So, some people have been asking and wondering if I'm still around, which of course I am, even in this crazy Covid world. However, as many have rightly surmised, I've also been busy with work and with life, which doesn't afford me nearly the time that I once had to hunt around and yes, tinker with stories. I haven't completely given up on it of course and as a slower time of year is coming, I might try and work out some story of some kind for one of the better images I have. As it currently stands, I still have way too many things that I haven't uploaded here, many of which are the result of having some ideas for stories and not wanting to post them until I do, but for those curious, they exist out in the wild though. I've never been a fan of hoarding art for myself and not letting everyone else see it and enjoy it, save for a few occasions when the pictures themselves don't live up to my personal standards, in which case they will likely never see the light of day, but those are few and far between. Generally, people are more than welcome to ask if they're curious about it though.

That being said, I'm open to suggestions for stories for any of my art, if there are particular pieces that people are fond of or rough ideas (think something easily summed up in a sentence or two) to go with them. As stated, I'm strongly considering trying to write SOMETHING here in the next month, so if you wanted to see one done for anything, speak now or forever hold your peace. As it were. My DMs are open and of course you are welcome to comment on this journal as well.

This brings me of course to the second part of my update. Harkening back to my previous statement about lack of time, I really have had the secondary issue of finding a decent artist/artists anymore. I don't exactly have the time to camp everyone's twitter, patreon, and FA page to keep up with it and frankly, so many new and good artists have come and gone in the past few years that I've never seen. There are still a small list of those that I've gotten to know over the years who I still keep in touch with, but obviously I'm looking to branch out just a bit, so consider this a good opportunity if you have an artist friend with openings, or even if you are an artist yourself, to drop me a line or a link so I can check your work and potentially throw money at your face. Also and potentially related, I have been looking on and off for someone who does good, short animations, but holy crap do I suck at finding people who do those, again any suggestions would be appreciated.
Of course please don't be offended if I'm not interested in any particular person or style, I'm not going to talk down to anyone for not liking the style, but I do have my own standards that I tend to stick to when I commission people.

All this said, I hope you all had a great Christmas this last week and hopefully a good new year coming up. Hopefully things can only get better from this point for us all!

Long story short, I've been really, stupidly lazy with getting a lot of my stuff uploaded. Call it business with other things, call it apathy, call it just plain being lazy some days. That's all going to come to an end this month though. I've got more than a handful of pictures that I'm sure some of you have seen here there and everywhere that are going to be uploaded in the coming days and weeks along with a few more that need some written story love as well. Furthermore, I have one final part of the 'Evening with Sweetie' that's yet to be uploaded and that's going to be coming sometime in the near future as well along with the corresponding picture. So bear with me people and watch this space for further Alicorn Raritrap goodness~

So a couple of days ago I make a call home to make sure that my family got the box with the Christmas gifts that I'd sent them and they did. However they asked if I'd gotten the package that they sent to me, which I told them that I had not, which made them curious since it was supposed to be delivered on Saturday the 19'th. I told them that it probably was just late and would be delivered after the weekend was over since a lot of packages get shipped during Christmas and it can be hard to keep track of all of them. Fast forward to today, the 24'th and I still haven't gotten the package and when they check the tracking number on the package, they confirm that it was delivered indeed on the 19'th to my apartment building and left in the mail room.

Hm, that doesn't bode well. Maybe the building Super picked it up and took it into the office? So I go talk to him and he never moved any package or even saw the package sitting in the mail room when he made his rounds that afternoon. I call the post office up and confirm through their package tracker that the postman brought it and delivered it around 9 AM in the morning when mail is usually delivered and left it in the mail room instead of in front of my door because it was taking too long to deliver individual packages in a seven story building and the building had never had issues with theft before. Suffice to say, he said that the tracker said it was there and in the three hour period between when the package was delivered and the Super showed up it disappeared.

Much as I didn't want to believe it, someone apparently stole it.

Now I'm old enough to not mind if I don't get anything for Christmas as I can just buy myself whatever anyway, but what unmitigated gall some people have. To steal what is clearly someone's Christmas package from the mail room and for what? So that they can ruin the feelings of my younger brothers and sisters who got me some treats and made me some crafts that they poured hours of time into making when they find out that I didn't get my package and will never see what they got me let alone use it? To make my mom upset that the special batches of extra cookies she made for me were a waste of her time?

