Hey folks, kept ya waiting hmm?

So as some of you know, I have something of a "victims" list. These are basically a bunch of OCs that I have permission to use in tickle pics. Usually involving them getting absolutely wrecked X3.

It's been a minute but it needs an update. So if any of you watching me have OCs you'd love to see get wrecked by tickle torture, drop their refs here and I'll add em to the list!

Who knows, they might get picked one day~

And so here we are again, a tradition like no other (though it really should be adopted by more folks, but that's just my opinion on the matter). As we count down the final hours of 2024, let's take one last look back at all the good things that happened this year. The triumphs, the achievements and all the niceities that the people running your socials don't want you to see.

*Sweden became a member of NATO, the final Nordic nation to join the alliance.
*The EU passed the Artificial Intelligence act, the first governing body to regulate the usage of AI.
*The G7 nations agreed to phase out unabated coal power by 2035.
*Grizzly bears are returning to the North Cascades.
*A new drug to treat schizophrenia was approved by the FDA.
*Malaria vaccines are now being distributed in 17 African countries where the disease is endemic, saving thousands of children.
*Gene therapy was used to reverse a particular type of deafness.
*AI models were trained to spot the signs of Parkinsons disease, even years before the onset of the illness.
*Arizona announce they will buy out the medical debt of 1 million of its residents.
*Poverty rates in Latin America and the Carribean have fallen to their lowest levels ever.
*An mRNA vaccine developed from research on Covid-19 vaccines is being tested in England as a treatment for skin cancer.
*92 year old Alfredo Aliaga became the oldest person to ever hike the Grand Canyon rim to rim.
*A new species of Dinosaur was discovered in Montana.
*The Summer Olympics were held in Paris and the world saw the athletic prowess of atheletes like Simone Biles and Noah Lyles (and Snoop Dogg).
*MICHIGAN WON THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP (and beat Ohio State again).
*It was a busy year on the Moon, both China and Japan landed craft on the surface, along with the Odysseus lander from Intuitive Machines, the first private spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon.
*The Sun was Eclipsed by the Moon on April 8, and just over a month later a series of solar flares created the most powerful geomagnetic storm since the 1980's, with the Aurora seen all over the world.
*A great year for gaming as well, with titles like Helldivers II taking the world by storm.
*Moo Deng. That is all.

You remember all that, yes? Because that's where I'm at.

As always, you, dear reader, are in the future. Perhaps everything I listed here is fresh in your mind, or it's a distant memory.

To be sure this was a challenging year for many people, and the year to come may prove to be just as challenging. So I've thought for a bit about what word I should use to not only describe this year, but give us inspiration to face the year to come.

And that word...is redemption.

There are those who say that America is the land of second chances and I find that to be an attitude I agree with. Look at who just got elected President for proof of that (though I personally would argue that dude is on his 27,000th chance but that's neither here nor there). So it's easy to take a cynical view of this mindset: the idea that people who've done bad stuff are not punished for it but instead get a slap on the wrist and face no real consequences for their behavior.

But there's another way to look at it. What is redemption but a comeback story, and if there's anything America loves, it's a comeback.

Look at Detroit. Just a decade ago, the city filed for bankruptcy. It's hard for a big city in the West to hit rock bottom, but Detroit managed it. Everyone had pretty much written the city off as nothing more than a decaying urban sprawl rife with gang violence and a improbably good baseball team (more or less). Many believed that Detroit would never again return to its previous glory.

Well...to be sure the city is still a ways away from that, but it's certianly made a great comeback. The Detroit of today is a thriving city, one that can finally turns its eyes to the future. Does it have issues still? Yes. Can it be better? Absolutely. But it's no longer weighted down by the failures of its past. The Motor City can finally move forward.

Now this is not meant to be a prediction of how anything will go in the coming year, whether it's your football team's season or the term of your elected head of state. Instead, it's a call to action. Think about your own shortcomings and failings, the times where you let down or disappointed someone. Lord knows I have a list of those times that's about a mile long (and that's not even getting into the people I know over the internet).

But this is your chance to make that comeback. This is your chance to redeem yourself. Maybe you can't make things the way they were before, but what you can do is make yourself right. Once you feel you've done right by yourself, the rest will fall into place.

And extend the same courtesy to others in your life. We've all run into people who have disappointed us in certain ways, whether they voted differently than how we did, or they did something to personally betray us. That's a part of life. But consider that maybe their actions were not malicious but mistaken. Give them a chance to redeem themselves. Some will take it, some will not, but the least you can do is offer them the chance.

As we move forward into the New Year, many of us are going to be confronted with the knowledge that our beliefs and desires don't always line up with reality. We will be proven right about some things, but odds are we will be proven wrong about a lot more. And when someone you know turns out to be wrong about something? Don't belittle and mock. Allow them to see the error of their ways. Who knows? Perhaps you will be proven to be wrong about something, and the only way people will cut you some slack on such things is if you give them the same courtesy.

Let us use the moments where we are found to be mistaken as an opportunity. A moment to acknowledge that we are never too old to grow, to learn, or to be redeemed.

Have a great New Year's Eve, friends. Stay safe, have fun, and I'll see you all in 2025.

Hello folks. Hope your new year is off to a great start, mine has been phenomenal.

It's about that time again. Time for Helios to crowdsource ideas for putting furres through tickle hell.

Here's the poll. More than 100 victims to choose from. You know what to do.

https://forms.gle/Pe3z3AoBGAw1HXtPA

Here we are once again. Hours to go until the new year is upon us. Even though when you read this you may very well be in the future, it's time once again to use the few hours we have left in 2023 to take a look at the state of the planet.

And...what a state it is. I said last year that 2022 may have very well been the inflection point for this decade, the moment that the 2020's truly began to come into their own. I think that's held true for this year, even though it still feels like folks are trying to find their feet in some aspects. But even in all this confusion and uncertainty, there is still progress to be had.

So let's take a look back at some of the good things that happened this year:

*The European Parliment commited to ending the sale of petrol and diesel fueled vehicles in the EU by 2035 in an effort to push the adoption of electric vehicles.
*The High Seas Treaty was signed by the member states of the UN, this treaty commits to the conservation of 30% of the world's oceans by 2030.
*The ozone hole continues to shrink, projections have it on track to recover to 1980's levels by 2050.
*Finland became the 31st member of NATO.
*The World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 and Monkeypox are no longer a global health emergencies.
*The first synthetic human embryo was created from the use of stem cells.
*The African Union became the 21st permanent member of the G20 (wouldn't it be G21 now?).
*Katalin Karikó & Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine for their contributions towards the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
*The FDA approved of a treatment for sickle cell disease involving the use of the gene-editing technique Crispr.
*Scientists announced the ability to use AI to decode people's thoughts from brain scans.
*King Charles III ascended to the throne in the UK.
*Pope Francis decreed that Roman Catholic priests would be allowed to bless same-sex marraiges.
*Mexico decriminalized abortion at the federal level.
*Despite projections of a recession, the United States economy experienced it's biggest growth since before the pandemic, adding 2.5 million jobs and inflation decreasing to 3.1%.
*Spain won the Women's World Cup for the first time in a 1-0 victory over England.
*SpaceX's fully stacked Starship flew twice this year, the largest rocket to ever fly (now if only they can get it to stop exploding).
*The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) was launched by the European Space Agency, it's expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2031.
*The European Ariane 5 rocket flew its 117th and final mission.
*India's Chandrayaan-3 landed at the Moon's south pole, the first spacecraft to do so.
*Oppenheimer and Barbie released the same day in theaters and the internet had a lot of fun with that.
*Michigan went 13-0 agian and won their third straight Big Ten championship (BEAT BAMA!)
*The Pistons actually won a game before the end of the year.

