As was mentioned in a site announcement back in November, there are scammers about trying to con people: they'll try to get you to commission them, but they just take the money and run.

Recently, one of these punks targeted one of my commissioners, using one of my stories in their pitch, so it's personal now. I will not name names, but I am glad the target correctly identified the message as a scam.

To reiterate from the sitewide announcement journal: if you see some or especially all of the following signs, you're dealing with a scammer.
- They send YOU the first note and ask YOU to commission THEM
- They try to push you off-site to Discord or Telegram ASAP
- Their account was made within the last month or so
- Their gallery is a bunch of AI-generated or stolen art

If you get one of these notes, please file a trouble ticket under the "Spam (Comments/Notes)" category. Include a link to the note you received and select the "Grant staff temporary permission to view notes you link to" checkbox when you do. We'll handle the rest.

More than once I've had people ask me if I have a particular story in a different format than the one I published it in, such as if someone can't read a PDF or if they want an eBook version of something of mine. I have no objection to the idea of publishing stuff in other formats, but distribution is always the sticking point. It's not that I don't want to, it's that FA isn't built for it. We don't have IB's multi-file uploads, as much as I would love them for handling alts of submissions, and there's no bulk upload either, nor can I upload zip files.

Then, last night, a thought occurred to me: I've seen several 3D artists hosting animations off-site. While I can't put my stories on e621, and itch.io would only really work for TWINE games, there are a couple of other options for general file-hosting that permit NSFW stuff. Mega is one, Catbox is another and I'm leaning towards the latter. Catbox doesn't permit doc(x) files, likely due to the potential for malicious VB/macro exploits, but it would still be a way for me to easily distribute EPUBs, AZW3s, PDFs, RTFs, and so on.

There are some other projects where off-site hosting might become necessary as well. TWINE games are published as HTML files, which I can't put directly on FA. I'm also working on a short-form story format with a "choose your ending" approach, and offering all the alternate endings as separate files externally is the 'cleanest' way I can think of to handle it (FA would probably have some all-in-one PDF or something). The JSON files my stats script outputs can go there as well so that I have a way to publicly distribute them.

Doing all the file conversions manually would be a pain in the ass, but fortunately Calibre can be run on the command-line (ie, by a script) to do all that for me, it'll just be a project I need to put some time towards.

No promises on exactly when any of this happens - I'll go put it on my goals list for 2026 - but if anyone has experience with Catbox or other ideas on things I could distribute off-site please feel free to leave a comment.

A little late this year but it's still November. Better late than never! Previous anniversary journals:
2024: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10998157/
2023: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10729882/
2022: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10369705/
2021: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10037728/

Stats

I'm doing something a bit different this year - if you want to see the stats, go check this submission: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/63022531/

Unfortunately my number of galleries has decreased from 3 to 2, as explained here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11196812/ I have observed no changes on IB's front, so my IB gallery remains hidden until further notice.

Goals

I've previously done these in a separate journal but I might as well fold them in here. Last year's goals: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11018032/

2025's been a bit rough, mostly due to being stuck at Evil, Inc(TM) for the end of last year and the first few months of this year. I did go to a con, but it turns out I'm really not a con person - perhaps unsurprisingly, social anxiety and huge, crowded spaces full of strangers don't mix very well, so I don't intend to go to any more. I did do another Raining Gold episode, and I did expand on my stats, though I haven't made them public just from having to figure out distribution - I ended up making a huge JSON file rather than a spreadsheet. I'll figure that out another time.

I did also cycle my queue insofar as I got to The Big One. I might accidentally another book. We'll see. This time around I am taking breaks every 30k words to work on other slots on the queue to keep it moving, and it's working well so far.

I didn't get to finishing the second-person-perspective story, and while I have started on some TWINE projects, they're not done yet, so hopefully that'll be done next year. What I did do was very promising at least, even though I'm probably trying to do things TWINE was never meant to do. But hey, the tools are all there.

I did, however, manage to become part of FA's staff, something I wasn't expecting or planning last year. It honestly has been a positive thing! I've been on FA since the beginning and being able to help it out, especially at a time when we're actively working on improving the site, has been very encouraging. No, FA isn't perfect. It never has been, and it never will be; perfection is impossible. But that doesn't mean we can't or won't make it better and I'm glad to be part of the improvements currently happening (even if I'm not on the tech staff... yet.)

So at least for now my goals for the next year are:
- Finish a TWINE project. I want to do an SFW one first so that I can show it off and go "Hey, this is what I'm capable of". NSFW ones can come after that. To that end I've actually dug up a different project of mine that was never published and am basically converting it into a TWINE game, but I need to just get off my ass and finish it. The majority of the work is already done (writing the text) and it's just the programming side that needs work.
- Finish the WIPs that I have floating around that aren't being allocated to a personal slot. This includes a sequel to Malware Defender, the second-person-perspective story I mentioned, an SFW sequel to Study Buddies that's intended more to be personal therapy writing than anything else, and a couple of small projects.
-- I'm debating taking some express slots for myself to get the small ones done, as the gaps between my personal works are otherwise enormous. I technically haven't done one at all this year (though I've just started one now); Raining Gold is more of a community project that consumes a personal slot than it is something actually personal, and I'm feeling the burnout of not getting to pursue my own stuff. I'd still hold myself to the "only one entry in the express queue at a time" rule, of course.
- I need to get better about storyboarding stuff before I start it. This is on me, not the commissioner. Outlines are the high level "I want a commission where X, Y and Z get together and do all this stuff" thing that lets me gauge if a project is doable. Storyboarding is a mid-level "X, Y, and Z go to X's house. They do such-and-such. Y suggests that X does the thing..." type of outline that lets me sort out the structure and helps me ensure I'm not going to write myself into a corner somewhere. I've been slacking on doing this and it's had a notable negative impact on writing speed.
- I'd like to add Occupational Hazard and Bring the Kids to my website with the other Children of the Egg stories. This shouldn't take long, I just need to sit down and do it.
- I'd also like to write a script that would convert my stories into various formats automatically so I don't need to do it by hand. Then I can publish them all to Catbox or some other NSFW-friendly external site and link to them from FA. This would also let me publish things like TWINE games and the data files for my stats calculations. (More info here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11255412/ )

Markov Chain Shenanigans

In case you missed it, I explained what a Markov Chain is, how they work, and why they're not GenAI in this journal: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11247436/

I've tried changing the state size from 2 to 3 for this set, which basically means we look at the last 3 tokens when deciding what the next one will be. Will we get better results? My commentary is (in brackets) as before.

General Generations

- Though, uh, I also discovered that night that ice cream is always good for variety. (Markov approves of midnight ice cream snacking)
- We can be as loud and annoying as they possibly could first. (I'm concerned about who might be actively trying to be loud and annoying.)
- Look, my ass is finished! (I lol'd. Is this some robot character pleased that their body is being (re)constructed?)
- She could sit on that, and he had his whole life. (I'm not gettin' out of this chair! No sir, not gettin' out of this chair!)
- Lunging forward, he punched a hole in the woman's attention, and she didn't know what it did. ("Punching a hole in someone's attention" feels like an awesome metaphor, not gonna lie)
- "Awesome," Marika said with a shake of her head. (Something tells me she's being sarcastic. : p)
- It was as though she had some cereal she didn't have time to learn. (...what?)
- They don't understand you're still a villain! (Malware has apparently pulled off the Villain With Good Publicity trick)
- Joke's on you, how does it feel? (...is Markov giving me sass again?)
- Kaitlyn objected, "I can't stand on that floor!" (But it's a floor, that's its entire purpose!)
- He tried to get a mechanic to drain the rest of the place. (I believe you want a plumber, not a mechanic.)
- Even an old VW Microbus, its side thrusters firing to try and peek. (What kind of pimped-out hippie van has side thrusters???)
- His chest was just a store with cheap bulk snacks and candy. (I guess we're inside of a giant robot today.)

