#im active every day on my patreon discord

[intermundia]

Hope you’re doing well ♥️ miss your posts 😢

hey! thanks. i'm doing pretty well actually! the second half of last year was basically lost in a cancer/depression blackout brain fog, though i am very proud of the posts that came out of that period and the few stories i did manage to write. the problem with six months of stress, pain, and depression is that your house gets fucked cleaningwise and your life gets fucked schedulewise. there's just a lot to do on the rise up back to normal functioning, much of it offline. i'm on the climb now and finally checking off things on my to-do list, which is literally still two pages long single spaced lol. it makes me very pleased to know that you enjoy my analysis and are interested to read more, and believe me i will be posting plenty more in the future!! thank you for your patience <3

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 11/8/22

two days before my birthday problems

listening

Arrival At The Library from the Escape From New York soundtrack (1981, dir. and also scored by Carpenter). this is one of my favorite tracks bc of how tense it is-- so much music theory has been written about this score but i like it bc i like short fast repetition. makes me feel like i am inside computer as i do my little computer tasks.

the tracks on this thing are so short and mostly blend into each other, so it should not be startling that a thing i like so much is a hair over a minute long but i'm startled anyway.

unrelated to the music but related to the movie: let me lay out a scenario. a friend's partner (neither active on this site) was recently gushing about kurt russell's performance in this movie (same) and like. i know this man knows what bisexuality is. me saying "oh yeah have you seen big trouble in little china? suzee pai is so hot in that" got NO nibbles bc he immediately started talking about the women in the trucker episode of cowboy bebop.

i cannot outright ask this man for reasons of basic propriety if he is also bi. i can't even do the little signalling hey-im-bi-are-you-bi signalling dance bc 1) doesn't work on guys and 2) only works in real life and not the online. this isn't a problem to solve i'm just nosy and want to know if my vibes are right. also this would bump up the total of bi guys i know but have not dated to a grand total of three.

-

reading

one of my favorite grad students, a nuclear anthropologist, was briefly quoted in this middling article about bitcoin's survival in the event of a nuclear war (no). i do not know this guy in real life but i do have a parasocial relationship bc we used to run in the same physics/astro twitter circles before i had to use twitter for work and stopped using it personally for my health.

this is more of an excuse to talk about one of my favorite patreon structures, where it's just Some Guy doing his thing with a three dollar a month tier or something. i don't particularly care about new or exclusive content, or the perceived value thereof, i like the cut of someone's jib and want to throw a couple dollars for groceries their way. i want a handy spot to find, say, all the articles someone's written and been quoted in all in one place and nobody keeps their fuckin CV or portfolio updated and i'll be fucking damned before i use twitter again. because of my own personal choices, i am going to whine about how it is very hard to keep track of some of you people's work and what you're up to. inoreader only does so much, especially with twitter in an upheaval.

-

watching

this teardown of two of those automatic cocktail makers was very fun, got passed around the makerspace discord a bit. spoiler: it's pretty gross in there. this host is just a nice jersey boy who's lightly exasperated, which was of course extremely compelling to me.

in the original test run of these machines, he does what i value most in a critic but for food-- identify what is happening flavorwise, if it's typical or atypical for the drink, and break down exactly which flavor notes clash and why. i do not think i have every really thought about What Alcohol Flavors I Like other than knowing i have a light mint allergy and a dislike for tannins so this was a fun brain exercise.

-

playing

so there's a goofy little claw machine pie dispenser in the video game Fallout 4 that does not actually dispense pie. well, depending on a complex series of factors but mostly my luck stat (1) it would take about a hundred and fifty tries to get a slice of pie, across hundreds and hundreds of hours of playing this frankly disappointing game. but the sims is a little too scary and the settlement building here scratches a brain itch.

so when i got the fuckin pie in a shed in a DLC i shrieked out loud in real life. this was before i googled the stats to include in this post and found out this location is bugged and always gives you the pie. so it FUCKIN goes. i briefly considered building a museum to it, but i'm still going to put it in a display case in my player housing so none of my companions eat it.

i don't even have a pic of it in the machine bc i wasn't fast enough, it's more like a little ritual gesture than actually expecting to get the pie at this point.

-

making

a friendly reminder that my birthday is thursday :) and i am making a bigger fucking deal out of it than usual bc quite frankly i should not be alive. in lieu of commemorative gifts, donate to your local food bank or Native American tribe. more info here!

went into some sort of fugue state last night and wrote twenty pieces of mail. are the most overdue replies in the mail yet? heavens fucking no. usually outgoing mail goes in the toucan, but not this fat sheaf, which was very satisfying to hold. no fancy fanned-out pic bc many are going to beloved mutuals

and woe! more red lentil soup be upon ye (do not @ me. the lower shelf is full of various frozen meats. also do not @ me about the margaritaville shrimps. they were two dollars). square containers when these fake tupperware die, i think, although it feels like soup should always be in a round container.

