#but it does make it hard to estimate how much i've done until i've moved from editing the draft to working in twine itself

[redo-rewind-if]

Hello again, it's me, your neighborhood writing gremlin here to bring you a progress update!

Next Update (Chapter 3? Quite Possibly!):

Intro Scene (if not on music fest route): 100%

Music Fest Routes (Solo, V, and Amara): 100%

Club Pyre Path: 100%

Editing: 20%

Coding: ???% (A mysterious quantity: better estimate coming soon!™)

Bug Testing: 0%

Editing's coming along, alas, I've encountered one of the things I'd feared—an unfinished scene I'd forgotten to write. Marked in bright red text reading: "put transitional shit here".

So, detouring to finish that (and checking for any more) meant not as much actual editing this week. Here's hoping I'll be back on the editing train next week!

[crimsonhydrangeavn]

Hi! I absolutely loved the demo of your game—it was amazing! I'm excited to see more of it. I have two questions: First, how would Garret or Teagan react if they were in a room full of yanderes with y/n? Second, I hope this doesn't come across the wrong way, but I'm genuinely curious—how long does it usually take to release a new episode? I'm really looking forward to continuing the game, and I appreciate all the hard work you put into it. I hope I'm not rushing anyone, and I'm truly sorry if it comes off that way. Thank you so much for reading!

Thank you so much for your ask! I'll go ahead and answer your second question first before moving onto the first one! lol

I wanted to start off by thanking you for asking your question in a kind and respectful way, I completely understand where you're coming from and I don't take any offense to it what so ever!

I know I really appreciate transparency when it comes to games/ things I'm a fan of, so I want to do what I can to make sure I'm as honest and upfront with you all as possible.

So I went through my logs and did the math. Day 1 took me about 6 months from start to finish and Day 2 took me almost a full year from start to finish. That being said, Day 1 was 11k words and Day 2 was 24.5k words total. So given the fact that Day 2 was more than twice as long as Day 1, I can see why it took double the time as Day 1. (That and I learned how to add animation into Renpy and spent a little over a month going down that rabbit hole and making a few animations for the game. I also spent some time refining Day 1 while working on Day 2 so that probably made the Day 2 release take longer than it would have otherwise)

The reason why it takes as long as it does is because I'm making this game entirely by myself. That includes the script, all of the art assets, the programming, the audio, and not to mention all of the social media, and patreon content.

On top of that I also have a pretty steady stream of freelance work that usually equals to about 30-50 hours a week. I've burnt myself out in the past and I'm trying to keep a sustainable pace where I'm making progress on CHVN but I'm also enjoying life and taking breaks as needed.

That being said, I do post monthly game updates on my patreon to discuss what I've finished that month, what I have left, and what the current word count is. ( ATM it's longer than Day 1 and I still have a lot planned haha)

I also think it's worth mentioning that this is my first game and I'm learning how to do everything from scratch. My background is in the visual arts so programming and audio stuff is completely foreign to me. That being said, I'm stubborn as hell and for better or for worse once I put my mind to something, I'll get it done one way or another.

Hopefully that answers your question! Once I finish up the script portion of Day 3, I can give a better estimate of how long it'll take me, but until then I really have no idea when the actual release date will be.

Now, onto the easier/ fun part of your question! lol

Garret would play nice at first, however he would make sure that he was never more than a step away from your side. He doesn't trust anyone to behave themselves around you, especially if they're anything like him.

Teagan on the other hand would immediately try to get you to leave the room. They don't deal well with competition and would want to remove you from the situation asap. If you refused/ couldn't leave with them, then they would make sure to talk shit about all of the other Yandere's and taint your view of them. While it would put an obvious target on their own back, at least they'd know you wouldn't talk to or go off with them out of your own free will.

Thank you again for all of your support! I really appreciate it and I can only hope that the next update is worth the wait!

[void-botanist]

13, 17, 18, 27 for the weird writers ask

From this ask game.

These took a while to think about and write answers to.

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy? I have a hard time with any kind of romantic relationship that is not A) already established or B) friends to lovers or C) both. I just don't understand how to make it go from 1. meet cute/first date to 2. real deepening relationship. Which was one of the downfalls of early iterations of Zel and Anni's relationship and also to some extent Triad (but Triad had other problems too). It probably stems from my weird brain plus just not having much personal experience with dating as opposed to, well, friends to lovers.

On the flipside, friends who have been friends forever - or act like it? Easy. Their dynamic flows and so does my writing.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

Oh boy. I have a habit of fitting those things into the text as much as possible and then deciding whether to cut them later. They often pull my story in a slightly different direction and honestly make it more fun. Because TFA is about androids and also differences between different places a lot of the transport and technology minutiae does show up. But here's some stuff that most likely will not (or is kind of meta):

Anni's current design is actually a merge of two characters. An Annie who was a Julian's niece and an android's co-builder existed in old drafts, and in Triad I briefly threw in a librarian character, Tavitta, who had an impeccable sense of light, blue, bow-laden fashion. She wasn't very good in Triad but I couldn't get that concept out of my head so I applied it to new Anni.

