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Ball's Rolling Again
5 years ago
General
>Cough, you said like, April. It's July you lazy shit.
Well, let's take a look at what started happening mere days after my previous journal entry.
First up was the coof heard 'round the world, (the condensed irony of my pen name right now) which while not dangerous to me specifically since I'm in good physical health of course heaped worry on just about everybody. A situation patently not helped by governments around the world seeing the infection rate and slamming the panic button. Living as a neet is practically mandated by law at this point as this particular flu strain's hyper-virulence has prompted a ridiculous amount of fear. It honestly reminds me of the H1Z1 swine flu that was making the rounds back around '08. The media again hailed it as a killer plague that would storm through America causing mass casualties but that one never prompted torpedoing the economy and watching the job market burn with a nation wide lockdown, probably because it was about as dangerous in terms of symptoms as the kung-flu but nowhere near as infectious. If you are in ill health due to other factors, do stay safe, but as for myself I'm no longer worried. I was even under a belief that because of my city's locale in the middle of a desert, not being a tourist spot, and relatively isolated meant we wouldn't get a big spike in infection but my neighbors never fail to disappoint me. The end result of this is my little search for a job got executed before it could ever really get going due to all non essential businesses shuttering their doors and with them goes just about any dayjob I'd tolerate/find myself enjoying doing. My initial plan right now is finding something part time I can work from home until shit reopens so I can land myself something actually worth doing. At least until some dumbass in florida prompts a second outbreak and we do this all over again.
Shortly after my neck of the woods got the big bad coof, we got hit by an earthquake and multiple aftershocks. Now bat soup fever already had my hackles a bit raised but being shaken out of deep sleep at seven in the morning to the ominous sound of the earth roaring sent me into full tilt. There's a soft, underlying paranoia in my area about the major fault line we practically live on top of one day deciding to just up and kill us with the big one geologists rave is coming for decades now. Of course this wasn't that but try telling your brain that when it's still waking up, just got kicked into fight/flight mode and the land itself is shaking like gelatin. Numerous aftershocks over the next few weeks didn't help because dumping an earthquake on top of a pandemic is just cruel. Damage was minimal and last I checked the extent of it was really just rattling everyone's already frayed nerves.
But it doesn't stop there, no sir, because having at least one month of this year go by without some other giant fuckup happening is verboten. Probably what's gotten me the most paranoid out of all of this and has most motivated me to bunker down are the recent riots. And let's not toe the party line for fear of beating the bush here, these are not protests, not since they started looting, assaulting, murdering, and shooting at bystanders whose only conceivable crime was being in the area. These are cowardly rage mobs that deface and destroy American history and attempt to bully upright people into submission and prostration with their entirely hollow calls of racism, sexism, whatever -isms and -ists you could think to throw in the pot. It isn't about race, that was just the excuse they coopted; it's about rabid collectivist faux-revolutionaries attempting to overthrow the American way of life and rewrite history to suit their infantile fascist fantasies. The complication is that these people are pampered weaklings that haven't really struggled for anything a day in their lives. Just look at the utter chaos that occurred with the 'Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone', which was only allowed to exist because a corrupt city government tread on the rights of the citizen. Starving people, astronomically high crime and acts of violence, psychotic 'safety officers' that beat and murder innocent people that were in the wrong place and the wrong time. This is the "perfect society" these lunatics want to create so it's only correct to call them for what they are, insane. Watching a similiar mob rampage in downtown has set my mind on the matter as my current big savings goal is exercising my second amendment rights. I'm perfectly aware telling the truth like this won't win me many friends around here but my patience for bullshit is gone. I'm winded, weary, and angry, but I'm not letting anyone or anything threaten the sanctity of my home and my life.
I comment on all of this not just to stir up a big stink and air out some of my personal venoms because 'ermaghrrd Cough's a nazi.' but to illustrate the breed of anxieties I've been battling with for months and help relate why I continue to miss deadlines/ needed to take some time off before I had a nervous episode.
>politics politics politics
annoyed bird.png
>ermaghrrd Cough's a nazi.
annoyed bird cocking a gun.png
Now back to discussions, that quad release I originally promised is fully here. The Buzzing Hour is complete after being on hold since late 2018 and for anyone that has read what was there before on pastebin, the act 3 continuation and finale has more than doubled the length of the story. I basically wrote an entire NoF chapter in the process of this and that alone makes me confident enough to say that I have killed the writer's block and reacquired my muse. There's also an assortment of three short stories for selection, one action based, one slice of life, and one a character focused short/hit piece. The first two were done on request via loose frameworks provided from friends. The last is based around Vilka and I generally wrote it for my own whims because mange mane is emblematic of a personality type I've developed a deep hatred for based on personal experience with a bastard that claimed to have my best interests in mind. I figured it was prudent, healthy even to work this simmering aggression into something productive and therapeutic, call it rage writing or what have you. It also served as the trial run for character based shorts, so in the future there may be more to come with various characters from my work. Immediately I have a solid idea for a short featuring Tom, but my focus has turned towards NoF proper for now and I will bank out chapter nine after taking a few days sabbatical.
