100 subscribers

So, this happened like a month ago! Er, apparently I started writing this post like a month ago and I forgot about it, hehe.

Doesn't quite feel right, I must admit. I have absolutely no idea who any of these 100 subscribers are, because aside from five or six actual members of the TAPAS crew, none of them ever post comments, and only about a quarter of them actually appear on my list of subscribers. Why do I have so many completely anonymous subscribers? It's really unsettling.

Anyway, let's see, just finished the first week of Beauty and the Beast performances. Will have finished the entire run by the time this blog is posted. It was very rewarding... I always get super-depressed after a show is finished. It's over and it was all I had to live for, for a time.

I think I'm gonna be okay this time. As soon as it's over we're having a big meeting, everyone at TAPAS, to discuss getting the teasers done for our fantasy projects! All of it as soon as possible, allowing for a little holiday break.

Let's talk about theatre dreams! I always have a few whenever I'm doing a show. The most common is the one that comes very early in the process, where it's opening night even though we've only just started learning the show. Later, it's often followed by one in which a slight wardrobe issue results in me being sent onstage to perform naked. Ain't that always the way in dreams? Anything happens to the clothes you're wearing, you go about your day naked. You'd think there would be more reasonable solutions. Finally, a strangely specific dream sees me being asked to take over for another actor; it goes well for a time, until at one point I realize that in a few minutes, the character I was playing before is supposed to be onstage at the same time as the one I'm playing now, and that I'm still expected to play both roles even though that's impossible. And the terror starts to creep in, and I wake up the instant before I learn what the solution is.

Now that I think about it, being expected to do something logistically impossible is probably the most recurring theme in my nightmares, actually. I'm legitimately terrified of that. It's why I always try to give detailed explanations for my circumstances - and nothing triggers me more harshly than the accusation that I'm making excuses. Yeesh, just typing the word made the anguish and rage bubble up a little. Hm... I wonder where that comes from. Bits and pieces of it have been around for much of my life. I might have to think about that.

There's a thing been going around Twitter where you share four fictional characters who mean the world to you! I took some time to sleep on it, and thought what I wrote about them was neat enough to maybe take it beyond Twitter into a more readable location such as this~

Let's talk about these dudes! Much elaboration on top of what I said in the original Twitter thread:

Goliath: The lead character of Gargoyles... just a great hero, who, like the show itself, wasn't afraid to be melodramatic, dark and brooding and gothic in the old-school sense, on the Disney Channel in the 90s of all places. I have fallen very, very far behind on releasing videos, I recorded a whole series of Gargoyles videos nearly two years ago now, which I still haven't gotten around to releasing. Anyway, I do so love Gargoyles and its universe, a world where the fair folk are quick to point out that "all things are true" - while Disney in general inspired the Keys & Kingdoms universe, quite a bit of its atmosphere and concepts come directly from Gargoyles, and what Gargoyles could have been. Maybe it still could be; its creator, Greg Weisman, is enjoying some success currently running a revived Young Justice, but he's always hoping to revive Gargoyles... no sign of Disney giving him a shot at it, even though it's one of the greatest properties they're sitting on. Damn shame. A tweet in that thread where I complimented Weisman on the show and actor Keith David on his performance as Goliath was immediately spotted and retweeted by a Gargoyles fan account within five minutes, despite the fact that I did not tag Weisman or David in it nor use any Gargoyles-related hashtags, and subsequently blew up into what's probably safe to say is my biggest tweet ever. Not a big tweet, mind, we're talking four retweets and fourteen likes, but... that's big attention for me!

Discord: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic debuted in 2010, developed by well-regarded cartoon creator Lauren Faust, who sought to turn the brand away from the frilly, conflict-free slice-of-life it had been for a couple of decades, back toward the fantasy adventures she created in her childhood. She saw only middling success in that goal, and the Season 2 premiere was the last episode of the show she personally worked on before sensing she was losing creative control and deciding to quit while she was ahead; and what a premiere it was. She sought to introduce Discord, an imprisoned chaos spirit who can command reality itself, defeatable only because he often chooses to toy with the heroes instead of break their minds immediately. When she explained to the producers that the character's concept and dark-comedy style was inspired by Q from Star Trek, they were amused enough at the notion to actually hire John de Lancie to voice the character, in a show with an otherwise low-budget Vancouver-based cast. Cut to me, the following year, having heard that the new My Little Pony series was known for its wit and depth and was attracting an audience well outside the target demographic. Intrigued, I tuned in, on what was by shocking coincidence the day the Season 2 premiere first aired, thus hammering me instantly over the head with the realization that yes, this show had more meat and potatoes than you'd ever expect from the My Little Pony name. And so I rode that brony train! Er, not all the way, I fell behind after a while and never did get around to watching the ninth and final season of the show. Still, look at that: Faust's creation lasted nine years even if she only stuck around for the first one. It was quite a phenomenon.

Incidentally, my first time checking out Star Trek: The Next Generation was pretty surreal; I chose an episode I knew prominently featured Q, and it was weird to listen to a bunch of Gargoyles supporting characters being antagonized by Discord. Though I guess it's supposed to be surreal, just in the opposite direction, you're supposed to recognize those voices from TNG...

Drizzt Do'Urden: A Dungeons & Dragons character originating in the various novel series of R.A. Salvatore. Added to Salvatore's first novel at the last second when the D&D executives asked for the barbarian hero Wulfgar to have a sidekick, Drizzt thoroughly stole Wulfgar's spotlight and the novel series, over 30 years and well over 40 books in, now bears the title The Legend of Drizzt. Drizzt was a dark elf ranger, and when he debuted in the late 80s that was an inherent contradiction, as rangers were always good and dark elves were always evil - Drizzt's race prevented him from being respected in his chosen profession. Inadvertently, Salvatore had drawn attention to the odd politics behind fantasy "races", and as the years go by, D&D and its fellow fantasy worlds start to get better and better at a fair depiction of all sorts of different sapient beings living together and discovering their individuality. It's good stuff! Drizzt's story has had its ups and downs, but Salvatore doesn't regret a bit of it, he just seeks to take the parts he did badly and do them better next time, which is a stance I wholeheartedly agree with, much better than erasing the past. And how influential is Drizzt to me? Well, I start dual-wielding like a ranger every time I find myself with an oblong object in each hand; Salvatore is quite the choreographer and chose the coolest possible style for his hero. And... I initially intended to launch TAPAS with a Legend of Drizzt musical. I still hope to finish and produce it someday.

Minsc: Another D&D character hailing from the same universe as Drizzt, the Forgotten Realms. Minsc debuted in the Baldur's Gate video games which were made from 1998 to 2001. The Baldur's Gate "trilogy" (technically only two games, with the story concluded by a very lengthy expansion pack to the second; last year's Baldur's Gate III is no relation to the originals story-wise) is the standard by which all computer RPGs are measured. They're brilliantly written and balanced, and Minsc is their most famous attribute! He is an insane and violent barbarian warrior... and simultaneously one of the noblest heroes in the world. He unleashes that berserker rage on those who harm the innocent - "butt-kicking for goodness", as he calls it. To put it another way: sure, he thinks that the hamster he carries around with him is from outer space and talks to him, but he's also clearly very good at keeping a hamster healthy on his travels. It's also worth mentioning that he was voiced by Jim Cummings; being some of the earliest video games to feature a substantial amount of voice acting, the divide between cartoon voice actors and video game voice actors wasn't quite there yet. The realization that all of the actors in Baldur's Gate were also a constant presence in the Toon Disney, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network reruns I watched every day fascinated me, and my obsession with voice actors is, well, the other half of my life, the first half being D&D-style high fantasy, and I owe both to Baldur's Gate. D&D recently released a Forgotten Realms supplement meant to continue the story of the original Baldur's Gate games, presented as being derived from Minsc's own journals as he explored the Realms, and I absolutely adore it, it's great to see where some of my favorite characters ended up 100 years in the future, and when the book ended with a dedication in Minsc's own hand to the memory of Khalid and Dynaheir, I started crying. A wonderful tribute to my entire childhood and who I became because of it.

