Once again, we should talk about some new things here.

A lot of them are regarding the new “paid posts” I’ll be making in here, so let’s get that out of the way.

What I think about paid posts

At the start of this, this site was supposed to be a personal hub of texts I’d show my friends; a place to direct them to if they wanted to read things written by me. With time, slowly but steadily, more people from all over the world seemed interested to read my texts. So instead of having no compromise to posting, picking a cover photo from Pinterest and posting personal whims on a diary form, I started to think of schedules for posting, crediting the artists from the artworks, even tagging the posts to reach more people.

If my posts reach you and make you come back, thank you. Thank you a lot for showing your support in the way you can. Just a like makes my whole day.

At the beginning of all of this, I had a sort of repulse to paid posts, I must admit. Especially if you’re doing the type of personal posts that I usually do; it was ridiculous to think people could pay to read you whine and yap. I like to think I’m making stuff that can be read by anyone and anywhere in the world, for free. I still think like this, but I had to start thinking about the reality as well.

For those who don’t know, I live in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. I stopped looking for jobs to support my family while I was in film school, but now that it’s over I don’t have that privilege anymore; the bills are expensive and we should start and look for a way to get out of here as soon as possible, since it’s a dangerous place.

So, to help with the bills, while I’m looking for a job in my field, I’ll start having paid posts in here. The nature of them depends on the publication. I’ll talk about it more in the next sections.

But as it stands, if you feel like supporting me to keep writing here, you can be a paid subscriber or donate to the ko-fi at the end of the post. If you can’t support because of your own financial situation, don’t worry. A like/free subscription already motivates me a lot! The more of you exists, the more frequent the posts in here will be (I hope it’s easy like this).

Nightporter Paid Post Update

There’s a few new things now that I can actually write for the Nightporter (my headphones kind of broke so I had to wait for my new in-ears).

The only paid Nightporter posts will be the post with the highlights of the month.

Every month, I’ll create a playlist for the best songs I’ve listened to in that whole month. It will have all the best songs from the albums I reviewed or plan to review, plus some loose songs that caught my interest in my scavenging. It will be albums first, loose songs last, kind of organized by their mood.

The playlist will be free. In fact, you can already listen to the one for October here (the playlist will also be at the end of this post). However, the post commenting about the playlist, as well as commenting more about the albums I’ve reviewed on the month, will be paid. In the post, there’s always going to be a space for you to recommend me new stuff based on the playlist or your personal deep dive in music. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be on the playlist of the following month.

The playlists will always be free, as all the other posts, so don’t worry. The playlists will be shared at the beginning of the month so you can see it being updated and get spoiled on what I have a chance of talking about here. You can also go to my linktree to see my RateYourMusic and Lastfm if you wish to get even more spoiled (I have two linktrees now). There’s a “nightporter” tag now on my RYM for the albums I plan to write something about.

Feel free to check my other playlists as well while you’re at it. I made two new ones with different brazillian genres, feel free to try them out, too.

Other Nightporter posts update

Nightporter will be sorted this way, at least for now:

The-of for singular songs I want to talk about (like The Magic of Farewell Transmission);
A Personal Look at will be for the big reviews for whole records (maybe the name will change for this one, idk).

There will be posts for albums where I’ll just shortly talk about them. Doesn’t mean I don’t love the album necessarily, it’s just a way to always keep writing about them even if there’s no personal attachment to a story of mine. I just don’t have any idea of their name yet, but there’s some already written.

As I said when I announced Nightporter, we’ll talk about other types of art, like literature. For now, there’ll be only songs in here; I don’t have a lot of time to read books anymore, sadly. As soon as I read a new one or I have more stuff to talk about other kinds of art, I’ll do another update.

Also… There will be a different highlight post for each different type of art I’m into at that month (like one for music, one for books…), but even in the case of me not having the time to read or do anything else, the only one that will always happen is the music one.

I plan to do a special thing in Nightporter in the following months, but I’m waiting for a few friends. When the time comes, you’ll see it, it’s going to be lovely.

Close Up-date

Close Up is the name of the film magazine I started on my last semester of film school. It has one edition already — sadly, it’s only in Portuguese. However, during the last days of college after we presented the magazine to our professors, they offered us to make the magazine part of the college, so we would be an official publication tied to the institution, that would come along with the help of the college’s art designer and some of the teachers would come to write something, too. We were promised to keep the freedom we already have.

Ok, so fast-forward some entire months and we’re still waiting for updates from some professors. I don’t even know if the first edition is going to be published — or even if it will count as a first edition or it will be a prototype. Me and the other editors can’t work on the texts and the topics without some things being talked about with the professors, but we have agreed that we will continue with the magazine with or without them.

So this brings us to some important themes.

The Close Up magazine will have paid posts; this means you’ll have to be a paid subscriber to read them. This will be in order to keep our interests on the writing since we weren’t and won’t be paid by our college. I’ll talk more about it in this next segment.

Easier way to get the paid posts

Here’s the kicker. For Close Up, everything will be written in the official Substack of the magazine (yet to be created); however, in order for you to read all my paid posts in Substack you’d have to be subscribed to all of my three different publications there. That can be a lot, especially if you prefer a type of post over the other.

So, as it would already happen, I’ll put my paid Close Up posts here, and since this is only one site for three publications, you can become a paid subscriber here, winning three paid publications bonuses.

Another way to get all three is through Ko-Fi; they also have a subscription method there and I plan to post all the paid ones there.

The Close Up Substack will have paid and free posts, but they’ll be in Portuguese, since the publication is for my brazilian college. The Close Up category in this site (and on Ko-fi) will have all of my posts in English and all posts will be paid. This will be, again, to cover the cost of translating them and to support me as a writer, especially once I’m busier and writing takes more effort.

So, to sum up: Close Up is coming, it will be only paid posts in English here. If you’re brazilian, consider subscribing there in the Substack (once it’s out) to support my friends and read the texts in their original language. As I said, the only posts here will be the ones I write, and I think they write well too, so don’t miss out on them if you know the language.

the-thief Update

the-thief is chilling like a maniac. No paid posts in the horizon for it.

But it is the publication most people already read in this site, so in the future, as more people get around here, I can think of a thing or two to keep posting there to help the community that wants to support me grow.

I am writing two the-thief posts at the moment, which brings us to the bigger update:

Schedules of Posts

The current plan is for a Nightporter post every Tuesday and a the-thief post every Thursday. The posts can have a one-day delay, though, if I’m too busy.

Once Close Up starts, we’ll change it up a bit. As of now, I think this works. If I can’t post on one day in a week, just wait for the next scheduled day, and this goes even for a week without posting.

That’s it! Once again, thank you for reading me. Have a wonderful weekend.

Cover credits: Jester Pepita!

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