...Still waste of time, but...I made this:

Forgive me if the quality's not great. Apparently, Weebly has a file size limit of 10 MB, and the larger version of the image exceeded that, so I had to upload from the reduced-size version. (Not that it matters much since weebly automatically resizes ANYWAY, but it helps if the image starts larger.)

But anyway, it should be fairly obvious what this is: basically, it is a compilation of everything good in Ruby's design, packed into a single handy, hopefully easy-to-use reference image. You'll recognize most of these things. That drawing on the left is what I worked on during vacation. This shows what I strive for, minus a few imperfections here and there. There's no clothing folds, her hair isn't shaded, little things like that, but it's a great image for showing her current design.

The image to the right you'll recognize as being the original drawing of her from the prologue. While some things I've done better since then (for instance, in that drawing, it looks like the mask she's wearing is a bandanna-with-eyeholes, a-la Zoro, whereas it's supposed to be a domino mask), and some things I'm applying conservation of detail to (for instance, her shoes, and also a bit with her hoodie), it is all-around a solid design for her, the first to show that, yes, she is a teenager, yes, she is a superhero, yes, she is a magical girl, all in one image.

The bottom-right you'll recognize from the image I just posted. It is capturing the essence of Ruby. It does have some minor mistakes on her design, though, like not including the stripes at the bottom of her skirt and not having a bottom seam in her hoodie, but it's as I mention, the perfect rendition of her as a badass teenage superhero.

The middle-right design should not be underestimated, though. While it has some early-design-flaws (the mask still doesn't look like a domino mask yet), it's a brilliant front-perspective shot, with some foreshortening at that, which includes basically every relevant detail of Ruby's design.

Then we get into the colored items. I'm not sure if I posted my inktober images on this blog or not (don't remember), but the bottom-left image comes from it, as the sketches I did on D1 and D2. This is, 100%, completely and entirely, an accurate rendition of Ruby's hoodie and skirt. The text is too small to read, but it's filled with notations where I describe the items on the hoodie in detail, everything from the length of the sleeves (elbow-length approximately) to the sides being black (but the front+back being red) to the red seam on the bottom to the red seam on the pockets to the zippers on the pockets (speaking of which, pockets are a detail that I'm coloring wrong in the black-and-white, same as the skirt, because I fear losing detail if I shade them with pencil, so that's an intentional decision on my part to leave for digitization) to the middle zipper to the color of the hood (black inside, red outside), all sorts of things like that.

The top-right image was not a drawing of Ruby, per se, being me making a quick, 10-minute digital sketch of what I look like lifeguarding (with...some mild artistic liberties taken), but since Ruby is based off of me, it's close enough. It shows her official hair color. More or less: a standard brown. Her eyes are also green when she doesn't have a mask on.

The final image, in the middle, was a cheap five-minute drawing meant to mimic a toy. Think of it as a digital doodle: no reference images, just quickly throwing something together halfheartedly to make something vaguely okay. However, in spite of being cheap, it does contain important details: things like the color of Ruby's skirt, socks, and shoes, her having a domino mask, hair coloring, skin coloring (okay, so think somewhere between the middle and top-right: not as light as the middle, not as dark as the top-right), hair, and vitally, her eyes being blue while wearing a mask. That cheap toy drawing is the ONLY drawing I have with that detail right now.

I have it in my notes, naturally. But only there, in the cheap toy drawing, is it shown.

Soyeah. I now have a cheap, easy universal one-image-only handy reference guide for Ruby. I just checked, and it does in fact viably fit in the picture viewer. I mean, the small middle drawing has the details be virtually invisible, and the top-right drawing when zoomed out so much is a bit blurry, but every other detail shows clearly and crisply.

Now, this is, sadly, an image that I will only have available at full size on my personal computer (because, uh...yeah, not many places accept uploads of 12.7 MB), but the smaller version still maintains almost all the details. (The middle image, sadly, is a bit too small; the blue eyes--the most important detail--get too blurry to be clear, albeit being vaguely there.)

...Of course, I've wasted all this time on the image, so now I need to redouble my efforts at actually getting my work DONE!

I really don't want to fail that checkpoint.

Soyeah. While it's been fun, and semi-productive, to do this, now it's time for me to actually get back in business. I've got the 5 at 5 to listen to, which is great motivation to stay in one place and listen to them while working, rather than, say, going out to the living room and checking to see if the computer's open.

Wish me luck! (I, uh...very much desperately NEED it.)

The title, as you may have guessed, is sarcasm. So what did I do after all that hype yesterday? Blow it all away and waste my time, of course! So now I have FIVE pages to do today at minimum if I want to make my release date!

It gets better; because I forgot my computer wanted to install updates, guess what I had to sit through today? With it taking half an hour (if not more) to actually install! And as I'm writing this, I'm STILL waiting for everything to get back up and running to full capacity--namely, Firefox, so I can actually, y'know...BLOG about my miserable failures.

As if that wasn't enough, because of my little distractions, I'm virtually site flaking from my mafia site, all because of my Red Hood Rider obsession! So at some point today, I'm going to have to figure out a way to overcome inertia and tackle every project there I need to. Everything from year-end nominations (mostly, picking out all the ones that were seconded yet aren't listed as being seconded, because the people in charge of those things kinda suck at stuff like that) to general talk (for instance, talking about Star Wars) to more private talk (such as trans issues) to, of course, my games. Which I have been neglecting. And flaking from. Again. As a hydra. Which I'm becoming NOTORIOUS for.

...All THAT, BEFORE you factor in all of the distractions I'm inflicting on myself. Like how, right now, I keep thinking of some of my favorite Kongregate Games of all time. Everything from Ge.ne.sis (I think that's the game's title? I'd have to check again) to a really, really, REALLY brilliant game that I can't recall the title of off the top of my head (but which invokes childhood fondness and was inspired by synesthesia), to the Epic Battle Fantasy series to the MARDEK games...you know. Little things like that which serve to be a distraction because every thought on them is a thought not spent on Red Hood Rider.

MORE than that. Then there's the productive for Red Hood Rider in the long-term distractions which don't help my immediate concerns! Like how I really, really, REALLY want to write the episode 2 script right now. Something I'll need to do eventually, but not right now, yet the urge is there, the distraction is strong.

...And to make things worse: while, THANKFULLY, my mom's on the computer right now (you know it's bad when I'm THANKFUL my mom's on the desktop!), I know for a fact that she's leaving for a party. And the moment she does, I'll be going onto there. And I won't be spending my time on productive things like ComicFury or even my mafia stuff. CERTAINLY not anything in regards to the Rubyverse. You know what I'll be doing? 100%, it will be...watching movies, because I know for a fact that my CF friends run a stream on New Years Eve all day long of solid films and that's quite literally a once in a year event, my equivalent of a new years eve party, because it's how I prefer to spend my time: among friends, hanging out, chatting, and having fun partying.