Code Creations

And what about me?
- Code had planned this whole thing! (...yes... yes, I did.)
- Code pointed out with a bang. (Code has literal finger guns.)
- Code woke up at a more rapid pace. (I wish I could do this. I'm not a morning person.)
- Code suddenly warned with a tap of her baton and twisted the blade. (Apparently RG Code's baton is actually a sword cane!)
- Code then noticed the sink, she began to slide back out. (I imagine Code entering a room, looking at a sink, and then just sliding back out with a GMod stone grinding sound effect)
- Code gently set her fork down at the corner of the bed. (I don't think that's how "Breakfast in bed" works.)
- Code's last day came. (Dawn of THE FINAL DAY. 24 Hours Remain.)
- Code asked Zhen a question or two about magic. (Wrong character to ask. : p)
- Code twisted her hips a little into his apartment. (Dancing your way into someone's apartment is quite a flex.)
- "Code and Ari," he replied, peering into the distance. (I wonder what this unknown character is watching them do... ;o )
- Code apologized as she got an idea. (Me when I think of a good pun I know is going to make people groan :D)
- Code was puzzled when, as she gave Madilyn a disapproving look at the thing, Randival began. (I would also be puzzled if characters from different stories suddenly began.)
- Code and Terra watched the colored bars above her head, she gave it a soft squeeze. (In a VR MMO, would anything really stop you from grabbing the health bar over your head?)

Reader's Reactions

Fine then, what about YOU?
- You can stop at any time. (Now Markov is definitely giving me sass.)
- You shall not take a seat of her own. (I don't remember this being one of the 10 commandments.)
- You can't touch the floor, giving the floor a moment later, just in case? (Is this a reply to the earlier generation about Kaitlyn?)
- You have friends who would be coming for it until the box began imploding in on itself... (My friends do try to avoid implosions, yes.)
- You made me your second in command because I'm not made out of reinforced manganese steel alloy! (These job requirements keep getting more and more absurd.)
- You haven't even heard all my stories yet. (And I intend to keep going. 😎)

Shiu's Shenanigans

Since Shiu's story got finished last year, what's he up to?
- Shiu nudged her towards the door as the other two were laughing uproariously at the sight before them. (There's a lot of things that could be happening here.)
- Shiu stepped off of the situation. (Just walk away! You can leave!)
- Shiu an ample opportunity to do nothing. (One of those days, huh?)
- Shiu tapped the back of the giant kobold. (This seems unwise.)
- Shiu watched her slide her tongue back into her pocket, following after her. (If I watched someone do that, I wouldn't be following afterwards.)
- Shiu had the engines going as hard as she could. (She canna' take no more, cap'n!)

Alliterative Titles Are Hard Okay

Finally, how about some of the official characters I've written about?
- Krystal said quickly, taking advantage of the game's creators. (When Krystal realizes she's been modded into something)
- Krystal took a breath and narrowed her eyes. (...also Krystal when she realizes she's been modded into something.)
- Krystal fumbled, trying to walk down here earlier because of the storm. (If it was an ion storm, maybe.)
- Fidget didn't grace him with a gooey slurp. (I would hope not.)
- Fidget stole one of the urinals fixed to the walls. (How???)
- Fidget sighed again and took out the coupon and waved it for emphasis. (Fidget is going to make Sereth honor the discount whether he wants to or not)
- Midna chastised the wolf she was sitting right on the Indian Ocean. (The whole thing?)
- Loona called out over an intercom system, "Please take the seats closest to the front of the fountain uncomfortably." (Loona knows park benches are uncomfortable I guess)
- Judy glared daggers and gritted her teeth, "I never doubted you," he fired back, then laughed. (That does sound like the kind of thing Nick would say sarcastically.)

Special Mention

While messing around with it earlier in the year I also got this gem:
- Sydney reminded her, and if she hadn't been too caught up with nothing.

"Being caught up with nothing" sounds like a wonderful description of work any time I have a Day Of Meetings.

Overall I got some "better" results with the 3-token model. More coherent sentences, but also more reproduced-from-the-training-data sentences.

This year's anniversary post might be a little delayed, as I'm still working on what I need for it. In the meantime, here's something I wrote up earlier.

I've done several anniversary journals now where I include some output from a Markov Chain I have trained. As I've stated before, they're not GenAI. They're named after a Russian mathematician, Andrey Markov, who (at least according to Wikipedia) first wrote about them in 1906.
But I haven't said much about what they are, or how they work. So today I'm posting a primer on Markov Chains so you have a better idea of how and why they produce such semi-coherent absurdity.

What is a Markov Chain?

To put it very simply, a Markov Chain is a set of instructions to generate random output. The randomness is weighted so that you don't get complete nonsense, but it is still purely down to random chance what you get out of it.

It is not smart. It does not have any understanding of meaning, context, or topic like an LLM does. It has zero intelligence, artificial or otherwise. It simply has a pre-defined set of states it can be in, and it moves between them completely randomly. Imagine a board game where you roll two dice to move, and for each possible result there is a specific square you get taken to from the one you're on. Where you end up is weighted – 7 is most likely, while 2/12 are least likely – but it's still just down to randomness. Now imagine that, but with thousands of squares and dice, and each square is connected to hundreds of other squares, and that's basically a Markov Chain.

As you might expect from a 120-year-old mathematical model, they are relatively simple compared to the stuff we see today, but this simplicity also means that it only took me one afternoon to write a Python script (using the Markovify Python library) that trained a Markov Chain and could generate output, with a training process that only took a minute or so. I've been refining it a bit over the years, but the core of it hasn't changed much.

In the specific case of what I'm doing with these anniversary journals, I am using a Markov Chain to generate sentences of text (which is also what the Markovify library is specifically written to do). These sentences are essentially random, but the training data I provide (ie, my stories) weights the probabilities of what words appear, and in what order, to generate sentences that kinda, sorta resemble English (because that's what my stories are written in; Markov Chains could work for any language), in my style of writing.

Hopefully, anyway. RNG permitting.

Generation

Markov Chains function in two parts: training the model, and generating outputs from the model. I will cover generation first and then pull back the curtain on training.

So, we'll first pretend we simply have a model. What is the model? Essentially, it's a big list of two things: what state we are currently in, and what states we can move to, with what probability. For the purposes of generating text, the current state is what the last word we generated is (with a special state for the first word when we are starting a sentence). The list of states we can move to is a series of words with a probability of going to each.

For instance, let's say our model has a 50% chance of starting a sentence with 'The', and a 50% chance of starting a sentence with 'But'. We flip our coin, it comes up heads, and we start with "The".

The model now says that, if you're on 'The', there's a 25% chance of 'next', a 25% chance of 'one', and a 50% chance of 'dragon'. We roll and it comes up on 'one', so our sentence is now 'The one', and we look up what we do when we're on 'one'.

Eventually we reach a state in our model that is considered sentence-ending, and when we hit that we consider the sentence completed and the generated text is outputted. So let's say that 'one' has a chance of being followed by 'day.' which is considered the end of a sentence, and it comes up when we roll for the next state. This gives us the sentence "The one day." which… is a sentence, if not a very interesting or coherent one.

But if we run through the model again, we'll get a different output. Our initial coinflip might start us off on 'But' instead, or perhaps we get a different third word and we get a sentence starting with 'The one and' which keeps going from there for several more words.

A real model, of course, is operating on a much greater scale. An English dictionary has about 170,000 words, and while the number of words that actually show up in common usage is far fewer than that, it's still going to be five digits. Any given word could be followed by hundreds or even thousands of other words with varying probabilities, but there's also context to consider – the words and ordering used in scientific journals would be vastly different than what you'd see in, say, erotic furry fiction. You know, just as a totally arbitrary example. ;)

So, how do you build a model that represents the type of text you want to generate? Well, you need a sample of that text. You can't write a scientific paper without having seen what they look like, and computer models are no different. Which brings us to…

Training

I've shown you how a model is used, but how do we get it? We need to build up that big list of words and probabilities somehow.

