Currently on art: The end of a project, the announcement of a project

Hi everyone!

It’s the middle of the quarter again, so it’s time for another Currently on art update. While there hasn’t been much happening in my life recently, this time I have some considerable news to announce.

First of all, after weeks and weeks of pulling teeth with the project and most of this month spent deliberating this decision, I have decided it’s time to put Exceptional Jedi to rest. Over the last year or two, I’ve slowly lost my passion for Star Wars and the admittedly far too ambitious project that I started way back in 2015. Does my slump (which I have started to recover from, fortunately) have something to do with my lost interest in the project? Probably, and that’s why I’ve spent so long looking at the poorly paced thing that’s the latest (and as of today, the last) chapter. However, while I feel I can get back into groove with Lyokostar 1 and Greenfield if I just make the time for them, I don’t see myself fulfilling most of the many plans I’ve had for Exceptional Jedi, and that’s why I’ve concluded that it’s better to stop here rather than try to struggle with a project that no longer brings me joy.

If there is someone out there who’s enjoyed that series (or what is available of it on the internet anyway, since it has been long since I last posted any longer stories for the series online due to my migration off DeviantArt), I’m sorry. Thank you for being along for the ride and let me know if you want to see what I wrote for the series but never released. Will I post the stories on Archive Of Our Own? No. It’s not worth the effort. I could compile and post a massive ebook with everything I’ve written on my Scrivener project here on WordPress, but I won’t be posting the individual stories anywhere now that the series will not be getting any more updates. I will at least try to finish the reference I have for the other main character, Jedova Wang, at some point, but otherwise I believe I won’t be touching the series ever again once I’ve updated the last files on it.

Honestly, it feels strange to pull the plug on one of my oldest fanfic projects. Alongside The Fate’s Way and the long-since discontinued Armada-Energon trilogy, it’s a part of the foundation of my account on DeviantArt. It’s probably at least in part because of a sunk-cost fallacy; I’ve spent seven years writing it and I’ve got tons of plans for it, so it feels like a waste to end it when I’ve already spent a lot of resources on it. At this point, it’s for the best, though. Any extra resources spent on trying to push it further would be truly wasted. It was like that with Armada-Energon back in the day when I discontinued it. I think when I get to focus my attention on stories that still spark some interest (even if that spark is dim), writing a long project will feel less like a chore again.

Speaking of stories that spark my interest, I think it’s about time I properly announce the project I’ve been working on since July – a Persona 5 Royal fanfic titled Navigator’s Glove. Unlike most of my fanfic projects, it’s a single story like The Fate’s Way. Navigator’s Glove is a New Game+ fanfic where the Persona 5 protagonist – named Akira Kurusu in my fic because I like the manga adaptation name more than the more widespread Ren Amamiya – wakes up at the beginning of the game’s story with most of his memories of the original timeline locked away. As he starts his journey anew, he finds himself surrounded by deja vus and in possession of a selection of items he does not recognize but feels are important – most importantly a (possessed) black glove that appears to have been putpocketed on him during his nap on the train to Tokyo.

Like A Wandering Aura, Navigator’s Glove will not be getting statistics because I want to keep doing it whenever I feel like it, although it is going to be my daily project in EJ‘s stead at least until I’ve gotten my grip on LS1 and Greenfield back. Since it’s my top project right now, I feel like doing it often – and a lot; since its start in late July, I’ve written over 270k words for it. In comparison, TFW, which has been going on since late 2014, has only about 130k words (of course, it has been on long breaks over those nearly eight years and only been regularly written on Mondays anyway, but it’s still a good comparison). I’m also planning on writing the first draft of NG in full, in part because I’m concurrently running a New Game+ run of P5R as the basis for the story, and only starting to release chapters when I’ve done at least one round of editing on it. How long will the story be at that point? I don’t really know, but it’s probably going to be at least close to 400k if the current wordcount is anything to judge it by.

What about my other projects? Right now, at least most of them are not at the risk of getting axed. Lyokostar 1 is something I intend on finishing so that I can move onto Lyokostar 2, The Fate’s Way has finally reached a point I’ve wanted to write for a long time and Greenfield is a project I am not intending on giving up on now that I’ve got to the point where I’m editing the first book. A Wandering Aura, on the other hand… I put its plot bunnies from my head to my plans and soon afterwards they stopped bothering me, so I haven’t had any proper interest in working on that project for quite some time. The fact that I keep falling further and further off the bandwagon with Pokémon doesn’t help. I may put the project on indefinite hiatus at the end of the year, but for now I’m going to keep the project’s status as active.

That’s all I have to say this time around. Let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:

• Exceptional Jedi: Chapter 5 of Seeking the Skies is finished All writing is at 2338 days. Jedova’s reference has not seen progress. The series has been discontinued.
• The Fate’s Way: Chapter 75 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. Revising has been on a standstill.
• Off-DA projects: My now announced Persona 5 Royal fanfic project, Navigator’s Glove, has seen a lot of progress recently and will have its own bullet point on this list starting from the next update. Otherwise nothing notable.
• Greenfield: This has been on a standstill for quite some time. I’m currently working on editing chapter 4. Read more about the project here.
• Lyokostar: The first chapter of story 7 is still waiting for alphareading and betareading. This story is in need of massive reworking, so it’s going to take a long time to finish. References need to be done.
• A Wandering Aura: I haven’t done anything for this in ages. I’m considering putting it on indefinite hiatus.
• Gaming: Habitica, Pokémon GO and Pokémon Masters EX keep on going, although Pokémon Go only rarely nowadays. I’ve also played Persona 5 Royal and and I’ve gotten back to Persona 5 Strikers.
• Other stuff: Nothing notable has happened; I haven’t worked on my Tribble Month 2022 or FFM 2022 collections nor have I read much else than some random fanfics here and there. I still haven’t gotten started with IDW’s Transformers comics, either.
• Personal life: I have been pretty low on energy and motivation, so coursework has gotten most of the limited energy I have available. I think I have started recovering from my slump, but there’s still progress to be made.

That’s it for this update. Thanks for reading and take care!