I'm hesitating to write my usual year in review, where I count the pages and document what I actually accomplished last year. I'm hesitating to do it because so little will be written down, and I'm also hesitating because in all likelihood I'll have the same goals I did last year, since I.... um.... didn't accomplish any of them?

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts...

THIS happened!:



And THIS!


He still has never spoken to me, so they were very unexpected gestures. You know what I found out about Wesley now that he's added me on FB? His wife is Japanese. lol I'm so curious now if he can speak any Japanese! Apparently they got married in 2000, so I'm a little confused if he's been married twice or if Richard was mistaken when he told me he was married back when they were working on the show, and she was actually just his steady girlfriend (although being steady for eight years is kind of a long time...) I also learned his birth year, which means while shooting AIW he turned 29. Twenty-nine! That's so damn young. lol I remember being just as shocked to learn that Patrick turned 30, but mostly because they did such a good job at making him look old. Actually, it's kind of adorable, because now that he's getting older, he looks more and more like Rabbit. lmao

Anyhoo, now that the site has officially gone public on FB (but not tumblr yet), I'm kind of just waiting around to see if anyone else will find it and contact me. It was really sweet and well-meaning of Wesley to share it so people who knew he worked on it could see it; I wish the others would do that, too, but oh well.

One thing I've realized, though, is that A LOT of my traffic are using mobile phones. I mean at least half, if not more of my traffic has been mobile, and a lot of people from California and New York. It's super unnerving. I can't ask them what it looks like, so I'm put in the helpless situation of having my fingers crossed that I look like a competent coder. ighghgHGHGHgh....

Onto other subjects. Writing. You know, that thing I used to do. Specifically He's There.

Once stuck, always stuck, is the problem right now. I'm looking for other people who can take the burden of offering feedback off of R & A because they so don't deserve to feel like I threw the position of editors on them. Someone is coming to mind whom I might ask to look after the rewrites (or maybe she has seem them already; I can't remember), but I think I need to put chapters 5 and what I have of 6 up so I can get some help. I gradually stopped working on these last year because suddenly I didn't believe in myself anymore by chapter six. Something very important was about to happen, but I wasn't sure if I was doing anything right, and so I began walking around in the dark, plotting things that weren't making me go "OH YEAH, THAT'S GOOD". You can tell in chapters 1-4, and maybe 5, that I believed in myself and was having very vivid imaginings... so to have that come to a halt all of a sudden was hard. I'll post plot and writing in a little while and try to convince people to offer their opinion, which I'm sure will be like pulling teeth.

I didn't really write anything else last year. I started an AIW fanfiction that got almost nowhere, and even though I love the idea of working on and finishing it, writing in a vacuum just isn't fun. Writing without inspiration from others, and writing just so I can post it and get no response aren't fun. The other stories I've done, there was a lot of energy behind them, a lot of conversations packed with laughter, and little moments and situations pulled from here or there that built up scenes and sequences, long before I even wrote them. It was almost just like connecting the dots and fleshing out the bones. And once I'd done that, there were these things called friends I had who were excited to read it and see it all incorporated. I almost think I need a social life back before I can progress creatively. This sucks.

Maybe my 2015 goal will just be "have friends again." "Join a fandom group for something else." I don't know.

Oh shit, this entry got depressing!

Bye.

-J

I was telling A that I wanted to create a purple/gold film as opposed to the commonly used orange/blue, so I put together all the unfinished painting sprees I went on that conform to this idea. I agree that orange and blue can be a bit overdone and take away from a story's unique presentation. Colors have always been a reeeeally sensitive thing to me; even if it sounds weird, I've always been particular about knowing what set of colors (down to shade and saturation) define a story.

I don't know how it happened, exactly, but I adopted purple/gold for He's There's illustrations, at least the nighttime ones, which comprise most of what I draw. I actually wanted the daytime world to feel rather different, more normal, but when the sun goes down something happens to the atmosphere that makes it feel like there are stage spotlights and rims of light and just a sort of subtle magic? If I could imitate Murnau's films, the way he plays with light, I would, which is why I drew "Erik" standing like Orlok behind the theater.