Let's start with a single sentence: "The fox goes murr." We don't care that 'murr' isn't a word in the English language, as Markov Chains are language-agnostic and don't care either. The upshot of this is that character names work just fine too. Anyway; we see that our word order is "The", "fox", "goes", "murr". Each word is a single token as far as the model is concerned.

The problem here is that this is just one sentence. If we build a model from this, every sentence we get will be "The fox goes murr" because that's all the input data we gave. So let's add a second sentence to our training data, "The lizard goes mlem". With these two sentences together our model is something like:

(Start of sentence) -> "The", 100% chance
The -> "lizard" or "fox", 50% chance for each
lizard -> "goes", 100% chance
fox -> "goes", 100% chance
goes -> "murr" or "mlem", 50% chance for each

With this model, it has a chance of generating either of the original sentences, but if the random values come up right, it can generate new sentences that were not in the original input: "The fox goes mlem" (I'm sure they can) or "The lizard goes murr" (I don't know about that one…)

Furthermore, this model will never generate sentences about wolves or birds or fish, because there are none of those in the training data – it can only generate words it's seen before. If we want to have sentences about other animals, we need to include them in the training data.

If I throw "The fox goes yip" into the training data, the additional 'fox' following 'The' now means there's a 2-in-3 chance of 'fox' and a 1-in-3 chance of 'lizard', so the probabilities are no longer split evenly. Which makes sense, we have two sentences about foxes and only one about lizards. If I kept adding more sentences about silly fox noises without anything else, the model would accordingly be built under the assumption that, generally, we want to generate sentences about foxes, but once in a blue moon we'll have a sentence about lizards instead.

This is simple enough for an explanatory example, but natural language is complex. So we need more training data – a LOT of data. Usually you would use a 'corpus' which is considered a representative sample of text; for instance, the Brown Corpus is a collection of 500 samples of text each over 2000 words, such as letters, news articles, scientific journals, and more. It's a little over a million words in size.

I, of course, crossed that million words threshold quite some time ago (I'm almost at 1.7 million words in October 2025), so MY corpus is built entirely, 100% from my own work – there is absolutely zero outside data in the model that I have trained. Not one word. The end result is a model that will generate sentences in the style of the author known as Codelizard… or at least, try to, because at the end of the day it's just rolling dice and randomly deciding what word to take next from the options presented in the model.

For example, if I crack open the model I trained for last year, then the first thing I notice… is that PyCharm insists on read-only mode because the model, a 24MB JSON file, too large for it to edit. Whoops.

The second thing I can notice from a glance is that "Fidget" has a weight of 128 for beginning a sentence, which means that in the training data I supplied, "Fidget" is the first word in 128 sentences. The chance of that actually happening in the output is going to be 128 in ((whatever the grand total sentence count is)).

The training is a separate step from the generation – once a model is generated, it can be re-used multiple times. This is nice because training takes a lot more time, as it has to look through every file I provide it for training data, and catalogue the chance of every word following every other word. Generation is just taking the pre-made model and rolling a bunch of dice, and is much faster.

State Size

Now, the thing is, if we were to look at just the previous word, we would be very likely to get nonsense, like the "Code took a home should be granted" I got just now while generating some sentences with such a model.

We can get more coherent results by adjusting the 'state size', which represents how many previous words we look at when selecting the next word. This number is chosen at the time we train the model.

By default in Markovify, this is 2 – if we're up to "Code stared at", the model will look at what follows the pair of words "stared at" without caring that it's Code doing the staring. To do this the model must have an entry for that pair of words specifically, which is why the state size must be specified when training, not just generating.

When I outlined above how generation works with the animal noises examples, I only used a state size of 1 for simplicity. It's good for teaching how Markov Chains work, but with a real data set you will get nonsensical (though highly varied) results.

For my actual generations, I normally use 2, but starting this year I'm going to try bumping the state size from 2 to 3. A higher state size will get you more coherent sentences, but it's also more likely for sentences from the training data to be re-generated verbatim, because any given combination of words becomes less probable as the number of words in the combination increases. (This can still happen with smaller state sizes when very uncommon words get used, but it's less likely.)

For example, a state size of 3 considers the entirety of the "Code stared at" sentence fragment above, and thus would only generate another word based on things Code has previously stared at… unless it picks 'the' as the next word, in which case it'll be generating a word to come after 'stared at the' leading into any singular object that anyone has previously stared at in one of my stories.

The other downside of increasing the state size is that it also increases the size of the model because there are more potential states to be in. For comparison, my models made from the first 6 years of stories are:
- 5MB for a state size of 1
- 24MB for a state size of 2
- 32MB for a state size of 3

Improvements

That covers the basics, but there's more you can do with this.

First, when I'm generating a sentence, I can nudge it in a particular direction by providing one or more words to start a sentence, which I have done before by telling it to start a sentence with "Code" and seeing what nonsense the chain decides I should be doing this time. I could give it more than that, such as "Code grabbed", which when I tested it, resulted in a surprisingly SFW spread of towels, remotes, and Zhen's arm being grabbed onto.

There's also nothing really stopping the generation from just going on indefinitely in an unreadable run-on sentence, which can and does happen, so I can provide a maximum sentence length to the generator and tell it to stop after a certain number of words.

Starting this year I have also added some pre-processing and post-processing steps. By default every word is a single token so "Code" and "Code's" would actually be tracked separately and have different probabilities. One step I took is to split the possessive "'s" off from my name, as well as every other time this is used, making it its own token with its own set of probabilities, so that all names share the chances for what comes after them. Then in the output data I remove the space between a name and 's to make them a single word again. I did the same thing with non-terminal punctuation as well such as commas, colons and semicolons, because otherwise they would be counted as part of the previous word. This adds more variety to the output. It doesn't distinguish between possessives and contractions, but due to how Markov chains work, it will never slap a 's in a place it shouldn't be in as it can only follow words it's previously seen a 's follow in the training data.

I also do a little cleanup to remove certain characters from the text entirely such as the < and > symbols (which I've used in some early stories to indicate written or telepathic messages) and my twenty-hyphen section breaks which aren't a sentence but would otherwise show up as one if I didn't strip them from the training data.

Finally, I can also turn 'strict' mode on/off when generating. With it on, it will only start a sentence with a word it has seen starting a sentence before; with it off, it will ignore that restriction. I typically leave this on when generating a whole sentence from nothing (as I'm more likely to get sentence fragments otherwise) and turn it off when I give it a starting word to turn into a sentence (to improve the variety of the output).

If I wanted to go the extra mile, as part of the preprocessing I'd run the text through a stemmer to cut each word down to just its base form. This would make the output very grammatically incorrect, but would further reduce confusion by treating words like "stood", "stand", and "standing" as different forms of the same word rather than separate words. That's a little further than I'm going to go, though, since I don't want to make more effort for myself re-formatting the output and correcting its grammar any more than necessary.

Conclusion

The end result of this is a big ol' random text generator that only uses words I've used before and strings them together into an order that will usually look like something I'd write. More or less. If you've ever used (or been forced by an employer to use) an LLM you can see the differences and limitations of this model.

As I've stated in previous journals, I do this for amusement purposes only, for my anniversary posts and for times I just want to chuckle by subjecting a character to the whims of RNG. I do not use it for writing new stories, especially since a good 80-90% of what's generated is nonsense, sentences regenerated from the original input, or boring 'normal' sentences - what you see in my anniversary posts is me cherrypicking the best of 100 or so generated sentences.