[sevdrag]

dreamwidth update: Fanfic Commissions 2.0, Electric Boogaloo, 2 Broke 2 Furious

tl;dr: Sev needs a new computer. It's old, slow, and doesn't understand scrolling sometimes. Just today I had to restart it because the delete/backspace/arrow keys all decided to take a vacation: it's the beginning of the end.

All of the money I earn doing commissions this round will go directly to a new laptop. This'll help me write more, be more active in Discord and other places, and be much more productive with paid work. Some estimating with a friend has revealed that I can get exactly what I want for around like $700-$750, so that's my eventual target.

I still have commissions left from the first round: 3 short (which I will deliver before starting anything new) and 2 longer projects that I'll work on in the background. Apologies for taking so long, and please know I'll wrap those up before starting Round 2. I intend to deliver them by the end of the month.

Last round I took a whole number of commissions at once and overwhelmed myself, which is why I still have some to deliver here in September. This round, I'll be taking commissions in a limited queue. Once the queue is empty, I'll post again and open up another round. I'll also post periodic updates on the standing of the queue just to keep interest alive. I will also be keeping my current WIPs moving, because I also learned that I need projects of my own as well as commissions or ADHD brain will self-destruct. Basically: I will be slow and careful with your commission, and I'll deliver top quality, and you won't be getting it back in like 3 days.

Commission Notes

Details are under the cut. If you're curious, here are the works I've delivered for Round 1. My pricing structure has changed somewhat because I discovered I spent a lot of time on commissions -- I hope the work shows that. You can see the rest of my recent work here.

If commissions aren't for you right now but you want to help influence what I work on in the background, consider my Patreon -- for $5/month you get to vote (Fridays) on what project I focus on for the next week, and (if i get more followers) sneak peeks as well.

And if you're as broke as me but still want to help out, please reblog on Tumblr or Twitter, or repost whatever sassy little graphic I'll end up making for DW. Every little bit of extended audience helps!

( Commission Details )

And a BIG THANKS to everyone who commissioned me last round, or donated to help me out, or helped spread the word, or supported me during word sprints, or seriously watched me write smut in a GDoc while eating popcorn and cheering, or yelled at me to make words, or sent me pictures and videos as rewards, or otherwise made me smile, laugh, or drink copiously during this time. I appreciate your patience, your fandom love, and your generosity.

NOW DO IT AGAIN IM BROKE

[mykegreywolf]

fueamen replied to your photo “-{ Patreon | Tip jar | DA | FA | IG | FB | Twt }-”

Why do you not update your Patreon?

I have been focusing mainly on catching up with commissions for the last couple of months, and unfortunately that has meant that I haven’t had opportunities to create works that I feel are worthy of making exclusive for my Patreon supporters. I'm planning to add Cadance to my swimsuit anthro ponies in a couple of weeks, so I hope you are able to look forward to that.

Even if I have, at times, used NSFW artwork as an incentive for joining, my Patreon initiative has never been focused on rewards for supporters, but was rather introduced as a way to allow those who are fond of my work and who wish to show support and appreciation for my efforts towards becoming a better illustrator, to do so in a material way that will allow me to keep creating works that they will hopefully be able to enjoy for the foreseeable future. I am really sorry if that is not enough for some to consider that kind of support.

Even when I’m executing commissions for which I am being paid by customers, be assured that I try my best to do it in a way that is true to the style and spirit that my work is known for, and at the same time appealing to the people who have decided to support me on Patreon. Make no mistake, my patrons’ support is still precious to me, and not only has it helped me improve my tool set over the last couple of years, but has also made me hopeful that it could be possible for me to provide for myself and my family in the future, while transitioning my illustration activities into a full time occupation in the long term.

Meanwhile, if any of my supporters feels that I’m coming across as too distant for someone who is asking for their patronage, I hope to be able to change their mind by inviting them to attend my (almost) daily Picarto streams (which I don’t usually announce because, well, it’s kind of a drag, having to do it every day on several different platforms), where I have been, fortuitously, able to build a small and welcoming community of people who happen to have in common their appreciation of the aesthetics that I privilege in my work. Feel free to join in! :)

Of course, if a group chat isn’t your thing, any of my followers who would rather converse with me privately, are welcome to hit me up by sending a message on any of my active online presences, as well as on IM networks such as Discord (Myke#0466) or Telegram (@MykeGreywolf).

Thank you for your understanding, and I hope to be able to continue creating works that you’ll be able to enjoy!

