...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!

While I was ultimately unable to get as much AO-related work done over the break as I would have liked, I do have a few simple things for you. The biggest of these is the addition of a third section to the Zodiac Pokémon section: the Unova zodiac. I've been spending quite some time in front of TV sets in my White Version trying to compile all of the "Personality Assessment and Horoscope" shows, and after finally finding September, November and December last night (whyyy does this show come on so infrequently compared to stupid Koukan Talk and Eyes on Unova whyyy) I was able to put these together today. It's silly and purely for fun (not that I take real astrology very seriously either), but if you'd like to see which Unova Pokémon you are you can go check that out.

Those of you who liked the plain Suicune sketch that has been sitting in the gallery for a little while now may be pleased to hear that I've finally gotten around to coloring that in; it's also visible in the gallery now.

I also found a way around the bizarre problem with my affiliate buttons occasionally not displaying, at least for me; the buttons should be working again and there should no longer be any extraneous text. If you still can't see the images, let me know. I still have no idea what the hell all that was about so I don't know that I can fix it, but I can try and find some other workaround in the meantime.

I've been having second thoughts about whether or not this other new game I wanted to add to the site is really worth it (no, not the interactive fiction stuff—that's just on hold due to lack of time/attention span); I would still like to give it a shot, though, so I may put up a really simple test version at some point in the near future. We'll see how that goes.

Still trying to get back on top of all the stuff I've let slip. This includes the affiliation requests I've received over the past few weeks—I'm really sorry it's taking me so long to reply to those (to all of my emails in general, actually), and I'll get back to you as soon as I can get a proper look at your sites. I do have one new affiliate to mention today, though. 6th Floor is a relatively new but definitely original site that focuses primarily on collecting and sharing Pokémon creepypastas and their related material; go check 'em out. We'll see if there aren't a few more shiny buttons to stick at the bottom of the page shortly!

I uploaded a new picture to the Pokémon section of the fanart gallery a few days ago. It involves a really, really terrible pun that I suspect I should be slapped for making, but I guess it's pretty cool.

I finished that post about The Thing for Insubstantiality; it's kind of sort of really very long, but go check it out, pretty please. I really want to know if I'm the only person who thinks this would be an interesting idea. (The Phoenixdex and 649 have also been updated recently, just in case you're following those.

Aaaaand that's all I have to say for now.

Ayup. Today's my 22nd birthday, and I spent pretty much the entire day trying to address the issues with the styleswitcher. Thankfully, I am the sort of nerd that derives some sick, masochistic pleasure from spending hours doing that sort of thing, so it's not like it was a bad day! For the most part, everything seems to be working now—the switcher should remember your style between visits, and it even changes the layout without having to reload the page you're on, though there may be some brief lag or hiccups while trying to load a style for the first time. The downside is that it won't work if your browser doesn't have JavaScript turned on; I'd wanted to go back to my old PHP styleswitcher, but that one and all the others I tried absolutely refuse to work with the site now, so meh. The styleswitcher can now be found at the top of every page. There are still some kinks to work out here and there, so bear with me; as usual, if anything is horribly, horribly broken, drop me a line and let me know.

The astute visitor will notice that there are four little pokeymans icons in the switcher bar, which is one more icon than there were links in the older styleswitcher. I finally got around to making a style based on that picture of Morty+ghosts in the gallery; it's not super-super different but meh, I wanted a darker style and one with the nav on the right and it works well enough for that. If you're using a really old and crappy version of Internet Explorer then you should probably stick with Storm at Sea, though—Apparitions should be perfectly functional as far as utility goes, but it looks absolutely disgusting in older browsers and that's not my fault so do yourself a favor and either upgrade to IE9 beta or stick with the pretty Lugia style instead.

(I still have a whole bunch of other ideas I'd like to try, but I am going to do my best to restrict myself to two more specific layouts for here and then use the rest of those ideas on other projects. Argh.)

