Fresh and Clean

Back from the family road trip vacation and.... feeling pretty neat, for the most part. It'll be time to move on soon and I still have absolutely no idea where I'm going, but I do, at least, have... suggestions. Yeah.

On the last day of vacation, I went through all the scraps of paper I had my various to-do lists on and organized them onto a new, pristine sheet of paper. Normally, that sort of thing upsets me, and it did to a degree this time as well, I hate that every week when I make a to-do list it's mostly just a copy of the previous week's to-do list because so little of my to-do list gets done in a week, but I don't know, something about being on vacation and having gotten so much fresh air and just how clean the new list looks without all the scattered crossed-out stuff, it pleased me so much I had an interest in blogging about the entire new agenda.

You know what I think helps a lot? Working at a desk or table instead of a bed or couch. Seems obvious, I know, but I never really had the opportunity, but now, well, maybe I should look harder for a better workspace.

I started with three things that I ought to do basically right away:

• Vacation Photos. I took lots of vacation photos in our trek from Denver to San Diego and back, gotta crop them and put them on Instagram. ...In a minute, on the drive back my phone charger end up hanging outside the car door and scraping on the road for a few hundred miles, so, my phone's dead, but I should have a new charger any minute now and be ready for 'gramming.
• Crown of Wizards. Podcast #43 has been in development for many months. I guess the depression just hit me like a truck and it took me ages to get through all the podcast tasks I used to do on a weekly basis. Eventually, I watched the 1993 Disney films Homeward Bound and Hocus Pocus. Eventually, I read some of my old fanfiction. And now, I'm finally, FINALLY, two chapters in to The Secrets of Droon special edition #6, Crown of Wizards, which has been taunting me for ages.
• Stacy Stuff. My good friend Stacy has posted a few art pieces and YouTube videos recently that I'm interested in, haven't had the time to check out, definitely putting it early on my list to make the time and give Stacy some love and attention.

Incidentally, speaking of Stacy, just last night she finished the Deities Project, here's the last few pages:

The entire thing, in very high quality, can be found here on the website:

https://tapasandstuff.com/projects/the-deities-project/

After that, a scattered list of other things I think it might be nice to do.

