopticon of stress and collapse, overwhelmed to the point of paralysis by the sheer magnitude of what it's cost us to abandon the future? you HAVE to dream. you HAVE to make unrealistic demands. the fucking conservatives have been making unrealistic demands forever and look, they're getting everything they want even though EVERYONE hates them for it! please i'm begging you to see and understand that what's feasible, what's reasonable, what's realistic, are literally irrelevant. these things only feel impossible because we choose to believe The Adults (and if you're younger than like 45, trust me, to the ruling class you are a child) whose bank accounts reflect just how profitable it is to convince us that they're impossible. all those billions of dollars these fuckers have didn't come from nowhere, it was stolen from all of us. there is no reason that money can't and shouldn't be seized and recirculated back into the economy, no reason it can't be used to fund a society that is actually social, where technological development is driven not by what's most likely to drive up profits next quarter but by what people need from technology in their daily lives.

uh so yeah basically that's my opinion of cohost lmao

[saphig-iawn]

Feel My Words!

I am opening commissions for short stories!

I have 5 slots open for now to see how things work out on my end with it.

I've received a lot of love for my writing, and it is something I adore doing. I love writing about the sessions and I will keep doing so and putting them here, but after writing more fiction on Cohost (Rest in power, sweet eggbug), I think this is something I would love to do more of.

The commission is live on Ko-fi, but please only purchase once you've filled out this form.

If you've read this far, then please enjoy a piece I wrote for Cohost. It is about working behind the scenes at theme park where you find yourself becoming far more involved than you thought. It is called:

Behind the Scenes

CW: noncon transformation

The keycard swipe took a few attempts before the device fixed to the wall chirped in affirmation. It was almost too hard to hear over the roar of the crowds and rides, but her new colleague's beaming grin was enough of a sign that ingress into the behind the scenes of the theme park was successful.

"Eee I just love showing new folk around! 'Specially the behind the scenes, heheheee~!" Norene squealed- wait was it Norene? Naomi? She was so excited to be lifting the veil on the magic of the park that it was very hard to see her name badge.

You had already been shown around some of the staff areas- oh, not staff, you were a Showhand, gotta keep up the act in front of the all the park visitors- but this was your first time being shown behind the scenes of a ride. It was bittersweet, because the ride was one of your favourites, was being a keyword because it got changed in the time between your last visit and getting a job here. Some of the characters were a touch dated so a big facelift and rebranding was ordered and their hard work swept away the memories and tucked them behind the wall in vacuum sealed bags. Bags that you were now looking at.

"Gawsh I miss these little guys too" 'Norene' said from behind you, "But all the new stuff is gonna make new happy memories for the kids queuing up today!" She patted you on the back, and it felt far more assuring than you expected. You hated the whole "We're a family" corporate message, but you can tell 'Norene' really cared.

Skipping from scene to scene, diorama to diorama, 'Norene' ran through the checks needed to ensure a safe ride. It being a small dark ride made these checks quite quick as everything was pretty condensed in the space, the focus was largely on the scenes the cars would pass through.

"Now, everythin' good so far?" 'Norene' wheeled on her heel to catch your eyes, her playfulness retreated behind a stern look. You nodded in agreement. Her face lit back up again. "Great! Now, we got ourselves a special item added to our checks today, one of the characters missed a beat on her performance so when she spun around for the big ol' long note, the servos in her arm ripped up her costume something good, so we gotta replace it."

A little chill shocked you as the realisation of your responsibility set in. Even on this small ride, there were just so many moving parts, so many points of potential failure. If one things goes awry then the whole experience is changed.

"Oooh yup, I had that too!" You felt 'Norene' wrap you in a deep hug, then a pat on the shoulder. "You don't got to worry though, we're both in charge o' this ride, it'll all go like clockwork!"

You soften in her support, the chill around your chest ablating in her warmth.

She directs you to where all manner of spare things are kept for the ride, including costumes for the humanoid animatronic characters.

The rebrand was a strange thing to explore from this perspective. Not quite uncanny, but everything you saw brought up feelings of familiarity and other. The ride before and after were 'period settings' according to official documentation, so there was a lot that got reused and recycled. You felt like you were in one of those hidden secrets videos where a chipper host guides you through the hidden details and traces of previous rides.

The rebrand was of a typical diamond-in-the-rough story, a bright woman with big ideas gets overlooked, patriarchal systems punch her when she's down, but a sudden beautification has the world finally see her. It was… meh. What wasn't lacklustre was the quality of the costumes. Even the saccharine sweet pink dress that the main character ends up in was incredibly well made. That was until the animatronic tore streaks through it.

As you unpacked the new costume from its protective sleeves, it amazed you. For a garment that would never be worn by a person, there were so many parts to it. Petticoats, a corset, stockings, garter belts, bloomers, suspenders, the lot. You suppose that, if this character is whirling and twirling, then you got to treat them a like a real dancer and not have too many points where a gap in the outfit might spoil the show.

The dress itself was a statement in pink satin. A skirt, that almost looked caged, but your keen eyes spotted how the tiers were actually built on small pulley systems so the animatronic beneath could send the right parts of the fabric in a spin or a flurry. The bodice pulled right in at the waist, with proud pink bows adorning the bustle and bust. Long bishop sleeves billowed out into pristine frilled cuffs. The collar sat high, with plenty of room for the deep emerald green choker.

"Like God made it herself, huh?" sighed 'Norene'. You could almost taste her admiration in the air. She walked around the table you had laid it out on, gently running her hands over the fabric like she was greeting friendly koi at a pond. Her face was aglow, but that was largely because of the light reflecting from the dress. You melt a little in yourself, seeing 'Norene' so happy. "It was Norene!" you shouted triumphantly in your head. She was finally stood still long enough to read her name tag properly.

