A Hidden Path

I published the first of four chapters of a new explicit digimon fanfic today! You can find it on AO3 here and FFN here.

Summary:

An AU story where Motomiya Daisuke, Anami Eimi, Ichijouji Ken, and Izumi Koushiro are undergraduate students in 2024. This four chapter explicit story follows their exploration of sexuality and relationships in a consensual, queer-friendly way.

Author's notes:

This story features college-age characters exploring their identities in a supportive/sex-friendly/consensual way. We'll see characters pushing themselves to see what they like, asexual characters exploring sex, casual relationships, casual relationships ending, casual relationships shifting to committed ones, monogamous relationships, and possibly poly and open relationships. The characters are purposefully pushing themselves and each other in the name of self-discovery, but they are doing so consensually. They are beginners, though; their advice isn't perfect. Also, while the story is sex positive, there are difficult aspects to being queer in our world, and to navigating relationships in general. Those do come up here.

Chapter one: Motomiya Daisuke x Anami Eimi Chapter two: Motomiya Daisuke x Ichijouji Ken Chapter three: Izumi Koushiro x Anami Eimi Chapter four: Still in development

Additional Notes:

Hi all!  So, this story was inspired by a dream I had of Daisuke and Eimi hooking up, which, if you're familiar with Eimi and my work, was...  Kind of weird for me.  I ended up fleshing out a story without meaning to simply by trying to figure out what could possibly bring those two together like that, and this is what I came up with!  It began expanding to contain Daiken, and suddenly it was June, and I thought...  Pride month celebration!!!!

If you don't know why Foss is awesome its not just that its free. Open source software has a huge set of advantages. Most software is proprietary meaning that its code cannot be viewed by other people. Open source softwares code can be viewed by everyone and people can contribute their own code to make it better. Open source is often more secure than proprietary because more people have more eyes on it and more people have contributed to it's security. Its also easy to know how much privacy you have with every software because you can read the code. No more "trust me bro I'm not harvesting and selling your data" you know if they are collecting and selling because the code is publicly available.

In the last two months I have been switching almost completely to Foss. I was worried at first because when I stopped using Foss over 10 years ago the average Foss software was genuinely worse than the paid proprietary alternative. Thankfully things have really come full circle. 90℅ of the software I have tried in the last 2 months works better than the proprietary alternative and is 100℅ less obnoxious.

So here is a list of every Foss software I have tried and recommend. There is way more than this available. This list is just what I have used and like personally. Anyone can feel free to add and we can turn it into a master list. Please just take these as a place to start and do your own research to see if these softwares will work for your use case before you fully ditch your proprietary software.

Operating systems

Graphene os: android alt. Security and privacy focused. The most secure and private smartphone currently available.

Linux mint: easy to use linux, 100℅ better than windows.

Pop!: The Linux distro you should use if you have nividia hardware and want to play games using said hardware. Very intuitive and easy to use.

Kubuntu: Ubuntu Linux with KDE desktop. This is the linux distro one I am currently using and I don't have any plans to jump ship again. Better than windows and better than Mac. The companion app for your phone makes life soooo easy. Its pretty and easy to customize to a ridiculously granular level. No fucking notes.

Kindle jailbreak- ko reader: use jailbreak to free your kindle from the tyranny of the bezos. It will download ko reader which is a Foss OS that has every fucking feature you always wished kindle had and let's you read whatever the fuck you want, and have whatever the screensaver you want (no more ads!). Soooo fuck amazon and use this. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough.

Linux FOSS: (some available on windows and android as well)

Calibre: Foss desktop eBook library. Packed with features. You will want to use this with koreader to make managing your kindle easy.

Manuscript: skrivner alt. Does absolutely everything I need.

Bitwarden: password manager (use a keepass fork if you want self hosted)

Next cloud: private google drive and cloud alternative that you can self host if you want but it's not required. App available

Proton VPN: to the best of my knowledge it is the only Foss no log VPN you can get. You can pay for higher speeds. App available

Quad9dns: free encrypted DNS provider. App available.

News software:

Use any Foss RSS reader and for the love of god stop getting news from social media. Take control of your feed!

Apps (I only know for android)

Fdroid: great app store to find Foss android apps and download them.

Antennapod: you can get all of your podcasts fetched to one feature rich app via RSS feed. No need to rely on spotify or music steaming services.

Openreads: it's good reads but private and 100℅ stored locally. No amazon, no social media aspect, it just tracks your reading, you can import your good reads but if you want to import from storygraph you have to make a good reads burner account, import to good reads, then import to openreads. The menus Navigation on this one is a bit cumbersome but honestly good reads app is worse.

