I'm Luna! 26y/o Trans kobold/puppy in Michigan, this is my Personal page so be prepared for NSFW content, minors fuck off -certified good pet-
also @SapphicScribe for my writing work, although there isn't much to see there at the moment ;p
man what else even is left on the internet besides cohost that
dreamwidth? pillowfort? some accursed fediverse hack?
edit:
4. allows italic text
cohost: the ONLY remaining site designed for grown-ups (though littles are also allowed)
At this point what even lets you write several paragraphs and use italics if you feel like it, the way that, you know, Livejournal did, back in the days before they took italics and complete thoughts away from us for some reason?
God in fucking heaven I forgot I can't use italics on anything else. What is wrong with this world
Which then led the plague of people using unicode math symbols to get bold and the accompanying cry from the screenreader users all because they had to arbitrarily take away something taken for granted on messageboards and back in LJ days.
How bad is Pillowfort these days?
...we could all move to Dreamwidth lol
Personal experience: It's clunky and prone to slow/broken loads. A massive chunk of furs I liked following there that don't use PostyBirb stopped being active on it many months ago.
I liked Pillowfort a lot when I used it (there's lots of ways to curate what you see and what you don't, and communities are a great idea) and it can be decently active, but what I didn't like was how I can't have any side-pages/side-blogs; I'd have to make completely separate accounts, which is clunky and annoying.
inb4 "you can do all that on Mastodon, provided you have chosen one of the Good Servers. how do you pick a good server? it's a secret :o)"
"also if you use any of those features nobody else will be able to see them unless they're also using whatever custom software" i assume
"Also if you use a software that implements the features and it turns out the developers were shit, we'll ban you, your domain and your mother off the Good Parts Of Fediverse"
It Depends
stock mastodon is kinda plain. 500 character limit? no formatting? bleh
the glitch fork (aka "the eternal development branch" aka "mastodon 'but good'") gets you markdown, and a few other things. a lot of forks work off of Glitch.
the rich text (mentions, links) wire format is HTML. sometimes, clients will… creatively interpret this HTML
here's an example of what things might look like in a badly behaving client:
this is what a list might look like in a client:this is a list itemthis is also a list itemhttps://this-is-a-link-that-was-below-the-list.example.com
unfortunately that's the most reasonable client, other than the fact that it only supports the boring john-mastodon-certified trademark-compliant features.
here's what was drafted:
this is what a list might look like in a client:
- this is a list item
- this is also a list item
https://this-is-a-link-that-was-below-the-list.example.com
now, another example: quote posting! it's an extension (or well, 9001 different extensions by different servers dating back to the year 123 AD) atop this jank. I maintain a fork of mastodon that supports it (not my patch originally, just my weekend hours spent poorly)
this of course meant that we got blocked by a few instances because apparently this patch meant we endorsed pile-ons and harrassment. (quote posting isn't a new thing, it's existed for years, and it's been fine.)
in summary, this entire thing sucks, but it's the Other Site that I help run. and it's better than cohost for getting endorphins from girl on girlpost engagement so,
ymmv????
Mastodon is Not Good Software and it makes me mad that it is the sort of default champion of activitypub. I imagined a bright future where cohost and tumblr and all kinds of not-just-twitter-clone sites got on the activitypub bandwagon eventually but of course nothing like that ever happened.
I'm just shocked anyone else knows about Dreamwidth
i only know about it because the person (one of the people?) running it went on a like 100-tweet thread about how Nasty and Abusive cohost's ToS is
pillowfort kinda got some nasty stank on it thanks to that weirdo doing drama hunting on cohost. also, as someone else pointed out, when has anyone, EVER, talked about or shared something from pillowfort? The fact it's still kicking is a shock, tbh.
the one thing I'll say about mastodon, is that long form posts suck to read in most of its given UIs.
and on the 'deck' web UI on mastodon, any post beyond a certain length is chopped off at the top.
and there's an overly aggressive CW culture there.
also like, your post having a subject line makes it hide behind the same "show more" button a CW would.
Pillowfort allows all of that? It's also specifically welcoming to adult creators and sex workers, and has banned material from generative AI as well.
Here's a list of links for the most active communities if that'd help anybody check the place out. https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/2952644
this is why i like fediverse. there's issues but long as you pick a principled server most of these issues are solved... i like tech.lgbt. it's a big instance with alot of queer people and they block most of the really bad instances.
I can't use italics or write longform there and have anyone be able to read it
there are instances that have markdown support and have large character limits (like mine)
rendering for the reader seems to be the point of italics though, so mastodon-style fediverse fails at that
the glitch fork of mastodon, yeah. bold, italic, bold italic, inline hyperlinks, bulleted and numbered lists, headings… and my instance has a 3621-character limit. if you would like an invite Just In Case i'd be glad to give ya one!
edit: idk why people are saying mastodon can't see the formatting. simply not true lol. i have a secondary account on a mainline mastodon instance and just tested it and can see all the formatting in my post from my glitch instance!
550-700 word limit doesn't really leave me much room to write something good if i feel like it
Fair! It doesn't look like any of your recent posts are over 3k characters but only you know your needs
