❀ Infodumpocalypse central RIGHT NOW!!!!!

　　1/5/2023

　　AT LAST. A REAL UPDATE POST. I would hope that after 3~ months I would have something to show for. This is gonna be a CHUNKY ONE !!!

　　At the mo there's a lot of focus going into overhauling and buffing up the Resort arcs. Originally OHAU's story was just those two arcs, so they've been the "backbone" of the whole thing, but they've been relatively unchanged all throughout and - to me at least - have felt pretty lackluster compared to what's been built around them. I've been wanting to Make Them Prettier and overall upgrade them to match the quality of the rest of the story for a long time now so I've really been trying to sink my teeth into it lately! Lucky for me it involves thinking extensively about Beau since he's the main antagonist for those arcs. I can't hide it; he is my favorite Ever.

　　I've been making an effort to restore him to his position as a more meaningfully threatening villain, because over the years he's lost his bite, so to speak, with a lot of the changes shifting story focus and where exactly the conflict is coming from. He does turn around, but I've felt as though it's not as meaningful when he isn't much of a force to be feared. I've leaned into a more... manic, mysterious sort of direction !! His thoughts and feelings and emotions (what remain of them at that time anyway) get pushed to the max. And I am fond of it :-) I think it suits him.

　　I also ! FINALLY !! Got the idea to actually make him look more like a cheshire cat, like he's been this entire time. If you didn't know that's what he's supposed to be till now I'm sorry, that's my fault. Hopefully it's more obvious. I didn't totally know how to feel about coloring him in at first but this was very much a trust-the-process type thing because I adore how he came out actually :-} I think it works really well for his whole shadow gig.

　　I renamed Tinkerbell... Cupid ! Because I think it suits her more. And I have yet to get a good grip on her real place in the story, but my thoughts have been vastly just restoring and refurbishing her original purpose. There are no thoughts in her head what-so-ever.

　　SETTLED ON A DESIGN FOR PUPPY AS WELL!!! AND I LOVE HIM SO MUCH !!! I think it works much better than him having a humanoid-type design, because its pretty questionable to just have a little walking talking doll of Beau running around. But also I just think that a kitty named Puppy is the cutest most charming thing ever.

　　Like Cupid I have yet to get a good grip on his real place in the story, especially with shifting the focus of things back to a more stable place. I haven't thought of anything yet but I think his position as... basically a story mechanic is fine to just live with as is. It doesn't have to be complicated because when it really comes down to it the purpose he serves is super barebones. He's a simple character and it's fine to act like he is. Maybe I'll stick with him being a sort-of-kind-of help and comfort to Mel and not much more. We'll see. For as much awful and horrible and insane things happen in the resort the solution has always remained... incredibly basic. It just takes a while for the egg on that to get cracked. Haha.

　　Lastly on the designs !! Enola !! I've been trying to think of how I could distinguish her from Beau (identical twin problems) and I think I really hit a home run with driving home how much she prides herself on taking after their father. Big evil beetle bug lady. hehe

　　There's been some really good progress on reworking the structure to the Resort chapters overall! Nothing truly incredible just yet (save for one thing I'm in love with though I don't want to spoil it necessarily) but it's been some really good groundwork, mostly in concern with The Snap. There's also been a REALLY good motivation for Beau to have removed some of his emotions to begin with and I am Exploding about it, it's so good, seriously. I've been trying for so long to think about how Enola could have driven him to that point, because it was something I desperately wanted to happen between them (and for Beau to have thought of and made the decision all on his own) and wow. Wow !! Wow I am excited about it !!! Wow !! Anyway.