>Can I have a request?
No... These were opened in private towards friends of mine I'm in at least semi-regular communication with. I don't have the tact or patience to open story commissions or requests to the general public and deal with all of the hassles that comes with. Yes, I need money, I very much like money, but my cynical inclination tells me 80-90% of my inbox would be littered with sparkledog donutsteel nonsense that would result in a one note conversation along the lines of 'your idea is fucking stupid and I can't work this into anything good, don't waste my time with this.' Or better yet, 'I don't do this fetish, get that away from me.' I just don't have the spare energy or patience to deal with those unknowns. I'm not even sure what the hell a good rate would be considering my writing style, I'd likely end up undercharging or overcharging wildly even between different commission projects. I'm sure there are good prompts and customers out there but when you open the floodgate the garbage is inevitably going to tumble in with the spring water. Besides, writing meaningless smut all day sounds draining. Call it the pessimism of someone who stays on the fringes but that's my current view on the matter.
>So you might open up comms in the future?
Let's... put a bookend in that and call it wishful thinking.
>I'd like to give you money
Hold on, let me dig out the big band procession and meaningless "rewards". Here's an invite to that discord I never interact with and some trash I picked up from the cutting room floor.
In all seriousness though, continuing on from my last journal I've milled the idea over a lot and actually gone through on setting up something for those that wish to donate. No, it is not a full scale patreon as I don't have a large enough/loud enough following to consider a patreon a fruitful venture, instead I've kept it small scale. I finally went and opened up a Ko-fi, what a dirty, dirty shill I am. Aside from saving me the hassle of attempting to figure out reward tiers and what I could possibly do to make those rewards seem fair not only to my patrons but my general output and time as well... Ko-Fi was just stupid easy to get rolling, plug it into the paypal, fiddle with some things and bam, you have an online tip jar. Which is exactly what I'm using it as, consider the Ko-Fi a tip jar if you enjoy my work enough to fling money at me to help keep the lights on around here/buy me food, ammo, spare gasmask filters/ help me splurge a little on art commissions. Again, I'm not facing life on the streets so this is not a facetious cry for help, I'd rather you spend your money on yourselves if you have to/want to. But for those generous enough to help me out by dropping me five dollars I went through and put it up there. Besides I'm not nearly noble enough to turn down free money, especially with the economy the way it is right now. Mayhaps if this place picks up enough traffic I'll consider upgrading to this 'gold' thing that allows me to set up an option for monthly payments and other stuff. And hey, if I really do blow up in popularity there might be use for a patreon afterall, but for now let's keep it small because I haven't won the exposure bux lottery. Ko-fi also doesn't take a cut of your money for themselves, how nice of them.
You can find my shiny new tip jar here: https://ko-fi.com/coughingfit
Please don't break it
>You absolute capitalist gremlin, how could you betray us like this you fucki-
Gettin' real tired of your shit, hayseed
>What are you doing next?
Well if you weren't so fucking rude before you commie pinko-
Okay, so for the next few days I'm taking sabbatical, might adjust the Ko-fi if you lads forward some suggestions that sound good. The reason it's so sparse right now is paranoia that directly posting any of my generally adult content to the sight will get the page suspended, but I didn't exactly look around at how other profiles were operating. There's not exactly a clear button to mark a page as nsfw that I saw the way I've seen patreon do. For stories my immediate focus is on Nights of Firefall, chapter nine is my immediate target and I'm filled to bursting with ideas for it, finishing BH was a small fit of excitement because 'hooray, now I don't have to hold myself away from my main body of work.' In the meantime I'll likely feel out character shorts, maybe conjure up frames for new sidestories set in NoF's universe and practice my sketching.
>you draw now?
Not exactly, I got a sketchpad over christmas and then just let it gather dust for a few months when all the big happenings cooked off because I really didn't feel like practicing when every day was more stress. Now that I'm in a better state of mind and things have stabilized I'll probably pick it up again and use it so I don't feel like I'm letting what was spent on it go to waste. I'll probably be sketching landscapes along to Bob Ross episodes because as I remember from HS, my figure drawing skills are godawful. In the end I'm going to need a lot of practice before I can turn out stuff I feel is suitable for posting and at the end of the day my primary focus is still going to be literature. As for sketch art my ideas are wide frame cover arts for chapters and standalones, mechanical and biological references to machines and creatures, and advanced shitposting. Also portraits because faces are one human element I recall being at least decent at. Just don't raise your expectations to the sky I don't have nearly as much practice with the brush as I do the pen.