...So to sum things up: total, utter, miserable failure here (that's me!) managed to screw things up and will only get worse.

The ONE redeeming element to be had here is that I didn't COMPLETELY waste my time. (Just mostly!) I did get some storyboarding done for my novel, by writing down some important notes. Not great, but at least it's SOMETHING. As of today, I've also further worked on the page I SHOULD have finished yesterday, prior to writing this blog because, well, you know...the computer was restarting, couldn't exactly type up a blog. (I could write one, but that was too much a pain.) So the page is ALMOST done, just needing two panels that won't be much effort (the largest struggle will be deciding what to actually show, since my script is a bit ambiguous on those two panels), but not quite there.

I also managed to scan that awesome page I mentioned in my blog yesterday, and as is my wont, I feel like showing it off.

One of these days, I'll learn to talk about the page on the day I actually upload the page, rather than the day before, because once more, all I can really say after posting this is, "You can see what I was talking about". Because, well...you can. And I pretty much said it all right then and there. Panel two has Ruby actually look like a badass teenage superhero, for pretty much the first time in a perfect combination of each.

I mean, today, I think I did a good job of making her look like an anime teenage magical girl, which is good, but in that one panel, above all other drawings I've done of her so far, from the title image to the first page (though, her breaking through the glass was pretty superheroish) to the previous drawing I was so proud of for page three (the one I did on vacation), everything pales in comparison to panel two in terms of capturing the essence of Ruby.

If I didn't already have my heart set on a certain currently-not-yet-drawn image as being my comic avatar, I'd probably use that panel as the avatar. (Well, a reduced-size version, anyway.) It is, quintessentially, everything I envision of Ruby. That is how she looks in my mind. No drawing I've done of her before or since then has so well brought my vision to life.

...All this, through some absolutely atrocious attempts at foreshortening. (I think it'll be an easy digital fix, though. For the drawing, I started with her head and then with her right/arrow hand, working my way outward and downward. To fix it, digitally, I think starting with the left/bow hand and working up the bowstring--which would need to be tilted upward--will allow for a relatively quick fix. At least, in theory. Cross that bridge when I come to it.)

Artistically, I might not have gotten the 'money shot' I was looking for, because the image is incredibly flawed. But from the perspective of a writer, seeing what I envisioned perfectly brought out in aesthetics even if not in the perfect angle is a dream come true. This is one of those rare moments in my artistic career.

Sometimes, I've jumped for joy over drawing the perfect version of my characters. It happened every rare once and a while for The Descended. Sometimes, I've been ecstatic at how well others have captured my characters, usually for the same reason, in that I love seeing my babies brought out in such magnificent detail.

Yet moments where I feel this pride and joy, in my writing, in my art, are truly moments to treasure. Of course, I know it's not perfect. It's flawed. Extremely flawed. But for me, it's perfection all the same, because...I did it! I made her look like how she's supposed to look like! For one, awesome, brief panel, that I now strive to match/exceed.

So...definitely at least encouraged. I think I can do great things. I'm a proper artist. I'm a proper webcomic creator. I can set realistic goals, I can set realistic expectations, I can realistically realize my vision, so that means...I can, realistically, start my webcomic. So in this one page, I think I have final affirmation that, yes. I CAN do this. I CAN make a webcomic. So that's all the encouragement in the world to keep me going.

...Still sucks about how much I'm not going to get done today, though. I'll have to do what I can.

Rrrrnng.

I'm actually being productive, here. More accurately, was being productive. I finished a full page. For that page, I like it pretty well overall: I sort-of botched the first panel (though it's not terrible), though my main regret is that I missed out on a perfect opportunity to ste--ah, I mean...borrow a pose from a reference image exactly down to the inch. (In this case...I only have one reference image of Kagomi from Inu-Yasha. And this was my chance to use it. Because she wears an outfit similar to Ruby's, it would have been an easy panel to draw, but no, I didn't think about it until after I had drawn the panel in its entirety. Oh, well.)

The second panel I also botched, in this case, me trying to use the awesome reference image I mentioned on this blog before (I have it bookmarked, even), but at least in that case, it was an epic botch. By which, I mean...the foreshortening was an absolute, utter, miserable failure, and as a result, the anatomy is horrendously off (the foreshortening needs to work in order for the anatomy to be good, and...it didn't), but in spite of that...I still like the panel.

Why?

Because in spite of the absolute terrible failures...Ruby still looks like a badass teenage superhero! It's probably one of the first times I've managed to so successfully capture what she's supposed to be. So while it's a bit of a failure artistically, conceptually, it is an absolute, entire blast of a hit.

The final panel didn't go so great, but it's not terrible, either. I think the proportions might be slightly off, and the attempt to show Ruby's head from a side perspective was a failure (I'm a weak artist, especially outside my comfort zone, and...I learned to draw in 3/4 profile, so anything beyond 7/8ths gets to be...well, of lesser quality, meaning that both front perspective and profile perspective are hard), but it's still a decent image of her. On the other side of the divide, the villain is drawn better, since for him, I just did a makeshift 3/4ths perspective which works...slightly better. Still didn't quite nail it (his hands are terrible, and everything below the hips is awful), but his face at least looks human this time. (When I envisioned him, I envisioned him as looking human, only...not quite, with slightly pointed ears, sharp teeth, and slightly--emphasis, SLIGHTLY--pointed claws. His neck is still too massive, his head a bit small, his teeth still too sharp, and claws still too prominent, but at least he looks closer to human.)

What I'm mostly here to gripe about, though, is that...well, I've been productive by producing that, yet when it comes to the next page, my body's telling me "No, we can't do much more of this". I'm right in the artistic zone. Right in it. I have the mindset to keep going. I want to get it done, I want to work on it, and I HAVE worked on it. The page has some details already put in, one panel finished, all panels outlined, the text for the page already laid out, everything done except the art in the remaining panels...

...But I've been fighting my body the entire time. My shaky hands are getting out of control. They didn't act up at all for the first page, but as soon as I started the second page, they began trembling violently. Heck, they're still shaking as I'm typing this. Especially my right hand...which, y'know. Is my drawing hand. If I focus, I can get the shaking to stop (and, yes, it requires focus, because by default, the shaking is there), but doing so places stress on my arm. As in, I quite literally am fatiguing my arm when I try to stop the shaking.

It also is a distraction. Every bit of energy I spend focusing on not losing control of my own arms and hands is a bit of energy not focused on doing my art. So while I've been forcing it to get this far, I've basically reached the limit of what my body can do. It definitely doesn't feel fair.

I mean...I have been working for a good three hours on art (aside from some minor research tracking down reference images for a scene from episode 2: not time wasted, but not something I need right now), and my body is telling me I'm hungry, so it's possible that all I need in order to shut my arms up and stop the shaking is to eat, butstill...