The sweet spot of a Markov generation is when it has a valid sentence except for one word out of place that makes it hilariously weird. It has zero understanding of narration or story and will mix and match characters from different stories with ease, bouncing between topics and subject matter. If you get a laugh out of the Markov Chain generations I put in my anniversary posts, then my mission is accomplished!

...when you subtract the 4 banned users, anyway.

I appreciate all of the fans of my work, regardless of which subset of it you're here to enjoy. Thank you, and I hope to keep posting more for a long time to come!

Short version: InkBunny, incorrectly, thinks 3D renders are screenshots. But only as an unwritten, unofficial rule. One that will still get your gallery nuked without warning. I'm not a 3D artist, but this policy is so monumentally stupid that I can't abide it. So I've hidden my IB gallery in solidarity with 3D artists, and won't post there until IB either makes this policy official (and explicitly states what attribution is required), or backs off on this nonsense entirely.

---

A while back (it's hard to know exactly when since they haven't made any official statements), InkBunny implemented a policy where they treat all 3D renders as screenshots. Yes, I was as confused as you. "Pressing the PrintScreen key" is, by definition, not at all the same as "painstakingly setting up a scene, rigging and posing models, configuring lighting, then having the GPU render it for hours or even days at a time".

They used this thoroughly flawed interpretation of what a screenshot is to start nuking the galleries of 3D artists, and while some pushed back to get their galleries restored, the administration (who only replied in journal comments rather than making any kind of actual announcement, naturally) made it very clear just how little they think of 3D artists by calling their work "just moving some sliders around". I'm not even a 3D artist and I was appalled.

When you dig into it, they hide behind the potential for assets in a 3D render to not be credited, which doesn't actually have anything to do with an image being a screenshot or not. Remember, IB also allows GenAI images, and the only credit you have to give is to the LAION model itself, which invariably contains an unknown number of unattributed stolen images vacuumed up from the internet en masse. Every single argument that IB made for removing 3D art utterly fails when applied to GenAI (these are all direct quotes from one of IB's site admins):

But it is not OK to have significant components attributable to a single source uncredited in a final work
...unless it's a GenAI piece that was entirely made from uncredited sources, of course. The defense to this is "there are so many sources you can't identify any particular one" and I would love to know which IB staff member is able to look at a 3D render and identify who made every single vertex in the background.

There isn't on the face of it anything wrong with derivative works, but they have to be credited and made with permission like any other submission
...unless it's a GenAI submission that only has to credit the model and not any of the tens of thousands of artists whose work was stolen, of course. Even 'better', the defense to that is "we can't hold GenAI to that standard because there's just too many people to credit" - wow! I never knew I could get away with plagiarism if I just did it too many times to count! Truly this is an enlightened policy. /s Not to mention that (almost) every other submission type has instructions on IB's ACP as to what credit has to be given, but 3D art has nothing, since it doesn't even have a section on the ACP at all.

We don't really want a bunch of generic models doing the same things to each other, which is what we were getting with Second Life, SFM, etc.
...unless it's generation #32,742 of Loona in the default GenAI art style, of course. This goes on and on.

Even worse, it's been months since this first cropped up in May, and they still haven't even made this stance official. IB's last announcement journal is from over a year ago. Their Acceptable Content Policy doesn't even have a section on 3D - or any mention of 3D at all. Even if you grant them "well IB thinks they're screenshots", the screenshots section doesn't have anything about required credit or attribution like other sections (such as audio remixes) do.

And if they treat the output of Blender as a screenshot because it counts as "other software", why doesn't GenAI get treated the same way? Apparently you have to have sculpted every single vertex in a 3D render yourself, by hand, starting with nothing but the default Blender cube, for it to be allowable. (But you can just throw prompts at Stable Diffusion and post a batch of 6 images to IB as much as you want, no problem)

I was wondering if maybe they were dragging their heels on this, or perhaps just trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug and forget about it... but nah, I've found more 3D artists still getting their galleries wiped as of a couple days ago. So today, I went from merely not posting, to hiding my entire IB gallery.

The end result of IB's unwritten policy is a Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of every 3D artist on IB - they don't know if they'll wake up to find their galleries wiped, and they don't even know what steps (if any) they can take to avoid that fate!

The most charitable explanation for this is sheer incompetence. The alternative is targeted malice: the IB staff use this ludicrous definition of "screenshot" to remove people and content they just simply don't like. Take your pick.

Either way - I stopped posting on IB in May and now I've gone the extra step of hiding my gallery on IB entirely. I'm only posting on FA and Weasyl for the foreseeable future.

I'm part of FA's staff now!

As of mid-February, anyway. If you check my other account  Shaaria you'll see the little shield badge next to my name indicating I'm part of the staff. I've been here since FA's beginning, and am glad to have the opportunity to help it improve in whatever way I can. Despite all the site has been through recently I'm hopeful for its future, and I want it to succeed and improve.

Do not contact me directly regarding site issues. Always file a trouble ticket if you need to report something.

1.5 Million Words!

I actually missed this milestone - Special Exception is the story that pushed it over the line. This year has been a little slow so far due to holiday breaks and sickness. However, I've recovered from con crud, escaped the Client From Hell at work, and am back in the groove now and chugging along.

Last Call for Raining Gold entries

If you are looking to submit an entry for Raining Gold, Part 1, you don't have much longer to do it. Entries will be closing soon, most likely during next week!

Changes to my queue

I've added a "limbo" section to separately track people who have reached the top of the queue but don't have an idea ready. This is for all intents and purposes the same as my old system of pulling people up in the queue if everyone ahead of them wasn't ready, but is organized more cleanly.

You might also notice I have a commissioner marked as MIA. They haven't replied in literal months and my Telegram messages are showing as unread. It's unfortunate but happens to everyone who takes comms eventually, and I'll be removing them from my queue within the next few days if I still don't hear anything.

A "lost story" is coming soon

Keep your eyes out for Terminally Online within the next few days. Unfortunate circumstances for the commissioner forced me to cease writing it when it was about 3/4 done, but it's been touched up and fixed to have a somewhat proper ending because I'd much rather show it off than have it never see the light of day. Originally written during 2023, it's languished for a while but I'm looking forward to publishing it; it's somewhere in the 30k words range if I recall correctly. Stay tuned...

I wrote a goals journal last year: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10766997/

And basically everything in it I managed to accomplish. I finished Small Fish, Big Pond, I published TPBS's Second Edition, I expanded to Weasyl (even if it seems to be basically dead for writers), I expanded my website and published Towards the Light, I created a Discord server, and I'm pretty sure I cycled my queue (the slot I was using as a marker got cancelled so it's hard to say).

I did attempt some voice work here and there, but I was never happy with it; it took a lot of re-takes and some of the voices I wanted to do I couldn't manage to do consistently, so I haven't published anything (despite making separate attempts to record parts of TPBS and Study Buddies). There's still a month left on the calendar so who knows, but I'll probably just be sticking to text.

We're nearly at the end of the year, so I'm going to think about what I want to do next year. This goals list will be a lot smaller though since some of the above items were ones I'd been considering for quite a long time.

Go to a con for the first time

This one's easy since I've already registered for Anthro New England. I've never been to a con before so we'll have to see how this goes.

Do another episode of Raining Gold

I'm going to use my next personal slot for this, so keep your eyes out if you're interested.

Expand on my stats and make them public

I plan to make a Google Sheet with the stats on my stories, as well as expanding them a lot more, instead of just having them in an Excel sheet on my computer. It'll be more fun that way. ;)

Cycle my queue

...again. I hope. In this case it'll basically be the  walnut45's slot that I aim to... well... get to, at least. Basically, 10 main-queue slots that aren't personal ones.

Experiment with more formats

In particular I want to try writing at least one second-person perspective story. I've got a half-written one lying around that I need to finish.