Newpipe: YouTube frontend that let's you have YouTube subscriptions, watch YouTube in the background, and blocks all ads, without logging in to YouTube. You will want to use this one with a VPN set to Canada (or any other country) so YouTube doesn't keep blocking it in order to force you to sign in. But even with that extra step its worth it for the privacy and the lack of ads.

Proton mail: one of 2 more private gmail alts. But you should note that email cannot be 100℅ anonymous or private.

Blender is an amazing FOSS suite for 3D modeling and animation, as well as digital sculpting and motion tracking. Pros use it. It’s a staple in game development. It’s what the Academy Award winning film “Flow” was made on. It’s not the bland name alternative to an industry standard; it is an industry standard.

Krita is a fantastic FOSS application for digital painting. Everyone I’ve ever talked to who uses it has loved it to death.

OBS is the absolute go-to choice for screen recording and live streaming. You can use it to record your entire desktop or a specific window, capture audio from multiple sources, and even add overlays, webcam feeds, or transitions to your videos.

VLC Media Player is the best media player, hands down. It’s lightweight, it’s reliable, it supports virtually every audio and video format known to man, and it has built in media conversion and even basic editing. I truly can’t imagine why anyone would use a media player that isn’t this one. It’s just the best there is, easily, no contest.

Audacity is a fantastic multi-track audio editor and recorder. It’s free and it’s good, and podcasters love it for a reason.

My orthodontist tells me I can make an appointment with the surgeon. I call the surgeon. They tell me I need a new referral. I call the orthodontist. They do a referral. I call the surgeon. Referral didn't come through. They tell me about their special unique system we have to use. I call the ortho again and walk them through the referral. I call the surgeon. They say the referral was missing some details so they have to do it again. I call the ortho.

The insurance company calls me about repair shops. I give them the name of the repair shop which I already gave them yesterday. They say they're not in their system but I can use them, but I have to call the repair shop to ask them to contact the insurance company. I call the repair shop and they say the insurance company is supposed to email them.

So, a while ago, some of my friends and fellow cast members of the @sansukhpodfic​ asked about how to make and edit podfic on their own. I created this tutorial for them, as a supplement to the resources already posted  by the Sansukh mods. In the wake of the most recent @auralphonic​ episode asking for technical advice on podficcing in Audacity, I thought I would polish this up and post it. This tutorial explains how, once you have permission to record a story, you go about turning it into a podfic using Audacity. It focuses on technical and logistical details, rather than artistic advice, and is cobbled together from my own experience, my knowledge of the mathematics behind signal analysis, and other people’s tutorials. There’s lots of communities and resources out there that give advice on the artistic side (Auralphonic, for example, has an episode for newbies), which I recommend checking out.

Disclaimer: There is no one standard method of doing this! This is the method I have found gives me the best results, personally, but there may be better ways to do this. I strongly recommend checking out other resources for comparison.

CON HAUL! CON HAUL!

I went to Anime Central last week to nerd out and catch up with my BFF (Best Fangirl Friend)! We saw FictionJunction live in concert (very cool!) and lamented the fact that the con has grown so big we couldn’t see all of Dealer’s Hall/Artists Alley AND go to the concert/some of the daytime panels in the hours allotted 😭

But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a great time! I walked away with some very fun Pokemon stickers and patches(!!), a beautiful lilac-colored Last Unicorn charm, as well as some amazing pens that look like magical girl henshin sticks from Artist’s Alley. AND @indigosharks was there with a rad Demona print I recognized from this very website, so of course I had to buy it, and got to yap about Gargoyles a little bit! <3

Definitely walked away with a wide range of fandom interests from the Dealer’s Hall, too. Digimon stuff is pretty few and far between these days, but I did buy the Hurricane Touchdown soundtrack because I didn’t have it yet (I know, I know, how is that possible?!), and I found a Yuru Camp promo book at the same place (I love the first season of that show, and the manga! Maybe this will give me the motivation to watch/read more of it!!). “Chocobo and the Airship” is a children’s book that has lovely art by the guy that did concept art for Chocobo’s Dungeon 2–which I’ve never played—but like I said, lovely art.

There were a bunch of plush rats in tutus at one booth, which I thought was hilarious and great, so I bought one (she’s so soft!). And then several buys from my favorite reoccurring booth, which always has TONS of hard-to-get merch for many of my favorite series, Digimon included! Yamato and Gabumon going ballooning was from a blind box. The Princess Kraehe gachapon was pricy for what it is, but worth it because there is NOT MUCH Princess Tutu merch out there, and now I have some representation the best ballet-inspired magical-girl show on my shelf! 🩰🐦‍⬛And Ranma and Ryouga on the same charm. It’s the boys! They’re fightinggggg! Teehee!!