I’ve decided to take a page out of bloodright’s book and start doing weekly roundup posts on here. Feels like a great, relatively low-maintenance way to get back in the habit of blogging.

I joined the fediverse!

A little over a week ago (and yes, exactly for the reason you think, more on that below), I signed up on a fandom-focused instance on Mastodon. I’m @gekidasa@fandom.ink, and I have to say I’m really enjoying myself over there. Others have already pointed this out, but it feels very much like fandom used to, back before social media made fandom and everything else about numbers and “engagement”.

It feels the way LJ used to, when you had to actively seek out people to follow and have conversations with. This is a welcome change for me, because conversations are very much a part of what I always enjoyed about fandom, and increasingly on Twitter they are more and more rare. I’m sorry, but likes and retweet are not a substitute for a conversation.

All this to say, if you miss the way fandom used to be, I highly encourage you to find a fandom instance and join. You can no longer apply for an account on Fandom Ink because Alis, who runs it, was getting flooded in apps, but you can make an account at retro.pizza and fandom.community; also keep an eye out for blorbo.social, which is in the process of getting set up.

About that dumpster fire over on Twitter…

Yes, that is the reason I made an account on Mastodon.

Look, when Musk announced his intentions to buy Twitter, and still right when he actually did it, I pretty much assumed right there that it was the beginning of the end, and that a new fandom migration was imminent. But I thought it would be a slow process. I certainly did not expect him to light it on fire the very next day, and even after that, I didn’t expect things to spiral into complete chaos as fast as they have.

But I will say, watching a platform go down like the Titanic in real time and so quickly has certainly been interesting.

As for my own account over there… I’m not leaving completely just yet. There’s plenty of people I follow on there that seem to have no intention of leaving (yet), including most of the people in my current fandom that ship what I ship, and (a big factor) there’s also the japanese fanartists. I’ll probably keep the account just to peek in and look at spicy fanart as long as possible. However, I’m fairly certain that in the near future my time will be spent between Mastodon and Tumblr.

Tumblr?

Yes. Not much to say, I’ve kept my account there, even if all I’ve done for years is reblog stuff every once in awhile. I’m starting to use it more again. I do appreciate the whimsical, often ridiculous nature of stuff over there, different energy from Mastodon, and I like both.

Chengsang!

Sangcheng Week ended a week ago, and there’s lots of new fic, including three new fics from myself and chapter 9 of my chengsang “roommates canon divergence” AU.

Also, I have been working on a new shrine: chengsang.net, and while it’s a work in progress, I posted about it “officially” last Sunday.

TV

I’ve watched 3 episodes of The Crown. It’s fine, but I must say for the first time, other than in the case of Princess Diana, I am very much seeing the actors and not the persons they are playing. This is particularly the case with Dominic West, who is a phenomenal actor, but I just can’t buy him as Charles. One reason is McNulty keeps intruding.

I’m also in the home stretch of Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (episode 39 or 40, I believe). It’s quite different from the novel, and I very much prefer the novel… especially for the dynamic between Tang Fang and Sui Zhou, but I still like it. And I love Wang Zhi.

I finished The Vampire Chronicles. I understand people have misgivings, in particular about Armand, but I’ve loved this adaptation. Perhaps because even though I loved these books as a teenager, but I haven’t really been into them or read them in decades. But I also really appreciate that even while things are changed, they’re always in conversation with the books.

…This reminds me I need to write that post about adaptations and what I think makes me like/dislike them.

Danmei

Still reading Peerless. I want to say upfront, it’s interesting, I certainly don’t dislike it, but the characters (and therefore the book) haven’t grabbed me the way the characters in Thousand Autumns and especially the Fourteenth Year of Chenghua did. I hope that changes, so far I’ve loved Meng Xi Shi’s writing.