As you might be able to see, green is a lesser color I try to incorporate - there's no getting around how green the Northwest is. Lastly, what I hope to do in other drawings is have bursts of rich, apple red. Not fire-engine, not maroon: apple. I want "Erik" to tie his notes with red ribbons (since, unlike Leroux Erik, he does not use red ink, but solid black.) Lily has had a pair of red flats in my imagination for years. Then, of course, there are roses (they are cliche but undeniable in a Phantom-related thing.) The bits of red I think I would keep in the daytime color palette as sort of a vivid reminder to Lily about what happens at night when she can escape life.

I think soon I'd like to paint day-time scenes... I'm wanting to draw one of "Erik"'s notes up close and come up with how his handwriting looks and put a texture and a tint on the paper he uses... things like that. For a while, I've also had this idea of doing something with the future site layout that reminds one of stationary: butterflies, dried flowers, etc. etc., but really dark, or inverted colors. And I always imagined "He's There" being something that's written out and then solidified as the title like this shitty attempt I made in Windows Movie Maker years ago:

Agggghhh ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

All the Wonder-men got back to me today/tonight.

Hatter

sure! have at it, Jennifer -- love that you're making a website!

Cat

Of course, dude. I mean, Jennifer! That's cool of you, Thanx!!

Rabbit

Sweeeet! Congrats!! That's no easy accomplishment. Sure you can use pics I've uploaded. If you want to tell me exactly which ones, I might have better or more recent or... whatever you think would be good. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!!

Patrick was just talking to me a few minutes ago, and I was rolling around on the couch, cuddling my pillow and giggling into it. Pm'ing with Rabbit! <3 Oh, I could die happy. He thinks the picture I chose and the frame are cute. Wahhhhhh, I love how they're just right there to talk to.

Now I just have to... *gulp* write to Wesley Mann (Caterpillar) and Robert (Tweedle Dum), out of nowhere, despite never having done so before. Wesley is not even my friend on FB! He's Jenna's friend, but not mine.

* * *

In other news, I haven't written any of the about/history page yet. Because my doctor changed my dosage but I had to stick with the pills I had until our insurance resumed, I avoided being dizzy by avoiding the pill, but the days started to pile up, so I started feeling less dizzy but more restless/unmotivated/in a vacuum/wanting to go to bed too early/thinking about death too much, so I was like "shit, I need to keep taking these pills even if I do the swaying and such again. Just for a few more days." Rather be swaying but feeling (mostly) content and getting things done.

It occurred to me there's one thing I must do before I begin to write the about/history, though: re-listen to the Tiara Talk Show podcast interview. She talked to John, Reece, Richard, and Elisabeth three years ago, for a collective 2 1/2 hours, and there was a lot of good information. Stuff that is nowhere else, not even in my interviews. It was such a fascinating experience, too, hearing Reece speak as himself for the first time... and complain so much! He speaks about having his hair corn-rowed so they could sew Hare's hair/ears in real tight, and how he practically "couldn't feel his scalp anymore" after shooting the show. And how the prosthetic never fit so he couldn't breathe through his nose. XD And then right after John goes on and on about how the purple suit made him look great and was the best thing he's ever worn, Reece cuts in with "my costume was cheap and horrible and made me look fat!" XDD

((He's got to be referring to the coral-colored suit from the first 64 episodes, since it was re-tailored a million times and rarely seemed to be shaped well, but... and I would never tell him this because I think he looks fine no matter what... it seems more like he gained weight by the later episodes. He went from having two chins to three, I swear! But I would hardly say his costume in the later episodes looked cheap. I loveeee his cute little blue waist-coat and the way they did his shoes. I wouldn't even say his coral suit looked cheap, either! If he was self-conscious about his figure, that's one thing, but I see lots of care put in to everybody's costumes, his included.))

Well anyway, when he's not bitching, he's giggling - they both are just a bucket of giggles together; it's surreal. You'd think Hatter and Hare were just extensions of themselves. I'll give it a listen.

Aggghgh in the mean time Rabbit. Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit. Rabbit thinks his profile looks cute.

xD

-J

I told the Doc about my dizziness, so he lowered my dose from 150 to 100mg of Bupropion. Unfortunately, I must keep taking the pills I have for another week because our new insurance doesn't go into effect until December 1st.

