I'll be at my first Anthrocon this year (not my first con, I've been to MFF, ANE and FE over the last few years), along with a few friends.

Feel free to say hi, I'll be wearing my Aisling badge.

On a personal update note:

I'm going to be turning 43 in August, and in the last three years I've realized I'm autistic, started transitioning, realized I'm definitely therian/holothere, figured out my theriotype, and most recently realized I've got some plurality going on.

Freaking wild to have changed this much in such a short time. But I'm happy.

To align with the username I use everywhere else I've updated my name here.

Id you want to know whats going on in my life I'm somni.luxe over on bluesky and I update there fairly often. Doing a lot of identity reconstruction and working out how I can align my conception of my gender and therian identities and express then irl.

I am very thankful for all the loved ones who have supported me through this and all these years. Its wild Ive been on FA for 14ish years and been interacting with furry art for almost 30.

Ive gone through multiple faces and this one has only been around a year and feels really intensely connected to me in a way I've never felt before.

Main ways of contacting me:

Telegram:
https://t.me/somnilux

Discord:
somnilux

Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/somni.luxe

Mastodon:
https://yiff.life/@Somnilux

I have a twitter but its locked to minimize my use on it.

I run an interest community on Telegram so its my main/easiest source of contact.

I'm on discord enough that I should get your messages.

Bluesky I check regularly but dms are closed unless I follow you due to AI bot spam.

The rest are more placeholders til I figure out how I want to use them.

---

Really looking forward to getting more art of my sona. Have a couple of outstanding commissions but it'll be a while before I get back to regular art comissioning.

I have a bunch of gift art from the time I was unable to commission I need to sort through and eventually upload.

Life continues generally to improve for me. I feel like I'm living for the first time in my life and it makes me acutely aware of my age and how much time has been stolen from me. There's nothing that can really be done about it but I'm still having to work through the emotions associated with that loss.

I'm about eight and a half months into HRT. Feeling more at home in my skin. My wonderful friend drew my new sona. I went to FE 2024 and saw a bunch of folks Ive known for almost a decade (and one I've known for almost a decade and a half)

I'm having to skip AC this year despite having friends going/driving by my home with a space in their room due to cost. I spent big this year on a two week trip to Wales to see my girlfriend for her graduation (and my partner is coming and gonna travel all over the place on her own since she really enjoys travel) that happens at the end of July.

After the trip I'm going to begin work on my legal name change now that I've figured out what my name is going to be. Will be happy to yeet my old Christianity tied, gendered soon to be dead name and never have to see it again. Instead I'm going to use a more flexibly gendered name.

Late August will be my 42nd birthday, around the target period for me to head down to Delaware to see multiple close friends for a bit. I'll also be in chicago briefly in late september for a marathon my partner is going to be running.

I'm out with my immediate family. Out with most people I'm meeting nowadays IRL. Out with five people at work including my boss but most of it was people at HR to talk through a legal name change without having to make it public within the large company I work with (since I got my license under a nickname I dont really feel the need to change my name professionally).

Normally I might not care about being out but the company is headquartered in Oklahoma and out of the seven states it has offices in only one is a blue state, so I have to imagine a majority of the folks working there might be uncomfortable with a trans coworker, and I dont know what kind of restrictions on businesses will be coming in the next few years of anti trans legislation in the state. Though I will say it's always amused me as an atheist trans person to be the lead engineer for a whole bunch of church work.

Oh and I have a bluesky account now.
https://bsky.app/profile/somnilux.bsky.social

For those of you close to me you probably already know most of this. But I figure if someone checking into my inactive gallery wonders whats going on.

First of all, my partner decided to go back to law school, and did so in a state that was way more expensive than where we were living. So I went from comfortable abundance to more than double the living costs and half the income. So while I do have some commissions, and gifts that were given to me I haven't been diligently uploading them and would need to put effort into figuring out what I haven't shared yet in this gallery.

Beyond that life change status. Another major update. While Ive explored gender for ages, it took some time for me to realize I was trans. Even more time to come out to my partner about it. And in the last year made significant progress in finally starting to live as the real me. I started HRT a few months ago and am extremely genderfluid. Its been nice to start to actually move to a point I can express it like my character Luxe has helped me with as a model.

I also finally told my partner of 23 years that I'm a Furry. Amazing how long that one took, but weirdly enough the hardest thing to talk about. She has a phobia of costumes and mascots that have made me misread her as hating the fandom when really it was a different barrier entirely.

