The Reverend's Sermons

Quick update: Starchild was (miraculously) finished in time for the bowling meet. :P I'm still not happy about the short notice, but what can you do? It was still fun and having a zillion fursuits around seemed to make the kids pretty happy. :3 And I like being able to practically walk to meets.

Uh, that being said, I'm probably going to disappear again for a while. >_< Got a phoenix suit to finish up in time for FWA (armwings, hell yes.) If I manage to pull that off I'll give Starchild a quick makeover too. The base structure is all fine, it's just some things need tweaking. And then after that is the rush for Animazement. ^^; I dunno what I'll be making yet but I have some ideas. THEN I might be able to come up for air. XD

Sewing has generally been going pretty well, but my writing's suffered a lot. :/ I've had writer's block for a while now, and I think I've actually managed to get even more paranoid about posting my own writing, which is impressive in a sad way. I'm still not entirely sure why, but I don't think it helps that all of the stories very dear to me are extremely personal and are about issues that deeply affect me. So I guess it's kinda like baring a piece of my soul, whether or not I realized it at the time I started writing them. I still like writing a lot and I have a lot of stories I want to tell, it's just getting harder to do. ._.; But I want to start again.

Ugh. There aren't enough hours in the day *flop* orz

I want this month to be over already and it's barely started. T_T

Well, the nice thing is, I'll be going to Virginia Beach and visiting sediea most likely, and probably dropping by feathertail 's new place to visit him. The bad news is The Beach Trip From Hell is coming up and I'll have to deal with my dad's side of the family. I'm really not looking forward to it, but I'm probably going to bring a bunch of sewing projects with me to keep me distracted and productive.

Speaking of sewing things, I've finished a tail for kiraeden , am working on something for traxer and a fursuit of my personal character, Starchild. After Starchild I'll probably do actual open fursuit commissions (and head commissions) because I really want to. ^^; Honestly if someone asked me about a suit commission I'd take it, I really want to and it'd hopefully keep me busy. Plus I like seeing what people come up with for their characters...

Um, the lack of communication over the past few months is largely due to some major family issues on both sides of my family. I've been feeling really down and I'm thinking about getting therapy again. I'm probably going to need it.

Yes, I still write stuff. I got attacked by the desire to write really stupid crossovers so I've been doing that lately. I'll spare you from reading them. >.>; You don't want to, trust me. I am also having my usual anxiety over posting stuff I've written so I haven't really done much of anything on FA even though I have...I lost count, probably 35K at this point on Devils. I'm thinking about posting Virtue too, since it's got some furry crossover appeal what with the Totems and Tytonai and animism and stuff. Also everyone will know just how disturbing my stories can get that way. :P Devils takes a while for the Fridge Horror to kick in. If it ever does.

Oddly enough, after writing exclusively in first person for a year, I find out my third person narration is getting a lot better. Wish I'd tried doing first person earlier. :/ I always hated my narrative style.

Oh. AZ was pretty cool. I guess I should have mentioned I went to that a few weeks ago. >_< I got my first really decent attempts at fursuiting in, and I didn't get stage fright nearly as bad. People got really into my act and the fursuit photoshoot was fun. Suiting is way better when you have other suiters to interact with, even though I wasn't being as hammy as I ought to've been. On the bright side, Starchild is a considerably more...er, hyper character than Domino, so being all bouncy and happy would be IC for xir (no typo there, Starchild's agendered.) Wish I could suit more...ah well.

Okay, I'm going to cut this now before it's bedtime. I dunno, I just wanted to ramble. ._.;

Well, I managed to carve out a head in what's probably record time for me...under a week, I think. This is my four-eyed spideryote character, Shi Maria. She doesn't have her nose on yet (I'm doing it separate this time around) so keep that in mind. :P She'll look a little less weird with it on.

( Creepy thing below the cut ooooooo )

This is more for my own personal benefit than anything else. ^^; But I've got a lot of ideas for suits and I figured I might as well write them down for future reference. They're all personal ones, I should note, I can think of a few fursonas I'd love to replicate in suit form but might not have the chance to do so. :/ Anyway, I've even kinda triaged (it is too a word, shut up) out things so I have a better idea of what I ought to be doing. Without any further ado...



And that about covers it! I was wondering if I should post the WIPs of Shi Maria-- the foamwork on the head looks kinda weird as of now, because...well, four eyes. I might be self-conscious though because I can't find any other full or partial suits with more than just two. I did find one with none though! And a quad with eight or nine eyes, bless Beastcub for taking on the strangest projects. If you're wondering why a quadsuit (fursuit in which the wearer appears to be a "feral" or non-anthro character) makes a difference, vision in those usually goes out the mouth or through hidden mesh screen in the neck or bottom of the muzzle. So that makes a huge difference with eye placement, since I obviously need to be able to see while I'm in suit. ^^; Also they were resin eyes, I'm doing plastic and buckram eyes.

Okay, enough rambling. ._. Back to sewing on pawpads!

ETA: I forgot about one. XP Added Brittany in!

I know what I've been doing wrong on my suits. :D

I haven't been arcing the muzzle upwards where it meets the cheeks. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well, but the bottom line is it creates a more expressive face, which is what I've been missing on mine. Also my eye shapes are all weird. I've got the irises and pupils right, but the sclera are shaped funny, and the lining could be better too. It's mostly the expression I'm worried about now though.

