Random Stories

Trying something experimental today, I have a number of random stories on my mind and I'm just going to tell them all.

Cherries

I read a story online once about some young guys who worked at a restaurant, and some older guy comes in and says he wants a sundae, "86 cherries". None of the workers happened to know that "86" is an old-timey phrase for throwing something out, still in common usage in restaurants, and so counted out eighty-six actual cherries to put in the old man's sundae.

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one: I tried to tell that story at work, some restaurant humor for the kitchen, and it didn't get a laugh, and at first I couldn't figure out why. In the awkward silence that followed, I put it together in my head: I had completely flubbed the story... by saying 69 instead of 86. Oh no! I quickly cleared up what I had meant to say, but yeah, I ruined my telling of the story.

That's okay! Just means I now have a story to tell that's twice as long.

Voice Acting and Shujinkou

Shujinkou was one of the best-reviewed games of 2025, and also one of the lowest-selling. It's good, but it's very esoteric: an old-school dungeon-crawling JRPG that's also educational, teaching you the Japanese language while you fight monsters.

For myself, I couldn't figure out the eccentric combat rules or dungeon navigation, and I simply can't connect to such a dense game that has absolutely no voice acting in it, so I abandoned my playthrough very early on. I want to commit to continuing to support Shujinkou, though, as I've worked with the composers and it's just a cool title I want to get more eyes on. I'll make a full let's-play one day.

I'm also still in the game's Discord server, and one day I was talking about how I found it odd that a lot of super-indie video games have no voice acting, a stage that seems to be so much less time-consuming than every other part of game development, especially since most such games also have a fully-realized original musical score, which in my experience is so much friggin' harder to obtain.

The game's creator, Julian, saw my comments and talked a bit about why that's the case for Shujinkou in particular: it's based on older JRPGs which never had voice acting, it may not be time-consuming but it can be expensive for such a big game, and if not done exactly right it can seriously diminish a player's enjoyment, so it just wasn't something that he ever seriously considered prioritizing. It all made sense to me, and he also mentioned he did hope to give his characters voice actors at some future date.

I asked if he had any particular voice actors in mind, and he immediately cited Matthew Mercer and Laura Bailey. And I was like... huh. Is it hipsterish of me to be disappointed? When asked what video game voice actors you'd include in your extremely personal indie project, you immediately name easily the two most famous people in that field? He laughed at that, admitting that he didn't really see Mercer and Bailey that way, as he'd been following their careers since they began.

And I made it clear I wasn't really razzing him; voice actors do not get big and famous in the same way mainstream actors do. The only actual person who ever got A-list celebrity status from voice acting was Mel Blanc -- he's the only voice actor the average audience member has actually heard of and he died almost 40 years ago, and I'd argue the only other person who ever had their career trajectory altered, even slightly, by landing a voice acting role was Ellen DeGeneres.

The big voices in the industry like Mercer and Bailey get paid the same as those who are just starting out. The famous ones are the ones who get lots of jobs in lots of titles, and there's no internal politics, they get lots of jobs because they're very good at voice acting and, if they're known in the industry for anything whatsoever, it's for not being jerks in the booth. So, yeah, might as well go with those two. Heck, I'd hire them too, if I thought I had roles that suited them. Which I occasionally do think.

Sweden

I played Shujinkou with the Japanese-learning part turned off, as I've been needing to prime my brain to learn Swedish, I'll be immigrating to Sweden sometime soon to be with my wife, we've been married almost a year. I can't seem to get anything to stick in my head through independent study, so I'll just be waiting for the mandatory Swedish as a second language classes I'll be taking when I get there. We've been together almost twelve years and I don't know a dang thing; I know ja and nej and jag älskar dig and that's pretty much it. My in-laws think it's cute, but it's not very useful. I can't even read the place names on the signs, because I have no idea what sounds the extra vowels make. I'll probably have to start with that.

I just haven't hugely prioritized it before because, well, everyone in Sweden seems to speak English. When Naty and I are walking around town together and talking, and she needs to talk to someone, she generally doesn't bother to switch her brain to Swedish mode, she just sticks to English and the other person responds in kind.

The only place that doesn't work, interestingly, is when we go out for Japanese food. Every time we've done so, the Japanese waitresses know, at most, enough English to say they don't speak English, then require us to order in Swedish. That makes sense to me. If you're a young Japanese person waiting tables in southern Sweden, I can see why you wouldn't prioritize learning English, that would feel kinda random.

