Le gasp! But it is true!

Few things. First and foremost, I won NaNoWriMo for the second year in a row:

50254 words of silly, parodyesque Tales of Symphonia "hardboiled detective" fanfic (think The Maltese Falcon on crack and starring Zelos), the vast majority of which are rambly fillercrap but were still a lot of fun and will provide a good foundation for the next draft, which will of course be posted here when it is presentable. I know I said that about last year's NaNovel, too, and I do still like that story and would like to get it spiffied up, but I just haven't had the motivation to so much as touch the thing since I finished it. Incarnadine Harvest, on the other hand, I am really excited about. Since I imagine the majority of you readers are Pokémon fans, not ToS fans, this is probably not wonderful news to you, but hey, maybe when I finish the IH rewrite I'll finally feel like working on At Liberty again–and rest assured that At Liberty is 100% USDA Choice Pokémon fanfic. It has a stoner hobo Armaldo and a Staraptor who makes siren noises in it. It will be fun. Dark and violent, but fun. :)

Second, the stuff I've been promising since forever ago. Ahahaha. Well, of the three main things I've been mentioning–the reffing guide, the Gen 4 Battle Factory page and the EV training page–the EV training page is pretty close to completion. Just needs a few more paragraphs and some more proofreading and cleaning up (with a little beta-reading help from one of my friends; thanks, Negrek) and then it should be good to go. The other two will have to wait a little longer, I'm afraid; without being able to look at game data my progress with the Battle Factory page is entirely dependant on my ability to actually make it to certain streaks with some degree of consistency, and that consistency tends to go out the window somewhere around the midpoint of streak 4. And the ref page... that's more a motivation issue than anything else, I guess. They will get done eventually, I promise, but at this rate I'm guessing only the EV training page will go live before the end of 2009. Sorry.

Third, if any of you have been following my HeartGold blog and it has not yet caused you to rip your eyeballs out, yes, I will be continuing it in an attempt (probably a futile one, given my track record) to finish well before the games' American release in April 2010. I have some final projects to take care of this week, which is also why I won't be able to finish the EV training page right away, but hopefully Chapter Four should arrive sometime around the 15th.

Fourth, I am once again annoyed with the way I have decided to structure my menu and sections. Expect another overhaul sometime between now and January. The links won't change, but where you find those links might.

Fifth, at some point I will probably be copying the updates from the older incarnations of the site over here, just for the purposes of having a more complete archive. On the off chance you want to see those again, well, they'll... be there. Yeah.

Sixth, as you may or may not know I enjoy creating fake Pokémon. For several years I've wanted to get a separate "Fakemon Pokédex" subsite set up so I can display them all pretty-like and with all relevant information in one place. I do actually have the site online on a subdomain and have been slowly filling it with content for the past few months; it isn't currently accessible if you aren't me, however. I was originally waiting to have at least one complete Pokédex finished before opening it to the public, but I've since changed my mind about that and am willing to let you all see it while it's still in progress. It isn't quite ready for unveiling yet, unfortunately. I'll see if I can't have it organized and presentable sometime around my birthday at the end of January. My 21st birthday present to all of you, or... something, I don't know.

Seventh, I am hosting a fakemon-creating contest on deviantART. Enter it! There are prizes and everything, including art by yours truly and some free shiny Pokémon from the sparklies page. Mmm, free shiny battle-ready Togekiss, you know you waaaant one... so go make up a fakemon and earn it!

Eighth, this has gone on long enough and it's high time I got back to those final projects. Adieu, and Happy Vague Innumerable December Holidays if I don't pop in again before the end of the month.

Figured out what was causing the thumbnails in the fanart gallery to throw themselves around the page with abandon, so that's been taken care of. There's still a bit more cosmetic work to do, but at least it's displaying logically now. Go see for yourself, and while you're there check out the sexy new picture of Morty I uploaded.

I also got my copy of HeartGold in the mail yesterday, so I've been playing that. The first installment of my progress-journey-diary-blog-a-ma-thing has been posted, so check it out here if you're interested in reading it.

Crazy, but true! I actually added a sort of interesting page today! And it doesn't even have anything to do with ASB! Can you believe it?

That page, in the Misc. Writings section, is a fanarticle about some of the more confusing Pokémon designs. It attempts to take a crack at explaining those Pokémon with less obvious or incredibly varied origins. I've started by covering two groups of Pokémon, the heavily-debated legendary beasts and the not-so-heavily-debated-but-I-get-annoyed-when-people-say-they're-just-wolves Poochyena and Mightyena, and I'll add more as they come to me; if any Pokémon has ever really confused you, you can email me and suggest that I look into it. I might also add another section to it about designs that aren't so much confusing as they are interesting, so we'll see.

I've got some ASB and some game-related sections in the works as well, so we'll see if I can't get at least one of those up by the end of the month.

I updated the Platinum failblog a few days ago–the newest post covers my trek through the Torn World, so you might find it interesting. I also added another link to the "these are cool" section of the sidebar. It's a Pokémon text RPG I mod at. I know, I know, you're thinking it's Yet Another Uninspired Pokémon TRPG, but it's got a lot more freedom and wanton destruction at the hands of baby Pokémon. Give it a look, it's really a lot of fun once you get going. :)

Still working on the fakemon project site thing, slowly but surely; I have a few other side-jobs I've taken that are also eating up my time, and school will be starting in a few weeks, but I'm still working on that and on some things I've got planned for this dusty little corner of the internets.

In the meantime, though, a few new requested pictures have been added to the artwork page. I've also restarted the Platinum blog, at least for now. At the very least I want to get through my little trip through the "Distortion World" (ugh Torn World was better, but couldn't they at least have made it "Distorted World" so that it doesn't sound so stupid?). Eventually I might copy my entries in the blog to the site just because this place is so goddamn empty in the event that anything happens to the blog, or maybe it might be easier/preferable for some people... dunno, but it's something.

Happy New Year, etc., etc..

I was working on something for someone in Photoshop and happened to pull out some old Garchomp lineart. I decided to color it in on a whim, and when it was done I went ahead and added it to the Free Renders section. It isn't in the same cel-shaded style the others are, but I think it looks good anyway. Better, even. (Doesn't help that I suck at cel shading.)

I'm currently working on my Platinum failblog and so playing Platinum is taking up most of the time I'd be spending on writing up articlethingwhatevers, but I'm adding notes and sections to the ones that are currently in the works. I've also added a "last updated" date to the failblog link on the side, just in case anyone wanted a heads up.