...But I'm pretty darn surprisingly close.
I'm taking the day off of mafia stuff (as I normally do on Saturdays), and health stuff continues to not be the best of things, but I am mostly on top of my life right now, because I just felt inspired today. It sounds weird to say, but it honestly feels like a mixture of simultaneous mania and depression coexisting for different areas.

Maybe a touch of autism/adhd in there as well.

Basically.

I started the day working on the civ 3 mod--the most worthless of the worthless thing to do. I made very very good progress there, but I got burned out from working on it so much so I didn't want to work on it more today.

But the usual timekillers aside from it I felt apathetic about. I don't feel like playing League tonight, or TFT tonight, or Epic Battle Fantasy 5, or offline Chrono Trigger, or Stardew Valley, or offline minecraft work. That leaves precious little on the list of timekillers.

So what came to mind that was left?

Two things. Neither a waste. Both which I should be trying to do more of anyway. Not mutually exclusive, either, as one is better later at night when my family is asleep and the other can be done before then.

I basically...came up with streaming (probably building minecraft), or...working on Phyrra and Cyrus. I was thinking of things to do, and the folder with my Phyrra and Cyrus stuff just...caught my eye. I kept staring at it, going back to it, and the inspiration just...struck me. Because it called out to me.

I don't even know what I am going to do there, yet. I think it'll be script-work though because it all starts somewhere and there is a very good place to begin.

​Wish me luck.

I'm fairly certain I've left an unfavorable impression on every single job position I'm interviewing for as a lifeguard. Still, though, in spite of this, I still have interviews lined up meaning I'm not a total disaster. Just, 90% a disaster.

I've also slacked on health stuff, quite badly so in fact.

And while I've kept pace with most daily stuff.

I'm, mostly: not focusing on the right things.

Granted, the things I'm focused on are mostly things that can be productive.

For the mafia site I play mafia on, I am 95% done with creating a, repeatable, adjustable, setup which combines aspects of the Town of Us mod and the Other Roles mod in Among Us, along with a cameo role from Project Winter (Identity Thief) and some local spice from roles common on the mafia site itself.

As this is a setup that could be run by anyone, adjusted/modified as they please, so that's not a waste of time. It's actually a worthy endeavor. It's probably the most productive thing I could do from the list. Which is saying something rather unflattering.

The other thing I am working on is Castle 4-0 in minecraft. I'm actually considering, when not faced with job interviews every single day, streaming me building it more. Which would be productive technically speaking. Beyond that, if I ever did complete my work on Castle 4-0, I could port it over into a minecraft world, provided I have the funds to do so.

And then open that server up for others to play around in. That'd be productive.

I've done a fair amount of Epic Battle Fantasy 5 farming--fun, but pointless, albeit technically working towards steam achievements. (Which isn't nothing but isn't much of anything.)

​But by far the least productive of the things I'm working on.
Would be another go at a Civilization 3 mod.

Another go at a modified Rise of Rome scenario. But also incorporating other scenarios in:
A little bit of the ancient Mesopotamia scenario, and having all the eight civs (Rome, Carthage, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Goths, Celts, 'Hordes') from Rise, but also having key civilizations from other scenarios: Turks, Russians, Germans, English, French, Spain, Portugal, and Vikings (for 16 total).

I have the tech tree, approximate technology, approximate units/buildings, etc. all more or less figured out.

The main thing to do would be to build the map.

Which would be something done a little bit by feel; I'd need to make room for two cities that are in the same location, to not be in the same location, as to allow those cities to have two different owners. (Key example of this: Londinium for Rome, but London for England.) I'd keep the approximate loose topography of the areas for all areas, but I'd need to play it largely by feel in order to get it right.

This amounts to a gigantic waste of time.

​But I still want to make it...

I've been adulting every day. I've had nonstop interviews, emails, calls, scheduling, etc. literally every day this week. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I will continue to have it tomorrow on Sunday and again on Monday, with more to probably follow.

On the other hand I've also lost a lot of time, slipped on personal hygiene, blogging, etc., by barely staying afloat in most other fields.

Granted, still done stuff, just...not the stuff I need to keep doing.

Yes I realize it's 3 am, what better time to start adulting than in the prime time for me when I am awake, have energy, am not too sluggish, am not too tired, am fulfilled, don't have much else on my mind, and am mostly thinking of what needs to be done before tomorrow?

Anyway. I do have a lot on my mind and a lot to do.