In conclusion... well, Beauty and the Beast indeed ended its run yesterday. It's bittersweet, but I'm very much prepared for what's next. Which is... a big TAPAS meeting to decide what's next. "At dawn... we plan." Lots of ideas to gather, including perhaps the creation of a "Best of Phase One" video to celebrate those 100 subscribers. Woo-hoo.

Rehearsals, Recordings, and Recruits

Beauty and the Beast rehearsals are going on. Complex stuff! The ensemble numbers are massive productions, even bigger and longer than they were in the film. Lots of dancing, lots of harmonizing, it's so much fun! I was recently spotlighted by the QCT Facebook page, they've been promoting one cast member every few days, and my cast bio mentions TAPAS and Better Yet? - a fellow cast member approached Mason and me at the latest rehearsal to say he went to investigate and started watching Better Yet?, so, yay! Marketing. Maybe we'll have other new viewers. The YouTube channel is up to 97 subscribers. I've had a lot of trouble focusing, I hope I can break through that in time to make a "Best of Phase One" video as a 100-subscriber special. Growth is still pretty slow, so I don't anticipate any urgency. Agh, but I do need to focus. It's been difficult.

We've begun voice recording for the Irregular Fantasy teasers and trailers and the Keys & Kingdoms pilot. Completion of the character designs and storyboards has slowed down for the past couple of months - both of the artists have been occupied by work stuff but they've been trooping along, they're almost done. Then it'll be time for finalizing the motion-comics for the teasers... we'll need more artists for that. Gotta get ready for some big, big plans.

And for that, I've approached Mason and AJ. The longtime biggest supporters of TAPAS to be found locally, I decided to bring them in as producers, helping me arrange ideas and funds. Not gonna work on anything too hard while we're still working on Beauty and the Beast, of course! But this is off to a good start, not only helping move forward with these big fantasy projects, but coming up with ideas for more content. I just, gah, need somebody to breathe down my neck at all times if I'm ever gonna get back to what I've been working on... why is it so hard to make myself work creatively when I've literally nothing else to do...?

So, this past weekend we did our first Irregular Fantasy voice session, and we'll have a whole bunch more next week that should get us nearly all the audio we need! And we're nearing completion of storyboards, designs, then time to get started on music... just taking things bit by bit. Thinking of starting a mini-fundraiser soon... the actual motion-comic part is gonna take a lot of work hours, a lot more people, gotta pay them somehow. Just need a bit more art to show off first! To tempt people. A mini-fundraiser for the teasers whose purpose is, well, to introduce the big fundraiser.

We've recruited a couple of new people into the team from the Beauty and the Beast company, some old friends who were interested in helping us put it together, and in particular a choreographer. With all the challenges that storyboarding has presented, we're going to try to have a live-action reference photography stage before storyboards from now on. The idea is to stage every scene with actors and models so the storyboard artists can just quickly convert the models into the characters, and do their work much faster and easier without having to guess as much.

We'll need a space and models and photographers and some rudimentary props... could check out the dance studio, maybe the prop basement down at the theatre! We're thinking it over. And for fight and dance scenes... choreography. I hope our choreography still looks good in this motion comic format, as a sequence of stills... I really think we're gonna be doing something really extraordinary here, if only we can finish it up, pioneer a very new art form.

29, Dudes

Writing this on my 29th birthday, September 25 - though I'll be publishing it a little later, waiting until an official announcement comes out of the theatre, 'cause I'm back in that old game. And under a little mini-NDA for like a week until they announce it properly.

So, let's see, how am I doing? Well, pretty good. My antidepressants are kicking in nicely, been feeling good and motivated. So, sticking with those. The anxiety pills just put me right to sleep, no good at all. Not even as a sleeping pill. I sleep fine, I don't want to sleep heavier. I might be okay, anxiety-wise; under the antidepressant I'm not as afraid of things, and as I may have said, I don't have much in the way of survival instincts or social perceptions when my anxiety clears up. So maybe I don't need an anxiety pill. Might be heading back to the doctor in a couple of weeks to ask about something for ADHD instead; I'm motivated and feeling good but I still can't concentrate, so that'd be the thing to look at.

Getting better at meditating and other things I've always meant to be daily routine; not quite on them daily, but I'm doing okay. Last time I took something for ADHD, er, I played Bloons Tower Defense for 24 hours straight and then went to work a 10-hour shift without being the slightest bit tired... not what I hoped for. Unnerving enough that I didn't take that pill a second time. Testing out some new medications during a rehearsal process sounds like a nice balance between trying them while they might interfere with a job, and trying them while I've got nothing going on and it's thus too hard to tell how they alter my life. Considering reopening my file at the employment office! To start looking for some work... after the production. We'll see how life is going at that point, y'know?

Also, going in to get my eyes checked soon. Gonna get some contact lenses, wouldn't do at all to be onstage with my big blue plastic-rimmed glasses. I got away with it in She Loves Me, but otherwise I try to be glasses-off in public performance. Actually, that's why I've worn such big and obvious glasses for the past few years, to discourage myself from wearing them, but I haven't actually worn contacts in a while, I can't keep them in for an entire work shift, and... beyond work and creative projects, I don't really go anywhere. But I definitely gotta get contacts again for this play!

And then after that? I'm gonna look into getting my wisdom teeth out. Got one out a year or two ago 'cause it had a big giant hole in it, and the other three, eh, they bug me a little, might as well. But yeah, that's another thing I'm waiting to do 'til after the play, I don't think having teeth out during a quick rehearsal process is a good call, hehe.

So... it's autumn! Had to take my AC out of the window 'cause the wind and rain was coming right through it. And then had to put it back in because it's getting hot again this week, but we had a couple of autumny days that I got a kick out of, did some walking all bundled up in my sweater, looking forward to more of that.

I met with Randy Wolfmeyer to talk about designing our still-nameless RPG, of which Keys & Kingdoms will be one campaign setting within. We talked a lot about how the magic system functions; that's really the crux of a lot of things, because the stories we're writing right now take place in the worlds of this RPG, and we want the magic system to be recognizable between the games and the stories. Anything else can come later: fight scenes work differently in a story than they do in a game, and any claim we make about creatures or the world in one, can easily be made true in the other. But the magic system needs a good bit of attention paid to it if a story is ever going to examine it carefully, which they definitely should, if not necessarily in the pilot episodes we're working on right now.

Randy talked a lot about how he wanted the system to involve building creatures and characters up from nothing, component by component... and that the principle of this building system might be the crux of two things I've been wondering about: the main selling point of the game, and its title. I like the concept. That'll take some thinkin'! Randy felt a campaign setting might be the way to sell the system initially, but I dunno, I want to emphasize how the system can work with anything, and present some generic RPG fantasy first, before diving into alternate genres like western, various science fiction, modern settings with or without superheroes... the specific fairy tale world of Keys & Kingdoms should definitely be presented early on, but I don't necessarily think it's the right call to open with that... we'll see how it goes! Randy hopes we'll have time to discuss things while we're rehearsing.

birthday collage!

So, yeah, it's my birthday! I'm 29 now. Eh... I was pretty excited about turning 25 because I really thought I'd seize the day that year. But I didn't pull it off. Haven't been enthused about adding another year ever since. But, got a good feeling about what we have going on. Maybe at 30 I'll feel artistically fulfilled. If not, you know, I'll live.

Presented above is a collage of the various pictures that people whipped out on my birthday, most of them from my mom, one from my uncle and another from my dear fiancee. I loved them. They go on the blog for sure, crude little collage of fun memories.

Anyway, let's talk about those rehearsals I've been alluding to - QCT is starting up their production of Beauty and the Beast. Been looking forward to this for over a year! It was announced for the final show of the 2020 season, but the pandemic hit in the midst of the production of Chicago. This year they resumed and completed that production, and are now firing up Beauty and the Beast as their winter show once more! I had hoped to get some TAPAS stuff done between Chicago and Beauty and the Beast so we could be sure everyone was relatively free but, er, didn't.

