@taylorlorenz don't be shy on testing waters on other #ActivityPub based platforms as well. You get the same audience and the same people, while enjoying these platforms' particular features. Friendica, for example, has a #DM inbox already, as well as #QuotePosts.
You can also add titles to your posts, as well as format your text using #markdown or #BBCode, and many other features that haven't made their way into Mastodon just yet (or were already for years when Mastodon added them). Not to mention you can write texts as long as your heart desires, as there's no limit on them (and they appear just as long on Mastodon).
A good and fairly popular Friendica server is venera.social
Edit: and yes, I am on Friendica. Writing to you from Friendica as well. The server I'm on, libranet.de, uses a less stable version of it. venera.social has the same admin but uses the current stable release.