Thursday, September 14, 2017

Update-ry Stuff

No Monmusu Conquered World Text Play updates this week.  Other stuff came up and I managed to fall behind.

Also, having got much deeper into the game, I'm starting to understand some of the criticisms people posted when I first talked about the game.  It does get repetitive and the lacks the pay-off of either Violated Hero 2's later Bad Ends or VH5's reasonably interesting storyline.  It does have a nice range of monster girls and I think most of the animated sex scene snippets work pretty well, but like a lot of Dieselmine games, all the good stuff never quite comes together to form a truly good game.

This is especially noticeable now I've got around to playing Monmusu Quest: Paradox again (more on this later).

I did think briefly about knocking the series on its head, but I'm not far from the end, so I'll post the last remaining segments next week.  In future I think I'll avoid doing games where I have no machine translation and stick to ones where the story is a little more interesting or where some element of walkthrough/guide might be useful.

Which brings me back to Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  I did write a massive series on the first part that was a lot of fun.  I didn't think I'd be able to do the same for the second because of the problems of running text-hooking software on Windows 10.  I have found a fix for that, or rather some software that does work, so I'm thinking a Text Play of Monmusu Quest: Paradox part 2 might be back on, providing I find a schedule that doesn't devour all the time I should be spending writing.

So yep, been replaying Monmusu Quest: Paradox a fair bit over the last week or so.  The Dargoth translations really improve the playing experience.  Dargoth and co. didn't complete a full 100% translation of part one before part two came out, but they seem to have followed a sensible priority list of names/items -> main plot -> H-scenes.  I'm nearly done with a replay of part 1 (Just Gnome and 3rd Tartarus to go) and it's been mostly English all the way.  If you're looking for English translations of a fave monster girl's H-scene, you might be disappointed (especially if she shows up later in the game), but the main plot seems fully translated from what I've seen so far.

So, there's a decent chance I might launch straight into a Monmusu Quest: Paradox part 2 series right after finishing up with Monmusu Conquered World.

As for my own personal writing, that's rather chaotic at the moment.  As usual I have too many projects on the go simultaneously, but at least some of them are approaching completion.  Here's the full list for people that might be interested:

H-Space Monster Girl Bestiary

I have one on the way and another batch of ideas to write.  I'm still suffering with a bloat problem on story length.  At 2.5K words they're not quite long enough to be what I'd consider a quality short story, but are taking up more time to write than the original purpose of sex scenes I flesh out into full stories at a later date.  I'm conscious of the fact I'm unlikely to put out a new novel this year.  I'm also conscious of the fact I put out the equivalent of an average novel's word count in H-space stories/profiles that I don't really know what to do with.

Priorities - not one of my strong points. :)

I'll keep adding to them when I get a chance anyway.  The setting is a little too hostile to human life at the moment, but I have a few ideas to fix this and make it a little more interesting.

Short Stories.

A H-space piece that builds up the lore a bit.  I'm about halfway through this one and I think people will like it.  I have it penciled in for Lit's Halloween contest.

Nude Day piece.  This one was penciled in for Lit's been-and-gone Nude Day contest.  A trio of lads, a derelict mansion, a lot (and I mean a lot!) of succubi in the basement.  Intro and first 3rd is done.  One of the characters needs a tweak to be less annoying/abrasive.

Novellas/Sandwiched by

"Sandwiched by Smoke".  This one's been crawling to completion for a while.  I keep coming back to it to add a few more pages.  It's inspired by '60/'70s spy serials like The Avengers and The Prisoner and should be a little more zanier than the ickier "Sandwiched by Stomachs".

Sandwiched by Slugs.  This was going to be a H-space Monster Girl Bestiary short.  I liked the setup and +1 slug girl gives me the sexy slimy sandwich to make it part of the Sandwiched by series.  (yes, it'll probably be icky).

Novels

Nicole standalone.  This was going to be the novel I wrote in between SS201 and SS301.  First two chapters are done.  I have a rough idea of the full plot and how it ties a bunch of my short stories together.  Then chapter 3 hit a roadblock, so it's sitting on the backburner until I get a chance to come back to it.

Succubus Invasion/Barry Lyle.  The backup novel I was going to write between SS201 and SS301 for the first half of this year.  Chaos writing screwed up here and I kept bouncing myself off the project to do other things (Sandwiched by, H-space Bestiary) instead of blasting this out while the ideas were hot.  I thought this was going to be parked on the backburner after I failed to finish it in the first half of 2017, but the words have started flowing again in the past couple of days (which is partly why you're getting this post and not Monmusu Conquered World Text Play part 18).  If I suddenly go very quiet in Oct/Nov it'll be because I've decided to stop jerking around and finally hammer this out.

That or:

Succubus Summoning 301.

Unsurprisingly, this is the one I get asked the most about, and the one that should be my greatest priority if I didn't have a very bad habit of my productivity being inversely proportional to the amount of pressure I put on myself to write something.  I know I'm way slower than I should be, but I also know I won't (can't) shove out of a bunch of rubbish to cash in on the popularity of the first two books.

If I hadn't finished in-between standalone novel by the 2nd half of 2017, the plan was to move on to SS301.  This is broadly in place dependent on where chaos writing takes me.  My productivity is so sketchy at the moment I'll settle for writing 10 pages on something random than trying to force a slow half-page out on whatever I think I should be writing.

This probably isn't what people want to hear, but the more I try and push myself, the more my feet dig in on things like this.  It'll come when the chapter is ready to come bursting out of my skull (which I don't think will be much longer - Rosa is very keen to go wild after I made a joke of her not getting any in SS201).

This is currently where I'm at.  Obviously, I'd prefer to have completed 1 novella + 75% of a novel, rather than 10-50% of about seven different projects, but that's how it is.

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for the update, I'll admit I was starting to wonder if you'd packed in writing. I'm sure it'll be good when the stories get released (my cash is waiting)

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  2. Just laze around all day if that's what it's going to take to get Succubus Summoning 201 out faster xD.

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  3. If that's how it is, than that's how it is. I'm just glad to hear you got some writing you're mostly satisfied with in and not just smashing your head into a brick wall, metaphorically speaking. Writer's block sucks.

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  4. Really appreciate the update! Was afraid we wouldnt see anymore of your writing, but Im happy to see that isn't the case. My cash is waiting for whenever more stuff comes out

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  5. After finishing Paradox part 2 on very easy, I'm really excited for when Dargoth gets the story for that fully translated. It's a lot less linear than part 1, so even with a machine translation it was difficult to figure out where to go sometimes.

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  6. Hello, M.E. Hydra. I would like to first say I'm a fan of your work (you have probably heard this very often). I will get straight to the point. I have bought three of your books (succubus summoning 201, a succubus for remembrance and a succubus for st. patrick's day) on Google Play. I would like to ask if and when you could make your other works available there. Pls respond to me when you can.

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  7. manyeyedhydra's
    story has won a contest at Literotica.
    Succubus Summoning 213

    Congratulations!

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  8. Good to hear from you again. Any update is a good update and I hope you'll take your time and not worry about rushing. A fan is a fan and I'll wait as long as I have to to get quality content.

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