#anyways tomorrow i'll HOPEFULLY be able to finally finish this one project so i can focus on other shit-

[natrome]

ok now that i for real know what my writing commitments are going to be for the next, like, year, at least the majority of them, here is the actual for real i s2g hold me to this writing schedule

Fic in a Box - due 10/15

1 assignment of 2k words remains, write it this saturday

Five Figure Fanworks Exchange - check in 11/11, due 1/20

i expect this will take about a week to finish, and ideally i'll have it done prior to check-in.

Yuletide - works due 12/18

UNLESS i get an assignment that i want to go hogwild on, which i should be prevented from doing, i should be able to finish this the week of 11/26 and not work on it outside of that.

galactic santas - est. due 12/25

my fave event of the year lol, the logh secret santa exchange. uh anyway this one is usually due around christmas and also is the easiest thing on this list by a mile and a half. i'm 0% worried about this one.

tomorrow ye will get your pay - aka the whale novel. - first draft due 3/1, physical product due for display 4/1

this is an extremely short timeline, and while it's not "drop everything else" level short, it is going to have to be my #1 writing priority for a long time.

my plan is as follows

spend the remainder of october getting situated w/ the research i'm going to have to do, figuring out who i need to talk to, etc. as well as put together a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline

nov/dec i'm assuming will be eaten by SMST and other commitments, but get research done and essentially braindump into document

jan/feb, just write as much as possible, take time off of work/quit job if i need to

if possible confine edits to the first 2 weeks of march, get books printed; deliver final product by last week of march.

god this schedule is miserable. well i signed up for it! i did this entirely to myself! lmfao.

anyway i'm going to bracket in that it's a 20 chapter novel, which seems like a reasonable number of chapters. i essentially have ~10 weeks to write this book. this is totally normal and fine, i have written longer books with less of a solid outline in shorter amounts of time. if i can just sit my ass in a chair and hammer out 2.5k words/day i will EASILY make this deadline and have time for editing. the issue will be making myself do that. but having a deadline and like professional accountability should majorly help. esp if i quit my stupid fucking job lol

serpent's mouth, serpent's teeth - due 12/31

i have four chapters left on SMST. i do not think they will be EASY to write but I do think that I'm CAPABLE of getting them done before the end of the year. at the very least i've sworn until i was blue in the face that i would finish this book by the end of the year. i need this book to stop haunting my waking nightmares lmfao. i estimate ~50-60k words remain, but we'll see what it actually ends up shaking out as. hopefully it's not more than that.

anyway this is another just "ass in chair" moment. though if i could have made myself do that months ago, this book would have been finished sometime this summer lol

every link was freedom's name - aka the fucking. arle heinessen play. no due date.

this is my yay you finished all the obligations you had now you get to do something deeply deeply stupid and entertaining only to a tiny number of people project. lyric play about arle heinessen. book of exodus pastiche. probably not that long. estimate it'll take me as long as POD did, so a month and a half? but i won't stress it. aim to finish it mid may?

new constellations - aka the logh rarepairs exchange i run

I'm planning to run signups in late march, with works due mid may. this is slightly earlier than last year but due to my own personal schedule i don't want it to overlap with...

heart attack exchange - works due 6/2

yeah you literally only get 2 weeks to work on this one so it kinda is what it is lol.

life out of balance rewrite. no particular due date.

i expect this will take me 3-4 months to complete. finish by september?

lighting out for the territories augmentation. no particular due date.

i'd like to think that i can get this done in 2 months but i don't actually have a plan for what i need to do to it. so who tf knows lol. assume it'll take me the rest of the year.

every hateful instrument - no firm date

this will likely take between 6-8 months to finish, but it's another thing that i really want to stop having hanging over me. i'll either work on it before the LOFTT stuff or after

WIAW phezzan novella - ultimate TBD

to be completed immediately before starting LL/SS, probably

other misc nonsense

there are other small exchanges that i like to do (space swap, unsent letters, we die like fen) so as those pop up i probably will sign up for them. i'm not going to look up/prognosticate when they will happen at this moment in time

god i owe so many people gifts for birthdays and holidays and stuff >.> you may or may not get them. lean towards may not b/c what the fuck is this writing schedule. i'm so sorry lmao

i've now gotten back around to "oh this goes up to the end of the year again, so the end of the year exchanges (yuletide, fffx, fiab, galactic santas) should be on this schedule" but down that road lies only pain and horror lol

this list has gotten incredibly vague as things have gone on. the last part of this year and the first part of next year are pretty set in stone though, and i just need to like, get myself to the starting block and then start running

literally so funny that i was like "i should relax and take a break from writing before starting LL/SS" lmfao. lmfao.

