What that Substack Do...

Herethings, Whatthings, and Nextthings

You may notice I've changed the title of my...Thing. Here. Herething. Those of you who also subscribe to my Patreon/Discord will have recognized Cozy Conquers All as the English version of the motto of the Cozy Cult, a long-running joke that ended up kind of sort of almost turning real—a joke that came from a particularly unglued lady on Twitter who unned her glue all over me in hilarious fashion, insisting I was leading a cult to drag people away form Christ.

Well, obviously we had to pretend she was right for just an inappropriately long amount of time, while crafting the coziest most ethical cult ethos we could crowdsource. Thus was the Cozy Cult born, and lo these many years later, a group of really just fucking beautiful people are still pretending, and it never stops being funny for a second.

And it’s exactly that late-night Twitter-to-dearly-held-forever-laugh that is being so depressingly ruined by a certain emerald asshole.

God dammit.

ANYWAY, the CC is genuinely one of my favorite things that has ever come out of…me…which sounds wholly not on, but as soon as I made this Substack, as if by sympathetic dirtbag magic, I got covid again and have been in a decidedly non-cozy delirium for just an inappropriately long amount of time since.

So if I’m going to reference myself in the title of this Herething, I gotta be honest, Welcome to Garbagetown seems to fit the world a little more snugly, you know?

Plus, well. We are human, therefore we are holy trash. (We watch Love Island, therefore you can just take the holy part out.)

I’m still crawling back so forgive me for not having a formal essay or anything ready yet. I’m still trying to scry whether Twitter is going to end the Weimar Republic before I figure out Mastodon. A site that is confusing, and super committed to being old school, and I think going through some stuff with the tsunami of new users who don’t understand the vibe. ME ME I’M ONE OF THOSE.

Also I’ve been told to kill myself twice, told god should kill me once, and once asked to piss in a random stranger’s mouth and that’s just today on the big woolly M.

Sigh.

Garbage.

Which brings me back to Substack, whose features I have barely begun to explore, and poking at it with a long stick and an unsure expression.

Which is hilarious, because I used to do this shit all the time. I started long-form blogging in 1999, before most people had hear the word blog. On fucking Diaryland. (Do you know there are people still posting on Diaryland?) But with the, in hindsight, foreshadowing death of Livejournal prevalence of microblogging, you get out of the habit,

So I wonder, what can I do here that you would enjoy? I produce quite a bit of monthly content on my Patreon and have no intention of ever not doing that, but I definitely want to try doing a different sort of themed thing here. Herething.

I suppose I could do essays on things unrelated to writing craft, which is the main thrust of the Patron essays (though the connection is sometimes tenuous). I think I definitely have something brewing in me about the old internet and the new, and losing platforms, diasporas, and cycles of attention. Or a poem-a-day project or something. I don’t know. What could I develop here that isn’t part of the rest of my internet…uh…botanical garden? Sorry, I’m clearly still in the brain fog.

I’m genuinely curious to hear if there’s something specific you’d enjoy this space being used for. If not, I’ll figure something out. But we could make this a really special little place that revolves around something, could but my brain summon up what.

In the mean time, some lovely people did subscribe (which is amazing. No one has to, but it’s amazing.) so I’m going go to post a unique little thing for them in a few minutes. After all, I don’t do unreturned favors.

My four-year-old son is snoring lightly in the next room dreaming of lollipops for breakfast. FINALLY. I think I’ll pour a glass of wine before I write the post for the beautiful box seats, and tell my kitten he’s the handsomest man who ever lived and also a roly poly doofy floofy Porg baby.

I feel quite melancholy, closing out a regular old blog post with who knows how many characters in the cold November night. Return to the old ways, isn’t that the song the fairies are always singing?