This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: A Review of Judas by Suu Minazuki
• TSF Showcase 2023-45 Irekawatte Modotta Joshikousei by Zaregoto Hitsuji
• TSF Showcase 2023-46 Queen Slime no Gyakushuu [The Queen Slime’s Counterattack] by Hiiragi Popura and Kuratsuka Riko
• TSF Showcase 2023-47 Boku no Milk o Meshiagare by Yoshida Gorou
• Rockstar Just Can’t Catch A Break… (Grand Theft Auto V’s Source Code Was Leaked)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
A Review of Judas by Suu Minazuki

Christmas is over, but I spent my Christmas Eve reading and Christmas Day talking about Judas, a Biblical themed story, so the title of the Rundown works, DARN IT!

Coming in as a request from Natalie.TF’s very own Cassandra Wright, let’s talk about Judas. A 5 volume manga from 2004 to 2006 that falls into a genre that I would dub ‘Christian mythology action.’ Which means it is an action story that lifts elements from Christian mythology in order to seem deeper or more poignant. Though, in many instances, as is the case for Judas, it largely uses Christian mythos because they are cool, make for flashy set pieces, and give the writer a foundation to base the story around.

Though it takes a while for the manga to admit it, it follows Minazuki’s rendition of Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus Christ, but takes… quite a few liberties with him. This Judas is a crude and perverted spirit who can only interact with the world through a host. In this case a cute, airheaded, and tiny crossdressing femboy by the name of Eve, who is extremely accident prone and loves burgers. When Eve is harmed, Judas takes control of his body, transforming him into Death. A female version of death who, if this series were ever popular, would have definitely become a mid-2000s goth icon of some notoriety.

As for what this story is about… Well the series was officially localized (by the late Tokyopop and later Viz) so it has an official synopsis, but I’m going to say that’s basically useless. The actual story can be divided into two arcs, which I’m going to call the ‘body horror buddies’ arc and the ‘apostles apocalypse’ arc. With the body horror buddies arc following Judas and Eve as they assemble a group of friends. This consists of a 16-year-old Leukemia curing polymath hacker doctor named Mizuki Ayase and Kogiku, a perpetually ill girl who is friends to all the animals. Throughout the first volume, the group comes together, forms a loose dynamic with Judas and Eve, and establishes a cast that is both very cute and moderately functional.

They are brought together by a pair of incidents where ambitious men begin undergoing mutations into… I don’t even know how to describe them beyond religious themed body horror monstrosities. Fleshy, almost wing-like, tendrils begin growing from their backs, and as they reach their full forms, a rendition of Death— as in the hybrid form of Judas and Eve— begins growing from out of their shoulders. All of which is triggered by… a drug that Mizuki developed, I guess? Or perhaps a cross dagger of some sort?

It’s confusing, not very well explained, and is filled with regular references to how characters do not want to go to Heaven or Hell, but to Eden. As in, the Garden of Eden, which is interpreted as its own realm. The imagery and references in this arc gives the impression of some deeper symbolism. But when paired by the exaggerated, edgy-cool, and action-packed presentation, all this religious hoopla feels like little more than noise.

As for the apostles apocalypse arc, that covers the latter four volumes, and… it gets really bloody weird. It begins with a chapter where Judas confronts his former host, a man named Zero, or Mascchettiano, who manages to perfectly capture everything great and awful about early 2000s edge. His deal is that he hates Judas and wants to kill him for reasons that, again, are not super clear. They battle for about half the volume, but are interrupted by… stuff that is also only vaguely explained and exists more to look cool than mean much. Then it’s the seven days of apocalypse from the Book of Revelations. Giant crosses fall from the sky and impale the earth, it rains blood, vast natural disasters scourge across the land, and the twelve apostles reappear. You know, just like the Bible says, word for word.

On that note, let’s talk about the apostles, as these guys… suck ass from a sheer utility and visual perspective. The series simply lacks the attention to even support twelve characters, just in general, and does a poor job of assigning a role, purpose, or unique design to the apostles. All the male ones have these otherworldly idealized physiques where they are ten heads tall and have shoulders four heads wide, but also more effeminate features too. Long, flowing hair, pretty faces, tight clothes, wavy dress-like clothes. There is some variety, but it’s very easy to get their names confused or fail to recognize who they all are. Oh, and the fact that some of the Apostles are women, including Thaddeus and Matthew, somehow only makes things more confusing. 

