The Monthly Report: July 2023
Pauses, celebrations, and payment
July is a special month for me, since it’s my brith month. I don’t think I’ll be doing anything special for it on the Warthog Report, but felt like bringing it up.
Battles Beneath the Stars will have a brief break from publishing as I work on the next story, Nisha’s. Due to the anthology nature of BBtS I might make it part of the regular plan to have a pause between character stories. Gives more space to breathe and plan things out. Not to mention the start of this month will be rather busy for me, won’t be as much time for writing.
At the latest Battles Beneath the Stars will resume on August third. If all goes quickly it could start back up sooner. Everything else should continue as normal.
Before going into the recap of June, I have some vague future plans to bring up. While I enjoy working on the Warthog Report for its own sake, it’d be nice to have some income related from it.
One avenue I’ve been contemplating is offering paid editions of my short fiction as one off purchases, since a full on paid subscription is quite the commitment. There are plenty of Substacks I’d gladly give five dollars too, but five dollars a month adds up. I imagine others must feel that way too, there’s so many subscriptions these days.
So to put it simply, what do you think you would you be willing to pay for? Either in a paid subscription or a special edition of short stories like The Swordsmen. I already have ideas in mind, but knowing what your audience wants is important.
Recap of Last Month
In Battles Beneath the Stars we saw the end of Amezwar’s story. I know it was a bit of a ride for me at least. On top of that I added a new bonus feature, win quotes for each character, complete with a little system programmed in Ink for selecting them.
Win Quotes
If you’re reading this in your email, there’s likely a message about this being too long for email. But there’s a chance you won’t need to go the website to get what you want from this post. One convention of fighting games is to have a line of dialogue from the winning character at the end of match, referred to as a win quote. These help show more of th…
I also wrote a piece of flash fiction for a contest on another Substack,
. It didn’t win, but I expected that because it was decided by reader votes and I was a very late submission.The story itself is about the Norse god Odin and Sigi, progenitor of the Volsung line, expanding on a few lines in the first chapter of the Saga of the Volsungs. Which is what the first edition of ‘Let Me Talk To You About’ was about.
Father of the Slain
Odin preferred to know men after their deaths, when their story had already concluded. Looking at them while they lived only made him think of their fate, often already known to him. Even as Odin walked with Sigi, all he could see was the eventual and inevitable conclusion of Sigi’s story. The air between them was motionless. They walked like ships carr…
On that note, last month I wrote about Get Smart, an old TV show I enjoyed a lot. Wish there was more people my age who knew about it. There’s a lot of good old shows and other media that could do with more appreciation by current audiences.
Get Smart
Would you believe it if I told you Get Smart is universally considered the greatest television show ever, can you believe it, universally agreed on as the greatest ever? No? Would you believe it’s the best show about spies? Still no? How about number five on some random youtubers ‘ten old shows that are actually decent’ list?
And to end the month I wrote about fighting game tournaments, specifically the smaller ones. It’s something I’m so into it can be hard to remember at times that most people barely even know they’re a thing. I hope I let at least one person know about them.
Fighting Game Locals
It can be hard to meet people offline once you break out of the education system. But one method I’ve found that’s good for getting me around other people is going to fighting game tournaments. My fixation on fighting games only reached the level it’s at now due to them being one of my main ways of finding social events.
That’s all for now. Thank you for being subscribed to the Warthog Report.