• Schedule. The overall TAPAS schedule is arranged quarterly, in three-month sections. The third quarter of 2020, obviously, started in July, but I haven't gotten around to looking at it or adjusting it, or... yeah. Gotta do that.
• Screenshots. When the Hamilton film was released, I saw a lot of posts complaining that you can't take screenshots on Disney+. As I rely on Disney+ screenshots to be the visual aids for my Disney Retrospective videos, I should probably investigate and find out if that has indeed become a thing since last time I did a retrospective.
• Rob Heinsoo. I have gained access to the personal email address of famed game designer Rob Heinsoo. He's a family friend, and while I've never met him, he did stay in my room once, where he came upon my vast collection of D&D gamebooks he was involved with and was very flattered, gave me a couple of autographs as well as helping my aunt gift me with a copy of his own game, 13th Age. Having an interest in game design myself, I wanted to contact him privately... not sure what to say to him. Maybe the fact that Keys & Kingdoms is, thus far, way too much like Dungeons & Dragons. Perhaps he can give me some advice on building originality.
• Documents. I'm thinking of buzzing all the documents and files I have on my computer, Google Docs, and a few other places and sort of trim the fat so it's not so overwhelming, so I'm working only with what I need.
• Playlist. I have a playlist. I like it to have exactly 150 songs on it. It's overdue for a few revisions; some songs on it I'm not so passionate about anymore, which can easily replaced by the songs of a few artists I've neglected in its earlier iterations; I'm thinking Flight of the Conchords, Lily Allen, Barenaked Ladies...
• Doctor. Need to contact my doctor, who's been trying to reach me for months. My medications and therapy have helped me feel better in day-to-day life, but not actually... be better. For example, my anxiety medication was not able to help me overcome my anxiety well enough for me to call my doctor to ask for a refill on my anxiety medication. So... I haven't done that. Gotta start over, I guess.
• Podcast 43/Cast Announcement. Once I've read Crown of Wizards, I'll finally be able to make a big comeback on the YouTube channel, starting with the much-delayed podcast entry and then a video I've been working on announcing the voice cast of Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices. There's some cool new artwork in that video I've been waiting to share.
• Videos. I have a bunch of vacation videos from last winter which I never put online. Gotta do that.
• ERB. My mom hasn't seen the five most recent episodes of Epic Rap Battles of History. I want to show them to her.
• UEBS. My youngest sister had an interest in playing Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator on my computer while I'm visiting. I thought maybe we could make some videos on the subject. And we have. Score! That's one item crossed out.
• House Hunting. In terms of house hunting in Quincy, I've exhausted every avenue I can possibly think of. I freely admit that every possibility I can imagine in the field of such an adulting-related task is probably no more than 10% of the options that exist, so while I'm still here, my mom is going to help me figure out that process. I was originally going to return to Wisconsin at the end of this week, but I'm sticking around a while longer so we can really get that done.
• The Mechanisms. My fiancee wants me to check out the musical group The Mechanisms. Gonna do that.
• Irregular Fantasy! David Morgan-Mar has given me the permission to at least begin the process of adapting Irregular Webcomic -- just begin it, he wants to check out what we're working on before we get too into it, see. I commissioned some character designs, but unfortunately I accidentally deleted most of the story outlines I'd been working on, so I have to start that over.
• Kingdom Butts. Been working on building comprehensive story summaries of the Kingdom Hearts series in order to have a clear picture to work with for the super-epic parody series Kingdom Butts. Gotta get back to that.

And then, well, it's time to return to routine TAPAS tasks, such as:

• playing Icewind Dale
• playing Dungeon Siege
• writing fanfiction
• writing the Some Sweet Kind of Vampire pilot episode
• finishing the video summary of my Secrets of Droon adaptation fantasy
• storyboarding the Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices pilot episode
• writing the Keys & Kingdoms: Explore Cosmos short films
• preparing a good world and story arc for Iris
• readying the Whirlwind reboot
• blogging
• podcasting
• retrospectives

After that, well, I guess it's time to see what remains in my digital to-do list. A few months ago I took the advice of my therapist of putting all my to-do list stuff on paper instead of on my computer. Didn't seem to work terribly well, but I got into the habit, so once I've cleared all the tasks here I should check out my to-do list Word document and see what's still on it.

After that, some daily tasks:

• exercising
• meditating
• being a better friend

...And nowhere on this list is the process of acquiring qualifications for a better-paying job, but, that's also a thing I'm working on.

I'll leave you on that last bullet point: being a better friend. I have a lot of love for a lot of people, but I'm shy, and I'm always scared of saying the wrong thing, and I have no idea how to interact with people apart from talking about my projects and asking them to participate. I need to do better.

Absence

Been quiet for a long time. That's nothing new. I keep trying to do things. But most days, getting out of bed is the only success of the day. I keep a list of things to be done. I don't think any of it's gotten done since about February.

All my life I've been talking about projects I'm trying to create and, perhaps prematurely, letting people know I'd like them to be involved... Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices was supposed to be the one that was actually going to happen. We had a voice cast, we had storyboards almost completed, but the art eventually just stopped happening, and, well, I can't record the voice actors until I'm in Quincy... planned to be there by the first of July, but I've completely pushed myself to the limit of everything I know about finding a place to live and gotten absolutely nowhere. I'm clueless.

I'm feeling absolutely worthless. Devoid of potential. Sub-human. Right now, I'm spending some time with my mom, we're going to go on a road trip and... hopefully somehow get things together.

There are a lot of people out there who believe in me. Not me, I don't think I'll ever be able to do anything right ever again, but... some other people. Gotta keep going for those people.