Monster trucks exist in this world because I think they're too fun not to and I'm not sure Dez realizes this until post-TFA when Syndy becomes obsessed with them.

I have a reference map that I crafted from my old childhood maps for this world plus some climate and weather research. It has a grid (which is basically latitude and longitude except not skewed for the curvature of the planet so…inaccurate) that I use to estimate distances for travel, time zone notation, and general climate zones (frigid, temperate, subtropical, tropical). It helps me keep my climates consistent and also showed me where Elbas Island has to go to not be in a hurricane zone.

I have so far done a bad job of integrating Dez's relationships with Mizzat and Imjen into the story. I've unironically considered moving his citizenship adventure to one of their locations, but unless I fully transplant Elbas Island (which disrupts everything about it that relies on remoteness) I don't think that makes sense. Unless one of the nAkkanswl have decided to be Good Actually and just hand out android citizenship which would be fun but also a very different story than what I have currently.

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

The nawwen looked out the elevator door as they waited for it to close, but before she could raise a hand to signal them to hold the door, their eyes met hers and went huge. Then they leaned into a different button in the panel. She thought the door would close in her face as she crossed the last few feet to the elevator, but they were still holding the button and the door was still open when she got there. “Thank you,” she said, with the tiniest question in her voice. She was glad to be in the elevator, but she wasn’t really sure what had just happened there. The nawwen let go of the button and the doors started to close. “Of course,” they said in an accent that reminded her of her grandparents’. They still looked a little spooked by her presence, like she’d caught them at something. She gave them a smile and checked her node. If she’d gotten this wrong, she might never find Syndy. But the connection was almost at max strength, and it didn’t budge as they rose past the second floor, then the third. “Excuse me,” the nawwen said from the other side of the trunk. She looked up, slipping her node hand back in her coat pocket. “Are you Anni, by chance?” She blinked. “Uh…why do you ask?” “Because if you are Anni—Anni Chalbis—then you’ve just saved me an email.” The relief on their face said ‘email’ was an understatement of their narrowly avoided trials. “I’m Hoven, he-him, though I believe you know me as ‘the bookish friend’.” Her eyes widened as the pieces came together. “So you’re looking after Syndy?” Hoven nodded, then glanced to the floor number on the elevator’s screen. “We can talk in my room.”

This is from like the fifth major version of Anni meeting Hoven I've written, and it's one of the best. Not only is it just more interesting to have this accidental meeting, but Anni is actually directly involved in the whole setup instead of having someone else tell her what's happening or telling Hoven to reach out to her. She would have met Hoven anyway because he was coming to see her. But why schedule over email when you can get a weird connection request and then go on a hunt for a missing android?

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why? The most stressful in terms of "character is having a Bad Time" is Sid from Tales of Tobar Si (which I've been thinking about again recently. It's becoming interstellar sci-fi?). He's going through the early stages of realizing his parents are abusive and figuring out what to do about it and how to stay away from them. But the most stressful in terms of "why won't you let me write you" is harder to pin down. Zalen and Aza have both been difficult because I've had them as characters forever and I've been recycling them into new better characters that look basically the same. I've been slowly breaking my habit of second-guessing myself about all of Anni's POV scenes, especially about whether she reads too much like Dez. I think it also got easier to write her after I sort of let Hoven be the anxious one instead of her (they were both gonna be the anxious one. Not sure why I thought that would work).

Thank you for letting me ramble lol. I hope you enjoyed :)

[uh-e-rinnie]

How long does a drawing usually take? I know your drawings with more people probably take longer than those with only one person, so for frame of reference let’s say we’re talking about a fully rendered piece with one person.

Ah this is a rough question to answer

Simply cause each step of my art is done in intervals, I usually don't finish one piece immediately. When I'm done with one step I take a 15-30 minute break and look away from the piece as much as possible.

Every time I move on to the next part I come back with fresh eyes, so there's also making changes included in that.

I say, with single pieces, depending on how ✨ dramatic ✨ the piece is, it could take 2-5 hours if its fully rendered. Probably less. Probably more. Really depends on what I'm going for.

More plain pieces (like, just a rendered character kinda standing there smiling) probably take less that time. So I'd say an hour and a half to a bit over two hours maybe.

The summertime record piece (All sides + Blue sky background), would have taken roughly 3-4 days if i erased the intervals and pauses cause of life.

The glasses piece, probably took around a day or two erasing the intervals + life pauses.

The art process is a bit or a lot different every time and for every piece, so it's always hard to put a general estimate.

I've drawn a piece with 9 characters in it, and finished it in roughly a week but only doing the work from afternoon until night. With intervals in between. But I was much slower back then since I had just changed my rendering style. So I'm not sure how well that'll help in estimating lmao

[mcdannoangelwolf]

My thoughts on H50 10x07.