Remember all that? It's okay if you didn't. But once again, this is where I'm at right now.

You are in the future. Every single word on this post is already confined to the history books. How you remember this year is ultimately up to you, but keep in mind that the reason I make these posts is a counterpoint to the many forces out there who have a lot to gain if everyone is under the impression that everything is always terrible all the time.

And that leads me to my word of the year. It's a bit unusual but I think it fits:

The word of the year is: Perception.

At our core, all of us are truth seekers. Whether it's objective truth or personal truth, we all want to find it. One of the benefits of the internet age that, in my opinion, gets taken for granted is that we now have more information available to us than at any time in human history. Our ancestors had to deal with incomplete and contradictory information, but now we can find out pretty much anything in a matter of seconds.

But with that information comes a host of issues. We unfortunately live in an age where a commitment to objective truth is being overshadowed by a desire for personal truth. We're putting less emphasis on what is true and more on what we want to be true. Unfortunately, as Carl Sagan once said, our preferences do not determine what is true.

And there are those who seek to exploit this. There are people in this world that are willing to alter your own perception on how things are. But not to benefit you, but to benefit them. They wish to take advantage of your desire for your own beliefs to be validated for time evermore and turn that against you, so that they can create a better world for themselves even at your own expense.

But you can stop them. All you have to do is be aware that perception doesn't always equal reality.

2024 will be a consequential year. For one thing, it's an election year in the United States which means the stakes are high enough as is. There will be a lot of consequential events over the next 366 days (yay for leap years!), and a lot of people that you've never met will be trying to tell you how to think and what to believe.

Remember that at the end of the day, the most important values are the ones you hold dear. Just because something gets a lot of engagement on your socials doesn't mean it's the best way to contextualize something. Don't allow your beliefs and values to be compromised for the sake of fitting in with trends or trying to cash in on some vague notion of importance; especially when there's people trying to exploit that at your expense.

The first step to healthy civic engagement is a body politic that is informed and questioning. It will do you no harm to read up on whatever topic is trending on the socials. It will only make you informed and then you will be able to decide if a position or a policy is truly the right one for you, based on what you hold to be important.

Knowledge can be scary at times. It may cause us to reevaluate our position, as well as come to realize that something we felt or believed or even wished to be true now has to be totally re-examined in a new light. But all that is what helps us grow, that's what helps us evolve and become stronger.

They used to tell us that "knowledge is power." I can tell you that knowledge only makes you better.

Remember these words as you head into the new year. Rather than wishing for your perception to be reality, base your perception on reality.

And then those who thrive on the exploitation of ignorance will have no power over you.

Have a great New Year's Eve, friends. And I'll see you all in 2024.

Helios.

Okay been a while since you saw one of these yeah?

Getting a pretty big commission and I need 5 furry ladies who don't mind (too much) getting stripped down and tickled to tears.

Depending on how many responses I get this could just be first come first serve or it could be a raffle.

So get those refs in and make it snappy! :P

And so here we are again, with just hours to go before we finish another lap around the Sun.

I feel that in many ways, 2022 will be looked back on as the year we have once a decade: where the old order finally passes on to make way for the new order that will come to define this period. In addition to some major world-shaking events (we all know what those are), it felt like this was the year in which we set ourselves down on the paths that we shall follow for the next decade.

And despite some dark clouds that were present back in the Winter, I feel this year ends on a note of optimism. There were moments where things could've turned bad and put us all into a grave situation, and in some respects things got pretty dire for some of us. But I feel like that while we certainly entertained our worst fears, we never realized them, and now we can be in a spot where while we're not out of the woods yet, we can feel as though things are looking up.

With that said, let's look back at some of the good things that happened this year:

*The permanent members of the UN Security Council put out a joint statement saying nuclear war must be avoided at all costs.
* A pig heart was successfully transplanted into a human for the first time.
* The Winter Olympics were held in Beijing and the World Cup was held in Qatar.
* Over 10 Billion COVID-19 vaccines have been adminsitered around the world.
* The wreck of the Endurance, commanded by Ernest Shackleton during his Antarctic expedition, was discovered.
* The Democratic Republic of the Congo joined the East African Community.
* Turkey and Israel resumed diplomatic relations.
* At the COP15 Biodiversity conference, 200 nations pleged to preserve a third of the planet for nature by 2030.
* Construction on a wind farm began in the Mediterraian sea, it's estimated the farm will power 21,000 homes.
* The US Government invested $430 billion dollars into fighting climate change, the largest investment in American history.
* EU Environmental ministers committed to eliminating carbon emissions from all new vehicles by 2035.
* The National Ignition Facility records a net energy gain from a fusion ignition for the first time.
* The European Southern Observatory announced the discovery of the micronova, a new type of exploding star.
* The James Webb Space Telescope began sending back its first images.
* The Event Horizon Telescope gave us our first look at Saggitarius A*, the black hole at the center of the galaxy.
* Artemis 1 became the first human-rated spacecraft to visit the Moon in 50 years.
* The global population surpassed 8 billion people.

Those are just some of the highlights that occured this past lap around the ol' Sun, and they show that despite the darkness that may exist, the light of progress and hope can shine through all the same.

Which is why my word of the year is "evolution."

As I said above, I truly believe that this will be the inflection point for the decade, the year when the cultural zeitgeist of the 2010's ended in favor of the 2020's. We don't know yet where this decade will lead us, but the way to ensure the best future for all of us is for us to constantly remember to evolve, whether it be in our professional lives or our personal lives.

It sounds like a tough ask, to exchange the comfort of the familiar for the uncertainty of the future, but it's actually something we do constantly, whether we want to or not. In our younger days, we all had our lives planned out; we knew exactly what we were going to be, who we were going to marry, where we were going to live, and we were naieve to assume that things would fall into place. But as we got older, we discovered the real world is not as accomodating as we'd like it to be, and often we found that our hopes and dreams ended up being just that in the face of reality.

But we didn't give up. What did we do instead? We evolved. We recognized the changing world around us and we changed ourselves to find or secure our place in it. Maybe we didn't recognize it at the time but we changed nonetheless. Sometimes we were forced to evolve, other times we took the initiative, but the end result was the same: every year we exit the calandar a little different than who we were when we first opened it.

But evolution shouldn't be looked upon as something that's imposed on us, or something that is a burden. Rather we should see it as an opportunity. A chance to view the world in a new way and come up with new ideas to solve the challenges and problems that face us all. Perhaps old thoughts and predjudices looked at in a new light is the key to overcoming them, and those who you thought you needed to hate and fear could turn out to be the people that will help you on your way.

So as we truly begin this decade, remember to always be looking for ways to improve yourself. Inspire those around you to do the same. Don't wait for someone above to bring about the change that you feel is necessary to make your life better, make it happen yourself. Be the change that you want to see in the world.

Like I always say: better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today.

Happy New Year to you all and let's make 2023 a good one!

