Guess what! 42 days until I turn 42! (OK, yes, I forgot to post this yesterday, so I’ve backdated it to yesterday, so in a way it’s 42 and 41 days until I turn 42.)

I am working on an anomalously high number of stories right now. It’s great because there’s always something to turn my attention to next when I’ve worked on one story for as much as it wants to be worked on at the moment. It sucks because each story comes along so slowly when there are so many. I don’t want to change it, though.

Drawings are in about the same state, and will be even more so when I get the signing-bonus stories for Dani and Laridian finished. And if I can manage to get more Patrons! So much to draw, so little time!! At least while I’m drawing I can listen to audiobooks or people’s stories.

I forget… did I mention already that the cancer drug I’m taking has exacerbated my ADHD traits? Yeah, there’s that.

Ugh, I have a couple of Saitou & Sano surprises that are soOoOo hard to just sit on. But you know me (and read the above, if you’re here at all) — they’ll take forever, so it’s no good teasing about them now!

So that next ASZz scene is postable, and the early access timer is ticking. I’m really pleased with that scene, and excited to continue. But besides that, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the second story-arc lately. Never too early to plan ahead! The biggest question I’d like to answer (and haven’t yet) is where the break point will be between part 2 and part 3. Just as in canon, the discrete early adventures of the Kenshingumi aren’t long enough to stretch out into an entire story-arc (and I’ll be skimming over the really boring stuff, like Raijuta)… but departure for Kyoto is still an excellent breaking point.

So the question boils down to: do I have the next story-arc (so-called) be short, or super long because it goes on to cover the events in Kyoto? Third option: I find another breaking point somewhere within the events in Kyoto. I guess it largely depends on how much of the detail in the Kyoto arc I want to include. Since the story doesn’t include boring Kenshin’s perspective, a lot of the new characters’ backstories and such won’t come out, so it may be a much shorter Kyoto arc than usual.

The answer lies in planning, so that’s what I’m going to do. And meanwhile, I tackled another question that I was able to decide on. Of course this story is my own take on RK, since I feel like RK was badly mishandled by an evil person. So I’m changing anything in canon that I want to, and an important part of that is Kaoru. She isn’t characterized very well, and doesn’t really have her own story; she’s mostly just emotional support for Kenshin. And, like, you can have some characters like that, but does it have to be a woman every time? I love my Kaoru-chan, and there’s no reason she shouldn’t be an active, contributing participant in the story instead of just a cheerleader driven by her love of a man.

I know this smacks of “strong female character = physically strong,” and I hope I can write it without it feeling like that. But it is incredibly frustrating that she’s such a talented swordsman but is always getting either kidnapped or left behind because she’s surrounded by unnaturally strong men. Why can’t she be unnaturally strong?? You can’t ask me to believe in dudes that wear 80lb capes to suppress their strength and dudes that survive being burned from head to toe and fucking Fuji and expect me not to wonder where the hell the physically strong women are!!

I do have plans for her other character traits too, though. We get hints of them in canon, but they’re buried under a mountain of temper tantrums and beating people comically over the head, irrational concern about Kenshin even after she’s seen him defeat eleventy-billion dudes, and the ever-popular “the two leading ladies must be interested in the same man and therefore rivals of each other.” Which all by itself can FUCK RIGHT OFF.

So, yeah. She’s going to be way more awesome, and have her own story… and that’s going to be a side-story to ASZz. It’ll be her perspective and Megumi’s, and cover any of their stuff that isn’t clearly shown in ASZz. You can probably guess from this that they will be a couple eventually. I told you I was fixing everything I see as wrong with the canon! XD

The other specific thing I want to mention is a story I’m writing for Laridian. In case I haven’t gushed about it around here before, his novel-length set of stories A Gun For Barns is some of my favorite fanfiction evar, and everyone should read it, regardless of knowledge of the fandom. (I’m serious; it goes through the story of Fallout: New Vegas in a coherent and well ordered way that’s perfectly comprehensible and very enjoyable to anyone.)

Recently, Laridian was so good as to join my Patreon! And everyone that joins my Patreon gets a signing bonus of a story written for them or a drawing done for them. So I’m writing Laridian a fanfiction of his fanfiction! This makes me very happy, because I just love his original character and the way he writes the canon characters, and now I get to play with them too!

I actually bought FNV for research purposes, because it was $10 for the game and all the DLC. The problem is that I suck at video games. I completely cannot handle first-person shooters (I’ve been over this here before XD), but at least this one has a third-person view as well. Still, just not that skilled XD But I’ve been having brother play some of the video games I suck at so I can watch him, and that’s almost as good as playing them myself for getting a feel for the environment/atmosphere/story of a game (and vastly better in terms of surviving to the next town, etc. XD)

By now I’ve got the action in this story I’m writing set down pretty solidly. So the next important step is the characters and their interactions. It’s more adventure than drama, but that doesn’t mean interpersonal relations aren’t important!! And I want to make sure I get them right! And the best way to do that, of course, is to reread AGFB again. OOOHHHH NOOOOOOOOOO, I have to reread one of the best stories I’ve ever reaaaaaaadwhatwillidooooooooooo