Spoons

Ugh, had a bad week, at least the back half of the week -- spent two days sitting around doing absolutely nothing and falling into despair; then on the third day I had a shift at work and that cleared my head, so that's nice. I'm continuing to try to get my life together.

In the community of... something, be it depression or anxiety or ADHD, one of those things, doesn't much matter, I have all of them... there exists the concept of being "out of spoons". Basically, the human mind is a drawer full of spoons, and fulfilling any sort of task is a spoon. When you're out of spoons, you're mentally incapable of doing anything else for the rest of the day.

Me? I have exactly one spoon. Always have. Long before I discovered the "spoon" concept, putting a name to it and making me realize it's not some freakish defect of mine, I realized that I could only do one thing per day. If I have an appointment to go to on a given day, well, after that appointment I'm not making any phone calls that day, no matter how important a phone call that day might be. It is literally not possible. Last week, I wanted to take a shower and do my laundry. After taking my shower in the morning, I was mentally out of commission until very, very late that night, when I'd finally regained the energy I needed to do the laundry.

I tried to restructure my to-do list again to reflect that, to reflect my nature of having only one spoon, but... it just doesn't work. I just have too many things to do to be able to accept the way my mind is wired. Still only getting one thing done a day. But... I'm gonna keep trying to do more. Every single day, trying.

Things to do in June

Every so often, I revamp my entire system of having a to-do list, since, well, my to-do list never gets done, so I'm constantly trying to think of new ways to structure my life so that life actually... happens.

Sometimes I save a to-do list and make it a special feature on Patreon, for the historical record. Well, this one is free! It's right here on the blog. So let's take a look at the complete list of projects, as seen on the TAPAS website, and figure out what can be done to get closer to achieving those projects in the month of June.

• TAPAS and Stuff Productions Podcast: As of this writing, Podcast #43 has been hanging in limbo for nearly three months. Gotta get over that troublesome little hump. I hope to post a podcast episode every time I have a day off work, and finish Season 1 before moving to Quincy... at this point, the latter goal would require significantly delaying my move to Quincy, but that's been giving me trouble anyway.
• Let's Play Infinity Engine: Haven't played Icewind Dale since October. I'd like to play it for at least one hour this month just to blow the dust off of it. I'll get back to it properly after finishing Dungeon Siege.
• Let's Play Jackbox: Well, hoping for a summer 2020 season of this series if I can get Quincy friends together. Masked, presumably. And that's assuming Quincy happens in June...
• Let's Play Dungeon Siege: As noted above, I hope to finish the single-player campaign of the game this month so that next month, I may properly return to the first TAPAS project, playing Icewind Dale.
• Disney Retrospectives: The Little Mermaid TV series has proven surprisingly hard to sit through, but I hope to get through two retrospectives of this series a week so that next month, I can start posting the Gargoyles retrospectives that Naty and I recorded over the holidays.
• The Deities Project: Four pages of those to go! Stacy has been working swiftly, in defiance of my original premise that she'd finish one page a month. I don't expect her to finish all four pages in June, though that would certainly be impressive.
• Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices: I had hoped the storyboard would be finished in May. While Casey proved a speedy boarder, no one else is even close, so now, the goal is to finish the storyboard in June. Also, got some guys helping me finish writing the Explore Cosmos short subjects.
• Luno Canyon: Naty and I were going to dive hard into writing the audio drama, but then she broke some ribs in a freak swingset accident and was in no condition to focus. But she's all healed up now and just finished her finals at school, so that's something to take off the back burner and get back to work on, I think!
• Drizzt and the Companions of the Dance Hall: Current priority is to release demo versions of the first four songs! So, the June task... is to finish composing those four songs.
• Better Yet?: Our summer productions is delayed due to covid, obviously. I've considered two possibilities: that the six cast members plus a camera crew are a small enough group to gather together and perform safely. Or, more likely, perhaps we stage it as an audio drama so no one has to leave their home? If neither of these work out, we're going to follow the lead of Quincy Community Theatre and delay the show to 2021.
• Whirlwind: It's been forever since I got back to the task of revising this story. Still gotta do that.
• Kingdom Butts: Well, the crew now knows how the first story arc of the Kingdom Hearts series goes, so I'm thinking of planning bit by bit how the first story arc of Kingdom Butts will go. Still not even sure if I'll write it myself or with a team. There's been some quiet buzz of a Kingdom Hearts TV series going into production which is, well, just typical, I can never make a fan project that stays current.
• Depression & Me: Figured we'd puzzle this one out after writing the first season of Luno Canyon, so, maybe we don't touch it in June.
• Iris: Been having lots of ideas for this series! Still have to, of course, begin it. And before I do that I need to figure out the world and the future story arcs. Cool-looking characters with a lot of inner torment will only get me so far.
• Some Sweet Kind of Vampire: Also been having lots of ideas. Just need to rewrite the pilot, gotta get around to--there's a lot of stuff that I'm prepared to do and just haven't gotten around to. It's a difficult time right now in the world and, well, all times are difficult times when you're me, so, yeah, it hasn't been a very productive past couple of months...
• 100 Awesome Plans: Going to start making this show as soon as I have my own place, so it's delayed until that happens. Due to covid, I'm thinking of dividing it into two 50-episode seasons instead of a single 50-episode project; the first season will be the "home" suggestions, then maybe after 50 weeks the pandemic will be over and I can start doing the "away" suggestions.
• The Trivia Box: Still a fairly nascent idea, I figure it's just a game show that's more about comedy and introducing the viewers to the people of Quincy than it is about the stakes and prizes. Might not ever actually be a thing.

