News and Life for August 2025

Good evening!  I am tired.

Enough of that though, I wanted to update everyone on my ongoing struggle with the disease called “life”.  It’s been a bit since I talked about life things, so I figured an update was due, especially since I haven’t been posting anything but Hell/Dolls stuff recently.

Health-wise, I’m fluctuating between “healthy” and “dead”, but not as badly as I would’ve expected by this point in my life.  I visit a mental health doctor, family medicine doctor, dentist, and eye doctor regularly compared to how I was the past decade.  Teeth are still in my head, blood pressure and cholesterol could be better, and sleep is what it has been since high school.

My right eye, however, possibly has something called keratoconus, which basically means my eye is distending at a rate that could cause partial blindness if left untreated.  I’m seeing someone in September to confirm I have it, then I get the surgery if I do, hopefully before the end of the year.

I have kept hold of my current job, now making it the longest career I’ve ever held (just passed five years), and I still enjoy the people, coworkers, and the work.  If I end up moving out of my current state, I will definitely look for a similar job.  Unfortunately, a lot of my favorite coworkers (including my direct boss), have either left the company indefinitely or prepared themselves to leave, so there’s a lot of shuffling positions right now, which is a little stressful, especially considering I don’t know who’s going to be filling the holes.  New bosses can always be a hard thing to get used to, more so if they have a different leading style than you’re used to.  Still, I’m holding my breath.

Aside from that, as y’all are (painfully) aware, I’ve been writing a lot more than before in my spare time, mostly Hell/Dolls and supplementary material for it.  I am still greatly enjoying building the world beyond its original design, and redesigning and building new characters and pieces of the world.  I haven’t had this much freedom with my passions in a long time, mostly due to being pressed for time – work, stress, and duties to school and family were always preventing me from committing my thoughts to paper.  Nowadays, I feel like my scheduled interactions with others are more clear, well-placed, and fit with my pace and needs.

I’ve been looking into Fiverr for some high-quality art for my story (mainly for the cover, world map, and possibly a map of the main city), and a couple artists have stood out to me.  If I can at least get a commissioned world map with the details I want, I will be much more likely to release art with the chapters, as I originally wanted.  I may release the first designs I had, but I’m still on the fence.

The last thing I wanted to talk about today was my reviews.  I haven’t really been posting many anime reviews lately, and I haven’t posted a game review since I came back, as much as I want to write them.  I’ve been watching full cours of anime recently, so I’m not lacking review material, but I need to buckle down and think hard to write those reviews in a way that doesn’t sound too repetitive, which I felt was happening with the last few I wrote.

To be honest, I have a few reviews started right now (Metallic Rouge, The Wrong Way TO Use Healing Magic, and a couple of other fun ones), but for me, reviews have to be written after binging the series or while watching episodes.  Otherwise, the details get fuzzy, the episodes blend together, and I forget key points or confuse characters or meanings.  I have never deemed myself a professional reviewer, and I won’t deign to be one now.

That’s all for now, I just wanted to give y’all a quick update on my life.  I hope you all enjoyed my rant today.  I’ll try to get some more content posted.

Thanks for listening!

-Marcosias Isif

Story Update: Hell/Dolls release

Good evening, all!

For those of you that follow me, you may have noticed two posts released earlier today; the Prelude and first chapter of Hell/Dolls is now available to read…

On Wattpad and here.

So, funny story.  I didn’t remember that FictionPress has very strict rules about what can be posted, so to post Hell/Dolls on the site, I need to revise some things…

Granted, nothing in the first few chapters breaks the rules, but the overall story is supposed to be a more mature fiction (FictionPress specifically has the MA rating for flavor, it is not an allowed story rating), so before I release anything there, I’ll triple-check and edit down some of the more “adult” elements.

If you’re interested in reading the mature version of the story now, it is available (once again) on Wattpad, on this site, and soon to be on Archives Of Our Own (once I get the OK for an account).

Just a quick update for y’all, hope you enjoy it!

-Marcosias Isif

RAPID UPDATE: Hell/Dolls

I know it’s late (here at least), but I just wanted to update y’all as soon as I could.

I have finished Chapter 10, so after a final review of the first two chapters, the Prelude and Chapter 1 will be released.

I hope you are as excited as I am, since this has been in the works for *checks watch* almost a year now, wow.  As I’ve said in previous posts, this story is very dear to me, so I hope those who follow me on various sites will enjoy this story as much as I do.

There is no fixed date for release, but keep an eye out on Wattpad, FictionPress, and here on this site for the release of the prelude and first chapter within the next few weeks.  I promise they will be released before the end of August.

Super excited!

-Marcosias Isif

Update Diary: Hell/Dolls (June 18th, 2025)

I AM LATE BUT I AM HERE~!

I apologize for the delay getting to the story update, but I’ve been finalizing(ish) the prelude and first chapter of the story for release, which should be available sometime this month or next. I’m very excited that we’re so close to release!

In other news, here’s the current status of the series:

Current Chapter: 10 (Status and Poison)

Pages (not including title and ToC): 138

Current Word Count (same): 62,730

I think that I’m nearing the middle of this part of the story, if I’m being honest. I was originally envisioning the first “book” to have 30 or so chapters, including asides. With the way things are playing out writing-wise, I may end up only releasing 25 chapters, if that.

I also wanted to clarify something I may have forgotten to mention in the last update; I had to rearrange some of the paragraphs as I reviewed the story to fit the… “pacing” of the speech and thoughts. I’m not a professional, and I’ll never (truly) claim to be until I release a physical book or something. I rewrite my chapters regularly and I read and listen to my story whenever I can to catch hiccups and mistakes. But I am not perfect, and I have learned to accept that.

The story’s endgame has not changed, just some wording and clarifications fixed or added. Because I haven’t really said anything about the story, I realize it is a completely mystery to anyone reading these updates. But please believe me, I am putting all my effort into making this story enjoyable to some degree.

As I said previously (I think in the March update), I am using Autocrit to help me close the gaps. I want to be very clear about this, however: Autocrit is a support tool for me. I use it to catch repetitive mistakes and unresolved plot threads, but I do not generate any of the text that will be released. I do not like the idea of writing a story completely with AI, and I greatly enjoy creating my own worlds from scratch and mind. I take any suggestions from Autocrit with a grain of salt, but I do trust that the mistakes it catches can help me improve.

Sorry, a lot of infodumping at the last minute, but I felt I should be very clear about everything regarding the story – why I’ve been delayed, what I’m using and why, and my level of dedication to this project. As I said, I’m extremely excited to share this.

Keeping in touch,

-M. Isif