The Monthly Report: July 2022

Reformatted and Reorganized

Hello, and welcome to the Warthog Report.

Improved Sectioning

The Warthog Report is now making use of the sections feature on substack. Currently there are two sections, Battles Beneath the Stars, and the Warthog Blog. This means that you can choose to only get either the fiction or the blog posts.

For Battles Beneath the Stars I’ve been doing some additional tune ups. The prologue and introduction now have their own pinned post in the Battles Beneath the Stars section, where it will include links to each character story. Each chapter now has links to the previous chapter, prologue, and next chapter when applicable.

I have additional adjustments planned for this month. Starting with the next chapter, I’m going to experiment with including drawings of the stage layouts. That should help add to the imaginary game aspect.

Another new feature will be a post containing character profiles, styled like the kind you usually see for fighting game rosters. This will be linked to in each chapter. I’m looking into ways to make it visually interesting without art, since I don’t have the skills for serviceable character art yet.

Although I had this idea when starting out the project, it was for posting the profiles before letting readers pick whose story would go first. That felt impractical for a new substack, and I felt it would have messed up the pacing no matter when it was sent out. Now that I’m more familiar with substack I’ve learned not every post needs to be emailed.

To give credit where it’s due, The Case Files of Sheridan Bell’s own character profiles was what inspired me to revisit the idea. And I wouldn’t have the knowledge of substack needed for this idea or the sections without the Substack Writers Unite discord and Fictionistas substack.

Plans for blogging

I was able to put out the two blog posts I promised last month, both on the theme of crossovers. So I’m giving crossovers a break as the subject material and can now enjoy a more reasonable writing pace.

A potential angle I might use for future blog posts is highlighting different things I like, particularly the niche ones barely anyone knows about. Sometimes when you don’t have anyone to talk to about something, you just need to shout into the internet and hope there’s a response.

On a riskier note, I might make some posts about ancient mythology/religions, where I share things I’ve learned from my hobbyist research. It’s risky because I don’t want to add to the misinformation on the internet, but I’m sick of seeing Tezcatlipoca demonized.

Also, once I’ve given crossovers some time to rest, I’d like to do something on the use of Smash Mansion in Super Smash Bros fanfiction. Exploring what I’ve found of its history and why I think it’s such a good tool and a fascinating example of how ideas spread.

Additional Update

I’ve been asked to commentate a fighting game tournament, specifically the tournament for Merfight: Curse of the Arctic Prince at Indie Breakdown 2022. As a bonus tournament only the grand finals will be streamed, and I’m not getting paid or anything, but it’s nice to be requested for something.

That’s it for the Warthog Report today. I hope you enjoyed this update.