Trying not to fall off the horse yet again
-Coughing Fit
Well, let's take a look at what started happening mere days after my previous journal entry.
First up was the coof heard 'round the world, (the condensed irony of my pen name right now) which while not dangerous to me specifically since I'm in good physical health of course heaped worry on just about everybody. A situation patently not helped by governments around the world seeing the infection rate and slamming the panic button. Living as a neet is practically mandated by law at this point as this particular flu strain's hyper-virulence has prompted a ridiculous amount of fear. It honestly reminds me of the H1Z1 swine flu that was making the rounds back around '08. The media again hailed it as a killer plague that would storm through America causing mass casualties but that one never prompted torpedoing the economy and watching the job market burn with a nation wide lockdown, probably because it was about as dangerous in terms of symptoms as the kung-flu but nowhere near as infectious. If you are in ill health due to other factors, do stay safe, but as for myself I'm no longer worried. I was even under a belief that because of my city's locale in the middle of a desert, not being a tourist spot, and relatively isolated meant we wouldn't get a big spike in infection but my neighbors never fail to disappoint me. The end result of this is my little search for a job got executed before it could ever really get going due to all non essential businesses shuttering their doors and with them goes just about any dayjob I'd tolerate/find myself enjoying doing. My initial plan right now is finding something part time I can work from home until shit reopens so I can land myself something actually worth doing. At least until some dumbass in florida prompts a second outbreak and we do this all over again.
Shortly after my neck of the woods got the big bad coof, we got hit by an earthquake and multiple aftershocks. Now bat soup fever already had my hackles a bit raised but being shaken out of deep sleep at seven in the morning to the ominous sound of the earth roaring sent me into full tilt. There's a soft, underlying paranoia in my area about the major fault line we practically live on top of one day deciding to just up and kill us with the big one geologists rave is coming for decades now. Of course this wasn't that but try telling your brain that when it's still waking up, just got kicked into fight/flight mode and the land itself is shaking like gelatin. Numerous aftershocks over the next few weeks didn't help because dumping an earthquake on top of a pandemic is just cruel. Damage was minimal and last I checked the extent of it was really just rattling everyone's already frayed nerves.
But it doesn't stop there, no sir, because having at least one month of this year go by without some other giant fuckup happening is verboten. Probably what's gotten me the most paranoid out of all of this and has most motivated me to bunker down are the recent riots. And let's not toe the party line for fear of beating the bush here, these are not protests, not since they started looting, assaulting, murdering, and shooting at bystanders whose only conceivable crime was being in the area. These are cowardly rage mobs that deface and destroy American history and attempt to bully upright people into submission and prostration with their entirely hollow calls of racism, sexism, whatever -isms and -ists you could think to throw in the pot. It isn't about race, that was just the excuse they coopted; it's about rabid collectivist faux-revolutionaries attempting to overthrow the American way of life and rewrite history to suit their infantile fascist fantasies. The complication is that these people are pampered weaklings that haven't really struggled for anything a day in their lives. Just look at the utter chaos that occurred with the 'Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone', which was only allowed to exist because a corrupt city government tread on the rights of the citizen. Starving people, astronomically high crime and acts of violence, psychotic 'safety officers' that beat and murder innocent people that were in the wrong place and the wrong time. This is the "perfect society" these lunatics want to create so it's only correct to call them for what they are, insane. Watching a similiar mob rampage in downtown has set my mind on the matter as my current big savings goal is exercising my second amendment rights. I'm perfectly aware telling the truth like this won't win me many friends around here but my patience for bullshit is gone. I'm winded, weary, and angry, but I'm not letting anyone or anything threaten the sanctity of my home and my life.
I comment on all of this not just to stir up a big stink and air out some of my personal venoms because 'ermaghrrd Cough's a nazi.' but to illustrate the breed of anxieties I've been battling with for months and help relate why I continue to miss deadlines/ needed to take some time off before I had a nervous episode.
