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Alright, so the next week is going to be fun for me. My boss was on vacation over the last week and I was so damn busy that I didn’t even finish the next chapter [87] and I certainly didn’t have a chance to work on any of my other projects.

A big chunk of that is my fault, really. Why I thought staying up all day Tuesday after being up all night I’ll never understand. I was up for 33 hours and managed to write like 10% of a chapter because I was too preoccupied by not falling asleep to focus on the story.

It was a fun stream, though, even if I’m sure there were moments I had dozed of for a second or two. Part of me wants t ogo back and check, the other reminds me that I dont’ have the time.

My ego is also adamant that I did no such thing and was perfectly coherent and aware the entire time. I think it’s lying but I like what it’s telling me so we’ll go with that.

I really need to get to bed because I have once again managed my time poorly, so I’ll try to keep this as brief as I can while covering everything that needs to be mentioned.

First, the commentary for chapter 81 has been posted. If you need a little pre-chapter reading or think the chapter is missing something- like an unnecessarily long AN- go ahead and check it out.

Next, I spent an hour playing around on the site and managed to get a basic forum set up. Eyazahrids’ Project board is accessible through the link at the top of the page or at Eyazahrid.net/ProjectBoard . It’s empty at the moment, but I figure this would probably work better than the Google Drive folder I had set up.

Haven’t had time to post things for either, but hopefully soon.

If you have any ideas or challenges you’d like to share with the community feel free to post them under the Eyazahrids’ Community Projects thread. I don’t think you can post on the other two, but in case you can please don’t. I’m going to be using those so you can see the projects I’m currently workign on and the ones i plan to do as soon as I have the time.

Third, I don’t have any Bonsai pics for you this week but next week brings us into June which means the girls are due for some new soil- and one of them still needs both a pot and a name – so after I do that I’ll take pictures and post them here.

Next, I do have three days off coming up – though I’m supposed to show up for some additional training during one of them- so hopefully I can at least catch back up. I’ve already promised a stream for Tuesday [2019.05.29 @ 0300-0700 UTC] but I’ll try to get us back on track by at least streaming on Thursday [2019.05.31 @ 0300-0700 UTC] as usual. Won’t make any promises for Friday [2019.06.01 @ 0300-0700 UTC] but chances are pretty good.

If you have any questions- related to the story or not – this would be an excellent chance for you to stop by and ask. If you’re going to miss these or have missed my older streams, I do post them all to Youtube – usually a few days late, but they get there- so you can always go back to see what we were up to.

Finally- I have a nagging feeling I’m forgetting something important- we have our teaser for chapter, erm, one second.

Ah, chapter 86. Damn, I gave those out too fast, we’re almost caught up to my current chapter.

Oh well, you’ve waited patiently enough. Not like you’ll remember it by the time the chapter is posted.

Sasuke asks for a favor, Overseer Jirobo shows off his work, Naruto gets protective, and Anko finally receives her present.

That should do it for this update- I fucking know I’m forgetting something- so we’ll end it here. I need to get to bed.

Until I next have your attention,

–Eyazahrid

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Seems we’ll be doing this weekly, almost like a pre-chapter sort of thing, and that should be fine. I would like to do them more often but I’ve been strapped for time lately and it just wasn’t a priority when all I really had to talk about was finishing a single chapter.

Well, I say strapped for time but during the 2019.05.17 stream we ended up spending over an hour playing slots in Moxxi’s Bar. We’re going to go ahead and consider that “work” because I was streaming.

It’s how I’m justifying it, anyway.

Speaking of streaming, I typically stream every Friday at 0400-0700 UTC and on most Saturdays at the same time. For me that’s Thursday and Friday evenings but who knows what that might be for all of you.

This coming week will be a bit different because my boss is going on vacation so my schedule is a bit weird. I’ll be off Wednesday the 22nd and Tuesday the 28th. I’m not sure about the 28th, but I should definitely be able to stream on the 22nd (2019.05.23 at 0300 UTC). I’ll probably keep it something simple because I will have work the next morning- in fact, I may end up streaming earlier because of it- but we’ll see.

There should be no interruption to your regular chapter on Monday the 27th because of this.

If you miss a stream they are available on Twitch at Twitch.tv/Eyazahrid or posted on my Youtube. I’d give you three guesses what my channel name is, but you probably don’t need them.

You may have noticed that there’s another post here today that isn’t an Update. I mentioned it in the Author’s Note of Chapter 80 but my Commentaries will contain responses to the feedback I receive over the week after posting a new chapter.

It helps keep the Chapters more tidy and allows me to make Author’s Notes as long as I like. My plan is to do these every week, but hopefully it won’t take two days like this last one did. Didn’t have much free time, which was the main reason, but I didn’t start Chapter 86 until Wednesday or Thursday because of it.