I just watched this episode and I am SO pissed off. I've been told I tend to be cold and harsh on certain things and, as much as I've tried to deny that, this episode made me feel it.

This is gonna come from both a meta-position and a RL position so it might be hard to follow.

I love Alex. I think he made a lot of bold and powerful choices with this episode. For that I applaud him. However it pisses me off something chronic how hard he worked to give Doris a redemption story.

He had me in the first half, the speech about how what she did what she did for herself. Faking her own death. Springing Wo Fats dad from the black site. Recruiting Catherine. She chose every step of the way. You cannot tell me that someone as cunning and ruthless as Doris didn't have enough dirt, enough info, to secure an exit for herself. All her talk of the Government forcing her and using her and what it cost her. Doris CHOSE to go back EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I was good with this. Finally Steve was seeing her for what and who she was. But then the Swiss accounts. Really? That was the angle he went with? That was so far out of left field that, frankly, I found it pathetic. Nothing we've seen of Doris has shown that she had the level of concern or remorse for her kids/Joanie.

Yes people change. I fully understand that. People do the wrong things for the right reasons. But we've never been shown this in Doris. Infact we've seen the exact opposite. She used Steve on several occasions to meet her own needs with barely a token effort to try and dissuade him.

Furthermore how does she figure that they would have used it, would have kept it? Mary and Steve both know Doris well enough to know that it would have been blood money. Every cent. If Doris had really cared she would have done another fake ofbher death and moved on. Let her kids finally grieve in peace and move on with their lives.

Now some might say it wasn't about Doris. It was about Steve and giving him closure. To that I say what closure? I saw only a man heaped with yet more pain and trauma than he knows what to deal with. Than he deserves.

Some might say that I don't know Steve. Don't know his life or his feelings or his desire to have his mother in his life. To that I will say you are right.

But I do know about parental abuse. More than I care to admit. I'll just say my former step father was a master of psychological and emotional abuse and manipulation. Which is exactly what we've seen Doris do, right up until she died.

I also know about parental abandonment. I know what it's like to beg and plead and hope and pray for that parent to want you around. For them to want you in thier life. I know what it's like to reach the point where you can't twist the knife in your own gut anymore. To where you have to just get down on your knees and say your peice to God, the Universe, the Devil and whoever's else is listening and let it go and move on.

I'm not as good a person as Steve. Maybe I don't feel or love as deep as him. But for me, when she refused my help and cold-cocked me with that pistol, that is when I would have walked away.

Some people don't deserve second chances. Some people don't deserve redemption. Some people make their beds and need to lie in them. In my estimation Doris was one of them.

Then we come to what is probably the most tragic part of the episode. The pointlessness of it all. Doris had the sub and men bugged. She went off the tilt but still, in the end, did her job. Sure the CIA didn't know that. I understand that. But it was still pointless. All Steve's work, his pain and guilt and trauma. Pointless. Doris' death pointless.

Maybe that was the point. To illustrate the pointlessness. The futility.

Life on Life's terms indeed.

Well my Rant is over.

Best all,

J.

P.S

I realized how hard I went after I posted this so I privatized it till I could make this addition.

I want to say that my anger is not directed Steve. I have nothing but mad love, respect, and sympathy for Steven J McGarrett. If anything this episode makes me feel closer to him. I my heart broke so much for him that I want to do the Sushi roll care meme with him and give him all the cuddles with Danno. My upset is specifically aimed at the writing and Doris' arc.

That said I still think this episode was a masterpiece. Very powerful. Just, for me, infuriating.

[ketzwrites]

I've been tweeting #SaveShadowhunters like crazy at TV networks, I've requested Shadowhunters to Netflix a bunch of times, and I chatted with Ann Pauline M via Netflix customer support and got a general 'there will be 12 episodes for you to look forward to' response. Have I earned a drabble? If so, can it be Malec in an AU where the downworlders are in charge?

Here we go, nonny! I wanted to do this right because I love this “what if” scenario. I couldn’t just wing it, you know? 

Hope you like the result! Available on AO3 as well.

It wasn’t the first time that a Shadowhunter tried to get to the Soul Sword. In the little more than twenty years since it’s been under Magnus’ protection, he could safely estimate the fools had tried to recover the Soul Sword at least a dozen times. Truth be told, most of those attempts happened right after the Uprising and the installment of the Downworlder Council, when the Shadowhunters hoped to reverse the new system of government. That hope was gone now, but the occasional hero-wannabe still tried to do it every now and then.

Of course, none of them succeeded. It was no coincidence that the Mortal Instrument was given to Magnus Bane to safeguard. He had worked with Shadowhunters a lot during the Old Times, back when Shadowhunters were in charge of the Shadow World. If there was one Downworlder that knew how the Shadowhunters operated, it was Magnus. There was nobody better for the job.

The Mortal Instruments were the only thing that kept the Shadowhunters in line with the new regime. As long as the Downworlders had them, the Clave would obey. Magnus still remembered the day that Luke Garroway pried the Soul Sword out of Valentine’s cold, dead hands. Blood dripped out of it, both Shadowhunter and Downworlder blood. The other two Mortal Instruments, the Cup and the Mirror, were respectively given to the Seelies and the Vampires to guard. But Magnus got the Sword.