I WANT ART, NOT FOOD, DANG IT! I'm working on page six. There are 22 pages in the chapter. I want to get the prologue sketched before this Monday, when it's possible I'll be working again. That means today, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 16 pages after the current, means that if I only finish my current page (which, as noted, I may not be able to do) today, that's four days to do 16 pages, a rate of four pages a day.

I'm averaging maybe .75 pages a day at this point?

Something like that.

So...I have two options here.
Option one, set a different deadline. I hate, hate, HATE this option, because that enters the procrastination cycle: "Well, I missed the deadline, better set a new one" which I then miss, and set a new one and so on and so forth.
Option two...buckle down and do the work. I like this one, so...I need to work around my limitations, here. There will be a way to overcome the physical blocks. I'm overcoming the mental blocks, finally, finally, finally, so I should have a way to conquer the physical ones, too.

Because, yeah. If I don't find a way to defeat the physical limitations I'm facing right now, I'll fall straight back into the mental blocks. Inertia is strong. Get going, it's hard to stop; get stopped, it's hard to get going. I've gotten going, but the physical blockade of my body not working properly right now is giving my mind a perfect excuse to shut the engine down. And that would be absolutely catastrophic to my goal of a Red Hood Rider January 2016 release date.

As-is, I'm realistically looking at a second-half-of-January release date, even IF I finish the pages before Monday, because I'll likely be faced with work, and job searching, which I promised to start come January 2016. (I only have so many excuses left!) Given my unfamiliarity with FireAlpaca, which is looking like the best option for quickly doing my art, and how digitizing pages traditionally takes me about 1.5 times the length drawing them did (going off of The Descended, anyway--it took 2-3 days usually for me to draw a page, and 3-5 days for me to digitize it), that's going to slow me down a lot.

...So if I fail to make my end-of-Sunday deadline...(and I need to go to the Y on Sunday anyway to get my schedule)...then I'm absolutely screwed as far as my webcomic goes.

So I'm going to keep fighting.
I want you to see my work so badly!
Red Hood Rider has been dieing to be made for nine months. It's my child, now. A baby, ready to be born and grow.
It would be criminal if I didn't let it come true.

What that means is that I got almost 12 hours of sleep. Good: very restful! Nice way to stay refreshed, keep apathy at bay, and probably keep me healthy, too.

Bad: extreme lack of productivity, since half my day (quite literally) was eaten away by sleep. Meaning far less time for doing things. I'm handling CF adequately (I didn't quite get to as many comics as I would like to, but I feel like I can only list so many a day before becoming a broken record), but falling behind in my mafia life. (Whoops!)

I don't imagine it'll take me long to fix that, but I do need to overcome the inertia there to actually buckle down and do it.

I also need to continue working on Red Hood Rider. Yesterday, I got myself all hyped up about it, intending to dive into it, then a distraction opened up when my mom said the computer would be available soon. (And, predictably, productivity dropped from potential to absolute zero.) For the record: this was at around 7:30 PM. I imagine she took breaks at points throughout the day, but ironically enough, for all that she hounds me for being constantly on the computer, that's over 12 hours she had it reserved for herself.

Mainly, today, though, I also want to get working on my novel. There are a couple things I want to focus on, mainly in regards to the second book, but with some build-up in the first book. Like why Rokust does what he does, his motivation for his big move, the consequence in the second book, and also a little bit of fun extras about a side character, Kano.

Kano is a very young member of the military, enthusiastic, and quite the skilled shot, though otherwise a mediocre soldier. As of the second book, and this is what I just now thought up, he's an aspiring writer, too. My thoughts on the matter there are that, basically, he writes a book where his current superior, the enemy of the world, is cast as a monstrous figure in the dark. With...approval from said figure, who doesn't mind the portrayal. He believes in free expression, after all, and it turns out the book is a huge blessing: it becomes a huge propaganda hit, selling millions of copies...with the money funding their army, exactly the thing which the propaganda is trying to AVOID. And furthermore, the book--while having the superficial appearance of being propaganda--has undertones that actually SUPPORT their cause, drawing in fresh recruits who are able to pick up on these. So the book ends up being a huge boon to their goals.

Serves as a bit of a meta comment on my writing, too, I suppose. But that's in the distant future. Can't write the second book without writing the first! (Well...I CAN, it's just that it doesn't really make much SENSE to. It'd be like writing The Return Of The King before writing The Fellowship Of The Ring; you'd still have some very powerful moments, but you'd have almost zero investment in the characters because most of the important stuff about them happened in the unwritten first book.)

Now...I need to actually be productive today. There's not much time left in December. (Heck, mentally, I'm already thinking it's January.) I need to get moving, FAST. Cranking out page after page for Red Hood Rider, getting them all scanned, then digitizing them. And I want to keep writing while doing that.

I have the time. I just need to actually USE it, which I'm not always doing.

All that talk, and wouldn't you believe it? I missed something! (Surprise, surprise.) Turns out in all of my excitement, one of the main things that I was going to do, I, well, uh...didn't. So remember that thing I mentioned in the first blog post for today? I was going to do more stuff.

In particular, the plan was to blog about two things mainly. Disease as one...and art as another. Something I epically failed at, since here I am, just now getting to the art which was one of the largest reasons I wanted to blog in the first place! Well, time to fix that. I mentioned that yesterday, I scanned both the magical girls and my two new Red Hood Rider pages, right?

Well...here they are.

These are the magical girls, and the dark magical girl, that I created way back during the power outage, with no references available, out of boredom. You may recall the blog post about them. It's buried by now. Since I didn't get my blog running until late December, you'll have to go quite a ways back into the December archives, but I do believe it's somewhere around December 21st as the day released, and should be marked as being a blog post on...November 19th, I think? Somewhere around there.

God I should have gotten my blog running sooner. Anyway, the point is, these are those magical girls. They're pretty nice characters, fitting smoothly in the Rubyverse. Not a part of Red Hood Rider, directly, but existing in the same universe. There's a lot I wanted to say about them, but most of it has since disappeared from my head, categorized as having been not important enough to store to my long-term memory.

I do remember that, basically, Ariana remains a villain because in spite of her having a power that should make her of ALL people have a HeelFaceTurn, she's a villain because of love, a deep, true love. Villainous love, yes, and a little bit squicky love (Ronan is 28 and she's 16), but love all the same. And because of her empathy powers, she knows the feeling is mutual. Ronan truly, deeply loves her more than anything else in the world, and she loves him more than anything else in the world, and it's through that bond most of their characterization comes.

