I don't think I've ever really been proud to be British, but today certainly doesn't do much to change my cynical outlook on my homeland. Some foetid cunt whose glory days from writing some popular childrens' books have been stretched out by the ever-fruitful nostalgia market has a chip on her shoulder about how trans people are trying to steal her vital essence or some stupid bollocks, and now the law of the nation is being changed for the worse by a bunch of worthless politicians who are only too happy to discard science like a used condom and run roughshod over human lives in their frantic quest to pander to the bigot voting bloc and suck its flaccid, shrivelled cock. I'd ask rhetorically for someone to make it make sense to me, but of course the answer, as it always is, is "money". Wizard bitch has a lot of money, therefore the seething, inane bigotry that she has by way of an opinion matters more than the lives of actual people. Fuck everything.

Now I can only wonder if being the lazy, inertia-ridden coward that I am has caused me to miss the boat on making any meaningful progress on transition. Am I doomed to live in a world where any attempt to try to live as the person I want to be will only mark me out as someone to be sacrificed on the altar of hatred?

I have no intention of giving up my belief in the value of trans people and their right to pursue their true selves, no matter what kind of stupid, hateful bullshit might be smeared all over the world, but days like this make the struggle seem endless.

Trans rights are human rights. Fix your hearts or die.

Well, it's 2025. Happy new year!

2024 wasn't the most interesting year for me, but professionally it had its moments, that I hope won't be the last. As for '25, I'm not really one for new year's resolutions but those of you who follow my goings-on will no doubt recall a certain personal revelation that I underwent. Hopefully in the coming year, I'll be able to follow up on that and make some significant changes.

I can't say what the new year will bring, but I can only keep my fingers crossed that, against all probability, it's a good one. Wherever today finds you, I hope tomorrow will always lead you somewhere better!

So I got my new laptop today, which means it's time to retire the old one. It was almost certainly on the way out - worying sounds on start-up, one drive had failed, the E key was acting finicky, and the monitor was starting to flicker - but it's still quite a sad moment.

That laptop had been with me for eight years, and I saw a lot of my life through it. I made friends, played a lot of games, published my first novel, and began to explore my gender identity, all through that screen. It's the end of an era, really.

Since it still works acceptably, I'm keeping it on hand in case of emergencies. But for now, it goes into retirement, perhaps never to be used again.
Perhaps it's silly to get emotional over an object, but I still can't help but feel wistful.

So long, PrimeRadiant, and thanks.

So, with Myuphrid being a girl now, one thing I'm wondering is what to do about the dangly thing on the tip of the dracolupe's chin. I'd always intended it to be something akin to a dewlap or a wattle, as a number of birds and reptiles have in real life. But I gather that a lot of artists interpreted it as a goatee (which admittedly it was semi-jokingly labelled as on the old ref sheet). Such an accoutrement is fairly unremarkable on a masculine-bodied person, but would it be too boyish on a woman, even one covered in fur?

It's difficult to know what to say in a situation like this. I never knew 'Neer, but through FA he had a profound effect on my life and my identity, as I'm sure he did so many others. Who would I be without this place? I can't even imagine. It may not be perfect, but it made me the person I am today. I can only hope that provisions are in place to keep FA going, because to lose it...

But I can't help but feel selfish for thinking like that in the wake of a person's death. My deepest sympathies go out to his friends and family, especially given the circumstances of his passing. If nothing else, I hope they can take some solace from the legacy he crafted for himself. In creating this website, this community, he helped shape the lives of tens of thousands of people. Whatever else happens, thank you for that. Goodbye, Dragoneer.

I can't say exactly how long I've been questioning my gender to one extent or another, but recent events have prompted me to at least try to explore the option of transitioning. I don't know how I'm going to actually go about it in real life, but if I don't at least make an attempt at some point, when will it happen?

As a tentative exploration of the possibility of transitioning, from now on I'll be going by "she/her" pronouns online. How profound a change this is, I'm not sure, but I hope it's something. In any case, think of me as female if you can.

Happy Pride month!

There's a part of me that would very much like to visit a furry con at some point. But there's also a part of me that has a phobia of fursuit-like costumes. Which is but one thing that makes the prospect difficult.

Maybe I should hire some fursuiters for some exposure therapy or something.