Pet Stroller

My mom got me a pet stroller when Sebastian was getting too old for walkies, enabling us to still go out and get some fresh air. After he died, the cats liked to use it as a perch sometimes, but mostly it took up space. And I do say take up space, because... I never figured out how to fold it back up after I assembled it.

A few weeks ago an old friend, Ashley, was asking on Facebook for a pet stroller she could borrow for a weekend, and I told her I could do her one better and give her mine outright. She came by for it, bought me a beverage in return, and later sent me a video of her on a walk with her elderly little dog. It was bittersweet giving away an item that was associated with Sebastian, but I was very glad to give it to someone who needed it instead of just tossing it aside.

It appears that Ashley's dog passed only a week later, which explains why she was looking to only borrow a stroller for the weekend. Oof, that's sad...

Sleeves

I saw a viral Tumblr post where someone had an idea for a guy: a guy who wears a shirt with some anti-sleeves slogan such as "sleeves are bullshit" or "sleeves are for wimps", but on a long-sleeved shirt. Part of the humor was that the poster was coming up with numerous variants on this single idea to try to find one that sticks.

After seeing that post on my feed a few times, it gave me an idea for some sort of friend or colleague of this sleeves guy: a woman who promotes bralessness with her shirt slogan, something like "no bra club" or "burn your bra", but is very obviously wearing a bra underneath it. Is that anything?

Evil General

Here's a situation you may have seen: someone suffering with depression forgets to eat the bananas they bought, and the bananas get mushy. They inititally feel like a loser for wasting bananas, but decide to reframe it as an opportunity to learn how to make banana bread.

I saw a post online that was a great parody of that concept: a warlord forgets to feed his army and they die en masse, but rather than feeling like a bad general, he sees it as an opportunity to learn necromancy and raise his army up as an army of evil skeletons! Even better!

My mom is always talking about cognitive reframing, so I thought she would appreciate that joke, and I sent it to her. She did not. She lectured me about how the general is a horrible person for letting his soldiers die and their families suffer, and delusional too since learning necromancy isn't actually a thing people can do. Jeez. No wonder she thinks my very typical fantasy stories would be inaccessible to audiences.

Now, to be absolutely fair, which I try to be in all things, I have a long history of being very hostile toward the concept of cognitive reframing, so she didn't grasp the point I was actually making by sharing it, thinking it to be a critique of the concept.

I have indeed critiqued it in the past. Cognitive reframing is basically saying "what you're going through isn't as bad as you think", but sometimes what you're going through is exactly as bad as you think and it's condescending, to a deeply jerkish degree, for someone to suggest otherwise. To tell me that there could be a positive side to some of my life experiences, well, that's just trying to be deceptive, and I don't like deception. So, yeah, I've been extremely hostile to the concept of cognitive reframing, so my attempt to convey that I'd come to understand it since we last discussed it, that fell flat like the cherries story.

Eowyn by Frazetta

This is an illustration by Frank Frazetta, supposedly depicting the scene from The Lord of the Rings in which Eowyn confronts the Witchking. Now, keep in mind that for most of this battle, Eowyn is disguised as a man. Is that the men's Rohirrim uniform she's wearing?

Of course, for most artists, the answer would be no and that would be very hypocritical, but this is Frank Frazetta we're talking about. The men in Frazetta's world go around in thongs too, and often midriff-baring shirts if any shirts at all, but I think even Frazetta wouldn't go so far as to have the men wear boob-shaped armor, so, yeah, he screwed up this scene in a very uncharacteristic way, just as much as any other artist who'd put Eowyn in sexy "women's armor".

Not-so-secretly, I like the "women's armor" trope, with the showing off of the shape and the skin. What do you want from me? I'm a guy. What I'm not is a hypocrite; I like the way Frazetta does it. If the women don't wear armor that actually works, neither should the men. Good armor is no fun. Makes every character look the same. Which is why my characters usually aren't wearing any armor at all, just fabric, so nobody can claim my characters are wearing sexualized, skin-revealing "armor".

Movies: Skinamarink

My final three stories are about movies I've seen recently that I thought were worth talking about. The 2022 horror movie Skinamarink is set in 1995 and is filmed in 1995 quality.