UPDATE: Survey will close this Sunday (5/22/2022) so if you haven't gotten a response in yet, now is the time to do so!

Yeah you probably figured that the last journal was to see who'd be interested in making your favorite phoenix laugh his tailfeathers off.

Yes, talking about me here :P

I could come up with another overtly complex idea...but I'm busy with a lot of things at the moment so once again the content of this hypothetical comic will be decided, primarily, by all of you!

Most of you know the drill by now, but for those who don't: click on the link and fill out the form to decide my tickle torture!

I'd ask you to be gentle, but let's be honest y'all probably won't be XP.

https://forms.gle/jR7VpgNpATv4o8Qm7

So I've been out of the loop for a while and I'm not sure who's available to do what anymore so this is a general call:

Looking for an artist who's able/willing to do an NSFW tickling comic of a...*cough* certain Phoenix >v>. No real details beyond that except length will probably be 5 pages, maybe a bit more.

If you're willing to take this on and/or know an artist willing to take this on, lemme know!

So here we are again.
It’s always such a pleasure.

Once again, I’ve been thinking on how to write the missive for this year for quite some time. It kinda feels like that a lot has happened this past year and I’m not really sure where to begin or how to summarize it all.

Safe to say, 2021 was a year for some people. Not a great year, not a bad year, but a year. It seemed like every week we bounced from a moment of triumph or accomplishment to one of existential horror and may of us head into the New Year rather confused as to not only the internal and external threats to our lives and livelihoods, but not knowing who to trust or what to do going forward.

Despite all that, there were some things that happened in 2021 that undoubtedly pushed humanity in a forward direction and, as per tradition, I will close out the year by listing them.

If 2021 has offended
Think but this, and all is mended.

*In Lyon, the first transplant of both arms and shoulders was performed.
*The Treaty of the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was signed, it is the first such agreement to comprehensively the development, testing and deployment of nuclear weapons.
*The border between Saudi Arabia and Qatar reopened and Kosovo established diplomatic relations with Israel.
*The United States rejoined the Paris Climate Accords. Shell later becomes the first company to be legally mandated to curb their carbon emissions to the standards outlined in the agreement.
*Pope Francis met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the first meeting between a Pope and a Grand Ayatollah.
*Raúl Castro resigned as First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, bringing the Castro regime to an end.
*Leaded petrol was completely phased out of use in road vehicles around the world.
*The COP 26 climate conference was held, which saw nations agree to phase out coal power, as well as end deforestation and cut methane emissions by 30% in the next decade.
*Magdalena Andersson became the first woman to be elected Prime Minister of Sweden.
*Barbados transitioned to a Parliamentary Republic, 55 years after declaring independence.
*The 2020 Olympics were held in Tokyo along with the 2020 Euro competition held throughout UEFA nations.
*9.15 billion vaccines against COVID-19 have been distributed around the world, with nearly 60% of the global population receiving at least one dose.
*Phase 4 of the MCU kicked off with hit shows on Disney+ and blockbuster hits at the theater.
*Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin made their first crewed spaceflights, while SpaceX launched Inspiration4, the first all-civilian spaceflight and successfully flew a prototype of Starship.
*The Perseverance Rover landed on Mars with Helicopter Ingenuity, the first aircraft to fly on Mars. Joining it on the Red Planet is China’s Zhurong rover and the UAE’s Hope orbiter.
*The James Webb Space Telescope was (FINALLY) launched to the L2 Lagrange Point where it will peer back in time to the dawn of the Universe.
*Michigan Basketball won the Big Ten Season Championship and made a run to the Elite 8 in the NCAA Tournament.
*Michigan Football FINALLY beat Ohio State and also won the Big Ten Championship! As I write this they are hours away from playing their first match in the College Football Playoff against Georgia. Win or lose, this has been a very successful year for the Maize and Blue (though they should try to win).

The above is a snapshot of where I’m at: just over 14 hours to go until the end of 2021. You, dear reader, are in the future.

Maybe you were aware of some of what transpired above, maybe you weren’t. But all of these things happened and most of them at least were positive things that helped push us forward in a direction that most of us want humanity to go.

That is my main takeaway this year. Despite all the difficulties that were thrown at us by the world, society or life itself, many of us still found a way to keep pushing forward.

Which is why, much like our intrepid rover now roaming the surface of Mars, the word of 2021 is “Perseverance.”

Jack Bauer once said that there are things in this world that are out of our control and that sometimes we like to blame ourselves for them so we can make sense out of them. It’s an understandable impulse; whether it’s the mechanisms of a complex system of government, the variant nature of a virus or a terrifying natural disaster, it’s much easier to blame yourself or others for why things go wrong than accept the alternative: at the end of the day there’s only so much we can do to keep ourselves, our families and our friends safe and prosperous.

There’s a lot of talk these days about “strength”; both in terms of what it is and what it means to have it. But strength isn’t just measured in how violently you can slam someone through a table or how many bullets can you fire out of your gun: true strength comes from recognizing that you are in an adverse situation, maybe one that no one expects you to prevail in, and you still find the courage to press on and determination to succeed.

At the start of the year, no one thought Michigan would be any good. When Jim Harbaugh said that they would beat Ohio State and win the Big Ten or die trying, everyone rolled their eyes and penned their columns about how it was time for Michigan to move on. I admit, your humble author didn’t think it was in the cards this year. But when November turned to December, it was, as Bo said, Michigan again.

So if Jim Harbaugh can take a squad that went 2-4 and get them through Ohio State, out of Indy with a trophy and end up with a 1-in-4 shot of winning a national championship, just imagine what you could do in this next year if you are determined to make it through.

But all the same, never lose sight of what’s really important as well as who is really important. This is something that I myself lost sight of this past year and this year I’m gonna be better about recognizing those things. Sometimes we get so focused on ourselves and what is available to us that we forget all the people that, without their help and support, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. As The Oracle said; the path of The One is made by The Many.

Remember that what you get by achieving your goals is not as important as who you become in the process. Never fret over the timing of events or how long you perceive your wait to be. The important thing is not that they happen right now, it’s that they happen the right way. As John Lennon once said, Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.

Be at peace with what you cannot change. Have the courage to change what you can change. Seek the wisdom to know which is which.

To quote Gus Grissom: Do good work.

If you can do that, you will prosper this year and beyond and you will help others prosper as well.

Happy New Year and I’ll see all of you in 2022.

Helios.

Hey folks, kept you waiting huh?

Wish I had stuff to show you all but it's not ready just yet. However, I am putting a call out to all those who like writing stories about furres getting tickle tortured.

I'm putting another project together as I've been bitten by the writing bug for the first time in forever and a day. It's going to be a little different in that it's story-based. So this is my call for anyone interested in doing some writing!

If writing furries being tickle tortured is your thing, hit me up!

I know what you're thinking.

"How can you even think of doing one of these for this year? After everything that happened? You can't possibly be trying to do your little feel-good writeup!" Well...you're right. I can't. That's right, State of the Planet is cancelled.

I don't really have to explain why, do I? I have no words to describe this year and I know you don't want to hear them anyway. I understand your anger, your frustration, your sadness, everything you're feeling, I get it.

This wasn't the year you imagined and almost certainly not the one you wanted. Thanks for being there the entire way, and I'll see you next year.

Okay, I'm just kidding. I couldn't do that to you folks, I just wanted to get some more mileage out of a dead meme.

