chimerical girls @chimericalgirls@monsterpit.net

ceo: hmm, what kind of office should we have? computer, tell me about open-plan offices
computer: "why open-plan offices don't work"
computer: ""why open-plan offices are like a nudist beach"
computer: "hate open-plan offices?"
computer: "the subtle sexism of your open-plan office"
computer: "everyone hates the open-plan office"
ceo: enough! i'll take it!!!

there is so much going on on that thread we just boosted but it is all just wonderfully aligned with our community-building sensibilities

the thought of an internet that actually belongs to the community using it, rather than belonging to giant cash machines, is just really appealing, even if it requires different or unfamiliar technology to build/run (guess that is why we are here these days rather than the bird site)

what a fantastic, optimism-inspiring thread

big shoutouts to:

- the fanworks creators out there doing the good work of subverting corporate ownership of society's myths and icons

- the lovelies out there doing the good work of nurturing and sharing their own personal myths and icons

there are so many stories out there to be told, and so many of them will simply never be told by big money media companies

Witch Funk band name idea: Earth, Wand and Fire

exothermic activities are hereby suspended until the summer calms the heck down

tired: "headless server"
wyrd: "riding the Information Superhighway dullahan-style"

our long-term goals:
- to fade into legend
- to become one with the night
- to be forgotten by the world

this is not a joke post, these are our actual life goals at this point, and are things that we are actively working towards

notably, fame within the Waking World is something of an anti-goal for us. we have no desire to build our resume or develop our career and we definitely are not about building a personal brand

mostly we want to leave our career, delete our resume and linkedin account, retreat to the hidden, secret spaces from which we came, and spend our time and energy caring for the other people who have landed in such spaces

as life goals go, this does not seem too bad. the world is filled with forgotten spaces and forgotten people, and those people need love more than the world needs whatever product capitalism would funnel our labour into

also, it might be nice to make some music.

the coffee we are drinking this morning is so Extra it came with a hecking *mixtape*

shout-out to Dark Matter Coffee for being just ridiculous, and to our elven friend for finding this and ordering a block of it!

(bonus: the coffee turned out to be pretty tasty and the music is really nice)

oh, a *particularly* interesting facet of this:

sometimes we stumble across a conversation on a topic with which we have *deep* expertise

sometimes it is clear that we carry pertinent information that the conversation lacks and could benefit from

like "created the thing people are talking about" level expertise. "directly experienced the thing that people are hypothesising about" level experience.

sometimes our input is even actively solicited!

sometimes we are *forcibly added* to such conversations by other people, maybe even people who are participating in the conversation

even in all of these situations, engagement is purely optional. the conversation might not benefit from our engagement. we might not, either!

and learning to make this evaluation has been *key* to surviving social media

(heck, we put this skill to use in the workplace on a daily basis)

it is just a valuable social skill in general

one of the better lessons we have learned in this life is the relative value of our opinions

in the negative direction.

recognising:

- where our experiences have not adequately prepared us to speak on an issue

- how we can positively contribute to conversations by *keeping our trap shut and leaving more space for other people to speak*

- when it is simply unnecessary to share our thoughts on a given topic

all of these habits have been very good to us, and... kind of run counter to the very structure of modern social network design?

so much of how twitter and facebook and such are built centers around encouraging Engagement, stoking it with common techniques like Spectacle, Outrage, Sensationalism, and Perpetual Anxiety

it just feels really *freeing* to look at these things and then *turn our back on them*

and it feels like we contribute *more* to a community by focusing on things more personally meaningful

twidere was really good to us on twitter, but honestly the masto support seemed broken: it often entered a state where it would stop picking up new posts until we dug into the settings to clear the cache, which is kind of obviously a showstopper

tusky had similar issues, which left us wondering whether there was something about glitch-soc that breaks these apps, or whether programming is just hard (because it kind of is)

mastalab worked well for us, but the presentation felt really sparse compared to subway tooter. fewer posts fit on the screen in mastalab so reading was physically more exhausting, with quite a bit more scrolling involved

to be fair, though, it seemed like mastalab was not really all *that* out of line with how most social apps present information? it could just be that subway tooter's dense presentation style just really works for us

anyhow, that is our summary of the various android apps that we tried! thank you for reading, hope it is helpful!

having played with a bunch of different mastodon clients for android, the one that ended up sticking for us was "subway tooter"

subway tooter's ui is a bit technical, but it does everything we need, *well*, and over time the way that it presents data really grew on us

it works like tweetdeck, except the workflow centers around creating columns just long enough to ingest the info within. *everything* is an ephemeral column

also it is great at multiaccount

we can not possibly do justice to our love of the night, darkness, and rain with simple words

but heck if we are going to let that stop us from trying

there is still love and joy to be found in this broken, dying world

find us in the world's hidden, secret spaces and we will sing to you of them...

today opened and closed with rain for us and we have spent the entire day soaking in the ambiance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXoVOt7Nh9U

humanity tends to cast darkness and the night as violent, evil things to be feared

but in our experience:

without the sensory onslaught that accompanies the brighter, louder, busier day hours, the world feels sharpened, in focus, more *pure*. for us, the night is a time of peace, comfort, and healing from the damages left upon us by the day

we wholeheartedly believe that the night loves us and works to protect and heal us

and we hope that the night can be this sort of time for you, too

the night loves you and wants you to be well

urban fantasy is an exceedingly relatable genre, especially when it is telling tales about society's liminal spaces and those who dwell therein

there is a trend in the genre, though, in which the protagonist is either A Normie who visits these spaces as if on a Weirdo Safari, or is a person who is *ostensibly* A Normie, who later discovers that they are Not So Normal, and have some sort of business in these spaces

if authors *really* want to crank up the Chimerical Relatability, here is an alternative:

characters who are just having a really hard time passing as Normal in the mundane world and are just *so relieved* to return to spaces where nobody cares if they have an indecipherable gender or interact with things other than Normal Humans or are just generally Weird and/or otherwise fail to fit the strict parameters that most people seem to require before treating them with the respect due all sentient beings