You've also probably noticed the "network updates" bar at the top of this page, which should serve as a nice reminder of when I've updated my other projects so you don't miss out on whatever fascinating idiocy I've recently puked up. (The layout restructuring also means moving my affiliate section down to the footer on all layouts instead of just on Warbird; they're not gone, you just have to scroll a little more to find them.)

I finally got around to updating the zodiac images. They're now a little smaller and arguably a little sleeker-looking, and some of them are sporting new faces to accomodate the fifth generation. I even added an Ophiuchus image for those of you who were paying attention to the recent internet superdrama about the zodiac "changing" and getting a "new sign" added; astrology is silly nonsense and a little actual thought and research will tell you that Ophiuchus is neither anything new nor anything that actually affects most people, but I felt like being passive-aggressive about it and hey, it looks kind of cool. Use it if you want. The old zodiac images will still work and are still accessible, just in case you think they're ugly or now hate me forever for making the Ox Baffuron instead of Miltank.

Aaaand that's about all I've gotten done for... a while now. I have been intensely distracted by rather a lot of stupid stuff to the point of neglecting my usual fandom haunts and pursuits; most of this distraction did have to do with either improvements to the Phoenixdex or else the super-secret The Thing I keep mentioning but never explaining, so it's not a total loss and will count for something down the road, but I imagine that several people are more than a little upset with me right now. Sorry, Negrek/Kusari/Dylan/Lunar/Maple/Metallica Fanboy/Meowth/Jax/school/Internet. I will attempt to get back on track now. Or, well, whenever it's not my birthday anymore.

good god three updates in seventy-two hours, what devilry is this

I didn't add too much today, though. I tweaked one more problem with the styleswitcher that was preventing it from remembering your style properly, a problem I suspect has been happening ever since I added the switcher and I simply never noticed because I was always using the current default style anyway. You may have to restart your browser for the fix to take effect. I am hoping to high heaven that I don't have to touch that thing again for a good, long while. (I could still use a heads-up from IE6/7 users as to whether the Wargle layout is working now, by the way). I added a Kecleon render to the Free Goodies page, and I fixed up the slightly older Pikachu render so that it was more "cute" and less "staring into your soul". I've temporarily de-affiliated with AobaruNet, as the webmaster is taking a little time to work on some stuff, but they should be back on track soon.

While we're on the subject of webmasters working on stuff, I have a small announcement to make: I may be changing the website's name and URL (and subsequently the URLs of any projects hosted on subdomains of this domain, like the Phoenixdex and 649). No, dcNET is not closing; no, I'm not "changing the website's focus" (bahahaha like dcNET ever had a proper focus in the first place) and turning it into another graphic design website with free video game site layouts. There will be no silly hiatus, though there may be just a little bit of downtime while things change over and some broken links until I can update them all. The current content/projects and all future content/projects will remain the same "whatever fancrap I'm currently interested in with more Pokémon/ASB stuff than I'd originally intended". I'll save the gory details for a later update, or perhaps for a revision of the About page somewhere down the line, but in short I've outgrown the name and it implies a focus/mascot/direction that the site never took. It was okay for three years, but now it's time for a slightly different image, methinks.

I don't know when this will happen; I don't know for a fact that it will happen at all. I'm still deciding on potential new names and domains. (I've actually liked the word "Insubstantiality" for a long time—part of why it's the current temporary title of the new fanstuff blog—and the domain is still available, but it might be a headache for people to type or remember and I can't think of a cool short name like dcNET.) I pay for my hosting out of pocket and don't currently have a steady income, so I also need to consider whether I can really spare the extra ~$9 a year. If this change does go down, however, then rest assured you will all be given ample warning and a heads-up about the potential for downtime and broken links, and I'll have a redirect set up for a while just in case you forget about the switch. I may still do something with dementedchicken.net down the road, as it came free with the hosting package and it'd be a shame to waste it, but it may not be the internets home of this site for too much longer.