You know, for the longest time I was pretty alarmed by how the auditions were in mid-September for a production premiering in late November and early December, that seemed like such a short rehearsal process, and after thinking about that for weeks, I realized... I forgot October exists, there's a whole 'nother month in the middle there, that's... that's plenty of time. That explains it.

I'll be playing Monsieur D'Arque, the asylum keeper:

I'm listening...

And presumably, since he doesn't show up until the second act, a lot of costume-changing and background dancing until then.

In the film, D'Arque was played by the late great British actor Tony Jay, who's freaking awesome; he's got this insanely deep voice and just a fabulous villainous aura. The directors of Beauty and the Beast liked his small appearance in the film very very much, and five years later cast him as the main villain, one of Disney's most prominent villains ever, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Apparently, all of his dialogue in Beauty and the Beast was recorded in a single take... DURING HIS AUDITION. That's one of the greatest things I've ever heard.

Why, Tony Jay made an appearance in the first TAPAS project, that being the Icewind Dale playthrough with Irregular Webcomic characters. In Icewind Dale back in 2000, he played the ghost of the barbarian king Kresselack. Regrettably, I lost my gameplay footage of his best scene. Dang it all. Anyway, he was a cool dude. As a lot of people know, I'm pretty into big deep voices (my Johnny Cash impression is the stuff of legend), and I was delighted when they asked me to read a bit of D'Arque during my audition and I did pretty well at getting into that lower register. I'll have to adjust it a bit to carry in a big theatre... very excited!

So, the cast gathers on Tuesday night, and will probably be announced shortly after, and I'll post this blog whenever that happens. Once we have a rehearsal schedule down, well, the recording we'll need to do for the early Irregular Fantasy and Keys & Kingdoms material is fairly minimal, we can probably squeeze in bits and pieces of it during rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast, and have it all recorded by the end. Still got some storyboards and design stuff that's not quite finished yet; as of this writing, five of the eight characters from the previous post have been clothed and equipped, very awesome.

Relatedly, Bobsheaux sent me some vocal samples the other day. He'll be playing King Dworin in Irregular Fantasy, got a real YouTuber as a special guest star for credibility. Well, real-ish. They don't give out bronze play buttons... but if they did, he'd totally have one. They should, you know. Why is the first one you get silver? Ain't fair. (for myself, I'm very near to reaching the first rung of that ladder - so close to 100 subscribers I can taste it! I need to prepare my "Best of Phase One" 100-subscriber special video)

Anyway, he offered up three different options for the character's voice, and I picked one! And I had similar issues as I did when editing the scratch dialogue done for the Keys & Kingdoms pilot episode, and then my sisters' dialogue for the trailers. You know how a lot of people can't stand the sound of their own recorded voice? I've never had that problem, I like my voice. But I think it's by the same basic principle that I get really uneasy listening to recordings of people performing words that I wrote. I stand by the words, and no one's ever done the material badly to date, but listening to other people reading my scripts a real chore to do, and I think it's just a sort of self-consciousness, similar to how I just don't like being noticed in general. But I got through that, and Bobsheaux will get around to recording the dialogue proper, eh, whenever he gets to it! I'm hoping that we get all the dialogue done around October, from all directions.

Hey, a cool thing happened this week - I've been following this webcomic called Grrl Power for a long time, it's an interesting take on a superhero universe, and it's had a running gag from very early on in which the self-duplicating superhero called Harem drinks novelty sodas, and the names of her sodas foreshadow something which then happens immediately: in the first story arc, she's drinking "Spit Take" soda just before doing a spit take, then "Burst" soda which then boils and explodes... and then she's drinking "Supervillain Blitzkrieg" when a bunch of supervillains show up and start a brawl which is the comic's first major story arc.

And here's the thing: I've been reading the comic for years but had no idea this running gag existed, making today's strip nearly incomprehensible to me: Harem is drinking "Attack of the 50-Foot Ex-Boyfriend" soda, and the main character demands what the hell is wrong with her, how she can be so irresponsible. And then a big giant demon shows up and Harem insists it's not her fault. And I'm like... what? I spent like 20 minutes looking at the previous three strips this gag was allegedly calling back to before I finally noticed "Supervillain Blitzkrieg" and thus, knowing what to search for, sought out the other two soda names. Maybe I was aware of the gag at some point; this was its fourth occurrence and the first three were waaaaaay back at the beginning of the story, a lot's happened since then, so I may have simply forgotten.

So I finally got it and I was like... that's the best running gag I've ever heard and it's very possible to miss it completely. I wish I was that clever. I love my stories but I feel like they really don't measure up, like they're nothing truly special.

Mkay, the official cast announcement is taking longer than I thought, should be soon, I think? We're starting our second week of rehearsals. Thus far, we've mostly been learning big group numbers, nearly all of which are straight out of the film. It's been quite wonderful. The music is incredibly complex; I always knew Alan Menken was brilliant, but in working on this show the extent of that is quickly becoming plain. And yet, I've never seen a cast adapt to material so quickly, to seem so ready to perform so soon. This is gonna be a hell of a show. And... they have now made the cast announcement! Okay, time to whip out this blog...

our beautiful cast!

There are times we have to make it perfectly clear that TAPAS is not affiliated with QCT, but all the same, just about everything we do starts there. Why, four of the six cast members of Better Yet? are in this Beauty and the Beast cast, and three others are lined up to be in our next thing... and one other is in the secret TAPAS insiders Facebook group but has not to date been an active member beyond offering bits and pieces of advice now and then.

So, some other news before I get this blog out:

new books!

My birthday gifts to myself! I've been awaiting their release for many months. That their release dates should both happen to fall on my birthday week, well, feels like fate. I'm gonna read 'em! And vlog about it! And hopefully that opens floodgates for all sorts of book-readin' in my future. I used to be a voracious reader, but it's become so damn hard in recent years.

So I'm walking my dog the other day, as I do every mealtime, when a car skids into the auto shop parking lot to block my path - it's Michael D. Perkins, who happened to spot me in just a position he could stop and say hi. An Irregular Fantasy cast member reprising his role as Kyros from the Icewind Dale soundsets, he's been very enthused about the project, as I learned to my considerable shock when seeing him at the first cast meeting. Before having those conversations with cast members on Zoom, I'd been so convinced in my insecure little brain that I was basically strongarming a bunch of people who did not care into participating in my projects... likewise when asking people to watch them.

This blog, any project I put out there, any piece of progress I share with the crew, leaves me tearing my hair out crying to myself "why don't they care?!" And the answer would seem to be, it's a lot easier to spontaneously react with excitement than it is to type something out. Like, they're feeling me but just can't convey it in text. And that's so hard, because I crave their enthusiasm, I need it so badly in order to survive... but for me, it's so much easier to type something than to say it, plus I really don't remember much of what happens if it isn't recorded somewhere, so, I just don't see a lot of that enthusiastic boost I need, and every time I post a new update and see the response being two or three people hitting the like button, I'm right back to thinking "nobody loves me, and I'm in this alone", even as posts about actual events in my life rack up so much loving and thoughtful engagement.

I know it's a problem and I need to get the hell over it. I'm working on it. There's a Twitter thread I've spotted circulating a couple of times recently, about how that feeling of insecurity that people don't actually like you... that's a pretty hurtful thing to do to people, to assume they'd be so cruel. Yeah? You have to have faith in people's care and honesty sometimes.

Just... need a few more of those people who consistently express themselves. I get no engagement to speak of from those 90-odd subscribers, and those three comments on Better Yet that I shared in its first week of release? Still the only comments it has. It's weird. It's weird that my projects somehow have the ability to make everyone around me so much less articulate than I know they truly are, whether they're helping write it or performing it or just seeing it. But so it's always been...

Anyway, my encounter with Michael was well-timed in more ways than just the one, for I was able to inform him I had just gotten back in touch with Isaac David, our studio guy, back from a couple of months on the road, and arranged to meet with him later this week to start scheduling some voice work for those two fantasy projects... I think I already went into detail on that plan earlier in this very post. This is a long one. Thus I'll see all the cast members in the flesh and get to really talk about what we're doing and see the full scope of their enthusiasm! ...And then have to listen to them perform the dialogue I wrote, which as I've just learned is very difficult for me, but hey, it's cool I have that experience now, to know that that's the reaction it brings out, hehe.

