Hi everyone!
It’s been over 1.5 months since the previous Currently on art update, so it’s about time I sat down and got around to writing another one. The previous weeks have been super busy as I’ve had two big courses with big software projects to work on partially simultaneously. Now that the other one is over, things are getting a bit lighter, although the other one is still eating most of my time (the workload required is as good as a part-time job), which meant that I had to drop my Japanese course on its third week. I’ll hopefully be able to retake that course during the summer months (or self-study enough to skip it).
There’s also other stuff I’ve done; in January, before my courses got heavy, I ended up going on a massive revising spree on The Fate’s Way and caught up with where I was going at the time (since then, I have written a huge bunch of new chapters which are now waiting for time to revise now that I’ve finished the story arc they form). My beta reader is still working on getting through the already revised chapters, so there will be some more chapter releases on AO3 in the near future. After the backlog runs out, though, I’m not sure when the next chapters will come; I have two courses I need to finish in the following weeks all the while using around 5 hours each weekday for the massive project course, so art progress will be far slower than it was at first. Still, without taking revising into account (which has seen even a near-total rewrite of a chapter), I’ve written over 18k words of TFW just in this half-quarter – a number topped only by Greenfield‘s progress in Q3 2019 and Exceptional Jedi‘s progress in Q4 2020 (both a bit over 24k words) when it comes to quarterly performance. On TFW‘s scale, it’s a new record after Q4 2021’s almost-14k wordcount! Of course, the rate of writing new stuff will probably go down more and more the further I go into the spring semester (and Exceptional Jedi is taking a heavy hit in wordcount once again already), but that in addition to revising over 30 chapters is a slagton of stuff.
I also spent a good bunch of time in January going through this website with an accessibility checking tool and doing what I could to improve accessibility. It’s not perfect as the theme has too low contrast in some places that I can’t change on WordPress.com’s free plan, but it’s as good as it’s going to get for the foreseeable future and it’s definitely better than it was before.
Have I been doing much else when it comes to art? Not really, actually; there’s been little to no progress elsewhere when it comes to anything art-related (except for a fanfic archival project that I started working on for my Calibre library because I decided that I had better preserve the fics on AO3 that I love while I still can – in the process I found something like 5 dead bookmarks, and with only 2 I have any kind of proper idea of what lovely stories are now gone). Right now, I don’t see that changing since art needs to take further steps back from my coursework.
Honestly, there isn’t much else to tell. I applied for a summer job but didn’t get to an interview and once the workload of the project course realized itself, I decided not to apply for anything else; I’m going to need the resting time of the summer. I watched Transformers Cyberverse (which calls for a dedicated review post, although I’m not sure if I get around to doing it… let’s just say that I’ve never seen pacing that bad). Also, my university just got rid of the rest of the COVID restrictions. We’ll see how that’ll go with the craziest numbers we’ve been seeing over the course of the last two months.
Oh, I almost forgot. I got my first pair of glasses in early January (and new sunglasses a bit later). It was weird at first, but I’ve started to get used to them. Them fogging up when I wear a mask (especially when I go indoors) is annoying, but it’s a small price to pay for better eyesight – even though I have forgotten my glasses a couple of times when going outside. Once, I realized at the grocery store (where I had just walked) that I’d forgotten my glasses at home, and the other time (actually earlier this week) I almost left for campus without my glasses. Fortunately, the cold air coming to contact with my eyes made me realize I’d forgotten my glasses right after I’d gone outside, so I had the time to turn back and get them myself instead of asking my boyfriend to bring them with himself when he comes to the campus.
Well, I guess that’s enough about what’s been happening this year. Let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:
- Exceptional Jedi: Chapter 17 of Paths is in writing. All writing is at 2068 days. Jedova’s reference has seen a little bit of progress. I need to make a comic about Valentine Clanker and lots of other drawings. I’ve been creating data on Scrivener to build a wiki of sorts there so that I can flesh things out for writing, although it hasn’t been progressing at all for a good while since I haven’t had the time and energy to deal with it. Revising is still in a standtill.
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 68 is in editing. This story has seen a ton of progress due to inspiration – I’ve written 9 chapters this half-quarter alone (and I had 5 WIP chapters at one point, haha!)! I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. The revising process has taken multiple Cybertronian-sized leaps and is now nearly caught up with where I’m going, although I’ve got a story arc’s worth of chapters waiting for revising now in addition to a few revised chapters waiting for beta reading.
- Off-DA projects: My web coding project is mostly on standstill. I did make a tiny demo thingamajig for it, but that’s all there’s going to be for a long while since I’ve got a massive project course ongoing.
- Greenfield: I haven’t edited this at all since everything else has taken most of my time and energy. I’m currently working on editing chapter 3. Read more about the project here.
- Lyokostar: On an indefinite hiatus. References need to be done.
- A Wandering Aura: I haven’t worked on this at all for a long while since I haven’t found the time and enough interest for it.
- Gaming: Habitica, Duolingo, Pokemon GO and Pokémon Masters EX keep on going. I’ve been playing PC Building Simulator recently, it’s been fun, and I’ve also played a bit of Surviving Mars and some Zen of Sudoku, Wingspan and New Pokémon Snap.
- Other stuff: Not much has happened; I’ve been working a bit on my Prose-ject collection but it’s far from ready. Reading is mostly still in a standstill on the book side, although I did finish The Art of Peace. I’ve been thinking of getting into IDW’s Transformers comics but I haven’t gotten the chance to get started with them yet.
- Personal life: COVID is still going on, as usual. I got my first pair of glasses and my courses’ workload is doing its best to kick my butt.
That’s all for this update. Thanks for reading and take care!
WindySilver 