I haven’t written a more personal post lately, but I’ve been meaning to.
Artfight was just last month! I love Artfight time, but god does it drain me by the end... I love the festive nature of it and giving and receiving stuff though, so I always come back! I did 44 attacks this year, which feels insane... I always come away saying, “Next year, I’ll do less” ... And then do more... Oh well, it’s all in good fun! Though I was so tired, it was hard to complete Eiichi’s birthday art, and then finishing up the latest chapter of 18782... Surprisingly, I only had a minor carpal tunnel flare up towards the end of July.
This August has felt like a bit of a reset after all of that. Maybe it’s the nature of putting up older OCs and thinking about my breadth of stories, but I’ve really started thinking a lot about plotlines I haven’t put a lot of thought into in a while. (I also think revisiting Fall Out Boy and other bands I listened to more when I was 12-14 has lit another fire under me...)
That’s pretty much where my mind has been: Bouncing around from OC storyline to OC storyline. I have 18782 always in the back of my head– in fact, as I’m writing this, I just started thumbnailing the next chapter! I think it’ll be shorter than the last, but it’s the end of the Chika arc and the start of a new arc. Though by me saying this, I don’t mean this is the last time she'll be seen. While I don't have a storyline for her at the forefront, due to my love of intermingling everyone's storylines together, she'll come up again! Don't worry!
I have also been considering for a while doing a print of 18782. I don't mean for purchase, I simply mean for my own collection... I think this next chapter would be the best time to “slice it off” for a print, so it's been more to the forefront.
Aside from 18782, I've been juggling 3 other storylines in my head: KKPP, Suburban Purgatory and my Other World story.
KKPP is an obvious one. Granted, it's pretty much just a subsidiary of 18782, but I'm considering it differently in my head in terms of projects right now. I think I've made a decent dent in its progress this month. I'll go more in depth in my devlog next month, but I think the wheels have been turning a lot and I feel as if more and more I find my footing when writing.
I also try not to mention any game dev woes in my devlogs (unless they impact development, of course) because if anyone is reading them, I’m sure they’re just more interested in how the game is progressing. However, oftentimes I worry if my writing isn’t good enough. It’s a weird mental balance of, “God I need to write better” and “Dude this is the first rough draft, it’ll be fine, just get it done”. I’ve been able to push myself to more of the latter and take a looser approach to everything while getting the major plot points down. I have generally been feeling more confident after I decided to add more interactions again... It’s hard filling out the space, but I think I’m managing...!
Aside from KKPP are my other 2 storylines. I’ll start with Suburban Purgatory. SP was a storyline that was very, VERY close to my heart. It pretty much occupied my brain the way 18782 does now. I think the fact a lot of it holds a personal nature is a big reason why I feel this way. Anyway, this isn’t about my sentimentality towards it. I think the thing that spurred me to work on it again is the last few months I’ve been thinking about adding to my scene lineup in that storyline. I’ve had ideas kicking around but because of Artfight prep and Artfight itself, it’s taken me a while to actually get stuff drawn out. Now that I have, I keep thinking about that storyline as a whole too...
Before 18782, the game I made was one in this storyline. It was released for maybe a weekend before I pulled it due to an anxiety attack. I found the file again and began playing it... And maybe it was for the best because I fucked up and made a part impossible to get past LOL. I still kind of want to see if I can boot it up in RPGM and fix it and finish the game... It’s pretty rudimentary and I don’t think I want to actually ever release it. At best, I’d put a playthrough up on YouTube or something.
The game in question
Anyway, there was more I did with it. Originally, I planned for it to be a text-based project or a comic. The comic kind of felt overwhelming so I never finished the first chapter. I did start writing a lot of text... But I don’t know exactly where it went to or if I deleted it. I still have the storylines in my head, so it’s not such a major loss in that respect. I was thinking about doing something again with it in the future though...
And lastly, my Other World project. It’s a big thing in itself, but tldr, it’s a big fantasy world project I’ve been working on since high school. It’s gone through many iterations and even one of the storylines in it had a comic (wow, a pattern here, huh?...). My reignition of the passion I had for it kind of came when I saw something about people making their own zines and I had my wheels turning... So, I started writing text for something like that.
The project itself isn’t exactly confined to the Other World (there’s one story that is in another storyline– Pottersfield– which lightly ties into The Harold Saga, actually), but most stories are fleshing out the religion for that. Because of that, I kind of went down a bit of a rabbit hole and started doing a major lore doc for the whole project. I’ve written a lot for both of those parts... And by a lot, I mean 56 pages combined. This started as part of a stress relief to all the Artfight drawing I was doing too. I really want to do something with this storyline...
World map
I guess my thing is I have all these different storylines and I really want to just do something with them. I feel awkward putting any actual writing up on my site... But maybe I’ll end up taking the plunge once I finish my little “zine”. I really also do want a KKPP portal... I had one started, but the file didn’t save right and I lost that progress...
Aside from that, I’ve been reading The Summer Hikaru Died and started playing through Higurashi. I guess I don’t have anything super interesting to report aside from OC stuff lol.
5:55 PM ... 08.25.2025