I'd planned to do a chapter a day like I'd more or less done with the DCR and TV audits, but the idea of that much tedium spread out over that much time didn't sit well with me. I sucked it up and plowed through it in three work sessions - the original "test" chapter, two through Expulsion yesterday, then everything else this morning.

The major achievement is the removal of all links to the old version of the website - the book now has a solid, self-contained data structure for the first time in a couple of years. I've also pruned out a lot of dead links, removed a bunch of unnecessary links, updated the links I deemed necessary, did some editing and some culling. I also altered the formatting - prior to the audit, nearly every page of The Dualist had a Movable Type tag in the entry. This pulled in the formatting for the "first edition metadata" splitter with the notion of retaining some form of forward malleability.

I've also culled some (not all, but some) of the emo. My consistency in this respect made sense in the second edition commentary, but to see myself stuck in a loop on a few specific issues for years was a bit disturbing. Fortunately I've quit drinking (for the time being) and I've more or less got my diet sorted, so two of the major sources of whinging are currently moot.

I also removed a shitload of "woot" and "ph34r" and variations thereof. I didn't get 'em all, but they have been culled from an incessant refrain to every so often.

There's only one major thing left to do for The Dualist and Transitional Voices,* and that's to create a hardcopy-scale file for each page. The "live" area is already the right size, mind you - they just need their gutters expanded. That's a photoshop batch action, and that's something I can do later.

Now that this bit of work is out of the way, the way is clear for some more work on the Universe (hah!) and the DCR.4 script.

My current goal for DCR is figuring out how to cram DCR.4 and DCR.5 into 50 pages or less. I've already cut the equivalent of an entire chapter from the story - now I need to figure out how to cram the last handful of scenes into a reasonable page count. I'd like to be on TV.2 this time next year, and I consider the script and this little bit of site maintenance to be steps in that direction.

* DCR is produced with the print-scale gutters. I use a photoshop action to crop and scale the page to web presentation, instead of simply dropping it to 600x900 like I've done with the color books. When TV resumes it'll be guttered and actioned like DCR.

The metadata for Transitional Voices chapter one has been given a thorough once-over and is back online. Unlike DCR, there were a few pages that didn't need fixes. Like DCR, there were a lot of links to fix or remove. Also some subtle editing and some images to transfer.

If yesterday and this morning have proved anything, it's that I can comfortably bite off audits one chapter-sized chunk at a time. This bodes well for The Dualist - though it's a different challenge with vastly different editing requirements, a couple of hours a day should still see it ground out and back online before August is out.

The DCR metadata has been cleaned up and put back online. The work focused on chapter one and the first four pages of chapter two, and consisted primarily of link editing. Links to most old instances of The Dualist (back when it was ATC) have been fixed and in a few cases removed. A load of old dead links have been removed, though all of the old dead links to various PGHGoth-related nights and personalities have been retained. I also indulged in some minor editing and removed all links to images hosted on dcr.org and the old version of the ATC website.

By the time the metadata audit is complete, I should have that site isolated enough to finally delete it.

I've also added most of the Hemera crew to the cast section. The mass entry is missing one or two Addicaines, which I'll generate at a later date.

All ATC data has been copied out of the CMS. TV and The Dualist are ready for auditing - TV will be next. I'll likely do The Dualist in chunks and then apply the fix after all pages have been processed. That's gonna be awhile - this bit of work (pulling over 500 entries and proofing just over 30 of them) has made my brain gooey, so I'm gonna do something else for a bit.

I need to edit a couple of pages of DCR.1 to bring them in line with standards established in DCR.3 - I'll post links to the pages when I've finished the fixes.

Later : Make that page, singular. The cars in whitehouse -16- have been silhouetted. Whitehouse -27- gets a pass for now - the visible vehicles can pass for '97-era and the main panel was hit with a filter. It looks nice, but my usual stencil approach won't match without a good amount of rubber-stamping. I'll probably fix it at some point down the road, but for today... I've done more than enough work. Time to shift gears!

Production of DCR.3 wrapped this weekend, clearing the way for me to Get Serious about DCR.4. Originally titled Seasons in the Abyss, now tentatively titled Diatribe, the chapter has a full outline and partial script and will need an extensive amount of development within the next month if I'm to shoot the images I'll need for the opening at an appropriate time of year. I'm in a position to chew on this while getting work done on paying projects and wrapping up a few other things - script development isn't nearly as onerous as page production, especially given the fact that it's half done already.

When I tell writers that writing comics is the easy part, the writers who write frequently bristle and get pissy with me, whereas the writers who also work on the art side of a project have a tendency to agree. They're different challenges - while they use different parts of the brain in different ways, there's no disputing the fact that once something pops into your head, writing out a description takes a hell of a lot less time than drawing, modeling, photoshopping or otherwise rendering the image - especially if, as the writer, you know exactly what you want on the page.

This applies to the next chapter in spades. While script development has been relatively straight-forward, visually realizing what happens in chapter four is going to be one hell of a challenge. The beginning and end are straight-forward, chapter five is straight-forward, but the middle (the majority) of chapter four is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around from a feasibility standpoint. It's some seriously major plot stuff, both for DCR and for the story as a whole, and I'll need to be at the top of my game just to get the layouts right.

I don't know how long the script will take - I'd like to shoe-horn it in over the course of the next month in addition to other obligations, and would like to have the critical assets modeled and page production under way by some point in October. I don't want a repeat of DCR.3, where the cover goes up in November and I spend the next four months in an alcoholic haze. I want this thing to go cover to pages quickly, and I'd like production to be as regular as the latter two-thirds of DCR.3 was.

That said, there's a few website-related details that need taken care of over the course of the next month, as well as some back-end bit-shifting. Here's the list:

1. The Hemera crew needs to be added to the Cast page. I may split them into ICG and Addicaines, I may lump them into Heirotus, I may use this as an excuse to play with tags a bit further down the road. There's a skeletal writeup already done - I just need to flesh it out and select headshots.

2. I need to audit the metadata. Technically I need to do it for all three books, but DCR and TV get priority, as between the two I'm looking at just under 80 pages that need to be proofed versus the 350-plus of The Dualist. Metadata for both books will be back online within the next couple of weeks. The Dualist will take longer - I'm currently thinking of it as a winter project, and I'm thinking on ways to re-jigger the CMS templates to hide/disable unaudited sections while rolling out the revised material.

3. As part of the audit I'll be creating disk-side metadata files for each page. I've already done this for DCR.3, and for TD2E in bulk. In this case I'll be extending it to all pages, and that'll be part of an effort to get the file hierarchy for The Dualist reorganized - something I'll be starting today or tomorrow. The original pages are in an original chapter directory that's a sub-directory of each new chapter, and long story short that's made it a bit disorienting to find color palettes and other reference material on short notice.

4. I've been threatening to edit and add to the glossary/Universe and refusing to actually do it for so long that this is effectively the list item that cried wolf. There's a lot of work to be done, and there's enough material on "paper" to justify spending some time at least editing the existing entries. While I doubt this will actually happen (beyond adding the Hemera crew), there's always the possibility that it might actually get done at some point.

5. DCR.3 needs to be typornographed. Rather or not xeno will actually remember to do this is anybody's guess.

One is happening soon, Two is happening soonish, and half of Three will be done today or tomorrow. The third item means nothing to readers, so it's best to get it out of the way quickly. Five isn't a xeno-only thing - if you find a typo, feel free to contact me or leave a comment!

So.

That's the short term between-chapters plan. With a bit of luck and a lot of effort this stretch of downtime will be a short one, and I'll be back on the stick before the year is out!