For medical stuff, I still need to return one test that I haven't done yet. I want to not make the trip be for just one thing though so I also want to accomplish some shopping. Things I want:
-Therapeutic Gloves and/or wrist immobilizer
-Chokers
-Thigh bands
-some form of Bra fill
-completing makeup kit.

Therapeutic gloves and/or a wrist immobilizer are due to how my right wrist keeps on flaring up, specifically at the wrist, right on the bend joint on the side. Pinkie-side rather than thumb side. This is a recurring issue, not new. It is also something that has a fairly obvious culprit: spending 16 hours a day in front of the computer using the mouse.

Basically confirming the source of the issue is how on days that I use mouse-intensive games, it is much much worse than on days that I use games that mix keyboard and mouse or are just keyboard or don't use the mouse basically at all.

Games like Epic Battle Fantasy 5 and Minecraft (both have a ton of repetitive clicking) tend to wreck my wrist, whereas games like Chrono Trigger (controller), League (half-half) and Stardew Valley (mostly keyboard with only a little mouse) seem to not agitate the, for lack of a better term, injury.

It's almost certainly a repetitive motion injury of some kind. Minor, but something that I deliberately need to force measures into place to mitigate and prevent from getting worse. I find that quite often, I need to alternate days for games that I play. If I play a click-intensive game I almost always need to wait one day or else face it getting worse.

I also try to elevate my elbow to match the elevation of my wrist. Right now my chair is up extra high, sacrificing some of the mobility I get from it being lower, just so that I have the armrest of the chair level with the keyboard where the mouse is, so that they're aligned, allowing for less necessary wrist movements.

I also pull out the keyboard so that there's less motion needed as when the keyboard is fully in, that requires a lot more motion, especially side-side motion which hurts a hell of a lot more than up-down (thus, extra-important to limit).

But these countermeasures are proving insufficient. I want to be able to game what I want, when I want, and not have the worry of wrist injury worsening. I looked up possible measures to counter this and found out about therapeutic gloves and also found a video from a professional who gave a quick fix of sorts that, while not 100% effective, should be basically 100% safe.

Basically, taking a single strip of electric tape wrapped once (not twice or more) around the wrist, to help immobilize it but not cut off circulation. I did give a minor modification (the video was applying it to bare skin, I applied it over my love), but while my modification means slightly less accuracy, it still seems to do what was promised. My wrist mobility is by my estimation halved. Not immobile, but still limited from the extremes, which is what I need. Plus, if I feel a tug, that's a reminder.

It's still a stopgap measure though. This DIY might help, and the exercise shown in the video may be useful, but there's still some sort of nerve, tendon, or something that feels strained and I need a better measure to prevent worsening of the injury.

On other might-require-doctor news, when the doctor drew blood for tests, it left my arm sore--normal, right? What's not normal is how a week or two later, there's still notable discoloration (many icky green spots) marking what is undeniably a bunch of very very obvious bruising in the area. I get the impression that is not the norm.

I'm glad that I don't have any lasting damage from my physical section of the interview, though. I made the mistake of drinking water while changing into my swimwear, as I knew I was already dehydrated. By the end of the physical in-water section, my legs were absolutely dead-tired, my head was spinning, I was lightheaded, terrified I would pass out, collapse, that I wouldn't be able to stand.

My legs felt like lead, I did indeed struggle to stand, I struggled to carry my bag to the changing room (and couldn't carry anything except the bag), every step I could have fallen over due to the imbalance I was feeling, and I basically ran into the changing room, heavily nauseous and exhausted and ready to collapse.

And then, the urge to vomit hit. At first I suppressed it, because I really didn't want to vomit, but ultimately, I gave in, and after vomiting a little bit of the water out (that's all there was to vomit), I felt good enough to take a cleansing shower. I wasn't 100%, but I was still passable.

Until I got out of the shower and collapsed again, the urge to vomit overtaking me once more. This time I didn't resist, and the rest of the water I had drank came up. But then, I realized something. Once all of the water had been removed from me...all of my symptoms just went away. No lead-weighted feet. No spinning head. No dizziness. No lightheadedness. I felt not only normal, but great. I felt arguably better than I had before the water testing.

