Monthly Projects: September 2026
This month... I think I had a lot of events I wanted to take part of where I had a strong start and then they fell to the wayside. HOWEVER, there was also lots of writing. As I didn't post much, in the community section I decided to highlight some cool folks and projects shared on Pillowfort.
Web Weaving (earliest -> latest)
DW fic archive layout revamp
As part of Small Web September, I challenged myself to play around with Dreamwidth layouts. This comm... wasn't in the list but it's the only I ended up revamping completely. Despite the spontaneity, I really enjoyed the result! I ended up using Style 6 - Editor (Monokai Classic) as the base layout and dark mode color scheme. Then played around with Nord theme for the light theme. To the base layout, the only touch up I did was removing the styling for the navigating so that in smaller screens, it was in a column instead of a scrollable row. I don't know what's up with them-I just don't like them! Nor to use them! Oh wait, I think I also edited the color scheme of Monokai a little.
Okay, being kinder with myself, perhaps I just burned out from doing something new. Guess three in one month was a lot of ask of myself. The other two comms I wanted to edit the layouts of were my OC and fandom yapping comms. For the former, I want to merge Style 7 - Autumn is Blue (layout and light color scheme) with Style 9 - Summer Night (dark color scheme). Basically the same thing I did for the previous comms. What burned me out was implementing variables to the base code for switching between light and dark. It takes a lot of braincell power! Then for the latter comm, I don't really know. I'm not quite convinced of the layout I'm using right now.
Archive of Your Own Eleventy template
This is a project I began last month. I implemented Coyote's Archive of Your Own to my site which is now built with 11ty. It was a rushed job like you wouldn't believe. I tried to make it a proper template when my laptop stopped working (it's ok now). Coyote is creating its own version so I have little incentive to continue working on this.
Testing Twine and itch.io account
Similar but different??? I didn't go all into gam dev and the concepts are pretty similar to web weaving (code syntax-wise) so it stays here. So yeah, I tested Twine at the beginning of the month with an old fic. Reflections on the engine are on this new dev log. Conclusion, crazy easy to use! For now!
The itch.io account was a reckless choice because I wanted to go through the motions of publishing a game. The account is empty. Feel free to follow, or not. I'll be posting coding resources and other stuff as an alternative front to my git repo. It's just another account to add to my linkhub right now.
Writing (earliest -> latest)
This month was mostly focused on writing of the fic variety. I began with journaling on my Dreamwidth account (locked posts for some reason). Then, I wrote two posts for my 18+ site. As usual, heed the content warnings. After that I just went RIGHT INTO FIC WRITING. AND JUST KEPT GOING!!!
- College AU Galore - this is the month of thinking about AUs. Thanks Nami's Slate AU Part 2.
- More Gay Bar Thought Dump - apparently people (me) have a lot of thoughts about experiences they've never had.
- Kirishima Keima & Kirishima Saki - on the relationship between mother and son OCs.
- Alternative Universe as a Tool for Character Exploration - a reflection on how I'm using various AUs to explore my OCs in novel ways.
- For the Freedom to Love Dev Log - dev log for a Twine novel.
- Dev Log#3: Free Visual Novel Assets Collection (ft. Itch.io) - on said devlog I shared a bunch of free assets I found on itch.io.
- For the Freedom to Love Act I - Fully drafted. It's a game script so it's probably not gonna be posted??? Although I do like the idea of a traditional prose version versus an interactive version. At least till the choices come. Anyways, ACT I DONE!!!! Kinda weird though since I didn't intend to work on it this month it just HAPENNED. And then I just KEPT WRITING. Word count is 700 words.
- For the Freedom to Love Act II - The boys have met!!! They're are talking!!! gushing noices. Current WIP. Word count is less than 2k.
- Kinktober NSFW fic #1 - Fully drafted. supposed to be Kinktober entry that derailed. As in, I just went with it and it ended up being around 2.5k. I have no idea what prompts this fic fulfills but it's out of my system at least. Whatever I was feeling while writing this led to starting what later became Act I.
- Kinktober NSFW fic #2 - was born out of the previous one as well. Been writing a lot in Keima's POV lately. Current WIP. Word count it 2.2k.
Total fic word count: ~7.4k words (wowie!).
Community
I got busy with other stuff this month so I wasn't very active on community events. I took this chance to check off some things that were on my backlog and explore other corners of Pillowfort.
- Nomnomnami hosted as an ask session on their website at the beginning of the month where folks can leave questions while publishing the second half of the Slate AU. It had me on a chokehold. What was life outside of this comic? I can remember. (joking)
- Applied to volunteer at Pillowfort.social. They're aiming to become a non-profit and as one of the few places that allows NSFW art and offers some solid privacy features, I would like to help it thrive.
- Started taking part in some writing games over at Pillowfort at the suggestion of some established Pillowfort users and dip my toes on the large writing community there.
- I wanna shoutout the talented artist rah over on Pillowfort and her story Spice Road. I've been seeing sketches like one and it stole my heart ヾ(•ω•`)o. I'm extremely weak to the trope of two men raising a daughter.
- Continuing with the Pillowfort news, the extension, Tassel, now includes a feature to download one's posts. Haven't tried it myself. I'm sure they would appreciate feedback from other testers though!
- Coyote wrote a post, "If you weren't on Cohost, you don't have to miss it" about the ugly side of the social media site that shut down about two years ago. It allowed to finally articulate my experience on the site before I had any experience with the cognitive demands of the Indie web/Small web compared to mainstream social media, the time and effort it takes to find people with similar interests and forge connections. Here are my reflections which I should share on my accounts/blogs.
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And that's it for this month! Kinktober is here and I can't put any braincells on it until I get these monthly posts out so that's what I'm doing. Here's to more writing!
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