For instance, when the question is raised about whether it's possible their powers influence their emotions (Ronan's limited reality warping power could, with constant close proximity, cause someone to love him; Ariana's empathy power allows her to manipulate emotions, including having the ability to induce love in someone), they both basically answer that they would do whatever it took to break the artificial bond, and whatever would be left would be left...but they're absolutely certain their love formed without their powers being involved, and since both of them are happy with their relationship, are not exactly willing to push the boundaries. (Particularly since basically the only way to, for absolutely sure, break the hold of their powers is to actually die and stay dead long enough for any residual effects. Not something you'd be liable to do.)

Basically, they're a couple first, villains second. They're also not that bad as far as villains go. They have simple goals, mainly among them being trying to find ways that they would be able to live a comfortable life together, without the kind of judging stares they get. (Because of the aforementioned squick factor in their age difference.)

They hold fairly high standards for villains, though do still see the Simple Stars as an obstacle, one they would remove if the opportunity arose, because the Simple Stars are usually the only thing in the way of them achieving their plans. However, that being said, they would actually prefer to avoid that scenario if at all possible, and do try more low-key methods. It's just that when they see opportunity, they leap at it, no matter the legal or moral implications of their actions.

I quite like them as characters. I also put a fair amount of depth into the Simple Stars, too. Crystal is the youngest of the group, but also the smartest. She's not the leader, but she is the person who plans for the team, particularly since her power of Clairvoyance is actually better defined as seeing the CURRENT future. She likes to cause chain reactions, domino effects, basically setting up Rube Goldbergesque situations, which turn simple things into fun links, where one thing leads to another for a satisfying pay-off.

Dee (the only name which doesn't hold meaning) is constantly-enthusiastic, but as a stealth expert (not to mention, fast, speedy, and using the heaviest weapon of the trio in the form of an ax/crossbow hybrid), she is also a very pragmatic fighter, always going for the easiest route available for the fastest victory, no matter how brutal.

Fiona, the oldest of the group, is the leader. She's the glue that holds the team together, very competent. She's passionate and quite skilled at many things, including life skills that the other girls lack. She is their main link to the world, in fact, somewhere between the role of a big sister and team mother. But what she excels at most of all is combat, where she is their strongest, most powerful member. Her magical bullets are about to par with Dee's bolts in speed and power, and while her sword may lack the weight of Dee's ax, her swordsmanship makes her technical precision skills in melee combat exceed Dee's.

What makes her the most dangerous of the three, though, is that she holds the greatest amount of magical energy, which she can discharge through either of her weapons and thoroughly blast an opponent. This, when combined with her prowess at combat, makes her the most lethal fighter, especially since she's a fierce fighter even when depowered. (Well, their powers are always passively active: Crystal can always see into the future, but she gets more detail and can manipulate events better when empowered; Dee is always fast and light-footed, but her powers turn those to superhuman levels. Fiona's the only one of the three who doesn't really have any depowered skills...but that's because she doesn't need any; she's THAT good.)

It's a fun story, good for a spinoff comic somewhere way, WAY down the line, but not part of Red Hood Rider. Which is what I wanted to show. In particular, the image of the page I finished on vacation.

Apologies if the quality isn't the best. After the original was scanned, there were two ways I could upload it: as a reduced-size PNG, or as a full-sized JPEG; the full-sized PNG exceeded the file size limit for CF. JPEGs are notorious for loss in quality, and resizing definitely loses quality, so the question is just a matter of which had less of a loss.

And I think it was the JPEG, so that's what this is. But I didn't see any obvious degradation, so if there's any change at all, it'd probably be in the color of the lines, which wasn't large enough for me to see on quick eyeball inspection. So...hopefully this is close enough to the full-quality version as to be full-quality.

But anyway, this is the finished page. I think you can tell what I mean when I said I only had my own left hand as a reference, plus a few pre-saved references from previous pages. Given those limitations, it's an EXCEPTIONAL page, but again, not perfect. It's the quality I'll strive to meet (or exceed), though! (The follow-through page...well, I...didn't quite meet the standard. It's okay, but nowhere near matching this page. To think I had references for the okay page that didn't go well, and didn't have references for THIS page which...did. Funny how that works.)

So...this time. I think THIS time. I'm actually done blogging for the day. Unless something else comes up, anyway!

...So what I was coming here to actually say is probably going to be rather short in comparison. One of the things I began thinking about was my story, Disease, one of the two stories I was working on for NaNoWriMo. Basically, thanks to the side-game which I based off of Disease, Disease inherited some traits to the story that were absent before. (I believe there's a TVTropes term for it. Something in regards to Canon, usually in regards to a character created in an adaption, which works its way back into the original. I forget the TVTropes article's name, though this should give you an idea for what I mean.)

Basically, it went, I created the story of Disease. I gave people powers I thought were cool. I knew from the get-go I wasn't going to have an infinite number of powers; there would be repeats, as well as powers that were similar but manifested differently. But that was about it.

Keep in mind: Disease was one of my first stories, ever. I forget how old it is, but I think it was among my first eight, definitely in my first ten, and was one of my immediate big hit stories. Disease, my original first novel, a novel involving werewolves, and a story involving a maze all spring to mind as being big ones. Oh, there was also an Inu-Yasha knockoff, too. Then there's my Bleach knockoff, which is an occasional side-project I dabble on even to this day because it's taken on a life of its own. There were others (I could go on all day about all the various novels I created in my youth and have revisited from time to time), but these six, along with my current novel to make for a nice seven, are the largest of my large.

Disease was the one that really sparked them off, though. My first novel started me in novel-writing. Disease was created because I was looking to get approved to be an author on the Battleon Forums. I wrote it, purely and entirely, specifically, for that purpose alone, and it was a hit. Particularly thanks to one of my long-time friends I've sadly since fallen out of contact with. She's one of the most talented novelists I've ever met, and it was her enthusiasm with my work that kept me writing. I owe everything to her, though that's a story for a different time.

(I wish I knew what happened to her. I can list various facts about her from memory, but while she was a friend, enough to share with me her personal email account, we never used it that much, mostly using forums and a chat program to talk. I know that she has a birthday in either March or May, and was 16 when I was 15, which means that she's somewhere between 22 and 24 right now. I know she was living in Canada, I believe somewhere in the Ontario area though I'm not entirely positive about that, and she was fluent in French and English. But that's it; I never learned her real-life name and even if I did, not like I could really learn what's going on with her right now without it being all creepy stalkerish. Still, one of my greatest hopes is that she never gave up on noveling and has somehow managed to get published, with me simply not knowing which of her great works got published especially since she may have changed the name from what I knew the novel as.)

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is: Disease is an old, old novel. I'm not sure if I was 14 or 15 when I started it, but it was around then. Going through my flashdrive, the earliest word doc I can find date-modified-wise has a November 2007 date on it, which suggests I was 14 if I'm doing my math correctly, though the word doc I'm going off of was not for a novel, but rather, my suggestions thread for things to be added to the game.

