So, not much time to talk. We watched the third disc of Andromeda's fifth season, which ended on the 100th episode. (Ten to go!) I've done some art and there's stuff I guess, but I'm feeling empty batteries. And incoherent.

Stuff happened, but confidentiality means I can't really talk too much about it. Today's had a lot of ups and downs, covering the full spectrum of emotions. And I do mean it. Like every feeling possible (almost anyway), I've felt today in some form or another.

So that's left me a little bit...well, out of it, so to speak.

​Sorry. Emotional rollercoasters are kinda funny that way.

I'm rather tired at the moment. I've got food to finish, but have been a bit busy. I guess I should probably be thirsty, too--dehydration is a thing. I'm not quite coherent. I'm sure stuff has been happening. Continuing to do art stuff, job stuff. I'm sure stories of real life happened, but I can't recall anything. Basically, life's happening. Not as well as preferred, but also not terribly. Things actually are progressing, and it is good.

Well, in the last 24 hours at least.
Our cats are playing again, which is nice.
I got the achievement for that one game I was thinking was too long--turned out the strategy was to simply switch who I was going up against to get the four other killing achievements, and also to switch which country I was using. Turns out that the British greenjackets are insanely overpowered at a reasonably cheap price. The thing is, I'd been using the Prussians, but their Tier 3 Unit, the grenadier, was absolutely useless no matter what civ I was up against: by the time the grenadier was in range, my defenses were already in shambles because all other enemies regardless of civ have longer range than the grenadier, making it awesome yet impractical incarnate.

The British, on the other hand, have greenjackets which are awesome yet practical, in that they have the longest range and up against the short-ranged Prussians in particular, a four-deep line of greenjackets (totally doable) could kill anything, essentially, especially with canon support. So, took me far less time than anticipated thanks to that.

​Stuff happened today, lots of stuff, but my mind's basically a garbled mess at the moment, so I'm not sure I can properly descramble it at the moment. Sorry. I guess that means this is it for today. It's 11:15 PM, and I'm kinda tired; I want to take a nap.

It's 8 PM, and there's a bundleload of work for me to do yet. While I've done my daily sketch, and I'm in the process of writing my blog post right now, I've not really been doing all the rest of my daily stuff that needs to be done, yet alone, the other stuff beyond that which I want to get done.

And I am racing against the clock here, in spite of me having what can be called a combination of inertia and writer's block: I have an idea of what needs to be done and what I want done, but not the how for it actually getting done, if that makes sense.

I really want to give some sort of better insight into my life right now. What's going on. Interesting stories. Stuff. You know, more than this. But I'm afraid that this is about as good as I can give you at the moment.

,,,Oops.
Well, uh.
My bad.

I'd write something, but it's 4:45 AM.
As-is, I've neglected to do mafia activities at the very least.
The problem in this case is the badge of the day for Kongregate. The game for today is nearly impossible in spite of it allegedly being...I think an easy badge. Well it wasn't easy for me; I tried and while I'm within 2,000 points, and within 2 seconds, I can't earn it so that means I need to earn all the other badges this week. (Well I can miss one.)

I spent hours working through Fixation. (Which may or may not have gone through, but I have the screen cap to prove I've finished the game at the least.) It's a wondrous game, but it's hard even if you use the walkthrough which I try not to. It took me forever to learn to time my puff rings.

Master of Fortresses is the other I haven't earned, and I don't think I will. That badge shouldn't be a Medium; the length of time required to earn it alone should bump it up to a Hard, and this is where my time disappeared to. I didn't know I had spent the other hours on it. Between Fixation and this game, we have at least four hours if not five worth of gameplay time and I'm nowhere remotely close to earning the badge.

So getting the golden Kongpanion this week is going to happen, but I need to check every day and also confirm I got the badge I needed, as to allow it.

...While I can't discuss work, I can discuss what I thought up during work! In this case, I thought up the sketch I have planned for today: a half-dragon. But more than that, I actually as is my wont developed a story behind her. In this case, the presentation might be a bit rough, but what I decided is that it'd be a new story: a novel, told in first person. Not sure what tense, but first person is what I knew felt right.

The story more or less has at its concept nothing particularly groundbreaking. I'm thinking urban fantasy, emphasis fantasy here, where magic is commonplace and many modern things don't exist using technology (but might exist using magic, though some may not), but many other modern things do. Things like cars, cell phones, the internet and the like are definitely in the setting, as is electricity. Other than that, not exactly sure.

But anyway. Central point here is that it's mostly a fantasy world. As a result, dragons are...a big thing. Dragons are the creature with the greatest natural storage of magical energy: their vast magical reservoirs dwarf a comparative human's level, but this comes at a small price: they lack the efficiency humans have. The dragon's natural form is difficult to cast advanced magic in. Basics like flight and fire come easily enough, but in draconic form, they lack the finesse necessary to manipulate magic with ease. (You can make magic do anything with your mind, but it's much harder and less efficient than using your limbs to aide and guide the magic. Because dragons aren't exactly the most nimble of creatures, their magic is therefore less efficient.)

Now, dragons can shapeshift using magic, and in a shapeshifted form, they maintain much of their draconic qualities. In fact, a dragon in human form is actually more efficient a mage than a natural human. However, there's a tradeoff involved: shapeshifting is not easy to do. It robs them of the majority of their magical reserves, because maintaining human form is basically a constant, neverending strain on their powers. So, when in human form, a dragon has access to less magic than a human would.

In short, when as a dragon they have far more magic than a human but far less control; when shapeshifted to be a human, they have a little less magic than a human but at least have some greater control than your typical human mage would.

