Saturday Update!

Well. It's been a bit of a week!

I did get some good planning done, but to be honest, it wasn't as much as I would have liked. This phase is the most openly creative in the entire process, and will lay the foundation for everything else after. I spend a lot of time rejecting ideas for being mediocre, so building the plot is going kinda slow. It's always hard to strike the balance between accepting work to move forward and finding something that will really satisfy me.

Plus, I'm not immune to higher number of eyeballs on my work 😂

Still, I did get some work done and moved forward. That's the important thing.

Ah, also, before I get into it- Canada Post is on strike again. This means that my Etsy store is once again closed for everyone. And I will be honest here, I don't have much information.

I do know that no deal was ever accepted, it's the same problems as the previous strikes. Aside from that, I openly admit that my support for the union is blind. This time the strike started with no warning, and I haven't been able to get much information. it seems even the workers are confused. I'm just violently pro-union so I offer my support regardless.

I'll keep people posted on my website of course. There's no indication anywhere of how long the strike will last. My gut says it may be short just because of depleted resources but 🤷‍♀️ I don't know nothin' about nothin'.

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So let's get into what I got done.,

^ You're not supposed to be able to read this, I've blurred it beyond recognition on purpose.

I show it anyway though to give an impression of the amount of planning I have done. There's still a lot of planning work left, particularly in the details of day 2 and the floating endings- and other new mechanics that I'm keeping under wraps for now.

As I've been brainstorming and making decisions, my personal understanding of Lawrence as a character is getting clearer. He has indeed changed in my head. Like Strade, I'm beginning to feel more clear about his motives and the way he thinks. It probably sounds strange, but I've been a bit surprised about how he's changed. I'm sure that some of it is due to how much I've changed.

He's lost a lot of that trembling unsureness. He's still anxious, but he's expressing it in a harder way. Walls inside of walls. I think he's become more sinister too, in a way I'm honestly a bit nervous about. I'll have to be really serious about the warnings on this game.

I know my wording here is a bit weird, because it sounds like I don't have total control of this, but that is how it feels. Writing for Lawrence has always been a sort of stream of consciousness type exercise for me.

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There was also a bit of an emotional rollercoaster last week about some merch.

My handler at Vograce contacted me and told me that out of the 1000 new keychains I ordered [ 500 strade, 500 ren ], 600 failed quality inspection. Apparently I'm the first person to try to order a large number of keychains with the new embedded metal foil AND a print on both sides with transparency to show the foil. The failure was due to glue used on the foil leaving visible streaks in the keychains.

They told me that I can't have transparency/showing foil on both sides of the keychain, despite the product images on the website indicating that I can. I told them I was disappointed, but I understand. I scrambled to make new art files that were only transparent on one side. I was pretty bummed that they weren't going to come out how I imagined.

Then, a few days later, my handler emailed me again and told me that the technicians worked on changing the process so that the keychains could have the foil on both sides! They really went the extra mile and figured out a new way to do them so that they could look how I imagined! They sent me pictures and videos of some prototype keychains and I was totally blown away. They're even more beautiful than I imagined. I'm actually very excited for them now!

[ And hopefully Canada Post will no longer be on strike by the time I get them 🥲 ]

For all the extra work and materials they've spent to make me happy, I have to at least plug them in return:

https://vograce.com/

I can personally strongly recommend their quality- they manufacture all my pins, keychains, and dakis. They also have very low minimum order quantity [ except for pins- pins need a larger base payment to pay for the original metal stamp ], so if you'd like to have something made just for you with your own OCs or something, you should really look into it! And of course, they have great discounts for bulk orders, so they're also a great choice for people looking to sell products! I've been working with them for for nearly a decade and I can't recommend them enough.

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And because the news is a constant barrage of psychic damage, have a Willow update:

I have run into a new challenge with her: Clipping her 23 nails [ cats normally have 18, 5 on each front paw and 4 on the back. Willow has 5 on each back paw, 6 on one front paw and 7 on the other- all with functioning claws that need to be trimmed ]

My new strategy is 'Toe Time' which is me holding her in my lap in the morning and clipping what I can [ it's been a single claw so far... she is very squirmy ] and then immediately giving her greenie treats after, which she goes crazy for. I figure that if I do it every morning, even accomplishing a single claw each time is okay. But hopefully she gets more used to it and associates toe time with treats!

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That's all I got this week! I'm gonna keep banging away at the planning document for YKMET:Lawrence next week. It's taking a while but I do think I'm making good progress. Lawrence is the representative for 'Mind' in my head so I guess it makes sense that he's hurting my brain LMAO [ I think of Strade, Law, and Ren to have themes of Body, Mind, and Emotion, in that order ]

Stay safe, find joy, and care for each other. We are in this together! See you next week!