Make a TWINE game

Basically an interactive CYOA style story, more sophisticated than the PDF-based ones I've done before. I've downloaded a copy of TWINE, looked at a couple of guides, and just need to try it out (since it's free). I already have some ideas; I just have to pick one, plan it, and do it.

Another book, for real this time?

I've got ideas, but I need to pick one and focus on it. My motivation for extra writing is basically rock bottom at the moment because of work being such a soul-draining grind, but hopefully that won't be the case for much longer. I've got a vacation coming up soon though that I can use.



Okay, maybe a few more goals than I expected, though some of them will be easier. Enjoy the rest of the year!

I'll be at Anthro New England 2025. It'll be my first convention ever so hopefully it won't be too much of a disaster! I'll be Around, as Codelizard, so you may or may not run into me if I'm there.

I already gave a more personal message on my other account's journal, so this is purely regarding my commission work.

The official statement at this time is that nothing is going to change with FA in the near future, and as long as FA is here, I will be too. I don't buy into the FUD that FA is going to disappear overnight (if nothing else, server hosts tend to bill monthly, so if FA can't keep going - and as far as we know right now, it will continue operating - we'll get some advance notice).

I've been here since the beginning in 2005, and I'll remain until one of us dies; this is my home more than any physical location, as FA has been with me between two different countries, a dozen jobs and six different residences. I wouldn't even be here, taking commissions and pursuing a creative passion for writing, if not for FA. So I will continue to use FA as my primary means for taking commissions, displaying my queue, and posting the results.

I do crosspost to IB and Weasyl, and I have my Discord server as well, if worst comes to worst. But I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. So pull up a chair, and stay with me. If this is temporary unrest, we'll weather it together. If it's not, then I'm here until the end.

Today, I learned that Discord invites go to a specific channel. When you right-click the server icon and pick "Create Invite", it goes to the channel you happen to have open at the time you create the invite. So people were getting thrown into a channel they didn't have access to and it was failing to load.

I've created a new invite that actually goes to the welcome channel, and updated the previous journal and my profile page, but here it is again:
discord (DOT) gg (SLASH) 4cnWsWxcux

🎉 1,000,000 published words! 🎊

The publication of Malware Defender has pushed me to 1,015,332 words published here on my FA account! (The millionth word was "best" "one" (I found a typo and fixed it, lowering the word count by 1), for those wondering.) I was expecting my second book, Towards the Light to take that milestone, but an extensive editing process means it's still 99.9% done at this time.

This is insane, to be perfectly honest. That's longer than the entire LotR trilogy, plus The Silmarillion. It's longer than all six Frank Herbert Dune books added together. It's ALMOST as long as all of Harry Potter (1,084,170, so TtL will push me past it if something else doesn't first). It's... not even close to Wheel of Time which is around 4 million, haha. Game of Thrones is around 2 million total, for comparison.

And it's all thanks to you! I wouldn't be doing this if not for the commissioners and readers out there. Not in the sense that I chase page views or reader counts but just because it's nice to have an audience, and I wouldn't write any of this stuff purely for myself. Some of it might be more meaningful to me than my readers (like TPBS) but I still put it out there in the hopes that other people find it and enjoy it. Whether it's from enjoying the characters, narratives, settings or plots, or because it's porn that's up your alley, I adore hearing other people say they liked my work.

And so, to help try and build a little more of a community...

My Discord server is now open!

discord (DOT) gg (SLASH) 4cnWsWxcux
(Link obscured to prevent bots from scraping it)

I set it up earlier this year and was going to open it when I published TtL, but since something else pushed me past the big 1-mil early I'm opening it now. Whether you just want to lurk and listen for updates, or you want to engage and talk with me, everyone's welcome! I expect it to be a fairly chill server since despite my prolific writing I'm pretty small-time as FA members go. This server is just a place for fans of my work to chill, chat, and ask me questions. The NSFW channels are locked behind an opt-in role, as are the channels for the WS/Scat stories I am most commonly writing, so you don't need to engage with any of that if you don't want to.

In addition to sets of chat/art/ask-code channels it also has a copy of my commission terms and my commission queue so that FA isn't my only place for these. I have a fairly minimal set of channels to get started, and if I get a community going and more are needed, then I will make more.

Nothing is going to be Discord exclusive. I'm still here on FA and will still be reachable through the same means as before. You don't have to join to talk to me or commission me, it's just more convenient. I'd just be happy to see some of my readers there, so feel free to join!

tl;dr All old forms of payment are still valid. There are new options if you want them.

I've updated my main ToS journal accordingly, but here's the rundown for anyone interested:
- All discounts lower my rate by $0.25 each.
- The "My OCs" discount remains as it was.
- Paying with art from a third party gives you credit at a discounted rate - that is, the discount is in your benefit.
- Paying with gift cards gets you a discount AND I'll round down to the next $5 increment since gift cards are typically sold in multiples of $5.

Any art must be from a third party to avoid any conflicts of interest. Plus, if you're trying to pay me with something you made, that's not paying, that's a trade, and while I am potentially open to trades I handle those on a case-by-case basis.

In the interests of brevity I omitted some "obvious" things from the main journal: I have to approve the artist and the picture idea. You don't have to theme the picture around the story I'm writing for you, or other stories I've written, but I would especially love it if you did. That said, it does need to be something I like, both in terms of the art style (which I am picky on) and the content (so don't try to inject your own kinks into a picture you're trying to pay with or I will ಠ_ಠ at you). I'm flexible with scheduling (since my queue is long and other artists might take a while too) but until I actually get the picture that was intended to be used as payment, I will treat it as though I have not been paid, which means you can't re-enter the queue. If the picture is worth less than what you owe you can pay the difference another way. If it's worth more, then I can credit you towards the next story, or maybe pay you the remainder, depending on circumstances.

Gift cards are easier, but might pose some challenges. For instance, I have discovered that Steam only lets you send digital gift cards to people on your friends list, and they must have been your friends for at least 3 days. There might be other anti-fraud measures on some platforms to account for as well that I'll probably discover as we go.

Okay, so, to elaborate on the previous journal:

I have a day job. The "Code" in "Codelizard" is there for a reason; I'm a programmer. A senior one. As such, I earn a pretty good salary from my day job. For this reason I have been trying to keep my rates low, at around the minimum wage given my average writing speed. I want my stuff to be fairly accessible, and I just charge the money so that I get some compensation for my time. It's a hobby, not my job, so I am always flexible with payments if people need to split them up or wait for a pay day or something, because it's not paying my bills. It's just meant to be a nice little side income that mostly ends up being passed on to other artists when I commission them and pay out of my PayPal balance.

The government thinks otherwise. Because my day job income is a not-insignificant salary, all extra income from my writing commissions gets taxed... heavily. To the point where it doesn't even feel worth it any more, again given that I was originally trying to aim somewhere around minimum wage for my writing rates.

But as crushing as it is to discover this the hard way, I don't want to stop writing or give up commissions. It's a good creative outlet and I enjoy doing it. I like hearing from people who read and enjoy my stories, and I'm always happy when a commissioner likes what I've created for them. Plus, my commissioners give me fun ideas to work with. I want to keep doing it, but I also don't want to be doing it for free (or paying half of it to the IRS). And trying to raise my rates accordingly is a losing battle that will just price everyone out of commissioning me, and I don't want to do that.

So...

I'm currently considering how to accept non-monetary payments. Art would be an obvious option. Or video games or gift cards or stuff like that. I've actually done this a couple times before where I've given people credit for either drawing or commissioning art for me related to my stories.

And doing the math, I could even give a huge discount on it. Even if I hypothetically dropped the exchange to my original rate of $1/100 words, I'd still be coming out ahead compared to earning the money directly and then having the government eat half of it. Not to mention that there's a better emotional payoff; I love seeing my stuff brought to life visually (or even as audio, which has happened once). Even moreso if it's something involving one of my characters. Plus, it helps spread awareness of me and brings in new potential readers to enjoy my work. These things are worth more to me than the $40 (well, $20 after tax) or whatever I'd otherwise get.