I first started this missive several years ago when I noticed that people were developing a tendency to condense the previous lap around the ol Sun into a series of terrible, horrible, no good very bad events at the expense of anything good that may have happened. I don't know why this was done, maybe as a ways to ensure that the coming year would have to be better by default.

Well...we all saw how that worked out for this year, didn't we?

As you all know I prefer to do things differently. I prefer to go out on a high note and remember all the good things that happened in the past year. If nothing else, I think it helps remind us that as much as we want to bemoan and be pessimistic about the state of our culture, society, civilization and even species, there's plenty of evidence to suggest we're not doing so bad after all.

And even thought it feels like this past year the world went out of its way to teach us some rather harsh lessons, I'm still determined to find something good that happened. So let's take a look back at some of the good things that happened in 2020:

-A circumbinary planet was discovered at the TOI 1338 system.
-Luxembourg became the first country to make it's public transportation free.
-The Bhadla Solar Park became the largest solar park in the world.
-The BepiColumbo space probe departed for Venus, en route to an arrival at Mercury in 2025.
-A fast radio burst was detected from a Magnetar in the Milky Way, the first time such an event has been detected in the Galaxy.
-A team of British and Kenyan scientists discovered a microbe that can block mosquitos from transmitting malaria.
-A black hole was discovered in the QV Telescopii system, at 1120 light years away it is the closest known black hole to Earth.
-A 425 million year old fossil of a millipede was discovered in Scotland, one of the oldest fossils ever found.
-SpaceX launched their Dragon 2 spacecraft on its first crewed missions, the first astronauts to launch from US soil since 2011.
-The Perseverance rover was launched to Mars and is expected to touch down in February.
-The Barakah nuclear power plant in the UAE became the first operational nuclear power plant in the Arab states.
-Wild polio was eradicated from the continent of Africa.
-Skeletons of 31 prehistoric animals, including 200 mammoths, were found at a construction site in Mexico City, it was the largest finding of mammoth bones ever.
-The 5.37 mile La Linea highway tunnel was opened in Colombia, it's the largest road tunnel in South America.
-Kosovo, Serbia, Sudan and Bahrain all decided to normalize their relations with Israel.
-Phosphine, a strong predictor of microbiological life, was discovered in the atmosphere of Venus.
-Preserved remains of a cave bear were discovered in Siberia.
-A 1634 edition of Shakespeare's final play, The Two Noble Kingsman, was discovered at the Royal Scots College's library in Spain.
-The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected samples for return to Earth in 2023.
-The Falkland Islands were declared free of land mines.
-Molecular water was detected near Clavius crater on the Moon.
-An AI algorithm called AlphaFold was able to figure out the process of Protein Folding.
-The UN commission on Narcotic Drugs removed cannabis from its list of dangerous drugs.
-The EU committed themselves to reducing greenhouse emissions by 55% over the next decade.
-A Great Conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn occurred, the closest one seen in the night sky since 1226.
-Comet NEOWISE passed by the Earth and was the brightest comet in the night sky since Hale-Bopp in 1997.
-Among Us became one of the most popular games in the world.
-Half Life: Alyx was released, the first Half Life game in 13 years (FINALLY).
-Joe Biden was elected as the 46th President of the United States.

Remember all that? Good. Because that's where I'm at.

You, dear reader, are in the future. Perhaps you're reading this in the final hours of 2020, or the first hours of 2021. Or maybe so much time has passed that both those years are now confined to the history books.

Perhaps everything I listed above is not enough to overcome all the bad things that happened this year, and that's a fair assessment. Maybe at the end of the day there's nothing that can overshadow the fact that someone in China who ate the wrong bat resulted in the entire world coming to a stop. If that's your feeling, then I understand completely.

But let the record show that those things did happen. In a year full of chaos and uncertainty and anxiety and dread, there were still moments where we could objectively punch our fists in the air and say "yes!" Even if only for a moment.

So now comes the part where I have to take all the things that we just went through and sum it up in a single word. Usually I don't think about this until the day of, but this time I've actually known for months what I was going to say:

The word is...Goodbye.

It sounds both strange and appropriate at the same time, doesn't it? As we close out this year, as well as this decade (reminder that 2021 is the real start of the next decade) we can look back and realize we've had many experiences. Both positive and negative. Hopefully they were mostly positive, even during this year.

But there is at least one experience we've all shared together, especially in times like these: saying goodbye.

I will confess to you all that I have a hard time saying goodbye. Hell, I don't even like the word. Whenever I end a conversation, I always use some variant of "see you later", since, to me at least, "goodbye" just sounds so final. Though with that said, I will also admit there's some people in this world that I had no problem saying goodbye to, and I don't mean "till we meet again", I mean "get lost." And I'd be lying if I said there weren't some people who felt the same about me, but I digress.

In the last episode of his show, Red Green delivered a monologue about saying goodbye. A monologue that I am now shamelessly ripping off for your reading pleasure. Not just because it's a way to get this done quickly, but because I think what he said is very true.

Red says that when it comes to your good friends and your family, you never really have to say goodbye. Why? Because they're always in your mind. And whenever you think about them, you're together again. I can tell you from experience that works rather well, even when it involves people that I don't want to think about. But even in that instance, where our last interaction was a negative one, I can't help but think back to all the good times we had together, and for a moment I reminisce. It's nice when it happens.

We've all heard the phrase "nothing lasts forever" and we tend to dismiss it as a cliché. But we're still constantly confronted with that reality, even if we never realize it. As Al Pacino said
in Any Given Sunday; "When you get old in life, things get taken from you. That's a part of life."

We've all lost things in our lives, and I just don't mean toys that have been sold or people that we love who are no longer on this mortal coil. I'm referring to the moments in our lives where we're forced to accept that our circumstances have permanently changed, and that the way things were can no longer be the way things are. This is why you shouldn't be having kids when you're in your 70's, and no one over the age of 50 should be naked in public.

On a more personal note, this year I got that feeling once again. It's not just because I'm most likely leaving one job behind for another job, but there were things in my personal life that shifted so dramatically that I knew things could never be the same again. And seeing as how, for the most part, I liked how things were, I'd be lying if I said that this change didn't cause me some distress.

But that's all a part of growing up, isn't it? As much as I may cringe about reaching 30 years of life on this Earth, I accept it all the same. Because, if nothing else, it's a reminder that I need to keep moving forward. Is it sad that the good ol days are now just memories and dreams? You're damn right it is. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing, because even if they're not what's happening now, they still did happen. And who knows? Perhaps the days to come will be just as good, if not better. In my opinion, that's something to look forward to.

And the same is true for all of us: if we want to live a happy fulfilling life, we have to keep moving forward. We can reminisce about all the fun we've had in days gone by, but it's just as important to be ready for the days yet to come.

I think that's why New Year's is such a poignant holiday for all of us. It's a tacit acknowledgement that we have to say goodbye to the old, so we can say hello to the new.

And at the risk of making this entry so long that by the time you're finished it will be 2022, I'd like to do that now.

To all the people that have been with me since my early days, thanks so much for all that you've done. I appreciate you sticking it out with me this far and I hope you'll continue to do so for many years to come.

To all the people that I've met recently and have decided to join me on this ride, welcome aboard. We're glad you could make it and we hope you'll stay a while as well.

