My sister's cat as a Bombchu from The Legend of Zelda.

Rough concept sketch for Kirven and Nusa, two Werelupe supporting characters from my Neopian Times stories. I recently completed a short story where they come into play again, and thought I might as well take the opportunity to play around with Werelupe character design a little.

I know the crossbow is probably not entirely accurate. Were this a more polished piece, I would have done more homework. It'll do for now.

Farewell to Lynwood

Suhel originated as a supporting character in Worth Searching For, and I had no plans for her beyond needing someone to be Isengrim's second-in-command and to fulfill her role in the plot. However, as I continued to write about the cast, I couldn't stop wondering about Suhel's past. In my headcanon, Werelupes usually happen as a result of normal Lupes going "feral", and I wanted to explore another case of that and give Suhel a bit of a different past than Isengrim, but one that still explains her attitude toward the outside world, and why she so highly values being a member of Isengrim's pack.

What I didn't anticipate was that this story would lead to further developments later down the road, but I'll have more to say about that when the time comes.

When revising this story for posting on the blog, I took the opportunity to greatly expand upon just what it was about Lynwood that made Suhel hate it so much, and her evolving relationship with Lexora. Working under the constraints of 4,000 words for a Neopian Times short story, I couldn't go into many details then.

For the record, Suhel has a Glaswegian accent, because I can get oddly specific about my characters.

From the moment Suhel Caradoc laid eyes on the Lynwood School for Girls, she knew she did not belong there.

The little Christmas-coloured Lupe poked out her snout from the window of her carriage, eyeing the grounds with distaste. The immaculately-trimmed lawns stood behind signs saying “KEEP OFF THE GRASS”. The stately trees had been expertly trimmed to remove all low-hanging branches that might facilitate climbing. The school building itself was the most boring grey monolith Suhel had ever seen, as if not a single Neopoint of the construction budget had gone into trying to make it interesting or beautiful. At least Suhel’s parents’ house contained the expensive things they had bought to show off, but Lynwood seemed to scream dullness—or rather, to whisper it politely.

Suhel’s dark green ears drooped. Barring holidays, this was to be her home for the next seven years of her education, and she felt a pit of dread well up in her stomach.

 

I needed a new Facebook profile picture, and I can never really do things the normal way.

My niece wanted to know what her cat would look like as a dinosaur, so there you are. (Ear-tufts are purely hypothetical.)

 

Today I followed a painting tutorial on the Corel Painter YouTube channel. (And by "followed", I of course mean "observed the instructor's brushes and techniques and used them to create something entirely different".)

My painting is pretty rusty, but I feel like maybe this didn't turn out completely horribly. And I learned some very useful digital painting techniques so that's nice.

Create Your Own Adventure

This is definitely one of the less serious entries in my Neopets fanfic corpus, but I'm including it here because it just plain amuses me. I also think it's a good bit of character development for Hyren, lest anyone think he went soft after defecting from Virtupets to save two socially awkward children. :) (There is also a teeny, tiny bit of lore in here that comes into play in a future fic, but my main reason for including this one is that I just think it's funny.)

As for how it came about, well, one day I was feeling nostalgic and was looking at stuff about Neoadventures, a whole sub-segment of the Neopets website dedicated to allowing users to create their own choose-your-own stories. That got me thinking about how they might actually work in-universe. And then for some reason, my next thought was "what would happen if Hyren decided to write one". Maybe because he's chock-full of old war stories.

Hyren may allegedly play the straight man to the rest of his kooky family, but he is quite weird in his own special way. :)

Edits made to this fic from the version that got into the Neopian Times are just a few minor technical fixes. I think I'm getting better at this crazy writing thing!

I always suspected that my Grundo had a sadistic streak. Years of serving as a commander in Dr. Sloth’s galactic marine corps will probably do that to you. But my hunch was confirmed the day Hyren brought home an Adventure Generator.

I was sprawled on one of the library couches in our Neohome, reading, when the little blue guy walked in and spread a scroll of parchment across the table. He looked it up and down and nodded satisfactorily, and uncorked a bottle of ink.

Hyren prefers to let his swords do the talking, so his sudden interest in writing piqued my interest. “What are you doing?” I asked from behind my copy of Destruct-O-Match Basics—that fiendish avatar keeps eluding me.

“Making a Neoadventure,” he said, dipping his pen.

I raised an eyebrow. “That’s new.”