This is the first Currently on art update that I’ve written on WordPress. If you have been following me on DeviantArt, you know that I’m migrating away from there due to its new UI, Eclipse, due to reasons including poorly handled literature and heavy eye strain (I think I will never figure out how exactly they managed to pull that off when I have literally never had eye strain at my computer).
With no alternatives available yet, I have had to deal with my summer flash fictions with duct tape and compromises: Flash Fiction Fridays required me to post on DA, while with Prose-ject 2020 and Flash Fiction Month I’m allowed to post here on WordPress – an ineffective alternative because the stories drown among my other blog posts, but the best one currently available. Therefore, I have collected the links to a static page for easier access: Flash Fiction Link Compilations
Yes, I ended up joining Prose-ject this year despite of thinking that I wouldn’t because the moment I saw the journal, I couldn’t say no. I guess I shouldn’t have been following the group and the poster at that point, haha. However, I don’t regret it: my challenge of writing only about my already existing worlds has borne lots of fruit, with multiple previously scarce worlds now having more story and characters than before. I’m especially proud of the world of Unar and Ria – the prompt that led me to discovering the latter has brought a lot of interesting stuff to the story, and I currently love those two precious ones.
I especially love the last story, because it gave me the perfect closure to the month of discovery: I managed to use all four prompts on the last day and make the story about the end of a journey. I must admit that I might have gotten some Okami feels while writing and editing it, which also accounts for how much I love the final story, as I’m currently playing through the aforementioned game’s HD version.
There is something I want to get off my chest better than by tossing a status update, though. If you have read my previous Currently on art updates on DeviantArt, you know that since spring 2019 I have been migrating a Finnish website from its original service provider, Suntuubi, to WordPress because Suntuubi was shutting down 30.6.2020.
At the moment I’m writing this sentence, it is the 26th and it has been about an hour since I finished that long migration project. I had to cut some corners (mainly with archives, which I will keep backed up on my computer), but I ended up making it in time anyway despite of time almost running out.
Now that the migration is over and I’m painfully aware that the site I have grown with, built and nurtured for nine years is going to get wiped off the face of the earth in four days. I can’t help but feel empty and extremely sad to see it go; I was unable to replicate all of the user interface on the free WordPress plan, so the new site, while cleaner than the original, does not look like it too much. The UI that I have looked at, tweaked and used for nine years is about to disappear forever.
It’s hard to believe that after nine years it’s now over. Before the announcement that Suntuubi is shutting down, I had known that someday it would end (I had seen it coming from various things), but now that it’s happening… it feels surreal. The thing has been up for over half of my lifetime (Wikipedia said that it was started in 2006) and my website has been there for almost half of my lifetime, a majority of the time the service has been online (since 2011).
The thing is, if I hadn’t stumbled upon Suntuubi and, most importantly, its Finnish Code Lyoko fandom, it’s likely that I wouldn’t be here. If it wasn’t for that fandom, I might’ve never actually tried my hand at fanfiction, let alone created my first website for it. If those two hadn’t happened, I might have never found my way into the writing community on DeviantArt or created this website. A lot could be different, and I can’t imagine anything that would be better than this.
The Code Lyoko fandom on Suntuubi has grown silent during the previous years, but it was there when I needed it. Now, all traces of it, those years of things learned, stories shared and lessons learned, the network of individual websites all built for our love of the series, will be erased. I will keep going on WordPress, but nothing will be the same especially with so many sites disappearing completely. I don’t even know if any other Code Lyoko sites from Suntuubi ended up migrating to survive.
It is a fact that the fandom would have never become the same it was, but I still miss those days, and I know I will miss the days of Suntuubi. It was, after all, a huge part of my life for nine whole years, some of my most important years of growing and learning. The fandom shaped me in ways no other group could, and it gave me a voice both as a beginning writer and a Code Lyoko fan, something I couldn’t have gotten outside of my laptop.
Those years with that fandom, I treasure them. They taught me a lot, and a community where I belonged to and had a voice was an invaluable treasure to me back then. Communities like that still are – it is only human to want to belong, to be heard.
