Welcome to the Art of Dina M!

…no, wait, that should be the other way around. It’s September right now.

Sorry for the radio silence, but I’ve been around here and there… as you can see there’s new comics and a new blog post, and I’m currently about 70% done with the second draft of the second Project Eryss story, Holly Blackthorne and the Silent Choir. It’s currently about 20 000 words long… twice as long as Welcome to Paragon Bay! This is a full-fledged novella, even if much of it is dedicated to a long dialogue between Holly and Monkaya.

(I like novellas. They have more room to breathe than short stories, they can have more characters and more plot, but they’re still simpler and easier to finish than novels.)

Also, Amarys the computer is back with me, and has been back for a few weeks… after a very long and extended stay in the repair shop. I ended up having to rely on Lyra the Chromebook for a lot longer than anticipated… normally repairs are supposed to take a week or so, but after one week the repair shop sent me confirmation that they’d received my computer and started the repairs, but they didn’t have the right spare parts so they’d have to contact ASUS and send away for the parts.

Okay, I thought, it would take a little longer… but then, one week later, I got the updates: They had received the parts, but the they discovered that there were MORE spare parts that they didn’t have and needed to order from Asus, and they would get THOSE spare parts within the week.

OKAY, I thought, we’ll have to wait for another week. Now it had been three weeks. And on the fourth week, guess what happened? Yep! I got another message saying that they had to order yet MORE spare parts from Asus, and it would take another week.

By now I was slightly fed up, and I sent them a complaint e-mail asking just how many spare parts they needed and how much of the original computer was even left at this point. I got a message back with profound apologies, but with an assurance that I didn’t need to pay for any of this. And so FINALLY one week later I got the message that the parts from Asus had arrived… and while I was bracing myself for the follow-up, this time I got the message that the computer was all fixed, and they’d tested it thoroughly and everything was in perfect working order.

They’d replaced the motherboard, the screen, the keyboard, the LED cables, the LED lights and a few more things that I don’t remember. So it was basically a brand new Amarys that returned to me, more than five weeks after I’d sent her away.

I’ve taken some time to get her settled back in and see if she starts horsing around again, but she’s been working almost perfectly… there was ONE time when she BSOD’ed me for seemingly no reason but that appears to have been a one-time thing.

So, everything is in working order!

September 2023 I wrote about having just purchased a new laptop; an Asus TUF A16 that I named Amarys. She was a bit of a downgrade from my previous laptop, an Asus ROG named Valerie, but Valerie was nine years old at the time and couldn’t keep up anymore.

Almost two years on I realize just how spoiled I’d been with Valerie, who ran smoothly for six years before any problems hit her and even then it was just a battery issue. Right up until she gave out, she worked at near-peak performance, only starting to lag a little a few months before she finally threw in the towel. Amarys… hasn’t been as sure of herself. While she’s generally worked just fine, there have been some issues. A weird line of dead pixels on the screen that I didn’t do anything with because it was nearly unnoticeable… and occasionally, VERY occasionally, she just turned herself off with no warning.

For the longest time I thought these shut-downs were just me accidentally pushing the power button… the mechanical keyboard I use sometimes moves a little, and well… But in hindsight it was probably a sign that something else was going on. I noticed it after the clock set back after Daylight Savings Time; suddenly the shutdowns got more frequent. I was looking at several sudden shutdowns per week, and after a few of them it took nearly five minutes before the computer would respond to pushing the power button. As if that wasn’t enough, after some of the shutdowns the clock reset to midnight.

I checked official sites and message boards. I watched YouTube videos. I checked Asus customer service and even consulted a couple of AI chats. I tried several solutions, to no avail. It got clearer and clearer that we were looking at a hardware issue that I couldn’t take care of on my own. So finally I had to face facts: Amarys needed repairs.

And so, with a kiss and tons of well wishes I cleaned her screen, packed her down in her original box with lots of bubble wrap for protection, and sent her off to Asus for repairs. (She actually functioned great for an entire week before I sent her in… but then the night before she shut off an impressive four times in twenty minutes and then reset the clock and sulked for five minutes before I could coax her back for one final boot-up and a last session before her journey… yeah, she REALLY needs those repairs.)

So, now while she’s gone I’m without my main computer. Buuuuut that’s not the HUGEST problem, since I still have my Chromebook, an Acer Spin 314 that I mainly use at work and that I’ve affectionately named Lyra. Now, Lyra doesn’t have one-third of Amarys’s power or versatility, but as a temporary main computer she’ll at least keep me online. I can still write my Holly Blackthorne story, surf the web, keep up on social media, stream Netflix and Disney+, and even keep editing this website. And when it comes to drawing… luckily I still use my Wacom MobileStudio Pro for that.