I'm coping with it and getting sort of used to standing and walking like Jack Sparrow, though - it's not causing me as much alarm now that I know what it is and I keep myself fed and hydrated. Some interesting things are going on and distracting me, anyway. For starters, I started my other job! There are simple pleasures to be had there, like how a juice shop is way less busy at night than a pizzeria, if you can imagine. They have these charmingly peachy, soft t-shirts that come in extra small, unlike my other work shirts, which are too big and totally stiff - I always say they make me feel like I have a turtle shell, AND they smell bad after a long day. My new job just seems much cleaner, so much that I didn't mind bringing my regular jacket and scarf. ANYHOO, yeah, and a free drink every shift. Tell me that isn't a good deal!

I'm surprised at myself: is it the medications? I've done seven cast bios in the past few days. I'm down to four. I think when I'm done, I'll move on to laying out the site map, since it shouldn't be a huge challenge. All I really have to do is find a way to elegantly list every single page and section in one cute table, with a few fonts and borders. I figured I'd make this so that everything the site has to offer is somewhere in plain view and isn't overlooked. Then again, I don't know... do I save this for after the site's online, since there are other things I'm not doing till then, anyway? The site needs some buzz before I begin episode livestreams, which will be used to create extended episode profiles. I also won't be doing book scan PDFs for a while. I'll think about it. If not the site map, a draft of the about/history page might be a good idea. I'm avoiding finishing the characters section. It tires me out just thinking about it.

I know that it's my own drawings, but are they not adorable? They're adorable because of the show designing them, not because of me. I just took the screencaps and drew what I saw - that's all I meant... XD

[ 1 / 12  cast blurbs ]
[ 14 / 14  crew prop illustrations ] WHOOO!!
[ 16 / 16  crew blurbs ] WHOOHOOOO!!
[ 8 / 12   character profile illustrations ]
[ 1 dormouse & 1 Hatter and Hare drawing ]

The sombrero and yarn ball are for the Chiodo Brothers, who were responsible for the Cheshire Cat puppet, so those are some of his props. hahah The green hat is just something we see from time to time in Hatter's house, though ironically it was also in his grandfather's hat trunk that they found after going on a "treasure hunt". I guess Hatter kept it around afterward! Anyway, we used that to represent Lois DeArmond, who did constumes. I don't know if she designed the hat or if Kelly Van Patter did, since nobody ever wore it, but it was a clothing item that just popped in my head when I thought of Lois, and I knew I didn't want to redraw an item that the characters wore, since it's already represented in their profiles. Then there's the record player, which you can barely tell reads "Dinner Music", and it's for Mark Mothersbaugh, the music director. It was fun drawing that one because in order to get a good reference, I got to look at Hare having a difficult time with it. XD ooshkabooshka so cute.

So~ that just leaves two drawings for the makeup artists and the writers. I'm doing a collection of things: the makeup artists get three items from the Queen's table (a lotion dispenser, a hand gel bottle, and a facial creme container), and the writers are getting a stack of books seen in the show with one of them leaning against the stack with the cover 3/4 facing us. The books will be... the Large Print Dictionary, Hatter's Daffy Taffy book, the Red Pages, Field Guide to Wonderland Plants, Rip Roaring Rabbit Tales, and Diary of a Mad Hatter. It's between the last two which one will be facing forward.

When the props are done (hopefully today) I'll assign myself the cast profiles for the rest of the month. But then... I don't know if I can stick with this project next month. I'll be hyper-aware that it's NaNoWriMo, I'm already kicking myself all the time for the amount of time I've lost to write this year.... I still have no one helping me sort out my thoughts for He's There, so it still feels like deep space around here. Very stale air, nothing getting done.

I had high hopes this year, but I'm not going to have met any of my goals. Not a one. He's There won't be finished revising, I won't have a new AIW fanfic, I won't have done my own Script Frenzy for Nosferatu in Love, I won't have advanced my Orlok costume because the tailor I was talking to earlier this year seriously never got back to me with a quote and I don't know who else to go to. I've got nothing to be proud of except *maybe* this website. Maybe. I know I'll need another month on the site, but another month remains open if I can actually pull myself up to stance and do something. But what? And will it be next month?

