Hi! It’s me! The creator!

And it’s been far too long since I’ve written one of these.  Health problems and other projects have gotten in the way.  But I’ve written a lily diary every night!  Well, nearly every night.  Some nights I sit down and say “Time do to a Lily!  I wonder what she’s up to today!”  Honest truth is, half the time I don’t know myself, some days it’s just as much as surprise as it is to everyone else.

But she’s coming up on a year!  Next month, in fact!  Now, one could say that I’ve done a really bad job at marketing her, no one reads, and no one pays attention.  And that’s true.  I still get very few viewers to the page, and no one knows about her.  That’s kind of a failure…  and it’s kind of not.  Because at the end of the day, she still has nearly a year of content.  I can’t tell you exactly how much (though that would be a fun statistic) but she’s a pretty fully fleshed out character with a minimum of plot holes.  (There are a couple, I’m going to have to make a project on a weekend soon to go back over all the posts).  But I can do stuff with this.  I can make a summary page, for example.  There’s lots of stuff I can do with such a mature character that I couldn’t do a year ago.  So I’ll have to do something special for her first anniversary, whether or not people pay attention to it.  Maybe I’ll go on an FB ad blitz and make some special patreon-only content.  While, as I said, I’m protective of her character, I’m not above a little quasi-innocent fanservice.

I think her anniversary is July 21, or something very close to that.  Stay tuned.  It’s been a year.  I plan on going all out.  I just don’t know what “going all out” means just yet.

There are times when I write Lily that I’m tired, I’m depressed, I’m misanthropic, I hate people (but I repeat myself), life itself can be a burden that’s difficult to overcome.  But I try not to reflect that when I write Lily.  She’s a pretty happy, optimistic, innocent girl, and it’s just not appropriate for me to overlay my problems onto her.  I’ve actually found that she and I kind of merge a little.  I find myself acting a little bit more like her in some situation, and she starts acting a little like me.  She shares some of my interests (but not others), and a lot of the stuff she’s into is stuff I know about.  But how could it be otherwise?  I mean, I don’t know makeup or clothes or the stuff girls do when they’re by themselves (being a nearly 50 year old guy, I can’t identify), but all the other stuff?  Well, she’s not a dumb girl.

But there are other things you might say “that’s not realistic”, but it is.  I knew a girl once a long time ago who really would make piles with her friends.  Girls really are physically affectionate in a way that boys generally aren’t – but that doesn’t mean they’re lesbians.

Speaking of which, there are no LGBT characters in Lily.  That is a conscious decision right now.  It’s not because I don’t want LGBT characters specifically, it’s more of a response to people that go out of their way to add them when the plot doesn’t really call for them.  I am specifically not going to do things just for the sake of representation, I’m only going to do things when it adds to the story, and adding an LGBT character does not add to the story right now.  That may change in the future – some characters are young enough that there is a nonzero chance that there may be a closet to come out of – but not now, and very possibly not ever.  If you don’t like that, then you’re very welcome to go elsewhere.  Also, Lily is not really interested in LGBT issues and doesn’t talk about them.  It’s not because she (or I) hate them, it’s just because it’s something that doesn’t cross her mind.  Again, I’m not going to shoehorn things into the plot that don’t advance the story or the character.  If there’s a time for that in the future, then that will change.  It’s not time for that.  And, let me clear, no matter what, Lily is straight, will always be straight, and will never take on an “identity” other than a straight, half Japanese female.  That is my choice, as the creator.

That said, there are some issues that I do deal with.  That’s because I have a friend (whose daughter Allison is based on) who tells me some of the things on her daughter’s mind – and that informs some of the things Lily experiences or talks about.  It’s a treasure trove of story ideas, and it really helps me out.

Anyway, I guess that’s enough trouble for today.  I have a lot to do.  Stay tuned for Lily news.