Couldn’t work on the next chapter when my mind was still on one of the earlier ones. Writing it down certainly helped.

Unlike Updates, I will not be announcing the posting of Commentaries. They’ll be mentioned with Chapter updates but should be available the day before on Sundays.

If you’re interested feel free to check them out, otherwise enjoy the more story-focused chapters. It should look a lot cleaner without my giant Author’s Notes taking up the first page.

With alternate media out of the way, let’s focus on the progress we’ve made over the week.

Chapter 86 of Sealkeeper is done, as you probably know, despite being started later than I would have liked. On Friday evening before the stream I did get to work writing more for the Tatsuki oneshot (though who knows, it might become an entire spinoff depending on how things go.) which I continued working on Saturday morning before work.

My seven new pages (Just shy of 3k words as I write this) flowed pretty easily and it was incredibly refreshing to be able to write without worrying about all the things the main story has in play right now.

If I’m to be completely honest, I probably could have posted what I wrote back in February of last year (some 1600 words) and been satisfied with it. Not the best ending, certainly, but there was just a rightness to it that had this sense of hope for the future. It had me grinning at my own brilliance, which is always fun.

The Warlock of Winterhold didn’t see any progress and neither did any of the other projects I have on my list- which I really should write down soon – but with the next chapter done, the commentary for last week’s chapter, and the progress I made in the Tatsuki oneshot I’m pretty satisfied.

Just wish I had more time to work on all of this.

And speaking of time, I still haven’t done my final inspection of the next chapter yet and there are plenty of mistakes in this update I need to correct so i can post it. With that in mind we need to wrap this up.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten what you’ve really come for — Chapter 85’s teaser.

Mai takes some chances, we meet two of the next generation Wolves, Mikoto contemplates the thought processes of plants, and Gaara writes a letter to his Tou-sama.

And there you have it, the May 20th Update. I was going to keep it the May 19th Update as I started it on the 19th but seeing as it’s technically morning now I’ll just go ahead and change the name.

Now, I’ve got a lot more work to do before I can enjoy a shower and collapse into bed.

Until I next have your attention,

–Eyazahrid

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It seems that I don’t have a whole lot to keep you all updated on now that we’ve managed to build up that reserve of chapters. Chapter 85 was finished this week and chapter 80 will be posted tomorrow morning.

I have managed to start getting work done on The Warlock of Winterhold but its’ not even the full first chapter yet. It’s been really strange working on something new but it also kind of refreshing.

Of course, I have to figure out why my Skyrim saves aren’t loading now and why I cant’ save new games. Hopefully I haven’t lost the game I was using for inspiration because that will be a huge setback.

Probably should have played through what I intended to write about first so that I had all the materials I’d need but it’s a little late for that. When I have more free time I’ll try to figure it out but what I have already should last me quite some time.

It will be taking a back seat this week, however, as once I finish chapter 86 — hopefully I can start it on my break — I’m going to try to put in more work to a very special project I’ve been slowly making progress on over the last two years or so.

Writing the Tatsuki oneshot is proving more difficult than I could have imagined. Overall I’d say it’s about a quarter of the way done, but I don’t know how long it will actually end up.

I also don’t know if I’ll post it before Sealkeeper ends.

Knowing the ending as I do, you may need something fluffy after getting through it. At the same time, it would be nice to have a completed work posted somewhere for you all to enjoy and I know you’ve all been eagerly anticipating this for quite some time.

When I do post it, however, I don’t think it will be to FanFiction.net. Instead, I’m considering posting it only here on the site. Not sure if that will be well received, but it just feels right to have that particular piece of work tucked safely away from the general community and somewhere only the readers of Sealkeeper– and I suppose any future works — can find it.

Going forward I’ll probably alternate between TWoW and the oneshot [Which I haven’t decided on the name yet, but am leaning towards “Ties that Bind” or “He Who Is Bound”] every week and hopefully I can have the oneshot done within a month or two. At the very latest I’d like to have it done by Sealkeeper’s fourth anniversary coming up in December.

Actually, posting it on the fourth anniversary is a tempting option too. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

Beyond those two projects I also need to prepare a 5E oneshot as my DM is busy with school and the rest of us are taking turns until his exams are over. When I get that done I might end up putting that on the site for others to use too.

I really need to write all these projects down, I haven’t even uploaded those story ideas to the folder yet and I was meaning to have that done like a month ago. There is just not enough time for me to get everything done these days.

If I cut back on time with Menoly, reducing it to only Thursday and Friday evenings during streams, and move my desk out of my room so I’m not as distracted I might be able to get more done but even then work just takes up so much of my time that I don’t think I’ll ever manage to get to everything I need to.