"Whenever I ran tests on this ride, I loved watching her dance in this dress." Norene said, dreamily. "Gawsh I just wanna scoop it up off the table an' wear it myself."

There's a tone to her voice, you recognised it; thinly veiled yearning. You had been there too, watching princesses in films when you were younger and wanting to be them with every fibre of your being.

"While it makes the kids happy an' all, something like this is a little wasted on silicone and servos." Norene's pleasantness gave way a little. Barbs of envy stood a little too proud in her words. The smile on the corners of her mouth faded.

"Besides, I'm too small for the costume. While I love everythin' here, they never quite cater to everyone in all their splendors." There was a bitterness. "Its always the same kinda shapes, and the same sorta looks. And when they finally have the ba-" She stops herself, her cheeks flushed with equal parts injustice and embarrassment.

She looks up to you, almost pleadingly. You return a soft smile, but before you can offer words of support her face snaps back to jollity, like a bulb in her mind had just flashed with inspiration.

Without breaking eye contact, Norene grabs the dress by its shoulders and drapes it over your front.

"Oh… mygod…" she just about manages. Her eyes are wide and epiphanic. She suddenly retreats into herself, bunching the dress up at her chest, like a small child aware of their timidity and hiding behind a pillow. She looks at the clock, and scans the room for cameras unbeknownst to you.

"Wouldja wanna… uh.. try it on?" she trembled.

Like the Showhands who don costumes and personalities, you suddenly felt like you were being greeted by a character's biggest fan, and about to make a dream come true. You nod silently, a smile on your face.

Norene squeals with excitement, some of it tapping into the part of her brain that confuses cuteness with aggression. The dress felt this emotion the most, but she gasped as she realised that was causing the garment distress.

Like a character from one of the films, Norene danced and pranced around, guiding you to a chair and sitting you down. It felt really strange having parts of the costume being put on over your uniform, but you guessed this impromptu cosplay wouldn't be on for long so the discomfort was bearable. Despite your cargo pants, the stockings hugged your legs well. The garter sitting neatly over the frilled panties. You felt so relieved that Norene couldn't see your face because having a fairly new acquiantance be so much in your personal space had your cheeks ablaze.

Dissociating in that moment to not focus on what was happening meant Norene yanking you to your feet snapped you back. It felt so odd to be stood fully clothed with period lingerie on top. You almost felt a bit vulnerable, like you should be covering up. Norene whipped about you with the character's corset. Surprisingly, the garment needed very little adjusting. Your polo shirt was not the appropriate accompaniment to its finery.

Norene brings the dress over and holds it open for you to push your arms through and in. The inside felt amazing. The lining glided over your skin. The dress hugged and accentuated in the just the right places. If you stood still in the right place, you almost stopped feeling your stuffy polo shirt and cargo pants.

There it was. Giddiness. A bubble. Right in the chest. You felt yourself smiling.

"AaaaAAaah! Look at you darlin'!" Norene's praise was almost a shriek. You felt her tighting and adjusting, zhuzhing and tweaking. "Aaaaah its time for tha finishin' tooouuuch!"

The way the light catches the green ribbon of the choker stuns you for a moment. It felt like peering into another world, its sky alight with an aurora; its broach framing this world like a painting.

Norene brings it up to your neck, and walks around you to fasten it.

You felt… complete? A rare feeling, but you felt satisfied. Like wearing this costume was right.

"Gawsh have I waited so long for this." Norene purrs. "So. Long."

Wait. There it was again. Those barbs of envy, but this time they felt more severe. Like fangs. The hairs on your neck pricked with apprehension, a slight panic set in. Maybe it was time to take this off-

An arm barred across your shoulders as a hand clamped on your mouth.

Your gasp was caught by the hand and forced back in as you went to struggle.

"No! Nonono, don't ruin this sweetie, I've waited- uhn- so long" Norene spat.

You tried to move towards an exit of any kind, hoping you could get out, even if Norene was dragged with you. No one would care about you being in the costume, if they saw Norene trying to attack you, right?

But your feet didn't respond.

You heaved forward, almost lifiting Norene off her feet, in attempt to shift your weight but your feet would not budge.

"Darlin' it'll be so much easi- hey! nonono- so much easier if you just let it happen!"

Like the dimming lights of a rolling blackout, your legs began to seize up and cease moving. Your breath was quickening, the panic was birthing screams that Norene's hand kept denying.

"Oh come on! Gunna have to adjust your feet now, this is not a- whoa!- not a cute pose!"

Pose? What the fuck was she talking about?

Your fingers find purchase between her arm and your shoulders, the sleeves being the biggest obstacle in trying to find a point of grip. You try hard to pull her arm away, but the rising immobility made things difficult.

Your core muscles stopped responding.

The strength in your arms was beginning to wane.

"That's it darlin', there we go." Norene cooed. It was chilling, you felt like a prey caught in a trap, being soothed by your captor. How could she be like this while attacking you? "Just a lil' more, just a lil' more!"

Your arms have almost locked in place.

You deploy a last resort.

You feel your teeth sink into Norene's palm.

"Ah ya lil' rat! Stop biting!"

Like it was willed by her words, your next bite was softer. And softer.

"Aaahh… there we go…" Norene sighed, releasing her grip on your frozen lips.

You try to look at your captor but your head won't move.

Norene walks into your vision.

"God you're beautiful. The pose, I can work on, but you look so perfect hun."

You so wished your eyes could inflict pain on her but despite staring harder than you've ever stared, Norene was uneffected.

Norene ducks below your eyeline. The sound of snipping scratches through the air. You feel something shifting and brushing on your skin. You tried so, so, hard to do anything but you remained frozen and reluctantly posed in your final moment of struggle.