I went to MFF 2023. Got to see friends from the fandom over the last few months. Got to meet some folks very very important to me.

Now that my partner is a lawyer once we unbury ourselves financially I may return to commissioning and supporting art I love. In terms of personal exploration, I've uncovered some therian-style connections to being inhuman at my core sense of self. And found connection specifically with hooved mammals in particular Donkeys that Ive only just started to explore. I'm going to work on some self expression in my commissions in the next year or so while I work out that part of myself more and figure out long term if I incorporate that into Luxe as a character or if I just create something new entirely. Only problem is Luxe is an actual name I'm considering IRL so likely whatever I do with new self expression will also use the same name.

So thats the big stuff. Beyond that I'm still highly active in the fandom itself, particularly among queer/trans fans of transformation. I manage a social space on Telegram with a lot of folks who have become life-long friends. I'm also around on Discord.

Easy to find somnilux in both places.

Also FA I really hope you let us change account names. Its really tired to be stuck to something this outdated in my life.

Cheers,

If you want a chance at your own character see:

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/35160146/

Deadline is March 5th.

I kind of stopped using FA journals a long time ago and only sporadically was posting even the last few.

For a while you could find out what was going on, on twitter but my updates there are also progressively more sporadic.

Mostly using FA as a commission dumping ground, and I'm starting to post some of the stuff I avoided for various reasons (gift art for others, stuff I used to be shy or embarassed about, and stuff I just got backlogged on).

If you need to reach me, telegram remains the best platform, though I will recieve twitter and discord dms eventually.

My BFF TeknicolorTiger whose work you can see all over my gallery is open for very special Tarot Card comissions.

They are amazingly detailed and really thematic and you should consider one.

http://teknicolor-tiger.tumblr.com/.....ions-like-this

 eloquentcensored really impressed me and despite 300 watchers, insanely good turnaround speed and quality for the price their comission list is sitting empty.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7508413/

You may not like Luxe's design per the limited favs of my uploads but they totally nailed an incredible complex character and I have nothing but praise for them. I plan to comission them.again next week likely with something you may all like more than Luxe but for now, go. Look. Commission.

https://gumroad.com/l/wv02

You can now pay what you want for a wonderful collection of awesome werewolf-related stories that really challenge the concepts of what 'romance' means.

Check it out, there's comics, art, and writing from a multitude of talented folks.

I am being published in a big anthology later this month.:
http://werewolvesversus.tumblr.com/

You can find out more info here. Its a biyearly electronic magazine/anthology focused on a specific theme, and challenging werewolf authors and artists to create something that reflects the theme. Having already experienced quite a few submissions I can say with little doubt this is an absolutely amazing collection that has blown past any expectations of the creator.

My submission is a collaboration with my best friend Technicolor Tiger (tumblr/weasyl/deviantart) formerly she illustrated a rather intensely emotional story I created for it. I will be posting a promotional companion story as soon as I finish it that you may want to check out..
Its pay what you want, buy the money you give goes to the contributors in equal shares.

is both a good friend and a really talented artist. They work full time as an engineer but they have a bit of a hobby of drawing really neat werewolves and snow leopards. Check out their gallery and throw them a watch. They need more encouragement and eyeballs in my opinion.

Go!

Well, I don't really journal here much these days. So I figured those who dont follow me elsewhere might want to know whats going on. I got really busy irl with work so Dreamcatcher got shelved for a while. Working on a heavy amount of work overtime for a long sustained period and its finally slowing down a bit. I am going to try to get my SE license in the next year and a half.

Besides that the most dramatic news is I have finally started to address my internal gender identity issues I have kept tied down since I was a young teen. Its been a confusing thing and I am still not sure how I want to address it or if how I identify is correct. But there are multiple reasons I have come to see myself as gender fluid. When I mentally identify as the opposite gender and accent that both in how I present and how I act in my private life it actually makes it easier and stronger feelings of identifying as my birth gender later. This flux is potent and when I embrace both sides it makes me much more comfortable. Of course this is more than likely the source of my love of werewolves and transformation when it comes down to it. Of course the real problem is there is no way this can actually be real physically but at least due to being born female I can get away with crossdressing from a societal standpoint fairly regularly. In the end though I give much less care about how other people see me and I am not going to be enforcing or expecting pronoun changes or anything of the sort. This is more of an internal way if handling my weird tidal fluxes. Bipolar, Gender Fluid, Creative/Logical, my whole life is a constant ebb and flow. I guess it makes sense my gender matches the rest of it.