It stars two kids who wake up one morning to find that their parents have disappeared, as have all windows and exits in the house. Being about five years old, they're not as freaked out by this as they ought to be, and simply camp out in front of the TV watching cartoons, having completely lost their perception of the passage of time.

I wouldn't have known that just from watching the film, I only know that's what the film is about because of descriptions of it I read ahead of time. There's very little dialogue, and you practically never see the children, because the film is basically shot from their perspective and they're very uncurious about what's happening around them.

The children's song "Skinamarink" makes no appearance in the film, so I'm not sure why it's called that. It's a very surreal, dull film... I appreciate most works of art that I see, but this one was a dud, I did not enjoy it.

Movies: Smallfoot

Smallfoot is a 2018 animated feature I've been aware of since it came out but never actually decided to watch until recently. I was pretty much aware of the premise. There is a hidden village of yetis in the Himalayas. The yetis have a strict religion, one of the tenets of which is that humans, which they call "smallfoot", do not exist and not to go looking for them. But of course, one young yeti named Migo, played by Channing Tatum, is out exploring the mountain one day when he finds a human, who is himself trying to find evidence of yetis. Also, it's a musical! That's about when people figure this is the kind of movie people made on drugs, but, you know, I never vibe with that idea. Making an animated film takes about three years minimum, I don't think it's possible to stay high that long and competently finish your project while in that state.

I was also aware before going in of the third-act plot twist: the chief elder of the yetis eventually takes Migo aside and reveals to him that the yeti elders have always known humans exist, but kept it a secret from the general population because they feel that if curious yetis seek out humans, the violent history between the two species will reignite. I knew this ahead of time because the soundtrack had come highly recomended, and in the song "Let It Lie", the elder, voiced by Common, explains all this history to Migo via straight-up gangsta rap. Okay, referring to "Let It Lie" as "straight-up gangsta rap" is probably the whitest thing that was said on the Internet today, but still, it's a pretty good song and Common performs it and the surrounding dialogue with awesome intensity.

So, after having that song on my playlist for years, I finally saw the movie. It was... aggressively mid, which I might have guessed from the fact that none of the other songs on the soundtrack were worth listening to, but it might have, I don't know, deprogrammed some children from some strict religions, heck if I know. Like I said, I enjoy most art and I'm glad I finally saw it after all this time, I might watch it again sometime should the opportunity arise.

Movies: Fall

Our final story today, I saw the movie Fall, a 2022 survival thriller, which was recommended to me by a coworker. In this film, two daredevil climbers, Becky and Hunter, climb up to the top of an abandoned signal tower in the middle of a desert. Some pieces fall off the rusty tower when they reach the tippy-top, leaving the two women stranded together on a small platform 2,000 feet above the desert sands.

As I learned when I watched it, this all happens after the opening scene, in which Becky's boyfriend falls to his death while rock-climbing, and some months later Hunter is wanting to get out and climb something again so they can move past it. After the events of the film, I think it's safe to say that Becky will never be climbing anything ever again no matter what. And I think that point is proven by the fact that the recently announced sequel will be featuring completely different characters, because... yeah.

One thing that really caught my eye was, when I rented the film, the streaming service classified it as both a "suspenseful" film, which was to be expected, and also an "erotic" one. I figured that was probably not true, but held onto some hope that, hey, maybe so. Not so much; Hunter wears a very cleavagey outfit for the climb, and Becky's outfit... isn't cleavagey at first but becomes so later, I'm not sure how that works, but by the midpoint of the film they're horribly dehydrated and "erotic" is definitely not the right word, very intense stuff.

This one also has a pretty epic plot twist, but I won't discuss it like I did the previous one, because, well, I'd encourage people to watch this movie. Unless you're reeeeeally not into heights, in which case... you don't want any part of it. But if you like a good thriller with a minimalist cast, definitely go for it.

~

So that was my random collection of stories for today. There probably won't be a comparable blog entry anytime soon, but, you never know, I collect a lot of thoughts, perhaps enough will be worth distilling again later.

Visuals: Irregular Fantasy! Prologue

Another blog entry to serve as visual aids for a story on Archive of Our Own. Irregular Fantasy!: The Prologue was published a little over two years ago, and it's time to add to it the intended fixtures of all our AO3 publications: a cover illustration for every chapter, followed by a bunch of character profiles.