Some people say that Christmas is a time for miracles and I still believe that, but as much as we like to forget about the hardships of the world for a few days, for all the good that random strangers can do, for all the charity and whatnot, this only reminded me what scum humanity can be on the whole as well. It reminded me that I'm but one person that this has happened to and even if it doesn't ruin my Christmas, there are hundreds of families that this happens to ever year. Some lowlife breaking into their house stealing their gifts from under the tree, kyping gifts from people's front porches or mailboxes. For all the good that people do, there's always THAT group that remind us of just how fucked up that this world really is at the core.

My apologies to everyone who enjoys them, I'm sure that you've noticed a bit of a marked dropoff in the number and length of the stories that I do for things. It's not that I don't enjoy doing them at all, but lately I've been missing my mojo to write them. Probably has something to do with working more hours and more days as of late, probably has something to do with me just having a real issue with my muse as well. I still have about five things that I've slated myself in to write stories for, but unmotivated bastard that I am, I just can never bring myself to sit down for a few hours and hammer something out.

Don't worry about lack of content though as there are still pictures that I'm going to be uploading and short stories that I'll be adding to some of them. Also to all of those who are fans of the 'Evening with Sweetie' series that I've been slowly doing, don't worry, I plan fully on finishing that still. One of these days when I get my groove back that's going to be the first thing that I work on, along with some deviancy with Applejack as well.

Huh, apparently people really like this stuff. In a way I am surprised and in others I'm actually rather flattered. I'm going to have to do something for that. Just what it is remains to be seen, but it will probably be some sort of special piece for the occasion. But this is where I would like those of you all who actually do follow me to give me a little feedback for the upcoming months to years. What is it that you like in general about all of this here? Why did you start following me? If you want you can even make suggestions for what you would like to see as the 500 follower celebration.

I'm sure that many of you by this time have unwrapped all of the presents under the tree and are coming down from the euphoria of the generosity of others towards you. Furthermore I'm also relatively sure that there are a good number of you out there that have enjoyed the little story blurbs that I've been writing, from some of the shorter ones to the page filling monstrosities. Seeing as the season for giving doesn't end on Christmas day and I need to hammer out my craft a little bit more, I've decided that I'm going to give away a story to one of my many kind followers.


Rules are as follows:

Entry is simple, just reply to this post saying that you would like to be entered in the contest and one week from today I will randomly select one entrant, via a random number generator. The winner will be contacted via note the day of the drawing and will have one week to respond and accept. If the winner does not respond, a new winner will be drawn on the eighth day.

The story itself can be anything that you choose within reason, a story based on certain characters, a picture, a fantasy, etc... All of this will be discussed with the winner after they answer the note accepting their prize. After all of the details are hashed out, I will write up a rough draft and the winner will be allowed to read it over, make suggestions and changes, again within reason. In all, I will allow three edits before giving a final version, after which only small revisions will be allowed, then that version will be the final version. There is no obligation to use all of the revisions offered, if you are happy with the story after the first or second draft, simply tell me and I will finalize it.

You will be allowed to use the story for whatever use you intend, be it personal or public, just so long as the appropriate credit is given.


Caveats:

I will not write things involving many of the more extreme kinks, eg, death/mutilation, gore, vore, toilet play etc... I will make every effort to accommodate the winner, but I also reserve the right to refuse any kink.

I will also not tolerate any rudeness/disrespect from the winners/losers. This is a giveaway, something that I'm doing out of the goodness of my heart to make someone else happy, being exceedingly whiny/demanding will get you a big fat nowhere fast.

It seems that someone has found more than a few of my shaded images and started coloring them. I don't really know what inspired Hyperstorm_H to start coloring all of my shaded images, but He's done some good work that I'm going to upload here since color is good. So thanks to Hyperstorm for his work and if he's actually reading this and has a FA page or tumblr home, by all means, note me and I'll give you the proper credit.

I've been thinking that since I'm actually listed as a writer that I should write some stuff as opposed to just being an art whore, so I've been having fun writing little blurb stories for some of my pictures lately as opposed to just giving them a basic description. What are your thoughts on all of this?
Should I, A) Do it with all/more of my new works, B) Keep doing it from time to time when the mood hits, C) Just stick with the basic description.