>politics politics politics
annoyed bird.png
>ermaghrrd Cough's a nazi.
annoyed bird cocking a gun.png
Now back to discussions, that quad release I originally promised is fully here. The Buzzing Hour is complete after being on hold since late 2018 and for anyone that has read what was there before on pastebin, the act 3 continuation and finale has more than doubled the length of the story. I basically wrote an entire NoF chapter in the process of this and that alone makes me confident enough to say that I have killed the writer's block and reacquired my muse. There's also an assortment of three short stories for selection, one action based, one slice of life, and one a character focused short/hit piece. The first two were done on request via loose frameworks provided from friends. The last is based around Vilka and I generally wrote it for my own whims because mange mane is emblematic of a personality type I've developed a deep hatred for based on personal experience with a bastard that claimed to have my best interests in mind. I figured it was prudent, healthy even to work this simmering aggression into something productive and therapeutic, call it rage writing or what have you. It also served as the trial run for character based shorts, so in the future there may be more to come with various characters from my work. Immediately I have a solid idea for a short featuring Tom, but my focus has turned towards NoF proper for now and I will bank out chapter nine after taking a few days sabbatical.
>Can I have a request?
No... These were opened in private towards friends of mine I'm in at least semi-regular communication with. I don't have the tact or patience to open story commissions or requests to the general public and deal with all of the hassles that comes with. Yes, I need money, I very much like money, but my cynical inclination tells me 80-90% of my inbox would be littered with sparkledog donutsteel nonsense that would result in a one note conversation along the lines of 'your idea is fucking stupid and I can't work this into anything good, don't waste my time with this.' Or better yet, 'I don't do this fetish, get that away from me.' I just don't have the spare energy or patience to deal with those unknowns. I'm not even sure what the hell a good rate would be considering my writing style, I'd likely end up undercharging or overcharging wildly even between different commission projects. I'm sure there are good prompts and customers out there but when you open the floodgate the garbage is inevitably going to tumble in with the spring water. Besides, writing meaningless smut all day sounds draining. Call it the pessimism of someone who stays on the fringes but that's my current view on the matter.
>So you might open up comms in the future?
Let's... put a bookend in that and call it wishful thinking.
>I'd like to give you money
Hold on, let me dig out the big band procession and meaningless "rewards". Here's an invite to that discord I never interact with and some trash I picked up from the cutting room floor.
In all seriousness though, continuing on from my last journal I've milled the idea over a lot and actually gone through on setting up something for those that wish to donate. No, it is not a full scale patreon as I don't have a large enough/loud enough following to consider a patreon a fruitful venture, instead I've kept it small scale. I finally went and opened up a Ko-fi, what a dirty, dirty shill I am. Aside from saving me the hassle of attempting to figure out reward tiers and what I could possibly do to make those rewards seem fair not only to my patrons but my general output and time as well... Ko-Fi was just stupid easy to get rolling, plug it into the paypal, fiddle with some things and bam, you have an online tip jar. Which is exactly what I'm using it as, consider the Ko-Fi a tip jar if you enjoy my work enough to fling money at me to help keep the lights on around here/buy me food, ammo, spare gasmask filters/ help me splurge a little on art commissions. Again, I'm not facing life on the streets so this is not a facetious cry for help, I'd rather you spend your money on yourselves if you have to/want to. But for those generous enough to help me out by dropping me five dollars I went through and put it up there. Besides I'm not nearly noble enough to turn down free money, especially with the economy the way it is right now. Mayhaps if this place picks up enough traffic I'll consider upgrading to this 'gold' thing that allows me to set up an option for monthly payments and other stuff. And hey, if I really do blow up in popularity there might be use for a patreon afterall, but for now let's keep it small because I haven't won the exposure bux lottery. Ko-fi also doesn't take a cut of your money for themselves, how nice of them.
You can find my shiny new tip jar here: https://ko-fi.com/coughingfit
Please don't break it
>You absolute capitalist gremlin, how could you betray us like this you fucki-
Gettin' real tired of your shit, hayseed
>What are you doing next?
Well if you weren't so fucking rude before you commie pinko-
Okay, so for the next few days I'm taking sabbatical, might adjust the Ko-fi if you lads forward some suggestions that sound good. The reason it's so sparse right now is paranoia that directly posting any of my generally adult content to the sight will get the page suspended, but I didn't exactly look around at how other profiles were operating. There's not exactly a clear button to mark a page as nsfw that I saw the way I've seen patreon do. For stories my immediate focus is on Nights of Firefall, chapter nine is my immediate target and I'm filled to bursting with ideas for it, finishing BH was a small fit of excitement because 'hooray, now I don't have to hold myself away from my main body of work.' In the meantime I'll likely feel out character shorts, maybe conjure up frames for new sidestories set in NoF's universe and practice my sketching.
>you draw now?