A proper spread detailing the designs of all twelve would have been REALLY helpful, but I guess that’s why they didn’t include it. Because it would be a simple way to make things less confusing, and the comic cannot have that.

After introducing the Apostles and apocalypse plot points… the comic just sort of keeps on going. It keeps staging these elaborate fight sequences while vaguely explaining what might be going, slowly doling out its dialogue one sentence at a time. Then, after being relegated to a minor character with no real connection to the plot, Mizuki gets isekai’d back to Bible times, replacing Simon. A character who was previously featured as a doctor during the body horror arc, died, but somehow came back to isekai her.

Here, we get to see Minazuki’s interpretation of Judas’s betrayal, why he killed Jesus, and the answer is almost simple. The apostles, or rather disciples at the time, were attacked by an army of Deaths, who are incarnations of Eve— the Eve from the Garden of Eden. Judas and the primary sentient Eve— with the rest just being demons or something, I guess— have sex under an apple tree, and fall in love in an hour or so. Judas is alienated from the disciples for getting some strange while they fought an army of Deaths, and during The Last Supper, Mizuki/Simon appears to tell him that Eve can be brought back by killing Jesus. So, Judas kills Jesus the night before his supposed sacrifice, and Jesus accepts it, ‘cos he values love above all else.

Afterwards, Peter claims to be Jesus when it comes time for the crucifixion, and swears revenge on Judas. But it takes him 2000 years before he can return and launch his plan. Well, I say his plan, but Peter is really just following John’s Revelations that Jesus will be revived after the apocalypse and the apostles will be sent to Eden. …Except it turns out that John was a nutjob who wanted to destroy the world and is the TRUE betrayer of the apostles.

This… is a bit roundabout, but is far from an unworkable premise. The real problem here is, as always, the execution and how this story is ultimately told. Between spectacle and set pieces. It is not an efficient use of space, I could barely follow what was going on at points, and the conclusion is just… bizarre.

It turns out that the femboy Eve at the start of the story was just an amnesiac reincarnation of Eve— I think. The world is left half destroyed, forcing humanity to rebuild after this immense destruction of Biblical proportions. There is this weird closing section where Judas and Zero hit up a strip club that’s functioning in the apocalypse, but that might not be a literal event. And… There is a lot of fighting. So much fighting. So much empty pontification. And so much structurally cool action that falls flat due to a sheer absence of narrative weight.

Based on this work alone, I would say that Minazuki is a good comic artist. He knows how to use perspective, scale, and striking imagery to inspire awe and splendor. His battle scenes are chaotic delights that succinctly capture the vibe and sense of cool that defined a subcultural era. And his comedic timing and understanding is pretty spot on too, with the first volume being chock full of sillier moments. Though his character designs can be a bit… questionable, I think his artwork is a delight, and for as much as I can and will criticize this comic… I really liked looking at it.

Its biggest sin is its story, which reads like it went through at least three different visions while it was being written. It does not read like something deliberate or planned. The writer fails to accommodate or handle a cast of this size. Characters get left by the wayside with nothing to really do or contribute. Its Biblical references are ultimately superficial and included for aesthetic above meaning. And it is just so, so overwhelmed with ideas and does not know how to use them.

Judas is not a confident work, and it is not a work that understands what it wants to be. It is a flailing and passionate story that delivers on a number of cool moments, funny scenes, and wonderfully captures a bygone yet eternally cool aesthetic. But the more I think about it… the less I like it.

Also, this is not a TSF story in my book. The TSF character, Eve, is not only originally a woman, but her reincarnation as a boy only turns her into a boy in the loosest sense, and is undone by the second volume. Per my own definition of TSF, it does not meet the requirements. 

/QUOTE

“TSF is a genre of fiction wherein a character undergoes a change in sex through fictitious or fantastical means. With the ensuing narrative, assuming there is one beyond the initial transformation, following how they adapt to these changes.” 

Natalie Neumann, Natalie Rambles About TSF

Amnesiac reincarnation already puts you in the iffy range, but when the story barely addresses it, then you miss the mark, bucko!

Before I close out this section, I want to point out what Minazuki worked on afterwards. Based on his clear love for exaggerated action scenes and overly idealized sexy men, I expected him to work on a more typical shonen action series of some sort. …Instead, he went on to make the ecchi angel manga/anime series Heaven’s Lost Property. Which saw 20 volumes, two seasons, and two theatrical films.