I'd like to conclude with a topic near and dear to my heart. Traditionally, dragons are depicted with two arms, two legs, and two wings. Modern filmmakers today often design their dragons with forelimbs like a bat or a pterosaur, a pair of wings which they can also walk on, since in real life vertebrates never have six limbs; they want their dragons to have plausible anatomy. So, for starters, I don't like that, I think dragons have a mystique that precludes them being biologically sensible. Dragons should have six limbs.

That being said, there are a lot of people out there who'll tell you that if a dragon doesn't have arms, it's not a dragon, it's a wyvern. Fuck those people. A stinking wyvern did not conquer Erebor and burn down Laketown. Daenerys Targaryen was not the goddamn mother of wyverns. They're dragons if the story says they're dragons, whether or not I agree with their design scheme. Wyverns are actually cool, mind you, but they're their own thing, they're not just any dragon with no arms, they are a thing lesser than dragons, with their own brand of charm. And dragons, again, they possess that sense of mystique in the title of "dragon" that should not be taken away from them on a stupid technicality. So, in summary, if you're designing a dragon, please give it arms, but if you're looking at a dragon... don't count its damn limbs, just look at it, if it's gargantuan and majestic, and full of flame, and strikes terror into the hearts of puny humans, it's not a wyvern, it's a motherfucking dragon.

Cephalopods, and Other Vital Concerns

Here's a nice thing about English: there's a certain degree of efficiency you won't find anywhere else. Yes, it's more or less the only language in which the rules of spelling and pronunciation are completely negotiable, and while that's usually a subject of mockery, it means we can take a loanword from any language and it'll pretty much sound right. You won't find that anywhere else.

My experience with this phenomenon primarily lies in zoology. I love animals, and learning fascinating new things about them and how they're classified. A recent discovery (of mine, that is; I assume zoologists have known this one for ages) -- falcons, despite their superficial resemblance to hawks and eagles, are more closely related to parrots. Vultures are in the same family as hawks and eagles, while owls are another family in the same general group. So I guess "raptors" aren't really a thing, taxonomically. Or they are, but falcons don't get to sit with them.

Sometimes nuances like that get completely lost in translation. For instance, Brain of Pinky and the Brain often proudly declares that he's not a rat, but a mouse. A distinction which does not exist in many languages. I think I read once (bear with me if I didn't remember this right) that the Japanese dub of the cartoon translated this catchphrase as the claim that he's not a mouse (in Japanese), he's a MOUSE (in English). Somehow that just doesn't come across as a boast that makes any stinkin' sense.

Today, I found myself wondering how a Swedish zoologist would distinguish between the two animals pictured here:

See, Naty and I have been working on composing a song. And in that song, Naty translated "giant squid" as "jättebläckfisk". Why does an upcoming project feature a haunting lamentation, entirely in Swedish, which includes the lyric "a giant squid from outer space"? Never you mind! You'll find out later.

According to Google Translate, "jättebläckfisk" means "giant octopus" and, when asked, Naty admitted there's no word in Swedish to differentiate an octopus from a squid. Finding myself on Swedish Wikipedia, I decided to try to look further into that. The article about jättebläckfiskar was clearly about giant squid, despite what Translate had told me, and the article on bläckfiskar in general (octopuses according to Google Translate and literally "inkfish", which is an awesome term for whatever we're talking about) was about all cephalopods. From there, I thought, surely there's an article about octopuses as opposed to squid? Eventually, I found the link in the cephalopod tree of life regarding åttaarmade bläckfiskar, literally "eight-armed inkfish". There they were. And by all appearances, the giant Pacific octopus pictured above is distinguished in Swedish from every other kind of octopus only by its internationally-recognized scientific name, Enteroctopus dofleini.

On another note, do you have any idea how freakin' awesome it is that I can find a crystal-clear photograph of a giant squid? The picture above was taken by researchers in 2006, a mere two years after the first time ever that such a creature was photographed, by another Japanese research team who had devoted two years to that exact goal. What a time to be alive! I remember the days when a living giant squid was something which had never been seen by human eyes. Clearly, this is no longer the case. That's a big deal.

So, doodly-doo, posting pretty late this week, this squid stuff alone didn't seem to merit it by Monday, but now it's Saturday and I've definitely said enough, posting soon. Been working with Stacy this week on the final character of The Choices who needs to be designed, Jax. While trying to refine her face - making her look like a rat, and yet relatable, and yet not too cartoonish - I eventually said, "We'll have to consult the furries." And that sentence on its own made Stacy collapse in giggles. We found a nice piece of Sabrina Online art, got that face done, and with Jax, that's all the prominent main characters we're redesigning for The Choices:

There they are, at least done with Stage 1, the structure of the physical body, and Stage 2, hair and makeup to complete their nude figure. Stage 3 is wardrobe and equipment, we'll get started on that next week, and it'll include elements like Kinzie's helmet and Maer's glasses that complete the picture. Won't necessarily be showing off the completed model sheets; after designing these model sheets to perfect what they truly look like, promotional poses will convey their personality, whereas these are just... mug shots, basically, so all artists can draw them accurately.

So, working on proceeding past storyboards, which is just incredibly exciting. And overwhelming! It's a lot of freakin' work. I put together a shot list, asset list, audio copy, and some keyframe pose ideas... for a 3-minute teaser, and that was difficult; for a 20-minute episode, well, I'd say I can't imagine, but that's what I'm doing next, so I'd better imagine it.

We're suddenly... going through some stress right now, among the cast and crew. Back-to-school in year two of the pandemic, it's reminding me of the atmosphere of when the pandemic first began, which coincided with my first attempt to cast Keys & Kingdoms. Everyone scared, bummed out, and overworked. I'm certainly not complaining about the effect it has on my projects, that's not the right takeaway there. I've always dealt with the confusing phenomenon of everyone's enthusiasm apparently dampening significantly upon realizing a project is something I intend to actually create rather than a purely hypothetical aspiration, and the engagement I receive from fans and team members has always been eerily minimal given how many people I know are invested... ultimately, I do know I'm getting a lot farther into my artistic endeavors than a lot of aspiring people have.

My own anxieties are... elsewhere. I'm just scared all the time. I can't leave my house, I can't call or talk to anyone, I'm just scared to my core of the slightest chance of judgment or any witness to my incompetence at life.

I went to the doctor today, for a general health check, primary care, mostly needing a note confirming that my anxiety is of such intensity that I need to make my way around Quincy via the Paratransit shuttle service for disabled residents... I should think so, because my anxiety is so intense that actually calling Paratransit to make an appointment, or getting on the shuttle, is too terrifying to consider. Going anywhere, doing anything, where someone might see me... it's scarier to me than death. Given the choice between getting groceries and going hungry, I would take hunger every time, because no matter how I go about getting groceries... someone will know I'm there. Can't deal with that.

I asked the doctor about THC. Purely out of desperation to try something I've never tried before; I didn't think it was a good idea. I hate the idea of being high, of my mind working at less than 100%, and honestly, I'm deathly afraid of being relaxed, of losing my anxiety, because whenever I'm not anxious, I have no common sense, I wander into traffic and I lose my filter and hurt everyone's feelings. I said in the Chit-Chat episode a quote I picked up somewhere: that people assume that if Van Gogh didn't suffer mental illness, he wouldn't have been as good an artist, something many people to this day still believe about artists and artists believe about themselves, when the truth is, if he wasn't mentally ill he would have created so much more and lived so much longer. I stand by that, I want my depression and ADHD heckin' gone so I can live my damn life, but when it comes to anxiety, my concern is that getting rid of it would swiftly result in my accidental death.