And finally, to all the people that are no longer here, whether they've merely left my social circle or left this mortal coil altogether, all I can say is that we've had a great run. Whatever our reasons for parting are irrelevant now and I wish you nothing but good fortune in whatever it is you decide to do. Perhaps, God willing, our paths will cross again some day. But even if they don't, I hope that every so often we'll think about each other and smile a bit.

And now I'd like to close with something different. Usually I ask you to comment below with something good that happened to you this year. You're more than welcome to do that. But if you're looking for a change of pace, may I suggest that you close out your 2020 (or open your 2021) by listening to this song from the great Ashleigh Ball and Michelle Creber (yes I know many of you are hoping to leave the Miniature Equines in the past, but I'm hoping you'll permit them one last indulgence).

https://youtu.be/XjkPH6sZM_o

This is the song that inspired me to write this missive (along with the aforementioned Red Green) and as you're listening, I want you to think about all of those you said goodbye to this past decade. Think about all the fond memories you had together and give yourself a smile as the clock strikes midnight. Even if they're not with us today, we still have all the memories of them that no one can take from us, no matter what happens to the world.

And now the time has come for me to end this missive. Let the record show that this was my final word on 2020 as well as my expressed hope for charity, kindness and goodwill to flourish throughout the world in the years to come.

So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends.
And 2021 shall restore amends.

So here we are. As of today I am now 30 years old. I was under the impression that there were local, state and federal laws as well as international treaties that were explicitly designed to prevent this from happening, but it was not to be.

I don't usually do birthday journals anymore, but seeing as this is a pretty big milestone in my life (one that I didn't really think I'd reach), I felt the need to kind of express my thoughts.

I'll go into more detail in my year-end journal of course, but this past year for me hasn't really been good or bad. It's just been...chaotic, for lack of a better term. While I think I've managed to handle...*gestures at the entire freaking world* better than most, it's still been a rather trying lap around the Sun that's brought me some personal changes. The biggest one being starting only the second job I've worked in my life. I'm not at liberty to say what it is, except that for the first time in years I'm actually getting paid a decent wage (and when I say decent, I mean something above $0 an hour).

Which of course means more money to throw at my more talented artist friends. In theory.

In regards to all the stuff you see here, I gotta be honest, I'm really not sure where I'm going to go next. Part of me feels that I've accomplished pretty much everything I could realistically do without figuring out how to draw shit myself. Sadly I don't know if I have the time for that. The one constant in my life is that I've never had enough time to do all the things I want to do. I won't lie, it kind of feels weird to say that seeing as I've now spent 30 freakin years on this Earth, so you'd think that'd be time enough for everything.

Maybe it was, but it was no time at all for me. And now I'm starting to wonder how much more time I have left doing all this.

Don't worry, I'm not leaving or anything. That time hasn't come yet and you'll know in advance when it does. I do have some projects on the SL front I've been working on, and you'll hopefully seen those soon. My SL photography has improved to the point that I don't cringe when mentioning it in the same sentence as my SFM work. Also, if you can believe this, I actually have some folks in SL willing to model for me! I suppose that's the one advantage SL has over SFM: lots of furres willing to take their clothes off lol.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. I wish I could give you guys some really amazing news like I've been offered a job at Valve or NASA or I got an entire studio to do my work for me, but I can't. I do have a Valve Index tho, which, not gonna lie, is really fucking cool.

But nothing else really comes to mind for me right now except to thank you all again for not only the Anniversary of Birth wishes, but also for your support over these years. Without you guys I'm just another dude on the internet. In many ways, I still am that, but at least people are interested in what I come up with now XP.

Have a Merry Christmas (or Winter Holiday of your choosing) and I'll see you all in a week for the yearly wrap up!

So as you all know, I like to upload my commissions in art floods a few times each year, particularly around the Holiday seasons as sort of a nice festive capping to things.

Well, what a year it's been! I've already had to push back stuff I was planning to upload this Summer to Halloween...and then I had to delay them until Christmas...and it looks like they're going to be delayed again.

The reason is because for the past year I've been at work on a secret project with  purp1e  ZeroDrago99 and  dragonmaster2653 that was intended for this holiday season: a 26 page tickling comic! The comic is being colored by yours truly, but I underestimated how long it would take to actually do the coloring part (note to self: no more coloring pics with chars that have like 3 color patterns). I've been trying my best to get all the pics colored so I can upload them on Christmas Day, and there's a good chance that I would be able to do it but there's also a good chance that I won't.

And...I'd rather not be worked to death for Birthmas. I'm gonna be 30, I'll be old enough as it is.

So, here's what we're going to do. We're going to upload the comic in segments starting tonight, but we're gonna be uploading the B/W lineart versions of the pages. At a later date they will be replaced by the colored versions and I'm hoping to have them done by New Years Day, which is when I plan on flooding the rest of my commission backlogs.

I'm really sorry that I couldn't finish the coloring, but I really think you guys are gonna like this comic. And if you don't, well there's gonna be a lot more stuff on New Years' that you'll hopefully like as well.

So! That's the situation and you'll be seeing the comic in your inbox very soon!

We've all heard of Santa's Reindeer...but where do they come from?

So you may have noticed the last two uploads shared a common theme. I'm here to tell you I have more planned with the same theme in mind.

Welcome to the tickle chamber! Where you get stripped to your fur and tickled all over while laughing gas fills the interior. This not only makes you more ticklish, but it transforms you as well. And the more you laugh, the more you breathe in and the more you transform!

So this is probably gonna be the theme for most if not all the stuff I get this Summer because I feel like it. So with that in mind, I'm gonna need victims.

If you're interested in your OC's being tickled and transformed, let me know. You might just get picked for future pics!

See you in there!

Hey folks. It's a little past 0300 my time which means I'm up late enough to enter what I call "Evil Genius" thinking. Basically I've been up long enough to think about things that would usually get pushed off to the side in my day to day activities.

So here I was, reading the "Plumeville" comic being commissioned by the great  coolhater. If you don't know what it is, it's actually a pretty neat premise. A bunch of famous OC's from throughout the tickling community in a massive story-based crossover (think The Great Tickle Trap for those of you familiar with MTJ).

It's a pretty neat idea and I just pledged my support on the ol Patreon.

Hell I'll be perfectly blunt: I really wish I thought of it.

Then I was thinking back to the times where I mentioned on my old tumblr (RIP) about the thought of establishing a shared continuity between my pictures. For the most part the continuity has been fast and loose for obvious reasons, each pic demonstrates a different scenario.

With that said I did come up with a sort of explanation: I've been meaning for some time now to write a short story explaining how each commission I get is, in actuality, a tickling video that Helios produces to sell on the ol internet. I haven't had the time to write it but for those of you that saw the Seinfeld episodes where Jerry and George pitch their show to NBC, it would've been along those lines.

But this Plumeville comic has gotten me inspired to bring it back and take it a step further. To create an actual ongoing narrative that changes and evolves over time. And hey, why stop at pictures or comics when we could have animations or even games? The fact that I know people who can pull this off (as opposed to when I didn't long ago) helps out a lot.

Now keep in mind this wouldn't necessarily happen right away, probably not for a while. Money will have to be procured, artists commissioned, and storylines would have to be written. Character selection would be straightforward: the aim would be for everybody that I know to be included in this. So the real concern is logistics.