[comeondowntosouthparkrpg-blog]

Alexis “Lexus” Martin

out of character info

Name/Alias: Lindo Pronouns: hhh Age: 24  Join Our Discord: I don’t have a discord :/ Timezone: EST Activity: aaaaaaaaaaa Triggers: heterosexuals Password:jimmy can FAST PASS MY ASS Character that you’re applying for: LEXUS Favourite ships for your character: chemistryyy

in character info

Full name: Alexis “Lexus” Martin Birthday: June 15th Sexuality, gender, pronouns: Bisexual, cis fem, she Age and grade: 18 Appearance: Lexus stands at 5′6″ with curves in all the right places.  Her eyes are bright blue with a ring of green in the middle and her face is peppered with freckles.  Her hair falls to the middle of her shoulder blade, the color of leaves on an autumn day.  She’s fit, given the job she has her body is her main source of employment.  Her nails are always painted some form of fun color, usually acrylic and sharp enough to tear skin.  Despite her petite size, she packs a mean punch and will knock you out if you step out of line.   She has her ears pierced twice and often flaunts a face of makeup and fake lashes-- always wanting to look her absolute best.  Her belly button is pierced, usually showed off when crop tops and hot pants.  Her legs are long, often accentuated with high heels.  To put it simply, Lexus is hot.

Personality: Lexus has always been the “mean girl”.  She won’t hesitate to tear you down or rip you a new one.  She’s the pitbull of the Raisins, ready to throw hands at any time if someone sticks their nose (or hands) where it doesn’t belong.  Despite this, at work she’ll flirt with literally anyone that’s seated at her table-- it’s her job, after all, and tips are always bigger when you sugar coat everything.  Most of her regulars worship the ground she walks on, and if they don’t they fear for their lives because she can and will end them if they misbehave in the restaurant.

When it comes to the other Raisins girls, Lexus is seen as the mother hen or big sister.  She’s incredibly defensive and protective of them while also relentlessly teasing them for their faults.  It’s basically “only she can make fun of them”.  This is most notable with Porsche, whom she mocks for her stupidity constantly, but if someone outside of her clique were to attempt it they’d end up in the ER.

History:  Alexis was born to a a seventeen year old cheerleader and her jock boyfriend.  It was love at first sight-- and the shot gun at the alter was there to make sure of it.  She grew up in a trailer park with an overworked, asshole father and a fleeting debutante mother.  One was always drunk while the other was constantly chasing her youth.  When her father’s job could no longer support the family, her mother took to stripping in an attempt to make ends meet.  

This had an impact on Lexus, whom constantly saw the worth of her mother’s beauty over all else.  Eventually, her deadbeat dad went out for a drink with the boys and never came, setting the two back and forcing their financial status to once again drop.  When Raisins opened in the fourth grade, Lexus was one of the first to apply.  She saw how her family’s struggle lessened with her mother’s new career and figured her new job would do nothing but aid them. 

She was pretty, for a kid, and thus was able to gain quite the reputation.  Most of her money went to helping her mother whom didn’t seem to see any problem in her 8 year old daughter working at what was essentially a children’s Hooters.  With the morality out of the way, the two girls managed to support themselves throughout Alexis’s childhood.  When she finally hit the age of legality, it was a no brainer that she sought a part time position at her mother’s strip bar where the cash really came in.  Of course, her loyalty to Raisins and her girls wouldn’t let her entirely quit, so she still has a few shifts at the restaurant.

Sample paragraph: Neon lights flash back and forth, accenting her darkened silhouette as her body is spun around the pole one last time.  The song comes to an end, someone calls her off and she takes a moment to collect her bills off the stage and exit.  It’s 2am-- the club is closing down and the last few patreons are being escorted out on wobbly legs and shoved less than gracefully into awaiting cabs.  Delicately manicured fingers grab at a nearby rag, wiping any remaining sweat from her body before tugging on a big pull-over sweater and pair of shorts.

Her feet sing a chorus from the angels as her stilettos are tugged off, replaced with comfy socks and converse.  She checks her makeup in the mirror as she passes, smudging away a stray eyeliner wing and pulling her ginger locks into a loose bun.  A sigh leaves her bright red lips, stray bills being shoved into her purse as she leaves from behind the stage and towards the back entrance.  Lexus passes a few of her coworkers, giving them loving goodbyes and patting one of the bodyguards on the shoulder in a silent “good job”.  She doesn’t need his help, and he knows, but her appreciation is still expressed regardless.

The redhead exists the building, shivering slightly at the harsh Colorado air and she makes a beeline for her car.  The vehicle springs to life with a click of a button and the redhead slips into the driver seat and immediately pulls out of the parking lot.  It takes off down the street, only stopping to retrieve a bottle of liquor and a pack of smokes from a gas station.  She’s not old enough to legally buy, but her and her mother are so well known by most of the staff that the look the other way when she comes to pick up her mother’s “medicine”.  Items in hand, Lexus continues the drive back to the trailer park and enters through the front door with a “I’m home Mama.  I got somethin’ for you,” before the door is shut behind her and she’s finally separated from the world for the night. Headcanons: 

She carries a bat in her backseat and a pistol in her purse

She’ll kick your ass

She’s the group mother, very protective of her girls

Lexus is afraid of bugs and WILL scream if she sees one before smashing it to death

She has never had a girlfriend or boyfriend simply because they’re too much work

She doesn’t really believe in love, except for the love she has for her mother.