...Oh, and also I write fanfiction. That's not a TAPAS project, it's just something I've been doing for the past ten years, and I don't want to abandon my two big stories before they're finished, know what I mean? Low priority, but still a priority.

And I'm thinking about two other projects that aren't yet on the website:

• The Grandpa Show: When I move to Quincy my grandpa will be nearby, and it's been a priority of mine -- ever since my grandma was still alive; it was her idea -- to preserve his knowledge and experiences, all the stories he has to tell. His own mortality has been on his mind the past couple of years, ever since he hit his mid-70s. So, I'm basically thinking an audio podcast where I interview him, maybe occasionally film him going through his possessions and photo albums.
• Irregular Fantasy!: I intended to approach David Morgan-Mar about this project in, say, early 2022, but what the heck -- I approached him about it last week. I figure if we start now, we just might have an animated pilot ready by late 2022 in time for the 20th anniversary of Irregular Webcomic! What can I say, something inspired me and then my characteristic impatience flared up.

As of the end of May, I now have a cast lined up for K&K: The Choices! Main characters and the two minor roles appearing in the pilot episode. I'll leave you this week with that cast list.

And... how about the stories behind each cast member? Yeah, that'll be cool.

• Aramie Joy as Airi and Ziya Herman as Zaya. Obviously, my two little sisters were the inspirations for these characters, I was pleased when they promptly showed up for the second audition period. They both declined to sing, which is okay, I figure that any voice actor who doesn't live in Quincy won't have the time to be brought in to both speak and sing their part.
• Stacy Lord as Zaya (singing) and McKenzie Eby as Jax. My Team Salmon co-creators were the only people who showed up for the poorly-timed first audition period, trying out for their namesake characters of Stacky and Kinzie. I found that they were surprisingly poor fits for the characters based on them, but they both had really great qualities, Stacy's amazing singing and Kenzie's adorable geekiness, I encouraged them to try out for other roles. Stacy tried out for a few of the other roles and I placed her here, and Kenzie, well, I still actually haven't seen her audition for Jax, she was unable to upload the video, but you know what, I took her word for it, I know what she sounds like.
• Caleigh Twaddle as Airi (singing). Armed with the knowledge that Aramie wouldn't do her own singing, and not knowing much about Quincy's student theatre scene, I reached out to a local music teacher and vocal coach to ask for recommendations, and her first suggestion was Caleigh, who played Anna in a pre-covid production of Frozen at the beginning of the year. I reached out to Caleigh's mother and, though I've yet to directly converse with Caleigh, I've been told she's very enthusiastic about this project! Got her audition and it was excellent, excited to meet her and work with her.
• Mekia Gay as Maer. This performer caught my attention when I saw some pictures and videos of rehearsals for QCT's Chicago, the performance of which has been sadly delayed to next year, and I recently realized I also saw her in Mamma Mia, that was fun, and then! And then, the moment she found out about this event she immediately approached me asking for all sorts of details on how she could help, it was amazing, and she was the first Quincy performer to submit her audition, doing a whole bunch of monologues and songs that ultimately made her a sure thing for the role of Maer, most excellent.
