Progress Report - August 22, 2021 (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

I apologize for being a few days late for this week's progress report. Or I guess a few days early, depending on your perspective. This is the make-up for missing Friday August 20th's progress report. There. Let's go with that.

Health Update

As you all may or may not be aware, a few weeks ago I had what I believed to be food poisoning, and it took me out for the better part of a week. In the two weeks since, I've been riding a rollercoaster of varying symptoms at various intensities. Sometimes I'm perfectly fine for a whole day or two, other times I'm feeling extremely unwell for a day; most of them, it's a mix of feeling unwell for a few hours at a time, then feeling well for a few hours, before feeling unwell.

This started its largest uphill climb since the initial sickness on Wednesday, when I completely lost my appetite and was barely able to eat even half of my dinner. This loss of appetite continued all throughout Thursday (had to fight to eat even half my normal meals), and when my appetite showed no signs of returnin by Friday afternoon, I decided to see a doctor about it.

While the doctor wasn't able to really help me with my current symptoms, they were able to at least provide me with some peace of mind, coming to the same conclusion that Ordagon and I have been coming to ourselves: it wasn't food poisoning that I had, but a stomach virus of some sort; and that it may take several weeks for me to fully recover. And that some of the secondary symptoms I've been having, such as feeling my heart beating in my chest, was most likely just illness-induced anxiety - they ran an EKG and it came back extremely strong and healthy, which was comforting for me to hear.

With that in tow, the doctor recommended that I just take it easy, take it slow, and take it day by day. And so, that's what I've been doing. Most of Friday was spent dealing with going to the doctor and all the ancillary baggage that comes with that. Saturday I ended up taking off and just spent working on getting better. I've pushed away from my extremely carb-heavy diet and have been moving to a more fruit-oriented diet, under the assumption that my illness depleted some much-needed vitamins and nutrients that my bread-heavy diet wasn't supplying. And I've picked up some comprehensive multivitamins to further help replenish what may have been depleted.

My appetite has been very slowly returning. And while I wouldn't say I have an appetite again, I would say I have the shadow of an appetite, subtle suggestions from my body that it wants me to eat. And the last two meals I've been able to eat without having cold chills and extreme fatigue hit me, which is an improvement over how every meal I (tried to) eat from Wednesday into Friday had gone.

That's all I really have in terms of health updates, so I'll end this sentence on a request for you all to be patient with me, and a request to myself to be patient with me. Trust me when I say no one wants me to get over this "being sick" bullshit and jump back into the thick of it more than I do. But I think I jumped the gun prematurely on that once already, and it's partially while I slid the way I did.

Overbreed Update

That being said, before I slid at the end of the week, I did make a bit of progress on Overbreed. If you follow my Twitter, then you likely saw that I posted a one-minute WIP video of the first minute of sex sequence C in the Episode 1 screenplay. It's a solid start, and I think it's a good portend of things to come, once I am able to actually make regular progress again.

We already knew that Overbreed Episode 1 was going to take a long time to produce. At this point, what's a few more weeks of delay? Especially when it's a delay for my health. I'm not bothered by it, and I'm sure most people will understand that. No one likes being sick, after all.

I won't lie when I say that I am slightly miffed how that Overbreed WIP, which I literally fully animated and put together in a single sitting, got 1.1K Likes, compared to the Fraternization release Tweet, which took me a month of production, only getting 1.5K Likes. But I am choosing to interpret that as meaning that, once Overbreed Episode 1 is finished and released, it'll just go gangbusters when it comes to the Likes.

As a final word, referencing the poster: well, I've said before that Overbreed has multiple interwoven narratives all entangled and resolving throughout the course of its run. What's a few easter-eggs for threads to be tugged at in future episodes between friends? Keep your eyes peeled for this image making an appearance, in some form, in Overbreed Episode 1! When it comes out, of course.

That's all I have for now. I'm going to continue taking it easy and focusing on recovering from this fucking stomach virus. I might be able to get snippets of work done throughout the week, but I am not expecting it, and you shouldn't either. That entirely depends on how I feel any given day, and if I feel like pushing myself. Which, honestly, I feel like I should refrain from doing, at least until I have an established track record of feeling well for a few days.

Until next time, everyone!