Uh. Long story. But basically, know how Blood Masters are now a part of Red Hood Rider's Rubyverse? Well, prior to that, Blood Masters were split into two stories: one in an urban fantasy setting, the other in a fantasy land of Mythe, which was my knockoff-cheap-substitute for Artix Entertainment's setting of Lore. And that's because, prior to being in Mythe, Blood Masters existed as a suggestion to be a class to put in Adventure Quest. The file I'm staring at is another of the class suggestions: I called them Casters...effectively a light-element version of necromancers, who raise a SINGLE undead person as a full-bodied version rather than skeletal version as a companion. I thought it was a neat idea, which is why they got put in Mythe. The Descended used a variant on the idea by having Necromancers require the Light element, and even in the Rubyverse, elements of Casters get featured in Necromancy.

...But that's a tangent. (Hmm, seems to be a common trend for today! And here I thought this was going to be a short blog post. Maybe in comparison......) I'm more saying this because, if the file says it was last modified around that time, that's a good estimate for when I was beginning to save my works. It means that if I wasn't already a writer, I was on my way to becoming one; I definitely was a writer in 2008 because I remember writing way back then which means I was on the forums which means I started writing Disease when I was just a 14-year-old kid.

(Not that the people on the forums knew my age. I considered my age to be my most closely-guarded internet secret until...well, the start of this blog, really. I told a grand total of two people my age before then: one, another of my AE-days friends, the other, the prominent transwoman back in 2014 when she asked me my age. Nobody else ever had it explicitly given to them until the creation of my blog made the information easy to know.)

It was badly written. It was very, very poorly planned. I didn't have anything nailed down. I eventually got vague ideas in place: the backstory, the distant future, important plot points like the original midway point in the novel. (Now marking the end of the first book, since I know Disease will be long enough to need two books.) But that was about it. The characters were named after people I knew, mostly, but had zero percent of the personality of their original selves in them because I just needed names; I was making up everything about their characters, and it showed, with awkward bonds that didn't make much sense, a forced narrative...you know, a ton of amateur mistakes.

But me having bipolar disorder, I never could keep my focus on Disease and the momentum going. I got stuck in a cycle: rewrite. After partially rewriting, get exhausted. Instead of pushing through the exhaustion, I caved in. Worked on some flashy new novel project I suddenly became enthusiastic about, which I would later abandon the moment the enthusiasm stopped. Come back, be unable to stand the godawful piece of junk I had created, and start a new rewrite. Rinse. Repeat.

Until, eventually, I stopped working on the novel altogether. Enter, some point later (not exactly sure when--it could be as early as 2010 or as late as 2013), the idea for a flash game. I was really, really big into tower defense games at the time. Obsessed with them, in fact. I absolutely adored all kinds of them. A particular favorite was the Protector series. (This predates the release of Protector IV, to give you some idea of chronology. Maybe even Protector III, perhaps possibly even Protector II. So somewhere after the original Protector, but prior to Protector IV. That's the timeline you have for when this game idea was formed.)

I forget what other tower defense games were big at the time. Energy Apocalypse was fun to play through, though I don't think it was new at the time. (It was release some time in 2008. I think I first played it through to its completion in 2009, maybe 2010.) It was, however, vaguely familiar to me, what with the whole 'evolving enemy' concept and post-apocalyptic world and such. One of the earlier Desktop Tower Defense games was pretty important, and I believe Bloons and Bloons 2 were both popular at the time. (Absolutely positive there was no Bloons 4, though I'm not certain about Bloons 3. I think this predates then, but I'm not absolutely sure about that.)

So that should give you a fair idea of what kind of era this was. Arguably the peak of tower defense games, where creativity and ingenuity were at their highest and enthusiasm for the genre was wide-spread. (It has since died down, with many complaints about games being, "So...this game is just X, with a reskin" or "So this is X, with a bit of Y thrown in".) This, by the way, predates Plants vs. Zombies. Maybe not the creation of Plants vs. Zombies, but the fame of Plants vs. Zombies. If Plants vs. Zombies existed at this point in time, it was an obscure game, with zero merchandise and zero fame and zero imitators.

Around that time, I got the idea of creating a tower defense game. However, I think by this point, I had given up on becoming a programmer, because it was after I had just barely scraped by a pass to Digipen and the flash class I had taken was a dead-end. This places it post-2008, maybe post-2009. So, because after I was held back in second grade, my grade was the year+1 (as in, 2003 being 4th grade), I was in some time between 9th grade and 11th grade, somewhere around 16 or 17.

Probably 17. At that point, I created the tower defense game, blatantly ripping off my own story, Disease, for it. I avoided calling it Disease, and avoided calling any of the things in Disease by their names, even though I used direct imports. Darmichrons were given a different name, but existed as the main enemy to fight. The Sarciller was turned into a particle--vital detail there--with a different name, this time a result of a meteor impacting the earth and spreading an alien bug across the population.

The human enemy, remaining the architect of the disaster, was instead a head of a mystic occult group. Names were changed in the game, like Brian becoming Ryan, and the plot was altered somewhat, but it was still Disease with the serial numbers filed off, in the form of a tower defense game.

And here, in the tower defense game, important concepts were created. First, the idea of standardized classes. It's a tower defense game, so there could only be a finite number of towers--a finite number of powers. So, I created a list, and decided that because I had introduced this concept of particles for the game, as a currency for leveling up characters and creating towers and whatnot, that there would be two types of paths each character could take: this is where the idea of 'dense' versus 'scarce' originates from.

And when all was said and done...I looked at the plot I had made, I looked at all the concepts I had done, I looked at all the characters (hero units) I had done, and I was like, "...You know...I think I actually like a lot of this better than what I have in my novel. Hmm......"

So those ideas got ported back into the source material. Canon Foreigners. (I remembered the name of the TVTropes term! Yeah, it's Canon Foreigners, I do believer.) Now, obviously, a lot of the ideas from the novel stayed in the novel, and a lot of ideas from the game stayed in the game. They weren't quite that identical. But I took what I could, to improve the world of Disease.

...And this is just the backstory behind what I wanted to talk about. Basically, one of those standard classes is "Body": people who have absolute mastery of their body. In scarce form, this manifests as basically being combinations of shapeshifters and rubber humans, able to morph their form to be whatever they desire. However, in dense form, this manifests as having complete mastery over their bodies, granting them invulnerability: they can't starve, they can't die of thirst, they can't burn to death, they can't drown, they can't be cut in half, they can't be beheaded, and it's ridiculously hard to cut/pierce their bodies...and whenever they are, whatever damage was inflicted will heal quickly.

I came in here to blog about how I went into detail about them in my head this morning, as I was eating breakfast. (Which was...over three hours ago. Dang, I write a lot. Because, yeah, after I finished breakfast, I came straight here to blog, and...look at me, I'm still going at it.)