 I would ask how this happened, but it’s not necessarily uncommon for mangaka to change up their genre after one project doesn’t work out. And I can easily imagine an editor recommending a creator like Minazuki to make something more basic, silly, and marketable. Which, based on skimming through a few episodes… describes Heaven’s Lost Property.

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Seeing as how I devoted 1,800 words to a non-TSF story, let me dig through my magic bag for something worthy of capping off 2023… 

Let’s see, Mesu Ochi Shita Ore no Doutei Kari Nikki [My Virgin-Hunting Diary After Turning Into a Bitch] by Nakano Hitomi is a good rendition of a familiar concept. That of a man who is turned into a woman but must have sex with men to become a man again. But it is clearly aiming for the long haul and is revving up into a new bitch-ification sexiness with future installments. It’s good shit, but Imma fry it up later

I liked the ideas behind Shinyuu no Tsuma to Irekawatta Boku no Shinkon Seikatsu by Minaduki Nanana and Reitou Mikan, but it felt a bit too manic and sex focused for my liking. A timid friend swapping bodies with the protagonist’s ornery and mean wife is a good premise, but these things need to simmer.

…Screw it. It’s the holidays, so you’ll get a triple decker as a present.

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TSF Showcase 2023-45
Irekawatte Modotta Joshikousei by Zaregoto Hitsuji

As an avid fan of TSF, I have become increasingly lustful toward works that do something different. That takes things further, that follows the next step, and tells a story beyond the initial transformation. Something that shows characters living with the aftermath of the transformation, that focuses more on how they changed rather than how they change, and sees a successive generation of transformations. And Irekawatte Modotta Joshikousei is precisely that! 

The story picks up one year after a high school girl, Ayane, switched bodies with a generic lustful middle-aged man, when she suddenly finds herself back in her body. However, a year is a long time and that time has left Ayane’s mind “completely corrupted.” She’s now a ravenous pervert who cannot help but lust after her own body and seeks revenge on her former best friend, Chinatsu. Who, from Ayane’s perspective, went a full year without realizing that Ayane’s body was stolen by an imposter.

Now, any sane person would just realize that most people do not think ‘did someone use a body swap app on my friend’ when they start acting a bit differently. But revenge isn’t supposed to make sense.

As for how Ayane plans on getting revenge on Chinatsu, it’s a bit convoluted, but makes some sense. The body swap app used by the fat ugly bastard who stole Ayane’s body has been discontinued, all active swaps have been undone, and the memories of users have been erased. However, the memories of subjects have been left unchanged, and every subject has been given a ticket that lets them use the app once to avoid possible complaints. Now, why not just erase their memories like with the subjects? I dunno. Lawyers sometimes operate on moon logic like that!

Ayane then begins luring Chinatsu and a balding middle-aged man, or an oji-san, to an isolated apartment, where she promptly swaps the two. Oji-san is psyched to be such a pretty and ‘good-smelling’ young girl, while Chinatsu is naturally devastated. Oji-san and Chinatsu both have sex, Ayane masturbates in the background, and then leaves with her new best friend, leaving Chinatsu to be corrupted just like she was. 

Initially, it seems like this is just Chinatsu’s eternal hell, doomed to feel perpetual lust over her true body while being in a body that is drawn so unattractively it clashes with the style guide. But Ayane later clarifies that she can just undo the swap at any time, and will give Chinatsu her body back… after she becomes corrupted, just like her. Presumably so she can have a partner just as twisted as she is, and someone to help her as she engages in all sorts of sex crimes.

As stated above, I enjoy this story’s twists on a familiar scenario, but what really pushes this story over the line for me is the way the creator brings this idea to life. They give this comic enough time to not only breath, develop, and establish a setting, but follow through on this foundation with a sex scene that doesn’t waste a single page. And while Zaregoto Hitsuji is clearly a self-taught artist still developing their technique and style, their burgeoning art style is not lacking in personality. 

Character expressions are gloriously exaggerated, doing a lot to sell the sense of malice, disgust, lust, and horror that the characters feel as they go on this fraught journey. The inconsistencies and awkwardness in its artwork add to the more manic and wrathful mindset of the protagonist, whose persona and worldview have been distorted after a year of hardship. The sex scenes are depicted in a… surprisingly restrained way, without much attention to detail and more unflattering penis shots than anything else. Which, when combined with the aforementioned pseudo-human designs of middle-aged men, depicts sex as something that is linked with disgust, rather than beauty. It is a deliberately gross story, and one that thrives in that environment.