Due to some worrying clicking noises and a struggle to start up this afternoon, I fear my laptop may be on the way out. At the moment it seems to be working as well as it's usually been, but at this point I'm dreading the possibility that that could change at any moment.

I have backed up all the data I can't bear to lose (a certain portion of which naturally consists of porn), so I won't be completely sunk should the worst come to pass, but I think I'm going to have to source a new system soon. If any of you can suggest a good gaming laptop (or desktop, at a pinch) or at least a good system for Internet browsing, I would welcome recommendations.

Either way, if I suddenly become scarce online, this is probably why.

I just finished playing through The Pitt, Fallout 3's second DLC, for my YouTube gameplay channel, and I have thoughts I'd like to talk about for a few paragraphs. I doubt I'll be contributing much insight to the discussion, but it's my journal and I can post whatever I like. So there. Also I wanted to clear the previous one off the page - that issue has hopefully now been sorted out.

Anyhoo, the plot of the DLC: the Lone Wanderer, protagonist of FO3, meets a shifty, shady guy named Wernher who tells them about a city of slaves living under the oppression of a warlord named Ashur and his gang of raiders. This city, the remains of Pittsburgh (hence the name), is not only the site of perhaps the only working steel mill left in the Wasteland, which the slaves are forced to keep running, but is also a breeding ground for a degenerative mutational plague that turns many of its victims into feral monsters called Trogs. But there's good news on that front: Ashur has recently discovered a potential cure for the disease, and some of the slaves have formulated a plan: steal this cure from under Ashur's nose and free the slaves. So that's where the player comes in: you disguise yourself as a slave to smuggle yourself into the Pitt, do a fetch quest, then indulge in a spot of gladiatorial combat to prove yourself worthy of an audience with Ashur. But when you do meet him, a few things become clear: 1: Ashur isn't just some moustache-twirling slavelord arsehole, but an intelligent man with grand visions of rebuilding the city as a bastion of civilisation and industry, 2: Wernher had previously attempted a coup against Ashur and failed, implying that his allegiance with the slaves is nothing more than an attempt to get back at Ashur, and 3: The "cure" is in fact Ashur's baby daughter Marie, born with a unique immunity to mutation that, properly researched, could lead to the hoped-for cure.

So here's where the plot's Big Moral Choice™ comes in: do you follow Wernher's plan to abduct a child and kill her parents in order to liberate the slaves, or do you accept Ashur's offer to kill Wernher instead and leave both Marie and the slaves where they are?
If you're anything like me, you're probably raising an eyebrow at this "moral quandary". Given the choice between freeing slaves and not freeing slaves, I would hope the right choice would be obvious. This is, I suspect, why Bethesda threw in the whole "abduct a child" part. After all, you can't really have a shades-of-grey morality decision when the choices are as black and white as a zebra crossing. And yes, orphaning a child is bad, don't get me wrong. But there's nothing in the game to indicate that Marie will be treated any worse by the freed slaves than she will by her mother, and also... well, slavery. The needs of the many 'n' all that.
About the only thing I can conceive of that might cast the "side with Ashur" option in a more positive option is the character of Ashur himself. As mentioned above, he's not the typical violent thug that most raiders in Fallout tend to be. He's an ex-Brotherhood of Steel Paladin who was left for dead when the BoS stormed through the Pitt a few decades earlier, slaughtering mutants and recovering technological goodies as they are wont to do. When he awoke and got his bearings, he recognised the potential of an operational steel mill and set to work building up his army of raiders and slavers so he could make use of it. When you talk to him, he expresses regret for all this, but believes it necessary for the sake of the greater good. He also insists on referring to the slaves as "workers" and claims that they can eventually earn their freedom.

However, the observable facts of Ashur's regime don't really match his noble ethos. None of his raider underlings seem to regard the slaves with any degree of sympathy, even the ones who are themselves former slaves, and only treat the player with any real respect once they prove themselves a useful worker or a capable fighter. All of them seem perfectly happy lording it over the slaves from their restored apartments and catwalks suspended over the filth and squalor the slaves live in. Ashur claims that he maintains discipline over his troops to keep them from abusing the slaves, but if this is the case, then it doesn't seem to be working: no-one other than him ever mentions it and the raiders still treat the slaves like dirt.. Ashur himself seems to have no actual engagement with things other than handing out orders and standing on a balcony to deliver grand speeches from time to time. He refers to himself once or twice as "Lord of the Pitt" without a hint of irony, and all in all seems perfectly content to lean into his image as a god-king.