The main thing is this: would anyone be interested in such a project? And more importantly, backing it? As I mentioned above Castro is funding the comic through Patreon. You all know my MO is to pay most commission costs out of pocket, but every little bit would help in this case.

So what say you all? Would you rather we keep things as they are or would you be interested in seeing (and more importantly backing) a "Tickling Cinematic Universe" if you will? Keep in mind there's no right or wrong answer and nothing is currently set in stone, let alone promised. This is just a man with too much time on his hands trying to gauge interest.

And with that, I'm going to bed before I resurrect my online tickle machine idea.

Helios.

Alright everyone, it's time once again for Helios' annual wrap up of the orbit we've just taken around the ol' Sun. This is the State of the Planet as we close out 2019.

Now before I begin I want to state that, unlike seemingly everyone else, I'll only be looking back at things that happened this year* as opposed to this decade. For those wondering why, it's because I want to save my decade wrap up for when the decade actually ends. And as anyone who was around for Y2K can tell you, because there was no Year 0, the next decade doesn't actually begin until 2021.

Which means my decade wrap-up will be a year from today (and thus quite lame) but at least I'll be consistent.

So, with that in mind, let's take a look back at what happened this year:

*Same-sex marriage became legal in Austria, Taiwan, Ecuador and Northern Ireland.
*Pope Francis became the first Pope to visit the Arabian peninsula.
*Avengers: Endgame became the highest grossing movie of all time.
*A 17 year old in Britain was the first person to receive a genetically modified phage therapy to treat a drug-resistant infection.
*Jane Goodall won the Luxembourg Prize for Outstanding Environmental Peace.
*Humpback whales recovered from near-extinction in the South Atlantic.
*71 new species were discovered this year.
*The Antarctic ozone hole was the smallest on record since its discovery.
*One third of the world's electricity is now powered by renewable energy sources.
*A record number of African American women (34) graduated from West Point.
*The Indian Navy welcomed its first-ever woman pilot.
*The European Commission elected its first female President.
*Chicago elected its first African-American woman mayor.
*Ali Stroker became the first wheelchair-bound actor to win a Tony award for her role in "Oklahoma!"
*Game of Thrones, The Big Bang Theory and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic came to an end with strong finales (2/3 anyway).
*The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl, making it 6 rings for Tom Brady.
*The Washington Nationals won their first World Series.
*The US Women's National Team won the 2019 World Cup, their fourth title.
*A new form of messenger RNA Aerosol was developed, which could be helpful for treating diseases like Cystic Fibrosis.
*Malaria was eliminated from Algeria and Argentina.
*Two men may have been cured of HIV.
*Child mortality rates are at an all time low.
*Researchers at the University of Michigan and UC Berkeley developed new 3D Printing methods.
*Waymo has chosen Michigan to be the site of the world's first autonomous vehicle production factory.
*All 16 gigabytes of Wikipedia were encoded into synthetic DNA.
*The US Government authorized funds for Geoengineering.
*Video was taken by NOAA researches of a Giant Squid in the Gulf of Mexico.
*SpaceX's Dragon 2 and Boeing's Starliner capsules made their first flights.
*The first all-women Spacewalk was conducted on the International Space Station.
*India, Israel and China launched probes to the Moon, with China making the first soft landing on the far side.
*Water was detected on Mars and K2-18b, a Super-Earth 110 light years away.
*The New Horizons space probe made a fly by of the KBO Arrokoth (then known as Ultima Thule)
*For the first time ever, a Black Hole was imaged.

The above is a snapshot of where I'm at right now, the final hours of 2019. You, dear reader, are in the future. Let this list above serve as a reminder of what we've experienced in this past year.

Now the time has come for me to give a little speech to tie up everything that we've been through in 2019. Usually this is the part where I have trouble, but the truth is that I've known for a while what word I want to use to describe this past year.

The word of the year is "sacrifice."

This is a word that isn't supposed to be thrown around lightly, but I feel it's lost its meaning. When sons of certain politicians equate their lost business opportunities to what the soldiers buried in Arlington gave up...I get the feeling that the meaning has been cheapened.

As Captain America said to Tony Stark, it's about fighting for someone besides yourself. It's about laying down on the wire to let the others crawl over you.

It's about giving up your youth to bring attention to a coming environmental disaster, as we saw with Greta Thunburg.

It's about going into a disaster zone to save one life, as we saw with the first responders who ventured into areas ravaged by Hurricanes or Earthquakes, or battled raging wildfires in the United States and Australia.

It's about risking your own life in the name of standing up for your rights and liberties, as we saw with the protesters in Hong Kong.

It's about nearly destroying yourself to save an entire continent, if not a planet, as we saw re-enacted in HBO's Chernobyl.

As we here in America prepare to once again ask ourselves what course our nation should take, I feel that we've lost sight of the sacrifices the Founders made to get us to this point. We seem less concerned with the prosperity of our nation and more concerned with the prosperity of those that we happen to like, with the misfortune of those who disagree with us not only accepted, but desired. We've gone from E pluribus, unum to "my side needs to win no matter what, fuck the others."

This is not to say we are averse to the notion of sacrifice. We're perfectly willing to give up something for our friends and family as well as anyone who happens to share the same views. But I feel that we're not willing to go further than that. If we are to continue to proclaim ourselves, as we indeed are, the defenders of liberty and freedom wherever they may exist in the world, then we need to uphold ourselves to those values. We need to be willing to make sacrifices not just for ourselves and our "side", whatever that may be, but for all Americans.

And more importantly, all citizens of this Earth must be willing to make a sacrifice not just for their city or country or race or ideology, but for all of humanity. This is the only way for us to fulfill our destiny. The future of our species awaits us among the stars, and I know that the only way to get there is together.

So as we head into the true final year of this decade, consider what you are willing to give up and who you're willing to give it up for. And remember that the time will come when we all will have to decide whether or not to make a sacrifice in the name of something that's greater than all of us. What that sacrifice is and whether or not you choose to make it is for you to decide.

Just know that somewhere out there in a sea of 400 billion Suns is a world just like this one.

We owe it to ourselves and our children yet unborn to give our species the best possible chance to visit. Just in case it turns out to have Jedi or Ponies.

Have a great day, a great week, a great month and a great 2020.

See you next year.

So here we are again. Another lap around the Sun finished. That's 29 now, which means I'm close to 30, which is close to 40, which is practically 50.

I'm gettin old for this world folks. Relatively speaking of course. I think I'm honestly still trying to get my head around the fact that I'm nearing 30, and to be frank I never thought I'd make it this far.

But, here we are all the same.

If I don't sound cheerful, well I apologize, because I am! Today and tomorrow are the best 48 hours of the year as far as I'm concerned. I'm just kinda over the novelty of the birthday. When you get down to it, all I did was not die for 12 months. But I will concede that a living streak of 348 straight months is nothing to scoff at. In fact, we should all be so lucky to be here!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. That's for next week.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas or Holiday of your choice!

And to answer the one question that's undoubtedly been on your minds, "Helios, when are you going to start your yearly art dump?"

Right about...

Now.

Nine years can be a long time for people. A lifetime for some.

Long enough to heal the first scrapes of the elbow.

Long enough to forget the simple things, like the joy of discovery.

But I remember. It was no time at all for me.

So in lieu of my usual rambling wordiness, here's something I've spent the last few days putting together.