To the strangers on the other side of the screen who are a part of such a community: thank you for being there.
Everything comes to an end at some point, so it is important that we make the most of the time we have and make the most valuable memories. Someday, we will have to say goodbye.
It is ironic that when I was finishing the migration project, my playlist was playing Audiomachine’s Farewell to Earth. One couldn’t have asked for a better song for it, not even on purpose.
Whatever happens, take care and make sure to check in with people you care about.
As I am writing this sentence, it is already the 30th. I visited my old website and some other old Code Lyoko websites that were in my bookmarks in the morning one last time. During the day, all those websites were replaced with an announcement that Suntuubi has been closed down. I already feel wistful for all the time I spent there, for I was attached to that enormous amount of ones and zeroes that made Suntuubi and everything within its system. I still am, and perhaps will always be for the way it influenced me over all the years.
However, I mustn’t wallow in that attachment or the loss. The only way is forward. I will move on and make sure that those years of learning weren’t in vain.
Today, two things ended: my journey within my worlds for Prose-ject 2020 and Suntuubi’s 14 years on the internet as a platform for people to make their own websites.
This is the end of an era. What comes in the next one? I have no idea, except that it’s probably going to be mostly silent.
Silent or not, it is time to move on.
I think I have written enough about this case. Now, it’s time to look into my stats: Q2 2020, comparison to Q1 2020 and Prose-ject 2020 stats.
Here are the infographs:
While most of my writing projects’ stats are disappointing this quarter and I wrote less for Prose-ject this year, I did well with visual art: more artwork done and far fewer projects standing by.
Now, it is time to see what is up with my projects, as per my project widget:
- Exceptional Jedi: Chapter 18 of Crystals of the Past is in editing. All writing is at 1466 days. I need to make a comic about Valentine Clanker and lots of other drawings. I’ve been creating data and putting stories into an order on Scrivener to build a wiki of sorts there so that I can flesh things out for writing. It is coming along well. Revising has been on hiatus, but it should resume soon now that I’ve recovered my writing inspiration.
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 39 is in editing. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. Silverwind’s reference is in progress. Revising needs to be done.
- Behind Armada: Chapter 23 is in editing. I need to draw the references for a few characters (although they are the lowest priority). This trilogy will be put on hiatus indefinitely once I’m done with BA.
- Off-DA projects: Not much going on atm. FFM collections are still at a standstill; I haven’t had time to look into them yet. I should be able to get to them during the summer.
- Foes & Friends Remastered: Part 22 of New War Remastered is in translation. I should work on references at some point.
- Greenfield: Currently on hiatus until summer, at which point I will start editing it. Read more about the project here.
- Lyokostar: The translation of Lyokostar 1 progresses: Part 2 of story 6 is in translation. I have resumed writing monthly Lyokostar 3 oneshots in Finnish. I have finished Mary’s reference and made a sketch of Sophie’s first Lyoko suit. Other references need to be done.
- Gaming: Habitica, some random games again, with Okami HD taking most of the gaming time.
- Other stuff: I’ve fallen behind with literature deviations because I can’t read them on DA without getting a headache from the eye strain. I’m trying to keep it from flooding otherwise, though, and so far it’s been looking good. I still have no idea when my first FFM collection will come, other than hopefully this year. Lots of reading to be done still, but my TBR list has gotten smaller again, so it’s under control. It’s probably going to continue like that. Gotta get back to Unity and also Blender if I can. And video editing, I need to do lots of that because I have tons of footage to edit if I just found the time to put my laptop to work with them. As explained above, I have finished migrating a Finnish website of my own (the one which hosts the Finnish Lyokostar stories) from its original service provider, Suntuubi, to WordPress.
- Personal life: I finished my online course that I took to replace the one I flunked, and I ended up getting a small-ish work gig that has me rebuilding a website. I’m also sweating tons in my apartment because it’s constantly around 30 degrees Celsius during the days. Luckily, it’s been a cooler outside the last days, so it’s now closer to 25 than 30, which is nice, although I’m still sweating. LOL.
I’d say that’s all. Thank you for reading this long journal. Take care!
WindySilver 