As for the raiders themselves... well, there's not much to say. They seem to be the same violent thugs that they are in the main game, differentiated only by the fact that they're under orders not to shoot you. None of them express any doubt or regret over their literally elevated position, and don't even make the effort to draw the veil of euphemism over the whole business as Ashur does with his insistence on the term "workers". Even the fact that a handful of them were once slaves themselves doesn't seem to elicit any sympathy or solidarity from them. Having earned their freedom, they seem quite content to kick back and enjoy their new role, and everyone they left behind is just shit outta luck.

The "earned the freedom" part also deserves elaboration here, I think. Ashur touts this repeatedly in his dialogue, making quite a big deal about how "workers" can one day prove themselves worthy of a better life. Judging by the events of the DLC, the only way a slave can earn their freedom is by fighting for it in gladiatorial combat: shoved into a smallish pit with whatever weapons they happen to have on them with a handful of other hopefuls and several barrels of radioactive gunk to fight to the death. The winner gets a shot of anti-radiation drugs and a chance to fight a couple more rounds against nastier opponents, and the losers probably just get dumped in the river. In the end though, one thing is clear: a slave can only become free by proving themselves to be an effective killer. This is, by all indications, the only way a slave can become free, and suggests a distinct hierarchy at play in Ashur's realm: you're either a slave, a raider, a target, or dead.

But enough about the raiders, eh? What's there to say to say about the slaves? Well, they're unpaid labourers forced to work by their oppressive masters, and needless to say they're not exactly happy about it. They have slightly more dimension than the raiders, with the addition of characters such as a snitch who benefits from tattling on other slaves' resistance efforts and one slave who has accepted their lot in life thanks to an old philosophy book he found and had read to him, but other than the major players in the story the slaves aren't much more developed than the raiders. They're forced to work, live in abject squalor, and don't want to do either anymore.

Wernher himself is the main driving force behind the slave revolt, but from the start it's shown that he's not exactly invested in the cause of freedom. Part one of his plan involves getting you a slave disguise so you'll blend in, so he directs you to a nearby slaver camp to find one. If you bring up the possibility of freeing the slaves while you're at it, Wernher's response is an impatient "Whatever!" and an insistence that you keep your objective in mind. It eventually becomes apparent that Wernher only became a slave after trying to overthrow Ashur and usurp his rule, and the plan to kidnap Ashur's daughter and thus liberate the slaves was his idea from the start. He regards this more questionable act without remorse; in his own words: "If you aren't getting your hands dirty, you aren't making a difference". But by all indications that I can see, the primary difference that he wants to make is for Ashur to be brought down, and freeing his slaves is ultimately just a means to that end.
So that's the moral battlefield as the story presents it: do you side with an intelligent visionary who uses brutal methods in the pursuit of order, or a shifty, under-handed mercenary who foments revolution for the sake of revenge?

Once you complete the mission, nothing much changes either way. Even if you take down Ashur and his raiders, the slaves keep slaving away. If they have any long-term plans other than just carrying as before without having an army of raiders breathing down their necks, there's no real indication of them. If you don't declare yourself the new Lord of the Pitt when talking to him, then Wernher implies that he's planning to take charge of things, but there's nothing to suggest what his reign might be like. In the end, what happens next seems to be up to player interpretation.

In my mind though, despite Bethesda's attempts to paint the morality of the situation in shades of grey, it's a straightforward black-and-white choice. Ashur may be perfectly polite and civil in conversation and he talks a big game about what he's trying to accomplish, but th fact of the matter is that he's built an oppressive slave city with his law enforced by brutal thugs. He and his cronies live in relative luxury in partly restored towers with all the booze, drugs, and scavenged food they can eat, while the people doing most of the actual work live in filthy conditions, subsisting on food that the game literally calls "slop", with no access to medicine or any kind of comfort, and the only ways out for them are either to kill, to die, or to succumb to the plague and mutate into a trog. He can talk all he likes about "earning freedom" and building a new city, but there's none of that vision or nobility in the world he has actually built.

