"i'll have another bulletin up in a day or two" what is a 5 but a 2 upside down?? ah shit i got distracted watching infomercials on youtube and now it's 6 days. Anyway. what's up gamers it's your girl iso here with some Hot Life Updates

Part One: ah fuck it's NaNoWriMo

ah fuck it's nanowrimo. i dont even have a project up yet but you can become my pal here. i've been figuring for a while (since i got jumpscared by november like 2 weeks ago) that i'm gonna just do NaProWriMo again bc i've been needing to work on profiles for SO long and i would really like to be more active in general!! i might just have it be, like, a "just write" in general thing bc i'd also like to get various worldbuilding info pages up, and those are basically bios in a way.

"but what worldbuilding pages do y-"

Part Two: IT'S FURRY TIME BABY

WELCOME TO SIDEREA MOTHERFUCKERS YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So dedicated Iso bulletin readers are probably vaguely aware that I've had this setting called Siderea for several years now that has, like, zero content uploaded on Toyhouse at all. A legitimate reason behind my inactivity is that I keep getting annoyed when I want to use my favorite OCs in forum games or discussion threads or whatever else only to remember, oops! I don't have profiles for most of the characters that have been rotting my brain from the inside out for the past 3-4 years! There are other reasons that are bigger factors for sure, but that feeling of not being able to participate the way I want to and getting that sinking feeling of how "behind" I am whenever I think about it is absolutely one of them. But then whenever I think of doing one, I realize there's so many little concepts I'd have to define every time and profiles would have to be so much longer if I wanted to be thorough especially for the first batch of profiles because there would be no other existing things to link to and this and that and yadda yadda...

To compensate for the fact that I just don't have any characters uploaded and it'll take a hot minute before I do even if I complete NaProWriMo flawlessly (which I most certainly will not!), I decided that maybe it would be a good idea to just... put some lore up! I've been making little (and sometimes not-so-little) lore posts over the past couple years for my friends and I's little RP forum, both just for fun and to have something I can just link to when I bring up jargon, etc. I didn't consider transferring any of this stuff over here because I didn't have any specifically Siderean characters uploaded plus, more importantly, I would either have to copypaste things with WYSIWYG and fix a bunch of formatting OR just have everything be ugly bc I didn't want to deal with tediously changing BBCode into HTML...

Then it hit me that there are probably sites that convert BBCode for you and sites that add in ps and brs for you and I was right!! So yeah lmao I've been chipping away at converting things over, debating which posts were outdated enough to skip, and also working on the template for the zodiac pages over the past couple of days so I'd have some passable content to post!

There are definitely a lot of flaws here: all of these posts were made for a specific audience with a specific background of knowledge, so a lot of these posts will just drop references to RP stuff or other things that are common RP knowledge but very much not common Toyhouse knowledge with 0 explanation. In the interest of time (namely getting things out before NaNo starts) I didn't add any cross-linking except to edit any links that were in there to change them from forum links to Toyhouse links, and likewise there's no handy hovertext to quickly define any concepts or in-jokes (learned about the  tag recently wtf this makes life so much easier than coding hovertext myself. awesomesauce). All of the posts were also written really casually and fairly quickly with little to no proofreading, and needless to say I didn't do any proofreading in the process of porting them over. Expect to see a lot of typos, grammatical errors, clunky phrasing, and Possibly some broken code here and there.

As always you're welcome to point any of these out to me, BUT it might not be the best use of your time since I obviously plan to redo a lot of pages in the future! Once I have enough profiles up (or, more likely, I burn out on making them and drop NaNo lmao) I'll go back through everything that's currently up and get to adding links to things, which should make organically navigating the world through what interests you most a lot easier! But if you dare to tread this treacherous land... you're more than welcome to!