Oh, I posted a story on FA. It's the first part of the Devils in the House of God series. The best way I can describe it is that it's an urban fantasy story about monsters hiding in plain sight, and the trials they go through.

It also has possibly the creepiest species I've ever written, the daemons/virii/anomalies/various other names nobody can agree on.They're things that usually look like humans, and appear out of nowhere and alter the memories of those around them so that people think they're a member of their community. If they stay around for long enough, the memories become permanent. Therians, shapeshifters gifted with some small traces of magic outside being able to change their form, are the only creatures unaffected. They're also "spiritual beacons" of a sort who tend to attract other supernatural beings to themselves-- including the daemons. Whether this has anything to do with why the daemons want all of them dead is unknown.

Yes. >.> It's supposed to be a horror story in spirit but I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull it off. Either way, it's a fun story to work with. I've got a pretty good chunk of the first cycle written (POV for the stories is switched around between the seven main characters, once I finish that it'll be a cycle) and all of it is planned out. I'm not sure what else I'll do with the Theriverse, I'll just see where this goes first.

So, for those of you who are really curious, I took some crummy pictures of Farai today. \ ._. / Yaaaaay or something. They turned out really badly due to poor lighting, so I'll take some (hopefully) better ones tomorrow to post to FA. She's been done since before Halloween, I've just been a bit hesitant to share her with the world.

( Bad photography below the cut. )

So, that's that! I'll probably make a post later on what I learned from making Farai...hopefully it'll at least help someone. ^^; And yes, I am still writing...I'm a little hesitant to post Devils in the House of God since so many people watching me on FA know me IRL and it encapsulates a lot of my personal philosophies and thoughts on religion. It's on BYF though, and I am still enjoying writing it! I'm actually doing so right now. >_> Trying to get a chapter buffer up for now.

No, I am not doing NaNo-- I've got too much else to work on now. :/ I might do a mini-NaNo in March if I have more of my stuff off the ground though (those of you I've been keeping in close contact with probably know what I'm talking about.) That means I'll be doing 30K or so, which is a lot more manageable.

Oh, and as a general life update, I'm looking forward to winter. :P I want the snow to get here already! *shakes fist at the skies*

So, apparently I've been doing a pretty terrible job of keeping up with posting. >.o I've got some ideas of what I want to talk about but not much of a direction. Obviously I won't be talking about my day-to-day life much since it's incredibly boring. I'll sum it up here so I don't have to post about it:

"Today, I woke up, and I sewed things. Then I wrote some. Then I listened to music and watched silly videos on the Internet. Sometimes, I even remembered to eat food between those activities. It was a good day."

Not the stuff of legends, per se. So, there are a couple more interesting things I was considering discussing in this journal:

1. Gaming. I could keep something of a gaming blog, talking about GMing and PCing, the campaigns I'm in, systems I like, stories from older campaigns (I think just about everyone has heard about the time I kicked Satan though) and so on and so forth.

2. Writing. My old LJ (let's not speak of it, for my sake) was geared mostly towards this task. I kinda started out doing that a little, but identi.ca replaced the need for things like wordcount and posting updates on here. I could still talk about techniques and post excerpts and stuff, though (excerpts especially, because I really feel like I need to show people I am working, and making progress.)

3. Anecdotal stuff. I've written a few entries like this, just talking about silly things that happened to me in the past. I don't think I'm all that funny or interesting, but I like writing these every once in a while. This might not be a good choice though because I'd have to find the motivation and memories to tell more anecdotes.

4. You tell me! I'm open to suggestions or elaborations on my previous ideas, because I don't really have any clue where I'm going with this, except for the fact I'd like people to look forward to my posts.

So talk away! There's a little comment box thingy you can use. I'd be interested to hear your ideas!

Hey everyone! It's that time of year again, the time we celebrate Falkersatherhood. So make yourself a salkercathe and put some calkersandles on it, get all your falkersands over, and blockersow the calkersandles so you all can make a walkersatherish.

And if you have no clue what's going on, read this!

(Also, thanks to feathertail for helping me come up with the word substitutes. >_>)

In case you've been wondering, I did not, in fact, die at FWA. In fact, I actually had a great time! Such a great, fun-packed time, it's taking me forever to document all the awesome stuff that happened. There is a con report started, it's just...gonna be a while before it's actually presentable. For now, let's just say I wish I didn't have to go home and I'm really, really aiming to go to Mephit so I can share another con experience with FT.

On the upside: Animazement's coming up, whoohoo! I'll be going with sediea and a bunch of the NC Furs, hopefully. Farai, the suit I've been working on, will debut if things go right for me (I picked up some fursuit construciton tips from FWA that really helped!

Anyway, that's it for the update I should have done weeks ago. ^^; Gotta do more  of my usual antics (sewing, gaming, you know the rest.)

Well, in about two hours I'm going to be bailing out of NC and escaping to Atlanta. I'll be going out with cybershepherd and some of his friends to meet feathertail and the NC furs. I have to say this is the first time I've been nervous about a con since my first time at AMA...though I'm still more nervous about plans falling through than anything else. ^^; I've haphazardly thrown a schedule together for myself, at least.

Wish me luck, guys. ._.b