Well, the lining between my stomach and my throat wasn't good, it burnt from the acidic vomit, that was disgusting, but physically and mentally I was great. Lesson learned; drinking water before physically exerting yourself is a very very bad idea and WILL screw you over. Had I not drank that water, I'd have been much better off and wouldn't have spent 5-10 minutes vomiting. (Thankfully, the vomiting wasn't seen by the people interviewing me, as I imagine that wouldn't look promising for me to be able to do the physical aspects of the job. However, I feel like they could maybe at least understand that it was due to a mistake on my part of drinking water, but it'd still suck to explain that to them at the time.)

On that note. In further work news.

The interview I was meant to have today never happened.
I need to check on that and ask why, see if there was some form of mishap there. My own phone never rang. Other phones did, my mother's and our home phone, but my father answered the home phone and hung up so it couldn't have been that as the call.

I also need to follow through on the interview I had earlier since they got my corrected email.

Work to do, references to collect, busy busy times.

In my defense: I have been busy. I've got three interviews that I scheduled today which will be over the course of the week. I had a dentist appointment today, too. All in all, it's a very very very good thing to keep busy on. Health stuff and work stuff.

Granted.

It's gonna suck.

Early times getting up almost every day this week, along with a ridiculously long drive for the in person interview.

But it needs to be done and I want to do it.

I want to keep moving forward in my life.

Depression has somewhat gotten the better of me today.
I've kept on top of job search stuff, but I've still not done medical stuff.
I've again slacked on mafia stuff. (This is becoming a recurring issue.)
I'm only somewhat managing daily self-care stuff.
I'm also not progressing productive projects like the card game idea I have.

It's not a total collapse, so depression hasn't completely consumed me.

But the depression is still there, strongly enough to be crippling in effect.

I'll take the little win that it hasn't consumed me entirely but I'm worried that if it's this bad now, it could get worse if I don't get better at staying on top of things.

On the bright side tho.
I have maybe figured out how to make a proper drawbridge. Maybe. I've not tried out the science behind it, but if I can figure out how it works, what makes it tick, then I might be able to incorporate that into castle 4-0 for the castle gates. Probably not for the multi-leveled keep, unless I can make it compact.

Still though, castle 4-0 is coming along quite nicely. I'm most of the way towards completing one of the four walls in its entirety. I still need to do one side's tower, and I'm working on chiseling out the archery level and the cannon level, and I haven't done the outsides yet (the moat, the palisade, etc.), but completing that will give me the template for completing the rest of the walls and once I finish the walls, I can get a gate, and from the gate, build the moat and palisade and barbican and after that, I can create the contents within the castle.

Well, I'll probably be making the keep once I finish this wall (as my mental map of castle 4-0 has the keep be on the wall I am making right now), but most of the interior of the castle I want to craft after the exterior. Castle first, interior of the castle second as it's not much of a castle if there's no walls in the first place.

I missed a day of blogging.

As much as I am trying to attempt to stay on top of things in my life, some things slip through.

I need to do followup doctor stuff for instance (they've slipped through) for instance even now, though today has been better than most for staying on top of things.

It's still got weaknesses, but it has also gotten a lot done, including a comic showing off my stupid sense of humor.

I didn't quite nail the execution behind this comic though. It was difficult to capture the whole concept.
My basic concept was: person comes up, reads the door.
Person knocks.
Person is told to read the sign.
Person tries to use various secret knocks.
Person leaves out of frustration.
Person returns, with the epiphany.
Person speaks 'Secret Knock', and is allowed to enter.
(Kinda sorta in the style of, "Speak Friend, and Enter" made famous by Lord of the Rings.)

Unfortunately, showing in a comic various different forms of possible secret knocks is rather difficult. After all, to display variants on knocks you kinda need sound, and all knocks written are written the same. I could maybe have attempted to show different variants on knocks, but space was also an issue in that I could only fit so much in a panel and also I could only make it be so long in a comic.

So unfortunately, I had to basically skip the "person tries to use various secret knocks" step and leave the comic's contents far more implied than explicit.

So I didn't get the comic quite as I liked it, but for a comic I made in MS paint in about an hour's worth of work while multitasking, that's still not too shabby. It could be better, obviously, and didn't get what I wanted, but I still think it works because when reading my own comic, I DO laugh at it.

If I laugh at my own comic, that means I have succeeded in the end. It was funny to ME.
And while I realize it's probably not funny to most people, I knew that from the getgo as the humor style is rathe niche and something fairly specific to me.

Still, tho, I'm ultimately satisfied with it and rather proud of what I did.

I'm slacking in other areas of my life I'm sure.

I can't stay on top of everything, after all.

But I AM trying to do as much as I can to stay on top as much of what I can.

