~Totus

Random brain thunk.

A god's will makes real or false what they believe, barring exception or competition with reality or other super beings.

What is within their body is very much under their undivided control of will.

So if they believe the pill will work, it will. If they don't it will not. In a strange way all mundane medicine becomes a placebo for the god. Though they could've just willed the effect themselves otherwise, but by same token if they have trouble believing themselves able to heal a pill may be used to focus or confirm their will.

Or course non-mundane ailments and medicines may have their own magical and godly effects that are not dependent one way or the other on the god's will.



Filing this next to my mental frame work 'why do gods sneeze, blush, or blink'. The answer of course being the collective will of all belief that one sneezes when pepper is in the air, with attention the god can cease these activities, but when 'at rest' their body will operate according to whatever rule set is most 'willed' to be. Which without their will involved will be the beliefs of the majority, or of reality, or a mix of the two.

There's a long road of editing and additions/subtractions and bits to rewrite, then proof reading, plot hole hunting, so on... but the books first draft is done and its ready to begin getting pounded into a finished product.



It has taken almost a year since the end of the last book to get this done, an interminable amount of time. A combination of chaotic life shit, depression, the holidays, and constant distractions and future panic have made this take even longer than before. Likely the book won't be ready for release for another month... but its made its first and biggest step.



Frankly I'm pretty sure no one is reading these, but I'm still very proud of my work. During a short break of days I take before editing I'll likely look into getting some outline and framing work done for one of my other book ideas, or for book 5 which is likely to be the finale.



My only regret in these books is that I didn't start writing them years earlier.. Don't wait to start writing, my stuff isn't amazing and my first story or two was utter garbage (and you can still find it in my gallery), Go write things, not for anyone else but you. Write what you want for yourself, because writing is hard but it is also fulfilling.

Happy Pride to everyone who's gender or gender preference wasn't left on factory default, and everyone who stands by them.

Hell, happy pride to all you folks that just don't go out of your way to be nasty at such folks.

Pretty much wishing a happy pride to everyone but the bigots and psychos basically.

From the makers of Glaze, the team at Chicago University bring you....

Nightshade

https://www.technologyreview.com/20.....generative-ai/

An in testing AI 'well poison' that applies pixel level tweaks to art so that if it is used in an AI's trawling for its learning will apply to anything of similar meaning.

"Generative AI models are excellent at making connections between words, which helps the poison spread. Nightshade infects not only the word “dog” but all similar concepts, such as “puppy,” “husky,” and “wolf.” The poison attack also works on tangentially related images. For example, if the model scraped a poisoned image for the prompt “fantasy art,” the prompts “dragon” and “a castle in The Lord of the Rings” would similarly be manipulated into something else." -the article

Remain calm and art on, there are dozens of AI research teams working hard to create these things, and one team of students and professors at a university has already come up with two ways to screw them over.

The arms race is in favor of the artists and their academia allies.

Its the fiiiiinal coooouuuuntdooooown. *sick synth guitar solo*

Saga Of The Stallion Book 3: Anything But Home is in its final checks.

After a few proof reading passes it is now going through some format tweaks, and is being eyeballed by Libre Office's spell checker which HATEs how much slang and country spellin' I'm doin' when Totus is talkin'

Otherwise its working great. Burning through chapters fast now. Proof reading took longer than anticipated due to certain tools I'm no longer using. Then again, this might be for the best. More of my writing 'style' if you can call that hodgepodge a style is going to be left intact this time.

I am sorry I left my handful of readers on a sad lurch of an ending for this long. Frankly there may be a time before this is done that I do it again, but I am sorry all the same.

The first chapter should probably be posted before friday barring any weird life nonsense.

Also in case I haven't mentioned it, it will be having more numerous chapters but shorter chapters too. I was HOPING to end up with a shorter book but... yeah that didn't happen. Might be a couple thousand words shorter but my skill in brevity is still poor. Oops.

Thanks again for reading those few who do.


EDIT: I hope to get the last chapters posted before monday

Much editing, plot hole plugging, tweaking, adding bits I forgot, removing daft bits, and so on to go. Then grammar and spell checks and etc etc.

But the story is done! I'll be taking a short break before continuing. And double checking for any nonsense of double posting chapters this time.