• Jen Shackleton as Kinzie. Worked with Jen on my third and most recent theatrical appearance in Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, and shortly thereafter she played Alvissa in my Irregular Webcomic soundsets, I kind of had her in mind for Kinzie all along. Interestingly, I'd been envisioning her just playing Kinzie with her natural voice, as she did with Alvissa at my request, but then in her audition she played Kinzie very posh, so that was great, always nice to see something unexpected.
• Jessie Crockett as Cristela. Cristela has always been a very hard character for me to figure out, so I had no real idea of who would play her if no one auditioned... then Jessie swooped in at the last possible second and completely nailed her, I adored her audition and immediately offered her the role. A total stranger just threw herself in the ring on a whim, and it was fantastic. Many of the people who have been attracted to the project since the cast announcement are friends of hers, that's a nice way to grow the audience, and she's the only person in the Quincy squad thus far to have joined the TAPAS Discord server, she's really opening up our world there!
• Adrienne Fisk as Stacky. Adrienne was my dance partner when we were ensemble in She Loves Me, and it was fun getting to know her, very attractive, very nerdy, and I had her in mind for Stacky from the start, so when no one auditioned for that part, I just asked her if she'd take it, and she was up for it, having not auditioned due to insecurity about her bad microphone set-up. So this'll be tons of fun.
• Emily Dozier as Natha Lee. The last role to get lined up was Natha Lee, nobody auditioned for it, I can imagine it being intimidating that the role calls for a Swedish accent, and Naty was unwilling to try out for the part. After the auditions ended, I approached Emily, one of my first theatre friends ever since Spamalot, and she was all for it, having apparently procrastinated past the deadline. Perhaps we can arrange for Emily to study Naty's accent, assuming such a thing is needed, and Emily is one of the most amazing singers I've ever heard, so I'm super excited for Natha Lee to get her own number later in the series.
• Kelsey Pigg and Mason Ellison as Officers. A couple of theatre pals who helped me out gathering a bunch of potential auditioners. Even if the only people who actually auditioned at their suggestion were Jessie and Mekia (who were definitely very welcome surprises, mind you!) I decided that for their assistance I'd give them these minor one-shot characters. I'm sure they'll be appearing in many other parts once the series gets picked up!

So, that's things to do in June. Let's get 'em done!

May

Haven't done, well, much of anything in a while, besides going to work. Like a lot of creative types, I had hoped the pandemic would be a chance to stay inside and just be creative for a while. Most have found themselves simply too depressed to make any progress. Me, I've been overworked. And also depressed. Slowly starting to bounce back and recover.

Thinking about learning massage again. I went to school for it, passed the classes, but failed the license exam and sucked really bad at studying for a retake, never bothered to try to take it again, forgot about it for a while. But it's something I could do. Apparently. Never once felt like I knew what I was doing, but clearly I did. Also thinking of following my mom's advice of becoming a dog groomer, maybe study to upgrade myself to vet tech.