I can never repay them for nine years, so for now this will have to do.

https://youtu.be/Lo8uvHD-exs

Well the votes are in!

A lot of votes are in!

In some ways these results were surprising, and in some ways they weren't. But we now have a pecking order, so to speak, for tickle victims!

Now I know what you're saying: "Helios! There were a lot of victims there! How are you going to get through them all?" Well to be honest, I have no idea. I really don't know how many pics I'm going to get out of this before I move on to something else.

So I figure that 3 pics from 3 artists and 11 furres between them would be a good place to start, yes?

At any rate, now it's time to reveal the winners! Now some of you took the 9PM EDT deadline as being a suggestion instead of a rule. So these results are based on what the votes were at 9PM.

First up, we have two gals and a guy!

Glinda
Ty
Ruby

Vote on their fate here: https://forms.gle/Cdzhx3KK9N7zFhhK7

Next we have four lovely ladies!

Lola
Bellgrey
Phendrana
Kirisha

Vote on their fate here: https://forms.gle/nLZU26kVFeEvMhXQ6

Finally, three guys and a gal!

Zack
Oneex
Voden
Oro

Vote on their fate here: https://forms.gle/SoVsRJpAAXFBX6mF7

Once again voting will be open until 9PM EDT. You will need a google account as we want to make sure there's one vote per one person. Someone already admitted to me they voted twice in the last poll. They're now in the tickle-transformation chamber.

Don't be like them (unless you want to).

Once again, voting open until 9PM EDT (and that's a HARD deadline).

Vote Early! Vote Often! Make them howl!

That's right everyone, it's time once again to play What Happens Next!

For those of you who weren't here last time, this is where I do a series of polls, and some lucky furres get tickled based on what you vote happens to them!

But first, we have to pick the victims! This time around I thought I'd do something a little different and nominate furres that haven't gotten a whole lot of tickle love from me, or any at all for that matter! So there's gonna be a lot of new faces for you all to look at, especially since the poll has the answers in random order.

Also you can pick as many as you'd like. I'm not quite show how many furres are gonna be in these pics (actually, I do know, I'm just not telling). So it could be the top 3 get tickled, the top 5, even the top 10! Make sure you get those votes in!

Polling is open until 9PM EDT tonight. Vote early, vote often!

https://linkto.run/p/0Y41D9UG

Okay everyone, I'm in need of your assistance once again.

I'm getting another tickle comic from my guy countfire. This time it's gonna be our favorite tickle bird, Firebird, getting turned into a tickle slave!

But we're not sure how many pages to make the comic. That's where you guys come in: how many pages would you like of Firebird getting tickle tortured.

Keep in mind a couple things:
-countfire has said he can put up to 12 panels a page
-Each page goes for $30 a piece that I'm paying out of my own pocket (unless you all want to toss money at me, just so)
-It's gonna end up a NSFW comic so the last part probably won't be posted on DA.

At any rate, head over to my fancy strawpoll here and toss in your two cents! I don't know how long I'm going to run this but it won't be for more than a day.

https://www.strawpoll.me/18500861

Do you want to watch me work on a SFM tickle pic with 19 pony OC's? Of course you do!

https://picarto.tv/HeliosPhoenix

Now that I have your attention.

Anyone who's interested in doing amateur Astronomy in support of "actual" Astronomy should grab their telescope and point it at Jupiter.

Over the last week or so, something very strange has been happening with the Great Red Spot. Streams of material have been peeling off the edge of the storm and getting pulled into the nearby cloud bands. This is a very unusual phenomenon that, to my knowledge, has never been observed before (or at least, not at this level of intensity).

It's worth noting that Astronomers believe the Great Red Spot could be gone in less than 20 years. If that's the case this very well could be the beginning of the end.

Either way, this is precisely the time we need as many eyes as we can get on Jupiter, so be sure to have a look!

Oh, and as for those shinies or whatever? I might enable them, I might not. We'll see.

First and foremost, I'm not dead yet.

I know that I've been radio silent for a bit longer than usual outside of my private communications channels, Second Life, and the ol Twitter. This has been for a variety of reasons, the biggest one being a change of circumstances in my daily life that may result in less commissions as well as y'all seeing less of me than you normally do.

Don't worry, it's nothing bad, if anything it's actually a good thing. But it could mean I may have to dial back my presence here somewhat, and if worse comes to worse phase out commissions. Nothing can really be done about that, it's just one of the consequences of the fact that I'm closer to 30 than 20 now.

Also, Elite Dangerous. That's been keeping me going through the winter. If you haven't played the game yet, play it.

So anyway, let's get into SFM. First and foremost the outstanding commissions that I owe people.

I'm going to be blunt. They're cancelled. I'm no longer accepting payment for them. This is something I should've done a long time ago.

I believe adults should apologize for their failures, so I'd like to take this moment to formally apologize to all of you for my failure. Not just for not doing what people were paying me good money to do, but for failing in my effort to provide you all with high-quality SFM content on a regular basis.

The reason I failed isn't a mystery. I tried to do too much. When I opened commissions, I offered single pictures, image packs and animations, figuring I'd get customers for all 3.

Well, it turns out people *only* want the latter two, especially at the prices I'm charging. And to be perfectly blunt, I'm not at a point right now where I feel I could churn out that type of content at a quality level where I would be okay with accepting payment. Not to mention do it in a reasonable timeframe. Waiting nearly a year for a commission is, to be blunt, not reasonable.

So to those out there that I owe a commission to (one image pack, and a couple animations) I will no longer be accepting payment for them.

HOWEVER.

Because I feel terrible about making you all wait, I still have every intention of completing those projects. Now they'll be worked on whenever I feel like working on them, so it could be tomorrow, next Thursday, 3 years from now, whenever. But I do intend to eventually get them done.

So, to those who this message is intended for, you will eventually get what you asked and it won't cost you a dime. Just bear with me a bit longer if you so desire.

Okay that's out of the way, so let's talk about commissions going forward.

I will still offer single image commissions, but I will no longer be offering image packs and animations. Expect an updated price sheet in the next couple days.

Animations will probably be offered in the future once my skills are up to a standard that *I'm* happy with. Hopefully that'll be sooner rather than later. Image packs though I don't think are gonna come back for some time. I was under the impression I could get them done quick, fast, and in a hurry, and that's not the case and I don't want to make people wait around for that.

At any rate, single images will still be offered. For those who missed it the first time, prices are as follows:

$10 for one character at 1080p resolution
$5 for every extra character (up to 5)
$3 for 4k resolution

So just to make it clear, I am still taking single image commissions. I am trying to work this into a proper side hustle and I'm in a position now where I could use a little spare change.

On a related note, I'm finally able to make some YCH's with my resource pack. Not sure what they're going to be right now (aside from tickle themed), but I'm gonna try my best to have one up for you guys this weekend.

SPEAKING OF WHICH

That resources pack I'm hush-hush about? It's almost ready for release! Just gotta get a few more things polished and then it'll be avalible for you all to make your own anthro pone art in SFM! I'll also be trying to put together some tutorial videos that will explain how to rig up your own OC for use with the pack.

On that note: I can once again make OC's with the resource pack, but you'll need to have an SFM model of your char first. So if you want a commission with your OC, lemme know and I'll do my best to rig them up if you have a model for me.

That's just about it. Thanks for sticking around with me folks, and hopefully I'll see you all soon with new content.