A hand holding butchered cargo pants enters your eyeline.

"Won't be needing these anymore!" said the hand, before it drops them like a discarded wrapper.

You feel the dress and bodice press into your form even more, as Norene reappears, holding shreds of your polo shirt.

"There we go, darlin'. Can't have the kids seeing anything outta place. Besides, princesses don't wear polos."

Your mind was racing with anger and frustration. Was this it? Being held captive as Norene's own doll?

As that thought finished in your trapped mind, Norene began to pose you. The way your vision changed would be nauseating but whatever form you were in now didn't allow you that privilege.

"You see," Norene said from behind you, adjusting your legs and hips., "it wasn't just the costume that bit the dust, it was the whole character! But now, with you here an' dressed perfectly, they're gonna find the character's been fixed and that I did it and my perfect record of maintaining this ride will be maintained! Oh and they'll be none the wiser of course, hehe!"

You wanted to frown and spit at her glee, but your face remained stubbornly serene, now framed by your gloves

"Can't have folk goin' 'round asking questions either, so I'll make sure to work a lil' magic on those who jam their noses in where they shouldn't belong." She positions herself in front of you, admiring her work, running her hands up and down your frame and curves. "Not like what I worked on you, hun. No no, you're special darlin'. It was so fortuitious that ya landed in my care on a day like today." She adjusted the skirt of your dress. "I'll take care of ya darlin', thass a good girl."

She reached above her head at a dangling control and pressed a chunky button.

Your mind filled with music. Your inner voice erupting into song. Your ears heard no sound yet your body began to move and dance like a band was playing your theme. You wanted to revolt, to fudge the moves and break your voice, but you continued, like you were made for this.

Norene smiled.

[joecial-distancing]

2024 Mediatimes

Absolutely disgusted to be drafting a post on here again. RIP Cohost.

Didn't do, like, a ton of highbrow media engagement, but did manage to get caught up with a handful of classics. Also makes it easier to come up with some resolutions & plans of action for them, so hey it's not all bad.

Literature!

This year stunk for reading! Maybe the biggest shortcoming of any of these categories--I started hot and then ran completely out of steam way too early. I've felt like a dumber and more boring person, and it's been a struggle to get momentum back up.

Some of this feeling might be coming from a place of not counting comics and genre work as "real literature," but the point is I used to have more variety!

anyway!

Iliad:

Picked up the Emily Wilson translation, since I liked her take on The Odyssey a lot. I was really into this one at the beginning. I’ve only ever read the Achilles going super saiyan parts for a class before, so it was my first crack at the bulk of the text. I really liked the way that the mass death was approached; even as rando soldiers are being slaughtered, most of them get named, often with some lines about their families at home, and a lot of them even get some words about who they were and the life they’d lived. But then that ended up being almost all that was going on in the thing. Like in between the school class excerpts (things like the night raid, diomedes fightin' gods, achilles going apeshit, etc), the text really is mostly a big slog of duels that all run together after so many of them, and I had a tough time reaching the finish line.

Tehanu:

I'd read & enjoyed the previous three Earthsea books pretty recently, so I didn't revisit those when the Shelved by Genre crew covered them, but I hadn't made it to this one before. I was going back and forth with my opinion on it, but I think they kind of nailed it to the wall on the podcast by referring to it as a "custody thriller." It's a book that's Up To Something, but the Something is claustrophobic in a less artful way than Tombs of Atuan was, and then the return of dragons and destiny stuff at the very end was really strange and undermining. Ended up putting me off of trying to read the short stories.

Manga Digression--Junji Ito:

A Read-Along experience for Shelved by Genre, and a good reference point to have checked off. Uzumaki's easily tops on that list, and I think I didn't care for Gyo much by the end of it.

Manga Digression--Dragon Ball->Dragon Ball Super:

Figured I was already on the manga reading apps, might as well tackle another Big One, especially since Toriyama dying this year had a way bigger impact on me than I would've expected. I was never a Dragon Ball kid growing up, but I'd managed to osmose a lot from the surrounding pop culture.

Turned out I pretty much had the gist of Z-era from memes and having watched some DBZ Abridged back in college, but the early comics were interesting for better & worse. That first arc basically had exactly one joke to hammer on over and over, which ended up just being Sexual Harassment. Might've come across funnier if I were more familiar with the Journey to the West stuff that's having that kind of thing inserted into it. I'm also curious how much of all that made it past the censors for the american localization of the anime. The rest of it all the way through Z was basically the Shonen Bible, which was cool to see how much groundwork centered around this one property. Turns out the secret sauce was "make it less hetero."

My last post on Cohost was about reading through the Super stuff, which I can just repeat here--it's fun enough, but the ballooning scale of the arcs' threats being treated with identical severity each time ended up making me sad in the same way as researching satellites in a civ game.

The Stones Are Hatching:

Very much a coming of age story for kids, but steeped in fucked up terrifying English monsters and folklore. This had been a book I'd grabbed off the library shelf as a kid, and it left a huge impact on me. Was inspired to track it down again after honeymooning in Scotland, and it didn't disappoint on reread. Whole subthemes around WW1 that had gone over my head as a child.

Piranesi

Good recommendation, Jordan! Susanna Clarke at 2/2. I dunno why labyrinths make for such a good thematic space, but I love 'em. Very fun to have made it to this during a year that I'd played Void Stranger.

Speaking of, I saw somewhere that that one stop-motion studio had acquired rights to do an adaptation of this, which sounds interesting, but also the way more natural medium to adapt this kind of story to is 100% video games, and I think that's the first time I've thought that in my life.