Lexus is NOT ashamed of her careers and is actually very proud of her body.  She believes it’s empowering and that she basically owns every man in South Park because of it

Anything else: hmmmmm im gay

[mindmeltedmaiden]

2018 in review + December in review + 2019 plans

2018 IN REVIEW

Hey all, Maiden here! 2018 was a really amazing intense first year for my content. Alot has gotten made in a short time!

hmm lets think about all the crazy stuff that 2018 brought Mind Maiden

I started making files in Feb of 2018

Began the Maiden + Bliss discontinued series

Started Mind Maiden in the wake

Started a large, active, queer/trans inclusive discord kink server (700+ members and growing!)

Many public Mind Maiden releases on tumblr and abroad publicly!

My friend Hypdeep began working on the Mind Maiden Website around November, that should be ready in the coming weeks to follow in 2019

And most importantly...

Made many new friends!!

I'd like to take this time to shout out to all of the M.I.C Discord mods.

Special thanks to: Evaristus, Looped, Minas, Jaffa, Lilium, Hoosen, and formerly, SweetTey

I'd also like to thank my best friend and Co-Admin, Mousey AKA Squeex

you all have done wonderful volunteer work, and I couldn't ask for more from any of you. You are all great friends. I enjoy spending my days with you.

You work hard to keep the server a safe place for our users to be, and you all look out for me too. And for that, I cannot even put into words how grateful I am knowing you

all. you all kick some serious tail!

With 2018 going into our rear view mirrors, lets reflect on December of 2018

DECEMEBER 2018 IN REVIEW:

This month was an amazing month for Mind Maiden content. I released one of the most insane things I've ever made at the start of the month called Spectra which featured

Chaos doll as a lead voice actress.

During this time our Beloved Mousey AKA SQUEEX was here visiting me. LOT'S OF SUPER SMASH BROS. She finalized the covers digitally of the last few files we made

After she departed home. We released Personal Pleasure Switch companion which was co-written and voiced with wonderful voice talent SweeTey, AKA, lilhatter.

Then comes the final file in December, BIMBO+

I can't be more happy with how that one turned out, it's my first induction and I really think it works (phew, it sure worked on me)

ALL AT THE SAME TIME, we had lovely HYPDEEP working on the website.

so.. Where do we go from here? To the future.

2019 GOALS AND PLANS

In 2019, I'd say our first goals, myself and Mousey, is re-organize the patreon teirs by renaming the two current teirs, and adding a few more for more flexible donations.

Secondly and most important, is roll out with a Website that we can use to funnel traffic places as a central hub.

My personal goal for 2019, is to create 3 file a month, and its more looking like the themes are set into stone now

every month, i'd like to release 3 files: Bimbofictation, Sci-fi/Maiden industries themed conditioning (chipset melted, Spectra, Chipset modules ECT), and Stories/Audio lore (Squeex

The purpose of the Stories and Lore files, is because im really trying to create an incredibly immersive experience, to do that Mousey and I have created stories,

and characters. Every month, expect a file like the file SQUEEX. It will elaborate on the world more. It's like a radio play. It's what I wanted to do with Nightmare on

Pattern street, but with my own story, and lore.

on top of this, Mousey and I would like to start writing more stories for the server and tumblr that fill in the gaps the the Audio book moments don't capture.

We've got some serious plans people!!!! I'm super excited.

Stick around with me, Mind Maiden, and i'm definitely going to continue to deliver the goods and high quality bar content.

toodles!

HAPPY NEW YEAR~ From Maiden Industries

[thebibliosphere]

It’s been less than three weeks since my last thousand follower milestone. You’d think by now this would be mildly less terrifying for me but no, no, I am a still a raw bundle of nerves every time I look at my activity feed. Time for the obligatory navigational post I guess!

Hello trashcans, welcome home. I’m the vampire editor person who just wants to rest.  If you’re here for more Death smut, food discourse, general vampire shitposting and unconditional love for Carrie Fisher then boy are you in the right place. Clickable links are in bold for ease of navigation <3

IF YOU’RE HERE TO ASK ME HOW I BECAME AN EDITOR OR ARE INTERESTED IN HIRING ME AS ONE, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT MY FAQ. 

Thank you <3

Due to tumblr tricking me into becoming a professional writer I’m currently working on about a million and one writing projects. Most of them vampire related for some bizarre unknown reason.

