Poem: Coding Virelai

 Ballades are my preferred poem structure, but I found this one that I made in 2018 about the difficulty of transitioning to a coding career from an editing one. It seems especially poignant now that I've been in the coding career field for a while now and just frankly... don't like it at all.

Snippet: The Day of No Jackets

It's sad to see how many times I tried and failed at writing something. The more of these I read, the more I want to make this year the year I use all my D&D training as well as my knowledge of creative writing from college to write SOMEthing that has a beginning, middle, and end that I made all on my own. Anyway... This "attempt at an epic novel" was basically me rewriting my own life to be set in a fantasy universe. The worldbuilding was clearly meant to parallel my actual life, and while I get the idea of Ando being a linguist being a possibly interesting plot element, I had no idea where I was going with the conflict. I just wanted spring to come and to get started writing anything. They say write what you know, but in my case, that turned out to be really boring.

Snippet: Sonho Cinzenta

 Here's another snippet that's surprisingly not on this blog yet. Another attempt during the Great Writer's Block of the early 2010s, this time trying to invent a story of some kind out of Brazilian lore. I knew next to nothing about Brazilian mythology or some way to put a spin on a Brazilian setting (I assume, like all of my writing, this was going to be a fantasy story), so it fizzled pretty quickly. But the writing, as usual, is fun to read, and I especially like the first couple of paragraphs.

Snippet: "Beasts and Beauty"

 I'm glad I found this. I remember writing it in 2014 when I was in the height of my writer's block, desperate to find something to stick to writing about. So I decided to flip fairy tales on their heads and see how far I could go with that. As you can see with the shortness of the following snippet, I didn't get very far (blast my undiagnosed mild apathetic depression at the time!) but it's an inspiring snippet, and as with other snippets I've posted here on the blog, I wish I could learn more about this intriguing story. 

Poem: Looking Out a Window

 Merry Christmas, everyone. I've never liked free verse poetry much because I just utterly love rhymes, but this free verse poem I made in college in 2011 that I just stumbled upon evoked a very vivid picture that I distinctly remembered when I wrote it. That's poetry for sure. Man, I really need to write more. I miss it.

Doodles

Sometimes when I doodle something, a specific drawing just stands out for some reason. Maybe it's got a sort of perfect symmetry to it, or a beauty in a collection of its curved lines, or a humanoid figure looks particularly realistic in its form, or maybe it's just a well-detailed ink drawing with no mistakes in it. When that happens, I cut out the drawing and put it in an envelope called the "Envelope of Fame."

After many years, I accumulated quite a few of these precious drawings, and I realized how much I wanted to showcase them. At first I organized them into compilation PSDs, but just looking at a big mass wasn't a good way to appreciate the individual doodles. So I made this video. It was hard to come up with what music to play while the doodles were scrolling, but in the end I decided on the soundtrack from Goofy's Extremely Goofy Skateboarding (2001), which reminds me of the most carefree years of my life; and "Knight Gold" from Heroes of Might and Magic II Gold (1998), which I would like performed at my funeral, if at all possible.

I proudly present this compilation as a deep look into my artistic heart over the past 15 or so years. Enjoy.

Ask Dave Anything!

 I've had the privilege of being a close associate with David "DesignerDave" Fried ever since my Warcraft 3 Easter Eggs series took off. I even did an interview with him that was republished by Hive Workshop and beloved by many. This year, he and I decided to do an "Ask Me Anything" collaboration across our two channels, where he answers many questions sent in on our Discord servers.

It's been an honor to work with a former developer of one of my favorite PC games of all time and to get a bit of closure on why the franchise's "reforging" was so disappointing, among other interesting tidbits of information. Below are the first two videos. Enjoy!