Bit late considering some people get eaten in an earlier book, but it did occure to me...

Does a story get a vore warning if there's no lewdness or kinks or... anything?

See, if I tag it 'vore' people will expect 'oh munchy-chan, nom me!' and tongue swirling and pred/prey stuff, 'mwuhahaha, my lunch today, I shall talk to it and growl at it' etc etc.

Buuuuuuut that never really happens in my stories (usually) instead its more like... potato chips that happen to have an opinion.



So you see my catch-22 here. On the one hand, yes its a carniVORE action going on... but its certainly not 'VORE' the kink activity everyone would expect. (And cannibalism is just innacurate since I'm reasonably sure I never had any of the (spoilers) eat their own species)

Was the Sarlacc eating Boba Fett Softcore vore? (Since he got out without lasting harm in at least one continuity)

The Reuploaded Chapter
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/50670637/

If you read book 2 and found a pile of plot holes, missing references, and thought the pacing was shit between 6 and 10. Its because apparently I uploaded the same chapter for chapter 8 and 9.

I don't expect everyone to race and go reread one random ass chapter in the middle of the book and go 'oh this makes perfect sense now' but the link is there if you want to.



I don't know what makes me want to scream more. That my second big project was FUCKED by one slip of a Ctrl v, or that not one person noticed a chapter repeat twice.

I write these for me, and hope others enjoy them too, but it definitely sucks the life out of me to realize not even the couple people that left faves actually paid any attention. I don't mind critisism, but false praise fucks me right the hell up. Four months the chapters were fucked, and no one noticed.

Might be time for a break from writing.

Half way there... sorta.

The rough draft is approaching the half way point and most of the outline has solidified well. In reality this is about 1/3d way done as proof reading and editing lay ahead as well.

Still the book is in progress. Totus will grow a little, see new and strange lands and worlds, and learn the costs of ascension.

Chapters will be shorter this time, rather than 10,000 words on average they'll be closer to 4,000 to 5,000 to be more in keeping with novel chapters.

I am attempting to make the book overall shorter too but we will see. There is a LOT of ground to cover. Totus doesn't have much down time in his life.

For the handful of readers I have, thank you very much for your patience and I'm working at it, I assure you.

Welp! Book 2 is finished and posted! To the handful of people reading these books I send my thanks. Its been a wild ride

The story will continue, and the mood will improve I assure you. For now I'll be taking a short break before I start hammering the outlines of Book 3 into shape and planning the rough drafts properly.

In the coming book, assuming no drastic changes happen to the overplot, Totus will be fleeing across worlds and learning from each of them, meeting the pantheon of Selatim, and struggling to make a new home with new friends as he fumbles about the wider universe... and finding a purpose to drive him.

The story will continue in... (Pause for dramatic effect)

Saga Of The Stallion Book 3: Stray Horse Trot (wip title)



I'd like to take a moment to address the weaknesses in my writing I've found in the past two books. Because if I say it 'out loud' here I'm more likely to actually work on it.

1. Overdetail.

While some things should have been a bit more detailed, often I put too much detail into things that frankly... didn't need to be that detailed.

Listing every single little swipe or move in a fight is just clutter unless the fight is very plot centric, and while several of the combat scenes are exactly that, several are not. I am also fairly certain the people reading don't care too much that a battleship is armed with 300mm or 600mm guns as long as they know when they fire the blast wave smears waves from the ocean beneath the gunbarrels and whatever they are aiming at it reduced to fiddlebits.

I won't be -entirely- stopping this. I feel this is a part of my style of writing, but I will be trying to scale this back a bit going forward. This will help with my second problem.

2. Brevity, or lack thereof in a manner pertaining to a long winded manner of writing.

Joke aside, most novels are between 80,000 words and 140,000 words. Mine are coming in around 180,000 to 220,000 range. I am at that stage as a writer where I have transitioned from 'how do I write that much?' and instead now am saying 'how the fuck do I fit an entire book into only 100,000 words!?

As a result, there will likely be some style shifts in book 3, speaking of.

3. Details lost.

Overdetailed and under detailed in one book, ouch.