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TSF Showcase 2023-46
Queen Slime no Gyakushuu [The Queen Slime’s Counterattack] by Hiiragi Popura and Kuratsuka Riko

I make it a point to go through most TSF comics that cross my radar. While many of them are of a more middling substance, without too much uniqueness, personality, or new ideas. But every now and then I find a comic that… just keeps on going, getting weirder, and getting cooler with every new page. And this is one of those!

The Queen Slime’s Counterattack starts simply enough. An adventurer guy with that Kirito swagger is investigating a slime cave after some fellow adventurers disappeared. Immediately, he gets attacked by a queen slime, who looks like what would happen if you put the Bowsette Super Crown on a genericized Dragon Quest slime. The slime queen starts digesting him, but recognizes his strength, so instead of just vaginally voring him, she decides to rebirth him. 

The protagonist is age regressed into a small boy and as he is venturing through the cave, he is relentlessly assaulted by slimes. But rather than just raping his supple child body, they crawl up his orifices, transforming his body into that of a busty woman. It’s pretty gross on… several levels, but as a fusion/absorption fan, I need to take whatever scraps I can find.

The protagonist then runs into the queen slime again, who explains how the authors’ slime lore works. That the slime queen turns adventurers into slimes, but most are so weak that they lose all sense of self, becoming mindless goop. The Kirito-looking protagonist is special though, so rather than just reducing him into a slime, she kept him sentient, turned him into a slime girl, and had him absorb various other slimes. All to achieve her ultimate goal of transforming the adventurer into a ‘slime mother.’

Up until this point, I figured this would just be the typical ‘man to birthing unit’ type TSF story, which is fine, but nothing too remarkable. …Instead, the protagonist is transformed into a giantess! The Slime Mama! A 20-meter tall creature driven by instinct and a biologically mandated love for all her children, no matter who or what needs to be sacrificed. 

How are they sacrificed? By shoving them right up her transparent slime pussy, where they get unbirthed into cute little slime girls! Still fully sentient/sapient and presumably retaining some version of their prior self, but now… goopier! It’s such an effective process that it turns the entire capital into a city of slime girls, with their giant Slime Mama serving as their ultimate leader. And then everybody lived happily ever after! Das Ende!

…For the record, all the Slime Mama stuff happened across 5 pages. I often criticize stories for rushing things, but when you have a story that concludes with grade-A craziness, sometimes this approach is better.

There isn’t really too much to this comic beyond that insane escalation, but for a 28 page comic, that’s kind of all you need, and it helps when you have an artist like Kuratsuka Riko. While I’m not crazy about the childlike faces they give almost every character, I admire their ability to bury darker subjects under a veil of cuteness. They have an immediately recognizable art style, and one that I have come to recognize as an indication of quality. I would say they certainly deliver here, due in part to the full coloring, which I think is important for a story involving slimes. You need good shading to make them look especially jelly-like, and you need good coloring to convey what flavors they are.

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TSF Showcase 2023-47
Boku no Milk o Meshiagare by Yoshida Gorou

For the final TSF Showcase of the year, let’s go full circle with more breast milk! 

It’s time for… well, not Turned into a Breast Milk Fountain by a Beautiful Vampire by Kouji (Hawkbit). I already talked about that one back in Natalie Rambles About TSF Comics, and won’t again unless I want to do an 8,000 word essay. Instead, we’re doing Boku no Milk o Meshiagare by Yoshida Gorou. 

Yoshida Gorou is easily one of my all-time favorite TSF artists, and for three pretty simple reasons. Their artwork is phenomenal. Their characters are positively gushing with personality, everything they draw carries with it a signature adorable quality, and they have a illustrating motion and transformations. Their stories are not afraid to get really bloody weird, featuring a lot of oddball ideas and concepts that do not neatly adhere to the more blasé TSF premises, but if they do, they have a distinctly Gorou twist. And Gorou consistently delivers these densely packed stories that make extremely good use of their page counts, making them feel like full and complete explorations of their premises.

Pretty much any of their comics, at least those that have been translated, would be a prime candidate for a TSF Showcase, but we’re doing the milk boy one this time! With said milk boy being Megumu Shirai— not to be confused with Meguru Inaba of Megu Miruku. An XX-year-old child of the late legendary Milk Queen Kurumu Amanogawa and a recent volunteer in a program to become a ‘Milk Lady.’