We'll be using these promos as the cover illustrations for the two chapters of the prologue. Future stories will hopefully have more elaborate illustrations.

Those character profiles to come later, to serve as a third and final "chapter" of the story. I have a whole process planned; have to design all the characters in the prologue (not fully, just well enough) and then draw them posing. And then, of course, figure out what to write about each of them.

Irregular Fantasy! Redesigns

Got this done a few months ago: having redesigned the Irregular Fantasy! characters, I also had their promotional poses redone. Found someone going by Nyxthedragon225, who did well enough that we're currently in talks about other stuff, other promotional characters.

The idea was that the new poses would not only match the upgraded designs, but also more closely match the poses of the classic miniatures from the comic.

 

I also made another group shot, one I've been planning for a long time, which I call the "drinks promo". I've come to associate each character with a specific drink, mostly derived from all the times they hit various taverns in the comic: ale for Lambert (served in gallons), mead for Mordekai, cider for Kyros, stout for Draak, whisky for Dwalin, and wine for Alvissa. A characteristic container was designed for each, and their choice of drink will be a recurring thing in the story.

Keys & Kingdoms Fundraiser Extras

I've finished a long project which started almost two years ago: many, many generic character models for Keys & Kingdoms to demonstrate the ten core species of people in the setting. I remember long ago I had a brainstorming session with Naty, McKenzie, and Stacy, having them muse about what such generic examples would look like. Then over time I had those figures designed by Maria Yasen, a freelancer I found on Fiverr; here's her Instagram!

I call them "fundraiser extras" because I intend to use them as examples in an upcoming Keys & Kingdoms fundraiser -- donors of a certain tier will be allowed to design their own background character, and they'd need examples for all possibilities!

We started with three pairs of each species: one pair of warrior types, one of nature types, one of magic types. Each pair a man and a woman, or close enough. For certain species, I decided we needed four pairs to better display the species' diversity, in which case the magic types would be split into divine and arcane magic types.

Once we had all those pairs, I chose which pair of each species seemed the most "generic", to be the initial examples. And those were put out in August 2024:

And since then we've been working on the other duos bit by bit, which have been going into this playlist explaining how I'm adapting the species to a D&D 5E homebrew game. We finished all the duos this week, so here's a little presentation. Just setting them all in little picture frames, and... making them roughly to scale with each other.

The Keys & Kingdoms universe, as I'm sure you're aware by now, is based on the idea of "Dungeons & Dragons meets Disney", and so I'll go over all that inspired them as well as some semblance of their "statistics"; I still don't know how the game system will work for, like, actual statistics. Abilities are all inherent to the creature's biology/magic, never implied to just be cultural. Maria never took all of my instructions, so most of these pics don't entirely match the K&K vision, but, close enough.

Inspiration: Humans are the baseline people of the setting as they are in most fantasy settings. Their statistics in this universe take some inspiration from things that make humans unique as animals.

Size: Medium -- average 5'4" to 5'10".

Statistics: Endurance, aim with thrown objects, versatility (extra skills and feats, for whatever that'll mean).

Inspiration: While there's little elf lore to speak of in any Disney content, it didn't seem right to have a high fantasy setting with no elves. Some inspiration was taken from the Atlanteans of Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Stats were chosen to make them a bit more inherently magical than you see in D&D.

Size: Medium -- average 5'9".

Statistics: Keen hearing and sight, low-light vision, resistance to charm magic. High elves: Magic resistance, innate sorcery, minor teleportation ability. Wood elves: Speed, stealth, camouflage. Dark elves: Darkvision, magic of fire and darkness.

Inspiration: Dwarves appeared prominently in the first Disney film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As such, they're more like fairytale dwarfs than the bigger, sturdier dwarves of high fantasy, with some of the powers implied in Norse mythology.

Size: Small -- average 3'2" to 3'5".

Statistics: Low-light vision, sturdy and stout for being Small, poison resistance, command over earth and fire. Mountain dwarves: Resistance to cold and magic. Hill dwarves: Keen daylight vision, extra toughness. Gray dwarves: Darkvision, poison immunity, invisibility.

Inspiration: Merfolk of course appear in The Little Mermaid, so I knew they had to be core in a Disney-based RPG. In D&D they're always kinda there, but never given any focus.

Size: Medium -- average 6'1" to 6'8".