Believe it or not the world of Parvordis is a diverse and fascinating place with a wide range of cultures and customs. I think SOME of that bled through intot he stories, but not enough. Sayings, Customs, Beliefs, Superstitions exist that really never made it into the story. It was in the quest for brevity but honestly, there were times it would have enriched the story. Will be trying to work on density of meaning to shorten the stories while not losing these little tidbits that make a world feel more alive.



I believe these to be my (current) three weakest points in my writing and am going to attempt to work on them going forward.



To my handful of readers. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for struggling through my blathering and finding a story in it.

Book 2 is written and is in late stages of proof reading.

To the fifty or so people that read Book 1 of the Saga Of The Stallion, thank you so much by the way it just tickles me that so many people read the book. (going by views on the least viewed and rounding down a bit), I haven't abandoned the work and Book 2 has passed its first proof reading pass, and is nearly done with the second. After that will be a quick bit of spit and polish and I will likely begin posting chapters to Book 2 in early January.

To my handful of readers, thank you for your patience and thank you so much for reading. I write not so others will read but to get better at writing... but like sauce on BBQ, the meat of writing for oneself is filling and good, but the sauce of readers enjoying it is the extra spice.

Thanks again and as alwayy, comments and critique are not only welcome, they are how you the reader tweak how the story will be written in the future chapters

To the handful of people who read my first book of hoss 'Saga Of The Stallion: The Battle Of Brae' I just wanna say thank you deeply and sincerely.

To those that read a bit and moved on, I also give a thank for trying it out. Hey no story is for everyone.

Closing in on half way through the first editing run of Book 2. The first draft has been done for a few days now and I'm puttering through about a chapter every 1-3 days. Hopefully I can get to the second round of editing before christmas (which should go faster), and final read through which should take less time still... assuming nothing is catastrophically wrong.

I learned from the first book that I lack 'density'. That is to say, I use many words to say few things. This book will likely suffer from that to a lesser extent, and will have less in the technical descriptions as the focus moves away from militaries, their gear, and a war and more towards a tighter focus on Deep 6 and Totus

Things will accelerate faster in this book, that's for sure.

Hope you guys that read Battle of Brae will come back and read, 'Saga Of The Stallion Part 2: Kingdom Come' when it comes out.

(and any questions that the first book left you with by all means pop em in here and I'll do my best to answer them, or apologize if its just a blatant plot hole mistake.)

Guess its a mark of progress to becoming.

THE GREATEST STALLION WRITER OF ALL TIME! *read in arena announcer voice*

(Progress 0.01% of 100%)

But Had my first art thief, doesn't hit as hard I think cause I'm not the artist, I just commission... but it was still surprisingly anger inducing to have someone just running around with Totus's face. Maybe I might have been willing to come to a temporary arrangement until they could get a sketch or something done, definitely not now of course.

The group we were in came down on them and that image was erased, but could tell from his profile history that he had a long long long line of random horse images stolen from many sources, characters and artists, and that he'd run around with as his own. Doubly so when I saw one of his older images was also stolen from me.

Like, damn. if you credit me and the artist I honestly might be willing to do a loan setup or something, but just snagging it and using it is kinda... wow man.

I should note he wasn't just sharing it around like 'lookit this neat shiny I found'

That's 100% happy fun times, appreciate it if you share the source so the artist that did the work gets some free advertising but whatever.

Adding it to your own gallery or line up or what not however is just... really?

Anywho. Rant over, honestly might just blank this journal later cause its not really presenting anything positive, but we'll see.

Edit: This wasn't on Furaffinity I should note before the wave of 'report hims' come in.

*Dances like an idiot*

So yes, I'm over hyping the fuck out of a silly story posted on the internet. That has a handful of faves and next to no comments.

Know why? Because I built the story word by word by hand and fuck it feels nice to have book 1/arch1/story 1 Stallion Saga completed.

Going forward will see more and more magical things. The characters getting more room to act and frollick free of military constraints of behavior (as much as they ever followed them) and as many who know anything about Totus, his ascent to various mystical and nonsensical positions of power. As he learns some lessons about himself and power along the way.

Already working on outlines and some rough scene drafts for part two, can't promise a when but it won't take as long as this one did that's for damned sure.

