Welcome to the Art of Dina M!

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 kan 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 gol 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!

I didn’t do a whole lot for this site in May… been working more on Project ERYSS and Seven Favours, and did a few commissions, but very little for the site. However, you can read the new Chibi-Dina comic, Chibi-Dina’s Pride, which I did to celebrate Pride Month…. and explain a bit about why Pride Month should be celebrated. For once, there’s no nudity or hypno-content, or even a real punchline… just a small, earnest speech about Pride Month.

It’s no secret that I’m part of the LGBTQ community… I mean, all those comics with Chibi-Dina in graphic lesbian sex scenes should clue you in that I like the ladies… but I ALSO like the guys, and the inbetwixters. I’m also slightly genderqueer, and have called myself “genderfluid” for some time… but after having gone through some of the pride flags for the comic (I only included a select few because there weren’t room for all the flags!), I do wonder if I might classify myself as “genderfaer.”

What’s genderfaer, you ask? Well, it’s a variant om the “genderfae” term, which means you’re genderfluid but only between feminine, agender and non-binary genders and never masculine ones. If you add the R at the end, you get “genderfaer,” which means you CAN experience masculine genders, but never like a fully binary man.

I THINK that’s closest to what I am.

I have mentioned before how for the most part my attitude towards my own gender is “meh, whatever,” with a few (addmittedly infrequent) moments of either gender dysphoria or gender euphoria.Some people have described being genderfluid as a rommercoaster with highs and lows… in my case it’s more like a train ride over a long flat stretch that occasionally and for no reason at all decides to turn into a rollercoaster for a short while before continuing on its long stretch. But it never seems to go QUITE so far as “I’m a man.”

Bigots and haters will laugh at me, call me freak and pervert and worse, but I’ve never been inclined to listen to people like that.

I’ve talked a lot about Project ERYSS as of late, and now I can reveal that the first story in the series, Welcome to Paragon Bay, is done, It’s a one-chapter novelette of about 10 000 words, and will be posted to this site at some point… though it’s already up on my Patreon, if you want to read it now… along with the first attempt at a start of the series, Meet the Alliance (to be revised),

So, Project ERYSS. I’ll write up a more detailed introduction to the world and the story later, but just to give a bit more information:

Project ERYSS is a planned series of short stories, novellas and novelettes (you might call them “light novels”) all set in a world where superheroes and metahumand exist and have been part of human life for centuries.

The main setting is Paragon Bay, a modern island metropolis with.thirteen districts, almost 4 million inabitants, and an untold number of superheroes and -villains. It’s named for one of its founders and greatest heroes, the now-sadly deceased war hero Paragon… though the rest of the world also often call the city “Supervillain Central.” Not completely without reason. Because Paragon Bay is also secretly where you find the main headquarters of the mysterious Project ERYSS….

The stories will be very adult-rated, often feature mind-control, non-con and dub-con, superheroines in erotic peril and other things you shouldn’t show your kids. But hopefully I’ll also manage to have a bit of fun, adventure and character interactions. I can at least promise that I’m not going to have every story a copy-paste of the previous one, and the number of street thugs who effortlessly beat up trained warriors is going to be very low… it’s supposed to be SUPERHEROINES in peril, not completely ineffectual damsels.

Inspired by Astro City, as well as online erotic superhero universes like Metrobay Comix (I like Trishbot’s stories!), there won’t be one main character, or even one set of main characters. Different stories will focus on different characters, and while some chars might only get a single focus story, others wil be recurring.

So far, four stories are either finished or in the works, with more being planned.

• Welcome to Paragon Bay: Jenna Lee Foster still doesn’t know why Rosalynn Westwood, of the multi-billionaire Westwood family, offered her five million dollars to come see her in Paragon Bay… but curiosity, money and the fact that Rosalynn has been her biggest celebrity crush for years, made her brave the trip to the city everyone calls “Supervillain Central.” Of course, it may not have been that good an idea… (Finished,)
  
• Watch the Stone Shine: David is a normal (though not particularly friendly or likeable) store clerk who happens to find a ring with a magic ruby that can turn anyone who looks at it into his mindless hypno-slave… including female cops and superheroines. But will he bite off more than he can chew? (About 70% done.)
  
• Sage to Seraphim (working title): Seraphim, Paragon Bay’s oldest and most admired superheroine, looks back on her past, inclucing her history with the evil Lord Waric, Kaldor the barbarian hero, and Paragon, the war hero and co-founder of Paragon Bay. (In planning.)
  
• Meet the Alliance: A college student vanishes from her dorm room without a trace. The newly formed Alliance of Super Chicks, led by Ermine (the White Vigilante of Blackstone), have a mystery on their hands. (Under revision.)

Just a quick heads-up that there’s new instalments in both the Cavalcades of Lady Vidia: The Chosen One Cavalcade has a new pic that was a Patreon request, and the Disney Cavalcade has a Snow White-themed pic. The Snow White themed pic also features a cameo from a character named Ethereal, who is part of my upcoming erotic superhero project, Project Eryss.

And speaking of: I’m about half done writing Watch The Stone Shine, a novelette set in the Project Eryss setting and featuring a couple of the characters. It’s a bit of an experiment for me, since it’s a parody of some of those “errotic superhero stories” out there… you know, with some unlikeable main character who defeats seasoned superheroes and the narrative tone is “bitch deserved it.” I wanted to try my own take on that, complete with the kind of ending I think such stories SHOULD have.

It’s the first time I’m trying to write a main character that’s deliberately unlikeable… I mean, some of my chars definitely have unlikeable traits; Lady Vidia can be rather creepy and obnoxious, for one, but I’m sort of hoping she has enough charm that she’s engaging and likeable on some level. The MC of Watch the Stone Shine is supposed to come across as extremely selfish, self-centered and entitled… I’m just hoping that people reading the story start thinking “yeah, that’s just like me!”

I’m not 100% sure how I’ll release Watch the Stone Shine to the public yet… but I’ll begin posting the chapters on my Patreon before too long… in case you’re interested. There’s some other Patreon-exclusive stories, including a short story set in the world of Holly Potter and the Witching World, a silly little Sabrina the Teenage Witch fanfic, and the start of Project Eryss.

Patreons also get access to my Discord server, and first look at pretty much any artwork I make. In case you’re interested.