Platforms are not your friends.
This is a thing that we instinctively know about the internet, and it becomes truer with every cycle. No tool, space, or framework is perfect. Even when some platforms offer to be the best that they can be, others are silently imploding.
Discord is currently walking back almost becoming one of the biggest privacy and security threats in the communication space despite its logic attempting to secure privacy and security. People are more quickly coming to terms with how much data is being moved about from the apps and sites that we take for granted. Windows is falling apart (or, depending on who you ask, operating as intended) to the point where otherwise non-tech-savvy people are rapidly considering switching to Linux to have a modicum of control. And all of this is to say nothing of the slow and haunting wave of 'artificial intelligence' creeping into every corner of our digital lives, threatening to divorce us from our own thoughts, our labour, and our connection to reality.
Stuff's kinda unreal at this point, truly.
I like using Ghost. My current newsletter is not bad — I like the way it looks (for the most part, but I am a flighty person sometimes); it operates exactly within the parameters that I have patience for in terms of having to think about and put out my content; and having a newsletter that can also operate as my author landing page, as awkward as it presently appears, is decent for business, although I would like something that looks more sophisticated when I have the Action Points to actually do that work myself.
Ghost, as far as I am aware, has done very little, if anything, wrong. It definitely ain't no Substack, I'll tell you that.
And yet... as time passes, and I desire to have greater control over the way I present myself online, I am more and more intrigued by having a system that is much more removed from a kind of branded possession. I don't want to have to pay for the privilege of putting my words out in the world. I don't want to have to scramble to find the ways to connect the things I say in one space to the social media platforms where most of my followers — and friends — are actually located. I would love to have a singular creative and professional ecosystem where I need to think less, nitpick less, definitely doomscroll less, and write more.
There are things about ATProto that I think I enjoy. I like Bluesky as a tool (although even it is definitely far from perfect in terms of how it is managed), and I think I am in love with the core ideology of creating a space where I have more ownership over my content, more transparency about how it is presented, and less fear about what happens to it when any singular platform disappears. I know very little about how it works, to be honest — Clarke's Third Law comes for us all when you don't have any intermediate-to-advanced information technology knowledge — but what I have seen about its interactivity and its transparency gives me hope not only that I can understand, but that it is operating at least close to its ethos.
And that makes me want to move the workshop closer to home.
This is no promise that the Afternoon Tea is going to permanently come from this space, but it is a test to see whether it would appeal to more potential subscribers and more readily be accessible to people who just want to read the garbage that falls out of my head sometimes. I am similarly enthused by the idea that it is remarkably easier for me to have a secondary publication here than it is on Ghost without having to pay more money, which has given me the idea that it would be fun to have a separate craft outlet where I talk about poetry and SFF, give prompts, and discuss media from the craft and theme angle instead of the culture and fandom one.
Platforms are not my friends. But I am too friendly.
Another reason I'm not picky about platforms is because, based solely on my location and the accessibility of many financial platforms, I cannot monetize most versions of my newsletter. Picking one that can't be easily monetized at all, then, is much more preferable than the alternative.
With that in mind, your support via other means — especially through a one-time donation via Ko-Fi — goes a long way to keep this content, and the other writing and game design work I do, alive. Thank you!
Today's Tunes [02/24/2026]
Hannya | Iro no Nai Umi no Soko (Bottom of the Colorless Sea)
This is an old song, but I've only gotten to hear it very late last year, and it's been sticking in the gentlest parts of my brain ever since. I wish I didn't have to rely only on often-very-terrible digital translation, especially for the second verse, but like so much music (and to me, so much of Hannya's bars overall), he is very talented at having a tone that translates to melancholy and introspection with the same intensity as his angrier or sillier songs.
(This is as good a place as any to mention that one time I brought up Mogura, the TBS drama that Hannya stars in as a cop who goes undercover in a hip-hop group to bust up a marijuana growing operation. Turns out, while it has a very rocky start in the beginning, it does eventually close on a very radical, if kinda unearned, pro-hip-hop, anti-establishment message about how power uses crime to generate control despite the lack of actual threat to the public. Plus, the bars are pretty decent, even when Mummy-D's character seems to be lore-dumping at you. It's still on Netflix, by the way.)
While I'm here, here's a more recent Hannya track that I am still feeling:
Hannya | Sotsugyou (Graduation)
What's On TV? [02/24/2026]
Unlike other versions of this segment, I have very little to say about the latest episode of The Rookie that I did in fact already see. This is about next week's episode, which... baffles me.
I for one am more than hype to see the Game Changer folks suddenly appear in one of the few, if not the only, remaining guilty-pleasure police procedurals that I watch. (Hell, this reminds me that I need to watch Ponies, which I only want to watch because Vic Michaelis plays a secondary character in it who seems equal parts hilarious and conniving.)
But for the life of me I cannot imagine which segment of The Rookie's core audience this is for. It's not like Nathan Fillion himself draws no overlap with a particular caliber of nerd, or that showrunner Alexi Hawley isn't aware of it (because for some reason Flula Borg also shows up in the show from time to time). It also isn't like the show isn't afraid to be funny about Los Angeles stardom culture, or to poke deep and unabiding fun at itself, or its lead character, the obviously very old LAPD rookie John Nolan. To wit:
But... I dunno. I expect a lot of old white men will be calling their teenage grandkids in the middle of the night on Monday to ask whether the folks who do improv on that one show the kids watch on their phones all the time when they're visiting are really famous. But I don't knock it. I for one know it's probably going to be annoyingly hilarious.
A reminder that this newsletter, as well as the rest of my writing and game design work, thrives with your support. My Patreon is where you can find snippets of new TTRPG projects, exclusive writing drafts, and more:
The Leaves
You got a lot of tea this week! That's all for today.
A reminder that you can help keep this newsletter and the rest of my work afloat by supporting me on Patreon, buying me a coffee on Ko-fi or sending a donation via PayPal, or by buying one of my small game projects over on Itch!
I particularly emphasise my Patreon, where I'm currently workshopping a vital piece of longform writing about AI and how creators can forge a solid rhetoric for our own creation and the work of our own minds. The last piece of it should go live over there in a couple of weeks!
My only question for you today is: what do you think of this platform so far, simply as a reader? Does this hold your interest more than the Ghost version of this newsletter did? Would you remain — or become — a regular reader if you knew it was part of the ATProto ecosystem? Feel free to answer either in a comment or by directly replying to the Bluesky post you saw this shared in!
Until next time, I hope you enjoyed the tea!