A City On Mars

I feel like Zach Weinersmith's become one of the more interesting people to have emerged from that era of webcomic-making, in no small part due to his commitment to doing a lot of reading and research to back himself up, and I'm enjoying this arc of his & Kelly's growing profile as pop science figures. The book's solid, too. Pretty light reading overall, but it seems to be taking off at exactly the right time to throw some much-needed cold water on some of the more annoying public figures out there. It's asking good questions.

Movies!

Didn't keep up very well with (good) new releases, but I did do some catching up on a lot of 90s stuff I hadn't seen when I was younger

Bring It On:

Technically watched this one last year, but forgot to add it to the EOTY post. Really, really surprising movie. It started with a bunch of the usual components that show up in teen movies, and then swerved extremely hard into directions I absolutely was not expecting.

Legally Blonde:

Absolute classic of moviemaking & characterization, I'm extremely happy to have finally watched the thing.

Jumanji Remake:

"Watchable," given low expectations. Less interesting and less funny than the Robin Williams one

Pitch Perfect:

lol they ripped so much off of Bring It On and then made a dumber and more boring movie out of it. Jacob Wysocki from Dropout shows up briefly, which was fun to recognize him.

The Menu:

This was a fun time! Was worried we were going to be in for a cheap "eat the rich, audience claps" kinda thing, but then it kind of just turned into a movie about Ralph Fiennes chewing the scenery, which has never been a bad time. Nicholas Hoult was actually extremely good casting too, which isn't something I always think about him.

D&D Movie:

Most of any buzz I'd heard about this one was along the lines of "better than it had any right to be," which ended up being technically true, but also turned out to indeed be damning it with faint praise. Fundamental problem at the end of the day is Chris Pine's playing the main character, and he's exclusively there to Whedonvoice the entire time.

Stoned Watching:

Shelby and I got a tradition of every six weeks or so taking an edible and watching franchise movies that one or both of us hasn't seen before. The tradition started with the Twilight series, which were extremely fun to do that with, and we've been failing to hit the highs (heh) of those ever since.

Fast & Furious--FFX and Hobbes & Shaw: Had a few of these to get over the finish line from last year. These two in particular were weird ones to catch up on, because for me they really call in to question what the fuck people are talking about with their opinions on certain action stars. Why was everyone spending the last decade going bananas over The Rock? why do people talk about Jason Momoa like he's some kind of underappreciated star in the making? I understand these movies to be part of the basis of all that, and both of those guys are so goddamn annoying in these! What are you people talking about.

Die Hards--123, Live Free, A Good Day: Whole series checked off, each of them in order was worse than the last. First one's obviously a classic--I feel like people don't quite talk enough about how evil and insane McClane is in this, that santa hat dead body thing was a real sicko move. 2 and 3 are perfectly fine '90s action sequels, and then the last two are some of the most nauseating boomer dad pandering I have ever seen in my life.

Speed and Speed 2: Speed 2 is entertainingly terrible, in large part because they couldn't get Keanu Reeves back and instead cast a plank of wood as a new stand-in character. Dafoe scenery chewing always appreciated. Speed 1 though is an incredible idea for a movie, and extremely well executed

Twisters:

Mission accomplished: this was an extremely dumb movie that was very fun to go watch in the theater with friends.

Pride & Prejudice(s):

Shelby was telling me about how people have big disagreements on the 90s miniseries vs the '05 movie, and I was like "oh the only thing I know about either is that a guy from Succession's in the movie version and Succession watchers think that's extremely funny" which led to us watching both of these during Christmas time.

I think I mostly liked the miniseries more, but I did prefer MacFayden's take on the character. Some of that's down to directing, though, because they gave movie Darcy more stuff to do when he's in a scene but not talking yet. Like it makes sense for him to be curt with people when they're interrupting him writing a letter etc, whereas Firth's only ever staring out windows or into fireplaces--not exactly preoccupied with anything important. I dunno if I'm likely to read the book at any point, but I'm definitely on board with P&P being a story well worth checking out if you want to see a foundational work for so much romcom and sitcom writing.

Little Women:

Similar background--I knew people had OPINIONS on the Greta Gerwig version, but never read it and never watched an adaptation and we're officially on a period piece kick now. Only got through the 90s version before the year closed out. It's fun companion to P&P, like here's 50 years into the future, in America, in an Actual lower-class family, now let's compare & contrast & ignore some age differences.

Podcasts!

Mad Men Project

It's nice to have the picnic boys releasing stuff again! They've done media lightning round & one-off type stuff before that I've mostly been lukewarm on, but a several-episode deep dive is very solid ground for them. Super excited for future seasons.

Shelved by Genre

I'm a fan of the hosts, and it's made for a really good reading list. Fell off a bit after the Junji Ito unit, will have to check in on what they have coming up next.

FatT: Palisade

They finished the season on a real hot streak and I'm excited for them to start releasing stuff again next year

Games!

Void Stranger (mop-up)

The previous thing I'd gotten stalled on turned out to have a really easy solution, so I managed to work my way through some other secrets and unlocks. Reached a point though where it unlocks a mode that's a completely different video game, at which point I looked up youtube gameplay and decided "ohhhh no, I will not be running this many bullet hell drills to get the hang of this." Extremely good game! Labyrinths are a solid theme to build a game around.

KOTOR II Content Restored

Got a bee in my bonnet after playing BG3, and figured it'd be a good time to check out how the Content Restored mod played. Ultimately, the mod was mediocre; it fleshed out some cutscenes pretty well, but there still wasn't enough to make the final section Work, and the whole droid factory was a complete dud. I was vindicated on how inexcusably terrible BG3's party & inventory management systems are, though! Shit was basically a solved problem 20 years ago, it's like Larian decided to make things bad on purpose.

