Hopepunk Princess

I talked previously about a new online writing software/word processor called Skrib. I have since tried it out. What I liked about it was the search function, being able to toggle between documents from the sidebar, and having the planning/brainstorming board right there alongside my draft. However, I decided it's not for me based on a suggested edits feature that will literally give you suggestions for what to do with your sentences. Skrib purports to be anti-Gen AI and granted, the editorial suggestions feature isn't generating sentences. But telling you what you can do with your sentences comes too close and makes me uncomfortable. I know people use Grammarly or ProWritingAid for the same thing, but I personally don't like it. And it's not useful to me. My editing process is very gut-checky and vibes-based.

So I'm going to stick to Ellipsus. They've recently introduced a premium plan on top of their free one. Their free plan is great: I can have all the projects/documents I want and sync them to the cloud automatically, which covers the basics for me. And I can use timers, focus mode, and add collaborators. The premium plan introduces custom themes and something opt-in called 'emboss' which is like your writing fingerprint (it shows how many sessions you wrote the document in, typing speed, and other stuff meant to show you wrote it yourself, without using AI checkers). I'm irritated that our writing tools now are having to help writers prove they didn't use AI.

There's a South Korean bisexual dating reality show airing right now called Stand Bi Me and as your resident bi/pan/omnisexual I had to check it out. I'm watching the first episode with a big grin on my face. My cheeks hurt and my brain chemicals fizz.

Out of the participants so far my screen-crushes are:
Seungho, who is cute as a button. I melt every time he's on screen.
Hyeyeon, who has a dimple on top of being otherworldly pretty.

Some people have unfair amounts of charm! It's too early for me to ship anyone, but some of their interactions are making me feel all fluttery secondhand.

The results are in: for the poll about whether or not to have the doll on the cover of Dollshops & Deathmages, 64% voted for the cover with the doll and 36% voted for the cover without the doll. So I'm keeping the doll, and I feel better about that decision than I did previously. I love the ability to make decisions on everything that comes with being indie, but while actually executing that ability I'm sometimes indecisive.

Trying to settle on an author newsletter was similarly difficult for me to decide. I finally caved and moved to MailerLite. A fellow participant in the cozy fantasy anthology who is tracking reader downloads said 200 people signed up for it so far, so by the time the anthology runs its course there's a good chance that with the new subscribers I'll still be below MailerLite's free threshold of 500 subscribers. I have indie author friends who use MailerLite so even if MailerLite makes it difficult to get ahold of a human for support, I know humans of my own who might have suggestions.

I've written 10k words of Dragons & Debutantes, which is the point at which I feel like "this is getting real" about a book. I'm also writing a secret project... actually you know what, you're all in on the secret. It's an angsty sapphic romantasy called A Princess Bewitched. Since Mynah Clement is now a cozy pen name and this project isn't cozy at all, it's got to have different publishing plans, and I think it's for the best that I write it first and figure that out later. I've got around 20k words down which I'm rewriting from the beginning, and a method vriddy talked about recently (type the sentences from scratch with your edits, with the old sentences side by side, instead of typing/deleting/shuffling things in the existing sentences) is working really well with this one.

I've written 8k words on Dragons & Debutantes, and it's starting to feel like "yeah, this will turn into a book." It's cozy, but with high emotional stakes, so it's a different experience to writing Dollshops & Deathmages. I'm loving it.

I realised after finishing Dollshops & Deathmages that I felt very blue and disappointed, and it took people telling me they liked reading it for me to be able to see that it's still the same story I was delighted with during drafting. The same thing happened with Bloodhunt Academy. When I finished it I cried to my friend Vara about it not being good enough. About not feeling like a real writer, or like the writer I used to be. She said me worrying about my writing not being good enough makes me indubitably a writer XD

Before, the happiest part of writing for me used to be finishing and looking back on the whole thing. That's how I've felt for most of my writing life, so this new pattern with me is frustrating. At least I know now that it's not the quality of my writing that's making me feel blue, but rather something I don't really understand yet.

I thought I might be able to keep using Fika for my authorial newsletter, but unfortunately they've stopped replying to support. I've not been able to get hold of anyone for support with bugs/glitches for the past couple of weeks. That's concerning enough that I'll have to move newsletter services.

After the anthology runs its course as a newsletter magnet, at the beginning of June, I'll have to send out a newsletter to new subscribers reminding them that they signed up for my newsletters via the anthology. Reminding people who I am, and how and when they signed up. And for that I need a welcome sequence. But I don't much fancy any of the options for that. MailerLite is what's most recommended by some of the indie authors I've talked to, for sequences. But I hear they've replaced their customer support with a chatbot and getting human support takes effort (and that's a recipe for stressing me out even more when I need help). I'm also leery of the fact that they reduced their free subscribers from 1000 to 500 recently.

Ideally, I'd have an email reminding subscribers about the anthology and who I am, with a picture of the cover to jog memories, and a link to download it if they haven't already. I can't do all that with PencilBooth which only lets you send a short text as a welcome message. (If only I didn't need a welcome sequence, I'd happily move to PencilBooth).

I'm not able to make a decision either way right now. I guess I'll wait until the anthology runs its course and then see how many subscribers I've gotten, and if they total less than 500 I might still try Mailerlite's free tier.

I don't know, folks. I'd have more options if AI wasn't spreading like a rash.