I am still grabbing art. I have some stuff upcoming soon. Though only one planned TF piece. After xmas I should have more art budget again and am going to be getting some more transformation art, probably starring my character.

A few things of major note:

RL is still insanely busy. I'm working a ton. I'm still comissioning on occasion but mostly have stepped down on the rate of art. Putting in for larger and more expensive comissions down the road.

My BFF now Teknicolor Tiger over at deviantart, tumblr and weasyl has started a patreon! https://www.patreon.com/teknicolortiger

She's offering a sketch similar to some of the good TF works she did for me for one of the lower tier backings. She's great for that kind of thing, or if you enjoy werewolves she'll do one of her draw RL you as a werewuff.

As for dreamcatcher. Ideas keep percolating but studying for my SE license exam means I'm not really going to be doing any writing til after I my engineering license.

Thanks for all the watchers and supporters. Sorry for failing to deliver on more writing, or dreamcatcher.

I can't believe that many people like what I have to offer but am very thankful. Maybe I should do something to celibrate the 400th watcher.

I could do a raffle for a choice of vignette or a two char commission with one of my shapes from my artist of choice.

Dunno yet. We will see if I have any good ideas.

New house, settled in.

No writing progress, and my money is a bit tapped on working on the house so commissions will be slow for a while.

Dreamcatcher I hope to get started again on soon, but we shall see.

So, a few things.

I haven't made any progress all winter on Dreamcatcher. I am buying a house and had some family issues but that is turning around soon.

I also toon the time to build a live RP system for my best friend and Dreamcatcher artist 's werewolf group Silver & Bone. http://silver-and-bone.deviantart.com Its a neat little group with a lot of potential and features her characters that will be in the novel she is writing. If you like werewolves and write or art, its a great way to stretch your RP muscle at the same time. The system I built for it is no where near as complex as a full fledged tabletop like Dreamcatcher but I followed my audience's need in my design philosophy and came up with a good simplistic system with the fundamentals of gameplay to give players a way to handle fate and luck in a live RP and give players a nice growth system to work with, while keeping math to an ultraminimum for the artist's sake.

I will pull out some previews of it and samples tommorrow in a separate journal.

Lastly, I spruced up my FA profile to include links to the players from my Lightbourne RP group, the brave souls who have managed my pre-alpha diceless RP long before it became Dreamcatcher.

I tend to use them in a rather lax manner. Please don't take offense to me unwatching. I've moved some of my watches off FA, and my tastes vary with time.

I may end up adding you back in the process.

Also, I have accounts on sofurry, and weasyl, but neither am I as active as I am here (and I'm not super active with so many long term projects).

I've got some big projects in the works art-wise for Dreamcatcher upcoming, but I've stalled in the writing process with the holidays. Hoping to get back to it soon.

I hit 300 watchers! Wow, insanity considering how little I have offered to the community of my own. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to watch me.

Sadly progress on Dreamcatcher has been limited during November and December, just minor work on some contracts and some recharging after trying emotional events with my family and being rather busy with work.

I will get back to it, though I have started a marathon of rewatching Babylon 5, and will probably wait to start back on DC until after I finish.

For you readers out there I highly recommend Neil Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane, which in my humble opinion is his best novel and an amazing work of literature.

Additionally I would like to say in the last few years I have made some tremendous friendships in this community. I have been a lurker far longer than I have been active. I would like to thank everyone of my friends from my lightbourne RP group, especially Sorien

I have met some great commissioners, artists and writers also over the last two years, and developed good friendships with many of them. Notably who I consider a great friend and important collaborator on the biggest project of my life.

You all should know who you are and I shouldn't have to name each and every one of you.

Oh and for those of you who watched me for my erotic story, I highly recommend you take a look at the following erotic tf authors:
You might find something you like between them. :3.

I also have quite a number of friends in the process of changing their genders. I have massive respect and support for all you brave souls who have begun that journey to solving your gender dysphoria and will in the end make the world a better place for those who come in the future, paving a road of acceptance for those who follow.

Go give your love and support to all of them:
Rihko
Snowblind
Sammi
Elanna
Moriar
Smokie

Well, dreamcatcher hasn't had much progress this month (or really honestly, this fall). I had some writers block issues back in september, got that solved and had to slog through a time consumig mess of redoing pretty much all the mechanics, notably rewriting every skill. And this last month got eaten by work, my brother and family issues, and lastly now buying a house.