　　The Resort chapter needs more love in concern with Specific Things That Happen, because it's a slice-of-life type chapter; a part of the story where things seem to cool down. Anything could happen honestly. It's mundane but not boring. The most that's ever been specific about it for the longest time now has been Mel and Beau meeting and later dating, but I want it to be more than that, because if I'm being honest there's not a great deal of time dedicated to that to begin with. It's supposed to be brief and vaguely disconcerting in that regard. But also there's other characters that could be explored, and if I'm being honest I'm bored of 4 & 5 being all about Mel and Beau and their issues. I have BEEN bored. I want to do more with it. Something something making Mel and Clay seeing Clover for the first time in many many years out of the blue more of an Event. I think they'd want to spend time catching up and it would be good to explore everyone's feelings about it. There's a lot of potential when it comes to someone disappearing without a trace and reappearing suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere unprompted.

　　We've been able to do some really good work about integrating Clay into the story, at long last, after all these years!! I'm very happy about it personally, she's really beginning to feel like her own character with her own position and role in the grand scheme :-) + There's been some bits and pieces here and there giving the cryptid-busters (Sidnee, Dink, and Randy) something to do. I think treating them as a unit or One Character will really help with their integration, since they all move along the same sinewave! I also adore Beau and Sal's parallels and I am so full of love that they get to be each other's college friends. They are both tall boys with weird teeth and they love sweet potatoes.

　　Off topic, as i am writing this i have this picture open on my browser, so I can glance at it and chuckle.

　　I drew it on my dad's whiteboard at work today because I thought he deserved another Beau. For the collection. Anyway.

　　Aside the Resort tish-tosh, there's also been some focus pivoted onto the very latter chapters, since The Snap does bleed over into Kingdom in Ruin. 6 doesn't really have ANY structure yet, its just kind of... there, sort of, like a blank space, still with mostly very vague ideas for what might happen, and the end of it is marked I believe by Beau jumping into the abyss. 7 and 8 have more going for them as there's been some legitimately solid ideas for the sequence of main events. There's nothing especially noteworthy so far aside from something I will not be specifying (if there are any eyes maintained on this website, and I really do end up writing out a summary for all eight chapters, I would rather it be a surprise. If I look back on this I probably won't remember what I'm inferring but whatever!) but I am happy anyways because these chapters have been so full of Nothing for basically all of 2022.

　　The abyss has been getting most of the attention, because I'm actually a little too into the idea that it's something something Beau's self-inflicted purgatory. But also, I REALLY like where it's going conceptually. It's horrible and nasty and just absolutely awful and that is so awesome I think.

　　Maybe I was dialing up MFP to the max. But listen, ok, this is so cool actually. To me. I love anatomy. I have loved anatomy since I was like 7. Ok? I got an anatomical coloring book for Christmas when I was 7 or 8. Let me have this. Let me have my own version of that one episode in children's cartoons where they get super small and go into someone's bloodstream. I intended to do that with ENDOCARDIAL but this isn't an ENDOCARDIAL website this is an OHAU website. Ok.

　　This has always been a thing but it's totally crawling with botched amalgamations. And like.. the very nature of the pocket dimension, everything is always moving and shifting and changing, and it's eerie, like you can feel it heavy in your chest like a constant sense of premonition. I really shouldn't start going off describing this right now but I just need you to know how cool it is. As like a bad place to be. The pocket dimension is a horrible place to be post-ambush. I can't talk about everything that's been going on with this for one thing because I can't really be vague about it, since it's all such new and soft information, but there are things happening !! Aghh !!

　　I think moving forward I want to dial focus back onto... chapters 4 and 3, and even 2. The latter ones I don't think need a lot put onto them at the mo since it's supposed to be a point where the story comes full circle, and we revisit things that were established and left off on in the initial 3 chapters. There needs to be things established in those chapters to begin with for us to revisit so I'll definitely be holding off on writing them till they've been given some TLC. I think by that point we will have given All of the story a good several love and kisses. The more the merrier as they say. It's not that 2 and 3 don't have anything going on but I think they deserve to be buffed up along with the overhaul we've been pulling, though they'll remain vastly as they were. There's room to add New Things, if that makes sense ! New bits of info and things and characters to follow that we can come back to later in the story :-)

- Kyu; maybe I should go do that css overhaul before i make any more huge entries