You keep this away from them, Luke Garroway had told him. He had been just a boy then, a shadow of the man he became two decades later. Promise me.

And Magnus promised. He had looked into the eyes of that young man and seen no fear, only determination. The brave, serious eyes of a man who wanted to protect his people and do the right thing.

Just like the eyes that were staring at him now. Only, these eyes belonged to a young Shadowhunter. One that had - rather impressively - found a way through Magnus’ protection wards and gotten to the chamber where Magnus kept the Soul Sword. 

He had come with a squad; a blonde man, a red-haired girl, and a black-haired woman. They defeated Magnus’ protection wards, penetrated his fortress like it was nothing. Magnus had to personally deal with each one of them as they also were smart enough to divide to keep him busy. The group had been efficient, well-trained, and almost successful.

Almost. After dealing with the others, Magnus had stopped the man right before he could take the Soul Sword. Now, it laid between them, its presence just overbearing as it was in the Uprising.

“Should I ask for your Hunting Permit?” Magnus said, cocking his head to the side. The Shadowhunter narrowed his eyes at him, but he couldn’t do much more. Magnus had him paralyzed, which was the one thing that stopped the man from losing the arrow pointed at Magnus’ heart.

For a second, Magnus expected the man to curse him, but he did something else instead. He cleared his throat. “I do have one,” the Shadowhunter said, voice neutral. Aside from direct calls from Downworlder Leaders, Hunting Permits were the only other way a Shadowhunter was allowed to leave Idris. “There is a hoard of Shax demons in this neighborhood and my team was hunting them down.”

Magnus almost laughed. It wasn’t a lie; he had heard about the demons. Magnus also didn’t think the Shadowhunter expected him to believe the excuse. But the way that the man had said it, the practicality of it as if he had predicted someone would ask... Magnus couldn’t help but snort.

“Too bad you didn’t stick to the mission, Shadowhunter.” Magnus sighed. “With some luck, you and your friends will be locked up for life instead of executed. It would be a shame to cut off that pretty head of yours.”

The Shadowhunter blinked, surprise coloring his face. But then he gasped. “My sister- Is she still alive?”

Magnus cursed his heart when it jumped at the man’s tone. The worry in it, the relief… Magnus knew very well how it felt to realize someone he loved had survived a battle. Angel or demon blood, they were all human in their own way. The young man in front of him loved and hurt, just like him.

Gritting his teeth, Magnus pushed that thought aside. That young man had tried to steal the Soul Sword, he was not to be pitied. Magnus would not go back to the Old Times. The Shadowhunters had taken too much from him.

But that didn’t mean he had to sink to their levels of cruelty. He was probably referring to the black-haired woman. She looked just like the man, beautiful and dangerous. Magnus had knocked her out with a spell but there shouldn’t be any side-effects except for a headache.

“She’s alive,” Magnus finally said. He moved his hand, feeling the power run through his veins. “Let go of your weapon now and I’ll ask the Downworlder Council to be lenient. If you tell the Council who put you up to steal the Soul Sword, they might-”

“We came on our own,” the Shadowhunter interrupted him tersely. But he did let go of the weapon and the bow and arrow fell to the ground. Half a point for that.

Magnus wasn’t surprised the young man wouldn’t tell on his superiors. Everyone knew the Clave would never accept the defeat and submission. They trained their youth to stay loyal to a fault. Still, it didn’t hurt to ask-

“But we didn’t come here to steal the Soul Sword,” the Shadowhunter continued. “We came here to destroy it.”

Magnus blinked, surprised to say the least. That was new. No Shadowhunter in their right mind would even dare to think such a thing. They worshipped the Mortal Instruments almost as much as the Angel himself. It had to be some sort of trick.

Thinking quickly, Magnus pulled the bow and quiver away from the Shadowhunter and gestured to the Soul Sword. “Touch it and say that again.”

The Shadowhunter gasped when he regained the control over his body. He inhaled sharply and his eyes went right to his bow. He probably considered it was too far away to reach and, instead, stepped closer to the Soul Sword, laying his hands over it.

The Sword began to glow, a pale shimmer raising all around it. The Shadowhunter gritted his teeth, breathing in and out. “My team and I came here to find and destroy the Soul Sword,” he said, loud and clear. It seemed the Mortal Instrument did compel the truth after all. And it wasn’t done. “Before the Clave can use it to destroy all demon-blooded creatures.”

Magnus’ heart skipped a beat. “Move away,” he ordered and the Shadowhunter obliged, stepping away until his back was against the wall. Recomposing himself, Magnus smiled. It helped to wash away the surprise from his face. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. My name is Magnus Bane.”

“I know,” the Shadowhunter practically spat. He blinked, clearing his throat as if to start again. “Hm, Alec Lightwood,” he said and for some reason pointed at himself.