But I will get back to working on DC with some regularity. I had about 6 skills left to finalize, but the amount of work on those is a little draining so I am likely going to focus on contract revision. I already added some good thematic content to two nameless (Architect and Arbiter).

There are some of the contracts that need a lot more flavor, and all of them need updated mechanics. The revision process this time is going to be long and painful, but at the end of draft 2 I think I am going to kickstart instead of a third draft. At that point I know I can do my more significant edit passes for consistency and design within the time frame.

Dreamcatcherrpg.blogspot.com has some of the more recent mechanics.

On a side note I have and of course all agreeing to do art for the project in one way or another, so a decent selection of art to use for the kickstarter, I hope.

Updated the blog with an explanation of the major mechanics overhauls.

Http://dreamcatcherrpg.blogspot.com

Additionally I splurged and bought the new nexus 5 phone, and will be getting a Chromebook (Acer 720 refresh) so I will be all prepped for my two week trip upcoming for thanksgiving. It'll slow my output so I hope to have skills done by then and to be pecking away at contracts.

In the realm of art, I might be participating in a multicharacter SFW monstrous TF thing. Dunno yet if I am invited or what char but should be silly and fun regardless.

has been paid and I have been waiting for the signed contraxt to be returned since september, but she had some stuff going on irl. Hope she gets back to me on it soon since I look forward to seeing her vision on DC's Entropy.

awesome as usual is working on more concept art. She will keep posting it on the blog as it comes.

worked on a concept for how she wanted to express the native american god Raven in the book and world. She settled on an animal-headed look for multiple reasons and took inspiration from Haida art in designing him. He will make appearances in the book in more than just his contract entry I suspect.

Raven generally appears as a full raven, sometimes a full human. This is a unique look for him and stands out sharply from native myth enough to add some new flavor to the character, who has since the Day of Slumber embraced humanity in ways he hadn't before. In ways he didn't have a choice in the matter in fact.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11820235/

I look forward to her helping me bring my book to life.

Got that load off my plate and felt very productive doing so. Haven't recieved much feedback yet disappointingly but what I did get has been surprisingly positive particularly from people I didn't expect to enjoy it.

Dreamcatcher returns to my prominent focus and I spent tonight getting it segmented and broken up into more manageable chunks for revision. Going to start with the short stories to keep the same mental revision process from Binding Contract to get the stories really finished and something I can be proud of and used to promo the book a bit. When I am feeling mechanicsy I will try to rework the knot of mechanics I am having to untangle now that I dropped a stat.

I may consider a way to up the challenge a bit though. How to accomplish it and all mechanically. In general I need fortitude use to he higher than it is currently and am waiting til it comes to me how best to accomplish it.

Blog link: dreamcatcherrpg.blogspot.com

In the next week I will be uploading a few things that are unusual for me and may be unpleasant for many of my watchers.

I received a birthday present from an artist named Soty who if you aren't familiar with his work does quite a lot of pornographic transformation images. It weirded me out a little to receive pornography, and it is quite so, featuring some subjects that might make many uncomfortable. But I've also been blocked on Dreamcatcher lately, and feeling kind of down, and the act of receiving birthday gifts in itself made me very happy. In order to process my own feelings, and try to deal with my writers block, I decided to make the story within the porn image something I could actually like and copy with, and decided to write my first bit of erotica I've ever written in my life.

I am nearing completion on the first draft of the thing, and it's quite dark, violent and a bit unpleasant and very very pornographic. If you do not like such things, I suggest simply you do not read it.

A vast majority of the works I commission and write are not pornographic, and very rarely would they qualify as erotic, so don't unwatch me or avoid my gallery just because of these submissions, as they will not be a trend I will continue.

So, just a heads up before you unsuspectingly decide to click on the story submission and get really weirded out and angry.

Expect the draft at the end of the week, more than likely and for it to be accompanied by the picture that prompted it.

Dreamcatcherrpg.blogspot.com for the new blog where I post Dreamcatcher updates. (You know, the RPG I am working on). On a short hiatus from working on it for a mental break but is hard at work on logowork for it and I have a clear picture of some of the mechanics changes I need to make to DC in the next draft.

Even still, 140k words in five months is a pretty solid accomplishment.