P.R. is back up and running again. Things were down a lot longer than I planned, but now’s as good a time as any to dive back in. With that there are some things to cover.

February Goals

I spent way too much time overhauling layouts, moving things around, and just generally trying to get the site up to a good working standard. While February won’t be a complete bust goal-wise, I’m still well behind where I wanted to be on most fronts.

Lydia’s Golden Treasury

There hasn’t been any new writing done for LGT so far; I’m disappointed in myself for that one, but it’s not all bad news (or unusual). Part of the reason there hasn’t been any new writing is because I pulled the trigger on something important in the story’s chronology.

In short, I was missing a chapter.

LGT was always planned as a seven chapter story, and that’s not changing, but there are two problems I need to address to tie things together more neatly and put the Emancipating Blade further up the timeline like I wanted. First, there’s a missing chapter between Chapter 1 (The Armor of the Unburdened) and Chapter 3 (now The Atoning Mirror). That chapter needs to be written soon, preferably before Chapter 7 (Eisenwolf).

So eight chapters? No, The Golden Ticket and The Class Array were the second problem I needed to address, and now I have. The Golden Ticket and The Class Array need to function as an A and B plot together in the same chapter. That’s what I didn’t realize sooner. The Golden Ticket’s opening scenes are the inciting incident for The Class Array, but Enya’s involvement in the original outline is too small. Since the Class Array doesn’t even feature the usual artifact, it’s better to roll them in together and bridge the gap between Enya’s introduction in Chapter 1 and the Item Exhibit in Chapter 3.

So that’s the plan.

Incidentally, if I felt like cheating a little, I could count the 1st draft of Chapter 5 as finished since The Chronicles of Proxima got bumped up a spot. I don’t think I will, but it’s a fun thought.

Fleeing Victory

I’m closing in on the series of events I want to write about for Chapter Two. I wish it hadn’t taken two thirds of the whole month, but I’ve had a lot on my plate. Anyway, since this is one of the goals I still have time for before March, I plan to at least get this done. It may or may not be in multiple parts; I’m not sure of the overall length of this chapter or the chapters going forward.

The Virtues of War

This goal is coming along fine even though I started about eight days into February. I’m about 3/5 of the way through the book, so I should finish on time. Steven Pressfield’s style of writing is interesting, though definitely odd and just a smidge anachronistic in places. The quirks are charming enough and his take on Alexander the Great is pretty compelling.

I’ve heard Gates of Fire is his best work, and while I do plan on reading that one this year, it’s not going to be March’s read. I don’t want to read the same author back to back unless it’s a series.

Space Engineers

The Prinz Heinrich is going to need another month at least before she’s ready for the workshop, but the Cosmo Messer is nearly finished. I’m basically at a point where I’m deciding which improvements need to be made now and which ones should be saved for future models. A thorough conveyor and printing test in a survival game and the ‘BfC 109E’ model should be ready for prime time.

I’m still sad I can’t get wheeled landing gears on this thing without mods, but it is what it is.

I should also point out that a new drone hit the Steam Workshop recently, the XB-2 Combat Drone. I’ve been testing this with the Admiral Hipper. While my awful attempt at integrating it is indeed awful, I’m hoping to get to a point where I understand the program enough to make drone variants of the Cosmo Messer. That would just be divine~

Updates on all of this as they come.

World of Warships

There were some major developments earlier this month that I should probably mention here.

I was part of a clan called Special_Circumstances (S_C) until just recently. Our leadership had been in talks with Wolf Pack Alpha about a possible merger of sorts. The whole thing was horrifically mishandled on S_C’s end, and while the Wolf Pack is full of friendly and welcoming commanders, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to walk regardless.

I wasn’t actually with S_C long enough to be miffed over becoming a sub-clan, but I have been around long enough to know ‘careful maneuvering’ when I see it. The opinions of anyone who might have possibly objected to this never mattered to begin with. Being asked for input on ‘A’ with no knowledge of ‘B’ and then asked about ‘C’ with no knowledge of ‘D’ is worse than just being blindsided.

Joining up with Wolf Pack Alpha isn’t a bad idea in and of itself, but we were deliberately mislead just to keep potential objectors quiet long enough to get it done. I’m not even one of the objectors, I just hate that kind of chicanery on principle. The overall situation doesn’t leave me excited for Clan Battles, and that’s after our best season, too.

I’ve gotten used to seeing W-P-O next to my name ingame now, but I’ve definitely got mixed feelings about it. Strange as it sounds I almost want to join W-P-A directly despite being an aspiring competitive player (which is what W-P-O was ostensibly for), just to get a comfortable distance from ground zero.

I’d like to think there’s a way to throw something positive into the mix, maybe a compromise of sorts, but I haven’t really had time to think about this in detail or talk with anyone from the Wolf Pack about it. Maybe that will change in the coming weeks.

For now I’m just going to give them my best this coming season and see if I’m a good fit for the group as a whole. They’ve been nothing but good to us so far, so I want to at least give them and myself a chance to make this more than just a clumsy merger.

The Site

The updates and redesign were rough and the latter isn’t quite finished yet, but even with the setbacks I think it’s worth it. I’m definitely going to be repeating that one to myself throughout March while I struggle to get editing sessions going and 1st drafts written up again.

With this update I was looking for a more long term, uniform look that’s easy for longer stretches of reading. Dark theming isn’t as straight forward as it looks. I learned some very useful things putting it all together, so future changes won’t be nearly as time guzzling.

There are a few more things I’d like to try and some visual bugs I need to work out in some areas, but this is the overall look I’m going for, or at least what I settled on when trying to bring down the site’s loading times. There might be a few more plugins to look at. We’ll see.

Closing

That’s all for now. Like always, I plan to post daily (at least on days when the site isn’t on extended maintenance). Either today or tomorrow I’ll try to get some more info about the Cosmo Messer up. FV2 should also be coming soon, either in parts or one big piece.