If you'd like to receive updates on things that have been added or changed, subscribe to this thread! For wholesale new pages and things like that I'll make bulletins like I do for new bios/lits, but otherwise I don't want to spam my bulletins with more minor updates/tweaks - at least not when I'm planning to do a lot of that during a short time period! If you read stuff and have comments, questions, suggestions, want to toss in a vote for a character you'd like to see a profile of or concept you'd like to see a page on, etc., you can post in this thread! Or in here, on the comments of the world itself, fuckin wherever really I'm not picky I will just be excited someone is saying words!!

Because there's kind of A Lot there, here are probably the most important pages for anyone curious/bored enough to do some perusing:

• The main page ofc, which provides kind of a TL;DR of the setting!
• The zodiac overview page, which sums up all of the species and is also the only page with crosslinks because it's the only finished page that I made wholesale for Toyhouse!
• The gods page, which definitely has a lot of outdated things (Arachne is completely missing, you will note on the vast majority of pages that Ophius' name used to be Serpentarius and this world is actually the first time I'm using their new name, a lot of the weapons work differently now, etc.) but is still kinda the best source there really is atm for understanding the "main characters" of the setting.
• The Creators page, which is way more up to date and about the other three characters who color basically every aspect of the setting and whose names you'll be seeing constantly on like every page! It Does bring up a lot of RP stuff in it but that's mostly bonus content and not stuff you really need to know to understand Siderea things.
• The timeline page is a bit rough and has a lot of links that are actually dead links bc converting wikitext (there is a wiki. it's pretty barebones tho i dont even have the stuff from the world in there oopie but i mean feel free to look around that too i suppose there's Some information that isn't in the th world even!) to HTML is... interesting, but it helps provide a lot of context to various events that get mentioned!
• The dictionary page could use some new entries, but is a handy tool to have around!

• The Archangels are pretty important figures! It's also a great example of how you will find a lot of weird placeholder images throughout this world like how Jeremiel's placeholder icon at the time was just me looking up like goth anime boy emo angel or w/e and Uriel's is an emoji with MS Paint on top. I will change these... someday.
• The Facets are also pretty important figures, and it's one of the more recent and thus up-to-date pages!
• Before the Catasterismi randomly turned into me going into way too much detail about god backstories, so it's a good place to learn more about them!
• Due to its nature of being a summary of a story I didn't write, Age of the Risen Star gives some insight into character dynamics.

• Hallows and Animals (that's the only page I've explained faunals on Oops. the Actual furries)
• Liminal Parasites & Corruption
• Shapeshifting
• Cores & Filigrees
• Time
• The Incarnation Program

I think that's all the most important stuff! Like I said I intend to go back through these and fix more glaring errors and add links likely once NaNo is over or I'm just done with it, and ideally every page will someday have some level of HTML implemented to make it look nicer/make navigation easier! If you read any of it now, though... thank u you are so nice to me (little pleading emoji)

OH and tangentially related I crossposted two not-Siderea-specific-but-still-important pages that could be helpful resources! They're about the Greater Soulstream and the concept of magic, respectively. Give 'em a look! The latter even specifically mentions Siderea stuff...!!

Part Three: This was all lead-up to understanding that Scorpius was voted best OC 2023 and everyone was SO right for that (wild cheering and applause)

So a couple months ago I did a popularity contest on the aforementioned friend forum because I was overwhelmed by An Urge in the middle of the night. There are a lot of OCs on this list who don't have Toyhouse profiles and haven't even been mentioned anywhere on here, but nonetheless if you're curious you can see how things turned out here! A lot of things surprised me about this and it was really cool that a newer character I hadn't used too often but who is nonetheless one of my top 3 favs (alongside Orchid (dammit wtf happened to his background image. Bitch. maybe i will remember to fix it someday) and Astrid (who is high on my NaProWriMo priority list because Hoo Boy)) wound up beating characters with way more historical relevance.