obviously some of these things could be deleted from the schedule. i don't have to do a bunch of exchanges (but i liiiiiike them) and i don't have to write a stupid play (but i wannnnnnt to), and i don't have to do any rewrites to the early parts of WIAW (but they're a mess). so it's like. idk. maybe none of this is real and i'm just making lists b/c i like making lists lol

[catblgog]

Week 11

I DID SO MUCH THIS WEEK. I made the QR business card I want to stick on the table (pictured above). I was able to finally create chapter 6 which I had been unable to figure out how I wanted to structure it for weeks. The image below is my best page from that chapter.

And then I drafted and finalized that chapter. So I now have 4 / 6 chapters ready to print, with the final 2 already with layouts, text, and borders done.

I've also sketched some standing cutouts to set up next to my gallery setup. I taped together a bunch of paper to make mock ones in the size I want so I already have my digital document set to the right size. Just need to color and print.

And for the cover, I have an almost finished colored version, I just need to finish refining and adding the dramatic lighting that I want. IF I have time, I'll design two more color covers to hang on the wall at the gallery. If not, I think just the one will be ok. I'll make it even bigger if that's the case. The fablab has some nice cover paper that's 11 x 17 inches which I think would work well for a set of 3 posters, but I'll go bigger if I'm just doing one.

And I'm planning on changing how I'm binding the book, since my page number has continued to increase. I found a way that does single page binding that seems simple enough (I love WikiHow articles). This should make printing setup simpler as well and also allow the book to be evenly layed out and not have folding issues.

My goal is to be ready to print by tomorrow (Thursday) that way if anything goes wrong, I can reprint on Friday as a backup. I want to have everything printed before setup next Monday since it will stress me out too much to be trying to do things after setup. I think the goal is achievable, since I put in a lot of work last week and the amount left is very doable.

Reflection

It's a lot easier to get work done now that the end is visible. I know that about how I work, so I intentionally have had no plans this week so I can spend all my time working on this project. Of course, I would have loved to have been more productive during the entire past year, but I think that I'll be ending with a project that is ok. I have been working on time management, so hopefully if I ever have a long form project like this again, my work during this project will mean I'll be even more successful for the next one.

Anyways, all in all, extremely productive week. I have been alternating feeling nervous and feeling excited. Regardless, I'm looking forward to being done with this.

[victoria-strangelove]

Chapter progress news

A few lovely people have subscribed to my fanfic and I don't know if any of them use Tumblr or might see this but I thought I'd throw this on here on the off chance they might see it. Chapter 7 on Haunted One - Personify Me is drafted and one beta reader has sent back comments. The other though put it off until after all holiday obligations were done (fair!) and then got hit with a nasty cold (negative for Covid thank God). She hopes to be able to read it and send comments by tomorrow. Once that's done I'll apply the feedback, do any final edits needed, and get it uploaded. (More under the cut.)

Sadly there will likely be another long break before Chapter 8 is uploaded as my other beta reader is currently away from home on a job for half of January and will need time once they're back to rest up and get daily life back to normal before returning to any volunteer projects. I also need to get the draft of it finished anyway. Progress has slowed a bit due to the previous holidays and other life issues that hopefully will be resolved soon. There's a small chance I may get some bad news but I have no way of knowing if the outcome of said news will negatively impact my writing progress. There's a chance it might even speed things along due to several factors. I'll just have to see what life has in store for me.

There are zero intentions of abandoning the fic at this time. I'm finding the project way too enjoyable and even therapeutic at moments. Even when I'm stalled on a current chapter for whatever reason I'm working on the project as a whole daily, whether that be outlining, drafting later chapters in the current fic or the other two in the series I've planned (Remind Me and Witness Me), reading/researching BG3 or Forgotten Realms lore, or whatever else.