To those that make a living on Twitter accounts partially or totally (or just socialize on there)

I won't go into the fine politisocial details, but suffice to say Elon Musk may soon own twitter.

Now hang on! Not gonna bitch about that or cheer about it. What I am going to say is that some form of changes are likely in that platform. Maybe nothing bad happens, maybe its fine and nothing changes.

HOWEVER, just in case, you should have alt platforms and links to new places you can be reached.

ESPECIALLY IF YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE PAYS YOUR RENT.

If Elon leaves things running no worse than they are, then fine whatever works, but if suddenly there's tumblr-esque lockdowns you could be in a bad situation. Have spares set up just in case and best to get them linked to from your twitter accounts early to minimize your loss of exposure for selling arts or fursuits or dangly shiny things or whatever you like to do.

If you read this far, please echo this message around. Maybe its nothing and it'll all be fine, but also life is kind of a cunt so best to have a backup ready.

https://youtu.be/dUM_lpvsZ_Y

Because fuck it'd be fun

So this has been a long time thing with many artists...

While forgetting one or two things here and there is understandable, a large number of artista over the years have seemed to not reference the provided reference sheet. Mentioning the correction needed gets it done no harm no foul... But im one guy and when there are so many details (and artists tend to only be around when i am at work) that i sometimes miss even glaring issues while focusing on the many others.

So, what do artists look for in a reference? Would a checklist of common mistakes made before along with it be wise?

https://www.techradar.com/news/goog.....personal-files

Tldr. Many files and such on google storage may be locked down from being shared (possibly accessed at all but thats not specifically stated)
While some of the files listed are understandable, included in the list is 'Sexually Explicit'. Specifically stated.

Now i dont have backup sources so maybe its an empty scare. But you may want to backup your files and/or jump ship entirely away from google storage.

Or not. Theyre your files do what ya want. But passing the heads up along

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9980657/

Its pricey, but if you can afford it you'll get top-tier work done by a great guy that could use a hand.

If you can't afford it, consider echoing to help.

Any other americans wanna just... start using Aluminium? Aluminum sounds so much more boring, and Aluminium could be right out of a fantasy novel. I might just start using that in my stories from now on... iunno.

Ive noticed more and more as time goes on that for some reason many artists seem to despise hooves beyond a very small size.

This isnt calling out any one artist, this seems like an almost industry wide thing. The number of artists I have encountered who will draw anything beyond showpony sized hooved seems to be in the minority (and they have my deepest gratitude). Requests for larger hooves takes multiple tries and often if the art has multiple revisions theyll shrink back down again.

And the thing that drives me up the wall is... 'Why?'

I cannot fathom a reason for it. Maybe I am the loony expecting draft horse sized broad hooves on a draft horse sized anthro, but it seems like with all the insane customization going on with so many characters that a rather plain overbeefy horse asking for matching hooves would be... Kind of an easy thing? Then again I am no artist. Maybe hooves are incredably hard to draw, i wouldnt know.

This all hallows eve might not be the same as we are used to, but you should still do a thing to mark the occaision. Buy some candy and hand it out to friends. Watch some cheesy horror movies. Make a campfire (or fake one) and tell ghost stories with friends. Anything!

Happy Halloween and have a pinch of fun!

Macro planet appraiser/shop much like a jeweler. Picks up worlds and uses the little jeweler eye piece thing to look them over

'Mmm yes... Garden world, pre nuclear weaponry, ah a local macro population, yes yes hello there, nice defined ice caps... Ah and the ring of deserts about the equator, natural and rare but striking in bearing, an excellent world. Lets talk price sir'

Might make a fun premise. I am in the middle of a long project atm so cant make good use of the idea.

Its just that I don't do the work on those. The artist did all the work, I just threw money at them. I really appreciate the faves I do, but since its not my work I generally don't send a thanks for the faves on those the way I do when the fave is on my writing.

Comments of course are another story, and a more complicated one, but that's the jist

I get lotta faves on the art I get, and don't want folks to think I'm just flipping them the bird. I just feel like they aren't MY faves to say thank you for. Much the same way saying thank you when someone in a restaurant says 'this food is great' is kinda weird when all you did was buy the food.