I began bleeding around 8.30 in the morning. I got a new icon to represent moontime, isn't it amazingly apt? :D

I recently found out that someone in my city makes OEKO-TEX certified biodegradable sanitary pads (so they've been third party tested free of a bunch of harmful chemicals). She's been doing it for 6 years and I only found out about it now, but I'm happy I found out about it at all! She's using the profits to combat period poverty in my state, and to fund research into menstrual health.

She offered to deliver the pads to me via a dropoff service, but since it's within my city I said I'd come by and pick them up. Along with the pads she gave me a feast of mangoes from the tree in her yard! She said she was going away with her family for the summer, and was taking all the mangoes down from the tree beforehand so that they wouldn't rot and fall in her absence.

It was so sweet and generous and made my month!

Greetings, friends. Today for 3weeks4dreamwidth I bring you not a Kingdom of Knuffel avatar, but a Wild Knuffel. Wild Knuffel are adoptables made by users, for users! Anyone who wants to try their hand at art and use the Knuffel base to draw on can create one, and submit them for release. Once released, other users can adopt them.

Here's one made by user HanafuruLove. When I told her that I'd adopted him, she saw that I'd named him 'Too Cool for Skool' and she found that hilarious



It's possible to click on the preview box above if you're curious about seeing him in his full glory (all the details HanafuruLove added to him!) or if you want to try feeding and playing with him. I love his tattoos, piercings and of course, his skateboard. The expression on his face speaks volumes

My family returned to the house yesterday, and today I was surprised by the enormity of the rage and resentment I feel towards them. They hired a cleaning service, and the cleaner emptied the mopping water in the utility area which is where the dishes are (I like the dishes to be kept and washed in the sink, but my family prefers the dishes out in the utility area). The dishes were on the floor near the drain, and the mopping water was emptied on the floor near the drain.

I was telling my grandma that either the dishes have to be kept in the sink or the mopping water has to be emptied somewhere else, and it was a whole stretched-out conversation because my grandma talks over people and I was having to say things over and over to get her to listen. In the midst of this my aunt told me to quieten because they were booking tickets, but I wouldn't have to louden in the first place if they didn't loudly talk over people.

The dishes were washed later, but just the fact that water which is 1) dirty and 2) has floor cleaner in it had swilled around them, is enough to make me anxious about eating.

Oh, and my grandpa asked me whether I'm searching for jobs. I said yes just to fob him off. But it started me raging in my head about how if they want me to do a job so bad they should have supported me when I was offered one.

I recently went to an in-person job interview for a gallery assistant position. They asked me what I was 'expecting' to be paid. I said I had come here with an open mind and asked them what their pay range was; they ignored me. They asked me what my previous salary had been. I told them, and again I asked them what they were paying. Apparently they thought they didn't need to answer any of my questions while expecting me to answer all of theirs. They told me to come for a second in-person interview, and I emailed them saying that I was withdrawing my application because they were refusing to answer any of my questions. They emailed me back saying they were rejecting my application (even though I'd already withdrawn it! lol) because my salary expectations were higher than the budget for the position. The audacity to email me that after refusing to tell me what the budget for the position was! Bald-faced liars, the lot of them. It is amusing that they said 'no we are rejecting your application, you're not withdrawing' because it reminds me of guys who get rejected and then insist that they are rejecting you actually, and they didn't want you anyway.

All of which to say that I've been silently fuming, so here I am verbally fuming instead. Which is an improvement.

I've got an upset tummy and have had to cancel tomorrow's plans, which involved having Nikki over to hang out (our last chance to have the house to ourselves before my grandparents return this weekend).

Also, I found out today that my K-pop darlings, CIX, are disbanding. I have deliberately paced myself so that I still have lots of their old videos and past media to savour, but I'll eventually have watched everything... and, well. I knew their contracts were up but this is the first time I'm experiencing this. I've been a k-pop fan for a decade and seen disbandments, but this is the first time it's happening with my faves. My other faves are ATEEZ who have all renewed after their first contract's duration was up, and KaiBaek from EXO who aren't in the same group anymore but are both active and so successful that they'll likely continue to be.

My day could've gone better, ha. The silver lining is that I'm getting to rest.

I realise I'm late to begin participating in 3weeks4dreamwidth but I might as well start now. I thought about what I could post about every day (on days that I'm not posting anything else on my journal) and decided on discussing my avatars on Kingdom of Knuffel. Kingdom of Knuffel is a dressup game, virtual pet/adoptables site and forum community rolled into one. You earn points by chatting and raising virtual pets, and spend the points on dressup items for your customisable avatar.

This avatar is my great success. It's titled 'Tea Lime' and it won first place!!! in the May 2022 Monthly Avatar Contest at Kingdom of Knuffel.



Things I'm proud of:
Matching the Stripes and Hearts background with the Heart Cup.
The necklace looks like it's a part of the dress because the pendant sits right at the center of the bow. Speaking of bows, the dress has a bow, as does the hair, as does the avatar's frame. Even the necklace has a tiny bow.
The way I got the green skin with the white face was by using an item called Clown Facepaint on the Peridot Skin. (Otherwise she'd be green from face to torso.) I thought the violet blush looked nice even though there's no violet in the rest of the avatar, so that her face wouldn't be stark, uniform pale.
I chose the Alseid Lips, which I think makes it look like she just blew on her drink or took a sip. It's just the right, trace amount of tiny pucker.