Mostly I'm mentioning this because I am advertising that it's an extremely cool and swag thing to do and I would love to see people host some tournaments for me to vote on!! I included a little section for random comments which led to getting a lot of delightful OC questions to answer, such as what their 3rd-favorite ungulates are, how I would feel about being snowed into a cabin with each pairing, what they would get at McDonald's, and entirely too many questions about their sex lives. All this could be yours for the low, low price of make a ton of Google surveys...!!!

I thought about having polls up here as well, but the whole thing was kind of impulsive and I didn't want to figure out the logistics and also like half of the characters involved didn't have Toyhouse profiles. Maybe next year? Or I'll just do some kind of Toyhouse-specific contest someday? Prolly not until well after NaNo and ideally after I've been a bit more active so my characters will actually be recognizable to people, but you know.

"But Iso you are so cool and epic and I want to meticulously rank your OCs!!" So true but! You fool. You absolute buffoon.

You can.

Shortly after the tournament concluded a friend of mine taught me how to make a character sorter since I did an interest check during a post-tourney survey, and so I have inflicted this meaty fellow upon the earth. Check it out... if you dare! There are a little over 400 OCs in it (I was being conservative and restricting myself only to OCs who had some form of avatar - placeholder or otherwise - and trying to be somewhat picky on top of it) so for the love of god don't hit start without doing some filtering!! Doing so will take around 3000 matches, and even my bravest of pals who dared these wilds and hit tie a bunch of times on people they knew nothing about and had no strong opinions on the design of still took two hours to finish.

The category that probably makes the most sense to try out would be, well, the Toyhouse one! That one helpfully restricts the sorter to only showing characters who have profiles on here, placeholder or otherwise. If you do any amount of the sorter, I'd love to see your results! If you're curious about my favs, you can see my results here!

Part Four: IDK the rest of the bulletin

My segue kinda kept me from talking more about NaNo, but I'm still kinda debating what exactly I'm going to do. Either way it's going to be a rebel thing for sure, but I dunno if I'm gonna do a "one profile/page = par" kind of thing or do some kind of "just write in general" sort of thing and see if I can find an HTML remover and do draw word count to see how much writing I do when I'm not just trying to write a story. I do so much infodumping and RP stuff that I'm kind of curious to see how that would turn out! Though I feel like if I counted RP stuff and actually made sure to post a lot and other people posted enough for me to post I would blow 50k out of the water easily bc due to the nature of a lot of my threads they get really fuckin wordy so. Idk. These are problems for future Iso and by future I mean in less than 2 days.

Essentially I dunno if I'm gonna actually have a profile out every day or specifically push for that, but if I don't do that then expect my backup to be making more stuff for the Siderea world since I have a ton more infodumps/pages I'd like to make! If you have anything you'd specifically like to see, feel free to comment here or wherever else!

Also as avid Iso bulletin readers and link-clickers may have surmised by now, after years of back-and-forth I've decided I just kinda fuckin don't care about having nice art for characters I upload here anymore. Like I do because I want them to have an appealing enough avatar to make people click on them, but the fact of the matter is that I just don't really draw and therefore make refs, tend to end up giving up when I try to make refs bc there are a lot of things I don't have a good understanding of how to draw and not a lot of time/patience to step back and go do that first, and even if I did make refs I no longer have the financial means to commission people to make pretty art of them like I used to back in the golden days of yore where I had a job but not bills.

The whole reason I've been so backlogged on uploading OCs over the years is directly because of this fixation on having Clickable Avatars and I just don't fuckin care anymore!! I just want to have info about my OCs somewhere public and shove them in people's faces!! People will probably click on them anyway if I participate in forum stuff and if people go "ew cringe" when they look at my character page and mostly just see Picrews and other dollmakers well who fuckin cares I did not sign up to Toyhou dot se to become internet famous or whatever. So get used to seeing a lot of dollmakers and inaccurate doodles and also probably me deleting the little pictures in the Attributes sections of profiles for a lot of new characters bc they do not have many pictures. Thanks.