The most well known is likely Hunger Pangs which is available for pre-order via my Patreon, and in a mere matter of weeks, on Amazon too. Cause that’s right, I took that shit post and turned it into a poly-queer-paranormal-satirical-romance novel featuring vampires, werewolves and punching undead fascists (It wasn’t intended to be politically relevant but here we are).

A fairly concise summary of it can be found here and excerpts can be found by searching for the tag #the vampire werewolf thing, which is the unofficial tagline for Hunger Pangs or #Phangs as some people have started to tag it. By request there is going to be two versions of the book, one which contains sexual content, and one which does not for those who are not interested in smut and like a little more fluff with their fangs. 

Along with Phangs I’m also working on a gritty Scottish romance novella (extract) based on a pun; a pun based bakery romance (extract), a pun based werewolf Scottish romance (have you noticed a theme yet), and  a modern day romantic comedy concerning Scotsmen with questionable morals. Which also has an excerpt on my Ao3. Oh and also a vampire wedding planner romcom because apparently I have lost complete control of my life. 

All of my work is tagged appropriately, with anything that is 18+ being placed under a cut and tagged as #NSFW or #NSFW Text for ease of blacklisting if you would like avoid it. If you are under the age of 18, I do ask that you respect my boundaries and refrain from interacting with anything on my blog that is labelled 18+. I try very hard to keep my blog as safe for everyone as I can. No mean feat when you’re known across the Internet as “the crucifix vampire nipple lady” :P

All of my work that I intend to publish professionally will also be available smut free in plain romance/fluff versions if that is a thing you are interested in. If you need me to tag something for trigger purposes, no matter how silly you think I might think it is, please let me know, I will be more than happy to do so.

If you’re completely new here you might notice some people calling me “mom” or other variations therein of familial relation. It’s perfectly okay to greet me as such if you wish to, but it is by no means an obligatory title and not something I gave to myself. Tumblr decided to adopt me sometime last year after I did some helpful life advice posts and I’ve been doing my best to be worthy of the honorific ever since. You can also just call me Joy, cause that is my name :)

Please have patience if you are sending me asks or IMs. I am but a humble smut peddler, peddling my weres, and have some pretty profound chronic health problems ranging from autoimmune issues to nerve damage which make keeping up with a high traffic blog as well as my work schedule rather difficult. So I’m sorry if you ever send me something and I don’t see it. 

If you get tired of seeing my health posts, you may wish to blacklist the following tags: #chronic health tag & #chronic health tag: teeth, that way I can bitch and moan into the void and you don’t have to put up with me if you don’t want to.

Also sometimes we stream things in my chatroom, the link to which you can find in my navigational bar, and are welcome to check out at any time though we are currently on hiatus. There is also a discord chat set up by my friends and followers, where people often hang out just to chat. The link to this can also be found via my chatroom. Oh and you can now follow me on Twitter if that is a thing you are interested in. 

All of these things aside, welcome, I hope you’re having a good day, and whatever made you click on me was worth it. Take care <3

[nickyschneiderus]

Mastodon is crumbling—and many blame its creator

It’s 9am on a Tuesday, early morning by cybre.space’s standards. Few have logged on to the microblogging social network, and it shows: A follower feed filled with more than 31 users updates at a snail’s pace. It’s much slower than one would expect on Twitter. But then again, cybre.space isn’t Twitter. It runs off a decentralized social media software called Mastodon, and is part of a much larger network of Mastodon communities.

Over on Twitter, users post jokes about President Donald Trump, this time of a fast food feast he prepared for the Clemson Tigers football team amid the ongoing government shutdown. But the words “Trump” and “shutdown” only appear once each on cybre.space’s “local timeline,” which shows posts on the site and any other connected “instances,” or Mastodon communities. It’s even more barren on this reporter’s home timeline: No one is talking about hamberders.

Posting works differently on cybre.space than Twitter. It’s much more like living in a queer house, one that prefers to talk about political theory over current events. Some users chat about democratic socialism and queer identity, while others talk about games, music, fandom, or their difficulties navigating trans healthcare. One user posts a message that reads “re: hrt” with a few lines about their hormone replacement regimen hidden underneath, accessible only via the “show more” content warning (CW) button next to it. Another boosts a post praising Tallahassee by the Mountain Goats, calling it a “visceral experience.”

Cybre.space has just over 2,000 users. Over on Mastodon’s flagship community, Mastodon.social, there are over 300,000 users. But despite the larger userbase, discussions are even less political. On the community’s local timeline, one user troubleshoots installing a Linux distribution. Another shares a news story about a man who tried to turn his home into a restaurant. A third links to an article about Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford. Here, Trump is not the sun; tech, gaming, and the occasional NSFW post largely prevail. It’s as if the outside world doesn’t exist.