As for Wernher, he's a self-serving weasel who will gladly resort to questionable actions to get what he wants, but he does lead the slaves to freedom. Doing the right things for the wrong reasons is, in my view, a damn sight better than doing the wrong things for the right reason. And even if he intends to become just as much an autocrat as Ashur, will he even be able to manage it? By the end of the story he's surrounded by a city of former slaves who have just cast off the shackles of one man's oppression... what would make Wernher's shackles any less cast-off-able? Without Ashur's army at his back, any powerplay by Wernher, should he choose to make any, could be stopped with one judiciously applied Auto-Axe.

Anyway, that's what I think of Fallout 3's second DLC. I guess this 14-year-old bit of Bethesda's lacklustre writing just got up my nose a bit. Thanks for reading!

Well, this worked last time - might as well give it another go.

I need to find an artist who's willing to draw artwork for a novel's cover. I'm looking for someone with a good realistic style who's open to drawing fantasy-themed artwork. A confidence in drawing stone and metal is a definite plus.
If you're such an artist, or you know such an artist, please let me know! THe novel is complete, but publication has been on hold for months without a cover.

In recent gaming news, apart from the games I play for the gameplay channel I've mostly been playing Baldur's Gate 3 (also Whisker Squadron: Survivor, which is very very good but not what I'd like to talk about right now). I had initially hesitated to pick it up, because my experience with the first game was of spending a long time building my character only to get killed by the first tmonster outside Candlekeep. Not a great first impression, I hope you'll agree.

Anyway, I like BG3 a lot more and have managed to play it quite a bit longer. The thing about it is that in order to actually get myself to actually open the program and play the game, I find that I have to work up the motivation to do so. Most games I can happily pick up whenever the mood strikes me, but not so much for BG3. I don't know if it's the difficulties I have keeping my laptop's cooling tray going, the game's combat and skill check being more demanding than I prefer from a game, or how long it taks for saves to load (yes, I've savescumming. Deal with it.), or just that it's so goddamn hot right now, but I find myself all too readily finding excuses not to play it. I'm reaching the point mentally where I'm strongly considering abandoning the playthrough and starting again when I'm more in the mood.

Another factor in this is the recent release of Starfield. I've thoroughly enjoyed previous Bethesda-made open-world RPGs, like Skyrim and Fallout 4, and I do like me a space-faring sci-fi game, so a spacefaring open-world RPG is an easy sell for me. And I am all too tempted to buy.

Back now. Did I miss anything?

See you all in a week or so.

Well, since it's apparently Non-Binary Day, I suppose I might as well say something on the subject, since I do claim to be non-binary.
Declaring myself non-binary is a comparitively recent decision - less than three years old at this point - and it stems largely from a general detachment from my assigned-at-birth gender (that being male, incidentally). I don't think I've ever really felt like a man, whatever that's supposed to feel like. Mostly I've just felt like me. On the other hand, as my sexuality has developed, one of the things that has emerged is a deep and abiding fetish for feminisation and crossdressing - the girlier the better. No matter how much art I commission, I just can't get enough of Myuphrid in frilly pink dresses or with huge boobs... or both, of course.
Coupled with this is a long-standing sense of dissatisfaction with my body and physical appearance. As a person, I don't think I've ever felt anything more than ugly and grotesque. I would be hard-pressed to describe myself as anything other than a fat, hairy lump of meat. I don't like looking at myself in the mirror if I'm not wearing a mask or a costume of some description, and I never take photos of myself without them. At times I feel like my flesh just hangs off me like a badly fitting coat.
These two facts combined lead me to wonder if I might be an as-yet unhatched egg, a transwoman waiting to fully realise it, and that "non-binary" is simply a stopgap to try to acknowledge these feelings without actually committing to transition. Alas, here's where self-doubt rears its ugly head: am I just envious of all the beautiful, wonderful trans people in my life? Do I just want attention? Do I not fulfill the criteria for true gender dysphoria? Am I just a fetishist who's overthinking a kink far too much?
Sadly, this is where the story will stay for the forseeable future. Without the privacy I'd want to really explore my gender, a job or any real employability to be able to afford such a place, or the courage to leave the house thanks to the pandemic, I'm stuck in this rut. I don't have the wherewithal to properly explore act on these feelings and what they may mean in any but the most minor ways. In the end, I don't think i'm a man, but I don't know if I'm a woman... I guess I'm non-binary.

So, out of sheer irresistible curiosity, I'm giving VRChat a go. I don't actually have a VR setup yet (if indeed I ever get one), so for now I'll probably just be wandering around. In any case, if any of you have any suggestions for things to do, let me know!