Therapy is going well... things like meditation, yoga, and deep breathing have always made me anxious and angry instead of calming me down like they're supposed to, making me think I'm some kind of mutant freak. My therapist thinks some sort of trauma has made my limbic system afraid of feeling calm, preferring that I stay alert and on guard, to the detriment of my health. So we're working on that. Also working on my recently-diagnosed ADHD; been on Adderall for two weeks. The first time I took it, it was immediately followed by 24 consecutive hours of playing video games... so that was certainly focus, but not what I would have wanted to focus on. As of the rest of those two weeks, nothing seems to be different, except that my nervous tics are apparently a lot more pronounced. So I've been told, haven't noticed myself.

Still trying to move to Quincy. It's been incredibly difficult so far, because places that allow dogs tend to get snapped up really, really fast. So I've been looking into places that don't allow dogs, and that just makes me sad, I really liked the idea of Sebastian being a fixture of my first home, but if that's not in the cards, well, I'll live. Of course, I don't really know how I'm going to get to Quincy if I do get an apartment, I don't know if trains are running or anything... I'd like to drive there so I don't have to leave behind a single one of my possessions, but realistically I don't think there's anyone who can help me with that right now. I do wish I hadn't lost the ability to drive... God, I'm a mess.

Well, that catches us up for the past month or so, been a little bit longer than that since my last blog post, guess I'll see what else comes to mind before Monday. That seems to have been my tradition, posting on Mondays.

Ooh, well, I suppose there's some TAPAS stuff to talk about. In theory, this is the TAPAS blog, not the Sage blog. Okay, here's one, three more Deities Project pages from Stacy:

Just four more of these to go before the end of this project! That's really cool. And it's gotten me thinking about other Stacy arts... Stacy confronted me last week, asked me to stop pretending that "Team Salmon" is some sort of official creative team and that she's part of the leadership, so, yeah, for the record... Stacy is not some sort of TAPAS and Stuff Productions bigwig, she's just a friend of mine, sometimes I commission her for artwork, she was there when I started TAPAS and the character design I've paid her to do has given me huge amounts of inspiration for actually going through with certain projects in which I hope for her continued participation, but ultimately, Team Salmon is just... it's my group of friends. We met in 2013 on DeviantArt, mostly talking about Cars and My Little Pony; we've gone by many names -- Ponyville Springs, the Ecosystem, the Revived Squad -- Team Salmon is just my personal name for that group and most of them take part in my TAPAS projects whether as volunteers or on commission, but, yeah, my past implications that my friend group is synonymous with the employees of TAPAS and Stuff Productions, people have taken issue with that recently, so -- that was a healthy and eventually welcome reality check. I was being presumptuous about other people's time, I now strive to do better.

Anyway, like I was sayin' -- Stacy art. It was about a year ago now that she created real nice visual designs for the main casts of Some Sweet Kind of Vampire and Iris, both of which I hope to create sometime next year. Not much to say about SSKV, that hasn't changed much in the past ten years, to the point that, as I may have mentioned, it'll be set in 2010 regardless of when it comes out. Well, it's changed a bit; being ten years older I definitely want to remove the old-fashioned purity themes cribbed from Twilight, I see now how unhealthy those are, and not very much fun, the characters of SSKV will absolutely be having sex with their love interests. But, you know, still very much a wholesome, charming show.

What I wanna talk about right now is the character design of Iris. The atmosphere of Iris has gone through a lot of permutations over the years. The main cast of characters has never changed, but the world they inhabit has changed many times. It started off as a straight-up Maximum Ride rip-off, I eventually switched it up by having it take place in the very distant future. More recently, I thought of making it a 2010s genre pastiche in the same way SSKV is, rolling with the young adult dystopia trend of the recent past. Then I briefly thought of heaping on the RWBY influence, and finally decided to make the clothing sense of the series match that of the barbarian fantasy genre, which eventually produced character designs that looked like this:

But I quickly began to think that this didn't make much sense. How, I asked myself, do I reconcile the "barbarian fantasy" aesthetic with the "young adult dystopia" atmosphere? Finally, something came to mind: it's a dystopian future. Obviously, global climate change was a pretty serious thing. The planet is really freakin' hot. But there's not a lot of sunlight. So, there's the reason everyone on the planet would show a lot of skin; they need a way to keep cool and, sunburn not being a concern, the solution is to not wear very much.