Mastodon

Visiting Mastodon feels like strolling through the first “apolitical” social network. There’s no urgency to talk about the Trump administration’s policies or break down ongoing political events—but while that may seem like a pleasant reprieve, it’s actually an indication that all is not well on Mastodon.

Mastodon has long been hailed as a friendly and inclusive safe haven, one by and for people who want the far-right out of social media. But instead of losing the far-right, the platform has lost all politics entirely. That’s a problem for its queer userbase, who cannot be apolitical by nature. Being queer isn’t a hobby; it’s a political identity. And so while Mastodon seems fine on the surface, there is a much larger schism at play across the social media project regarding who should run it: its community, or its creator.

The creator

It’s impossible to understand Mastodon without considering its architect and understanding its structure. Eugen “Gargron” Rochko, a 25-year-old German programmer of Russian and Jewish heritage, began working on Mastodon while studying computer science at the German public university Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jenahad (or “University of Jena” in English). Rochko had experience with decentralized social networks as a teenager, and by 2010 he had already decided Twitter’s corporate-driven structure just wasn’t the proper way to handle online messaging. But it wasn’t until early 2016 that he decided to sit down and look at GNU social, a decentralized social network software and precursor of sorts to Mastodon.

Originally, Rochko considered making an app for GNU social, but he ultimately decided to start from scratch and create a custom implementation of GNU social’s protocol. This became Mastodon.

Simply put, Mastodon is a microblogging software where users can communicate with one another through character-limited messages, called “toots.” The project, which released to the public in October 2016, supports embeds for images, GIFs, and videos, and there’s even a “boost” system similar to Twitter’s retweets. But Mastodon’s biggest feature by far is its “fediverse.” Instead of throwing every account into a gigantic melting pot on one main website, Mastodon users can splinter off into dozens upon dozens of miniature Mastodon instances, which are servers governed by their own rules and with their own communities. These create one large federation, and while each of these instances—like Cybre.space—runs off of Mastodon’s software, they simultaneously exist separately from one another and as part of a larger whole. Instance users can interact with one another or blacklist other instances.

Mastodon is a free and open-source software that functions entirely on community contributions via GitHub. Over Discord, Rochko described Mastodon’s development flow: Features, changes, or fixes are submitted as pull requests on GitHub. A contributor codes the feature for Mastodon within the pull request. The pull request must pass through tests for review. But even if a pull request passes those tests, “only the owner of the project can decide” whether a pull request is merged, as Rochko puts it—although he has given that ability to “three or four more people than me” for redundancy’s sake (“in case I get hit by a bus,” as he says).

Since graduating in 2016, Rochko has given Mastodon his full attention. Today, he works on Mastodon full-time with support from over 900 patrons on Patreon (at the moment, he receives over $4,400 per month in total, or over $50,000 per year). But he’s far from the only person making Mastodon a reality, and many of its users take umbrage both with what features Rochko implements and how he credits the project’s contributors.

Mastodon’s former project manager, Maloki, founded a separative community that criticizes Rochko’s “Benevolent Dictator For Life” (BDFL) model for negatively impacting “already vulnerable and marginalized people.” Many queer critics feel Rochko implements features into Mastodon that make it easier for users to discover—and by extension, harass—people of color, queer posters, women, trans folks, and other marginalized groups.

The community

Decentralized social networking isn’t a new idea, nor is the “fediverse” as a concept. But the Mastodon project quickly became popular with queer and left-wing users after Trump’s election in November 2016. Most of Mastodon’s early users shared a common background: Some were furries, others worked in tech, some even developed video games. Many identified as queer and trans. As one Mastodon user said on Nov. 23, 2016: “Holy shit everyone Mastodon is basically gay furry-adjacent Twitter without risk of racist eggs, get here immediately and help us en-culture.”

After Trump’s election, Rochko paraded Mastodon as a Nazi-free alternative to Twitter, pointing out that Mastodon.social, which is personally administered by Rochko, bans Nazis. To this day, Mastodon is the progressive Twitter alternative, one repeatedly praised everywhere from Motherboard to Wired.

But Mastodon’s politics are more complicated than merely banning Nazis. White, queer, middle-class tech workers migrating to Mastodon treated it as an escape from the outside world. CWs effectively hid politics from plain sight, and to this day, the occasional Trump conversation is concealed and tagged under the warning “uspol.” This turned Mastodon into an apolitical space, one where users debate queer theory but try to keep the outside world’s happenings out.

Mastodon’s apolitical approach reflected larger problems at play on the platform. One early Mastodon adopter named “voz” left the platform in February 2017 after feeling increased alienation from Mastodon’s predominantly white userbase. Voz, who is a brown queer trans woman, considered Mastodon “a very white space” that gradually mirrored real-life versions of gentrification: White users made the service “more and more hostile to the Black and Brown users” that were among Mastodon’s initial adopters.

