The following sketches are my first concepts for their new "selves" as native inhabitants of Teragana. I'm not entirely satisfied with these new forms, yet; I want them to look a little more alien-like (the rabbit is closer to that), whilst still keeping this "mon" or "kemono" feel to them.
New version of the weasel/badger fellow. A hot-headed, impulsive, bit of a very confident/self-hype stereotype; think of a shounen MC, or something to that extent. I'm still unsure if his body structure will stay that way: I can't really picture him realistically sitting on any normal chair, but I suppose Teragana has specially-designed ones for their... thick-tailed anthropomorphic populace. His name is Aramis, he's a street fighter of sorts, and also a jack-of-all-trades handyman or service provider.
Updated design for Dragonair x Furfrou hybrid. She's quiet and more focused, and generally serious, more brainy than brawny; not necessarily a nerd, just a general silent-type. Same problem with Aramis, she has a long-shaped body with a thick tail that can't quite fit in some everyday furniture, but I'm sure they have solutions for that. This one here is called Irena, and she has the same occupation as Aramis. In fact, they work together as a small "company" of treasure hunters / multi-tradesmen, with her usually acting as the "brains" of most operations.
Finally, the rabbit/bunny-thing. This fellow doesn't have an identity yet. I need to brainstorm them a little, but I like this design the most out of the three; needs a few tweaks here and there, but I'm happy with it.
Tangentially related, I don't know what happened with these drawings that they look so light; the outlines for the bunny barely appear. I know it's the scanner I used, but I don't really know how to use it to its full potential (I don't think it has a lot of functions, to be honest).
More of original things in the future, hopefully. Fan works will not stop coming, though. I picked up writing again, and have ideas for fanfiction that I want to delve into.
Also shading. Dear Lord, shading/lighting is so hard. Between you and me, I didn't really know what I was doing. I went with what "seemed okay" and they all turned out pretty boring because I got scared and couldn't dare go further; everything I tried felt wrong, somehow. This is a topic I really need to study (besides... well, everything else, aha).
I didn't title this "drawing lessons" because... well, I used my previous "knowledge" (a rough, untrained understanding of the basic technique) of each media rather than actually following a tutorial and experimenting a bunch of times. No lessons were truly taken, I suppose.
Turns out my previous knowledge leaves much to be desired, but that's okay, I guess; at the very least, it helped me figure out which medium is harder (more frustrating) or easier for me to use at the moment.
Here's a Skeledirge, drawn and colored on a... brown-ish textury paper (that I don't know how it's called) using a sanguine pencil, a woodless graphite pencil, white dry pastel and two ordinary colored pencils (yellow and dark blue).
So, uhm... the whole idea for this was to limit myself to these two "cool pencils" that I have, and Skeledirge almost completely fit the bill regarding the palette, being majorly orange, white and black. I have two white dry pastel sticks which I also used to make something like a mix-media drawing, and the result was... underwhelming, to say the least.
I lost a lot of my sanguine, the woodless graphite pencil is very hard and dark and heavy to handle, and I have no clue how people draw using pastel sticks because they have no pointy tips. My hands got dirty and I smudged the paper. Also, Skeledirge has a very difficult "anatomy", and I should've probably copied a pose instead of making one up. Oh, yeah, I TRIED to add a BIT of shading, but I could barely understand what was appearing before me, so I gave up basically at the beginning of the process.
This was annoying and I hated it, but I have actual zero experience with every single one of the materials I used here, so I don't feel terrible about it. I don't know if the paper I used is adequate for those pencils/pastels either. Needless to say, I won't be coming back to these pencils (and specially the pastels) for a long time.
Okay, here's a Hydrapple, drawn on ordinary white paper using ordinary colored pencils and ordinary coloring markers (I don't know the brands).
Anyway, colored pencils are a lot easier to use than sanguine/graphite/whatever I used for Skeledirge, because I learned some in my teenage years, but I ended up feeling like I could've done... more? Like, I could've colored more, or harder, I'm not sure. There could've been more shading and more lighting, but I think I got scared of being too bold and messing it up. It feels a little... washed out? I don't know how to explain it.
The markers were used for the lines, and they, uh... did NOT match the color of the pencils (the apple isn't so bad, I think), but it's what I've got at my disposal. I'm thinking about buying new supplies because the ones that I have are, like... stuff you buy for school, and pretty old, but they still work. Kinda?
Last but not least, a Dragalge on common paper and a blue ballpoint pen.
I feel like I could've been bolder with this one as well, but once again, I chickened out. I saw one person drawing using ballpoint pens a few years ago and tried to use the same technique. I realized I kinda messed up the anatomy (or the positioning) of its head leaf-things (they should've been more... horizontal/laid down kinda), but I don't think I would've been able to make it more accurate because shading is so damn difficult.
