I'm still chugging away at filling out profiles and whatnot, but I'm starting to feel a little aimless with what to do since I have just... too many things I could possibly be doing. ^^; I mean, that's how it always is, but I feel like I'm starting to run out of steam on my current path and am wondering if I need to change tactics or focus on something else for a change of pace. And since I usually work better when I have outside feedback, I figure I'd ask the people who actually have interest in my content what they would like to see more of. My current to-do list is in this bulletin here, but it is a daunting list. Maybe working on something else might help.

So, some possible options I've thought of are as follows:

• Continue trying to fill out the written profile content of the characters I currently have uploaded.
  • I've been running out of steam on this because the remaining characters on the list either have sections I'm having trouble filling out (for example, I can't exactly write out their Clothing Style section when they need to be designed/redesigned first, etc) or I just don't feel in the right creative mood to think about these particular characters. Should I just power through it anyway so I can be done with it?
    
• Work on drawing new references for the characters who have none, so they can then be taken off private-viewing.
  • I don't like to put characters on public unless they have some kind of decent visual reference, and I have plenty of characters that have finished profiles but aren't visible because they have no art or only crappy phone pics of old notebook doodles. The problem with this is I'm usually very slow at this, especially ones I might have to redesign or design from scratch. ^^; But of course, that's the reason I've been putting it off in the first place.
    
• Work on writing pieces/literature instead of just profile content, so there is actual material of these characters in their intended use.
  • This of course takes more time, but I should probably do it since I always spend more time writing profile content/trivia rather than actually writing the stories these characters are actually supposed to be applied to. XD But that's not exactly a unique problem. I am working on a couple pieces here and there, but I have no idea if anyone actually has interest in stuff like that or not.
    
• Write some supplementary works or guides that better explain the universe that most of my characters are from.
  • I understand that pretty much all my profiles contain jargon that no one really understands except for me because I never take the time to explain or display my writing in a way that other people can understand. ^^; I always write my profiles for myself first, so maybe writing something like a glossary to explain the basic terms I always use in my profiles or expand upon the world I talk about (like the various planets/settings, the deities and magic systems, etc) would allow interested viewers to make more sense of it.
    
• Start uploading new characters that I might have more interest in working on as I think about them.
  • I've been holding off on making any new profiles until I catch up with the ones I already have created, but I'm not always interested in working on the profiles that I have at the moment. Maybe working on any character I'm currently thinking about actively will make me more productive instead of focusing on ones that I don't really have inspiration or energy for. If I upload new characters, I might just make a simple dollmaker/picrew avatar for them instead of spending time drawing a new reference just so I can make things viewable to other people.
    
• Instead of drawing references, just draw some fun doodles or character interactions.
  • I have a habit of forcing myself into artblock because I tend to worry about creating finished looking pieces rather than just churning out art whenever I feel like it regardless of quality. Finished references take a long time because they need to be inked and colored and then cleaned up after scanning, and that sometimes stresses me out of the desire to draw entirely. Maybe I could just draw whatever and upload more sketches and doodles so I could show characterization more through art instead of having to write profile content all the time.
    

I’m gonna run out of ways to butcher the spelling of birthday someday, BUT NOT TODAY

Oh ho ho, it’s annual update-your-age-on-your-profile day~ Guess that means I should draw myself another birthday doodle or something, maybe with a different persona this time. Most of my personas don’t actually age that much in terms of what they do in their narratives, but I DON’T HAVE THAT KIND OF CONTROL OVER MY DEFAULT DESIGN OKAY, I’M ALWAYS A WORK IN PROGRESS XP

At least the weather is nicer this year. Sure, there’s still snow on the ground, but at least it’s in the process of melting and I won’t have to walk through as much in heels. Because even though my birthday is always in winter, it never stops me from dressing the part as the birthday empress for the celebratory pasta. AIN’T NO COLD GONNA KEEP ME FROM THE PENNE ALFREDO

HEYO I want a new bulletin on the front of my profile and I want to have another project list right here so I'm not aimlessly staring at profiles wondering what to work on next. XP I'm itching to create new profiles for more characters I have waiting, but I really ought to finish up the ones I have now before I dump more onto my plate.

My priority for these lists are characters that are currently on Authorized Only, either because their profile is not finished or because they don't have decent art, or both. So, as I finish up either their art and/or profiles, I'll link them here for anyone who cares to see a list of all the currently-hidden characters I need to finish up. This is mostly a list for me, but anyone else can see what progress I've been making here too. I think putting a number goal will help me keep on track. ^^;

Wish me luck~

Profiles and Art to Finish: 13/200

Characters to Draw, profiles already finished: 8/100

Well, I didn't think I'd make it, but I did. With the shutdown of Charahub tomorrow, I had to go through all of my character profiles to move any information that was over there to Toyhouse if I hadn't done it already. And there was... a lot... ^^; I thought I only had 8 accounts, but apparently I had 9 accounts to sweep through because I'm an idiot. XP Fortunately for me a lot of them were placeholders, but there was probably hundreds of characters that required a whole lot of copy-pasting of information... and apparently I made 63 fresh new profiles for those who didn't already have one and had information in Charahub that I had no where else. They're of course all authorized only until I can go back through and reorganize now that I'm no longer on a deadline.