In the world of Boku no Milk o Meshiagare, the highest quality milk is produced by humans, by Milk Ladies, whose milk is served at high quality restaurants and favored by politicians. While the title of Milk Lady was once only available to cis women, medical advancements now allow AMAB folks— like Megumu— to transition into Milk Ladies using magical future hormones. Not to be confused with modern HRT that allows trans women to produce breast milk. However, Megumu is left struggling to produce breast milk, as she has an aversion to giving up her past. Or, in TSF comic terms, she still has ‘the heart of a man.’

The Milk Ladies in Megumu’s class quickly spot this and ridicule her by… uh, gang raping her for daring to get a boner while getting her nipples felt up. This naturally leaves Megumu distraught, feeling like she is failing to capture their mother’s legacy. But in her desperate hour, fellow trans Milk Lady Muneaki Hanyu who helps the sweet girl inside of Megumu’s heart break free via the magic of makeup and selfies. 

This influx of feminine feelings causes Megumu to develop rapidly, growing some impressively sized boobs and developing a vagina within… like, a minute. Which makes the perfect opportunity for Muneaki to penetrate her. Though, rather than being an extended sex scene, this is just a catalyst for Megumu to cast aside her former life as a boy and embrace her new body in a gushing milky climax.

After this display, it seems that Megumu has mastered the art of the Milk Lady properly. However, when she is unable to produce milk in the milk room, it’s clear she still has a ways to go. Thus bringing an end to part one.

Chapter two starts a month later, reintroducing the reader to the world with an adorable dream sequence before establishing that Megumu is now a respected rising prodigy among the Milk Ladies. To the point where her class, the one who raped her last chapter, is now begging for delicious milk. Things are looking up for the protagonist, but her newfound success attracts some negative attention. 

Namely from a Milk Lady by the name of Yoko, who views people like Megumu as an insult to a sacred right that belongs to “true women.” Needless to say, she’s one of the most clear cut TERFs I have ever seen in a TSF comic, but like most TERFs, she’s more frog than human and cannot handle the slightest of criticisms.

Megumu is saved from Yoko’s attempted rape and threats of physical mutilation (again, typical TERF stuff) by Shizuru Ryuonji. A tall and cool character with billowing hair unlike Megumu’s more androgynous cut. After introducing herself, Shizuru plans a kiss on Megumu’s forehead, dazzling her, and states that Megumu doesn’t have what it takes to become the Milk Queen. 

When asked why, Shizuru just rapes Megumu. She makes Megumu’s penis grow back, points out the bitterness of Megumu’s milk, compares it to the delectable taste of her own, and reminds her that she does not have to go down this path. That Megumu can always give up and go back to being a man.

…So this warrants some examination beyond the broad strokes summary I provided.

Shizuru is a character who could easily be read as a transmedicalist, or truescum. She is a trans woman who is putting down another trans woman for being ‘insufficiently womanly’ and telling her to embrace the pleasures of her penis. However, she is also Megumu’s senpai, and one who is directly in competition with her. And not in a ‘IRL, everything is a competition and respect is a finite resource’ sort of way (which is a vile topic well beyond the scope of a TSF showcase). They are competing to see who has the best milk and can inherit the title of Milk Queen, which is at least partially dictated by how feminine, or Milk Lady-like, one is. 

Shizuru could be simply exploiting Megumu’s uncertainty, as she has only known she was trans for a few months now. Or, like a helpful rival character, she could be highlighting the weakness of her rival, showing them how far they have to go, and how much they need to commit to their training. When telling Megumu to go back to her old life, is she mocking her for ‘not being trans enough?’ Or is she trying to show her how her lingering doubts/desires are preventing her from becoming stronger, which makes sense per shonen logic at the very least. 

It’s a surprising bit of depth in what is ultimately a deeply silly story, and… I appreciate the ambition on display by Gorou here. These ‘real life elements’ do a lot to make the story more interesting and grounded, while weirdly complementing the already present absurdity within its core premise. It feels like something that… works within this world.

Sadly, this is where the glimpse into this world ends. Boku no Milk o Meshiagare 2 came out on February 17, 2019, almost five years ago, has not seen a follow-up, and Gorou has released about a dozen comics in the interim. I would never say never— It took me eight years to release a sequel to The Malice of Abigale Quinlan— but it was long enough for me to do this showcase before waiting for this story to be ‘completed.’