I would say "in my defense, I have been busy" doing a lot of things, which is true!
...But mostly the lack of blogs has been pure sheer nasty depression sticking its ugly face out and taking control of my life.

I am however, trying to fight back. It's not an overnight process where I will suddenly magically have a fix for everything, but I'm working on it, trying to get more and more on top of it. I've actually done a ton of stuff, gathering makeup supplies, shopping, etc. But I've got a lot more work to do.

I started with a list of activities, divided up into one-time things, daily/weekly things, and additional/optional things on top of those, and then added in a need to remember login information for various different important things.

So far, this is what I've got;


ONE-TIME THINGS:
-Catch up on emails
-Do tax stuff
-Regain access to any sites I need to (at least one but see below)
-Restart unemployment (I messed up by not doing it so need to restart it)
-Seek psychologist (so that I can begin transition)
-Pursue namechange
-Finish makeup collection

DAILY/WEEKLY THINGS:
-Shave (daily for face)
-Comb hair (do with shave)
-Makeup (daily once I've got the supplies)
-Shower 3-4x / week + change (Monday, Wednesday, Friday?)
-Dental Hygiene (2x/day)
-Unemployment once restarted (weekly?)
-Shave (chest Wed, legs Fri, arms Mon)
-Pills once gotten (at prescribed time/method/etc.)
-Checking email (daily+)

ADDITIONAL DAILY THINGS:
-Once on pills, exercise:
*Daily: jackknives/crunches alternating
(start 10, increase by 5/week up to 100)
*Knuckle Pushups Monday / Wednesday / Friday
(start 5, increase by 1/week up to 100)
(use corset or similar for back form)
*Squats Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday
(start 10, increase by 2/week up to 100)
*Walk/Jog/Run;
Walk 1 mile/day, increase by 1 mile/week;
After up to 5, add jog for 1 mile on top of walk (6 total);
After 5 jog + 5 walk, add 1 mile run;
Max out at 15 miles / day

BONUS ADDITIONAL/OPTIONAL ACTIVITIES IN A DAY (Possible activities):
-League of Legends
-Teamfight Tactics
-TFT Hyper-roll
-Chrono Trigger
-Stardew Valley
-Epic Battle Fantasy 5
-Minecraft
-Art
*Finish self-portrait
*Finish Elemental Ruby
-Phyrra and Cyrus (scriptwork, songwriting)
-Job Search

-Storywriting (the below are stories I have a recent desire to work on)
*Coat
*The Bandit Seven (supervillain/"hero")
*Vetra (superhero/villain)
*The supervillain trio story
*Threadripper and Kinesis (supervillain) story
*Requiem (supervillain)
*Projection (superhero + supervillain) story
*Heroes 4 Hire (superhero)



ACCOUNTS I NEED ACCESS TO:
(I probably should not list these publicly even on a blog nobody reads so, uh...there's a bunch here just not to be listed)

So that's what I've done.

It's not enough, but it's at least a good start.

I can't go into full details, but as it is public that it was me I can at least mention this much; today made at least one consequence of a screwup I did yesterday official. (It is possible there may be further repercussions down the line. Given it was an accident and it was unintentional, I am obviously hoping there won't be, but given the nature of the offense and how I was already on thin ice before, it's definitely possible that I could face further punishment down the line for the messup. It'd suck, but I cannot say it'd be unwarranted, because I did genuinely screw up, so the punishment I received is the absolute minimum. I do mean it when I say I will count myself lucky if it is the only punishment I get because I mean it when I say it was worthy of being punished, accident/unintended or not.)

Basically, while I still cannot share the full story, I can go into the basics. On the site I play mafia on, I was in a mafia game. I believed myself to be within the rules with my posting--a first clarification in the rules, there was extenuating circumstances which led me to believe that I was still within them thanks to a case of unfortunate events. (In short, a private communication was similar, but much shorter, to the public communication. I believed, erroneously, that the private communication was just a shorter summary of the public communication. It was not.)

This led to the rule needing to be clarified a second time, and I received a minor punishment for the first with it being expected that future violations of the rule would give no such leniency because after both rule clarifications, the policy was as unambiguous as possible.

So how did I screw up?

Well, I was typing a post made that I believed to be within the rules between the first clarification and the second. I was unable to post it before the second clarification, and the initial draft of said post, while it'd have been fine if posted prior to the second rule clarification, was not okay to post after the second rule clarification.

I knew this.