Strangely cute. And also… a Lightwood? The surprises didn’t seem to end.

“All right, Alec.” Magnus narrowed his eyes at him. “I’m going to trust you.” Maybe it was a wrong move, but Magnus felt Alec had earned it by now. He hadn’t been holding the truth-compelling sword when he revealed his true plans. That should count for something.

Or so Magnus hoped. “Now,” he said, eyes locked on Alec’s, “what exactly do you mean by ‘destroy all demon-blooded creatures’? What does that mean?”

“It’s a secret. Izzy and I overheard our parents talking about it. They work for the Clave.” Alec frowned. “If the conditions are right, the Soul Sword can emit enough angelic energy to wipe the world of demon-blooded creatures.” Alec pushed his lips together, angering coloring his face. “But that’s not right. We shouldn’t have this power.”

Magnus considered it for a moment. Alec was telling the truth, but was he right? It did explain why the Shadowhunters went for the Soul Sword more than the other two Mortal Instruments. But that was the first time Magnus had heard of something like that… Could it be true?

Sighing, Magnus smiled again. True or not, others should know about it. The Downworlders ruled as equals. “Congratulations, Alec. You got yourself an audience with the Downworlder Council. You will explain all of that to them. They might even let you and your team go.”

“A Shadowhunter can’t get an audience with the Downworlder Council-” Alec started to protest.

But Magnus interrupted him. “Unless they have a sponsor. Well, you have me now. Don’t give me a reason to regret it and we shall be friends.”

Alec swallowed hard. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Magnus grinned, even though he had no idea if he should. Hopefully, that wouldn’t blow up in his face. “Good.”

It all depended on this Alec Lightwood. This strangely honest and determined man. Magnus had met other people like him before, but there was something different about Alec. It didn’t even matter that he was a Shadowhunter or that he would’ve put an arrow in Magnus’ head given half a chance. There was something special about him. Something that made Magnus trust him.

And trust makes one do strange things, doesn’t it?

[thepalecrawlers]

Crawler sighting 175

Encounter in Wisconsin

Hello All,

"I want to share an experience I had while training with my NG Unit at Ft.McCoy, WI.

I have not ever been big into paranormal activity as a subject of interest. I originally got into these topics by gawking at some if the more outlandish things in r/Highstrangeness. But, the deeper I dug the more I found what seems to be genuine people sharing real experiences. This sub in particular strikes me as largely honest and earnest. In that spirit I wanted to share a story about one of the few unexplainable instances that have happened in my life. Certainly the most significant. Sorry for typos, I'm doing this on mobile.

I am a member of the NG in Wisconsin. I moved from enlisted to officer via ROTC, and was attached to a unit in my prospective MOS while in the program. I don't really want to give specifics on my service, as the community is small enough to identify me to peers in the unlikely circumstance they're on this subreddit.

In 2014 my platoon decided to conduct night time land navigation at Ft.McCoy from 2030 to 0030. While the Army is typically all about buddy pairs, night land nav is one of the few cases we can do things solo if we so choose. Having done night land nav plenty before I step off alone, compass, map, and headlamp in hand.

For those who do not know; land navigation involves seeking out markers on a course by plotting their coordinates on a map and moving there via terrain reference and compass. At night this is typically done without light as much as possible. When light is used it is red. This minimizes damage to night vision. Obstensibly, these methods also keep you concealed in a tactical environment when employed with noise discipline.

I bring this up so you can understand a few things about my circumstance. I was moving through the woods while making a token effort to be hard to spot/hear. The woodland I was in was part of a larger forest system, but was frequently traveled. That night we had some 15 ish soldiers clomping around. My illumination was a togglable headlamp, but was toggled to be red when turned on. To cycle to white light I have to turn it off twice (the cycle was off- solid white- off - flashing white - off -solid red - off - flashing red - off - solid white).

My assigned points will take me to the other side of the course and back. A good hour and a half of walking as the crow flies. They're more or less in a straight line so I estimate two and a half hours out and back. I know if I come back too early I might be given another set of points. So I resolve to walk out, take a break for an hour then mosey on back.

The first half of this goes as planned, I get my points without much trouble and wind up sitting on a hillside at around 10 at night. It's cloudy, but the moon is full. I can see well-ish when the sky is clear, poorly when it's not. Occasionally, I see a red light bobbing in the distance below me. Once a pair of platoon members pass down the hill from me, using white light to try to read their map. I startle them when I ask if they needed help.

At the end of my break there's no more motion in my area. Most people had likely already walked out and back, or they were too lost and took the handrailing road home. I'm feeling pretty at one with my surroundings, having sat in the same spot eating stale Skittles for a good long while. Owls hoot, trees sway, all is well.

I trot down my hill and step through some brush. I'm in a clearing where prairie intersects forest. There are some dead trees in the area, one of them is split half way up. At the top (~ 15 feet) I can make out a head and shoulders sillouhette against the clouds backlit by the moon. I walk up to ask how they got up there (and if they're stuck) when the shadow twitches and I get the impression it's turned toward me. I stand there looking at it, and it's maybe looking at me.