My indulgent waffling aside, I really like Boku no Milk. Rather than just be a vessel for lactation fetish art, it stays true to its premise and treats it with respect. It manages to tell a story that, however tangentially, is about legacy and embracing or rejecting parts of one’s identity as they try to pursue their goals in life. And is all executed with a level of cheeriness that makes it easy to brush aside the more discomforting elements through the sheer cuteness of Yoshida’s illustrations. It’s cute, is never too messed up, and carries itself with a conviction that ties every disparate element together.

…And that’s all the TSF stuff I have to talk about this year! See ya next year, meaning tomorrow!

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Rockstar Just Can’t Catch A Break…
(Grand Theft Auto V’s Source Code Was Leaked)

Huh… this is pretty wild. Grand Theft Auto V, one of the highest selling, most profitable, and widely played games of all time… had its source code leaked. It’s out in the wild, if you go to the Dark Zone, you can probably find it. From general discourse around this leak, this source code was stolen during the GTA VI leak last year, but only recently was release, and right on Christmas, when Take Two’s lawyers are on vacation.

So, what does this mean? Well, a bunch of people are going to retrofit and rework GTA V with more modded content, even though the game already has a robust modding community. And Rockstar is going to need to go on high alert and probably take drastic actions regarding the security of GTA Online, as bad actors will abuse this leak and try to steal people’s data.

Also, there might be a chance that, in a few years, someone will decompile Grand Theft Auto V. Now, that sounds crazy as decompilation projects require a lot of work, specialized skills, and the most advanced games that have been decompiled have been PS2 titles. But… do not underestimate GTA fans and the level of dedication they put into things. 

Akumako: “Just for clarity, Natalie is not saying that someone will use the source code to make a decompilation, as that defeats the whole purpose. But if group A reads the source code, gives select bits of information to group B, and all their communications are rigorously logged… then you can skirt around copyright laws!”

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Progress Report 2023-12-31

I WAS WRONG! These Posse Logs are going to be like 2,000 to 2,500 words per chapter, not 1,500 words! To make matters worse, I need to write a chunky paragraph for every character detailing what they did and their thoughts on the day. Hopping back between 17 characters IS NOT easy, especially when I need to come up with things they can do without ruining plans for future chapters. It’s like coming up with two blasé chapter concepts while trying to write an epilogue for every chapter. Fookin ‘ell…

2023-12-24: Wrote 1,800 words for this Rundown preamble, 950 words for the first TSF Showcase, a 2,200 word Posse Log extension of VD2.0 CH 6-14, and 900 words for the Posse Log extension of VD2.0 CH 6-15. I also convinced myself Posse Logs were too important to NOT include in every chapter within acts 2, 3, and 4. It makes me regret this project in a whole new way, because of all the damn layers! Also, going from writing one character to another, paragraph by paragraph, for over a dozen characters, is… exhausting. So I went to bed early.

2023-12-25: Wrote the 600 word second TSF Showcase and spent the day working on Posse Log extensions. 1,200 words for CH 6-15, 2,600 words for CH 6-16, and I busted my freaking brain to try and get 2,000 words for CH 6-17.

2023-12-26: Wrote 450 words to polish off CH 6-18, so I could FINALLY get back to Ch 6-18, but I had to rewrite and expand the outline to accommodate changes to the story and new ideas. Meaning this chapter now has eight parts. After writing 2,000 words of outline, I was only able to write 2,400 words of the actual story. Ugh. Also, I played about an hour of FlipWitch. I swear to Verde, I need to start crankin’ out some 5,000 word days STAT!

2023-12-27: Wrote 1,300 words for the third TSF Showcase (I promise to only do one a week going forward. No more, no less, unless it’s like Remix Heart again.) Then I wrote 7,100 words for CH 6-18. I would have done more, but I was running on fumes and couldn’t even help Chari with proofreading stuff by the end of it…

2023-12-28: Welp, I got COVID again! Because of this, I prioritized taking it easy and sleeping for a good chunk of the day. I finalized this Rundown, did some work for my mother, and didn’t touch VD2.0…

2023-12-29: I wanted to do more writing, but my brain was fried and after 1,200 words, I just gave up. I was barely able to sleep the prior night, and made it a point to go to bed early with the help of generic NyQuil.

2023-12-30: I’m still sick, and decided it was not worth trying to write. My head is full of cotton.

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Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp
Acts 1, 2, and 3 Progress Report:

Current Word Count: 204,427

Estimated Word Count: ~420,000

Total Chapters: 48

Chapters Outlined: 42

Chapters Drafted: 21

Chapters Edited: 0

Header Images Made: 0

Days Until Deadline: 150