Mastodon

“Whiteness insists on hiding itself, and a veneer of respectability given by ‘banning (overt) Nazis’ is really just a kind of fig leaf for the more mundane white supremacy at work there,” voz said via Keybase.

part of why Im not as active on Mastodon anymore even tho I think its a more ethical funding model is cuz its full of fragile white gentle porcelain dolls earning $150k/year in tech calling me ableist for making them uncomfortable by talking about politics under a content warning

— Shel (@DataPup_) December 14, 2018

Some people of color blamed Rochko, arguing he doesn’t properly moderate Mastodon.social to protect people of color from abuse. Others came to believe Mastodon’s hyperfixation on avoiding politics fundamentally hurt users of color, eventually driving them away.

“What sort of culture thinks talking about politics needs to be behind a content warning? Is me talking about the intersections of my life and society in need of a CW because it’s political? What the hell?” writer and performer Creatrix Tiara asked in April 2017.

The process and the politics

Mastodon’s community and its development cannot be separated from one another: Whoever controls development also steers how its users interact with one another. For example, more privacy and anti-harassment features mean better protection for marginalized users. But these requests don’t always align with Rochko’s vision for Mastodon.

Mastodon’s development process is pretty standard in the free open-source software community, but Mastodon isn’t a standard open-source project, and its queer users have long fought with Rochko over how credit is given out for features. Hoodie Aida Krisstina, who uses fae/faer pronouns, helped push for Mastodon’s content warning system in November 2016 by opening an issue on GitHub after the feature was “born from the community consciousness,” as fae said.

In a Dreamwidth post from July, fae sharply criticized Rochko, arguing queer users initially “begged” him for feature changes to support the community that ultimately turned Mastodon into what it is today.

“Evidently sometimes what [Rochko] does is take the pull request, close it, use that code as a starting point, then later commit it himself,” Krisstina said in an email. “This, tied with how [Rochko] credits others (read: he doesn’t, except for GitHub commit history), means that there is very little evidence, and virtually no recognition for the folx that actually made a feature happen. It’s not unrealistic to state that without the pull request, and without my GitHub issue, there would never have been content warnings.”

Rochko admits that contributors weren’t originally acknowledged in release notes. However, he argues there are an enormous number of feature requests and bug reports, and that he is “a little more ambivalent” toward crediting users for making feature requests, as GitHub automatically records their requests, and “they’re asking somebody else to put in the work and everybody’s got ideas.”

Granted, Rochko thinks it would be “fair” to credit users who come up with a thorough design as part of a feature request, although he claims he hasn’t “seen any feature requests that actually designed a system.”

“Pull requests take higher precedence because people actually put in the work to contribute,” Rochko said. “Also translators, I would say, are a step below that, as translators who submit translations for various languages. So they put in the work of actually writing code and submitting it and I agree that those people should be credited.”

Queer users seem to view the issue differently.

Shel Raphen served as a developer for Mastodon from January to spring 2017 and worked as a “de facto” volunteer coordinator, project manager, and community manager for Mastodon during its boom in April 2017 (or “Eternal April,” as Raphen calls it). Raphen, who uses ze/hir and they/them pronouns, first joined Mastodon in the “November wave” that hit the project after the U.S. 2016 presidential election, one month after Mastodon was officially announced. They became interested in Mastodon thanks to the decentralized fediverse’s potential to protect marginalized users.

“When everyone joined there wasn’t per-post privacy or CWs or anything that people associate with Mastodon today,” Raphen said over Twitter DM. “The new wave of queer users came up with, designed, pushed for, and implemented those features.”

Because Mastodon relies on the BDFL system, ongoing conflict with Rochko can quickly become messy. In one case, Raphen said that they designed a welcome modal in April 2017 that Rochko “hated” and harshly criticized, calling it “stupid.” Raphen confronted Rochko over the modal, telling him that he has to “thank people and appreciate their work” on the project.

After Rochko introduced his own alternate welcome modal, Raphen claims community pressure led Rochko to add Raphen’s design—without crediting Raphen in the project’s release notes.

“I went in and edited the release notes myself and added myself, since I had that privilege, and Eugen got pissed and removed all my privileges and basically booted me from the project,” Raphen said.

When asked to comment on the incident, Rochko stressed that he should ultimately have the right to edit and tweak the onboarding modal as need be.

“I wanted to change some stuff around and they were very upset when I just touched anything and that’s not how it should work,” Rochko said. “If I have some feedback about how this onboarding modal should work, I should be able to change it without causing a drama.”

Raphen’s treatment was a breaking point for Mastodon’s queer community, and its users began openly criticizing Rochko’s control over Mastodon. Two weeks later, Mastodon user and GitHub contributor Allie Hart wrote a post-mortem called “Mourning Mastodon” and a follow-up post, “Mourning What Now?!?!”—both of which Raphen considers “Important Historic Documents” for Mastodon’s history.