The other really interesting thing to fall out of the revisit was rereading all the Kreia stuff, armed with some inside baseball context about the game's writing. The guy who wrote Kreia also wrote Durance from Pillars of Eternity, and Durance's whole deal in hindsight is so clearly Chris Avelone taking a second crack at situating Kreia Ideology in a game world, but stated more plainly. The problem of course being that this ideology basically boils down to "Struggle is virtuous; generosity is handouts and therefore bad." Code the character spouting that as grey smoke instead of red, though, and people will read some serious depth into that starwars character!

Octopath Traveler II

I was in the mood for a jrpg, but ended up not being a big fan of this one. The tone of the thing was all over the place; it's written at a very juvenile level, but then one of the main storylines is about stuff like child brainwashing and human trafficking incestuous bloodline-purity sex murder cults

Balatro

I think I got past the addiction faster than a lot of people, but definitely put in my share of time on it. I might need to dip my head back in there now that there's been a couple gameplay patches.

Hades II Early Access

I'm enjoying myself with it so far. Compared to the first one, the game's rhythm is less twitchy reflex, and more zoning and positioning, which I'm into.

Caves of Qud

I'm having fun, but I might not have the exact right kind of personality to have this one dominate my life in the way that it apparently does for some people.

Magic: The Gathering

This one's been the real all-star this year. Some friends got me a commander precon for my birthday & set up a game night that week, and I've been fully In It the whole year. In addition to being a good attention outlet for staying off of social media feeds, it's just been good socially! Has me out of the house seeing friends more often than I've been able to do since COVID first hit.

Been exclusively playing commander, but maybe one day will branch out into draft or something

Music!

Cleared 1,024 on the 1,001 album generator (which has a total length of 1,089 because it includes entries from every published edition of the book). It's been educational! It's maybe not been worth the time investment, but my opinions on its pitfalls are way better informed now than they would have been 3 years ago before I started the project.

Next year I'll have a couple new music tasks once this wraps up. First, I need to start actually listening to and engaging more with the amount of stuff that gets posted on the Picnic Discord music channel. But then Second is that the generator has NG+ where people who have completed the 1,089 can submit an album, and then have a daily album generated from the user-submitted list. In other words, it'll be a fun look at the kind of stuff that's foundational or interesting to the kind of person that would commit to this thing for 3 years. I dunno if admin keeps a full available list anywhere, but I know there's some Big touchpoints I haven't listened to on there, like Weezer or Sophie.

Highlights:

Run-D.M.C. Raising Hell:

Hard to not be charmed by this era.

Pink Floyd The Wall and Wish You Were Here:

Growing up, my parents for some reason had a lot of albums from The Alan Parsons Project hanging around, Alan Parsons maybe being a recognizable name as the guy who did the audio production on some big deal albums, like Abbey Road and Dark Side Of The Moon. His music project is a weird blend of cool audio layering playground, art rock, and some of the most exhausting 80s soft pop you've heard in your life.

This year was the year I learned that Pink Floyd is absolutely the outlet for getting more of the parts of APP that I liked. Tremendous band.

David Bowie Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust:

Absolutely buckwild that the first Bowie album I got from this project was Low, with Ziggy Stardust being the last. That is like exactly the opposite order that someone trying to learn about Bowie should do it. There's a handful of artists on the list that have way too many albums included; Bowie's one of the few that actually kind of needs most of them on there.

Fela Kuti Zombie and Femi Kuti Femi Kuti:

Kuti Family undefeated. Afrobeat really does it for me, and Fela in particular was hugely influential on the parts of new wave that I like a lot.

Frank Zappa Hot Rats:

Hell yeah Zappa

Portishead Third:

More abrasive than Dummy, but makes for a really fun midway point between trip hop and something along the lines of HEALTH

Curtis Mayfield Superfly:

Underrated stand battle. Definitely one of those albums where you listen to it, you get familiar with it, then you start hearing everywhere how much people sampled it later on.

Pixies Surfer Rosa:

I owe Doolittle a relisten, since it was the literal first album that the project served me, but for now I actually think I prefer Surfer Rosa. Like one of them is the Pixies doing Pixies stuff, and the other is the literal soil for what would turn into the next 20 years or so of Good rock projects

The Mars Volta Deloused in the Comatorium:

Tremendous work, holding down the prog rock fort during a trying era.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs It's Blitz!:

Man these guys are like the ideal example of a 4.5/5 on the thing's ratings. Had a lot of fun with the album and I absolutely love when they come up on the highlights playlist, but they're just missing a little bit of juice that I can't quite ID.

U2 War:

I knew I wasn't just imagining that they had a genuinely great album in their discography.

Adele 21:

"Rolling in the Deep" is well worth cost of admission, but the rest of the thing really really held up for me.

Neu! NEU! 75:

It's the shame of british music critics that this genre's only really known in the anglosphere as krautrock, but goddamn it I really like krautrock.

Funkadelic Maggot Brain:

Opening track's an all-timer. I felt like it was kind of losing me in the middle, but then "Wars Of Armageddon" brought me back with the synthesizer fart noises. Long Live George Clinton.

Onto next year!

[cedarspiced]

gazans - i get a lot of messages and i'm trying my best to get through them all, but there are a lot. if i don't reply, i promise i'm not ignoring. i'm reblogging and donating where i can.

hiya! i'm cedar or nyx! i'm a 23 y/o grey-ace fagdyke creature living in the PNW.

buy me a kofi?

my free/cheap anthro bases

gazafunds.com

sudanfunds.com

some things about me:

ΘΔ grackle-cat griffin, sable, cat, deinonychus, coydog, painted dog

i use it/they pronouns

i'm ADHD and autistic

i'm a physically disabled cane & wheelchair user with long covid, POTS, and several other fun conditions

i'm polyam and partnered with @bovinebimbobussy <3

i'm a huge paleoenthusiast and while i do have a soft spot for Mesozoic dinosaurs, i'm also a big fan of all the other prehistoric critters and plants. opabinia my beloved

i'm a furry and reblog furry art & fursuit pics sometimes, so if u don't wanna see that, please block those tags!

i also do reblog unreality stuff from time to time and I often forget to tag it, so if that's something that could bother you, please be forewarned.

i also reblog some nsfw text posts, so please be aware of that!

rent lowering gunshots:

kink belongs at pride and always has

masks & vaccines are awesome and slow the spread of disease

black lives matter and always have

free palestine. death to israel & to the USA.

if you say you're trans, you're trans. end of. there's no other requirements.

sex is a spectrum, not a binary. also, intersex people belong in the queer community.