Well, not in the next two and a half years at least. By then my debt should be all paid off and I should have enough saved up for a down payment on a house.

Should everything go as planned my living expenses will be low enough that I could get a less time-demanding job which would really help because I’d much prefer to be doing this.

Probably a pipe dream, anyway. Even if I end up with the house I’ll probably just find myself taking on more work because I can’t not work.

I suppose I’ll come up with something eventually.

Maybe my own business so I can work on my writing between customers? It’s an attractive thought.

Enough about my lack of time, you’re here for the good stuff.

Like my Bonsai.

Look at her, growing like a weed. I’m thinking “Natasha” but I’m not sure it really fits her. Maybe I should wait until she starts showing color before thinking of anything.

It would also confirm which Bonsai is which, but I have a fairly good idea these days. And yes, I did have it backwards.

Her sister is also growing well, though she doesn’t seem to posses the same balance. I don’t think I’m rotating them frequently enough, so I’ll have to work on that.

I’ll need to change the soil sometime next month, too. Maybe I’ll find a pot for this one by then.

And now that we’ve covered the girls — Huh, I like the sound of that, actually — we can get to what you really want from this update-

The teaser.

If I recall, we’re up to chapter 84 for these so here we go.

Anko finally gets her reward, Mai contemplates godhood, Kushina can’t help her curiosity, and Naruto learns of Hayate’s death.

It’s probably the last scene of the chapter I like the most and I’m sure you can all guess why by now. Gods above I love causing my characters emotional anguish. There are few indulgences so sweet.

That’s all I have for this week so until I next have your attention,

–Eyazahrid

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And again it’s been much too long since my last update and, as you might expect, I don’t really have a good excuse for why either.

Only needed to write up one chapter this week [Chapter 84] and I finished that Friday morning. I suppose i can blame part of it on the fact that one of the tabs I had open- of like 89 or something, I need to go through them- was a story I hadn’t read.

Of course, as soon as i finished it I clicked on the author which lead to their favorites list and some old favorites which continued to spiral out of control. What I’m trying to say is that I gave Mydia quite a bit of attention over the last few days- I was only twenty minutes early to my shift and nearly gave them a panic attack when I wasn’t two hours early- so I didn’t get much done.

What I did get started on, however, is the start of that Skyrim story. Yes, that’s right, it may not be very far but the project has been started. Only managed some 300+ words between eating during my break yesterday but it was the starting point I was most worried about.

Mainly because I had no idea how to explain how he ended up starting the game in Ivarstead or why he was even in Skyrim in the first place. Didn’t really flesh it out yet, but at least I have a general idea.

Also figured out a name for it-

The Warlock of Winterhold

— which I think feels quite nice. Hopefully he doesn’t feel too much like Naruto from Sealkeeper. Their personalities should be different enough but I’m familiar with my writing style and realize there will definitely be similarities,

Then again, that might be a good thing.

There wasn’t too much more to mention in this Update- that I can remember anyway- so let’s wrap up the normal stuff so you can get to the part you really want.

I tried something different with the AN for tomorrows’ chapter, starting to write it as reviews were coming in. Hopefully it will lead to a better response from me when I can remember what I wanted to bring up.

Yesterday was May the Fourth, so I did grab a bunch of Starwars games from steam. Perhaps when the entertainment of me failing in Oblivion runs out we’ll give one of them a try.

Streaming on Thursdays has become more or less concrete, usually starting about 2100 hours (9pm) Mountain Time, but Fridays are still rather loose. If I’m free I’ll usually try to stream a bit but there have been a couple of Fridays that I’ve taken for myself as it’s the one day in the week I don’t end up stopping by work- usually, anyway.

If Fridays work better for everyone, however, please let me know. I can always take Thursday evenings off instead.

Alright, with that covered- I’m pretty sure I’ve missed something, but it will come to me eventually- we can move on to my little teaser for chapter 83;

Naruto tries his hand at amateur psychology, a cherry blossom discovers its edges, and we briefly check in with Otogakure

Not entirely sure how to feel about the chapter- it was one of those that sort of just kept going and I just followed it along- but it doesn’t feel too off, so we’ll see how well it’s received.

Chapter 84 though, oh, that will be fun.

Mainly because I love tormenting my characters.

Bah, stop panicking. I didn’t touch Mai and Naruto isn’t the focus of this one. Well, not completely anyway. He’s certainly hit by some of it, but I’d chalk a good portion of that up to Naruto being Naruto. He just can’t help but blame himself and shoulder any burden he comes across.

Might be the most noble part of him that survived my meddling, actually.

Naruto’s character aside, we’ve reached the end of this update. Hopefully I’ll have another for you in a few days.

Until I next have your attention,

-Eyazahrid