Before & After & Inbetween

No new word count today, because I spent the day on

(a) setting up a Mastodon account for Perv!Tree,

(b) being stuck on deciding whether or not leaving spells protecting against mold after a target's house was flooded last year in place is IC for May 2000 Seishiro, and

(c) no, Subaru cannot ask his secretary to buy underwear on her first day at work. That is so NOT IC (even if it would solve the problem with the betting pool). *eg*

Since I've begun writing the Decagram again, I also resumed posting BAUplans. However, fanfiction writing related posts on BlueSky were just frustrating - whenever something related to fanfic, writing, etc. gets posted, the account (and the posts) are immediately swamped with bots and entrepreneurs apparently unable to grasp the idea that a hobby is fun, and fun is not something to be outsourced for a quick buck.
It made Bluesky a very hostile - at least very annoying - environment for me as a fanfic author writing for fun, so I decided on two things:

1. resume the BAUplan updates, including longer musing about them, here on Dreamwidth - also to keep track of progress, and


2. search for a fan friendly mastodon instance to get Tree-san it's own account, because posting that shrub's commentary is JUST TOO MUCH FUN!

So to quote a totally different fandom that I enjoyed watching back when it originally aired on tv here but never wrote in: "Hi, honey. I'm back!" (BtVS).

current chapter word count: 8004 words (one gap, two open issues, one scene to decide)
gap to be closed: "upcoming apartment vacancy with collateral"
scenes to be written next: burning hands, report coming undone
character examining bespelled mold: Seishiro
character managing to accidentally link paperwork and sex: Subaru
research of the day: combini closures in 2000 Hachioji

undecided issues:

family reunions - with respect to the Dao: how bad will they be?

• Ijyuin - Sakurazuka
• Shiro - Sumeragi

Interludes - which goes first? and in which chapter?

• Naha - Ameru to the rescue
• Naha - Shang shoots

Just in case somebody is still lurking on this journal:

I've begun posting the three chapters (two shorts and a long one) of Mariko's tale (you may recall her from Family Matters Chapter 19) on the AO3. Chapters 1 and 2 are up, 3 still needs some minor work, but I hope to have it done within one or two weeks at most.

If you are interested: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84966496 (limited to logged in users, because of LLM scrapers that also took my homepage effectively offline for the time being & also because there were a lot of comment lice on AO3 recently).

I'm also working on the next chapter of Business As Usual (Case Studies) again and it's coming around nicely, but I will refrain from giving a time frame or snippets for that one - first of all, my job may turn busy again, second, I'm paranoid about feeding the scrapers these days.

IT's extremely quiet here by now.
Of the blogs I follow, there were zero posts in the last quarter of a year.
A few communities still have weekly posts, but sadly none of the interesting ones.
I may have to spend more time looking for new ones...

Editing my private website to reflect the changes in prefered social networks proved to be even more of a slog. The software I use for it has made some changes for "easier use", which now prevents me from using different footers on different parts of the site - but I have black (general content) and white (stories) pages, and having a black footer on a white page (or vice versa) looks ugly! I may end up having to redo the whole thing once I come up with an efficient way to do it.

I decided to use this blog a lot more next year, so let's start early with that, shall we?
2024 is still six days to go, but here I am. :-)

Changes during 2024 (part 1)

Spotify to Tidal:

This is the most recent change. Spotify crossed the "has to go" enshittification threshold a week ago, when I first needed fifteen minutes on their crappy app to find the christmas music playlist I made last year and then discovered that half of the songs on it were either missing or replaced by "suggestions" of elevator music. Then there was this blog post by Cory Doctorow that linked me to an article about Spotify's muzac side-gig on Harper's (explains a lot, really!), plus their abysmal paying of the artists (think 227 streams for 1 Dollar [source]).
So I canceled my abo (effective Jan 2, 2025 - after which that account will be deleted) and looked into alternative services: Deezer, Tidal, and Napster. I didn't consider Apple (I'm on Android and Apple doesn't play nice outside its sandbox) or Youtube (Google is unreliable when it comes to continuing services) and Amazon is so close to the enshittification threshold by now that I certainly won't take any new business there. Deezer and Tidal have both intuitive apps and all my must-have favs.
I'm now on Tidal, of the two, they pay the artists better (80 streams vs 157 for 1 USD) and I liked their app a tad better. I didn't use their transfer service for playlists and such, since Spotify made a mess out of my lists anyway and I prefer listening to albums. For that I already spotted two new ones from "Two Steps From Hell" that I never found on Spotify and the audio quality is superb even on my tinny kitchen speaker.
Also, their themed playlists, something I avoided at all costs on Spotify in the end, are a positive surprise. Starting the "Rock Christmas" playlist (I needed a soundtrack on short notice yesterday) with "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl is certainly a bold choice and I was halfway through the list before one of the ubiquitous jingles showed up (Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney). And there are a lot of songs on that list I never heard before. Wow.
If you like podcasts and audiobooks along with your music, you'll probably want to look into Deezer, but if it's music in superb audio quality: have a look at Tidal. I'm certainly positively impressed at this point.