No, I didn’t name my Wacom MobileStudio Pro. What am I, weird or something?

Happy Pride Month, everyone!

You know the big update I’ve been teasing for ever so long? Well, it’s finally here. This is the official launch of a new section on this website: Project Eryss!

Yep, the series of erotic superhero stories (with superheroines in distress and erotic mind control) has officially started. You’ll see that this new section has a slightly different look and design than the rest of the site. The theme is purple rather than pink, and the headlines and fonts are slightly more sci-fi inspired… this is really because I found the old pink theme didn’t work too well for a superhero theme, and this makes Project Eryss stand out a little.

(You might also notice a new background image for the rest of the site, with pink clouds and stars and spirals. It’s not that visible on the mobile version of the site, but desktoppers should see it. There’s no real reason for it other than I thought the solid pink got a little bland, especially compared to the purple cityscape in the Project Eryss section. Never one to do anything halfway, I also gave a new green background to the Seven Favours section.)

The main attraction of the update is the first Project Eryss story, Welcome to Paragon Bay! It’s a one-chapter novella of about 11 350 words, which should serve as a slight introduction to the setting of Paragon Bay. It takes place a couple of years before the next batch of stories and focuses on smalltown acting student Jenna Lee Foster as she visits Paragon Bay for the first time… and of course it ends with mind control and manipulation and lesbian sex. Mind you, this isn’t safe, sane and consensual… but then this genre never is, is it?

There’s also a Locations page, where you can read a little more about the city of Paragon Bay and its 14 districts. There’ll be more locations added later… you might have caught on by now that the Project Eryss stories don’t take place on our regular Earth, but a parallel world where continents, nations and brands are different. You won’t see Norway or England or the United States in this world… but you will see nations like Westhaven, Tir’Galdur and Tyrellan.

Project Eryss also has its own character page, where you can meet the heroines, heroes and villains of the upcoming story. There are 30+ characters on the page… only a handful of them appear in Welcome to Paragon Bay, and even then most of them are just cameos, but all of them are going to get more attention in later stories. Like I’ve said before, I’m envisioning Project Eryss as kind of an Astro City-like series of stories; there isn’t one central character or set of characters, but different stories will focus on different characters. (It’s a little like Metrobay Comix in this too, especially with the erotic mind control!) The first story focuses on Jenna and of course on Rosalyn Westwood AKA Dream Jewel… but the next story, Holly Blackthorne and the Silent Choir, is going to focus on the characters of Holly Blackthorne and Monkaya.

Finally, there’s a Glossary and a Timeline… though the Timeline isn’t quite ready for the public yet.

I think this should be fun. I’ve been wanting to do this project for years, and finally I’ve started up.

I’ll be back later with some more thoughts and behind-the-scenes peeks at Paragon Bay and the heroes and villains… and my thoughts on why I wanted to do a superheroines-in-distress series of prose stories that ended up kind of becoming something a little more… but for now, I hope you enjoy this new section of the site!

Happy Easter, people!

So, I haven’t updated a lot here, but a notable one is just around the corner. Because I’m just finishing cleaning up the first story in the Project Eryss collection, Welcome to Paragon Bay. The people on my Patreon have been able to read the story for a while now, but it’s almost ready to share with y’all lovely people.

I’m thinking Project Eryss will get its own section on this site, with links to the stories, character art and profiles, and a look at the timeline for the entire shared story universe… I really had fun with this worldbuilding. And it’s not even done yet…. though I have made a semi-detailed description of Paragon Bay and the Aurelia Islands where it’s located. I’ve also done quite a bit on the nations of Ecanria, New Westhaven and Tir’Galdur. all of whom play a certain part in Paragon Bay’s history.

In the meantime, here is a preview of the map of the Aurelia Islands and Paragon Bay, with its fourteen districts (colour-coded).

But there is more too! There IS a blog post up about my writing, where I rant about Youtube vids with bad author tips, and a Chibi-Dina comic. (Whatever Happened to Chibi-Dina isn’t done yet, it’s just that part eleven had to wait a little while I was doing other things,)

Part Seven of Whatever Happened to Chibi-Dina? is up. Part seven includes Yuna, the purple-haired telepath. She’s been around in the background for a while, and I’ve mentioned her a few times on my Patreon and the connected Discord, but this is actually the first time she has a speaking role in any of my actual comics. But seeing as how I’m planning on giving her a larger role in certain upcoming projects, I thought it was about time to give her her own entry on the character page.

Also, I wrote a review of the sitcom/crime drama Kevin Can Fuck Himself. Main takeaway: It was good but not great. Nice to see such a vicious takedown of the “boorish manchild husband with the nagging sensible wife” sitcom setup, but I think they could have done it more efficiently.

