The State of My Blog

Hello to all my new and old readers - get ready for a long one!

As you have probably noticed, I recently posted my second caption this year. The last one was in January. If you do the math, it’s quite obvious: I haven’t been very active lately. Well, I’ve been active - just doing other things. So the free time left for captioning has been very scarce. I still enjoy writing though, and I want to get back to it. These stories provide me with a wonderful outlet for escapism, and I do not wish to give it up.

It blows my mind to see how many people still flood to read my stories, both on Blogger and on DeviantArt. I see new user names nearly every day, but also many old ones still pop up after several years of stories. Your comments are what keep me going, and I’m always happy to hear what you think. Instead of only doing this for myself, I get to share my stories as entertainment for an audience far larger than I could ever have imagined.

Before I continue writing more captions, which I will absolutely do, there are a few things that I would like to talk about.

Change in style

My first stories were from 2015 – that’s a long time ago! If you take a look at the old ones, you can probably see that my writing has changed a lot since then. For the better, I hope! My newer stories are longer, more detailed and less repetitive. There are more gifs, more multi-parter stories and more concepts that hopefully have never been seen before. This all, however, takes time. My new stories are much slower to write than the old ones. So, don’t expect a too rapid change in pace.

In the past I mostly used story settings that other people had already been using for years – classics such as shapeshifters, body hoppers, body suits and the Great Shift. Recently, I’ve also been trying to come up with some more unique ideas of my own: the updated Exchange Island with body swapping tokens, the body-morphing clothes of Perfect Fit, and some deeper exploration of both body hoppers’ and shapeshifters’ powers. I’ve also been starting several story series that still await finishing. There are currently dozens and dozens of stories that I’m working on, some even nearly finished. All I need is time.

(Bye the way, as you probably have already noticed, English isn’t my first language. So, that’s another thing that slows me down a bit sometimes. My writing has of course improved a lot over these years, and you don’t seem to be having any problems with it. However, I still have to double-check a word or two in the dictionary every once in a while, which can then annoyingly interrupt the writing process...)

No more requests?

As you can see, I haven’t been taking any more requests recently. That’s really only due to my lack of time and the multitude of ideas that I already have on my own. I want to concentrate on writing the unique stories that I have planned but haven’t finished yet. There are also those series, like Boyfriends and Punishments and Perfect Fit, that you all really seem to enjoy – I probably should try to eventually finish them as well. And another couple of series that I haven’t even published yet. A request also tends to take more time to write than one of my own stories, as I need to wrap my head around someone else’s idea and write it in my own, personal style. The result needs to be something that I, the requester and other readers can all enjoy.

So, no more requests for now – at least until I have more time in my hands (which seems improbable). That, however, doesn’t mean that I have stopped listening to your ideas: Keep telling me in the comments what you liked about in a particular caption and what you would like to see next – that will definitely help me when deciding what story to write next. Also, as many of you are still coming up with ideas for requests and clearly would like to see them, I’m currently researching my options for taking paid requests, possibly funded through Patreon or PayPal. I’ll return to the topic when I have a clearer idea – there’s still a lot to be figured out concerning prices, taxes, etc.

Reorganizing the Blog

During the past few days, I’ve been going through all my previous captions and organizing them into better categories. The tags that I have used closely resemble the old ones, but there have definitely been some changes. The tags itself are now up to date, and you can use them when searching for captions both on my Blogger page on totemscaptions.blogspot.com and my DeviantArt gallery on www.deviantart.com/totemscaptions/gallery. (However, the DA gallery folders still need some updating.) In my opinion, these work a lot smoother on Blogger, and that will always be my primary platform when planning new changes. However, they also work with DA’s search box and if you are already a DA user, there’s no need to suddenly change websites. I will make a separate post explaining the new tags a bit later.

Stories that have been deleted from DeviantArt

As you may have noticed, some of my previous captions have been deleted from DeviantArt. The fault is all mine, as those stories haven’t properly followed DeviantArt’s strict community guidelines. I will pay closer attention to the guidelines in the future, but I won’t be creating new versions of those previous ones. Also, if some of my new ideas aren’t suitable for DeviantArt, I won’t change them just to be able to post them on DeviantArt. However, as I have stated previously, my primary platform has and always will be Blogger (totemscaptions.blogspot.com), where I have better control over my work. You will always find all my past and future work there – including the stories deleted from DeviantArt, listed below:

• Transforming Waters (only Part A)
• A Critical Malfunction
• This Bath Could Kill Him
• Turning the Tables (only Part B)
• A Reason to Feel Upset? (only Part A)
• Rub It All over Your Skin (this one I reworked, so the new one can be found on DeviantArt)
• Homeless No More

~ TOTEM