TMA and TME are just terms used to describe a group most affected by a certain type of discrimination (in this case, transmisogyny). no, TME does not automatically mean transmasc. it just means anyone who can't exempt themself from transmisogyny. (what do TME/TMA mean?)

thought crimes aren't real and having paraphilias doesn't automatically make you an Evil Bad Person

callout posts are only ever harmful. yes even if they really did do that thing they're being accused of.

the tr*nsandroph*bia movement is just Mens' Rights Movement: Transgender Edition. yes, transmascs are oppressed. that is purely because we are transgender. not because we are transgender & masc.

asexual and aromantic people belong in the queer community. yes, even the cishet ones.

tagging explanations, sideblogs, other socials, and fursona refs under the cut :3

my tags:

#cedar speaks - my personal posting tag

#my face - self explanatory

#my art - also self explanatory

#no id - posts with no image description

#partial id - posts with some images described, but not all. alternatively, posts that have an ID that only describes part of the image (e.g. a post with a picture of an orange cat wearing a blue t-shirt that's captioned 'i love his little shirt' but the image is just described as 'a small animal'.)

#described - posts that have all images fully described

my sideblogs:

@sableteeth - therian/alterhuman sideblog @cedarspiced-artchive - all of my art gets reblogged to here

@morrowinds - all things elder scrolls

@slime-squishes - mined craft :]

@zooplanet - planet zoo, though i've been thinking about making it a sims sideblog as well

@the-fog-chamber - echo vn stuff

@fagmoans - horny blog. dni unless you're 18+

other socials (not really active on em, but jic this site goes tits-up):

instagram

cohost

bluesky

furaffinity

my fursonas:

Cedar (my namesake <3)

art by marlomogensen, with minor edits & background by me

Nyx (my truesona)

art by yours truly!

[circadianwolf]

Shadow of the Erdtree thoughts

[Originally posted on Cohost 25/8/24. Edited for formatting because tumblr apparently refuses to allow nested lists in any fashion.]

I finally finished SOTE yesterday. Putting these thoughts in a post for linkage elsewhere. Spoilers obviously.

First:

I think base game Elden Ring is beautiful, and I think the DLC is as well. I really enjoyed how the DLC immediately pushes into new palettes and biomes that weren't seen in the base game - from the starting prairie area (how rare to say "I like their use of brown" but it really does work for me) to some of the much more outlandish later areas. I feel like the day-night transitions also have a lot more color shifts in the sky that look really great.

Second:

I found the DLC narratively disappointing. I liked the NPCs (and was fortunate enough to not break any of them outside of some minor stuff with Thiollier and Moore) and I liked the concept of the hornsent and their relationship with Marika, but the actual Miquella plot is a real letdown to me.

These games (Demon Souls/Dark Souls/Bloodborne/base Elden Ring) are obviously associated with ambiguity (though I think sometimes that is overblown, e.g. in the first Dark Souls), but after finishing this DLC, looking up stuff I missed, and reading some other people's comments, I genuinely do not know what Miquella needs from the Land of Shadow, what the connection is between Messmer's position in the Land of Shadow and Miquella's goals, or what the player's role in the Land of Shadow is. This is literally the central plot of the DLC, and I feel like I should not be in the dark about it. It kind of seems like Miquella just needs to walk through a hole in some rocks (a hole we are prevented from walking through not by some message about being unfit for godhood, but by a 5 foot rise of rock), which seems very silly.

I hated the suggestion some people made from the base game that Miquella charmed Mohg into kidnapping him, and I hate that it is directly brought up here. I would like to read this as denial on Ansbach's part, but I feel like the game leans pretty strongly toward this being true. (It also doesn't really make sense to me within the world of the fiction, because if Miquella can charm Mohg, why can't he just charm Radahn in the first place? If Miquella can charm demigods, why is there even any civil war among them at all? Can't Miquella just win automatically?)

I don't mind many of the things left confusing or ambiguous in the base game being unaddressed here (I would still very much like anything at all pointing me toward a specific interpretation of what Radagon actually is, but I understand that isn't directly relevant to this DLC), but the almost total lack of reference to the Albinaurics is pretty disappointing to me. So much of the story of Miquella in the base game centers on the Albinaurics' faith in him, and the absence of any elaboration one way or the other on that seems very odd.

Radahn's reappearance, while not entirely out of the blue, does strike me as strange and unsatisfying. I didn't expect to fight Miquella directly, so that's not my issue here; but Radahn feels like a rerun, not just of himself and Mohg but also of Dark Souls 3's Twin Princes. Part of this is certainly bound up with my opinions on the final boss as a gameplay experience (see below), but I also think, trying to set the actual fight aside, there's nothing interesting done with bringing Radahn back. I saw someone postulating an alternative final boss with Miquella resurrecting Godwyn's spirit in Mohg's body instead, and while obviously my imagination has less constraints than game development, I found that idea immediately more compelling in its storytelling potential than Radahn.

Third:

On the whole, I enjoyed the big setpiece fights of this DLC, with one extremely glaring (and unsurprising, given the reception I've now been reading) exception.