Statistics: Dismal land speed but fast swimming, breathe in air and water, supernatural beauty, animal telepathy.

Inspiration: On the list because of Tinker Bell and her little spin-off franchise. Their D&D version is heavily toned down to be more in the vein of a playable character, but that's where we derive the notion that they have specifically butterfly wings.

Size: Diminutive -- average 0'9".

Statistics: Flight, weather resistance, magic resistance, light, invisibility, innate magic and strength depending on season or time of day.

Inspiration: Funny animals like Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, or straight-up furries like the cast of Robin Hood, among other things. A single race to represent any kind of anthro animal you want to be, with reasonable restrictions. D&D was going to do something similar based on the celestial guardinals, but I think that idea's been scrapped for now. Called "natives" on the grounds that they would be the first people of the setting, because the world of animation got started with funny animals.

Size: Small, Medium, or Large -- anywhere from 2'2" to 9'6", depending on the size of the animal they resemble.

Statistics: Weak bite or claw attacks, slight weather resistance, luck, courage.

Inspiration: Myshkas are based on the little civilized rodents you see on the fringes of human society in such films as The Rescuers, The Great Mouse Detective, and some of the best non-Disney animation of the 80s. It'll be vital in the system for tiny creatures to be realistic but viable!

Size: Diminutive -- average 1'0".

Statistics: Keen smell, low-light vision, piercing bite, communication with rodents.

Inspiration: Syrsas are here to represent a key character, Jiminy Cricket. Only they actually look like insects.

Size: Diminutive -- average 1'0".

Statistics: Flight, infravision, piercing bite or sting, claw attack, extra arms, communication with insects, cold-blooded, torpor.

Inspiration: Fairies from early fairy tales such as Pinocchio, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty; definitely a core aspect of the setting. The "Children of Oberon" from Gargoyles are also a race of fair folk, depicted as creatures of pure magical energy, shapeshifters, and also the entities who inspired the gods and spirits of all world mythologies -- so most of fairies' true nature in this setting were derived from that.

Size: Small or Medium -- any size within that range, being shapeshifters.

Statistics: Shapeshifting to change appearance or for natural attacks, can develop into flight or extra arms, cold iron weakness, sleepless, vulnerability to antimagic, "pure fey" form, unique spells.

Inspiration: Naturally, gargoyles are inspired by the gargoyles from the show Gargoyles. I made an effort not to entirely rip off the robust lore from that show. As such, they also take a good bit of inspiration from D&D's tieflings and gith.

Size: Medium -- average 5'9" to 7'4".

Statistics: Climbing, gliding, darkvision, powerful claws, prehensile tail, high jump, weather resistance, glowing eyes, stone sleep.

For a bit of a mea culpa moment, I definitely put too many of the women in skimpy outfits. I abide by the brand of feminism where, in a world of total gender equality, women can wear whatever they want, and that in a world of complete safety from any sort of judgment or actual danger, most would in fact dress pretty sexy. But I always keep in mind that some would instead express themselves by dressing modestly and, yeah, seeing all the fundraiser extras lined up, I clearly didn't do that enough here.

The Draw #19: Valerie Hernandez

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Today we're looking at Valerie Hernandez! If I recall correctly, I first met her as the costume designer for Is He Dead?, a production where a lot of good things got started, it's been mentioned a few times in this series. She's been costume designer on many productions I've seen, and been onstage in many others. Never seen her do both at the same time. That'd probably be too much to work on all at once.

I found out later she runs her own theatre group, Square Peg Group Troupe, with many other QCT friends I knew being members. It was Valerie who initially suggested the Wolfmeyers for the roles they played in Better Yet?, which earned both her and Square Peg itself special thanks credits in the production, as Adrienne was also a member. That's Valerie's only TAPAS credit to date, but that's because we haven't finished much stuff.

In 2020, she played a big hand in spreading the word about Keys & Kingdoms auditions. And in 2021, we worked together on QCT's production of Beauty and the Beast -- she played the Wardrobe. Because... she's usually wardrobe. I just got that.

She's helped with fundraisers and other promotions, from her own experience fundraising for Square Peg, and has generally helped keep me going during the many occasions I've felt like giving up on this whole enterprise, helping me sort things out and figure out how to manage myself.

Valerie with Mekia, working on costumes for 2024's Shakespeare in Love.