So, bearing that in mind, I have to redesign most of these outfits. The goal is no longer to show as much skin as possible, it's to realistically keep cool in a hot environment. No more boots or helmets or heavy coats. What little actual barbarian-themed skimpiness remains in the above designs, gonna get rid of that, these need to be modern sexy outfits.

Also, I need to make a final decision on the ages of the five main characters, the Eyes of Gaia; Iris has always been 17, the others' ages have fluctuated a lot, I think I've made a final decision that really works for the character dynamic and the motivations of the evil university who designed these mutants; Iris is 17, the others are 15. With that in mind, I'll be de-sexualizing Raquelle and Meggi and possibly the boys as well; still dressed for the weather, but not dressed for overt eye candy. We'll leave the actual fanservice to the adult characters. So, yeah, lots of Iris redesigns coming in the future. Not now, Iris isn't the priority right now.

The priority right now is Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices. The original audition period, which was open from mid-March to mid-April, produced no results, save auditions from Kenzie and Stacy for their namesake characters; I found them to be surprisingly unfit for the characters that were originally based on them. Mid-March was, of course, when the pandemic went into the public eye as a thing that was going on and the world got locked down, so, I certainly don't blame the entire city of Quincy for being too frightened, overworked, and/or bummed out to try out for my little art project.

I reopened the auditions on the first of May, once again for a month's time. As of this writing, one week away from the deadline... still no auditions from anyone in Quincy, just from my two sisters and again from Stacy, trying out for some other characters. But people have expressed more interest, I figure they're just waiting for that last week. If I'm wrong and I still don't get any auditions, then, screw it, I'm gonna fill the cast by deciding who I want. Hopefully it doesn't come to that and I have some juicy auditions to help me make an informed decision.

On the verge of having a recording studio booked, applied for a few apartments, still don't know how I'm going to get to Quincy, fingers crossed that trains are still running as long as everyone wears a mask...

While the casting is slow-going, Keys & Kingdoms progress is being made elsewhere; got lots of people storyboarding. Myself included. In theory. I haven't drawn in like a year, I'm scared to try again, but I'll get to it.

Top to bottom: storyboard frames by McKenzie Eby, Casey Gosselin, Nathalie Jenfjord, and Sadie Allen.

Lots of art and technology levels from lots of different storyboarders, but that's not a problem, it'll all even out in the next step. I absolutely adore how seriously everyone is taking the storyboards; if anything, I'm the one taking them the least seriously because I'm more concerned about speed than quality, I've had a "they're just storyboards" mentality, everyone else has a "backbone of the episode" mentality. I suppose everyone else is right. Well, that just makes me more nervous about the fact that I assigned myself to board a scene. Better get started.

Just did a little reread of the blog, I have said a lot of things in this post that I've already said in previous posts. I guess I only have so many thoughts and don't always remember when I've already said them.

So, as of the fine Monday morning of this posting... well, I've checked, the trains are running, just need to wear a mask and comply with all the other various precautions, so, I can get to Quincy whenever that time comes; applied for a number of apartments and haven't gotten any replies yet. The guy who runs the recording studio is receptive to taking on my project, and as of yesterday I've gotten some Quincy auditions at last and I'm really happy and giggly about that. On Saturday I'll be picking out the cast. I don't anticipate actually getting enough auditions to cast all eight characters that way, but I'm fully prepared for Plan C: going with my preconceived notions of the characters and begging those people to take on the roles, I don't got a problem with that.

