Progress Report

Alright. The polls aren't done for another day, so this will be a bit limited, but I kinda wanted to get the current progress reported before the polls ended. Combing the Poll Results and a Progress Report tends to create a pretty massive, rambling, post. Which I doubt very many people actually read. So...progress report now, poll results when the polls are done. (And if you haven't voted in them, make sure you go do that! They'll be ending tomorrow at midnight!).

Left Hand Magic

Ehhhhh...it's not going badly? I'd honestly hoped to be a bit farther along than I currently am, having had more time in the last week than usual. Unfortunately, that didn't really work out. That said, I still got about as much done as I normally would in a given time frame. The two animations for a new Masturbation Scene are done, and the last few frames of the first animation for Ariana's Weekend 3 route are running as I type this. That particular animation is part of why I haven't made more progress. Every iteration of it takes around 16 hours to render. Oof. Going to have to see if I can reduce that for the other girls a bit. 

Regardless, hopefully I'll have the second animation for that scene running later today. Since the stills are largely done, that will take care of Arianna's route for this build. I'd hoped to have finished two routes by now, not one, but that was always only a hope rather than anything certain. Particularly with the late start this month. I won't really be worried unless I can't get the process sped up a little.

Short Story

Despite the poll not being done, I actually do have news here. Specifically, that I've decided that one of the stories that will be updated either way this month is going to be Mass Effect: Final Error. It's consistently done well in the polls, and I'm worried if I leave it alone much longer I'll find it hard to pick up where I left off with it. As is, part of the reason I haven't gotten as much done is that I needed to reread large parts of ME:FE in order to sort out my notes/thoughts on what I was/am doing with it. The good news, though, is that I've already gotten a little over 3,000 words down for it, with the intention of adding at least another 3,000 to it.

So far, the content covered is the introduction and recruitment of Samara. Which ran longer than I expected. I'd hoped to cover the Alpha Relay incident, plus a bit with Miranda and Jack, and possibly an appearance of Thane as well. But with as long as Samara's bit ran, it will likely be that I only add one of the above, possibly two. That might well mean that we end up with three 'interludes' instead of the two I'd originally planned for. Though since those 'interludes' are essentially covering all of Mass Effect II, that's not really a huge deal, I think.

Wallpapers

As is sadly typical of me...I've had the renders for the wallpapers done for several days, and I'm just dragging my feet on the post-processing and typesetting -_-. I'll try to have them up in the new few days. I'm not quite sure why I hate that part of the process so much, but I do...I really do.