I suppose the message of this bulletin is that the Trivia sections of many of my characters are going to be a wild mess of copy-pasted crap until I can sweep back through and sort them out. I used Charahub a lot throughout college since it was the first time I ever had my characters in convenient online-profiles instead of my hand written ones, so even though Charahub had a lot of problems, it's a bummer to see it go just out of sentimentality. 

But if anything good came from it closing down, it's that it kicked my butt into gear and finally got me to finally migrate everything over to Toyhouse. I've been slowly moving everything since I joined here almost 4 years ago (seriously, it's been that long already?), but now it's all down in one stressful whirlwind. ^^; I dunno how quickly I'll be able to sort out my profiles considering how burnt out I am, but I'm glad it's done. 

And now I can bask in the victory of conquering precisely 801 profiles this month. I'm horrible.

Looks like I’ve made it to a quarter-century. :P Doesn’t feel like I should be this old already, but at the same time it kind of does. If I have this many characters to keep up with in 25 years, I wonder how many I’ll have to bury myself in further down the road.

I should totally draw myself a little birthday picture during class, because of course my birthday involves below freezing temperatures and still having to go to my evening class. XP Ah well, I can be the birthday empress no matter the occasion.

Well, I decided. I'm gonna make all my characters have avatars drawn by me so they all look like they're from the same artist/creator. I've made a new avatar tag to help me keep track of who is still in need of an acceptable avatar, and according to the inverse tag, I only have 79 characters that have sorta-acceptable avatars at the moment (although some of them are super outdated/old art of mine that I'll end up making new art to replace it with). 

SO, at the moment I have 376 characters to make new art/avatars for to claim that lovely uniformity my brain apparently craves. Lucky me. Hopefully I don't end up making too many new characters and end up raising the number even more before I make any significant progress.

IN ADDITION TO THAT, I also changed the avatars of almost all my characters to be my own art even if the art they current have is not a good looking avatar. Some of these poor sucker now have awkwardly cropped ones or avatars where they're sideways or upside down. It probably looks stupid and ridiculous, but hey, maybe the notion that my outdated art is now their public faces and will probably destroy their first-impression appeal will motivate me to draw them new art faster. TO HIDE MY SHAME. 

I have to admit though, some of these "new" avatars are really funny to look at. Take a look to see how all that beautiful art that other people have drawn for me has been slam dunked into the trash in favor of my ultra-anatomically incorrect drawings from high school. Or middle school in some unfortunate cases. The only exceptions I made were for character who had no colored art by me available or only had colored art of an old design that is drastically different from what they look like now. Only those few were spared from my whirlwind of destruction.

But anyway, I'm rambling. Long story short, all my avatars are now a mess, and hopefully my mission to replace them all with updated art won't take my entire lifetime. I won't hold my breath though. Thanks to everyone who voted on my previous bulletin's poll to help me reach this decision~ I'll forgive you for encouraging me to take the more fulfilling but much more painful route. ;P And if you see a character with a particularly poor avatar you want me to fix faster than others, feel free to suggest it here. Don't worry about offending me, I've already offended myself plenty by dredging up all this crappy art into the public eye.

Here is my first list, which only includes the people who have no colored art as their avatar or no avatar/art at all, for anyone curious. Pro tip: don't be curious. XP

I've been thinking about this for a long while, and I'm not sure what I think about the inconsistency of all my character avatars. Before I didn't really think much of it since not a lot of them even had good avatars at all, but now that more of my characters are slowly having acceptable references drawn of them, I'm not sure how I want to keep moving forward with it.

My main question is should I have consistent avatars for my characters, or should I just keep them the way they are now and just... pick the image of them that I think best represents their face? If you were to look at my character gallery at the moment, you'd see most of them have avatars from various artists and some of them were drawn by me. It's a mixed bag at the moment, mostly because I am very slow about drawing new references for my characters.