I'm going to have to think it over. But if I decide to plot HT and get somewhere with it in November, I'll need help fast.

:/

These little drawings of Adventures in Wonderland props are all that are keeping me from thinking I'm worthless!

Hadn't had luck with He's There - no one to talk to lately. But my good friend reminded me that even when I'm stuck on something, I need to tell myself I'm allowed and it's O.K. to work on other things that I feel like I have the energy and the inspiration to do. So I remembered that at all costs we must have the AIW site online by New Years, and got some work started on that again.

I'm going to do a couple more drawings/colorings today. All the props are going on the crew page to represent their work. The cookie jar is for Patti Columbo, the choreographer, because she keeps everybody movin' and burning off their calories! The grammar owl is for Peggy J. Christianson, the vice president of creative affairs for the Disney Channel, because it was her idea to turn Alice in Wonderland into a show that taught language. The Noggin' Knockin' Glinger, used epically by Hatter and Hare in this video, is going to Tish Simpson, the hair stylist, because it sure does do a number to the Queen's hair. The watermelon teapot is for Kelly Van Patter, who designed all of the props - she told me she was particularly fond of the stuff she got to design for Hatter's tea table, and that pot was adorable and definitely stuck out. Lastly, the bottle of Hatter's Hair-Raising Shampoo is for Richard Sabre, the hair designer. Still trying to learn about the difference between his and Tish's positions.

Luckily, that should happen soon, because she agreed to do an email interview with us!

Edit: Now I've got the top banana award in there for the director, Gary Halvorson, and a book about one of the Caterpillar's stories to represent Will Vinton Productions, who did all the claymation!

So... yeah, I'm going to do some more of these today, and in due time the crew page will be finished! It's all I can manage right now. It's simple, easy work. :)

-J

*sigh* You know, I am actually beginning to miss He's There. I thought of coming back as early as next month. I thought, since I haven't planned it right, the rest of the chapter (their first physical meeting) could be put off until I've plotted all the way up to the start of the third arc. That might be what I do, because it would also rev up my motivation, which often is born from simply KNOWING WHAT THE F*@$ I'M DOING.

Do you like those symbols? I could have just said "fuck", but I decided they looked more dramatic today.

Having that planned would actually really help me have the confidence that I'd finish my rewriting this year. I'd know I was looking at what was left that I had to do. I'd be able to properly gauge how long it would take. AND, unlike the first five and a half chapters I already wrote, not all of it will need rewriting from utter scratch. After all, there ARE many things in this story that are transferring from draft one to draft two. Namely, a lot of the charming conversations between Mariam and Lily. I still remember that it was during this "second arc" as I now call it that I was struggling the most and fizzled out. You can see it clearly that I'm conducting the train blindfolded. I'm not going to let that happen twice, especially since this is actually THE most fragile time between them.

Later, Lily puts up with so much of his shit and stands by him. She's already under a spell and trying to move forward within the framework that she must be with him, but that isn't established in the first arc because even while she's curious to a very extreme degree she isn't physically attracted to him yet. And by physically, I don't just mean what he looks like, because that's a problem area coming up in chapter six, but the way he moves, the way he makes contact with her, the way he seems like a superhuman, on top of treating her like royalty. It sounds great, but on top of all of that he will be tossing her Breadcrumbs of Crazy to see if she follows his mentality, and arguing with her, and offending her, and being offended by her. But, as many could read between the lines in the first draft, both of them get excited about being upset, even if Lily doesn't acknowledge it.

Phew... well, whatever I do, I can't think about it too deeply just yet or it'll be like quicksand. I owe my time to the AIW website, and plans for that have suddenly got way interesting because we got the executive producer Andi Copley's email from Kelly Van Patter, the set designer. She answered some of my questions through email and told me she's in regular contact with her, which was a big surprise. Andi is one of the Gods of Wonderland. It was she near the very top of the creative pyramid, and she either created or was a big name in Betty Productions, which seems to have co--produced AIW with Disney... meaning this woman, on top of giving us valuable information about how the characters and concepts were created, might know something about why it's not out on DVD. We've always suspected it was something to do with scattered copyrights and never knew anybody who could investigate it. Except now. We don't know if Andi wants to talk with us. The pattern with this show is that everybody (except Reece) is really happy to relive that part of their careers because they are rarely asked about it in depth, but we still don't know.

