How Life is Going!

Oh yeah, this is my OOG blog, isn't it? Well, let me give you followers an update (how on earth did I get twelve?).

Firstly.

OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING is done and out and a downloadable 1100-page PDF! Click that link for the download location thing! SlendySlayer did a grand job helping me edit it, and she's actually the one who organized the PDF itself and just seriously check that thing out. She did well.

Over 400,000 words. At least 85 pictures by seven different artists. More art coming soon.


NOW, what about what else is happening in my life?

I'm in college, for those who don't know, getting my GCSEs. Which.. are the British equivalent of a 10th grade education, really. Easy stuff for me, I just haven't properly been to school since.. what, 2010? So now that I have the chance I want this. I'll be taking my exams next week.
Yeah, I'm not worried.
I could go on with stories of how well I did in the classes themselves. Science, I was flying through tests faster than anyone else, getting some of the highest scores on them. Math, I was one of those kids who usually knew the right answer and people deferred to. Psychology, whenever I even showed up, my teacher generally loved me. English?
Oh god, English.
Is it any surprise to you guys that English is what I'm pursuing A-levels in next year, that English was the only class I did all my homework in, that English was a class I helped my teacher teach when she got too tired of our class, that English was the class where the lowest grade I got on anything was a B (and that was once and a half), and that almost everything I wrote for English class was shown to examiners and other teachers?

..but anyway. What is my plan for this summer? Well, I plan on playing much Rock Band (been slacking off on that, will get back into it when I get my copy of Green Day: Rock Band). I'll probably write stuff here and there. I'll hang out with friends. I'll see if I can get the Otso vlog running more.
Y'know, nothing big.
Oh, and I'm going back to Finland. :D For probably closer to six weeks this time. I'll talk more about this as we get closer to the date. Because goodness, I do want to talk about that. But for now, Jordanilla on päänsärky!

OKAY LET ME TALK MORE ABOUT WRITING

There's Fearblog of Fear, which is shifting into more of an actual plot with some semblance of depth.
There's Benefits, which is my way of making sense of why the hell I smoke now. Going pretty well.
There's Topography Genera, which is.. inching along as usual. Just gotta get video elements up.
Oh, and PLAN 31: RISE OF MCFEAR. My love letter to the Ace Attorney series. Writing that requires me being in a specific mood, though, so its updates will come in waves.
And then there's stories I'm not ready to post or announce yet! One of those stories is a blogpasta that's taking me an annoyingly long time to write, much trickier than other stuff I've written, but when it's ready it'll also have a bit of art to blow people's minds. Another one of those is my love letter to Omega's Mephi while doubling as a post-Rapture story, still in the brainstorming stages because it's the kind of story that I can't afford to blindly jump into. Another one of those is relaaaated to the blogpasta project but will not be ready for reveal for a long long time, a multi-person project that is unlike anything I've ever done.
And, of course, there's the usual Rapture secret project Rappu and I are working on, which is back to the forefront now that the PDF's out. That's one of the biggest reasons I go to Finland in the first place. But again, I'll talk about all this stuff later.

I've also been reading many books! There's Tolstoy's Anna Karenina which I am in love with though it seems to be talking more about horses than I really care about. What I loved-- well, one of the many things I loved-- about War and Peace was its sheer diversity of genre. It covered so many things. Anna Karenina is much more reserved, focusing on a smaller amount of things. And it's a little hit-or-miss with me in that regard.
I'm also reading Franz Kafka's The Trial, which I'm finding really interesting. It sounds vaguely metaphorical and I eat that stuff right up.
And then there's James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which... is like an oasis I skirt along every now and then, not yet ready to dive headfirst in, but I dip my feet in every once in a while and it makes me feel giddy and in love with everything. When I've had more experience dipping into these oases, I will go deep-sea diving into the Wake.
Then I have a lot of books I will read when I'm not reading all these others. King's IT (I'm getting close to the end kinda), Tolkien's The Hobbit (ugh I do not like his prose but I keep telling people I'll read this stuff), Eliot's Middlemarch (got it on a whim, looks interesting!), Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (also looks interesting and like it will help me understand Ulysses when I eventually get to that), Homer's The Iliad (it's interesting, I just put it on hold a long time ago), Adams' Watership Down (Rappu recommended it, she usually suggests things I end up loving, will get to it), Pratchett's Guards! Guards! (a Discworld book everyone recommends, excited to read it), and Pratchett's Reaper Man (looked interesting!).

Sooo I got a lot. And as I said at some point earlier, I ordered Green Day: Rock Band, and I'm excited to play it. Been getting into Green Day recently, and I'd intended on getting the game eventually as I just plain love everything Harmonix makes.

SO YEAH

THIRTY SECONDS: The Silence Before the Battle

I'm going to school on Monday. After that, I will have school every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

So.. basically, this blog may very well turn into a more traditional OOG blog. I might start talking about blah blah blah people I know and schoolwork. But I think I'll try my best to keep a firm grounding in the Fear Mythos, as I view that to be my profession. I intend on trying to see if I can lure a few people I meet in college to enter our mythos, too. >w>

..god, can you imagine if I got a video camera and was able to make a full-on Fearvlog?

ALSO I'm gonna get to play Black Mesa today. This mod has been in development for eight years, and I've actually been waiting for it this entire time. I was introduced to it shortly after it was announced; I got into the Half-Life series when I was about nine or ten. And.. well, eight years of development hell later, Black Mesa has finally come out! For reference, it's a complete re-imagining of the original Half-Life into the source engine and closer to the standards of present-day Valve titles. It's made entirely by fans, and as it's a mod, it's absolutely free!

But the only catch is that, although it's finally being released, Black Mesa isn't exactly finished. The last four chapters of the game aren't included; the mod ends after "Lambda Core." Now, this is actually fairly understandable, considering the last four chapters of the game are somehow reviled by most fans (*shrugs* They happen to be some of my favourite chapters in video game history, to each his own) and are just.. god. Without trying to spoil anything, they provide such a contrast to the rest of the game and they try for things that not many video games dare trying. And are beautiful. owe But the developers are, indeed, hard at work on them! The rest of the game will be released and updated to the mod sometime in 2013.

THE POINT IS THAT 5/6 of the game are still there to play, and the thing about Half-Life is that those 5/6 of the game are still among the greatest chapters to any video game ever. And after eight years of waiting, I'm stoked to get to play this.

I'd do an LP but I'll be playing on my brother's computer. :C

So yes! This has been, quite possibly, one of the most.. significant weekends in my entire life. OH AND NANQUEST

CLICK ON THIS FUCKING LINK

THIS IS NANQUEST

THIS HAS BEEN AND CONTINUES TO BE A MASSIVE INFLUENCE ON ME

NanQuest is a /tg/ adventure about Nan, an adorable goat repairwoman who has a job to do in a hotel. I.. won't say much more. It's the spiritual successor to RubyQuest, which was about Ruby, an adorable bunny who wakes up in a strange metal lab. Both stories have adorable art and utterly terrifying content. Though NanQuest is still ongoing, in my opinion it seems so much better for so many freaking reasons. I still love RubyQuest, though! Fantastic freaking story. A classic horror tale, expertly presented and wonderfully enacted. It's just that NanQuest has a much richer focus on storytelling and somehow managed to capture every terrifying thing in the world in one frightening hotel. I love spooky hotels. Hotels, forests, highways, and modern cities are my all-time favourite horror locations. >W<

..but yes. The reason I bring this up is because I recently checked up on it and it turns out the sixth thread has been released. Plus the fifth thread got a second half that I never read. So I caught up and just oh my god this story is so brilliant.

SO YES BEST WEEKEND EVER