I really should figure out a system for these “What’s New?” posts. I’ve done several small updates and forgot to mention it here.

Parts 4, 5 and 6 of Whatever Happened to Chibi-Dina? can be read on that comic’s page. I still don’t know how long this story will end up being, but with its six parts and 34 panels (seven parts and 40 panels if we count the prelude, Chibi-Dina’s Hypnoween III, as part of the same story) it’s already the longest Chibi-Dina comic to date. Be interesting to see how long I can keep Chibi-Dina being pushed from erotic hypno-situation to erotic hypno-situation… though I suspect I won’t be able to stretch it out beyond ten parts and maybe not even that.

Also, my first blog post in a while, “The Rose” and Being Aromantic, is also up. It ended up being a lot longer and more emotional than I had planned… I really just wanted to write a few words about what it was like to grow up as an aromantic, but then that song kind of entered the narrative and,,, yeah, you’ll get it if you read the post.

I’m also plotting out a visual novel starring Chibi-Dina, but that’s going to take a bit of time.

So… long story short, and some of you already knew this, but the other week my Discord account was hacked by some scammers that I ALMOST managed to fall for. It was the “I accidentally reported you to the Discord mods” scam, and it was late at night so I wasn’t as alert as I should have been…. Now, I came to my senses before they managed to get any money out of me, but the e-mail address I had connected to Discord was changed to an e-mail that wasn’t mine, and I couldn’t change it back.

I was in talks with Discord Support to see what could be done… luckily I had enabled my two-step verification and could log in using my phone, so the hacker didn’t get any actual control over my account. So I was hoping the Discord Support team could help me. And I had a few e-mails back and forth… but then, total radio silence.

And then, when I tried logging into my account yesterday, I was told it was disabled. No warnings, no more mails from Discord support, just “your account has been disabled.”

With the Discord Support team so… unresponsive, I decided that the only thing to do was to start a new Discord account. I kind of need Discord to keep in touch with a lot of people. Now my IP address hadn’t been banned or anything like that, so it was easy enough to set up a new account… though of course it meant I was out of a ton of Discord servers and had lost all my Discord contacts. I’m building it back up, and have posted about this both to Bluesky, Tumblr, Mastodon and even X-Twit (even if I hardly ever use that anymore, there are still a lot of people I know there), but in case you didn’t catch it: My new Discord account name is simply dinamnealey in one word. If you DM me I’ll add you as a friend as soon as I can.

But! There is also a small website update. Part 3 of Whatever Happened to Chibi-Dina? is up, and part four shouldn’t be too long in the coming. Not sure how many parts the comic will have when it’s done, but probably at least six. It depends a little on when I run out of ideas for it… but what I can say is that Chibi-Dina will spend most of it either asleep or in a trance, and get pulled into new hypnotic or erotic situations through no fault of her own. I’ve been wanting to do a “helpless protagonist who spends an entire story hypnotized and oblivious as other take advantage of her” story for some time, and using Chibi-Dina as well as tying it together with my unintentional hiatus for the last part of 2023 seemed like as good an occasion as any.

Speaking of Chibi-Dina, she and twilight the Catgirl guest-starred in a comic by MesmerEye called Maxwell, Chibi-dina, twilight, and a Phoney Booth, which you can read on DeviantArt.

I hate April Fool’s Day. That’s not the start of a joke or a clever April Fool’s prank, I canNOT stand this so-called holiday.

It might not have been so bad if the “pranks” had actually been funny. But 99 times out of 100 it’s just the same thing over and over, especially with online creators. Either they post a “hilarious fake instalment” of whatever they are currently doing, or they declare they’re retiring and won’t be posting anymore, or they leak obviously fake news or plans… it’s SO DULL. And pretty annoying too. I hope nothing important ever happens on the 1st of April, because when it hits the news everyone’s just going to think it’s a prank.

Usually on April Fool’s Day I refuse to post anything at all online, or even check any social media. But this year I’ve kind of been very silent, and so I’m taking a bit of time to say: I’m still here. I haven’t given up on anything. Life got very busy, but I’m coping.

Oh, and if you didn’t notice I finally posted the new chapter of Seven Favours. That’s STILL not an April Fool’s joke, it’s a legitimate new chapter. I’m working on the second year for the story, it’s just more difficult than the first year. I’m a lot better at beginning stories than finishing them.

I know… it’s been a long time since my last site update. I won’t bore you with personal details… suffice to say, a new job combined with some health problems gave me very little time and energy for online stuff.

Or if you prefer, I have another explanation for where I’ve been since Halloween right here.

I’ve also finally finished and posted a blog post I’ve had half-finished since November, where I whine about people whining about “strong female characters.”