Not exactly, I got a sketchpad over christmas and then just let it gather dust for a few months when all the big happenings cooked off because I really didn't feel like practicing when every day was more stress. Now that I'm in a better state of mind and things have stabilized I'll probably pick it up again and use it so I don't feel like I'm letting what was spent on it go to waste. I'll probably be sketching landscapes along to Bob Ross episodes because as I remember from HS, my figure drawing skills are godawful. In the end I'm going to need a lot of practice before I can turn out stuff I feel is suitable for posting and at the end of the day my primary focus is still going to be literature. As for sketch art my ideas are wide frame cover arts for chapters and standalones, mechanical and biological references to machines and creatures, and advanced shitposting. Also portraits because faces are one human element I recall being at least decent at. Just don't raise your expectations to the sky I don't have nearly as much practice with the brush as I do the pen.
Trying not to fall off the horse yet again
-Coughing Fit
Ko-fi does NOT allow pornographic content of any kind. While you could argue that a story that has minor amounts of such content is not truly pornography, I would not try to tread such a fine line.
Essentially don’t post pornographic content on ko-fi or use ko-fi to receive donations when you primarily produce such content. If you post any such content off of ko-fi and for free you should be fine. If you want to be extra paranoid post it somewhere not immediately available, such as the bottom of a story list (aka a master paste in pastebin with links to all of your stories, even ones unlisted)
Here’s a short but incomplete list with of what ko-fi DOESNT allow. Other things stated didn’t seem to be of much relevance to you and your work.
Content including but not limited to;
Adult or sexually explicit content including but not limited to:
• Pornography, nudity and any other obscene content;
• Literature, imagery (including illustrative), videos, links to external sites or content containing such material; and
• Sexual services such as prostitution, escorts, pay-per view, adult live chat features;
• Content including links to and from the platform which is fraudulent, misleading, inaccurate or dishonest;
• Violent or excessively gory content; and
• Hate speech, intimidation or abuse of any kind targeting any individual, group or institution.
Happy you’re back and looking forward to your work.
Live chat we obviously don't need to worry about.
I'm not sure how I would be dishonest in my links to the place
The last two are sticky. I'm not one to censor myself and these 'hate speech' clauses are always intentionally vague so again I won't be putting up anything on that platform that's opinionated, i.e. any of my journals. Not like I'll be using the place for anything but receiving donations anyway. But most of my work is naturally violent since it's, you know, about war.
Thank you though.
With regards to the virus, I'm happy to hear that you and your extended family are safe and unaffected at least from a medical standpoint. Others are unfortunately not able to say the same. Please continue to stay safe despite the desire to garner some semblance of the normalcy that may have existed before the outbreak, as I would hate for your family to mourn in a similar manner that mine has had to over these last couple of weeks. With that said, I'm afraid that we will likely have to endure further socioeconomic uncertainty because of the virus for what seems like at least another six months. It does sound like another stimulus check is coming our way. Small comfort I know, but at least it's something to keep things afloat.
With regards to the 'peaceful' movements currently sweeping the United States and in our own backyards, I could very well stand on my own soapbox for a senseless amount of time, but I currently lack the willpower or energy to do so. In short, the amount of scapegoating and frankly asinine demands to sensitize every facet of our society has me worried for our country's future. Anyone who calls you a 'Nazi' in this context has little understanding of what that term means or the historical implications that go along with it. Make no mistake, these kinds of people will do anything to compartmentalize or marginalize anyone who doesn't buy into their hypocritical notions on what an 'idealized' society should look like. They speak on the behalf of others in order to satisfy their own selfish desires and don't give a damn about how many lives they will ruin or 'cancel' in the process, but I digress.
On a more positive note...
I'm happy to see the four new releases, that you've fully regained your writing muse, and are embracing the desire to sketch again. Just remember that there's nothing wrong with having a happy little tree as a friend.
As far as Ko-fi is concerned, I had no issues with making a contribution on my end, so you should be at least set up in that regards. You and I both know that it doesn't equate to the amount of passion and effort that went into everything posted on your profile, but it's a start, and I'm told that big things have small beginnings. It's only a matter of time before your work will get the recognition that it deserves.
As always, I look forward to any and all future releases on your part.
Until the next entry, stay safe and I wish you the best of luck.
But thank you for the encouragment, and the contribution. It's true things start small but I can't help but feel they're going to stay small since I don't go out of my way to be marketable or to pander.
Don't sell yourself or your work short. You have a flagship series in the works, so build off of that as much as possible and then branch out from there. I'm sure that recognition will come with time, but don't be afraid to stand by whatever principles you set for yourself if you eventually choose to pander.
The central driver (money, viewership, etc.) is entirely up to you in the end.