My subconscious seems inclined to agree with this assessment; a past therapist suggested that this was the reason why techniques designed to calm the mind, all those I've ever tried at least, all breathing exercises, coping mechanisms, meditations, instead of calming me, trigger a fight-or-flight response, filling me with terror and fury. Something within my limbic system desperately does not want me to let my guard down.

The doctor, perhaps fortunately, wasn't a strong believer in cannabis either, instead preferring since its recreational legalization in Illinois to have his patients, if they insist, get some on their own initiative and leave him out of it. Instead, he prescribed me a very mild antidepressant to take daily, and some anxiety meds to take as needed. I don't have the best history with pharmaceuticals. In my past experience, they've do nothing, or they turned my brain completely off so I was a drooling zombie, or they made the thing they were treating, depression or anxiety or ADHD, ten times worse.

But that's normal. The hard part of finding the right medication is that while you're adapting to it you have responsibilities, school and work and such, to get through while your brain gets knocked around by prescriptions that aren't quite right. Already barely coping, in the past I didn't feel like I could afford to keep experimenting. Right now? Well, now's the time. I wish I'd thought of it sooner; my goal right now is to get my mental health in order before I start attempting to take on more in life. A bit of experimentation should be just fine. In particular, I've been prescribed anxiety meds "as needed" before. You can't drive or work after taking them, so... I never took them. Because I had to drive to work. That's what I was anxious about. Now I can at least find out if I'm functional after taking such a thing.

So... like I said, I fear living without anxiety, but I just can't live like this anymore. Anything is better than this, than being petrified about everything, wishing I was dead on a daily basis, total inability to focus for even a moment on what I want. What I wouldn't give to make more than fifteen minutes of progress through a video game, or more than one page of a book, or anywhere in something I'm writing... you think I wanted to hyperfixate on learning Swedish words for cephalopods? Nope. The only choice I had in that matter was to reason with myself afterward that I genuinely did want the answers, and they're good to know, and I shouldn't hate myself for that sidetrack. And that was hardly a choice at all, just the luck of the draw that the thing I fixated on that day was new information that I actually cared about.

It has to stop and I'm not the person with the power to stop it, my mind is a bundle of screams and carnage so far beyond my ability to control it's ridiculous. I've tried to change my habits for years, but tempering my thoughts for even a moment, it can't be done, something has to be done to me. Taking my shot with that. Heading to the pharmacy soon. Then the grocery store, hopefully.

In short, as I may have mentioned, I'm slowing down. Not allowing myself to get so frustrated and angry at my own limitations. Just being calm and taking things one day at a time. No one is expecting me to be anywhere in particular by any particular time... that's just me, wanting desperately to be stable and creative now and not later. Every day, doing everything I can... trying to set a schedule that actually looks like what I've been able to accomplish in a day for the past seven years. It's difficult, there's always another thing I remember I want to do and I end up with the same overlong to-do list that I can't possibly actually finish that week. I just gotta keep trying to trim it down until it is actually manageable. No more or less has ever gotten done, I just have to somehow put less on the list, have down-to-earth expectations so I don't end every day so disappointed in myself.

And... everyone else is slowing down too right now. You know, that's been the hardest, strangest part of this journey. Now that I'm working with a whole bunch of people, I'm realizing... everyone else isn't a million times more confident, motivated, organized, and energetic than I am. I always thought that surely I must be a uniquely shitty slug of a person. Now I'm thinking I must somehow be uniquely gifted, for actually knowing what I want to create and fucking going for it... to the point of the reality of it intimidating people. That's... a hard thing to wrap my head around. That I'm not the lowest of the low. Well, if everybody else truly does actually know how I feel, hey, best wishes to all of you. It's a tough world out there. I hate it. Thanks for being in it with me, that makes it better.

Writing and Creating

Released today the first episode of Chit-Chat, a panel discussion for newly-released projects. Hopefully one day there'll be another one to chit-chat about! We talked about Better Yet? and it was a lot of fun looking back on it, and listening to the writers go even further back to before I ever became involved.

It's an interesting process, writing a story. I've prepared a lot of stories in the past ten years or more. I go back to them now and then, make little modifications. I imagine, if I had released them when I first intended to, well... I'd probably be embarrassed by them now. The stories are so much better now. I guess if I just keep on modifying them until the day I die, they'll be just amazing. But no, one day the right time will come to actually develop them, and... improve them as they go.

So, there's that, and I also put out a promo pic for Irregular Fantasy!, with David Morgan-Mar's endorsement. The character poses and background, which I believe I've alluded to but not previously displayed on the blog. At one point I stopped really talking about the adaptation of DMM's work. Didn't stop all the older blog material from existing, of course. In short, he's okay with us working on it, when we finish something we will discuss releasing it. And he gave me the quick okay for releasing this picture as long as it's clear these are his characters and that we have his permission, naturally. Upcoming soon is a video Stacy and I made of her drawing process, that was fun to make, so I'm glad we have the chance to show it off.

Storyboards are proceeding, voice casts are preparing, it's nice that we're going forward.

Cast Gatherings

I missed last week's blog, nothing really started to happen until the end of that week, so I figured this blog would be where to talk about stuff.

Storyboards and character designs kinda slowed down last week, but they seem to be getting back on track. I'm very excited. I'd show you some, but the new Choices character models are still stark naked, we're designing their faces and bodies, and then tackling the hair-and-makeup department, and once we have that for all seven heroes and the villain, then we're going back to do all their wardrobes. They're not completely anatomically correct, but enough to be too raw for the blog.

And for those Irregular Fantasy storyboards, eh, not sure at this point what I can display of Irregular Fantasy. DMM is all for going forward with making this project, but displaying it publicly, fundraising for it, earning actual income? In that order, presumably? It's all still up in the air, to be discussed when it's in a more completed state, I suppose. I see no reason to think he won't allow it... but we're not there yet. And... he hasn't answered any of my emails since the end of June, think it might be time to buzz him again...

...to tell him about the musical score! We got some musical score done for the beginning of the teaser. It's excellent. Hm, with everything especially music taking so long, I'm fearing that we'll finish the teaser with absolutely nothing prepared for what comes after. The trailers are so very, very music-based, and... I've never had much luck with getting music made for my projects. Rob's the best we've had, but he's still not exceptionally speedy.

Had some cast meetings this week! The first one, only AJ and Michael showed up, but they were pumped as hell, which just... really, really encouraged me! For over a year now, I've been so confused and annoyed at how so many people claim to be on board but express absolutely no enthusiasm, but this meeting, seeing AJ and Michael on video and hearing them, I realized, okay, maybe I've just been misreading all the text messages I've been communicating by all this time. Maybe at the Choices cast meeting at the end of the week, I'll experience something similar!

I hope so, because afterward I met with Bobsheaux, and I was hoping for a similar party but it was just incredibly awkward. It went well, ultimately: got the job done, prepped for his role, told him a little about the design and upcoming story. He found it comparable to his early livestreams and now, well, I catch Bobsheaux livestreams whenever I can, so, just gotta keep it movin', I guess!

As for The Choices, well, after almost 18 months, those storyboards are done. Got the reel all put together. So, now it needs its proper audio - the real voice actors, some score and sound effects - and then... final art. Now that I have a storyboard that's finished, I gotta comb through it, make a proper shot list, then an asset list! The main characters are in the process of being redesigned, and from there we need to draw up every character, creature, outfit, object, and location appearing in that story! Also, like... a content warning list. Those are in vogue in internet productions and I think it's a fabulous idea, opening with not only precisely why the episode is not for children, but also any visual stimulus or social issue within the episode that might trigger someone, so they know to avoid it or at least brace themselves for it.

The medium of these projects, I've often jokingly claimed that, as it's not quite animation, as it's not quite a comic, you smoosh 'em together and get the word "anemic", but... everybody flinches at that, thinks it's gross. I really didn't think anemia was that unpleasant of a thing, but, the world seems to be in agreement. The term "motion comic" isn't exactly accurate, I wanted to call it a new thing because, well, I've never seen anything like what we're doing here, wanted to give it a new name that reflected how pioneering it was. But... before that, I was all for calling it a "motion comic", I guess we're going with that. Maybe I'll just have a running gag of how I want to call them "anemics" and have whoever's listening get grossed out.