Bosses I liked:

Rellana is a fun reprise of some visuals I've really enjoyed before - I am one of those people who loves Artorias, Pontiff Sulyvahn, and Dancer of the Boreal Valley.

The Divine Beasts are incredible fights to look at. I feel like they would be a nightmare to actually parse as fights in melee, but fortunately I wasn't trying to do that.

Bayle is a great new dragon fight (although the other dragon fights, like those in the base game outside of Fortissax and Placidusax, feel too repetitive).

The Scadutree Avatar is a great new giant monster fight.

Leda & co. is the only good version of this kind of fight From has ever done. I really like Dryleaf Dane.

Bosses that didn't make much of an impression on my positively or negatively:

Messmer, Romina, Metyr, Putrescent Knight. I do appreciate Romina for finally giving us a version of Scarlet Aeonia that is regularly usable though - I used it for basically all the bosses afterward, including many of the final base game bosses as I finished my replay.

The boss I thought absolutely sucked:

Radahn.

On top of being narratively uninteresting, as I mentioned above, the fight feels like a remix of stuff we've seen before that doesn't evoke anything new from their combination. The only really unique part of the boss fight, I think, is Miquella's grab, which is a neat gimmick but not enough to overcome how much of a slog the fight is.

I think the most infuriating thing to me is that it feels straight up worse to bring in the story NPCs for the fight - your reward for having completed their quest lines and brought them to this climatic fight is that the fight gets much longer and harder (because they don't contribute damage to match the boss's increased EHP). It's a bizarre choice to me when in this very DLC there are multiple bosses that let you summon NPCs into them without affecting the boss, because the game wants you to use them! But here it feels like you are punished for doing so. (I must admit I also made this harder on myself because my replay character was a gimmick build centered on applying buffs and debuffs, using spirit ashes and NPC summons to do much of the damage.)

The boss is also one of those, common in these later games and especially their DLCs, that does extremely long combos of attacks with few and small opportunities to counter attack, which I find to be an uninteresting challenge.

Overall:

I enjoyed most of my time with this DLC, because I like playing Elden Ring. I had had a desire to replay Elden Ring repeatedly since I first completed it and largely held off, because the base game is so damn big and I could not justify it to myself over doing many other things with my time. I said I would allow myself to do so when the DLC came out, and I did that (starting a few weeks before the actual DLC release, so I would be ready to go in when it dropped).

The base game is still largely good, and as I said, I really enjoyed exploring the new regions of the DLC just to see the beautiful, weird landscapes and the freaks that they were populated with. But having completed it, I feel very mixed about it; without a satisfying narrative to tie it all together - or even just an unsatisfying but compellingly confusing collection of narrative pieces to chew on and ponder, which is how I mostly feel about the base game - Shadow of the Erdtree ultimately feels like less than the sum of its parts.

ETA: Shoutouts to Jolan and Anna, who carried my spirit-focused build in the endgame when my Greatshield Lads were finally no longer able to do the job.

[blueberry-lemon]

What I Did In 2023

Ever since finishing school in 2017, I've always had a hard time feeling like I've "accomplished anything" in a given year. The months all blur together, and it's crazy how quickly I will forget something that happened or something I did.

To help myself with this, I wrote up a post last year of What I Did In 2022, which honestly felt good. So I figured I'd try again.

Sorry if you find these kinds of posts obnoxious. Hidden under the Read More just in case you do!

A few things I accomplished in 2023:

I wrote some stuff

I wrote Chapters 3 and 4 of Soul Symphony: Abandoned Encore. This is a sequel to a webcomic called Soul Symphony that I made and completed from 2010-2015. Olivia Myers, former music maestro and magical-girl adventurer, lives life as a depressed freelancer after quitting her teaching job. I think literally only like 2 or 3 people are even reading this, but good enough!

I wrote about JOMO, the Joy of Missing Out, when players have to work with different characters and resources in games.

I wrote a review of Bittersweet, an album by Jamie Paige.

My big piece of the year, which I chipped away at for months, reflected on nostalgia in culture and our personal lives.

I wrote about Cozy Games, which bizarrely was recognized in a Critical Distance weekly roundup.

I wrote about my fear for the direction of art and social media, a review of the writing in Sea of Stars, and other Cohost/Tumblr posts, which you can find in the #blogofkylelab tag.

As usual, I've continued my work as a Writer working on Rhythm Doctor, detailed below.

Art and Game Dev

Another sad year of barely 👏 drawing 👏 anything 👏 which is a huge bummer but I'm coming to terms with it.

Don't have anything finished to show for it, but doing a lot of messing-around in Twine and RPGMaker, which has been good for practice at least.

I funded the guest art and music for an upcoming card game, Isle of Swaps. I commissioned around a dozen artists, who I think drew around 50 total cards. Getting paid work as an artist is getting rough out there, so I wanted to help freelance artists the best I could.

Still working on Rhythm Doctor and A Dance of Fire and Ice at 7th Beat Games

We released Act 5 of Rhythm Doctor, which was our huge undertaking of the year! I co-wrote this with fizzd, and for the first time we were working with a completely blank slate with no levels made beforehand. I was recently looking through my Google Docs and was reminded how many different drafts and outlines I had come up with for this Act, some of which were long before the "athlete" story was even decided upon at all. I eventually helped come up with the character of Lucky (designed by our pixel artist Winston), and we got it all built out from there. I had a part in almost every sentence you see in the Act, I believe. I think I did an okay job, and players seem to really like the story and characters of Act 5, so that's a big relief.

Other Stuff

I've been running IndieGamesOfCohost for more than a full year now! I hope people have been enjoying this. It's been really tough to make the spare time for it, especially getting multiple developer interviews up per month, but I'm gonna keep pushing forward. Maybe "one interview a month" is a better goal to aim for. It's hard to tell how much people enjoy the efforts, but people do keep Liking and Sharing and Following so hopefully that means I'm doing something good with my spare time lol.

