Another late night coding session, and I've kind of figured out that I am much more of a night-owl than I have thought (shocker!!).
These blogs will more likely start focusing on Drachenstein and other random stuff, like usual, while I keep site-related things on the status update page in the index. Thank you all for being patient while I deal with this! Generally speaking, I've been REALLY messing around with the CSS style sheets, adding custom fonts, and optimising the image load times (which involves cropping and duplicating a bunch of images for the time being).
The goal here after this is to either take up PHP or Java once the website looks good, and make things a bit more interactive -- specifically an image upload software and a comment section. Am I worried about trolls and stuff? Yeah, but I know I can take it all away if I really wanna lol.
It's Semester 2 of Year 2 now, and I've been doing my best to keep up with everything. My Data Structures and Algorithms marks are actually really good because I'm actually starting to learn things, and I'm currently doing a kind of placement/capstone project. On the drawing side of things, I have taken up a commission (which I unfortunately can't share without doxxing myself lol), which will really get my art around the local community!
Speaking of local community, I believe it's coming up on my one-year anniversary since I've started going to a local transmasculine support group, at a time where I felt completely abandoned by a lot of people I thought were my friends. I think I should probably ask one of the facilitators as to how long I was there exactly, but these guys saved my life, and I will not shut up about it lmaoo.
Speaking of trans-related things, T is making me a lot hungrier than I thought I would be, but hey, it's paying off, I'm slowly growing a beard :D
Anyway, yes, Drachenstein is still happening, I just gotta balance uni a bit, and keep writing more stuff in :D
No real justification for this one, I'm afraid, other than the fact that I've been really busy with moving out, getting university out of the way (2 out of 3 years down!) and applying my newfound coding knowledge to spruce up this site a bit more. I finally managed to get myself some T (legally, don't worry), went through some shitty friends, kept the good ones around, and decided to lock in with studies, like I said.
Also, The prologue of Drachenstein is finally out, and I'm working on the roughs of the first proper chapter, and turning them into pencils. We're about to see a local festival soon, and I am looking quite forward to it. It's 1:11AM right now, but most of the site (except for the VALORANT/Skyrim fan comic) is more or less spruced up. Time for me to get to bed :) Good morning!
Eulogy is a audio theatre experience by Darkfield where you are a companion to a chaperone that guides you through the floors of a hotel room. Most if not all of Darkfield's experiences have some sort of gimmick (for a lack of better word) to them. For example, Flight simulated the rumbling of a plane and delivered the story through its loudspeakers or Coma, which uses scents alongside audio to make the experience more immersive to the listener, and in this case, Eulogy had the listener answering "yes" or "no" to questions that seemed innocuous at first, but later came full circle (at least most of them to my knowledge).
(Fun fact, all the "suites" we were seated in were named after famous psychologists. Think Alzheimer, Milgram, or Patterson. My partner was sat next to me in Maslow, while I was in Pavlov.)
Walking into one of the four shipping containers set up at the art show, we were met with twenty five steel seats fashioned after laundry carts, with a pillow on each seat. Once I tested my headphones and speech recognition, we were off.
Hearing the general atmosphere with each of the other suite names being called out was really something else (yes I was straining my ears to hear Maslow as well as Pavlov). The question-and-answer mechanic was really fun to work with, but sometimes, it was hard to pick up at which points I was expected to answer with "yes" or "no". There also were a few jumpscares in this, which were executed SO well - you could feel the scare in your chest, which is impressive considering that Eulogy was exclusively audio save for the rumbling of the floor under your suite.
As the story came to a head and tensions rose between us, our chaperone Elle, and another chaperone, Colin, we see the suspense bloom into an intense climax, leading into multiple endings based on the choices you make. Listening to what I personally saw as the epilogue of the story opened my eyes to the context that I was searching for throughout the whole story - by design, of course. Ultimately, even though I had what people would consider the "worse" ending, my curiosity, like that of a cat's, was sated.
Eulogy plays on confusion - on the fear one gets when given no context, unlike the people around them. It's the fear that you get when you walk into an exam with minimal preparation, being the new guy at the job with no idea of the workplace culture. The fear of messing up. Of missing a social cue or commiting a faux pas that might get you burnt.
And it is terrifying.
9/10
I've been working on this website for a little less than a year now and decided to change the colours up a bit. Initially this website was supposed to be somewhere I'd be able to put my webcomics without having to worry about likes, marketing or engagement. I was gonna keep posting my art to social media, but even that's becoming competitive, and I find myself focusing on what brings the most likes as opposed to what brings me happiness and joy.
So, I decided to add my more recent artwork onto this website, and decided to frankly, not give a shit about what other people think about said art for once.
In other news, I am currently listening to The Magnus Protocol, and I've really gotten into it. There's only 7 episodes out so far, but Rusty Quill's really kept the vibe going from The Magnus Archives, I might get around to making a separate blog post about my thoughts on the podcast. Someone in a Discord server I'm in recommended me The Cursed Heart by Derin Edala, a magic school book. Frankly, Harry Potter's left a sour taste in my mouth for that subgenre, but I'm gonna give TCH a chance - especially since it's protagonist, Kayden, is a black transmasculine character, and it is written by a transmasculine author.