I finally finished the fanfiction rec list I mentioned a few updates ago; I meant to have it ready earlier in the month, but at least I posted it before November really got going. I feel like the two people who commented saying they were interested in rec lists will already have seen most of these, at least within the fandoms they're interested in, but hopefully the rest of you will find something new to read! For future reference, you can find this and any other rec lists on the Misc. Writings page, though I'll probably make a quick note of it in the updates anyway if I add more to it.

(I am a little bummed about not being able to include one of my other favorite Pokémon fics on the list since the author appears to have taken it down from FFN and I haven't attempted to see if it still exists on any forums yet. If you happen to come across Mentor by Dagzar anywhere, though, and don't mind that it apparently won't be finished, give it a look!)

The webcomic rec list honestly should've been done well before that one, especially since I had most of my comments written down and just needed to clean them up, but apparently it's harder to do that than I'd thought it would be. It should hopefully show up soon.

That "soon" should be read as "sometime in early December", by the way, because after taking a break last year I'm going to be participating in NaNoWriMo again. Updates will be scarce to non-existent, yadda yadda yadda that doesn't mean a whole lot seeing as they've been scarce all year. :/ But since I'm writing a fanfic (again sob sob why are my original ideas never ready), it is something that can be posted to AO when it's a bit more polished... and as my primary NaNo plan is to write a bunch of mostly-standalone short stories that still add up to one larger story, I feel as though I'm more likely to have stuff that's ready to post instead of a monolithic thing full of monolithic plot holes that collects dust on my hard drive like At Liberty, Incarnadine Harvest and Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen. The caveat is that, like the aforementioned Incarnadine Harvest, this year's story is not a Pokémon fic (unless I do in fact change my mind over the next few days, which is ill-advised but not entirely implausible) and so will likely not be of interest to the majority of my usual visitors. Still, I know there are at least some people who might enjoy it if I post it here in addition to the more general fic venues, and dammit I need to be doing something on the actually-write-crap-and-actually-post-it front. (In more Pokémony news, though, I do have other plans for some writing that is a bit more relevant to most of your interests. More on that in another update, though.)

For now, anyway, I am definitely working with this Golden Sun fanfic. I'm already 800+ words in as of 12:30 AM (after which I stopped to finish up the rec list and this update), and will get to the other half of my day's wordcount after some sleep and some work. I just hope that leaves me enough time to either feel more confident about what I want to do with the GS fic or else make just enough headway on one of my other ideas to start that instead and not fall too far behind.

Oh! One other thing before I go: I finally updated My Oshawott Never Smiles and fixed the issues that had been pointed out to me. (Hopefully fixed, anyway.) Negrek I am so sorry and I swear that next time you leave concrit on a fic I will not take almost two years to act on it :(

IMPORTANT EDIT: I forgot to mention that the server change also means a slight change in the email servers I'm using. The address is the same phoenixsong at alteredorigin dot net, but I may not be able to receive any emails you send me for a few hours/days while everything changes over. If your email bounces back to you, wait a day or two and try again; if you need to contact me and it's really important, try to reach me at one of the sites/forums on the contact page. Sorry for the inconvenience.

If you're seeing this, that means the move to the new server was successfully completed at last. Welcome to the new place! Take a look around and see what's new:

• The biggest one: Insubstantiality (my fandom/fanwork blog) is now accessible on Altered Origin and can be found here. The old WordPress.com blog is still here if you need it (although you shouldn't, because all posts and comments have been moved here), but it will no longer be updated and it has a post with huge angry shouty letters telling you to come over here for new stuff anyway.
• Likewise, 649's stories and information have been moved over here as well. You can now keep up with all that, or at least what little there is to keep up with, over here in the fanfic section.
• The Phoenixdex has also been moved to the new server, though it's obviously still a separate site. I haven't yet figured out how I want to crosspost its updates over here, or otherwise stick an RSS feed somewhere, for those of you who want reminders to check in on it, so for now if you want to know what's new in the world of my fakemans then you'll have to *gasp* actually navigate over to the home page and see for yourself. Oh how grievously I have inconvenienced you.
• The domains/subdomains dementedchicken.net, phoenixdex.dementedchicken.net and 649.dementedchicken.net are all now officially dead and will point to boring landing pages (if anything at all) instead of redirecting you here. Seriously, stop using that domain. This one is prettier.
• New layout, obviously. It's pretty different from the previous layouts, but I wanted something a little simpler and cleaner for a change. Note that it's still a work in progress, and I'll be tweaking it for a little while to come. The other layout (which will be light-text-on-dark-background for those of you who prefer that, like me) will also be relatively clean and simple, but somewhere down the line I can make another of those "artwork" layouts or whatever you want to call them for those who miss their Morty or Sceptile.
• New affiliate, too! We All Live in a Pokémon World is one of the oldest fansites still up and kicking today, and it's full of a lot of interesting reads about Pokémon, its continued appeal and why it's a lot more awesome than people often give it credit for being. (Not like any of you nice people need to be told that twice, right?)
• Update comments are back; the new site does a better job keeping spam out without needing a silly captcha, and it's also a bit more prominent so people actually remember that the capability for commenting is there. Not that I expect people to have much to say about these updates aside from whatever goes on on the blog, but it's there if you wish to avail yourself of it!
• A few urls have changed here and there, namely the links to the individual zodiac pages (though the url for the zodiac landing page, the one all the little images actually link to, is the same), though aside from that I don't think there were a ton of people bookmarking or pointing to any of them. If you did, well... shouldn't be that hard to find again, right?
• Content-wise, I finally got around to moving my (unfinished) HeartGold blog over here, visible right behind this link. Stupid foreign-language shenanigans go?
• I also gave the sparklies page a bit of a revamp so it was a little better-organized and not so much a giant list of tables you had to scroll all around to see. Notably, I've decided I'm no longer being all that stingy with some of my sparklies, so just about everything is up for trade.

I do believe that's everything, then! Thanks for your patience while everything was shuffled around and whatnot. There may be a few hiccups here and there while I tweak or update a few things; if you spot any broken links or if anything else seems off, let me know about it (or use the comments, aherpderp). Enjoy the new site, and enjoy your holidays and the rest of the year if I don't drop in before then!