There are obvious caveats. I'll need to be willing to accept cash in full either way as not everyone will want to go this route. A perfectly equal exchange is highly improbable, so I'll still have to accept money just to cover the difference, and just treat the non-monetary payments as a discount option. I'll also need to be a little picky on artists and art styles, so that people can't try to pay with MS Paint doodles or tiny background slots in an overpriced YCH. Any given artist and I won't work in lockstep so one of us is going to finish first. It'll require a certain amount of trust between me and the commissioner, as well as the third-party artist.

If I accept gift games I need to be careful not to end up with a thousand games I'll never play, and I have to be picky there too so people don't try to gift me copies of Bad Rats or hentai games or whatever. Gift cards might be nice in certain circumstances where I already have something in mind I need, like a new piece of computer hardware, but otherwise aren't very useful to me. I guess I could also take GrubHub credit for when I order dinner, since food is obviously something I need regularly, but there's an upper limit on how much of that I need.

I'll have to think on it some more before I write it into my terms officially. Until then, it is unofficially a potential option, so feel free to reach out if you're on my queue and interested in such an exchange. I'm also open to ideas in the comments if you have any.

U.S. taxes are an absolute pain in the ass.

That is all.

As is usual, IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY ON MY QUEUE, THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU. This only applies to new main queue slots added after this journal is put up, and to any Express Queue slots that occur after March 1st.

The new rate will be $1.75 per 100 words, rounded down. The new discounted rate will be $1.50 per 100 words, rounded down.

It's going to be a long time before I cycle my queue (though as I mentioned in this journal, I hope to do so some time this year, getting down to at least past the slot currently held by Esayian). So this is me planning ahead more than anything else, well aware that I won't actually see this bump in rates for a long time yet.

I'm also not putting it into effect immediately on Express Queue slots to let people get a few more in at the current rate before the increase.

This year has been quite something. I wrote two books and published one of them, got my Express Queue going to seemingly resounding success, increased my writing time, published to a new furry art site and learned the technical limits of Google Docs. (Pro tip: don't use it for huge projects with lots of revisions and comments)

I'm still going strong, so here's a shortlist of things I'm planning for 2024:

Finish "Small Fish, Big Pond"

I've got one chapter left and it's already 90% done. I just need to take some spare time to wrap it up and it'll be nice to have a mid-size project completed.

Publish "Towards the Light"

The second book that I wrote this year which is undergoing an extensive editing process with the commissioner. We're getting there, despite Google Docs' best efforts to thwart us.

Publish the 2nd edition of "The Planeswalker: Between Skies"

This will depend on when I get all the chapter art for it, and when I write all the bonus scenes and supplemental material I want to add. Ideally this will happen on its 1-year anniversary, but we'll see. The main text of the story won't change (aside from fixing a few errors that slipped through the editing of the 1st edition), I'm just adding more stuff.

Expand to Weasyl

I offer my apologies in advance for what I'm going to do to the Weasyl frontpage. It's a much smaller and less-used site than FA so I wouldn't be surprised if I manage to completely dominate the Writing segment of the frontpage for the better part of a day or more.

Expand my website

I plan to expand TPBS's microsite to have pages for all of my SFW stories: The Days After, Towards the Light, and The Planeswalker: Between Skies, offering all of them (and any more SFW stories I write) in various formats under a pen name.

Start a Discord server

I'll do this after publishing TtL since that will 100% for-sure push me over the 1 million published words milestone. I've got a plan written up for channels and such:
- Channels to ask me questions about whatever; commissions, things I will/won't do, lore, etc.
- Copies of my commission queue and my terms so that they can be found away from any particular art site.
- Announcement channels with an opt-in role for pings so you can know when I've published something.
- Additional formats of longer works, as somehow Discord is the best place for me to dump a bunch of extra formats if you want to read a PDF or ebook version of a story.
- While there will be NSFW channels, and channels for the niche fetishes I'm best known for, they'll be opt-in through a role management bot so you won't have to deal with that if you're not into it.

Experiment with audio recordings

While a more grandiose plan is to record TPBS as an audiobook, I might want to first try something shorter and see how that goes. Maybe people will find my voice annoying, maybe they'll think it's okay for narrative and not erotica, and maybe it'll push people's buttons, who knows. But I won't find out until I try, so I'll have to pick a story (or a scene from a story), record a reading of it, and put it up to see what people think.

Cycle my queue at least once

At the time of writing I have 17 entries in the queue (of which 13 are actually commissioners, and the #1 is written and being edited). Not every slot is equal, some will be smaller and some will be bigger. I'd like to at least go through the whole queue next year at a bare minimum; preferably with more progress than that but I hope to make better progress. Various measures I've started taking (insisting on full outlines before starting and having a pause at 30k words) should help keep my queue moving much more reliably. Ultimately this is still a hobby and not my job, and it won't become my job unless I get laid off or something, but I do want to have a decent turnaround time regardless.

Another bo-

Hahaha, no. Two books in one year was enough to last me a while. Unless...?
More seriously, while I don't have any plans to write a book at this time, I didn't exactly intend to write 100,000 words when I started TPBS or TtL either. They just kind of happened. So I can't exclude the possibility of more accidental books in 2024.
Even more seriously, I'll probably try to take some long-form writing time to do more emotionally weighted stuff like the Warmly series / Study Buddies as they've been incredibly insightful to me while writing them. I'll just have to find some particular theme to write about and explore.

That's all for now. Best of luck to everyone in the new year, and thanks to all my readers! Whether you've read every last word I've written, or only that one story that panders to your specific fetish, I appreciate all of you. Thanks!

tl;dr once again I'm fine, just working on another big one.

I know it's been quite a while since the last main-queue story. The reason is simple: the current one is big. I am facing down the real possibility of writing two whole-ass books in the same year and I'm not sure how to feel about that, but it is cool. Thankfully with the Express Queue it hasn't been total radio silence and I'm still doing a short one a week, which is a nice source of variety and a good way to keep you all going with a steady supply of short stories.

This isn't the only one, either; you may recall there was an additional slot that I was working on for a while that got delayed several times before being pulled off entirely. That story was also quite large, just barely shy of 30k words with 7/10 chapters drafted, but unfortunately stuff happened to the commissioner that I won't elaborate on here. I may still be able to finish it up for them at some point in the future but it will be done in my spare time and not as part of my queue, so until then it will languish in an incomplete state.

Ultimately what went wrong here was that each story in this block did not have an outline before I began writing on it, and the fault for that rests entirely with me; as the writer it is my responsibility to make sure I have all the details in order before committing to the work. Similarly to my job, I need to know the requirements before I can start coding. This is why I added an extra clause in my terms earlier this year: I will not start work on a story until I have a complete outline. This isn't to be mean or to be a stickler for rules, it's because I had three stories in a row where I encountered great difficulty due to a lack of an outline and I've learned my lesson. Outlines are important for multiple reasons. They let me gauge the size of the work, but more importantly with a complete outline I can write all the way to the end of the first draft without having to stop and poke the commissioner for more details.

While I do enjoy writing these really big stories, it does feel a little unfair to the people in the main queue who have to wait for me to get past them. However, a person with a big story also waited their turn to get to the top of the queue, so it would also be unfair to make them wait longer by breaking up their story or working on someone else's in parallel. I'll have to think more on how to resolve this since I do, at least, have express slots to partially alleviate the problem; my queue keeps growing - which is good insofar as it means I have lots of people who enjoy my work and want to get some for themselves - and I'd like to be able to move through it a bit faster in some way.