I'll definitely be going back to ballpoint pens and probably colored pencils as well in the future, but I still need to watch some tutorials on both. I don't even want to look at the other supplies; I almost ruined them, so I guess we're enemies now. :/
(Oh, yes, also posted on my Bluesky and deviantArt)
I talk more about it in the end notes of the chapter itself, but the tl;dr is I'm done with this story and with Hellsing (at least for now). I'm currently focused on other things, and to be honest, it's been a bit of a struggle to finish this story; I'll manage my time and organize things better for future works. Anyway, thank you all for being here and all the feedback! (More stuff below)
In other news, I now have an Archive of Our Own account (right here). I'm a little embarrassed to admit I didn't know this place existed until a random post popped up on my X/Twitter feed. It seems to be very popular, so I jumped in. I haven't posted anything yet and haven't really checked it out (haven't been doing much fanfic-reading for the past God Knows How Long...), but I will eventually get to both.
Lastly, I've taken up drawing lessons! Well, I paid for an Udemy basic drawing course, and gathered a few resources online. I'm not completely new to drawing; I've been doodling incomprehensible scribbles since I was a teenager, but this time I'm actually investing my time in properly learning the art! Here are some practice drawings i did over the months.
Oh, uhm... Yeah, I'll need to find a better method to upload stuff to my computer, but for now, this will have to do. I uploaded these to my deviantART (here), but I'm not sure people use dA very much?
I hope to become a little more active online and post more often so I can actually engage with creators and interact with other people :/ I kinda lost interest in Hellsing, so I'm still figuring it out new "fandoms" I can get into; Naruto's been on the back of my mind, and it's been slowly growing on me, years after I've watched it. I think drawing will give an extra push.
I finished writing and uploading this new chapter much quicker than my usual intervals. I devoted a lot of my free time to getting this done, because I really want to see this story to its end. I don't think I'll have the same drive for the next chapters (which I think will be 3 or 4) and, unlike this one, chapters 9 through IDK have nothing drafted, planned or properly organized... so it's going to be a bit of a more pained and slow process.
As always, thank you very much for being here, for reading my stories and for the feedback! I hope you enjoy this chapter (part one of the "drama resolution" portion of the story), and I'll see you later!
I'm also happy to announce that the story is also coming to its end. The drama/conflict will be resolved either in the following chapter or next two chapters, depending on how big it gets.
After that, I'm going to focus on pregnancy shenanigans because pregnancy shenanigans were the original idea for this fic; I have NO idea how it got derailed into the mess that is now.
Like I said at the end notes of this chapter, I'm going to be more careful when writing new stories in the future. To sum it up, I'll try to avoid stories that are too long/complicated, and will plan everything ahead detail by detail, and will have chapters organized and structured before posting the story to the public.
Since I didn't beta-read this properly, I've probably made some mistakes that I will correct in the following days/weeks when I gather the courage to re-read the chapter.
Anyways, thank you for sticking around and reading, and I hope you enjoy it. It's a very long chapter, but hopefully it won't feel super draggy!
Hey, anyone who's still out there! First and foremost, apologies for the delay (it's hardly a delay, when I've been consistently uploading at embarrassingly year-long intervals, Jesus). Also, thank you, for still being here, and for being so patient and for still having faith!
Secondly, the link to the chapter.
Now... a bit of a rant/vent/explanation as to why it always takes so long for me to update this story. Under the "read more/keep reading".
Okay, so... I'm not gonna lie. A whole year is the time required to release a new, original book, not a new chapter for fanfiction. It's embarrassing, and it's frustrating, and it's extremely counter-productive towards my goal. It's... non-productive, really.
I don't have an "excuse" for that. My reason is many things, but I can boil them down to roughly two aspects.
The first, and the most important is, for many months now, I just didn't want to write. In general, really, but mostly, I didn't want to write for this fandom anymore, and not for this fic anymore. I've been spending a lot of my free time doing nothing productive (arts-wise); when I'm not with friends/family, or working/studying, I'm watching a TV series, YouTubing, or playing games. Sure, it's good to lay back and not do anything mentally taxing every now and again, but this has been setting me back on the personal goal of improving my writing (and the bonus side-quest of learning to draw).
I'm not sure why this is happening. I think I'm just a little tired. IRL stuff became bigger and more complex, requiring more of my time and disposition, and maybe I'm feeling like I don't want to do anything important whenever I get a break.