I never saw anything like it until I saw the web show My Pride, which is basically if The Lion King had a culture that operated in the way that real lions do, so, incredibly fucking brutal. Damn good show, and like the currently planned state of TAPAS stuff, only barely animated. Very inspiring. It's an anemic! No? Okay...

DMM got back to me. Apparently, genuinely did not receive the last two emails I sent him over the past few months, thought my email this week was the first he's heard of me in a while. He's okay with the process continuing without too much input from him... seemed to have missed my question about wanting to release some artwork, Stacy made a video of her process for the character renders and we'd like to release it and the art itself... I'll check in on him again next week...

We've had our first writer's room meeting! Mason, Naty, and I got together for some filling in the gaps of the big, big Irregular Fantasy pilot episode script. Next meeting is with the cast of The Choices, very excited about that. Stacy tells me her girlfriend thinks The Choices sounds "cool af".

Okay, I'm back, it's Tuesday, this blog's late. Dang it. Mkay, we had that Choices cast meeting, it was excellent, so happy to see that cast finally assembled! Got another Irregular Fantasy meeting coming up this week, immediately after another writing session. Everyone who missed the first meeting will be there, so, yay! Had to make a couple of cast replacements I hope will be temporary, I was really committed to Irregular Fantasy ending up with the same cast as the original Icewind Dale soundsets.

And... now I'm off to figure out what we need beyond storyboards and voice acting now that we are fully ready to go into and beyond those. The asset lists and whatnot that I mentioned... needs a lot of things prepared. Got Gretchen in as a production manager for Keys & Kingdoms, need another one for the other thing, maybe not right away, but later...

The Big Release

All right, well, first week of Better Yet? being out has been nice. I've spread it around, people are saying some very nice things. I boosted the post on Facebook, made it an ad... that was weird, I didn't like the results. Just lots and lots of total strangers hitting the like button and, according to analytics, not watching the video at all. The ad was supposed to run for seven days, but I pulled it after two, it was creeping me out.

Only one comment was posted on the Facebook ad: "CRAP! Reporting as spam." So, that was lame, fortunately I had the power to delete the comment like it never happened. Stalked the guy's profile later, found him a retiree from Florida who does nothing but complain about Facebook ads, explicitly stated at one point that he reports all of them, and vows to quit Facebook once a month or so. So, clearly nothing personal. I'm not gonna say he thinks Facebook is liberal propaganda despite it being mostly used for the opposite, but... yeah, he thinks that. I can cope with a bit of that, if we get haters that just means we've spread far enough that a wide enough array of people are aware of us, and I want that. But I don't think Facebook ads are the way to do that, I'll try to keep it organic.

With Better Yet? having premiered... I'm trying to savor the victory, but it's also time to start getting ready for the two fantasy stories that follow! I'm reassembling the casts and doing what I can to teach them about the characters and their story while we wait to learn when the recording studio will be available again.

Only other thing worth mentioning is that I have finished recording the Season 2 premiere of the TAPAS podcast, gonna edit it today. I haven't actively promoted the TAPAS podcast in a very long time, because... it just stopped being accessible, I was very much going through the motions, but I've retooled it, I think it'll be a more fun, community-type thing. Should come out tomorrow! But you can never guarantee a release date with TAPAS, it all depends on how well my brain's working.

So, short post today, I'll leave you with a collection of screenshots I've shared, some of the comments Better Yet? has seen so far!

The Best Yet?

All right, when I post this blog Monday morning... it will be the release date of Better Yet? Yup, that's right. Comes out in, like... 12 hours now. That's very exciting. I'm gonna be working hard at promoting it from the moment it unleashes itself on the public. #BetterYet, everybody! Well, the hashtag probably won't really go anywhere. But how about some YouTube comments? I get a very satisfying amount of views and likes on my videos but almost no comments. It's creepy as hell. Like watching a silent, staring crowd. If you watch it, just shout us out.

It's also time for other tasks of TAPAS Phase Two that I've been trying to dive back into. New podcast episodes in time, but mostly things like making sure the website is up-to-date and everyone has proper credit for everything they've done. It's a lot to go through.

Here's a simple new online avatar that I pasted together for myself, it's the new header image on my Twitter page. If you already know, then you know, and you're my favorite kind of people. If you don't know, these are two characters from RWBY; very very minor characters, but on the left we have Sage Ayana and on the right, Shay Mann. It's rare to see my first name or my last name in media, but here's a show that has both, ain't that remarkable. SageMann could very well be their ship name, if anyone ships them, which, despite the fact that they've never even appeared in the same season of the show together, is entirely possible. I'm hoping to commission something a little later, an actual drawing of them together, holding up little signs that say "Sage" and "Mann" like they're at the airport or something.

But, that's not a big priority, we've got lots of other stuff to work on right now. We're gonna try to give Better Yet? plenty of time to simmer and be the thing we have out right now, but we're also nearing the next step for our big fantasy stories, and that's gonna be super-exciting.

And, er, okay, that's all I've got to say. I have not had a chance to actually get to that Phase Two stuff yet. I'm starting now, Monday morning, for sure taking a break in the evening when the show launches to make sure everybody knows and it's promoted properly!

The Tethercat Principle

This'll be kind of a "random thoughts" blog; just wanted to discuss a thought from a few weeks ago while Mason, Isaac, and I were working on editing Better Yet?; I observed (mild spoiler alert) that the last time the character of Jodie is seen, she's sobbing at the end of Act 2, Scene 2. There are three more scenes after that, and Jodie makes no appearance in any of them. This works with the direction the story goes, and it's fortunate, I joked with the other guys, that the final scene mentions that she's pulled together, otherwise, since she was so inconsolable last time we saw her, the audience might worry that she never recovered.

Some call this the "Tethercat Principle"; basically, it's the assumption that whatever it is the characters were doing last time you heard from them, they're still doing that. It's called that based on a Far Side comic which depicts two dogs using a cat as a tetherball. Readers were devastated rather than amused, and Gary Larson later wrote that perhaps they would have found the comic more palatable if the caption, rather than simply reading "Tethercat", had told that the cat eventually escaped and got his revenge. Otherwise, it feels like the cat will be stuck in the tethercat predicament forever.

It doesn't just apply to fiction, you know. It's kind of the way the human brain works. Think about it: if a person is wearing the same outfit they were wearing last time you saw them, or are sitting in the exact same spot where you left them, your first impulse is to be alarmed that they've been wearing that outfit or sitting in that spot the entire time since you parted ways. When you see someone you haven't seen in years, you're stunned that they've gotten older. I guess we all still carry that teensy bit of childlike narcissism, assuming that people kinda hang from coathooks waiting for us when we're away.

And here's another one! A less recent thought, but one I remembered, a big realization I had upon studying Dungeons & Dragons books in preparation for Keys & Kingdoms stuff. There's a big difference in designing creatures for video games, which is where I originally took my inspirations, and doing so for tabletop games. In a video game, every unique creature costs time and money to design and construct, so often you want as many creatures as possible to use models you already have, just maybe change their colors and a few accessories, and so you have a bunch of enemies that all look pretty much the same, but each has different statistics and abilities to challenge you. In a tabletop game, there's no limited graphics processor to constrain creature design and there's also no computer calculating the stats for you - both are entirely in your own brain, therefore it's easier if every creature looks different but they all have the same stats. Isn't that interesting?

Anyway, yeah, that'll be the end of today's random thoughts blog. It's a couple of days late because I've been waiting to see the final cut of Better Yet?, and that was delivered last night. It's coming very, very soon.

And We're Back!

Okay, it is July 9, should be releasing this blog in a couple of days. Got my computer back! New hard drive, with my old one cloned on it, so didn't lose anything, that's nice... gotta be a little bit careful with my USB ports so I don't jostle them; my video drivers were upgraded, and it was recommended to make sure the thing is well-ventilated, perhaps with a cooling pad. I've never heard of such a thing before, but they sure look snazzy. Microsoft Office is still a little funky and glitchy, but nothing I can't live with. As far as I can tell, it is at least faster now. We'll see what becomes of it.