Helios.

Well here we are, it's time once again for my now annual review of the year we just finished up. When we take some time out of our New Year's celebrations to recognize that while it seems like we just went through 365 days of pain and frustration, there was a smattering of good things that happened as well.

Here's some of them:

-Scientists in China cloned two monkeys via Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, a major development toward's the potential for this technique to be used for regenerative cloning in the future
-A new drug designed to combat Ovarian Cancer has begun clinical trials. Early results show that half the patients taking the drug are now Cancer free with no sign of the Cancer returning
-Chinese scientists have developed rice that will grow in drought conditions. They plan to cover about 10% of the desert in the UAE with this rice for farming use.
-An effort is underway to save the Northern White Rhino from extinction, using frozen sperm implanted in eggs from Southern White Rhinos, the hope is that this process will be able to revive the species in the future
-A Ukrainian company is placing Solar Panels around Chernobyl to generate Solar Power. They plan to use the existing infrastructure to eventually generate up to 100 Megawatts of energy
-101 cities around the world are now getting 70% of their power from renewable energy sources. In a related story, 56 cities in the United States have committed to going 100% renewable by 2050
-The World Health Organization reported that Paraguay has now completely eradicated Malaria, other Latin America nations are close to doing so as well
-The Ocean Cleanup Project has begun an initiative to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They're aiming to remove at least 50 tons of garbage from the ocean every year
-The Ozone is beginning to repair itself. At current rates, the Northern Hemisphere should be fully repaired by 2030, with the Ozone Hole in Antarctica sealed by 2060
-The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge was opened, it's the world's longest sea crossing bridge
-Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that he's modified the DNA of twin infant girls in an attempt to make them resistant to HIV
-According to a report by the International Telecommunications Union, 51.2% of the world's population is using the Internet
-Qantas launched the first commercial non stop service between Australia and the United Kingdom, the route is flown by their 787 fleet
-Cinemas opened in Saudi Arabia for the first time since 1983, the first movie shown is Black Panther
-Diplomatic talks took place between North and South Korea, with both nations committing to the removal of land mines from the Demilitarized Zone between the nations
-The Basque separatist group ETA announced its dissolution
-The Supreme Court of India decriminalized homosexuality
-Ireland citizens voted to repeal the nations ban on abortion in a national referendum
-Voting turnout for the US Midterm elections was at a 50 year high
-Michigan was the latest state to legalize recreational use of Marijuana, Canada also voted to allow sale of Marijuana.
-The overall crime rate for the year is expected to have dropped by 2.9%
-11% of the US Population is expected to get a boost to their credit scores
-Homeownership rates for Americans under 35 are now at just over 36%, the highest since 2013
-Americans gave over $400 Billion to charity this year, a record high
-The 2018 Winter Olympics were held in South Korea
-The 2018 World Cup was held in Russia with France claiming their second title. It was also announced that the United States, Mexico and Canada will host the 2026 World Cup
-The Philadelphia Eagles won their first Super Bowl over the heavily favored New England Patriots
-Tiger Woods won his first PGA tournament since 2013
-The Michigan Basketball team did so much better than anyone could've expected, winning their second consecutive Big Ten tournament, and making their second Final Four appearance in 5 years
-The Michigan Football team had a decent year as well, posting their third 10-3 record under Jim Harbaugh as well as winning a share of the Big Ten East division title (but because two of those losses were to Notre Dame and Ohio State, Michigan fans will be forced to spend the offseason being miserable twats again)
-Justify won the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing, the second horse to win the title in 3 years (rather remarkable considering the previous title drought was nearly 4 decades)
-SpaceX launched 21 Falcon rockets this year, including the first Falcon Heavy rocket which sent Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into interplanetary space
-NASA had a busy year as well, launching the TESS spacecraft to search for ExoPlanets, the Parker Solar Probe to explore the Sun's atmosphere, and the InSight lander which successfully touched down on Mars in November
-ESA launched the BepiColombo spacecraft to explore the planet Mercury, the first mission to the planet in over a decade
-The OSIRIS-REx sample returned spacecraft arrived at the Asteroid Bennu.
-Finally, the New Horizons spaceprobe will conduct a flyby of the Kuiper Belt Object Ultima Thule just after midnight tonight!

Remember all that? Good. Because that's where I'm at right now: December 31, 2018, with just over 11 hours left in this year.

You, dear reader, are in the future. And by the time you read this, it's very likely that for you 2018 will be over. Relegated to the books. And you've probably read a bunch of articles and blogs and tweets about how we just went through a year of infinite pain. Which is why I'm hoping that this missive finds you after you've already read all those other things.

Because our minds tend to place the most emphasis on the last thing we experienced, and I want your lasting memory of 2018 to be that all those things I listed above happened this year, and nothing can ever erase them.

Now this is the part where I say something nice and worldly to tie up the events of this last trip around the ol' Sun. I try my best to come up with some theme or other that brings it all together into a coherent picture.

I think the word I would use to describe this year is "Revelation." Because I think we can all say that this year, it's not so much that we learned things, but things were revealed to us.

We've all been in this situation before. We think that we've got everything figured out, we have all the answers. And then all of a sudden we uncover something that completely shatters our perceptions and kicks our foundation out from under us. And based on all that's happened this past year, I think it's safe to say this happened to all of us at least once in the preceding 12 months.

Perhaps someone did something you never thought they would do? Or something that seemed to be amazing turned out not to be as good as you thought? Or maybe your way of viewing the world now looks totally alien to you?

Revelation can be a very traumatic thing to deal with, and I can tell you from experience that when your entire perception of reality is challenged, you become unsure about everything else. Doubts creep into your mind, and you start wondering what else it might be that you're wrong about? It's the kind of feeling that can make you feel completely alone even in the middle of thousands of people.

But Revelation can also be a good thing.

Sometimes something turns out to be even better than you were expecting. Or you discover that you actually are much more respected and valued than you thought you were. Or maybe you look around and realize that things aren't actually as bad as they seem.

Even if you have to deal with the Revelation of a harsh truth, you can still find the positive out of that. Sure you can choose to become cynical and jaded and let it consume you, or you can choose to be proactive about it.

Sure, things weren't what you thought they were, but that's okay. The world didn't come to an end, you still have much to be thankful for, and you can now use the knowledge that you've learned to become wiser about how to live your life.

So this is the part where I usually say that there's one more awesome thing that happened this year, but you're going to tell me what it is. Tell me something good that happened to you during 2018.

This time however, I'd like to try something different.

In addition to telling me something good that happened to you this year, I'd like you to give me the biggest Revelation you've had this year. What was the most surprising thing that was revealed to you?

Now I understand that it probably won't be as pleasant of a memory as whatever awesome thing that happened to you this year was, it may even cause you distress just thinking about it.

If that's the case, embrace it, because you are distressed. But not over whatever it was that you were forced to confront, but rather the loss of what you thought the world was.

But don't let it consume you. Take the truth that was revealed to you and apply it. Learn from it and resolve to use that truth to strengthen your resolve for this next trip around the Sun.

Things aren't always what they seem, and they often don't work out how you planned, but that's not always a bad thing. Because the amazing thing about this world is that things have a way of working out anyway.

So remember the good times, but learn from the Revelations. When you do that, you'll be that much closer to being the person you want to be.

Have a good day, a great month, and an AMAZING 2019.