And there we go, the blog is back and, well, the plan is for the podcast and the channel to be back tomorrow, but, you know, don't quote me on that. Thank you for your time.

April

It's April now, there goes the first quarter of 2020. Didn't quite get everything done that I wanted to in the first quarter, but hey, we got done more than we usually do, that's not a bad goal in itself.

Audition period is halfway over, and not one single person has auditioned outside of Team Salmon's own Stacy and Kenzie. It's been recommended that I make a video explaining my passion for the project and, like, continue nagging everybody. That would not intuitively be my choice of what to do, but that's what the theatre folks are suggesting.

My mom is more of the opinion that I should just shelve the whole thing, bring it back on the first of May, which would certainly have been a much more sensible thing to do to start with, since I won't be moving to Quincy until early June anyway. I just wanted to see some auditions and be ready ahead of time, just so I felt like I was achieving something... then the virus came along, seemingly moments afterward...

Wrote a teaser trailer for The Choices. That was a fun thing to do, excited for you to see it.

And... that's all I got this week. This being a new month, a new quarter, I threw out a few lines, making some additional progress with some stuff. It's good.

Two-Year Anniversary

This installment of the blog will drop a few days after March 28, 2020 - the two-year anniversary of TAPAS. While the first TAPAS project was released on the YouTube channel on November 14, 2018, I consider the founding of the group to have happened eight months earlier. With your permission, I'd like to tell you the story of how TAPAS was founded.

So, it was two years ago... in March... we founded TAPAS.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's look at what TAPAS has accomplished in two years. ...Well, from where I'm standing, it appears to be jack squat. Just a few video series, that update on an absurdly irregular basis, that absolutely no one watches. It's entirely my fault, of course. How can I wish to make it as some sort of creator when I can barely function as a human being?

It's fine... I'm fine... we're getting somewhere. I always knew I could never do this by myself, and it seems like I'm finally surrounding myself with people I can rely on. Same people I was surrounded with for those first two years, but, you know, nobody's perfect, I feel very lucky that so many people got the opportunity to start working all at once. ...That was before the coronavirus situation came to light, incidentally.

Let's take a look at the tasks that were set for the month of March. Pages 2 and 3 of the Deities Project, those got done. Real pretty. Here, I'll pack the project as it stands so far here onto the blog:

Lots and lots of deities, but the project isn't even halfway over yet. Doesn't serve any particular purpose, but it's super-fun. So, everything else that was on the agenda for March, let's take a look:

Keys & Kingdoms, the storyboards and preparing for the rest of the season, and auditioning roles... struggling. Writing Luno Canyon... struggling. Recreating Whirlwind... struggling. Planning out Kingdom Butts, let's see, yep, struggling. And rewriting the Some Sweet Kind of Vampire pilot, struggling with that as well, it's all a struggle, that's all I ever do. I struggle to keep my head on straight at work without completely breaking apart, and I struggle to have so much as a movement or thought when I'm away from work. Things I need to do are easy, people are depending on me to do that. Things I want to do are nearly impossible.

It was unfair of me to say that no one watches the YouTube channel. Team Salmon watch it. The fact that the channel is watched by people I love rather than hordes of strangers, well, I probably shouldn't feel bitter about that. I should probably be grateful, wouldn't you say? Yeah. Gotta change my attitude.

And here's Team Salmon as they'd appear in the RWBY universe, drawn by Stacy with varying degrees of input from the rest of us. We debated using our real names and theming the characters' looks after the meanings of our first and last names -- that would have given a nice "Easter and Christmas" theme based on the meanings of Stacy and Naty's names -- but in the end we decided on option B: following RWBY's color-themed naming rule, with our real initials so we can still be Team SSMN. This was a fun little side project. Could have used my real first name, but there's already a RWBY character with the first name Sage (and another with the surname Mann, weirdly enough) so I wanted to mix it up.