The situation feels off, but I'm not going to let a battle buddy punk me. I ask if they need a hand. Midsentence, the moonlight comes back. It's clear the thing on the tall stump is not a soldier.

This moonlight glimpse is the best look I get at the thing. It looks like a stretched out bald person. Its long arms are clutching the stump. I can't make out the face, but it looks pinched. By that I mean I couldn't see it's eyes or mouth, like they were small and in the middle of the head. It's skinny like it hasn't eaten, but it's tall and obviously strong to have made such a vertical climb.

It was definitely facing me, it probably was the whole time I was in the clearing. Maybe since I came down the hill. Maybe my speech startled it.

I swear loudly. It rapidly scurries down the trunk. I flick on my red light and catch it on all fours moving toward the brush line in the direction I'm heading. Automatically, I keep toggling the lamp to be in white light. That means it goes off, then to flashing red. In the flash I see the thing at the woodline, but I think it's flipped around and is backing in (probably to keep eyes in me). In the few seconds it takes for me to get to white light it's gone.

I scan the treeline which is silent. When it moved there was a scraping noise, plus the woodland brush is dense. If it was still running I would hear it. I reason that it must have stopped. It must still be watching me. I fumble out my knife and keep looking around the woods infront if me. After ages I start inching along a perpendicular path to my initial route of travel, an angle that will link me up with the hardball road that runs up and down the side of the course. Once in the road I can take it back to where my platoon is parked.

My major problem is that the road is ten minutes of walking away from my current position, mostly woodland. That can't be helped, I have to get out of the clearing first. My progress on that front is painfully slow. I'm fighting my natural urge to freeze in place like a deer in the headlights.

After side stepping a good 10 meters I hear a corresponding rustling and think I see movement. It's enough to get me to turn and bolt, right into a downed log which trips me. I scramble up to my feet and look back to the woodline where there is a audible commotion. I glimpse a leg and ass moving back into the woods. At this point I'm done with the whole situation, but don't want to run again. I start power walking to the road, turning to look as much as I can while seeing what the thing is doing.

Over the movement of my own kit I can hear it moving along side me, parallel. As I near the end of the clearing I think I hear it picking up pace as if to cut me off. I make the decision to sprint. When I enter the woods my path is clear, but I think I can hear it in my periphery. I don't stop, and run hard until I hit the paved road. I bite it hard a few times along the way, but recover with a frantic speed I cannot consciously replicate.

Once in the road I run perpendicular to the forest until I don't think I hear it anymore. I'm winded from my break out run. From the middle of the road have good visibility and decide to walk to catch my breath.

It's quiet for a while. Then I hear a branch move around thirty feet in the air from the woods I had just fled. I snap my gaze up, see a pale ovular face, half in shadow peeking at me from around a trunk. I take off again. After way too long I make it back to the headlights of our LMTVs. Its 1215.

"What happened cadet, did you get lost our there?" "You're covered in mud did you fall down?" "Why are you out of breath?"

"I got lost in my way back." "Yeah, I rolled down Pike's Peak." "I ran to get back in time."

"Lol Cadet was lost."

I knew better than to claim I saw a monster. Already my reaction had left me feeling foolish.

In the years since drilling at FMC I have never experienced anything like that again. McCoy does not have a history of disappearances, as far as I know neither do the two closest towns (Sparta and Tomah). I've done night land nav alone a few times since without issue. This is less from courage, and more from me deciding I must have misinterpreted a the situation. After diving into paranormal subreddits, I'm coming around to the idea I should trust my own account. Maybe the world is weirder than I thought.

If anyone has had similar experiences elsewhere, or (hopefully) an explanation please let me know. Thanks for making it this far."