All that said, to the people reading the fic, thank you! I'm so glad people are enjoying this labor of love of mine. To everyone, I hope you all are finding enjoyment in life. This world is a cruel place but is often also beautiful and may we all find happiness where we can.

[cru5h-cascades]

Okay, music update time.

So I should be getting my guitar by tomorrow (should be arriving by 10 PM but with some of my packages tending to come in super early like my inkling plush and obviously Hot Fuss it could be earlier who knows). I was planning on releasing one last track before going on hiatus but idk. It's nearly finished but I don't think it's my best work (this track is supposed to be another Sirenide track btw).

Anyways, I'm already looking at tutorials online to figure out how I'm gonna learn. I found some that can supposedly teach me how to play in 10 to 21 days. As to how effective these vids are going to be is unknown, but hey if I figured out how to use photoshop and sort of figured out animation (ain't no way I can animate shit on my home chromebook so I haven't attempted anything on it yet), maybe I can figure this out. Also, I need to figure out how to tune guitars. Thankfully, guitar tuning websites and apps exist so they can do the heavy work for me 'cause it's been FOREVER since I've been in a music class and I've never tuned a guitar before (My music teacher before going to high school was A CHAD. Bro is what got me to start making music to begin with! He let us dabble in playing guitars for a little bit but just towards the end of a unit we were doing. After that we started our electronic music unit and the rest is history...).

I dunno how long I'll be on a break from music for (depends on how long it takes me to become confident enough to make some stuff using my newly aquirred guitar skills). When I do come back to music, I'm probably gonna post something showing off my guitar skills. I may not have a mic to record this stuff on, but I got a plan. Finally, soundtrap actually has an upside! Basically, I can plug in my guitar into my computer (obviously my school one) and use that as an amp to record my stuff on. Of course, I'm going to have to test this out first to see how effective this all is (might post some test audio for that), but at least I sort of have a plan for all this guitar buisness. Will I start out with covers or try making my own stuff? I dunno. But at least expect some stuff featuring actual instruments. Might go back to my OG soundtrap junk now and then why not. One of my friends and I are working on something behind the scenes and if all goes well I'll properly reveal this huge project of whatever (I guess this is your first clue to what that project might be).

And what about my other stuff? Calamity Circus, my art, and the planned Murder Trilogy essay (yep that's right I'm still gonna do that! I might start writing it after finishing Calamity Circus or towards the end of summer. I think it depends on weither or not S3's judgement day aka final fest is happening this summer or not 'cause I have a story planned for that event.)? Well, don't worry I still plan on working on all of that, especially Calamity Cicus since I've been working on that ever since I finalized Your Side of Order's basic story beats and I really wanna get this story out there. Art's still coming out, maybe at it's usual rate.

So yeah that's what to expect for the next I don't know how long. I'm still working on getting a job since I still haven't gotten word back about my application that I sent out a while back, so things should be pretty normal until I do ultimately get a job (hopefully I'll be able to get enough cash to get a functional computer with a touchscreen). In the meanwhile I'm just gonna take it easy, recover from the hell known as the previous school year, make my art, and try to beat the summer heat. This has been your local paranormal pest, cru5h. Stay fresh, y'all :D

[pumpkin-spike18]

✨Weekly Progress #51-52✨ +Happy New Year 2024✨

I've been thinking about the past year for the last few days and struggled with how to talk about it.

But, let's start with the weekly progress reports, before I miss the ability to do it for 2023.

Weekly Progress #51

Linearted 4 SYVNH BGs

Answered more BWOBK edit comments

Yes, it's the same image as last time since... the 4 linearts were done by the time I posted the last update.

Weekly Progress #52

Scripted BWOBK S1-S3

Submitted the demo for The Beauty Which Only Beast Knows to Winter VN Jam and Once Upon a Time VN Jam

The demo is now available for download here!

...Oh my god, I forgot I start my weeks on Mondays. My brain got really confused for the twitter version of this update 😅

I'll be making a separate post for it tomorrow (or Akua would), but BWOBK is finally out! ...Well, the demo for it anyways. The last week has been a blur of editing, scripting, and final playtesting. I was working quite frantically so I didn't record all of my tasks for the past week.

...Which, to be fair, didn't amount to much other than working on BWOBK. Our team wanted to accomplish a lot for this jam, but as the final week approached, we knew we had to cut back a bit if we wanted to submit anything to the two jams so we discussed and agreed to submit a demo.