Twitter to Bluesky and Mastodon

My Twitter handle (AKK666AKK) was unused and the account locked since EM bought the company and put enshittification on speed dial.
In November 2024, I deleted it for good. I started accounts on Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky - and found myself using Bluesky (AKK666) and Mastodon (AKK666) the most, with Bluesky being mostly books, fan activities, art, cats and plants, and commentary in English, whereas Mastodon is German everday talk and science. More to Threads later.

Facebook, Instagram, Threads:

I stopped using these cold Turkey a couple weeks ago, when they demanded that I as a EU customer (a) confirm again that I'm fine with being ad-tracked and (b) get unskippable auto-play ads that are so much fun on a commuter train in the morning in my feed if I don't pay through my nose. Nope. Nope. Nope-ty-nope!
The accounts still exist, the apps are still on my phone - because I enjoy seeing the desperate notifications of "you missed this..." and "look at our crap..." that are increasingly off the mark regarding my interests (so much for their algorithm *eg*)
So, if you want to stay in contact with me, find me on Bluesky as AKK666 or here on this blog. :-)

There's more to come, but this post is certainly long enough by now.
Feels good to post in a format I'm atuned to. Verbose text. ;-)

Dear all,

as you maybe (not) noticed, the last BAUplan update is from August, reporting on a required change of perspective. Unfortunately, soon after my real life also insisted on such a change as the university decided after 14 years not to extend my contract past the current project. Hence, instead of writing I ended up job hunting.
Yesterday, I received - and accepted - a job offer for a position at a federal institute. :D

Now I have at least the rest of the month free for (a) calming my frayed nerves from the last months and (b) writing TBX. So, if the aftermath of the stress doesn't get the better of me, expect updates!

current chapter word count: 6823 (9/16 pages in continuous text; one gap before this scene, hence...)
scene written today: on the hunt
scene completed? not yet
scene to be written next: closer to home
character learning about "normal" retiree shenanigans in Tokyo: Seishiro
character reconsidering his options: also Seishiro
research of today: distance between Tama, Tokyo and Gero, Gifu Prefecture; distance between Tama, Tokyo and Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, as the shikigami flies and by train; toll road operations in Japan (not needed); river flooding in Tokyo in y2k (yes, but six months too late for the story)
author's comment: this is one of the 'mechanical' scenes that read "meh" and everything is figured out and the text tightened accordingly. Let's hope that happens soon!

quote of the day:
“Keep the file, but exclude her from the immediate list,” Seishiro decided. “Move the other two up to prime targets. You usually don’t send a tatarigami across downtown without it being noticed. I need full files on all three in thirty minutes, and the address in Otsuka right now.”

current chapter word count: 5324 (9/13 pages in continuous text)
scenes written today: Yimura's office, sensing the kill, about Hokuto (was: realization), report writing
scenes completed? you wish!
scenes to be written (next-ish): is it always like this?, working with Subaru, tatarigami mistress confrontation
character admitting to himself that he does exactly what his elders fear he does: Subaru
character finally getting recognized as what she was: Hokuto
characters embarrassed by her office size: Yimura
person who wishes to have more time for this: the author.

quote of the day:
“If it helps, the tatarigami would have killed Hasegawa without the active protection charm. Something I could only offer because I knew you’d be on the case immediately.”
Seishiro nodded. “Put that in your report. I’ll add a risk assessment to mine about what the tatarigami would have caused had it broken its tether.”
“Do we know its tether?” Subaru asked.
“Destroying Hasegawa.” Seishiro snorted. “My client was rather vocal about it.”

current chapter word count: 4642 (9/11 pages in continuous text)
scenes written today: Window [censored], Risk Assessment, Shisa approval & risqué and risk
scenes completed? Window was tweaked, RA and Shisa are more fleshed out, but not yet complete, R&R is almost complete, but all of them need more preparation in the still missing events beforehand that have been partially outlined today, but still aren't written.
scenes to be written next: is it always like this?, working with Subaru, tatarigami mistress confrontation, sensing the kill, realization
character not paying attention in his meeting because of underwear in his pocket: Seishiro
character deeply uncomfortable because of a missing piece of underwear: Subaru
character wondering about public transport usage: Seishiro
research for today: lines of sight between Kokyo, the Imperial Guards HQ, and Sakura Enterprises' location; building shadows in Tokyo in May at approx. 17:30; distance range of military grade binoculars

author's comment:
I originally planned to have the first touch of the Ijyeun thread in this part, but it increasingly looks that it will end up in the next part. There's so much going on already and window [censored] & co further expanding / complicating matters that it's either going to be twice the size it was supposed to be or going to be horribly cluttered. Both options are not appealing.

quote of the day:
“Shiibatani is probably furthering his education with binoculars.” Another stroke. “Right now.”