Note that I'm not sure if I'm looking for friends just yet, since I'm not really the most socialable of people at the best of times. On the other hand, I am vaguely interested in the idea of making custom avatars or worlds, but I suspect that interest might evaporate the moment the true extent of the necessary effort becomes apparent.

So I wrote a novel once, and a few short stories. Being an author is pretty much my single ambition in life and as such I want my work to be prominent enough to attract an audience. Obviously this would entail advertising myself and my writing to get the word out. The thing is, my primary internet presence is as some fetish-y weirdo and I don't know that I want that persona to be linked to myself as an author.

To be honest though, this is something I'm not really certain about. Do I take advantage of my moderate popularity as a furry to get the word out, or should I try to establish these two aspects of my life as separate from each other and not run the risk of people uncovering my weird porn?

So for a long time I avoided playing Star Trek Online, because the microtransactions were getting a smidge too expensive for my liking. But lately I've delved back into the game. Hopefully this time I can keep my spending to a happy minimum.

Anyway, the Borg missions in the game have rather set off my assimilation kink, and I'm planning to get a commission of just that happening to my Ferasan KDF player character. All I really need is an artist who can create such art for me. So, if you know of any artists who are good at such things and are open for commission, please let me know! I did try asking on Twitter, but all I really got was bots.

As a final update to my Twitter saga, all three of my accounts are unlocked once again. Huzzah!

Update to the previous journal: thanks to the aid of a friend, I have read-only access to my primary account again, and will have full access in six hours.

Hopefully straightening out my other accounts will be easy enough too, especially since one of them is essentially my business account and my primary means of transmitting authorial news.

So, in particularly frustrating news, my Twitter account has been locked because the system decided that my quoting a video I'd posted a link to counts as abuse. (Said video being a clip of a desert rain frog with Space Marine dialogue dubbed over it.)

This'd be bad enough, but the only way I can unlock my account is by entering a confirmation code sent to my phone... but for whatever reason, my phone number doesn't send or receive texts. And since Google Voice apparently isn't supported in the UK, apparently I'm just not getting that code.

Fuck.

So, aside from writing a novel (which incidentally you should totally buy and read), lately I've been occupying my time by recording video game playthroughs for YouTube. For now my viewership has been basically nil, but it's something to do, isn't it?

Anyhoo, for a month or so now I've been playing through Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Since I finished it just today and 343 Industries don't seem interested in porting Halo 5 to PC any time soon, my docket is clear. I might not start a new playthrough right away, but with no series to get through I'm open to suggestions. So, are there any games you'd like to watch inexpertly played by yours truly?

Note that since the only platform I can record gameplay on is a PC, that's the only platform I'll be accepting suggestions for. Also, singleplayer games only, please.

Seasons' greetings from all of me at Myuphrid, Inc.! Whatever holiday you may or may not be celebrating, I hope you have/had/will have/wioll haven be a lovely time, and I hope you have a happy new year too!

So, in video news, the Fallout: New Vegas playthrough flopped, due to an infinite loading bug in the "Come Fly With Me"quest. If that ever does come to pass, it probably won't be for a while - there's only so many times I can repair those rockets before my patience wears through.

However, I haven't given up on video playthroughs entirely. Since the trailer for Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 recently came out, I decided to play the original Space Marine again, and I also took the time to record it.

If you'd like to see Mark Strong beat the crap out of all and sundry, give it a watch, why not?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taaLdj8C9xM

Well, having downloaded LibreOffice, I've taken all the chapters of my novel's seocnd draft, stitched them all together into one document, and checked the spelling.

The second draft of my novel is officially complete. Woo.

I suppose now I need to see about getting outside opinions for proofreading purposes, then getting it published.

So you may well have heard of that thing known to those of the mortal plane as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. It's long been something on my radar, but for various reasons I've never actually tried writing an entire novel in 30 days. However, this year I've resolved to give it a go.
I've long had vague plans for a fantasy novel, but over the last few days or so I've been writing out the précis for one - something called "The Paladin's Blade". Under the circumstances, I think now would be as good a time as any to give it a go.
Now you might be thinking that trying to write a novel while you have another one waiting to be refined for publishing, but I don't think anyone could ever have accused me of being wise.

We'll see how far I get with this, I suppose. In any event, I'll probably write it sooner or later, but no time like the present.