Fingers and elbows crossed. o_o

-J

The graphics page is done, the one that has links to all the galleries. I decided the links would be in the form of photos, so I drew frames for all of them, vaguely character/setting themed. There's the palace, Alice's room, Hare's "house" (even if we never see it) and Hatter... I guess. lol The last one I really winged, and I kind of love how it turned out.

You know what makes me the most excited, other than how it really transformed the page? That I worked on these for hours when it was really hot out and I'd been super cranky. It showed me just how motivated I must have been to push through this awful time of year.

I slept with an air conditioner for the first time, tonight, though.

Maybe it's all up from here :O

(I have sirs here now! How about thattt~!)

I thought maybe it was time to write down what's going on with me creatively. As you may know, it's July. It's almost been one week of July, and it hasn't been fun. July and August are the worst months of the year, in my humble opinion. I went to the zoo on what was our hottest day so far, at 100 degrees by the late afternoon. Heat + me =/= creativity, or so you would think, but I've been battling through it, with, no pun, a fire under my butt. There's no telling if it'll last all summer.

If you are like me, then you regard inspiration as one of the greatest possible things you could ever have. It's free, it's fantastic, and for a depressed person it's like bottled happiness. Having a shitty day? Take a swig of that Wonderland! In no time, you'll be making a blissful jackass of yourself.

I never ignore inspiration. It could be for the last thing I planned to do and I still run after it, dropping everything else, which is kind of what happened a little while ago when Jenna agreed to help me develop the absurdly complicated (and definitive) Adventures in Wonderland site that I started to work on almost four years ago. We found it successful to assign things to ourselves to get done in a week or two, so now things are actually getting done that I put off forever.

So far, I finished contacts, links, interviews, episodes, and the FAQ. Jenna and I split the crew list in half and she is on her way to finishing blurbs for her group, and she's helping me wrap up the graphics page, which will have four galleries: one for icons, screencaps, promotional/cast photos, and fanart. I'm supposed to do four more profile images, but first I redid Hatter and Hare because they sucked:




Ah~ ♥!

Maybe someone on the outside thinks I've stopped doing things for my own good, but I have some hope it could open some doors, for the both of us. When the site is online, not only will we have our own homage for the show and a hub for all the other fans (an educational hub!), but the cast and crew are going to be able to see it. And who knows who they might pass that on to... Someone important could see all of our hard work -- someone who appreciates the art, the research? Someone with more of a position to find out why it's still in the Disney vault... and change that?

Even if nothing much happens, it will be something I'd always wanted to do, and doing things I want has been the goal ever since I was made a complete slave to my education. Truthfully, I yearned to be in this position of having a clock-in/clock-out job and coming home to do. what. I. want.

There's still so much to do, though. We might even take a break at some point. Not yet, but eventually. I know I still have a novel to rewrite and half the year has passed. I know that. I know I still have other goals, but I have to keep a one-track mind. I will look back and know a lot got done.

Woohoo!

-J

Oghhhhhh~ *cry* So yesterday was my deadline on working on the AIW site. I was able to do a rough draft of the about/production/history page and the welcome/chuckleheads/dvd/updates page, but for the past few days it's been the characters page only. I always knew it was going to be a big feat!

All of the bios are done, except the Tweedles have really short descriptions, and I couldn't find quotes for everyone from the top of my head. With Alice, I couldn't even think of where to find one because of how boring she is. lol

I caved, about the pictures, though. I didn't want to give myself the trouble of drawing and coloring them all when life-action photos would do but the urge just came and I wanted the graphics to be consistent, so...


{Click to Enlarge}


Obviously I'm missing like 6 characters, and they are not colored yet! I told myself during November it would be okay to work on them here and there when there's time.

Here are the other drawings, for around the site. :3





So~~ That's what I got done this month! Plus a few colored buttons. Oh! And an interview with that adorable bunny above this sentence.

