Project Updates 1

[nova_dergs]

Apparently we're doing a lot of projects. It didn't feel like a lot, but then we were reading Page's Spring, 2025: Achievements, Goals, Community Happenings and someone named Nova kept showing up?? (We are Nova). So here's a list of things we've either recently done, are doing rn or hope to do in the future.

 

Fictionfolk Webring - COMPLETE

Legit, we never thought we'd have the technical know-how to ever make a webring ourselves! Thank fully, we didn't have to per-say. Onionring.js had our backs with step-by-step instructions (that we struggled to follow at some points, but got there eventually) and the actual coding part. The cool gif on the widget is an amazing free find from pixabay. The same person who create the animated spell book also made a moving ink pen one - it was hard to choose!

But, ultimately, we did. The spell one was a small call-back to the gone-but-not forgotten Alterhuman Summoning Circle. Rest in peace.

The neocities site building was the easy part - sadgurl's layout with free assets we already had bookmarked from when we made HowlCon's website a few months ago. Probably took us a few days to build overall.

Check out our webring.

 

Alterhuman Art - ONGOING

Last October we started a new tumblr side blog called Alterhuman-Art. The idea for it came from a discussion in the Alterhuman Archive discord group. Someone asked if we archived art and the answer was no, not unless it's a part of something else like an essay, zine or very significant for some reason. That got us thinking - it'd be nice if the art was archived too.

But how? No one wants their art reposted and if we didn't care and did it anyway (we would never) how would we store and display so many images? So we made a choice to make it a tumblr blog since we refuse to use the other popular social medias for personal use. We could reblog art and continuously back-up our blog. That way, when tumblr finally goes down in flames all the posts aren't lost with it.

We have a secret Wordpress blog ready to transfer everything over to when the time comes.

At the time of writing this, Alterhuman-Art has just reached over 800 posts! Which means, we have over 800 artworks on display from the alterhuman and nonhuman communities and there's about 100 more in the queue.

Another neat thing we did was ensure that everything uploaded had an image description - whether the original artist included it or we wrote it ourselves (usually what happens). Maybe it's confirmation bias, but we really feel like we're seeing more and more ppl writing alt text since starting our blog which is awesome!

alterhuman-art.tumblr.com/

 

Digital Accessibility 101 - Centaurus Festival/OC

In a similar vein as the last section, we recently hosted a panel on digital accessibility at this year's Centaurus Festival. Admittedly, it was to test the waters on the topic and our ability to present before OC and it went better then we ever expected it to. Attendees really seemed interested in what we had to say and everyone aced the pop quiz we gave at the end. Daski even gave us a shout-out and showed off how to add alt-text at deir following panel on how to build a website!

We got our panel request submitted for OC and look forward to presenting it there this year too.

Watch the recording here.

 

Draconity Zine 2025 - NOW OPEN

Another zine! We took a little break so we could time this one to run between conventions. We're not great at naming things, so it's just called Draconity. It's the zine we always wanted to start, but couldn't because there was another general draconic zine running already when we started Modern Draconity and we didn't want to overlap. Well, now there's not! So it's our time to host one!

Our vision is to have this be an annual zine. 

Something else we'd like to do is have the covers have art of community members on it and not just us or characters we invent. Behold this year's! We asked in a friend server, expecting like a handful of ppl to agree and ended up with 10 dragons to add! How many dragons do you recognize?

Zine info doc

 

HowlCon - PANELIST/ARTIST APPLICATIONS OPEN

Last but not least we sorta are hosting a convention. It started as a "what if" idea between our system. Dino had said on his tumblr that he didn't know if he'd be hosting another OC and so we batted around the idea of making our own to help fill the void. Then we joked with a few friends who genuinely thought it sounded like a good idea and here we are! With some cute demon werewolf and bear mascots and a staff team.

HowlCon is a virtual camping-themed convention for alterhumans and nonhumans being hosted September 19-21. We wanted to host it at a time of year that we could feasibly be camping, but also not stepping on any other event's toes. Artist and panelist applications are open right now and will close July 1st. (When attendee registration will open.)

We've been on a number of staff teams for other virtual alterhuman cons (OC, Draconic Summit, and Centaurus Festival) but this is the first time that we are the one in charge. It doesn't really feel real yet.

Are people going to show up? Will people actually apply to present things? Enough to fill a schedule? Man we hope so, but even if it's light on events, that gives us a lot of time to chat and encourage attendees to hang out.

Something we really want to try to focus on at HowlCon is encouraging attendees to hang out together. Draw together, play minecraft, stream in the VC, etc. We were inspired by the first OC where it felt like someone was always streaming a game/video and impromptu cards against humanity games started up. (Ideally without a lot of the tech issues, but discord has come a long way since 2020).

Why not hang out with us this September?

Learn more about HowlCon

 

Edit:

Totally forgot about our comic.

3 Heads One Brain Cell - ONGOING

We felt like we needed more practice with multiple figures in artwork and story-telling so we started a comic! There's no set upload schedule, it depends on when we feel inspired. The strips are about our lives as a plural nonhuman system.

Read our comic on our website.

Comments

[leo9ish]

That's a lot of cool projects! I'm not much of a social butterfly, but I'm excited to see how HowlCon pans out. ^^

[who_is_page]

Go Nova go!!! Hell yeah!!!!!! \o/

[gze]

oh sweet! new draconity zine! hell yeah I'm submitting something

AND going to HowlCon too. will we be working two of the days? yea. will we lurk anyway? also yea.

-E

[nova_dergs]