Their ability is not true immortality, since in spite of their invulnerability, they still age. They do get hungry/thirsty and desire food/water, like normal people, and while complete mastery of the molecules in their body should stop aging, in truth, it just slows it down: they fortunately don't burn through their bodies with rapid aging thanks to their invulnerability, but they still do slowly fatigue. It's a gradual process, taking dozens upon dozens of years to build up, but they do eventually burn out...it's just that this won't happen in any reasonable time frame.

They tend to be stronger than normal humans (well, all surviving humans are stronger than average humans nowadays, and live longer too, basically being anywhere from 12-50% above peak human levels--these guys are stronger than that), and as mentioned, live longer (about 215 years rather than the 150-175 of normal surviving humans), but otherwise, they are normal, so their main role in combat situations is to act as a literal human shield, soaking up damage that would kill their comrades, and then hopefully manipulating their enemies in a way as to easily dispatch of them. Tanking damage.

...And my arms are sore. Funny how something I thought would be a five minute blog turned into a 180+-minute project.

You know you've stayed up too late when you hear Zach stating he's filling in for GregR. What this means for people who don't listen to 107.7 The End, is...well, GregR is their morning person. As in, 6:00-10:00 I think. (It could be 9.)

So yesterday was pretty productive, all things considered. I finished a page of Red Hood Rider, and managed to scan both pages plus also the magical girls I talked about way back in November which I created during the power outage. (Which means, as far as blog-readers are concerned, talked about ~1 week ago. Even though the blog was written over a month ago.)

I then spent the rest of the night on ComicFury, where I did some rather important things. For a start...I'm getting Red Hood Rider ready for release. I feel really, REALLY good about my January 2016 estimate, in spite of me making less than one page a day and me still needing to tackle the whole digitization issues I'm sure to run into. Mostly, though, I just caught up on what I had missed while on vacation, which is understandably a lot.

CF might be a smallish forum, relatively speaking, but they still post frequently enough that I'll have a page per two days, meaning three pages of threads to read. I, unfortunately, had to strategically tackle them. There were about two dozen threads that looked like I should at least check them out, but do you know why I stayed up only to 6:15? Because my mom was getting up, FOR THE DAY, and she kicked me off of the computer, with warning, meaning I had enough time to strategically tackle which threads to read, but not enough time to read every thread, sadly.

I wish I could give CF so much more than I do, really. For instance...I have about two dozen tabs for comics that I should have read but haven't. I additionally have about a dozen more in a notepad file of the same type. I simply haven't set aside the time to read them all and comment on them all, even though I should have.

I couldn't do it yesterday because I ran out of time, but I'm thinking of doing it today. It'll take a lot of time, but as far as I'm concerned...reading awesome comics and giving feedback (commenting, posting about them, doing advertising for them, etc.) is time well-spent.

Of course, there's also other things on CF that I want to do. Namely, there was a recent thread about saluting users. See, as far as CF residents go, I'm one of the oldest. Obviously, I'm not THE oldest resident there. But as far as internet years go, registering back in December of 2009 makes me the internet equivalent of a grandma on CF. There's probably less than five active Furians who predate me joindate-wise. Including the admin. What this means is...I have a LOT of people to be thankful towards. A lot a lot. A LOT. Like...there's so many people I need to be thankful towards.

My memory isn't great. I have a bit of the Fog of Ages effect going on when it comes to the internet. Sure, basically every thread is there, sure, every PM is there, sure, a good 75% of the comics are there (okay, probably closer to 60%--a surprisingly large number of Furians when leaving the site, taking a break, deciding to scrap the comic, or whathaveyou, will delete the comic, much to my disappointment), but while this is all true and I could track these things down by going through them...I have the third-highest post count of anyone on ComicFury. The only people higher than me are the admin (who's been around since the beginning of the site, so duh) and one of the moderators, my friend, who when he was young to the forum was a notorious spammer. (So while he joined later than I did, he was active more consistently and persistently.)

Anyway, my point is...with over 8,000 posts to sort through...and a very large number of pages of PMs to sort through...and a list of over 900 comics I'm subscribed to...yeah. There's a lot I have to be thankful for. CF is one of the kindest, nicest places I've ever been on. It has the feeling of family, like no other.

Now, don't get me wrong. It's not the only place I feel attachment to. For instance...the place I play mafia on, I actually have disclosed more of my vulnerabilities than I have on CF. It's two different sides of me. CF has my more motherly, fond, friendly, wise, ever-loving self who remembers many acts of kindness and tries to encourage them in the younger generation. My mafia-self is the young little girl in the corner, huddled up, scared and afraid, vulnerable and very much human, with her emotions, be it rage or sadness or laughter or whathaveyou. So the place I play mafia on is very important to me. When I was away from CF, I was on the place I play mafia on twice as much for that reason, because I needed their support. But while that community is certainly CLOSE, and while it's certainly friendly...

...Well...it's just not quite the same type of bond that I feel on ComicFury. Because CF actually really, really does feel like FAMILY to me. All the ups and downs of families, in fact: occasional drama makes for some particularly nasty fights where some family members, sadly, decide to distance themselves, but for the MOST part...it's a loving, supporting community, where people welcome you with open arms, offering friendly tips, helpful advice, wanting to assist you in any way they can, encouraging you, basically, being everything family SHOULD be, to the point where I'm dead serious, CF is more a family to me than my actual family is.

Again, my family's not as bad as it could be, all things considered, but having the most bigoted father possible (I talked most extensively about this early in my blog--go check out the October/November 2014 archives for more about it) and his toxicity towards basically everything outside his own beliefs seep into other family members means that were I ever to reveal to them the truth (still closeted here), they would most likely disown me and cut me off from the love and support they have previously offered me. So while they currently have that love and support for me, it means nothing if it's based off of a lie.

Whereas with ComicFury...they were the first ones I told the truth. In fact, they were the ones who helped me figure out I was a transwoman. It started back in Fall of 2013, when a thread was made about the subject. At first, I read it from the perspective of someone who had no reason to think anything--I was born male, and most of the transwomen that were coming out in that thread (and later, threads) were saying they knew from an early age, so it didn't immediately set off flags. But then...it got me thinking. Slowly but surely, I began to examine my life, because of those threads, and suspect. So I posted about how I was feeling, awkwardly, because I felt guilty. I felt like I didn't fit in. I didn't want to feel silly. I didn't want to offend anyone. I was terrified it was just me questioning things, that I'd have to take it all back and say, "Actually, I'm definitely a guy."