I’ve also finally managed to get on Bluesky. X-Twit is getting worse and worse, and I’m barely even there anymore… I’ve been trying to find a good replacement, and have tried out both Mastodon and Pillowfort… they’re okay, but more people I know seem to be on Bluesky. Of course, Bluesky’s still in the “invites only” stage, but I seem to be getting more engagement there than the other ones… so that’s good. If you’re on Bluesky too, feel free to look me up!

Well… Summer hasn’t been very good to me. Weather has been pretty lousy, though I suppose I deserved that after complaining about how hot June was. I spent a lot of July and August sick… got a nasty cold, then an ear infection, and just as I recovered from that, I got another ear infection in the OTHER ear. Then I got another cold. I was pretty exhausted at the end… but I’m starting to feel better.

But my old computer Valeria is not feeling better. In fact, recently she decided that enough was enough and stopped functioning. And really, I can’t blame her. She was an old ASUS ROG from 2014 and nine years is a respectable age for a laptop… especially since she kept performing at ALMOST peak form for much longer than I had expected. Sure, there were a couple of issues, most notably the battery had been shot to hell and ol’ Val only worked when she was plugged in… and the keyboard had a few loose keys (though since I use a separate gaming keyboard with mechanical keys anyway, that was less of a problem)… but she faithfully ran every program, streamed movies and TV series in high definition up until the very end.

It was only the last few months I noticed that she was getting tired. Things were lagging just SLIGHTLY more, and the hard drive was getting clogged; even deep cleanings didn’t do much. I was pondering whether I’d have to get a new laptop soon, but hoped Val could hang in there until Christmas at least… She still ran all the programs smoothly with only a few minor hiccups, despite being the ripe old age of nine. I got an external 2TB harddrive to store pics, music and video files, I cleaned vents, I defragged what stations that could be defragged, and ran several cleaning programs.

But in the end, it was too much for Val. One Tuesday morn, she gave up. I could no longer get her to work. In the end, I had to face that the old ROG was no longer functioning and I needed to upgrade to a newer model.

It took some time to find one. I wanted at least something that was DECENT quality-wise, with a large enough screen at at least 1TB of storage space, even if I might not have the cash to spend that I’d had back when I got ol’ Val. I was pondering another ROG, but as bad luck would have it, the ROGs I had my eyes on were either not in stock, or they were FUCKING EXPENSIVE.

I thought I had a decent candidate when I found an ASUS ROG Zephyrus at a pretty hefty discount, but I was just a little too late and it was sold out.

In the end, I found my new computer… an ASUS TUF A16.

It was a bit of a downgrade from the ol’ ROG; it was a 16-inch screen instead of the 17-inch I previously had, and the storage was 1TB instead of the 1.2TB of the ROG… but of course, with almost a decade of advancement in computers, the specs were better… and this new computer would run Windows 11, which Valerie had been too old to do. And the price was pretty reasonable, too. I checked out some reviews… the reviewers’ enthusiasm for the TUF 16 varied a little, but even the less enthusiastic reviewers said it was a decent gaming laptop. And the TUF 16 was in stock in computer stores near me, meaning I wouldn’t have to wait for ages for delivery….

And so, after having placed in a reservation for a Click&Collect at a computer store in town, I set out to fetch and collect my new computer. Which I then took home, and on the first boot-up decided to name “Amarys.”

I was very grateful for that 2TB external harddrive, because it meant I had a backup copy of most of my files… and the ones that weren’t on the harddrive were on OneDrive. So I ended up not really losing any content at all, though I needed to re-download a number of programs. It went ALMOST without a hitch. Even my passwords and log-ins, I managed to recover with no problem… it did help that my MobileStudio Pro was running Windows on the same account, and was more than willing to provide.

That’s not to say Amarys wasn’t a little hesitant to start cooperating at first. After the first startup and Windows setup, she wasn’t quite sure if she really liked her new surroundings, and responded with a few slow moments and program crashes, plus one rather baffling section where she insisted on showing all on-screen text (but not the pictures or videos) in grainy low resolution. Luckily, after a huge amount of Windows updates, a few restarts, and quite a bit of time spent tweaking Windows settings and screen calibrations, we managed to reach some kind of an understanding, and she began functioning properly.

Sure, she’s not quite as eager to get started as Valeria was; she takes a lot longer booting up, and recovering from sleep mode takes longer too, but once she’s up and running, she performs great. Programs are running, movies are streaming, graphics are sharp… even with the slightly smaller screen we still have some good media performances here. In the end, Amarys started to get what I really wanted from her, and began cooperating.

We celebrated the new partnership by watching Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake. 

So, going forward, I have a new computer. Hopefully this’ll pick me out of the slump I’ve been in. I’ll see you later!