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I originally posted this as a blog on medium - for some context, I'm the founder/ceo of a social media app for making plans with your friends. Odds are, you haven't read my first blog post detailing the story of my startup inception-launch. If you have a few extra minutes, the link will be in the comments - it provides some useful context for the things I’m about to write about. That said, reading it is not required to be able to learn something from this post.1: Discipline and focus are muscles.Until I started working on my app, I was not a disciplined person by any stretch of the imagination. I was diagnosed with ADD in 10th grade, but I view it more as a label more than a diagnosis — it’s not a label I’ve resigned to, but instead is something I recognize and actively work on. One my ADD tendencies is needing near instant gratification in order to preserve my interest. It doesn’t help that we live in a world where attention is currency and companies profit from manipulating your brain into releasing as much dopamine as possible.The best benchmark for my ability to focus is how much I rely on music. Before I began working on my app, I needed to listen to music in order to focus on a task. The fundamental part of ADD is being easily distracted — my prefrontal cortex is simply worse at filtering out external stimuli than the average person (which I’m honestly grateful for, but I’ll get into that more in a future blog post). If I wasn’t listening to music I knew well enough to predict what came next, I would become distracted by novel stimuli (especially sounds) without consciously realizing I was now thinking about something else.Now, a year and a half later, I rely on music much less. I have a coding playlist that started off being mostly instrumental music (shoutout Ratatat), but grew to include more music with words as I became better at ignoring the words to focus. I still prefer to listen to music while I work, but it’s not a necessity to prevent myself from being distracted. This is mostly a product of habitual meditation.I set hourly reminders to do some quick meditation by focusing on 10 breaths — this means turn your music off, close your eyes, sit up straight, and take deep, slow breaths. This should take at least a minute.It took me less than a week to notice a dramatic difference in my general mental state: I was more aware and present with my tasks, which is one of the parts of ADD I struggle with most. I also felt generally more at ease throughout the day, and I could calm my mind more easily and fall asleep faster at night.Another ADD tendency is hyperfocus — when I’m in the middle of something (especially coding) it’s hard to tear myself away and do nothing except focus on breathing. This is because the less conscious part of my mind (the one that makes impulsive decisions) views meditation as high effort and low reward. I’d rather continue programming because when I finish a task, I get a dopamine release. Meditating is not only hard, it’s boring — and there’s no real immediate reward. However, any work I’d get done in the minute break doesn’t compare to the higher quality work I produce over the next hour because I took the time to step back and become more present with everything I’m doing.​2: Be honest with yourself.This requires removing your ego from most things. If you can’t admit your shortcomings or learn from your mistakes, you’ll stagnate, and to stagnate is to fail. Attempting to preserve my ego by deluding myself into believing I can focus just as well as everyone else with the same level of effort is only going to hurt me in the long run.When I had the idea of an app that helped you make plans with your friends my freshman year of college (Spring 2016), I didn’t get very far. Despite having a strong background in tech/comp sci — I’d only written two lines of code in a project folder called munchr before giving up.Why did I give up? It was easier to blame the fact that another app for making plans (DownToLunch) was blowing up than to admit I wasn’t disciplined/motivated enough to get to a point where I could make progress.My motivation to build the app (at least, in that stage of my life) primarily revolved around the end goal of me being a famous CEO worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As it turns out, the fantasy of the view from the summit of CEO Mountain was not a powerful enough motivator to keep me climbing — nor would it have ended up fulfilling me as much as I expected anyway. You have to work on something because you love the process, and I did not yet love the process of creating, because —and this may come as a surprise — it’s pretty fucking hard.​3: You are your best asset. Invest in yourself.I read somewhere that as a founder, you should value your time at $500 an hour. If you break it down, it’s not all that outlandish a theory — if it takes you 4 years at 50 hours a week to make a startup worth $10m, each of those hours were worth almost $1k.You should do everything in your power to make your time as productive as possible. This means sleeping at least 8 hours, eating healthy, and exercising. Get up and walk around at least once an hour. Your success is not measured by time spent, but by your output. Your output has diminishing returns with how much time you spend working.Invest in your developing environment. In terms of your output, there are two types of friction — mental (how fast you can move ideas from your head to the real world) and physical (how fast your computer reflects those ideas). There’s a lot I do in my developing environment to cut out both types of friction, but I’ll get more into that in a future blog post.On my 2015 MacBook Pro, saving a file and having the iPhone simulator recompile my changes took about 5 seconds. I was lucky enough to land some investment money from family and friends in January of 2018, and my first purchase was a 2017 MacBook Pro with pretty beefy specs. My shiny new MacBook Pro refreshes changes in less than 2.5 seconds. On average, I save and recompile 5 times a minute. Over the course of an 8 hour day, that’s over an hour just waiting for my changes to be reflected. At $500/hour, the cost of my new MacBook was made up in less than a week.I am very privileged to be in a position where I can afford expensive toys like that, and I recognize not everyone else shares that privilege. However, the point still stands — your first priority should be to cut out all the friction involved in your output that you can.​4. Do things that make you extremely uncomfortable.I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it many times — starting up is by far the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done. In the 1.5 years I’ve been working on my app, I’d estimate I’ve grown to be a new version of myself four times. It did not happen easily — growth is more often painful than not. There are three major things I’ve done that serve as benchmarks for personal growth.4.1: I raised money from family and friendsThe very nature of creativity is to be vulnerable — taking an idea and putting it out into the world is to open yourself to all forms of rejection. Pitching my app to raise money from family and friends was the first significantly uncomfortable thing I did. Most said no — this is where being able to remove your ego becomes so important. To take rejection personally and believe you were rejected becauseyour idea is badwhoever you pitched to doesn’t think you’re smart enough to see it throughis more than enough to make most people give up. Instead, view their rejection for what it actually is — humans are very irrational and resistant to change.