...but the good news is that, although it may have taken nearly two months (;-; bad paaaaarent), I have finally decided on a game to play through and and what is hopefully an entertaining spin to put on it. Thanks for the suggestions! As for what the game and the spin are, well, you'll just have to wait and see, won't you?

It'll still be a little while before I get started properly, but I do have a few quick additions to make up for it and so the site doesn't go even longer with no new content whatsoever. For the most part this means two new pieces of general Pokémon artwork, both of which were intended as experiments with my tablet and a new art program but which turned out looking pretty snazzy for practice stuff, if I do say so myself. It's not quite as interesting as new art, but I will also mention that I added another fifth-gen sparkly to the sparklies page, and that I've also finally found a way to "clone" in fifth-gen games (no, not via the GTS or anything, I just have a way to make backup copies of my save files). So if you've had your eye on that shiny Tepig, or if you're interested in my new shiny Rayquaza, I now have a way to get 'em to you.

I have one more day of class, one more final project and a few other things to get out of the way, and there is still the Big Project, but I'm hoping to have the last few plans for the new gameplay blog fleshed out in the next week or so, and started soon afterward. Keep an eye out for it!

OH I KNOW LET'S DO ANOTHER GAMEPLAY JOURNAL that will fix everything

Gaaaah guys I'm really sorry that I haven't been able to keep up the updates around here; it's the usual laundry list of school, school and more school (though srsly this quarter shouldn't be too awful! I hope!) keepin' me down, and also moving a bunch of furniture and hardcore cleaning, and also after cleaning oops I kind of finally set up my PS2 and found some old computer games and wow it's really easy to lose track of time when you're playing Dark Cloud and Pharaoh. I'm kinda failing hard at most of my resolutions and falling behind on some other things on top of all that, too. The good news is that the Phoenixdex-related big secret project is really starting to move along, but as far as the regular Phoenixdex and all other things Altered Origin go I am a bad bad parent and I am very sorry. My poor, neglected babies :(

So! I want to update the site with something, and preferably something that involves writing at that. While I refuse to give up on Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen (though that has taken a few steps backward while I sort out some logistical stuff that kind of changed... everything) and three or so other Poké-plotbunnies I've been pondering, and 649/fixing the Oshawott story is still a thing I swear, I think maybe a simpler writing project that isn't quite as traditionally fanficcish in nature might be a better way to ease me into writing more until I work those out and pick one to officially start.

Which brings me back to the allcaps in the first line of the post up there. Another blog/journal/let's play–type thing might not be a terrible idea; I know I never officially finished the last two, but at least I made a hell of a lot more progress with them than I did any of my fic stuff. :| At this point there are no new main series games to give you all delicious spoilery I-can't-read-Japanese previews of, but I could do a monotype, a Nuzlocke (which I've never actually attempted before), or a few other interesting ideas for challenging/weird runs I've had. I could even try a modified hack of some sort, which would have the added bonus of screencaps for those interested in seeing that. I'm not sure exactly which I'd like to try, so I'll just leave this quick list here (and in a few other places) so you guys can offer your suggestions in the comments.

These are the games I physically own; I tend to prefer playing on actual consoles rather than computers, with the added bonus that I can get stuff done away from the computer, but I can also play ROMs if you're dying for screens, the game is a hack or I don't own a physical copy of whatever it is.

• Red, Blue, Yellow
• Gold, Silver, Crystal (Silver and possibly Gold no longer hold save files, though)
• Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Colosseum, XD, FireRed (English and Japanese), LeafGreen
• Diamond, Pearl, Platinum (English and Japanese), HeartGold (Japanese), SoulSilver (would prefer playing HGSS on the computer so I don't lose my save files; I can back up DPPt files, though)
• Black (Japanese), White (would prefer playing these on the computer so I don't lose my current save files)

And these were the ideas I had for runs/challenges/etc.:

• Normal playthrough (...yeah)
• Monotype (pick a type for me! Just not water, I did that relatively recently.)
• Nuzlocke
• "N Challenge" (a thing I thought of that I haven't really fleshed out but basically involves playing for a bit, ditching your entire team and then getting a new one from whatever's in the next few areas, rinse and repeat throughout the game.)
• Wildly-Out-of-Order Badge Run (RBYFRLG only; not as much of a "challenge" but basically taking advantage of the fact that, except for fighting Brock first and Giovanni last, the story doesn't railroad you into visiting the gyms in any specific order and I could fight Koga second and Lt. Surge seventh if I damn well wanted to. Added bonus for doing this in RBY instead of FRLG: there's a glitch that lets you sneak past the kid blocking Route 3, so I could also skip Brock and save him for later, too. The only thing I'd need to check before trying that is whether or not I'd still be allowed to fight Brock later or if the game would assume I have the Boulder Badge even though I don't, thus keeping me from finishing the game.)
• Randomized Emerald (not so much a "hack" or challenge as a program-generated patch you can apply to Emerald that lets you choose whichever Pokémon (Gen III and earlier) you like as the starters, and also lets you completely randomize all the wild Pokémon that appear in all locations)
• Pokémon ShinyGold (FireRed 386 hack, surely you've all heard of this one)
• Pokémon Alt Evo (may need to be logged in to see the thread, sorry) (FireRed advanced difficulty hack in which Pokémon evolve into other Pokémon they usually don't; not to spoil too much, but Venonat evolves into Butterfree, for example; no I'm not out-of-ordering this, I've seen how strong the gyms get, no thanks)
• Gen IV advanced difficulty/493 hack, e.g. Perfect Platinum, Perfect Heart/Perfect Soul, Hard Gold
• Gen V advanced difficulty/649 hack, e.g. Blaze Black/Volt White, Pitch Black/Pure White, Black/White Deluxe, etc. (I've actually already got the beginnings of a screencapped Pure White LP... but in playing it I'm coming to realize that BW can actually be really really awful for advanced difficulty games thanks to the scaling exp and no easy rematching, which means I might have to do a metric ton of grinding to keep up with the difficulty. I know other people who've played hacks like this so I'll ask them what they thought, but while I don't mind a challenge I don't want to have to ~Grind Forever~ to have half a chance at meeting it. More inclined to do an advanced difficulty game with the old exp system and trainer rematching, honestly, but we'll see.)
• Some heinous and twisted combination of the above! Just not Nuzlocking an advanced difficulty hack, please don't make me do that on my first runthrough of a hard game ;-;
• Wait until June for BW2‘s release and do that shameless tool I-can't-read-Japanese playthrough I usually do (not actually likely because a) want to do something now, not wait two months and b) may not have the money for it anyway)

So! Comment and pick one of those, or suggest some other challenge, hack or even fangame for me to try if you like! (Just make sure that any hacks/fangames you suggest are complete, or very close to complete; I'm sure all those fakemon fangames and whatnot being made are lovely, but if I can only play up to the first badge then it's not going to be a very interesting LP!)

Yes, I know there's a whole to-do list full of useful things I could be adding/updating up in the menu instead of making up something else new to do, but my head tends to buzz slightly whenever I think about actually checking it. I'll make myself look and get something on there done one of these days, though!

Almost two months, Phoenix? Really? For shame. And we were doing all right there for a little while, too.

Unfortunately I still don't have much in the way of new content (or that new layout); there is a new affiliate, PokEdit, down there at the bottom, though. They've got a cool online Pokémon editing app that you'll want to try out if you're into that sort of thing, so give them a look-see. Aside from that, most of my time has gone toward the Phoenixdex and one of its secret side projects, and as certain things going on with said Phoenixdex and said project are rather important they've been demanding a lot of attention. Oh, and school. School happened. Damn you, school.

The primary reason I'm updating is to let you know that there may be a little more potential downtime in the near future. I'm switching the alteredorigin.net domain name over to a different registrar (no change in the URL or anything, just the people I'm paying for it), and as with all such changes there's a chance that the site (and the Phoenixdex) may be inaccessible for a little while as everything propagates where it needs to. I'm trying to get that done immediately; I'll see if I can post again before it actually happens, though. Hopefully everything will go smoothly!

As for actual content, I have a few ideas for blog posts that I really need to get cleaned up, so at the very least I'll try and bang out one of those before my break is up.

Just a quick little update to mention that I've changed things up a little bit. I've decided that it's not worth sequestering my "blog" updates off away from the front page, partially because the front page gets lonely what with the infrequent updates and partially because this is mostly a personal site and screw it I can ramble about terrible plotbunnies on the front page if I damn well want. Likewise any fanfics that actually get posted (and that's totally going to happen this year, yep) will show up here as well, because making an additional post to say "oh hey I made a post it has fic in it" is somewhat redundant. Longer posts will of course have their content hidden under cuts so you don't have to scroll past an entire chapter of fanfic or a long-winded tirade about interactive fiction just to see what the last content update I made was.

The menu has been updated to reflect this (read: "blog" link has been axed), and now there's a sidebar on post pages so you can filter down to just blog posts, just fanfic update posts or just site update posts (for those of you who do not, in fact, enjoy my rambling about terrible plotbunnies and would rather ignore it) and so on as needed.

Oh, and my email is fine now, in case you were wondering about that. Back to business as usual.

Happy new year, errybody, and here's hoping that the front page is a little less lonely throughout 2012!