I actually have a lot of old pages from the site that I was working on a while ago, like for the episodes, links, and merchandise pages, so there isn't a terrible amount of stuff to do more besides lots of wonderful art. ♥ It'll have to be a December thing.

On that note, I've got to start on planning He's There now! Just kind of waiting for the right day to come... Tonight's homework, tomorrow I'll be pooped from school, so Tuesday sounds good.

I just want to make sure when I start planning that I have an open mind and I can think of the story from the perspective of someone reading it (or watching it? :D). Also, I need to rummage for things that need tying up and see if I can tie them together in an interesting way.

The next 10 chapters... all I can really say without spoilers is -- the ability to be as he has been will be exhausted. She will learn how much it utterly sucks to be stalked once she has fallen in love with him. Like a rollercoaster - up, up, up... she can see the whole world!--DOWN.

Oh, excited...

But kind of uncertain, too. Those days, where you could play with this idea; entertain the characters; build it up, are gone. We have to face the consequences of our actions.

Eep!

Well, I've got plenty of reason to be inspired to work on this, since I will be the totally hawt Robert Phantom for Halloween this year. lmao We're going thrift-shopping for my hat some time soon.

♥

And as for CP3 and the AIW one-shot, they may still happen. Kate's been flaky on me this whole month, but you can't be a hopeless writer. I would love to do that Halloween story, though. :)

Ignore it, it's nothing much.
I'm thinking maybe in 2011 I oughtta make a new main website layout.

Just as I loved V.3, I love the one I have now. I don't want to let it go yet. I just know that the area of content is so small that it's not suitable for what I thought would be good for the future.

Firstly, I want to turn the site into a little more of a portfolio. I want to prune the story section down to things that actually matter (which cuts out a few dead-end fanfictions from years ago), I want to include a page about my art (since it has so much to do with the stories and probably will influence my writing career and I can tie it in to why I'm getting a film major), and I want the story section not to confine the listings so much.

Back when myspace was popular, I had banners for my stories like these:




I came to find later that something like these would be cool to have for the stories, if I just expanded the listings. Then immediately you're getting a taste of the story even without reading any of it, and also people are just drawn more to visual things than text. We click on things all the time just because we like the images! I can still include the year, genre and format details, the ratings, and the summaries, and they'll look better.

I also want to give Crystal Palace (the franchise) its own little section under stories since the series has been growing. It's my only... script-thing I have going on, with promise, and it deserves a little explanation since it started off straddling fanfiction & fiction.

Also~!! I thought this would be a neat idea. On the 'home' page, on top the updates, I could have a little blurb with art for the stories in season, which I've already been doing here on the journal on the side bar. That way I can put a good word out for what I'm currently working on and lead people there without them having to search the listings. It's a good way to keep the attention on what I want to be judged by, and what is my most recent style/skill/fandom.

Yeah, I'm just talking this out with myself.

I don't think it's my wishful thinking, A LOT more people than before are going to my websites, and usually He's There by a landslide.

It's just kind of weird going on to freewebs now, because my site used to be such a private place. I practically made it for p_lover and chiharunamine exclusively, and it wasn't even a fanfiction site at first. It was going to be an anime site under the name Blossom Gurl, to make pages for my favorite shows and post pictures. I really don't know when the hell I woke up with the idea to change it to Lady Bow's Fanfiction, of all things, considering all I had at the time was Serial Experiments Lain Sequel (speaking of which, that site needs SERIOUS code-fixing...) and a Fairly Oddparents... spin-off or whatever about me getting with Mr. Crocker called..*choke* Kokoro no Naka no Negai. I'm not even going to tell you what that means, but I actually finished 12 chapters of that, some of which I don't know if I have saved, but rereading it would be a hilarious journey.

During the time that I was making "Lady Bow's Fanfiction Site", I had the idea for The Staircase (which I miss, a lot, I promise), and gave that a page as well, and I remember thinking it was so cool that this stuff was actually up on the internet and I could be creative like that. I shared it around the oekaki, but yeah, mostly I just posted these for Maha and Sara. XD

I had a tiny page for Crystal Palace which was just a poster and summary of the story, not out of disinterest, just because I knew it would take a lot of research and time to work out the plot, which is still continuing on this freaking day!