So I revised the post, to make it fit within the clarified rule.

I double-checked it; I triple-checked it; I was absolutely sure that I had fixed it, fixed the post typed before the rule clarification to fit within the guidelines set after--and to be fair, true to the Spiderman Homecoming 90% meme, the post did in fact mostly fix the original issues! I caught most of them!

...Most, but not all;

I missed...one.

I missed one spot, that violated the rule that was clarified a second time.

It was, obviously, accidental! It was, obviously, unintentional! I did revise the original post and tried to remove the rule violating aspects of it...but missing one spot? Completely and totally my fault. And I had already been warned and punished for the rule violation.

Again, to reiterate--this is completely and entirely my fault. It wasn't deliberate, but not being deliberate does not mean it didn't happen. It did. Accidental or not, it still transpired; unintentional or intentional, it still occurred. And once it did, once I failed to spot it, once I had broken the rule that I was immediately told not to break again, I needed to face the consequences, face the punishment for it.

It sucks, but when you screw up, it does carry consequences. I literally have nobody to blame but myself. The punishment I have received is the least amount of punishment I could possibly receive. (So if I receive more, while that'll suck, it'll still be warranted. I cannot argue against punishment. I can explain the circumstances behind it and I can explain my viewpoint but my viewpoint is that whatever punishment I get will be justified, not be too harsh, and be absolutely what I deserve because of my mistake because again, mistakes carry consequences and I made one. Knowing I made a mistake and regretting that I made it cannot undo it so all I can do is live with the consequences of my error.)

I obviously can't explain more than that (this much should be acceptable), but that was one thing which happened today; action punishing me for the mistake I made yesterday night. I knew it was coming, obviously; there was no way to possibly justify not punishing the action because it's a cut and dry clear unambiguous situation with no other possible resolution, with no other possible punishment to give.

Knowing it was coming, knowing it was justified, didn't mean it doesn't sting tho. It absolutely does. And it was one of the first things I woke up to see today. Not the way I really wanted to start my day, but I had to face the music sooner or later because again. I messed up, so there were going to be consequences to having screwed up. Unfortunate as the accident may have been, regrettable as the unintentional breach was, punishment was unavoidable because there was no possible leniency to be given and it was warranted and justified and if the punishment I got is all I get then I am in fact to be considered lucky.

Still sucks tho and again. Starting my day that way? Not exactly pleasant.

There was some good to counterbalance that, tho.
Today for the 4th of July I got to wear another dress! I took a shower, which I desperately needed, and changed into the dress. My family, who were all there, were by and large (being who they were)...less than impressed. Nobody said anything but when all of them realized I wasn't wearing my favorite (because it's long enough to basically act like a dress) T-shirt and was in fact wearing a dress that gave me notable curves, I managed to catch them having some rather...unfortunate expressions on their face.

Suffice to say, most of them did not approve of my apparel of choice.

And, yes. There was in fact tension to be had, there. Conversations were mostly natural but there were still occasional pauses--this is normal enough, but in this case the pauses seemed "different" to me somehow, in a way that felt directly resultant from me.

​Then there's again the fact that the entirety of my family aside from my younger sister deadnames me and misgenders me actively...and also the self-loathing every time I respond to the deadname rather than telling them "that's not my name".

Again, nothing really specific to the date in question, but something that there's a disconnect between what I tell myself and what goes on in reality. I tell myself, "every time they deadname me, I will tell them 'that's not my name'". Every time they actually deadname me (well, almost; I do occasionally have the smarts to not respond at all), I respond out of habit.

After all, I've used my deadname for 27 years in real life. It's literally instinct to me, especially from voices I know, in tones I know, asking questions that are normal from them. As someone with autism, inertia is unfortunately, working against me here; I've built up 27 years of inertia ingrained within me to instinctively respond to them on demand when they use my deadname.

So far, good to bad is two to two if you count 'good dress' and 'shower' as two separate goods.

​More in the bad; I had only one meal tonight and it was two hot dogs. Admittedly, hot dogs with chili and bacon, but my normal hot dogs in a night? Four. I didn't have breakfast; I didn't have S'mores (I couldn't stomach them), I didn't have hamburgers, and I had half my normal amount of hot dogs. (I also didn't have corn on the cob but I never have corn on the cob unless there's melted butter with the butter-spread-stick and the hold-corn-without-mess-prongs, which we had neither of.)