Somewhere along the line, though, something happened: dragons developed the ability to bond with humans. Now, this isn't "dragon riders". A bonded human may ride a dragon, but over half won't. This isn't "dragon masters". Bonds are never master-pet. Either way. (Not dragon in control, or human in control.) Always, it's a deeper connection between the two which places them on an equal level, where they are both individuals, who just so happen to have linked together.

Said bonds can be any number of relationships: simple partnerships, a friendship, with the bonded being like siblings, with it being a parent-child dynamic, it could be student-teacher, or even on rare occasions, lovers. (Among other bond types.)

These bonds aren't set in stone, and aren't even labeled. Bonds are bonds. When they happen, it means you have a lifelong companion, and that means that they are someone you will get along with more than you won't (bad bonds cannot happen), but what the bond is, that's up to the chemistry between the individuals. It can start as one type, and develop into another. From student/teacher to partnership to friendship to lover, for instance. But it doesn't need to be any concrete type. Bonding just...simply is. It happens when it happens, and then they get to decide what that means.

And they have a long time to do so, because bonds are life-long. There's no way to break a bond, though there wouldn't ever be a need to. (While you might not always get along with the one you're bonded to--everyone has disagreements--the bond represents your potential to have something special, something magical, together, something that you two together would do well in.)

And the main reason for this bond? The massive level of synergy it provides. Dragons, when bonded to a human, have the efficiency of one, even in their draconic form. (So long as the bonded human is close enough, at least.) The human in question gets the obvious magical boost, which is something that can come quite in handy.

And this even allows for a dragon to shapeshift while maintaining the vast majority of their magical strength, though because of them having the increased efficiency by virtue of the bond, taking human form is something of a personal preference. (Some dragons really like the form of the human body.)

With this set, obviously, half-dragons can and will and have been born before. They basically have the benefits of a bond without being bonded: they have a mostly-human form which offers them fully human efficiency, with the majority of their magic; they can shapeshift into a mostly-dragon form which maintains most of their human efficiency, while allowing for the rest of their magic to come out.

Most half-dragons prefer their human form. (Also, the child of a half-dragon will be the race of the other parent: a dragon with a half-dragon will have a full-dragon child; a human with a half-dragon will have a full-human child; a half-dragon with a half dragon will have a half-dragon child.)

Which brings us to our protagonist. She, like most half-dragons, prefers her human form. What makes her unusual is that most half-dragons don't form a bond. It's certainly heard of, especially to humans. The half-dragon bonds to a human. She's an oddity, though, in that she's one of only a few half-dragons ever to have bonded with a full dragon.

In this case, a more sisterly bond, in that the two were raised close together from childhood, and know each other well and treat each other as if sisters, in spite of them having no blood relation. But later down in the story, something happens which is the first ever known instance: she also bonds to a human.

Because a half-dragon is half of each, they can bond to a dragon thanks to their human heritage, and can bond to a human thanks to their dragon heritage. Nobody ever thought it was possible to do both, even though there was nothing logically stopping it from being possible. It just never crossed anyone's mind as being something that could happen, until...it did, to her.

The polybond in this case doubles as polyamory, in that her dragon-bond (basically sister) loves the same human she falls in love with (of course, there's lots of fun involved in this, in that she originally assumes the feelings are from the bond with her dragon-bond, until it's made explicit "No, you idiot, that's just you" because while bonding does cause a lot to be shared, that level of fundamental deep emotional transference is simply not how things work), and he loves them both.

That's about as far as I got story-wise, though I did also create the symbols which would display on a human-bonded-to-a-dragon, and a dragon-bonded-to-a-human. (Our protagonist eventually ends up with both, one on each arm in this particular case.)

All this, for a sketch I haven't even made yet.

But I'm looking forward to it.

A rather long one, at that. I can't discuss the details for obvious reasons, but the basic summary is: not the way I'd prefer to spend my Saturdays, but always more fun than I expect. Lots of good knowledge each time, stuff that needs to be said being said, basically doing vital job clarifications, but at the same time...physically and mentally draining, taking a lot out of you. Necessary, and fun, but still something of a chore, which needs to be planned around.

Speaking of which, I need to start planning out my evening and tomorrow morning routines, so this is all you'll be getting from me today, unfortunately.

Finally, and I really really really liked it.
Not sure about the rest of my family (this was my birthday pick), but oh well. Their opinion, not as important as mine. Though apparently they thought it was more dark than expected of a children's movie, so there's that.

Well, no dance tonight, with it being the second Thursday of the month and all that, though even if it weren't, I'm somewhat doubtful of my sister's willingness to attend dance. She's not as bad as she was yesterday, and not as bad as she was on Tuesday, and in round dancing she might not even touch hands with others, butstill, she didn't go yesterday so that's probably a sign.

I suppose weebly just gave me a prompt. In posting options, there's an option to add categories. I've noticed this before. It may, or may not, make the site more searchable, to make it easier to locate topics when I talk about them. (For instance, currently my method for finding my webcomic in my blog is to use google, and go site:http://alltoohuman.weebly.com and from that, search for it in quotation marks to get an exact match, because while I might use red, and might use hood, and there's the slightest of chances for me to use rider, using all three in conjunction only happens when talking about my webcomic. A method I borrowed from a blog reader, in that now I make sure whenever I do anything related to my comic to include the full title.)

I've had a few interesting dreams, but I can't really recall specifics behind them. Hmm...what else? It's 8:00 PM. I'm not sleepy, I've done my drawing for today, I've done all of my posting for today, so that's four hours before midnight I have in free time, and I'm thinking of maybe getting a buffer back on Red Hood Rider. (See? As so.) Basically, if I got a page a week, if not more, and started back up in...oh, say...February, I'd get at least 3 pages done in advance, which is the buffer that I had before.

Knowing me, I'll blow it. I'll mess this up somehow.
But, uh. Productivity from boredom if nothing else, assuming all goes well.

​Wish me luck! (I'll need it.)