Please look forward to a full release in January 2024!

Looking Back at 2023 ⏳

Visual Novel Development

Last year I made this tweet to celebrate what I accomplished in 2022.

A total of 5 VNs was an amazing feat I didn't think I'd accomplish. I was prepared to never beat this record again. Yet, lo and behold...

This year, I submitted nine projects.

1 Updated Demo:

I counted this as a submission since my update was about 50k new words, all new BGs, and like 14 CGs (I forgot the exact number). Sadly, I couldn't make it to the finish line of a full game. That'll be 2024!

4 Solo Projects:

These are four short visual novels I did for a variety of jams (three of them were for about week long game jams). They're all playable in browser and shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes each to play.

one last time. is a standalone entry.

kill your feelings., spirit killing curse, and Exorcist Killing Lie are separate stories set in the same world of ghosts, unreliable gods, and exorcists. I've been calling it the Kill Series and I hope to work on it more in 2024.

4 Team Projects:

I participated in another four visual novel projects this year! Two of which were demos, and one even won second place in the Spooktober Visual Novel Game Jam!! That was a real surprise! Although everyone in the team worked super hard, I don't think any of us expected it. So it was really a great and amazing surprise that had all of us shocked with happiness!

The Beauty Which Only Beast Knows is a demo I'm the main writer for. I also wrote one of the routes for The Final Prize is Soup, which is the second place Spooktober 2023 winner!

I provided the art for For the First Time.

And I did the programming for Saintess Alasdair is Dead.

All of these visual novels (plus more from previous years!) can be found free to play on my itch profile!

I think, next year, I won't be able to beat this record 😂 In fact, I hope I don't... As happy as I am to have performed such a feat, it was very exhausting and took a lot of energy out of me. I just hope to finish my ongoing projects in 2024.

Other Creative Goals

Here is another tweet from early 2023:

I wasn't able to spend a lot more time animating, and it's hard to gauge improvement on my own, but...

I did it! I completed 24 illustrations!

This has been a mix of OC art, fanart, a couple gifts, and a couple commissions. Hopefully, next year I'll be able to not "cheat" by adding commissions to the mix... 😂 I'm very proud of my commission works, but I did say it was supposed to be personal art.

I actually spend the last three months drawing 10 of the illustrations. To be exact, I drew 14/24 drawings in the second half of 2023... This was alongside working on a variety of CGs and BGs for games, a couple fancomics, and some design work that didn't feel quite "illustration" worthy.

Other

As a number of you might have noticed, or if you're one of my closer friends in devtalk... I quit my job!! Which, may sound like a bad thing, but I'm actually quite relieved. I finally freed myself from something that felt like it had been chaining me down for years.

I did it with no plans, just enough savings for a short while. Hopefully, this will be the wake up call I need to improve my life and find a job I enjoy. I took a few months off so I'm ready and back for the job hunt in 2024! (...So in about an hour from me writing this, haha)

Speaking of the job hunt... I also started accepting commissions on vgen! I don't know if I want to pursue a creative career, but it isn't out of the question.

If you're interested, I'll be opening for a week or so in 2024 before I close to work on projects again until June or something. (wink wonk 😉😉)

Finally, I'm really happy to have joined the Ace Attorney fandom this year. I started replaying the games around September and searched for a fandom discord on a whim. I've met some really great writers and artists since! Everyday getting to talk about gay lawyers have been great and reminded me of an almost lost fun from my childhood.

So if any of you from there see this post, hello! Thank you for giving me such a warm welcome! I really enjoy spending time with you all!

And someday, I WILL kidnap you guys into making a visual novel with me.

I participated in my first online fan event thanks to everyone there and it was a lot of fun. I hope to do more with everyone soon!

Well, that's all! If you made it all the way down here, thank you for reading! 2023 has been an interesting ride and I look forward to 2024.

It's currently 11:12PM for me here (I made it, I finished writing before midnight!) but, this is probably as close as I can get before getting distracted by a video or other work so...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[frogsandfries]

I got the TV screen on this smaller head buffed out, but the clay is so thin, and this particular brand is stupid brittle (would still mix with Sculpey Original for the price point and reclaiming some of the few benefits of Sculpey), I've been having trouble with this back area of the head just crumbling as I grip the head. I've been fighting uphill to patch it over and over, but hopefully I'll wrangle it before I'm done with this head sculpt.