Being without my computer for a little over a week left me much time alone with my thoughts... thoughts I put into my mini tape recorder! Well, it's digital, there's no tape in it. But, you know, just one of those things. I try to empty out my tape recorder every day, sort out all the various ideas into the individual documents for all the stories and projects; some of which are well-organized, others of which are currently a 50-page mish-mash of every idea I've ever had for the project with no organization, not helped by just tacking every new idea I have onto the end. One of these days I'll organize them, whenever jumping upon that particular project becomes a priority!

Anyway, like I said, I try to empty out the recorder every day. Sometimes if there are 30 messages or so, or if a lot of them are over 3 minutes long, it's a hard task to accomplish. With my computer gone, I ended up recording over 385 messages, many of which were over 10 minutes in length... over the past few days with the computer back, I have sorted through a good amount of it, including all those that are longer than 2 minutes, so I'm down to about 250 altogether, and... all short now. So, still quite a bit of climbing to do, but well on track to getting normal life back on schedule. With lots and lots of new ideas.

Sunday night now, July 11. Oh, I am well prepared to release this blog tomorrow morning. Mostly 'cause I just said everything I'm about to say in the TAPAS insider Facebook group. Guess it was insider information for, like, twelve hours, tops, hehe.

Spent this evening with Isaac in the studio, continuing to refine Better Yet? I had to substitute for our director Mason, who was in sitzprobe for Chicago - that, if you didn't know, is a long day of rehearsal in which the actors and the orchestra have a sit-down and run through all the songs together for the first time. Isaac and I listened to the whole 90-minute show, periodically stopping to make some modifications, but it didn't feel like it took that long at all. We've got a quality product here! Just that much of a delight to listen to, I guess.

After that, we discussed what we were doing next, and as it turns out, Isaac going out of town at the end of this week isn't a brief trip like the last time, he's straight-up going on tour, there'll only be small windows of time over the next couple of months where he'll be back in town and might possibly have a chance to let us into the studio. So my assumption that things could really get started up once Chicago ends its run on August 1, not gonna pan out. But that's not a problem! This means we have more time to storyboard, and to get the actors prepared for whenever it is we can do the voice-acting thing.

Also this evening, the Keys & Kingdoms storyboards reached 90% completion! I need to edit some more scenes stat, I did the first scene and the last scene and haven't had a chance to do all the rest that are finished. In the shots that were completed today, we finally see something I've been waiting to see since I created these characters: boobs! Yeah, if I haven't established yet that K&K will feature boobs, it certainly will, though... I'm beginning to rethink trying to put them on YouTube. It would just be so much of a bummer if the show was impossible for a prospective fan to just happen to stumble upon, just because boobs equals 18+ and that equals hidden. And even more of a bummer if the episodes were marked 18+ but then still deemed too inappropriate for YouTube and got deleted.

I still want to make my statement, so I'm thinking that the YouTube version will, like, censor the nudity really obnoxiously so you can't forget that you're not watching the real version of the show, and then the uncensored version will be found elsewhere. I'm not trying to be vulgar here, you know, just trying to #freethenipple. Sure, people find breasts sexually attractive, but that's also true of lips and necks and legs and any other part of a person's body you could name, why are women's nipples just as forbidden as actual sex organs? Nonsense, I say.

So... at this point, wasn't feeling like I could expect all storyboards and final character designs to be done by August 1, so, hopefully they're done in that vicinity at least. Post-Chicago we're definitely gonna get to work on writing further stages of these fantasy projects. And I'll at least start gathering up the actors and talking to them in more depth about what the heck we're doing - in the end that's probably a better idea than the current notion of getting them into the studio, like, right away.

And in the meantime, the final audio cut of Better Yet? will assuredly be done this week! And the release date, mmm, not too far in the future, I want to prepare for it and give it a bit of fanfare, but it'll be out for sure. This is very exciting, got a thing that's almost done.

Blog Train

Okay, we're back on the blog train. Got my computer back from the repair shop. The fan was dirty, it was cleaned, so it shouldn't overheat anymore. Absolutely nothing has changed about the way the computer runs. I called the repair guy and he was bewildered, he really thought cleaning the fan would fix up all the visual glitching. I guess I'll take it back to him, well, shortly after sending out this blog post.

For now we're starting this week. Today, the aforementioned trip into the recording studio to pick up those lines of Gretchen that were missed and, with Isaac back from his trip, it's back to editing the show, scene by scene.

Things happening during the time of the previous blog that I decided to save for this one. Well, Brian had to bow out. Brian LaGuardia is a composer who was recommended by a friend of mine a couple years ago. He signed on to write the music for my Drizzt Do'Urden musical. He produced like one-quarter of one song and it was very exciting, but didn't get any further. A year later, I asked him to write some songs for the Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices pilot episode. That, he did, so that was nice, with the songs I was able to continue writing and producing that pilot, and so I have been. So, I got two-and-a-quarter songs out of him in as many years before he officially bowed out a few weeks ago, just has too much to do for the rest of the year.

Why I stuck with a composer who had so little time for me, well, he was the fourth composer who signed on to TAPAS and the first who actually did anything. The first three met with me, talked about the projects, had a good time talking about it, were delivered the material to work with, never worked with it. One had the courtesy to officially bow out due to being busy like Brian did, the other two just ghosted me. It's very painful. I love music so much and want lots of it in my stories. I've gotten two and a quarter pieces of music in all the years I've been doing this. And the quarter might not count anymore, I'm confident enough now to admit it when I'm dissatisfied with a take, and I think the melody Brian composed wasn't up-tempo enough for my tastes. So I'll talk about that with... someone, whenever we get back to that Drizzt musical.

I'll have to rewrite that Drizzt musical; apart from the script being over four years old anyway, Drizzt is becoming mainstream soon, he's starring in the upcoming video game Dark Alliance and, rumor has it, a TV series. Or at least some stories narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, something like that. All the jokes about what an obscure story it is to write a parody musical about will have to be adjusted. Heck, some of those weren't even jokes, there was a villainous breaking speech on the subject.

A few months ago, Brian brought in his friend Robert to help carry the load, and, after those months Robert is almost finished with one song, a halfling-themed background song for Irregular Fantasy! I'm very happy with it. I'm just a little nervous now about what I'm gonna do about music going forward, I have Robert but I don't think he can tackle the whole thing alone. Need some more composers. I just don't understand why I've had such ill luck with musicians, why it's so often been such a complete non-starter.

Another person who's backed out of a project recently was Emily Dozier. One of my best friends from the theatre, I was in Spamalot and She Loves Me with her and her husband, and they throw excellent cast parties. She was to play Natha Lee in The Choices, but when I was re-confirming that cast, she backed out following the tragic death of her cat. That's hard. Totally understandable. Replacing her would be a hard journey, or so I thought, but my very first idea, for Hannah, one of our fellow ensemble members from She Loves Me, worked out right away, she was all for it. And the entire cast of Irregular Fantasy! is also signed on! Still a few Choices parts needing to be confirmed. Just as I hope Brian maybe makes some room for me next year, I hope Emily rejoins TAPAS for, well, whatever the next thing is!

Anyway... I assume you wanted to hear about kitties. A litter of feral kittens were born in my grandpa's neck of the woods. Comfortable enough to get on people's porches to eat the food laid out there, but feral enough to flee at the very sight of a human. When my mom and sisters were visiting, they trapped two of the five, and... I had to save them. I took them in. They're my kitties now.

My two boys, as I learned when I took them to the vet. The yellow one is Butter, the orange one is Marmalade. Because they're yellow and orange! Butter adapted amazingly well, he likes to cuddle and play. Marmalade is still pretty afraid of me, but he's adjusting little by little. I knew from the start that I wanted two, so they'd have someone around they'd be comfortable with, not be ripped away from their entire life, and that was absolutely the best call, the tasty-on-toast brothers are definitely good for each other's health and comfort.