Anyway, that's more or less what I wanted to say: addressing the long wait and why I'm going to be stricter about outlines going forward. With 1/3 as many submissions, my writing account already has 3/4 of the views of my main account, and I'm getting a steady trickle of new watchers all the time. I enjoy my writing and hope to keep doing it and am always glad to hear when people like my work.

Only a couple of months until my 5th anniversary of story writing! Let's go!

If you haven't seen it already, check out https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52481256/

It's been quite a trip. Clocking in at 105,324 words, it is officially my longest creation (crushing the previous record of 50,454) and is longer than The Hobbit (95k words). It also pushes my grand word total to 756,964 words, demolishing my last milestone of 706k (for LotR + The Hobbit + The Silmarillion combined). I will need to start adding another author's books to compare against, probably the Dune books.

Even though I consider The Planeswalker: Between Skies to be my magnum opus, I'm not done writing, definitely not yet. I have to get back to work on Small Fish, Big Pond for one thing and finish that out. Plus my commissions, of course. And I have a whole stack of other ideas stuffed away in a notes file waiting to be turned into actual stories. And if TPBS gets enough interest I plan to do an updated re-release of it once I have all the art done; it'd include various supplementary material like the art, perhaps a map, some extra information about the setting and other things you'd usually find in the appendices of a fantasy book.

I've already gone around to every group I'm in to advertise my book, but I'd greatly appreciate it if others who enjoyed it could help spread the word. It's free, after all! You can't argue with the price and I'd like to think it's an enjoyable fantasy novel for an adult (in terms of maturity, not explicitness) audience who wants a compelling story.

Regardless, this isn't the end. I'm still going strong and I hope to write many more things from here.

I'm Writing A Book!

Or rather, I've written one, and it's in the final stages of editing. It will be published here for free, and I will also be posting some download links in other formats. It's over 100,000 words so I'm going to have to do it in .docx and .pdf formats and I'll ask a friend to convert it into some ebook formats as well. I don't currently intend to actually publish it on an ebook store because of anxiety and a lack of self confidence - it was supposed to be a personal short story that got really out of hand.

I've been posting commissioned art for it on my other account, which you can see here: https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery.....-Between-Skies

What's it about?
If it were a real book and it had a back cover, the blurb would read...

Those who wield great power must know when to stay their hand.

Disaster is unfolding in a world among the clouds populated by dragons, and some of its residents have embarked on a journey to confront it. Yet they have an unusual source of assistance: an extraplanar traveler aiding their efforts.

To avoid discovery, she must blend in among them. Come what may, she must not do anything that compromises her disguise... even when it puts her companions in jeopardy.

Are the lives of friends a price worth paying in pursuit of a goal, however noble it may be?

It is a completely SFW story, but written for an adult audience. It is a high fantasy book that tells of a group on an adventure, their journey, and their bonds with one another. It also serves to properly introduce Shaaria, my other primary character, outside of the realm of smut. It is a serious story with emotional parts, though it's not grimdark or depressing - it is a proper narrative with a real story to it. If you've read The Days After, it's that same general style of narrative.

I'm excited to release it, but also nervous. It's Coming Soon^TM as soon as the final rounds of editing are done. I truly hope people read it and enjoy it!

Friday Writing slot

A prior engagement I had on Fridays has ended, freeing up that evening. I will be using it for writing time, as a 3-hour block, same as the others. I am taking a vacation soon (the week of May 28th), and this will take effect after that week is over. So, June 9th will be the first Friday that I will be writing on.

This is the most time I am willing to devote to my side hobby at this time (9hrs/wk) but it will help me move through the queue faster and will also let me do something else I've been considering, namely...

Quick Slots Are Dead, Long Live The Express Queue

As I mentioned in this journal I am going to do away with Quick Slots, which have had a highly variable and unpredictable demand, and also have to wait behind main-queue commissions. To streamline the whole process and have a quicker turnaround for small things, I will have a second queue that only takes ideas I can finish in one writing session to serve the same purpose. I couldn't have done this back when I only had 1 writing session a week, but now that I will have 3, it's much more feasible.

Details:
- My Sunday writing slot will be used for Express Queue commissions. In the event that it is empty I will (probably) use it for main queue commissions instead.
- Express Queue slots have a soft limit of 3000 words, which is roughly "one scene with an intro", because 2500-3000 words is typically how much I can do in a single writing session.
- For NSFW stories, any sex or fetish scenes will have a limit of 2 characters maximum.
- Express Queue stories must be self-contained. That is, whatever story they have must be resolved within that same slot. Sequels to previous self-contained stories are fine, just no "Part 1" type stuff in the Express Queue - that's what main queue slots are for.
- You must have an outline ready and approved by me before I will put you in the Express Queue. As with main queue commissions I'm perfectly happy to help flesh out or even write an outline, but I will not accept "I'll come up with an idea later" for the express queue. (It's still fine for the main queue) This is because I need to verify that your idea is actually something I can do in a single writing block.
- Express slots will be charged at my normal rate of $1.50/100 words rounded down, or $1.35/100 words if one of my characters is in a major role in it.
- Any material I would normally write about is allowed in an Express Queue story, as long as it can fit in the word limit.
- You can be in both queues at the same time, but still only once per queue.
- The main queue will have a personal slot every 4 slots instead of every 5; all the current Quick Slots will simply be deleted from the queue.
- I will not reserve slots for myself in the Express Queue.

I am willing to accept ideas now but I will not work on them until after the previously mentioned schedule change - so the first Express Queue writing day will be Sunday, June 4th.

I just noticed I hit another nice milestone recently, and this increase is for sure entirely due to my work and not due to any legacy holdover courtesy watchers.

Thank you all! I'm keeping at it and I hope you continue to read and enjoy the stories I create.

I was looking for some word counts of books to compare myself to, and I stumbled on this quote:

"500-1000 words a day is perfectly reasonable. I do on average 2,500–and that is after twenty years of practice, not to mention being able to do this full time. If you can do 500 words a day five days a week, that’s a novel every year. Don’t feel this is a bad rate. Keep at it."

This is from Brandon Sanderson, a very well-known and prolific modern author. (His books are good, definitely recommended)
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1ced7z/comment/c9fsl3i/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

This is a surprisingly inspiring thing for me to find because, as I state in my featured journal, I typically do about 3000 words in a single 3-hour writing block. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but that's about the average, which is why my Quick Slots cap out at 3000 words.

So apparently, I write at the pace of a professional author. Perhaps not quite to the same level of quality, but still, I thought I was somewhere in the middle at best - apparently I'm at a professional level. Sadly, this is my hobby and not my career, so I can't devote as much time to it as I'd like, but it's still reassuring to know that the time I do put towards it is apparently well spent!

Now that we are in November 2022, it has now been 4 years since I started taking commissions. Last year's anniversary journal is here if you missed it, but now it's time for another run with updated stats!

I have published 55 stories, up from 32 last year, totaling 517,228 words, up from 225,507 last year. I've more than doubled my total word count! Amazing what actually writing on a schedule can accomplish. This annihilated last year's milestone goal of 343,988 (the first two Lord of the Rings books), and thanks to The Days After and Friendship Is Golden, it also blew right past 481,103 (all three LotR books). Next up is 576,459 (LotR + The Hobbit) and that'll probably be here sooner rather than later, so after that is 706,112 (LotR+The Hobbit+The Silmarillion). After that, I'm going to need to start pulling in other author's works to compare against. I also hit the big 500k thanks to Small Fish, Big Pond Ch1.

A total of 352 narrated pees have been written, up from 182 last year. The average is now 6.4 (up from 5.7). Considering that FiG counts for 42 all by itself, it's definitely got its finger on the scales on this one; if I don't count it, the average goes back to 5.7.