I just have to pre-cure it one more time, then add the bezel/collar thing and burnish that, then add the neck hole.

My other goal today, with what little time I had left after running errands, was to clear out some old WIPs and get my dolls to a state where I can fully cure them and leave them, probably in the closet.

So I really went ham on this project. Like with the TV head, I've been struggling with this chest piece. The bottoms of the arm sockets keep crumbling, and I kept fighting with them over and over until finally, for some reason, I hollowed the piece out like this, and used a foil core to bridge the arm socket. Then I resumed adding definition to the back, which has been going neglected.

Ganesha is supposed to be fat, with four arms, so I'm trying to use studies to figure out how that might look.

It's getting late, so I figured I'd get some sleep, but tomorrow, I'll probably toss the chest piece in the oven tomorrow to set it so I can focus on the lower abdomen piece. I want to get the details set before I add the other pair of sockets.

One of the bigger reasons I want to get the dolls to a point where I can clean up after them is, what with going back to work, I want to clean up my desk anyway. A side benefit of cleaning up my desk is that I could do some diamond painting

I wanted to get that stupid dragon diamond painting done. It's been like a year since I started it and there's this tiny little sliver left. I'm certain that if I just really sat down with it, I could finish it rather quickly. Then it's done. Then. I can finally, finally get it mounted. I want to put it over the couch.

Then I can also move on to the other one........I was really excited to be able to snatch up Titania before they stopped producing it but........ that one is going to be a real beast.

[frogsandfries]

Literally just a few hours left

On this diamond painting. Last night, I accidentally worked on it till about one in the morning, when my tired partner, having a steadily worsening time with his video game, abruptly interrupted.

There was another of those huge booms last night, about an hour or two after we finally went to sleep. I have no idea what they are, how they're happening, where they originate--nothing. But a ton of people just on Reddit heard it from neighborhoods about five to ten minutes drive from our neighborhood.

It was so powerful, whatever the hell it was, that car alarms went off, the building vibrated, and I happened to be awake seconds before, and spotted the flash that seems to accompany this phenomenon. I had emailed the local news last time. This time I called non-emergency. Not that I expect that to come to much.

How much longer until whatever the hell this is takes out a building? It feels almost like a psychological warfare, just randomly wake people up with an apartment-rumbling blast seemingly with no origin that half the city denies or doesn't want to talk about. I've had comments to the effect that it's probably a car crash or fireworks, like I don't also live in this city where those things happen. This. Is. Not. That.

Anyway, I guess after I've finished the diamond painting tomorrow, I have to make the board to mount it on. I have two sheets of foamcore from the dollar store, so I just have to cut them cleverly enough to make one two-ply sheet. I think we're going to hang this one in the office? Probably opposite the window so anyone gawking will be forced to be confronted by such an abomination. Jk it's probably not actually that awful. I've just spent so long right on top of it, I'm convinced it's awful. I should have gridded it myself so I could color correct it.

Having Venus nearly finished, now I really want Jupiter, my other absolute favorite of the JPL travel posters. But then that's two and that's out of balance, so I'll need a third to put it back in balance. Earth. I like that Earth one a lot too. There's a company I'm probably going to reach out to, to see if they could possibly do Jupiter for me. Hopefully a company that produces such deliberate, intentional, and beautiful diamond paintings can turn the Jupiter poster into a custom masterpiece.

Or maybe instead of doing a diamond painting for the third poster, maybe we'll purchase that one artist print from the Animorphs cover artist.

It'll be such a relief to be some with this stupid diamond painting. I'll finally be able to focus on finishing this first issue.

Of course, there's another project I could and probably should turn my attention to. I'm trying to add more height to my desk. One way I have in mind is to elevate the actual desk surface by making a box to put into the existing frame. I couldn't figure out a good, safe way to make the desk taller from the floor. To my knowledge, they just don't make desks to my very particular expectations, so I can either make one effectively from scratch, or I can make what I have work better for me. I have a fairly nice desk, I just personally need more height. I wouldn't mind more effective storage or actual working surface but eh, I'll figure that out if it becomes more important.