I did have a plate full of barbeque chips, which by my estimate is somewhere in the .75 give or take .25 range for meals (as in, could be as small as half a meal's worth, could be as much as a meal's worth; it was a lot of chips but individual chips aren't that filling), but given 2 hot dogs is half of my normal meal, that meant tonight the maximum amount you could say I had was 1.25 meals' worth of food.

You're meant to have three.

And while I admit, I was more thirsty than hungry.

So a lot of the time, I wasn't hungry at all.

A fair amount of the issue was digestion. I wasn't feeling 'full', I was feeling like I couldn't stomach more food.

Normally, this is easily solved by, ahhhh...so to speak, emptying the system. Using the bathroom productively and flushing from the system something more than fluids. But I couldn't do that all of tonight, which meant, to my body, I had too much within me in spite of often wanting more.

I suspect the issue was circadian rhythm based.

My circadian rhythm is all out of whack, due to my rather not-the-best sleep schedule, but as of late, I've had a sleep schedule that is at least somewhat consistent if unorthodox; going to bed in the 5-7 am range, and then waking up in the 1-4 pm range. Today I was woken up a full 40 minutes earlier than I was planning, which I suspect may have contributed.

Unusual sleep schedule that's maybe not the best for digestion anyway + disruption to that sleep schedule via being woken up early + me not having food immediately (it took 1-3 hours or so for me to get the food) = suspected culprit for me having had less room. Also, maybe being thirsty all day may have contributed, with my only fluids being coffee (which isn't zero-calorie so does have some fill value even being liquid in nature).

Basically, lots of things could've caused it, hard to say the exact culprit, maybe multiple adding up, but it happened so that means I had less than optimal.

​Later in the night though, I decided to stream...
...And I got my first-ever raid! It was amazing! It was mostly lurkers aside from the broadcaster, but the broadcaster who raided me remained active for the vast majority of the stream and they and I had a fair number of similarities so I really enjoyed chatting with them and bonding with them.

Which means my night has ended on a bit of a high note. So, so​ glad I decided to stream on what amounts to a whim!

Anyway, bed now.

We'll have to see what tomorrow brings.

The bad:
I've lost the momentum I had on Monday. I did so, so, SO much prep work for the big coming out day on Monday and I've done zero since then, including not keeping my younger sister up to date on the things I did Monday.

Also, I've not done my daily rounds on the internet.

The good:
I brushed my teeth today for the first time in a while, keeping up hygiene, and I actually did art today which unlike my previous attempt which I scrapped, I have so far kept and it's on track to being something actually worth trying to make better!

I'm also at a really really good farming spot in Chrono Trigger to get me to where I was level-wise, which will also get me to where I was story-wise fairly quickly. (I'm grinding in the Fiendlord Keep in the first battle hall, fighting the six group repeatedly, because they always drop mid-ethers, and mid-ethers give 30 MP, and group heals top up my HP and take far less than that MP-wise and I'm getting level ups like crazy. I want to get Chrono to 99 MP and Nadia and Lucca to ** MR so that I can re-fight the post-40 pre-99 Spekkio and reclaim the rewards from my first file.)

Granted.

Both of these are things I may not finish before the coming out day--so they're worthless except in the best case scenarios.

But I don't want to not do them just because in the worst case scenarios I won't finish them. I needed them to release the pressure.

Mixed bag overall but a decent, acceptable day overall in my opinion. Could be better, could also be worse, I'll take whatever wins I can get.

​For the record, this is the art at where it is now.

I used ~5 reference photos (a google search of lady abs combined with a notable lady-abs image from Spinnerette which I binge-read the entirety of over the weekend, a naked lady photo for anatomy, a QAVimator pose, and a Rinmaru Anime face to get a more animesque proportioned head), including some trace work. (Which I am not the happiest about, I hate relying on traces for digital art.)

But it is already on-track to be much much better.

I need to keep in mind, "this is just the initial outline", too; I'll probably need to refine things like the exact outlines, the face, the exact anatomy, and even if it's correct, needing to make it not all solid black. But for a base to build off of, this is a fine start. 

For the record, this is still Elemental Ruby. It'll become more obvious when I add in better bangs, refine the waist area (her torso is a bit too wide right now, I needed it to be this way at its base to get enough room for the lady-abs while giving good proportions to be anatomically proportionate, but now that I have the base I can work on thinning the torso area), add a better nose definition, add in the eyes, and start to add things like her clothes and such.

It's a good start, but there's a LOT of work left to do.