Then later that year, He's There was born. Even though it was completely different and sort of like unbaked cookie dough, it was one my first stories with the oldest characters, which... I often forget, actually. I always take pleasure knowing Akira and Cosmo have been around six years, but by the end of 2010, the Phantom, Lily, and Mariam will be too, technically. Paulina won't be, lol, she's only... I guess going on three years. (wow, though) I remember this page well. It had a navbar with this crap-painting I did of the Phantom on the left, three scribbled white links on the top right, and a midi of Creep by Radiohead playing in the background. I kid you not.

I think of all my stories, this one was visited the least, which makes it even funnier that today the opposite has come about. Every blue moon someone will accidentally click on The Staircase or SELS and then leave. XD But yesterday there were 17 visitors, most going to He's There, some for comparatively long visits. This morning it already had 5 passersby. There's a lot of repeat visitors, some from places where I know I don't know people, like Illinois, or Florida. This morning, Germany and Finland. Sometimes it's hard for me to conceive that the internet goes this far even though I know what it is! So my page is on the screen of a computer in Finland - shit, what do they think?! I mostly look at these stats detached, though. In my own little world, everything is still my own thing that friends know about.

If anyone ever approached me in real life and magically knew about these characters, I would shit my pants.

"Oh yeahhhh... that's on the internet, isn't it? The real internet."

As if I may have been using placebo-internet all these years?

I can't imagine what it would be like to be published. Even one other person that I don't know having a thorough knowledge of something I wrote, or even uttering the title of the work, is NUTS to me.

I don't know where this is going, I just had a thought.

P.S. I posted chapter 37 a couple entries down in case you missed it~~ ↓

Here's the first post of 2010, at 3:01 in the morning! To let you know that I've worked my little fingers to the bone getting this blasted website finished and I think it looks pretty darn good.

He's There Version 7.0

If you see 'em, let me know if there are any bugs. :3

( HT ver 7.0 Previews... )

In other news, I think I know another reason why I like Robert-Phantom a lot. He reminds me the most of mine! I mean, granted there are some traits all Phantoms have, or should have, some I happen to like more than others... But moving on, HT-Phantom and Robert-Phantom seem to have this in common:

They're misanthropists. Robert moreso, probably.

They're both living pretty shitty secluded lives mostly because of their own actions. But I appreciate that neither of them bitch about it, they just sort of accept and make do.

They both get in tussles with people they have been rude to.

Speaking of which, they aren't really nice to anyone, but when Christine's around, they're suddenly gentleman and all excited inside.

Their personalities inhibit them from being highly affectionate. They're capable of being romantic, and they are, but it's a very deliberate thing for them.

Sometimes they're very blunt about their intentions and thus do not get the desired reaction from Christine.

They both like to write! And they're very "stop trying to see what I'm doing" about it.

They're so shy about that kind of stuff that they won't even let Christine look, at least not without persuasion.

They both like to carry sharp objects in their pockets, some not really so conventional. (FISHING HOOKS, HURRAY!!!)

They're not afraid to do things to their faces that really hurt!

They actually have a sense of humor. It really depends on their mood, but both like to be wise-cracking if the occasion calls for it.

They're probably moreso infatuated with their Christine than in deep true love. This is something I'm just going to have to admit. It's not like infatuation doesn't mean anything - I've been infatuated more than once before and it still requires a beating heart.

They're snazzy dressers. Heeellll yes.

:D

In other news, I'm using way too many HT icons. I can't help it, these illustrations just make really good ones.

These are the illustrations I have for the site so far : { this | this | this | and this }

I figure the illustrations will not take quite as long, seeing as part of HT's style is the pencil sketchiness, unlike Crystal Palace 2, where everything had to be done with precision on the computer. (I honestly can no longer do it. My dad bought this mouse that's way too small and I haven't been on the desktop hardly ever in the past few months. I don't have a steady hand anymore!)

Yeah and I don't like half of the older drawings I did for the story anymore. They're just... funny looking.

I'm hoping for the site to have a mixture of purples and browns with a little forest green. And since I cannot draw structures for the life of me, I will look for pictures of buildings that look like the theater on the outside and in. :3