29 Days to the Ides of March!

Heya, fuzzies. I just wanted to update you on what’s been going on, and also to pose a few questions!

First, updates: I’ve added some more entries to the Star Patrol encyclopedia, as well as added some limited SVG map support. This also means, for those playing the home game, that there is now—sort of—a map of the Star Patrol setting. At the very least, the various sectors are now kind of organized. I’ve also added a search function to the logic used for displaying CSVs on the site, so (for example) some of the fields in the Cannon Shoals names list are now searchable.

If you want access to the code for either of these… uh. I mean, it’s JavaScript, you can just right-click to view the page source, I s’pose—but I am also happy to help, even though both of these are still pretty skeletal projects rather than ones I’ve put any effort into commenting.

The first episode of the fifth season of the Dark Horse serial is now up on writing.dog, and introduces a new/old antagonist and the overall plot of that season. All five episodes are currently outlined, and three of them are written; I’ve held off on posting the first one to SoFurry just to get out of the position I was in last year where there was a year-long delay between the first episode and the next three.

I’ve also posted the first chapter of An Iron Road Running, with some changes and notes; I’ll try to get the second one written up this weekend.

Anyway, questions:

More substantial question: So, I generally lean towards the approach that my intent when writing is less important than what you take away from it. Consequently, while I write notes and commentary on stories, or provide my worldbuilding bible, I’ve gotten in the habit of writing everything fairly speculatively. Not “John Doe does this because he secretly knows Richard Roe’s murderer” but “presumably, John does this because he might know something about the Roe case. Or he’s just speculating.”

I guess, if you care (you do not have to care), do you mind this, or do you want me to be more assertive around authorial intent? I guess it’s reasonable to assume that if I’m writing things from out of my worldbible, they should be authoritative :P

Next question: I am incredibly grateful to all y’all for your support, and I feel like I should be more vocal about that. If you’d like, please message me with how you should be credited (e.g. if there’s a SF/FA/Twitter/etc. link, and a name) when I post stuff on SoFurry and I will do that. This isn’t a question :P But when I started writing this paragraph, it was going to say “do you want me to thank you publicly” and let’s just take it as a given that I would like to :P

Final question: So, in the finished-but-needs-editing queue right now are three Dark Horse episodes, the next Casey & Dev story, and a Cannon Shoals short story. In the “not-finished, still writing” queue are a fantasy novel, a sequel to Hatikvah, and the rest of the Dark Horse season. Are there narratives or settings you’d like me to focus on? The moreauverse? More Cannon Shoals? That whole dieselpunk thing?

Let me know!

Also, have a new version of the word generator (just some updates to the languages, nothing major from the code point of view I don't think). I’d kind of like to port this to JavaScript and make it easier to access, but… I have no real idea how to even start with that.