It's been a little, huh?

Hello, everyone! It's been a little while, hasn't it. Sure hasn't helped that we technically procrastinated on writing this for like 10 hours either. We've been alright.

From what I can tell, it mostly seems that the last few months caught up with us here for a little. Between the apparent events of the latter half of August and that emotional spiral, then the stress with Cohost, and then spending most of October and November focusing extra on job searches... A couple weeks ago, we got almost shocking confirmation that what we believed to be the situation in August not only didn't happen but was not a problem at the time at all, and it's just been. I wanna say weird, but everyone else is gently nudging me and saying that weird is what we'd be if all this other stuff didn't take our energy away from being it. We've been on survival mode again, I think. At least things are currently stable and improving slightly. Which means that instead we're having almost daily rounds of both dysphoria (Gender and species!), as well as the BIID-related thoughts hitting hard at times. It's fun. /s

Anyway, between all of that and our time getting swallowed by other distractions, we've kinda neglected this site a little in that time. Technically we're most active at the time on Bluesky (For now, at least), and somewhat active over on Mastodon too, but not so much elsewhere recently. I blame the (For us at least) lower barrier of entry and larger number of old acquaintances and friends. We're thinking about how we want to change that. 300 characters is almost nothing, especially when, as I believe this post so far is proving, we have a tendency to get perhaps overly verbose at times. The vibes there have also shifted this last week or so. At the start of November, we'd probably still call it "Twitter with a healthy dose of the internet weariness that became worn into the healthier habits and patterns of Cohost". Now? There's some of that still, but you can feel the extra buzz in the room. Things are louder, busier. Way more Twitter. And we're currently following just over 130 people on there, most of which deliberately chosen as generally slightly quieter posters too (We need more than one paw to list the people who're cool, but post and share way too much and would blow up our timeline if we followed them.) We're thinking of perhaps dialing that back.

I could talk about all this stuff until the sun comes back up and sets again, but I don't think it'll change much right now. So, what's the plan?

First of all, a bit of a stretch goal. Three new stories before the end of the year. If possible, not counting the one that we have 95% finished and ready to post after a final look-over to fix any last issues. We have *plenty* of ideas for stuff we wanna write (Including, but not limited to: BIID/gender dysphoria wish fulfillment, getting funny with body mods and doing a kink we're not sure has a proper name, some plushie-powered "Oh just confess already", a silly winter holiday gift-mixup, and others), so the main issue will just be writing. I think we can hopefully manage that, even if our little taste of editing from our current WIP is already somewhat addicting.

We also want to push ourselves to be more social. Not just a half-there presence on social media pushing the thumbs up button, as we've primarily been for years, but social. Actually talk to people. I'm gonna leave that part to the more outgoing members of the system.~

And between that, taking care of our body as we're coming out of this funk, and having to put some extra effort into our job hunting stuff going forwards (And the others pointing out multiple non-overlapping grinds they want to do in FFXIV) we have plenty of stuff to do. We just have to try and do it. And fight a little against the AuDHD along the way. I think we can.

Basically, I'm pretty sure next post on here will be sooner than a month from now oops

(no subject)

ALSO GUESS WHO JUST LEARNED THE HARD WAY THAT PRESSING ENTER WHEN YOUR SELECTOR IS NOT CURRENTLY IN THE MAIN TEXT POST (FOR EXAMPLE, IN THE TAGS TRYING TO FIGURE SOMETHING OUT) JUST IMMEDIATELY PUBLISHES THE ENTIRE THING

(Fortunately I was basically finished with it, but that was still a scare. Aaa. We should go to bed.)

(no subject)

“Tell me... Did it hurt?”

It was the smaller of the two who’d asked the question. Both of them sitting in that forest of greens and purples, dark in the late red afternoon, on the old wooden pier. The lake below them reflected back a city, one painfully familiar to the speaker. The smaller of the two looked like an ordinary human girl aside from the dyed purple hair. The larger of the two had skin the same color as the other’s hair, six muscular arms, and a heavy crown of antler-like horns.

“When?” the demon responded. “When I changed like this?”

“No. When you realized you couldn’t go back.” The girl was barely holding back tears now.

The demon stretched and sighed. “Yeah. That last night at my parent’s place got bad.”

“But not after your change?”

“By that point I knew there was no home left there.” A moment of quiet, only the wind brushing by the leaves made a noise. “And I think... Anyone who gets here has their mind made up. They know where home is, and where it isn’t.”

The girl broke into sobs now, and the demon gently hugged her. Comfort it had needed too, when it sat in her place a lifetime ago.

The skies dimmed. Gentle ambiance of unnatural insects swelled through the air. And as the reflection of that city in the lake dimmed and became a distant memory, the demon walked away from the pier and down the dirt path into the forest. Above it, a winged creature flew along on unfamiliar wings. There was joy and freedom in her motions.