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.