I really want to change that. I've been trying to follow a fixed schedule, that will break my free time up into "leisure" and "art/writing", but I'm having trouble following it through. I "binge" activities, rather than do a little bit of everything everyday, and I know that's something that I'll need to change in my behavior if I want to accomplish everything I set out to do. What's making that difficult is that I've been prioritizing some stuff, whilst others I'm not so inclined to do.
Which brings me to the second part of my "excuse". This story, Dragons. TL;DR, it's not bringing me any joy anymore, but I'm going to go into more detail on that.
My original plan for Dragons was to make it a domestic, pregnancy-romance story, focused on the condition and its symptoms, the shenanigans surrounding the novelty of a human-vampire hybrid "breeding", and the relationships between the characters, especially Alucard and Integra's, and how they developed as the pregnancy progressed.
I thought it would be easy. I thought it would be fun, and light-hearted, and simple to accomplish. I was wrong.
I don't know why, but I was wrong. I don't know what happened, exactly, that caused the story to drift away into... this. Into this monstruous, mentally-taxing narrative I am NOT prepared to write, and that I don't think I should be tackling right now. Not with the writing and reading experience I have at the moment.
It's so much bigger and more complex that I thought it would be. I'm aware I'm to blame for not having planned everything in its minute details, so stuff constantly changed as I got new ideas I wanted incorporated. Originally, I planned for Dragons to be roughly 3 to 4 chapters long, but now I'm looking at... what, 8, 10, and I'm pulling my hair out.
Whilst I did have character interactions in my mind, I did NOT intend for it to have any drama, especially not the kind of drama that it's driving towards. It was supposed to be shallow, something small and fun, but, instead, I'm feeling compelled to write these really long, drawn-out dramatic scenes, and all these """"""cHArAcTEr mOmENts"""""" that had absolutely no business in the original draft, and that I feel really insecure doing because I don't really know how to write that.
This chapter, chapter 5, didn't even include everything that I planned on delivering, and maybe that's my fault too, for not really knowing how to pace and structure a story. It's infuriating that it's been a whole year and I update with... so little and non-rewarding... a chapter that it's, like, mid-conflict, and not properly going anywhere, kinda. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, and I feel like I'm disappointing not only the brave souls who are still around (bless you), but also myself.
Maybe this also plays some part on my lack of interest, but I'm just not super into Hellsing as I was, when I first started posting Dragons. It sucks, but it's life. I don't really like working like that, not completely into the thing, feeling like it's an obligation and not a hobby I fully enjoy, but there's not much I can do about that; I refuse to abandon ship, and I can't force myself to become "obsessed" with Hellsing again (or, can I? I don't know).
There's also the language barrier, which takes some of my time, and the fact that I want to write more... "poetically"? My writing feels too sterile and "technical", I think, and I want it to sound more like a melody and less like a speech, and I know that I'll only get there if I read and write MORE, but it's still an added layer of consumption of my time and mental effort. Writing narrative, for me, is a struggle, but, when I complain about it, like I'm doing now, I also feel like I'm bitching for no reason, and putting effort into it is the bare minimum I should be doing. Still, it would be nice if it were a little less difficult, aha.
I'm not going to do like last time and "promise I'll (try) to do better". What I CAN assure anyone, though, is that I will absolutely finish this story (I hate engaging with someone else's work, and then having the creator just drop it, but this is merely a personal feeling and I'm not trying to pass judgement on anyone, people have their reasons), and that I will, eventually, when the story allows, incorporate the silly, pregnancy shenanigans that I originally wanted. As soon as the characters calm the F down.
Whilst Dragons took this crazy turn, I, at the very least, got most of it roughly planned and bullet-pointed. I have a direction, even though I can't be sure the path won't curve and spin to get to the end. Whatever, it's there for me to write; I just need to actually sit down and do it.
So... here we are, at the end of this vent. I have no idea when the next chapter will be uploaded. Sorry for the zero guarantees, sorry for always taking so long, and THANK YOU, for anyone, who's still, somehow, around, and following this story. You are the real heroes. T__T
Here it is, a new part! I donāt know why I just didnāt call thisĀ āchapter 5ā³.
Sorry for taking forever. Stuff happened, I got sidetracked, lost interest for a while... The usual. Hopefully the next chapter wonāt take as long to come out...
As far as the content itself, well, thereās stuff I donāt like about it, and I might have gotten a bit ahead of myself and exposed stuff I didnāt mean to show at this moment. I donāt like the ending very much and a few other things. Iāll prolly notice mistakes that will force me to reupload this chapter, but thatās a problem for future me.
Thanks for being here, I hope you enjoy, and see you later!
Itās finally done! I know Iām gonna find a bunch of mistakes and probably some plot hole when I read it again later, and chaos might ensue, but, for now, Iām okay with it!