​4.2.0: I started taking ice cold showersAll my life, I’ve despised cold water. It was a running joke in my family — I’d take my sweet time getting into a pool inch by inch, and wouldn’t go into the ocean until August. When I first told my parents I’d been taking cold showers, they laughed hysterically because they thought I was kidding. After months of insults directed at my willpower, my co-founder Alden finally got me into taking ice cold showers. When I say ice cold showers, I mean the coldest possible setting. If it doesn’t make you involuntarily gasp when you get in, and if you don’t hate it the whole time, it’s not cold enough.I’ve been taking cold showers since September 2018, and it hasn’t gotten much easier — as winter set in and the coldest setting on the shower became colder and colder, the only way I’m willing to subject myself to them is by sitting in the sauna at the gym until my consciousness starts dissolving. At the same time, the benefits haven’t gone away either (as someone who is very driven by the ratio of effort to reward, this is important) — if anything, the benefits have become more profound. After the first few seconds of severe discomfort, I literally feel unstoppable. You’ll never feel more alive than the first few seconds of cold shock as your body freaks out and produces an adrenal response in an effort to maintain homeostasis. Why do PCP when you can achieve the same feeling with some cold water?There are countless health benefits of cold immersion therapy that people obsess over, but the benefit people usually fail to mention is what it does to your willpower. The energy required to eat healthy and focus throughout the day pales in comparison to the energy I expend in forcing myself to endure freezing cold water until I’m covered in goosebumps and shivering. I didn’t start out that way — like I said earlier, discipline is a muscle. Unless you’re Drake, it’s hard to go from 0 to 100 real quick (or in this case, 100° to 40°): start by ending your showers cold, or toggling between hot and cold. The more you exercise your body’s ability to maintain homeostasis, the more comfortable you will be in the cold, and in general.4.3: I got rejected, oftenAfter we launched in April of 2017, I ordered a couple thousand stickers. My teammates and I would spend 30 seconds explaining the app while handing them out to people in dining halls/dorms on campus. People would say “I’m not really interested, sorry” straight to my face, or leave the stickers behind wherever they were sitting. I won’t lie to you, that really fucking hurt.Saying “take your ego out of things, don’t take things personally” is a lot easier than actually doing it. As much as it hurt to be told that whoever I’d just pitched to didn’t care, it motivated me 10x more. I became immune to the fear of rejection — if the worst case scenario of putting yourself out there is getting rejected and ending up in the same place you started, fuck it, send it bröther. Odds are, you’ll learn something.5. Learn to say “Fuck It, Send”.I am probably the biggest perfectionist I know. I used to make memes/write jokes on twitter (I'll link a collection of them in the comments). This was before the limit was 280 characters, which was a blessing as much as it was a curse— when I had a tweet idea, I’d sit on it for days or even weeks until I was certain it was written the best way it could be delivered.​Here's the joke I'm most proud of, which currently stands at 48k likes and 4.5 million impressions (all organic):Her: when you said "magical in bed" this isn't exactly what I was exp-Me: *holds up 8 of hearts* is this your cardHer: *softly* holy shit At 139 out of the former 140 character limit, I tweeted/deleted 5 different versions of it over two weeks before I was finally satisfied it was in the best format it could be.5.1: MVPMinimum Viable Product is an art as much as it is a science — for example, my app didn’t launch until users had the ability to peek other college’s feeds. In hindsight, we shouldn’t have built that functionality until people started actually downloading it at other schools. It’s hard to have that kind of foresight — I was utterly convinced it was going to blow up immediately and I didn’t want to launch before we were prepared for scale. The only way I found out otherwise was by putting it out into the world, something I would’ve done sooner if I didn’t fall into the One More Feature trap. Having your app/servers crash because they’re not properly equipped for scale is one of the best problems you can have.5.2: One More FeatureIt’s not hard to fall into the trap of thinking that this One More Feature is going to be the difference between success or not. It’s much easier to sit behind a screen and develop more functionality than to put your ideas out into the world where they face rejection. This is where being honest with yourself is so important — is this one thing really what will make or break you? Or are you working on that feature because you’re more comfortable developing than going out into the world and trying to get people to use your product?5.3: Push NotificationsIn the early stages of launch, we sent very few push notifications. I was scared to annoy people — if I sent too many, they’d delete the app, and we’d never get anywhere. However, you have to understand that you don’t owe the people who aren’t using your product anything: the people that are one or two push notifications away from deleting your app are not the people that will be responsible for its success anyway. Obviously, don’t overdo it, but it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.Besides investing in yourself, learning to say “Fuck It, Send” is the best thing you can do for your product — the sooner you get it out into people’s hands, the sooner you figure out why it sucks (which it inevitably will) and what you actually need to focus on to get it going.It also helps you prioritize the right things. Being the CEO, sole frontend developer, lead marketer, and literally every other role besides backend leaves me with much more on my plate every day than I can ever hope to get done. If I don’t focus on what actually matters, I’ll fail. This ultimatum is more a blessing than a curse, and the reason startups are even successful to begin with.​These are just five of the innumerable lessons I’ve learned on this adventure, and I will be writing about more of them in the future. If you enjoyed this or learned something and want to keep up with my future blog posts, let me know and I'll drop you a link to my twitter/mailing list.