On the note of Toyhouse, as alluded to throughout I'm trying to be more active in general! Have been focusing on trying to catch up on various lits/bulletins while juggling NaNo prep stuff, though unfortunately a lot of that will probably get put on the backburner or at least slow down during November. But on the plus side I usually don't last long during NaNo, so I'll probably get back to catching up on things soon enough...!

I have no idea how much stuff I'll go through before getting lazy and contemplating exploding my notifs again, so if you have any particular profiles or literatures you'd like people to read - even if it's like 2 years old - feel free to link them so I can check them out and put them in my lil ark adrift on the sea of my executive dysfunction. I really like reading people's things and validating writers by slamming that little star button so don't be shy if you have stuff you're proud of!!

Speaking of literatures, I've only written, like, one thing since my last magnum opus and I can't post it since it has RP spoilers we won't get to for who knows how long!! Oopsie. But if I make profiles for Scorpius or Andromeda OR Metatron or Sariel/Leiras (it's complicated.) I can upload the two short stories I have for those guys...! Well the latter is incomplete so idk if I'd do that. Like not "I just never finished the whole story" but "I didn't even finish the first chapter and it ominously ends with the words 'Sleepy hole' just dangling there". But you never know...!

And finally, I guess I should provide some life updates! Not tooooo much has changed for better or for worse, but I got a new position at work! It's a sidegrade rather than an upgrade since it's the same amount of hours and same amount of pay, but I'd consider it an upgrade in a way since it's a position where I no longer have to worry if I'll be able to hang in there. I dunno if I've mentioned it here before and if so not for a while, but I have early-onset arthritis and was previously in a pretty physical position. It was getting really, really rough on me and causing me a lot of agony about my future since I didn't know how much longer I'd be able to go on for. When my boss took me aside to tell me my current position was going to open and that I should apply I straight up thought I was about to get fired or at least get scolded bc I was at a point where I couldn't get through a full week of work without calling in, so an almost entirely sedentary position has kind of been a complete 180 for me lmao

There are some consequences, though! Not walking as much as I used to + my hours being redistributed (I get Fridays off now which is sick but I work longer the other days) I think is contributing to some lethargy and I kinda just spend half the day napping against my will when I get home. And... okay I guess that's basically it! It's really cool not going into big meaty credit card debt because my paychecks are constantly extremely short because I ran out of vacation time in spring! And I get to put a lot of stickers on things which is viscerally satisfying! Good end :)

Otherwise Uhhhhhhhhh I guess I started playing DND? Kind of? My friend @Exuro started running a campaign for our friend group a while back and after lurking for a while I jumpscared everyone by joining with Rigel, which will be a really funny name to hear if you read enough Siderea pages! If you're curious how former final boss and world-ender pony is doing, he almost got literally killed by a rug. He gets crit a lot. He has no rizz so he keeps getting mind-controlled by things which is really funny for a guy who Should be immune to that kind of thing but isn't for the sake of gaming. He stopped everyone in the middle of the desert to infodump at them and then threatened to kill them bc he reached C support with everyone and that's the price you pay for befriending him. Also he and Jerry are besties :D and it is really funny that every time an opportunity arises for Rigel to find out Jerry is associated with Asena (who he loathes with every fiber of his being) something will happen or the scene will change. 10/10 stuff consider enjoying a campaign with pals who are very lax about rules and willing to baby your clueless ass and make your pre-existing ocs work   consider a horse who is a shadow sorcerer with tank stats it owns

And Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I guess that's probably it???? Aside from ummmm I still love my gf as always :) I guess I can legally make profiles for her for NaNo couldn't I.....!??! Idk if I will but if I ever Do finish any profiles for her I would nefariously make a bulletin for it on this account to advertise it!! ok bye

EDIT: i forgot to add a +1 to aries in the poll i am a FOOL. its not my fault i dont think. cant help being an aries

EDIT 2: OH I FUCKING FORGOT TO MENTION THAT. i gave all of my folders little icons to differentiate them. thanks