My partner and I moved! Aside from Act 5 of Rhythm Doctor this was probably the biggest thing. It was my first time apartment-hunting, as well as finding and paying for a moving truck and buying big furniture, getting renters insurance and all sorts of annoying stuff. In past apartments, I was lucky enough to be invited in as a roommate after the place was already set up. I also helped my parents pack up to move from the house they lived in for 28 years. Lots of moving. Hopefully no moving in 2024.

I hope your 2023 was bearable! Take pride in the little things you were able to get done. Let's all push through 2024 together.

[spookygayferret]

Things I like about Cohost so far, after having used it several months

So first of all, I've been trying to find another place to go that isn't Tumblr (Pillowfort is always an option of course), I actually made a Cohost account months ago during another big "Tumblr might actually choke to death for real this time" scare. And in light of all the bigotry going around (particularly from the staff), I've been thinking about making Cohost my permanent main social media platform. I like my Tumblr mutuals, but that's...honestly about it? Like the only thing keeping me here at this point is the community I've curated and I'm sure it's the same for most people. Yeah, I enjoyed the boops as much as everyone else, but it hardly makes up for Tumblr being a shit platform.

So here's what I like about Cohost so far:

It feels like a cross between Tumblr and Twitter, except with a lot of the bad parts stripped out? There's no algorithm, not even a For You page, it's literally all just pages and tags you follow. Completely curated experience.

There's no app, but the website actually works well on mobile! And there are options for installing it as a shortcut/webapp on mobile, if that's important.

They actually allow NSFW stuff, you just need to put a content warning on it.

No pornbots, at least not that I've seen.

I haven't run across a single racist shithead, TERF, or right-wing dipshit. Not yet anyway. I'm aware that Cohost isn't perfect, it has it's problems and it's not like bigots don't exist on there, but it's nowhere near Tumblr or Twitter (again, far as I've seen).

No AI bullshit.

The OFMD tag is basically completely dead at the moment, not a lot of gay pirate fans on Cohost. Same for Good Omens and What We Do in the Shadows. But with your help--!

Other than that, I don't have a lot of complaints about Cohost. I know some people do and that's fucking fine, there is no such thing as "good" social media anyway (fight me on this, idc) and in an ideal world we'd all have our own personal websites without a big corporation staffed by racist queerphobic asshats looming over our heads. But as far as social media goes, Cohost is the better option among what we've been offered.

[nenekiribookwyrm]

CWs: mention of death.

March 2023 Update!

The weather continues to get warmer and my scales are thankful for it. I've had a massive case of cabin fever lately and been itching to go out flying in weather that won't freeze me into a dragon popsicle. Here's the update on what's been going on around the castle this past month.

Firstly, I had a death in the family about halfway through the month that knocked me off-balance in terms of getting things done. Add to that finishing up an intensive project at work and it might not be a surprise that I didn't get much done creatively this month. I'm trying to be patient with myself as I move through the grieving process, but being creative is a big part of how I like to spend my free time. So the last half of March has been a blur and I'm hoping that next month I'll be able to pull myself out of the funk and start making things again.

If you didn't see me talk about it last month, I was recently published in Happy Howlidays: A Furry Short Story Anthology which has a bunch of holiday themed stories and features my story "One Last Winter Ride". I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out and hope that you'll check it out! https://thurstonhowlpub.storenvy.com/products/36440494-happy-howlidays-a-furry-flash-fiction-christmas-anthology

I joined a werewolf themed game jam at the beginning of the month and while I haven't worked on my submission as much as I had anticipated at the beginning of the month, I am still excited to submit whatever I have done. I think I'm going to need to pivot my project into something with a lot smaller scope if I want to submit something complete, but I have a few ideas that might work for that. It's just making sure that I make the time to get those ideas written down. If this sounds cool to you, please check out the list of games once everyone has submitted theirs and play them: https://itch.io/jam/werewolf-jam

The current deadline is April 6th, which is the next full moon, so howl with us as we play some fun indie werewolf experiences.

We're in the middle of Furry Awards Season and the window to vote on your favorite furry books and short stories is closing fast! The Ursa Major Awards close at the end of the month, March 31st and the Coyotl Awards close voting on April 15th. Make sure that you vote and make your voice heard:

https://ursamajorawards.org/Voting.htm

https://coyotlawards.com/2022-coyotl-awards-ballot/

Twitter is going through another death gasp, and with the proposed changes being implemented soon I figured it was a good idea to mention I am other places. You can find me at the links over here: https://nenekiribookwyrm.carrd.co/

It feels like Tumblr and Cohost are going to be the places I post a lot of stuff should Twitter fall, so be sure to check those places if you want to keep up with me on social media.

Contact your representatives! If you live in the United States, there are a ton of anti-trans bills that are being pushed through right now and we need to call our senators and house members to let them know that won't fly. There's also the matter of the Tiktok ban bill, also termed the RESTRICT Act, that is much more than a proposed ban on Tiktok. It has a lot of wide reaching applications that could make privacy on the internet much more difficult in the future. I would recommend reading up on the bill and then calling your reps to let them know how you feel. It's a rough time for LGBTQ+ folks, especially trans people, and we gotta stick together through it.

I've been catching up on reading and as such, I'm posting reviews over to my Goodreads account: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/97223644-nenekiri-bookwyrm

Of note this month was Rafts, the debut book from Utunu which I enjoyed quite a lot. A very sweet gay love story that touched me.

That's about everything I have to share for this month. Here's to healing and a better state of mind the next time I speak to y'all.

Curl up with a good book and be kind to yourself