In “Mourning Mastodon,” Hart argues its initial leftist, furry, queer, and disabled base was the “most vocal and most frequent of Mastodon’s unpaid contributors,” designing Mastodon’s features from November 2016 to April 2017. After Graham Linehan and Dan Harmon temporarily moved to Mastodon.social and an April 2017 Motherboard story sparked media attention in the project, a new base arrived at the site, one that gave the project’s queer community less leverage in demanding changes from Rochko, Hart argues.

“The recent influx of users to the platform has brought with it new contributors and an expanded revenue stream that has rendered the original nearly obsolete,” Hart wrote in April 2017. “Queer users could leave en masse without harming the project’s survivability, which means that the reciprocity of their relationship has been terminated—queer users still depend on the project, but the project no longer depends on its queer users.”

Granted, Mastodon’s queer community isn’t perfect, and some of the same criticisms leveled against the Mastodon project could be made against the white queer community found on the service from the very beginning. For instance, Hart claims Mastodon’s white queer community would simultaneously demand a bigger voice in development while driving queer people of color off the site. The gentrifiers were now being gentrified, so to speak.

Warring philosophies

While speaking with the Daily Dot, Rochko called Mastodon “the child of my imagination,” arguing he “created it the way that I wanted to do it” and that he “did things the way I wanted them to work.” For the record, he doesn’t consider BDFL a harsh description of the Mastodon project, but rather a programming term to describe its governance. He also believes it’s more efficient than rule by committee.

“When you separate the decision making between different people that can come and go, you sort of have a tragedy of the commons where nobody is fully responsible for it and people have disagreements over all sorts of things, and you add the bureaucracy of [a] voting system, etc,” he explained. “Often times you’ll get requests from the community that are directly mutually exclusive to each other, and you have to make a choice, like, which direction will you go or how do you make a compromise.”

Rochko describes Mastodon’s users as separated between two “camps”: those who prefer discoverability, and those who discourage it. It’s more accurate to say Mastodon is increasingly forced to choose between its marginalized, queer userbase and white, well-off, and male tech workers who support Rochko’s BDFL vision.

Mastodon

Raphen believes Mastodon is “getting better, slowly” thanks in part to new queer users challenging its “fragile” privileged queer users. But even then, the platform’s remaining queer community has grown increasingly upset with Rochko’s leadership. After Rochko unexpectedly introduced “trends” tracking for words, phrases, and hashtags in summer 2018, marginalized users who feared harassment from the feature criticized its unexpected implementation. Rochko replied with a toot, arguing he “built Mastodon the way I wanted” and that those who disliked the project should not “give me shit about your failed expectations.”

“There’s the door, there’s the code, there’s the alternatives,” he tooted on June 2.

The future

A June essay from Mastodon user Cassian, titled “I left Mastodon yesterday,” argues Mastodon’s problems start with Rochko’s approach to development. Cassian claims users are rarely acknowledged for their contributions unless they are programmers, and Rochko controls the original instance and gets to decide which features make it into the Mastodon project.

Combine this with Rochko’s perspective as a white male programmer, and his decisions will constantly come from a privileged point-of-view that clashes with Mastodon’s marginalized userbase.

“Like it or not, he is in charge of the main branch of a huge community project and he promises various advantages over Twitter to attract members,” Cassian writes. “The users of his software have needs that he refuses to address but he wants to remain the sole decision-maker and have complete control. He has a right to do that, but it is unhealthy for the project overall.”

Again, Rochko thinks Mastodon users are split between two sides: those who believe the project should help users find one another, and those who prefer to stay hidden from others. But Mastodon’s internal community conflicts can better be described through a queer lens—that is, between privileged users and marginalized ones, and their diametrically opposed philosophies for what Mastodon should be.

“He’s a programmer. Not a leader,” Raphen said. “He’s an amazingly talented programmer. But that’s not enough to lead the project. He takes all the credit for making Mastodon what it is when it was extremely a group effort, not just the programming (the only labor he sees as legit).”

Raphen and Rochko’s beliefs are at Mastodon’s core, and yet they are fundamentally in conflict with each other. One wants a community-driven government system to protect vulnerable users. The other believes only a BDFL can efficiently maintain Mastodon and promote its decentralized, open-source fediverse structure. Both are hopeful for Mastodon’s future, and yet, they represent diverging paths that Mastodon can take.

Meanwhile, Mastodon’s users can’t even agree on how Mastodon should function, let alone whom it should serve. Figuring out an answer will decide Mastodon’s future—and whether its marginalized userbase has a place to call home.

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/debug/mastodon-fediverse-eugen-rochko/