An estimated total of 561.8 pints of urine have been expelled, up from 224.7 last year. The decimals come not only from Fidget for being smol, but also from Sydney from FiG, since she is stated to be smaller than the others, so I counted her for less. (That's 70 gallons, by the way, up from 28 last year) As before, this doesn't include the really egregious hyper pees (but does include estimates for the big girls from Splash Party). This is more than enough to fill a bathtub (42 gallons). As a back-of-the-napkin estimate, a cubic foot is 7.5 gallons, so this could fill almost 9 cubic feet, which is at the lower end of capacities for a typical fridge.

There have been 98 orgasms, raising the average from 1 to 1.8 per story. Most likely this is due to me branching out from pure watersports stories.

And as for things peed on, we're at 74 floors (up from 38), 44 containers (up from 30), 19 vehicles (up from 13), and I added a new stat: 51 items of furniture (tables, desks, chairs etc) have been peed on at some point or another across all my stories.

All of this is only possible due to the continued support of all my commissioners, watchers and commenters, so thank you all. Let's see where things go by next year!

And of course, I added all of my stories into a Markov chain again, more than doubling the size of its training data. Let's see what it comes up with this time. (My commentary is in parentheses, like this)

Short ones
- He was quite another. (This feels like a backhanded compliment, somehow.)
- Terra only moaned in the cushy pillows at the store out of the sofa. (Don't judge, some people just have their special comfy spots that they like to moan from.)
- Sammy was glad that that was about to do. (It's a good day that that was about to do what has to be done by me...)
- Inside were several printed pictures of Natalie, glancing away from it. (Spooky. Halloween was yesterday, though!)
- Maybe it's not empty. (Maybe it's Maybelline?)
- Most of her slightly pale stream gushed from her breast. (Markov chains do not understand basic anatomy. I'm sure this is someone's fetish, though.)
- Hannah chuckled as she looked around in her bladder. (...looking for what, exactly?)
- He wouldn't allow himself to keep as leftovers. (Markov generations with threatening auras)
- Cursing aloud as she held the door closed behind her. (Another Halloween generation.)
- Sydney asked, momentarily surprised; she glanced at Code with a gasp. (An unexpected crossover!)
- She was incredibly nervous about the archery range. (What do you call a fear of bows?)
- Ardes admitted as she felt the intense desperation building up in a more dramatic chord. (Ardes comes with her own personal soundtrack, apparently)
- Her golden fluid grew weaker as she tugged her panties and pants were on opposite sides of the building. (It started out normal, and then went waaaaaay off the rails!)
- I'll probably be really hard to consider anything else. (I think the script is asking me to stop running it.)
- His persistence was rewarded as she relieved herself into the air. (Hey, this one could actually make sense in the right context!)
- Not to mention that since it was probably full of determination. (*Undertale Intensifies*)
- If someone had told her what it was, it was a long sigh. (I don't know why but I find this one hilarious)
- The dragon flew off, and then shuddered, stopping abruptly. (I think we know where this is going.)

Okay, if that's what it does with short sentences, I can't imagine what trainwrecks we'll get from...

Long ones
- Sydney snorted and gave in to clear out of Code's depths, but she swelled with confidence and swayed her hips to spray earlier. (Sydney becomes so confident that she can pee backwards in time.)
- But he took in the continuing saga of her urine running down onto the plastic, her urine gushed into C'helpa's waiting mouth. (I mean, I do put a fair amount of plot into my piss fetish smut, but I would never call it a "continuing saga"!)
- Only then did she get Kaitlyn to help wake herself up, Sammy quickly realized that Code couldn't hear her stream began to flag, she squeezed her muscles pushed it back up, she saw Code undoing her belt, but it would be more to get once they went across her clit as she connected the dots, her tail to move something she'd wanted to, the middle of it, while she was doing, and it struck her and playfully stuck out his forelimbs, contemplating whether or not to assume it was his turn to blush, though nowhere near the edge herself, Rose kept her distance, looking for anything he tried not to think little of interest was apparent. (It went wild on this one, that might be the longest one I've seen it spit out. How many characters are in this???)
- He frowned, opening his pack of cigarettes from his cock throbbing within her pussy, she spread her pussylips enough to need another one. (The first half was already absurd, but the second half makes it even better/worse!)
- She turned and tugged her shirt only coming down here, it was too shallow for the two people that were a mess, the blankets next to it rustling the leaves, and Makayla gave a small glance towards Code, who was not a big one, and tapped it in its scabbard to the next zone: more caves, this time of day. (The second half killed me and I don't know why)

I'm honestly not sure if this is an improvement over last year or not, though I did get a few more (very short) coherent sentences out of it now and then.

Until next time!

tl;dr I'm fine. I've just been working on a huge story.

It's been 5 weeks or so since my last upload, so I figured I'd post something just to let everyone know I'm still alive, and that I haven't been hospitalized, my computer hasn't exploded, I didn't fall off the face of the internet, I haven't moved to Mars or spontaneously combusted or whatever.

I have, however, been working on several things, which will hopefully get posted fairly soon. The main one is the commission at the top of my queue, which is easily going to break my record and push me past my next milestone. I didn't expect it to be so ambitious when I began outlining it with the commissioner, but it's grown and has been extremely enjoyable to work on.

I also have been poking at the commission at #2 in my free time since it's much shorter, and it's being reviewed, but it may not get posted for a while.

The next Quick Slot has gone to  Zenkopan, who had the most interesting idea out of those presented to me (and all of the people who had ideas had won Quick Slots before, so I went purely off which idea sounded the most fun). I'll only give a small hint as to what it is, but it involves a canon furry duo.

There have also been a couple of personal projects I've been poking at. It all started when I went "You know, instead of a bunch of scattered .txt files, I should collect my ideas into a single .doc file with headings". Which I did, but in the process I also came up with like 5 more ideas and then a few more here and there from that. So right now I have a half-written stand-alone one-off, the start of a story I'll release in chapters (probably 3-4), and an outline for the story I'm going to use my upcoming personal slot on. But on top of those I also have several more vague outlines of stories to work on at some point or another, including, of course, the fourth story featuring Code and Zhen.

Finally, November is coming up which will mark the 4th year that I have been writing stories here on FA. I will toss all my published stories into a Markov chain again and see what manner of partly-intelligible nonsense it comes up with for fun, as well as update the stats I published last year.

So that's all - just wanted to let everyone know that it's been quiet because I've been working on another gigantic story. It's in the editing phase right now, and will hopefully get published within a week, so keep an eye out.

Character List

As has been the case for a while, I have a discount available for anyone who wants to include one of my characters in a major role in a story they commission. I have a few of the main ones detailed on my main account,  Shaaria, but I actually went through a while back and put together an entire spreadsheet of them, mostly for my own interest but also to double as a source of information on characters that can/can't be used in commissions.

If you want to know which ones can/can't be used, or you're curious about the plethora of characters I have created over the years (and it's not even an exhaustive list!), then check it out. Just take note that there are multiple tabs to the sheet for different categories of character (Tabletop game character, freeform RP character, written work character).

Quick Slots

Since I have a Sunday afternoon writing slot now, the "One Night" part of One Night Wonder isn't really accurate. Since the goal is to offer a slot that's done in a single shot, I'll rename them to Quick Slots which should hopefully better convey the idea of what they're about. Nothing else about them is changing, just the name.

Speaking of Quick Slots, the next one has been awarded to  Kojondian for being the only entrant, with Lomi's story nearly completed. I'll open the following slot at the normal time.

A Milestone!

With the upload of Like, Comment, Subscribe, I passed a fun little milestone: The combined length of my works at the time (345,296 words) now exceeds the length of the first two Lords of the Rings books combined (343,988 words).

The next milestone, all three LOTR books together, is 481,103 words... and thanks to The Days After contributing a little shy of 40k words to the total, I already have less than 100k to go. On my next anniversary in November I'll do a full recap of stats and such like I did last year, but I wanted to note this one.