snowflake challenge #4

[deerna]

rec the contents of your last page: websites that you like

first of all im gonna shamelessly plug my friend’s webcomic, the under garden: it has been one of my main fandoms for the past couple years (beside baldur’s gate, which was how i found his art and his comics) and it’s been a blast - you can read it on its own website or on webtoon

been attempting to de-google-fy myself for a while and i never liked google docs anyway, so i switched to writing on other platforms: my favourite lately have been obisidian - a personal knowledge base and note-taking application that operates on markdown files - and ellipsus - a web-based writing tool to write, edit and collaborate on any device, with handy options to share your work. trackbear is my tool of choice to track my progress

if there’s a website ive been spending too much time on is youtube - it’s very easy to click on a playlist while im doing chores or whatever and let it play. my favourite of late has been hannah alonzo channel - she’s been covering a lot of MLM content and critique of influencers and overconsumption. since it’s “useful” info i feel less like im frying my brain haha

Comments

[mossy_bench]

Intense nodding for the de-Google-fying—I didn't use Google Docs for writing to begin with, but now I'm also trying to find alternatives for their other products. How do you find using both Obsidian and Ellipsus—is it easy to switch between them/use them in conjunction.

Also, Hannah Alonzo mention!! I love her channel, and agree that it's great to listen to while puttering around or doing chores.

[deerna]

(apologies in advance, this is gonna be so long)

gdoc for a while was the only thing that could reliably sync between devices, which is one of the things that i need the most since i write a lot on the go (either on the phone or during dead hours at work)

obsidian is more like a knowledge/note organization app, rather than a writing software. it’s got a HUGE learning curve, but if you’re willing to tinker w it and dig thru the metric fuck ton of plugins that are available it’s a very solid helper tool and it’s fully customisable. it’s markdown based, which makes it very reliable for storing files long term without data and formatting loss. it’s great for things like lore bibles, if you work on a big scale, because you can fully hyperlink it as if it were a wiki, and you can organize files thru tags, and stuff like that. it’s extremely powerful if used well. i used it for a while for first drafts because it has a pretty good sync option (obsidian itself is free, but this functionality comes a few dollars a month) but now it’s mainly my worm dump- aka where i quickly jot down an idea for a story before it gets swallowed by the black hole that is my brain, and to keep an offline archive of all the writing i've ever done (tags my beloved).

ellipsus is more explicitly a writing app, for writers who also want to collaborate with other writers or beta-readers and plan to share their writing on other platforms. there’s tools to collaborate w other users on files (such as comments and in-built chat), there’s a system of drafts for each file so you can compare them while you edit, and there’s a bunch of options to share and export your writing in different formats (which is the reason i also use it to write stuff like blog posts— copy as HTML is a lifesaver). it’s web based so you can use it on any device, thru the browser. i know there’s apps in development, but they’re not available outside the beta-tester list yet. it used to be a lot more bare-bones but now there’s a lot of customisation and formatting options. it’s my main draft + edit tool rn.

obsidian + ellipsus workflow- i feel like it’s fairly easy to work with them together and to switch back and forth. my workflow is not consistent at all, but ideally this is how i go about things:

• jot an idea on obsidian (organised w tags by fandom and pairing)

• draft the thing on ellipsus using the obsidian bit as reference (i usually keep it open in a diff window if im on pc/ipad, but i will sometimes copypaste the markdown right into ellipsus. there’s a function to import .md files too, but w the way i use metadata in my files its a bit hit or miss)

• edit the thing using ellipsus

• posting time! from ellipsus i “copy as HTML” to post it on my dreamwidth archive and on ao3, and “copy as markdown” to copy it into my obsidian offline archive.

and thats it, i think that’s all the rambling i have on the matter. feel free to poke me again about it if you have more questions !!

[mossy_bench]

Thank you for the detail, this is very helpful! I don't mind a steep learning curve, and my current long-term archiving system is imperfect. (I use a very lightweight markdown app to write in and save ideas, but back up my completed writing across various zip files and, well, Google Drive.) So it's cool to hear that Obsidian can be used that way. Does it have any way to export its files? (No worries if you're not sure.)

Ellipsus seems super useful when sharing with other people, though it doesn't sound like I'd need it terribly otherwise.

I appreciate you taking the time to write this out!

[deerna]

and ye i love hannah, there’s something about her that is really likeable. i found her on accident while i was going down a rabbit hole about influencers and i got hooked to her MLM videos too lmao