Currently if you were to look at my general mix of avatars from characters who have good to decent art at the moment, they'd probably look something like this:

BUT I'm wondering if as I continue to slowly draw my characters new references, should I change their avatars to also be all drawn by me, therefore making all my avatars look more consistent, kinda like this:

The pro of shifting to all "my art avatars" would obviously be consistency and also... I dunno, all my characters would be more easily identifiable as my characters because I would have a sorta recognizable art style presented to the public...? The cons are both "I'm slow at drawing so this would take forever" and also that... well, I know people tend to have a preference for digital art over traditional, so I feel like it might hurt the presentation of each of my characters if I assign them all my own art as avatars rather than other subjectively better art that was made by someone else. (I'll be honest, I doubt I'll ever draw a better avatar for Anatola than what she has already)

So, I wanted to hear some outside opinions since I don't see to be getting anywhere with this decision on my own. Feel free to just vote in the poll or also explain your thoughts in comments. I'm kinda just stuck on the topic and opting to ignore it for now, but it would be nice if I could decide on something. ^^;

Thanks for reading~

-erature. Yes, I am getting literature up in here. What what.

Boy oh boy, I've been looking forward to this for ages, but of course it might take a while to dump more of my writing here. I keep looking at most of the things I've written so far and thought "THIS IS TOO OLD TO POST, I HAVE TO FIX IT FIRST" or "THIS ISN'T EVEN FINISHED FOO, YOU GOTTA WRAP IT UP BEFORE YA POST" But I suppose I'll kick my butt into gear eventually. I'm particularly proud of my Creepy Prologue that I finished about two years ago, and it's one of the only decent and recent finished things I have on hand. XD 

I'll let y'all know now, don't be afraid to comment on any my writing with questions or even just letting me know about spelling or grammar mistakes or whatever. I'm always re-reading my own writing and continuously horrifying myself with how many errors I manage to find no matter how many times I've read the same thing over and over. ^^;

I also plan on digging through my entire forum post history and submitting any notable forum game posts or the like as literature to keep better track of anything I put more effort than usual into. Better to do that now before my already sizeable post history gets even longer... I don't imagine I'll have that much to spam you with, but I could be mistaken as usual. XP I WAS INDEED MISTAKEN, YER GETTIN LIT SPAMMED SO BRACE FOR IMPACT

GUESS WHO FOUND MORE OLD ART TO TAKE CRAPPY CAMERA PHOTOS OF AND POST

There's like around 200 or so of these pictures I need to crop and whatnot, but when I'm done OH HO HO HO YOU BETTER WATCH OUT

And boy oh boy, this batch is gonna feature all my beloved and only mildly cringey art from my middle school history projects. We were required to keep portfolios of each US history chapter we learned in 8th grade, and I always drew my characters in those title pages and in all the review projects we did before each big test. It's how Demi became known for teaching me history and how she stole the founder of Massachusetts from the past and turned him into an anime character who looks nothing like his real historical self. Because she's horrible like that. But whoa nelly, these history projects are really what kept me drawing all the time in middle school. XP

I'm also uploading the history project review I did for World War 2 in high school, but it's gonna be on authorize only because I don't wanna deal with random idiots browsing galleries and getting offended by seeing something even mildly questionable and not looking at the context of it. Yes, I get it, WW2 involved a lot of sensitive matters, but we still had to learn about it, and I still needed to make a stupid project reviewing the lesson material with my dumb characters making dumb jokes, because I CAN'T LEARN HISTORY IF I DON'T MAKE IT STUPID ENOUGH

I'll talk about it if you're curious, but I doubt anyone wants to see any more of my dumb history reviews than I'll already be posting. XD I'm a little disappointed, since I was really proud of this project, but I think it would be easier to just not make it public and avoid the chance of out-of-context issues entirely.

But enough of my rambling, you probably don't care about that. The only thing that'll be on your mind is probably "WHAT THE HECK WHY IS THIS LOSER POSTING MORE OLD ART" and potentially questioning your decision to subscribe to me. ^^;

Think I'm done for now with barfing up all those new profiles and all that doofy old art of mine, or at least I'm done until I find more of course. XP

In addition to all those new profiles (although quite a few aren't public at the moment since they're all in progress), I've also reorganized my folders a bit by adding a new main folder for any stories that are "Fandom Related." The folder for "Stand-Alone Stories" is now "Isolated Stories" because Stand-Alone is too long to put numbers in front of for the character limit. XD Most of the folders in the "Fandom Related" folder aren't even for any fandoms, but more for stories than may have started out that way and have changed or were only inspired by some other source material. I only made this separation because my other main folders were looking too cluttered, but I suppose that's going to be inevitable.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE~ All folders now have descriptions, although I can't guarantee that all of them are interesting. XD They're just single sentence blurbs to describe the story that folder encompasses.

And what do you know, I'm now past the 400 character mark. *throws confetti* So much more to do, but I suppose tackling these new profiles and filling them all out is the priority, along with trying to draw more references. ^^; Can't rely on doofy college notes doodles forever.

And if you see any characters that interest you in the slightest and wouldn't mind seeing their profile completed sooner than later, let me know. I'm probably just gonna go in random order otherwise. XP