Project Proposal
Why Now? Why Substack?; What You Can Look Forward To
So: WHY NOW? WHY SUBSTACK?
“I’ve been told I would make it big on tumblr. But I like Twitter’s 280 character limit - it keeps me hungry, and my posts sharp” - @HalimedeMF, 9/16/23
What changed?
I’ve been feeling the urge to put out longer-form prose for a while. Five-plus years of dieting makes one want a few little treats. But that alone wasn’t enough to tip me over the edge.
The specific catalyst was a gay wedding I attended, where I ended up in conversation with a groom’s aunt. We talked about work, and retirement, and her lovely transgender niece, one of the groom’s sisters, and then the conversation turned to hobbies.
I mentioned my 20k or so twitter subscribers and was delighted when she reciprocated. She revealed that she’d been putting out a Substack newsletter for her specific hobby for years! Everyone under 30 deserves the joyful experience of discovering that a woman decades older can talk shop about engagement and user retention. She asked if I’d consider it. I told her I didn’t really need the money - but as a woman, she told me, I needed to value my own labor more highly.
And she was right! Women routinely underestimate the value of their labor. I don’t want to squeeze every dollar out of my audience but there are enough transgender women in tech following me that I could buy a few deserving trans I know a few lunches and some healthcare without worrying about impacting my projections for my ex-fiancée’s financial planning.
So here I am, and here you are. I won’t be putting posts up this quickly forever, most likely, but we’ll see what pace I end up at. I’ll probably charge for some of them, and I can’t say there aren’t many beautiful transgender women who you may feel deserve it more, but! Every dollar you send my way will both better the lives of transgender women and make it easier to cite my writing when I eventually take it to a publisher.
And: If you consider using Substack unethical, may I remind you: I’m on twitter.
WHAT YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO:
My twitter speaks for itself, I think. If that isn’t enough for you, here are some longform posts currently in the works:
(I reserve the right to drop these or write anything else entirely)
The Tokyo Yushun Is Decadent And Depraved - “falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of umamusume”
Father of Gonzo Journalism Hunter S. Thompson attends the Japan Derby, becomes disgusted at the excess and vulgarity of Japanese horsegirl racing.
[TITLE TBD] - Halimede Tries Her Hand At Mechsploitation
HR Workplace Drama in the eternal space war. Complicity; Bureaucracy; Anaheim Girls Story but better this time.
Good Trans Fiction I Follow - Halimede Recommends
Self-Explanatory
Premises/Excerpts From Fanfiction I Am Never Going To Write Or Finish
Self-Explanatory. Animorphs, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Elden Ring.
I may also post lists of my own tweets, with commentary - I have five years of backlog and twitter’s search function is less than ideal.
If this sounds like a good idea to you, subscribe! Or just bookmark my Substack and click it every day despite not having an account yourself; I’m told this is how many people experience my twitter.