But instead of rejecting me...instead of them laughing...instead of them doubting me...they ACCEPTED me. They helped me. They offered their support and advice. And that guided me. When I first began to read Rain, I slowly began to become more firm in my doubts about who I was, at first thinking I might be genderfluid/genderqueer like Ky(lie), but after the accident in January of 2014, that changed. I was immediately, IMMEDIATELY supported by my CF friends, and in a group that I had been invited to, I continued having talks with transwomen of CF. Then, eventually, I put the pieces together, and it was them I talked to first. They welcomed me when I realized I was a girl, fully and completely. It was with their support that I was able to, eventually, come out and say it publicly. (Interestingly, my coming out post was, for the longest time, the post I had with the most likes. Until my post returning from over a year absent blew that out of the water. Until I posted a picture of me which has blown THAT out of the water. Because said picture has nearly 30 likes last time I checked. I didn't even KNOW a post could get that many likes!)

And after that warm reception, after CF accepted me, I was able to come to the place where I play mafia a day or two later or so, and work up the courage to do the same there. (There, there wasn't a thread for trans individuals at the time. We HAD trans individuals on the site, in particular, one very prominent transwoman, but we didn't have a thread about them. So, unlike on CF, I didn't have a thread I could come out on. I had to start a new thread, and I was absolutely TERRIFIED. Unlike CF, where there's that familial bond, the place where I play mafia does suffer from trolls...and people reacting negatively to things they think are trolling as a result, even if they aren't. And I was going in, mortified, because I was about to share this really, really important thing...which people could have laughed or joked about. Fortunately, my sincerity was evident and they knew I wasn't joking, so they accepted me.)

Interestingly enough, it was my coming out on there that SPARKED the creation of a thread for transgender and gender-nonconforming people. And the number of trans people has simply poured in since then, of all shapes and kinds. Heck, most of them are new enough that they probably don't even know that back when I came out, I didn't have a nice, convenient, safe, thread for it.

But I digress. My point is, basically, that CF was the first place to accept me for who I truly am. They see the me that I aspire to be. On the site I play mafia on, there are plenty of people who roll their eyes at me. They make a lot of comments which, while they serve to keep my ego in check (and, yes, I do need that because my bipolar disorder means I suffer from delusions of grandeur as much as I would rather not), very often sting. I'll make my feelings known, about when I'm hurting, and that invites people making some justified comments about me being a big baby. So I get hurt, I get bashed, there's very much a lot of people who hold no respect for me, and while I don't hide my distaste for it, I accept it because part of me feels like I don't deserve that respect anyway, that I often fail miserably to uphold even simple basics that should be expected of me, that I'm a constant let-down.

...Getting a bit distracted again, but to sum it up: on that mafia site, there are PLENTY of people I am friends with. People outside the group of friends call it a cult of personality surrounding me. These people get a good glimpse at me, and accept it, like on CF, and I stay mainly because of people like that, who are there to give hugs and <3s whenever they're needed.

But while those people are plentiful, equally as plentiful are the people on the opposite end of the spectrum, who absolutely abhor everything that I am on there. (And it's people like them that inspire me to use alts. Interestingly enough, the people I consider friends can quickly figure out my alts because they KNOW me. The people who don't care for me, though, don't figure it out because they hold an impression of me off of my name, and my alternate account where I don't hold the name but am still me doesn't draw their ire. Most of the time, anyway.)

This is not really a bad thing...but it's something that I wish I didn't need to have in my life.

...Yet...on CF? There isn't any kind of person like that. While there are plenty of people who don't know/interact with me, every mention of my name is basically positive. There aren't trolls on ComicFury. There aren't haters. There aren't people who attack you. Those people exist on the mafia site, in various different forms, and even people I consider friends on there are not immune to attacking things they think are trolls but which I have good reason to believe are serious, making me want to go up to them and be, "What the hell?!?", but for which I lack the courage so I let slip.

On ComicFury, that attitude is, entirely, absent. (Except in the rare occasional drama fight.) All the love and support is there, but none of the hatred. So that's why I'm so thankful to them.

I have an endless list of people I should be thankful to on the mafia site, too, because in spite of the negatives, there's FAR more positives that VASTLY outweigh the bad. But while toxicity is an inherent element on that site (it, fortunately, seems to mostly be fairly low, but it's always present), CF is a family that holds virtually none by comparison.

Maybe that's because it's much smaller. I don't know. But it's there. That love. That support. That openness, without any hidden doubt. The people might snark, but they do so with love and kindness. There may be arguments, often over miscommunications, and because they're artists (who tend to be emotionally sensitive), these can get blown out of proportion. But mostly, people try to respect beliefs they disagree on, hold intelligent discussion, and raise good points. (It's a shame that, often, people who actually hold similar beliefs can sometimes see themselves as enemies, though, because of bad wording causing misunderstandings to arise. Such is the problem with language, though. It's imperfect.)


...Wow, that's a long ramble. I was coming in here not intending to even TALK about this stuff. I wanted to talk about what I did, didn't do, and what I have on my mind, which I haven't. I suppose I'll make a second blog post today with that stuff, though, because...well, this blog post seems like it's important enough to stand alone. My creative stuff feels like it'd just be tainting it.

I have, however, done something that may be very much more productive in the long-run. So I've had story arcs inside my head for ages in regards to the various characters, right? Everything from how to introduce Harold's sister (during the second Endless arc), to various miscellaneous plots such as Gary's training, D.D.'s training, Vili's training, Ruby's various power-ups, a few Sally power-ups, and so on and so forth?

Well...for the first time, I've more or less formed a coherent timeline for these things. Every plot that I can remember off the top of my head, from beginning to end, after the first season. (Which I have memorized.) This means that while there are some gaps here and there, and the chronology isn't quite what I was hoping for (Amy gets introduced much sooner than I anticipated, and gains powers relatively quickly after that; her introduction was supposed to be many storylines down the road and her powers marking something like the half-way point in the story rather than like, a third at most as is current), but this is actually really important.

I haven't put the summary of these episodes/arcs in, basically just writing down that they exist, so it's not even close to being complete enough to guarantee I remember everything. Yet this is HUGE. For the first time in, well, ever, I have what effectively amounts to a table showing how long Red Hood Rider is going to be.

This is what I needed to, but failed to actually, do for The Descended. It's a little bit fluid in certain spots, with events that can happen in any order chronologically (almost all of the second half of Red Hood Rider is that way, really: events only begin to lock in order near the very ending, with all events prior very flexible), but I've identified basically all the major spots.

The Unknown Riders arc (Hannah-Vili), the Traitor Arc, various miscellaneous character introductions, D.D.'s first power-up, Ruby gaining her super modes (her first, Dark Messiah, from the first Endless fight, the second, Arbalest Armor, being around the time we see Amy), The abduction arc (this one's mainly important because it shows the relationship between vampires, magical girls especially riders, and hunters), the second Endless fight which is an entire arc/Gary's first huge power-up, Gary's second power-up (this is an example of poor spacing, but also of fluidity; said second power-up can be moved to much later), D.D.'s second power-up, one of Sally's largest power-ups, The Light arc, Dale's epic power-up, Vili's power-up, Amy powering up the whole team with Sentinel Mode (which is Ruby's third super mode), and then beginning to get into more spoilerific endgame stuff.