The Draw #18: McKenzie Eby

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

This... is gonna be a sad one. McKenzie is one of those people who has left the group since I started this series, but she's such a vital part of the group's history that there was never any doubt that I had to do an entry on her anyway.

I guess I'll start with the bad news. In January of 2024, McKenzie told me and Naty that she didn't want to be friends anymore, just to continue collaborating on TAPAS stuff. Over time, we came to realize that wouldn't work -- her artistic output was just as unreliable as it had always been, and in the absence of her friendship and affection, it wasn't worth it anymore. In October of 2025, we asked her to leave the group, and she did so gladly, admitting it was a load off her mind.

I'll try not to speculate on her motivations, they're baffling to me and I don't want to turn anybody against her. The only thing she said that made any sense was that she feared she was becoming abusive, and it's true that she said a lot of very nasty things to me in the last few months of our relationship. I don't get why she couldn't just... stop doing that.

So what's the good news? I guess that's the story of the time we had together. McKenzie was a member of the chat room of artsy animation fans that came together in 2013, where I met Naty and many other good friends. By the time I started TAPAS in 2018, McKenzie had grown into my very best friend, and the person I credit most with making me believe I could really create the things I was aspiring to. Along with Naty, she was one of the central members of "Team Salmon", what I call the core group of TAPAS, those who were part of that original chat room.

Here's a picture of McKenzie, myself, and Naty, the first time the three of us came together to meet in person. We were an inseparable trio.

McKenzie was the central creative force on... just about everything we did. She storyboarded, she did character concept art, she had so many ideas for piecing the stories together. And then suddenly things went cold in 2023, a few months before we were scheduled to visit her at her home for the second time. We tried to be absolute model guests to mend whatever rift had grown between us, but it failed miserably, and having us at her home drove her over the edge, and she broke it off with us.

I'll never understand it and I really don't know how we're going to do this without her. While she had difficulty completing her art tasks on time, she was always on the ball with world-building and character motivations. When I finally manage to arrange all my notes together... part of me hopes I can get her back for the writing staff, if it's at all possible for her to work with Naty again after all the tension... Naty resents her departure very much.

There would be no TAPAS without McKenzie Eby, and I hope that, once I get on my feet a little more, there doesn't have to be a TAPAS without her, ultimately. I'm probably just fantasizing. All the writing and directing tasks that still have her name on them will probably have to be passed on to someone else someday. I'm still not over it. It's been a rough couple of years.

The Draw #17: Michelle Jenfjord

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Up next we have Michelle Jenfjord - my sister-in-law as of my wedding this past August. She joined the team around 2020, when we started working on storyboards for the Keys & Kingdoms pilot.

There were eight scenes to do, one for each character and then a conclusion. They were split among five artists; Michelle quickly volunteered for scenes 3 and 4, those starring Cristela and Stacky, in order to spare anyone else from doing the pilot's nude scenes.

The best part was definitely the various civilian designs that she put into the background of Cristela's scene of first entering civilization. I lifted many of their looks directly when designing concept art for the real extras to be designed for the final product, whenever we get to that. Had a good time adding some colors and specific animated face claims for these characters who will surely recur in the background, not just appear in this one scene.

One day I'd certainly like Michelle to continue designing some characters. I've designed a lot of the upcoming major characters myself for the cast blogs you can see scattered throughout the 2023 and 2024 tabs, but I don't want to be the only one who has ideas.

The storyboard process was a rough one, taking about 18 months altogether, every artist having their own struggles with getting through it, some getting more frustrated about it than others... Michelle hasn't contributed any further art to TAPAS ever since and I feel I've probably put her off the idea altogether after the storyboarding experience.

I need to find the balance in my directing. I started out too shy to correct anyone's mistakes, and that resulted in, well, the final product having mistakes in it. So ever since then, I seek to make sure everything actually goes right, and some people think I'm too blunt and judgmental and mean about it. I'm not judgmental about mistakes in the slightest, I just don't know how else to, like... correct mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. Sometimes I ask for a mace and somebody draws a flail; sometimes someone gives me a slingshot when I meant a sling. I can't just not say anything, but clearly I still haven't put my finger on the right thing to say.

I hope we can get past all that and see Michie in the TAPAS world again sometime, I don't like leaving people behind after they've contributed. She's still in our Facebook group and Discord server, at least. Best wishes!