Shits hectic right now, with the muskapocalypse and all.

Writing

I discovered a nifty writing app called novelWriter this week, and I've spent a lot of time tootling around in it. It's Scrivener-esque but less complicated, stores files in plain text (so no vendor lock-in), and exporting your shit is quick and easy.

They can also be found on the fediverse @novelWriter.

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I completed and posted In The Dark, the second part of my Dean/OC series.

One version of that particular OC, anyway (see Fucking Ryan.)

Watching

Not a lot of TV watching done this week, in fact, there were entire evenings where I didn't even turn it on. Just keeping up on the usual, Quantum Leap, The Winchesters, Handmaid's Tale, Interview with the Vampire.

There's a new show, The Peripheral, that is weird and different and interesting.

S4 part 1 of Manifest was released on Netflix this week and I ate the entire 10 episodes in 2 nights.

Spoiler

THE FUCKING WORLD IS ON FIRE. HOLY SHIT.

Social Media

Fuck Yeah Buttons

I had to make an 88x31 Mastodon button because none existed. I came out with two. They now exist, if anyone should like to use them.

Interesting bit of trivia: 88x31 buttons all look like shit on Vivaldi, and I'm not happy about it.

Reddit Mom

Followup on the reddit post from last week, Luna shared a valuable twitter thread that every parent, teacher, anyone who works with kids, every citizen of fandom should read and share:

Fantis keep trying to discredit the Reddit post from the mom of a teen fanti/grooming victim for the same reasons they’re getting more vocal in attacking me again.

Predators don’t want ppl to start paying attention to what they are doing & they’re circling the wagons

🧵(1/?)

— Luna 🔞 FemBunnyBoy Overlord 🐰 (@iamlunasol) October 28, 2022

Fandom Exoduses(eses?)

yourlibrarian on Dreamwidth posted Online Colonization, which, among other tidbits, has some interesting things to say about fandom exoduses:

...what makes people leave are technological changes that break what they use the site for. That's what brought some communities to Dreamwidth, and it's what sent most of fandom off of del.icio.us.

Another factor is cultural changes. One of these is whether a site is considered "hot" or "uncool." This happened first to Facebook to the detriment of My Space, and then to FB itself to the benefit of Instagram and Snapchat. Another is whether a technology is easily adapted by a new group of users.

And the uptake of new platforms:

The "easily adapted" part is a major reason why Dreamwidth tends to attract or keep mostly people who have used its format before or who are technologically capable. The advantages DW offers are real and in-demand, but the hurdles are too high for many. Even if DW were a hotbed of activity it would be a limited group, I think. There are people who find AO3 far too difficult to browse as readers despite the enormous attraction of scores of fanworks for popular fandoms.

So I feel that the simple inability to use a site, either because of its level of difficulty or because it is actually broken in some way, is the only thing that truly dooms it as a platform.

While I'd love to see fandom abandon twitter wholesale (the antis can stay, I'm cool with that), realistically, the majority will stay behind. I think this says a lot about what fandom has collectively lost in using platforms that serve content up without the user having to look for it, that don't allow personalisation (so newer fans never learned HTML or other forms of customisation), that give users so few real options that they've lost the ability to use a reasonably simple piece of software.

Fandom once would hack any platform into working for fandom, it's kind of heartbreaking to accept that so many fans are now willing to just give up and stay in such a toxic environment because the alternative means they have to think for themselves.

On the subject, Casey Fiesler posted the link to a paper specifically relating to fandom migrations.

You may also be interested in reading Notes on Migrating an Online Community and Toolsets for managing the decline and fall of Twitter, a couple of posts on Pillowfort relating to the Musk acquisition and the potential fandom exodus.

PostyBirb

If you're thinking about moving on from Twitter but not sure where you'll end up, PostyBirb is a desktop app that can help you crosspost your content to a crapton of sites including Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr and Pillowfort.

Unfortunately they don't do Dreamwidth. Yet?

New Platform Teething Problems

From what I've seen on twitter, the two platforms people are leaning toward heaviest in the search for a twitter replacement are Mastodon, and Cohost.

'Course, cohost is spanking new, so new that registration isn't even open yet, you've got to sign up for the waiting list.

All new platforms have their hiccups. Pillowfort had loligate and gaping security holes. Fanexus had mod problems.

Just as all spanking new platforms have their issues, Cohost has reliably shit the bed. They're in the midst of their own loligate, but even worse, they've got a frankensteins monster of a ToS. This 🧵 is a wild ride, start to finish:

Okay, people keep asking "but what even does that MEAN (it means "we have no idea what we're doing") so let's do this: why Cohost's Terms of Service are terrible and abusive and you should not agree to them unless they are radically changed https://t.co/Q1RqwEu92T

— rahaeli (@rahaeli) November 5, 2022

No spanking new platform will ever be the shining saviour to solve immediate social media woes. When shit goes bad (like Elon Musk buying twitter), only mature platforms will offer the kind of stability fandom needs.

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I've pretty much ditched twitter as an every day site, I'm only opening it to post new fic and blog posts.

Instead, I'm on Mastodon: @bloodwrites@fandom.ink

Website Updates

• Added Tools section to the Links page.
• Added Fanlistings.

Not so much a website update but an update about websites... I've put some static site layouts up on GitHub. Now I've got to figure out whether to put them on the site somehow or not.