If you see something in my blog posts missing from the above descriptions, then either it's (1) a less-important event plot-wise but which I still have in my notes, (2) it's been incorporated into something else, likely one of the above, (3) or I simply didn't remember that detail off the top of my head, increasing my need to go through the archives and compile my notes. (That, or it's a first-season episode. Anything from the first 14 or so episodes--and for that matter, most of the second season--is so thoroughly nailed down in my mind that while I may tweak specifics, I cannot forget the whole plotline.)

Soyeah. I still need to get a few things done on all of these, because there are great details that I want written down, but I've got an amazing chronology. If an arc averages to 3 episodes (they probably won't, taking much longer than that), then I've got...probably around 75 or so episodes, by a very, very loose estimate, to cover the entirety of what I have planned for Red Hood Rider.

Obviously, the Rubyverse is much larger than that, but...oh, man, the math for this aint pretty. Each episode probably averages around 30 pages. Sometimes less, sometimes more, but let's say I release on episode a month, a hopelessly-optimistic goal. That's 12 a year. Under ideal circumstances, that means I'm probably going to be working on Red Hood Rider for 6-7 years.

Well, if Jocelynn Samara can run Rain for five (or is it six?) years and only be half-done...
(Let's face it, stuff happens, and I have commitment issues and also many things happening in my life. I'm having enough trouble just meeting my January 2016 release date goal. So 10-12 years to tell the entirety of Red Hood Rider is probably the most realistic estimate I have.)

Anyway, yeah. I'm not cutting content, though I think at this point, the only content I'm adding is in the form of expanded-Rubyverse material: extras to flesh out the world, but which won't be focused on. Of which there is plenty. (The file I store my notes on? Between character notes, timeline notes/storyline summaries, and expanded universe material...it's 119 pages and 47,193 words...and this is covering my blog material from blog content prior to April 16th. There's SOME material in there that is fully in-depth and goes beyond the blog--mostly, recent stuff like the blood masters and whatnot--but most of the material between April 16th and now, December 28th, remains very much not in the notes. And given that I average talking about Red Hood Rider something like 5/7 days per week......yeah.)

Alright, so I got home last night, but I mostly spent my time playing games. I spent some trivial amount of time on CF, though not as my main account, so I need to do a ton of stuff today. There's some mafia stuff I need to attend to (albeit not much, it's just that what I DO have will be a pain to deal with thanks to inertia), not to mention, getting my CF life up and running again.

But I actually have a couple main priorities today. First-off, I want to actually get my blog up and running. I fell over a month behind the last time I went a few days without updating it, and that shouldn't happen again.

Second-off, I only got one page done on Red Hood Rider. It's a GOOD page (albeit not perfect--I didn't quite get the imagery I wanted in the transforming sequence, the last panel was supposed to be more zoomed out with the bow half-strung, the image of Ruby was supposed to not cross paths with the panels except at the bottom yet there are some spots where it does and therefore she gets covered, and there are some minor colorings I didn't do like coloring her hair so that it's more brown than blonde in black-and-white appearance, not to mention her bow-hand glove being left uncolored, plus as a final note, the text at the bottom is squashed together when I could have moved it over to the left and given it room), but no matter how good a page it may be (it's as close to perfect as I can get, in spite of the flaws I just mentioned: for the given length of time I worked on it and the lack of available resources, the quality is EXCEPTIONAL), one page is...one page.

So as I'm writing this blog, I'm starting up Firefox (which was closed during vacation as part of trouble-shooting via a reboot) and hopefully, I'll be able to get things up and running again soonish.

I also still have a few miscellaneous tasks that I need to do, which I might as well talk about. I've talked about drawing Red Hood Rider. To meet my January release date, that is in fact a top priority of mine, but it's far from the only one. I still need to upload the completed page. (Plus, something I want to try: since all my pages are too large in PNG format except at the size of 800 to be uploaded onto CF, I want to see if JPEG versions of them would be small enough to make it.)

Then I also want to upload the magical girls that I made earlier, during the power outage. Then, there's also the fact that I've still got some script-noting to do, about some extra chapter/episode revolving around Rin, beyond the school dance and formal date episodes already planned, which deals with her getting abducted in an effort to draw out Ruby to a fight. (Rin's reaction to the whole thing is where the character depth gets put in, and it's made to help you love her as a character all the more.)

Beyond that, I still have to actually write out the script in detail for Episode 2. I have it still in my mind, more or less, and it's pretty awesome, but I still need to write it, because after I finish the first Episode (the prologue I'm working on now), it's up next for drawing.

That doesn't even begin to go into my writing. I STILL want to do my novel as the light novel, but I need to set aside the time for that. But furthermore, I want to get my novel actually finished and written. Especially since, superstitious as this may be, I received a fortune cookie when out at the Chinese Restaurant which said that I would inherit a large sum of money from an unusual source...and, well...writing is an unusual source of money, and I think my novel actually may be good enough to make that kind of money if I can get it to the point of publishing. But...for that? For that, I need to actually...well, WRITE THE DANG THING.

Which...I haven't been.

Soyeah. I've got a lot of work on my plate today, and that's assuming I don't get distracted. (For instance: huge distraction potential would be me looking at the TVTropes page for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It's something I traditionally do after watching a movie, look at its TVTropes page, because TVTropes can give you a great enrichment of the film. It allows you to see all the subtle nuances you missed on a first viewing, opens you up to seeing extra moments, answers most of your questions about the movie via fan guesses/Word of God about aspects of the movie you weren't happy about, gives moments of brilliance that you hadn't seen before, and plenty of trivia among other great factors. It is also, depending on how recent/well-known a film is--older works and/or obscure works have shorter pages which can lessen the length time/width-wise--at least two hours' a time sink, less for smaller things, much more for a film like, say, Avengers in scale, which...Star Wars is.)

Also, as I write this, I'm updating my blog, so have some dump of my tablet drawings.

You can see what I mean about it being messy handwriting in quality. The main difference between my tablet art digitally and my non-tablet art digitally is that my tablet art looks messy while not taking long (each of the above took no more than five minutes), whereas my non-tablet art looks messy while taking long. Or, if it actually looks clean...taking me really, really long. (Seriously, take for instance the sketch that the drawing above was a prototype digitization of. That took me hours upon HOURS to do, using TONS of reference images. It may look relatively clean as a result, but that's because I spent days' worth of time on it.)

Well, today's the day. I probably should have more to say, but right now, kinda feeling tired, so I'm probably going to pack things quickly, then get to sleep, so, uh, yeah. For now, not gonna say much.