I guess I donāt have a lot to say here, most of my notes are in the chapter itself. Took a lot of time, because of course it did... I keep hoping I wonāt take this long for the next chapter, but this never seems to happen x(
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for your time and for sticking around!
Will you ever continue your story Dragons? I love your fanfiction, the plot is really awesome. I don't wait for any other story so long and so excitedly as with you; _; Please tell me if you will keep writing it or if I can stop hoping
Yes, absolutely! The next chapter is in the works! Iām really sorry itās taking this long, Iām actually embarrassed! A bunch of things happened and I kinda lost the motivation to write (in general, not just Dragons) for quite a while T__T But Iāve got some stuff sorted out, so now I can make more time for writing! I will absolutely see this fanfic through.
Thank you for sending me this, itās really motivating! And thank you for reading the story, Iām really glad youāve enjoyed it so far! :)
This is embarrassing. Canāt even remember how long itās been since I last updated a fic, probably almost a year. I admit Iāve been lazy and unproductive and kind of focused on other things, but, as usual, Iām not dead. I guess Iām a zombie?
So, hereās a double update. Iāve re-written the first chapter of Fondness; the plan was to just adapt it to make it less sucky, but it turned out something completely different. Hopefully itās better.
And Iāve also updated Dragons. Not sure thereās anything in particular to say about that, except some necessaryĀ āplothole-ishā parts are now out of the way, so anything after this will be mostly character interactions and pregnancy stuff and fluff/drama/etc.Ā
Enjoy, feel free to comment/criticize/what have you, and, as always, thank you very much for the attention and for your time! Itās late and Iām tired, so Iāll probably fix potential mess-ups sometime later; I apologize for those in advance.Ā
Here it is, chapter 2 of Dragons:Ā https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13032986/2/Dragons
I realized something when I was writing this. Sometime ago, I struggled withĀ āshow, donāt tellā, telling a lot and barely showing: Iāve always been a fan of descriptive texts (think RPG manuals, stuff like that), whilst narrative has always been a pain in the ass, so I carried over a lot of my ādescriptivenessā to my stories.Ā
Now that Iām trying toĀ grasp the concept ofĀ āshowingā properly, I noticed I have a very hard time writing without filling the text with character actions; I think youāll see that when you read this chapter, particularly the first part.
Iām not sure how to get around that. The only solution I see is going back to describing things? I mean, how do youĀ āshowā without characters doing actions? Not sure if thatās possible. I guess what Iām trying to say is that my sentences feel... I donāt know, empty? Like there could be more than justĀ āMary Sue tilted her head to the side and exclaimedā, you know?
Anyway, lastĀ āintroductoryā chapter before the fun begins, I guess! Enjoy!
Hello, hello, everyone! Itās been a while! I apologize for my absence, but lots of stuff happened and I got lazy!
Anyway, hereās what I promised last time we met: the first chapter of a new Alutegra fic,Ā āDragonsā:Ā https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13032986/1/Dragons
Itās kind of a weird chapter, but thatās because I was at a loss on how to introduce this new story... So I took a bunch of unfinished, independent texts and tied them together with a singular motif. As you read through, youāll probably figure out what the storyās about, but if you donāt, well, youāre going to have to wait for chapter 2, hehe.
I remember saying in my last post that it wouldnāt take me too long to post this chapter, but... I kinda got addicted to Yo-Kai Watch (Fleshy Souls for Kyubi power), and ended up postponing both the writting and release of Dubious.
Regardless, there you go! Itās not the most creative; I suppose I lost theĀ āweirdnessā I wanted to develop with The Nest (chapter 2), but, still, itās Alutegra and a little awkward, so thereās that.
Like I said in the authorās notes, Dubious will be the last chapter Iāll upload to Fondness for a while. Not only because I want to focus on a more proper Alutegra story, but because I also want to engage on another creative endeavor (which I hope will benefit my love for the couple).Ā
Iām thinking about eventually releasing the real bad and unfinished stuff I wrote, but I keep changing my mind because I get embarrassed by all the terribleness. If these scraps do get some sort of polishing, though, theyāll be posted, rest assured.
Anyway, stay safe, enjoy this little thing, and Iāll see you (hopefully) soon with something different!
Itās right here:Ā https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11066640/6/Fondness
I wasnāt very creative with this chapter, Iāll admit. I just wanted a way to turn headcanons into somethingĀ ānarrative-yā.Ā
Apologies for making Alucard wimpy. Itās just an idea I had for his reaction concerning the things he cares about. Or rather, the prospect of losing them. You know when Windows pops up that FATAL ERROR blue screen? Thatās how I see it.
Yeah, itās pretty fucking weak, but there you go. Also, I donāt think Iāll take too long (not my usual interval, at least) to post the next chapter.