So, like I said, we're back to working on Better Yet? today. Based on how the editing went of the first three scenes - apart from noticing that we simply didn't have some of Gretchen's dialogue in Scene 2 we got a good rhythm going and it went very smoothly! - the whole thing should come together soon, I can't imagine anything going so wrong that we'd fail to reach our ill-defined release date of July. Just July.

Hoping to put together a Quiplash 3 game with the cast of Better Yet? for this weekend too. That'll be tons of fun. Nice little promotion.

And by the time this blog comes out, I hope to have engaged TAPAS Phase Two. You'll know it when you see it. Well, maybe not here on the blog. Not entirely sure how to redesign the blog for Phase Two. But every other place you can find TAPAS, that, that'll be all decked out for Phase Two.

So, another thing going on: final redesigns of the cast of Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices! Funny thing: most of the art for TAPAS projects thus far has been done by either Stacy Lord or Casey Gosselin, and I had the realization a few months ago that all the projects we were actually launching - Better Yet?, The Choices, and Irregular Fantasy! - were coincidentally all of those that were visually developed by Casey. But while Better Yet? will indeed feature Casey's portraits, some scheduling problems meant Stacy had to take over for first Irregular Fantasy!, then The Choices.

Anyway, the objective for the final version of The Choices characters, was to remember the massive Disney inspiration that the Keys & Kingdoms universe was supposed to have. I'm working on world-building with all the ideas I've had from watching Disney films, inject more of that atmosphere into the universe, and I also want a ton more Disney in the art style.

For example, here's the picture of Zaya and Airi which Casey did for the TAPAS Banner! I assume the TAPAS Banner will have gone public by the end of this week. If not, well, here's a preview of one-tenth of it, ya lucky blog-readin' bastards.

And here are Stacy's preliminary sketches! Experiments with adjusting her art style so we get the look we're going for. This sketch is all we have so far, but I'd say we're off to a good start. I saw this the other day, and I says to her, I says, "Those are some Disney-ass eyes. Well done."

The Irregular Fantasy redesigns were finished some time ago, not only character models but also some slick promotional renders. Those have been shown off to insiders, not going public with them until we're closer to having something to release. I have teasers for both projects boarded, hoping to unveil those teasers by September-ish? We'll see what we can do.

As for Casey, no longer having codified the art style of these two projects, well, something occurs to me. That being the launch of Whirlwind, my crew's old Dungeons & Dragons adventure, and Kingdom Butts, my long-in-the-making super-awesome Kingdom Hearts parody. I moved them up to earlier in the agenda because I think the way to tell these stories... is as books. Not real books, but books to post onto a fanfiction site, I'm thinking Archive of Our Own? Books that need maybe two illustrations per chapter, and I think Casey's style will fit a legit D&D story, as well as a Kingdom Hearts story which, unlike Keys & Kingdoms, we're trying to make look like D&D instead of Disney. Actually, I haven't mentioned this to Casey yet. I'll do that now.

As for Whirlwind, you know, we played the first story arc I had planned, we documented it, we released a pinpoint-accurate book adaptation of it onto fanfiction.net. But a D&D adventure doesn't make for a very good book, it's all ad-libbed and unstructured. So we're rewriting that first story arc, as a book, and then we'll be continuing the adventure in that way, as books. I've already told the players, now my co-writers, the broad strokes of how I intended the rest of the adventure to go, so they will no longer be surprised at every turn and will now have control of other aspects beyond what their characters do. So, you know... it's not a legit D&D adventure anymore, but it's still an honest collaboration set in a D&D universe.

Okay, it's another day. I cancelled the Quiplash plan. Maybe another week. I'm just feeling too overwhelmed for it right now. Part of it was the stress of trying to make sure there would be exactly six players, as Quiplash 3 has a pretty lackluster ending if you don't have an even number of players, and it's pretty dull all around if you have only four. Maybe I should buy Drawful 2 instead. It's a standalone, not in any of the Party Packs, and it's a classic. And it'll work just fine with five people. Most of the games do, I just really wanted to break into Party Pack 7 for the first time; Quiplash 3 looks really good, but again, only if you have an even number of players.

But we've done the thing, we got into the studio to get Gretchen's lines and we made some plans! Mason, Isaac, and myself will gather in the last few two days of June to continue editing the show now that we definitely probably have all the dialogue. Isaac hopes to refine everything by July 17, as he's going on another trip after that. And right now, several of my cast members, Mason included, are entangled in QCT's production of Chicago, which was in the middle of production when the pandemic hit. So that'll take a lot of effort! But it ends its run on August 1, and... I think Isaac will be back from his trip around then? Not sure. But anyway... surely all the storyboards will be done by August 1! Then we can jump right into recording for the Choices pilot and the Irregular Fantasy teaser. Hmm, my aim to release the teasers by late September (for my birthday!), that's probably too soon to hope for with this plan, but that's totally okay! We have forward momentum and it's awesome.

But what this means right now is that Better Yet? will almost certainly make its "just July" release date, so that's cool. Sadly, the trailer doesn't seem to have spread as far as the simple promo image did, but again... that's okay. We'll do the real promotion when the actual show is released. Oh, and also hopefully in there we can edit all of Aramie's dialogue in the first Choices teaser; she hosts that alone, we have it all storyboarded, so it'll be cool to have a complete story reel of dat.

It is now Sunday morning and I have just discussed all these upcoming plans with the insiders. Gotta admit, the notion of Better Yet? almost being finished is kind of making me depressed. That's natural when a project is ending, you know, and that's never really happened with a TAPAS project before. Finishing an art project, as they say, is like getting fired and having to find another job, and so being a freelancer is like that happening every week or so. The depression I've gone into after the end of every stage play I've been in, that was hard... didn't have anything else going on in my life at the time. Fortunately, I do know what's coming up next for me, as you've gathered from all of the Keys & Kingdoms and Irregular Fantasy stuff I've been discussing. As difficult as that will be, more so than Better Yet? was, it'll be something to strive for that's going... rather well. And, you know, I should savor the existence of Better Yet? before rushing into the next thing. We want to get people talking about that for as long as possible.

Still Sunday morning! Finished recording Podcast #52 yesterday, so it'll be released this evening for sure, this blog will be released after I've switched everything over to Phase Two. Very exciting. Here, let me show you what the blog looks like right now:

Just a default Blogspot look-and-feel. It'll probably still look like this after this post is published, but I for sure want to try and customize it in some way in the future. I'll work on that.

So, okay, Monday morning, posting the blog momentarily. Everything does indeed now have the Phase Two veneer on it, the new logos, the banner. Everything except the blog, anyway. I wonder if I can put the banner up as a header image for the blog? I'll try later. If not, I'm referring to this baby:

The Phase Two TAPAS banner, headlining all our social media presence from now on. The stars of nine of our original IPs, here to tantalize the audience about what their stories might be about when we unveil them in the future! Directly to the left of the logo you'll see Trent, drawn by Casey Gosselin for Mason Ellison's Better Yet? - you'll meet him very soon. Front and center are Airi and Zaya, they should be making their debut not too long after. Everyone else? We'll see.

Heard back from David Morgan-Mar this morning, he's looked over my material, he's looking forward to seeing what comes next for Irregular Fantasy. If all goes well that'll start popping up at about the same time as the Keys & Kingdoms stuff, I'm thinking of them as sister series even though there's no formal connection beyond, I suppose, both using the same RPG rules system which I... still haven't formulated. Might behoove me to figure out exactly what magic is capable of in the multiverse of the still-nameless Tapas RPG before getting too far into stories set there.

Last night, I found my computer could no longer read any USB device I inserted into it. So... couldn't have a videoconference or record my voice or even back up what files were changed since my last trip to the computer repair shop. That was kind of infuriating... but I just counted my blessings that I got the podcast recorded before that, got it done. Added it to the list, my full-page list of computer problems to resolve. Might end up being cheaper to just get a new laptop, in which case... I don't know what I'll do.

But I don't want to end this on a sad note! It's Phase Two. There's a whole world of possibilities ahead of us.