A hobbyist artist dreaming about becoming an author…
Author: WindySilver
N. WS. Jokela, more commonly known as WindySilver, is a Finnish IT student and a hobbyist artist fighting a war against procrastination on the losing side. When her free time is not taken up by things like reading, procrastination, video games, watching series or more procrastination, she mainly writes sci-fi fanfiction and original flash fiction of various genres. While she dabbles in a lot of things ranging from digital art to jewelry to plants to whatever catches her interest, writing is her persistent forte.
You should not give her yet another crazy flash fiction challenge to take part in because she simply cannot say "no" to it.
Challenge 2: Supersonik, Elektronik (1500 words or less): The year is 2000-something and human colonisation of space is well underway. Sadly, the aesthetic has evolved backwards to resemble something like this clip by Zlad!. Space is still pretty much a dangerous place however, and so your story will tell an adventurous, musical and oh, so very sexy tale of getting stranded on a hostile planet. Replace all your hard c’s by k’s and have the main kharakter all their verbs in kompletely wrong places say.
Given we had a good khase for the Intergalaktik Polike. Was our engine shot now, and headed was our kourse deeper into this odd planet’s atmosphere. Was at its end this adventure of money and fame of ours. Forgotten would be we after our impending deaths.
Try I did to save everyone on board nevertheless, just so that have we kould some hope. “For krash-landing prepare!”
Krash!
When wake up I did, bounked light off the shining silver klothes of my friends’ immobile, bloodied bodies. Played still my musik player musik; must it have rekeived sunlight all this time for power.
Was I where? Know not I did. Hear I did skratkhing, feel I did heat. Alive anyone else was? Know not I did.
Look I did out of the window. A nike planet. Look it does good for an adventure, although frighten me did the gigantik kreatures in the horizon. Appear the planet did dangerous.
Was there something else as well: pretty humanoids, throwing rokks all at our ship. Have not they did mukh klothing, yet all blakk and shiny silver like ours. Very pretty. Very relatable.
Very mukh ours?
Hold they did very dangerous rifles in their hands.
Boom!
Turn I did towards the sound. Were they inside now, at me brandishing rifles. Aktivate I did the defense systems in response. Think I did that now was I safe.
Wrong.
Was at its end, my adventure.
And keep playing musik did my musik player throughout all this.
Challenge 1: Needs More Pirate (1000 words or less): Write a suspenseful espionage thriller scene in your setting of choice – could be any time or place in history – but add one parrot-toting, rum-guzzling, Caribbean pirate.
With haste, you put a handkerchief over your mouth and nose. The only good thing about rum was that it did wonders to knock out both Captain Doublehook and his trusty parrot, Featherhook.
However, the most outweighing bad thing about it was that in the Caribbean heat and enclosed ships, it smelled worse than death whenever you opened a door. You suppressed the urge to stumble to the desk adorned with pillaged treasures from all across the archipelago and dry heave into one of the drawers. That could bring unwanted attention and you had only so much time to scan the map before Doublehook would regain consciousness in yet another massive hangover.
As you closed in on the desk, wary of the numerous rum bottles on the floor, you could not help wondering if this stench would make you drunk if you stayed in the room for too long. Featherhook being out on its feet, still attached to its owners shoulder, did indicate as much to you, after all. Nevertheless, while it was an interesting scientific scenario, you wanted to see such experiments conducted only in a controlled environment — something a Caribbean pirate ship would never be, at least not without taking the “pirate” out of it.
Doublehook murmured something between his snores.
You froze, suddenly reminded of the here and now. You had lost your focus — a fatal mistake.
If Doublehook woke up and saw you now, you would be pushed off the plank and the Queen would never get the map to Pirates’ Lair.
I wrote this during 31st December, 2020 and decided that it would be fitting to schedule it to one minute before midnight. Hence, chances are that when you do read this, it’s already 2021 in your part of the world – that’s fine, though! Enjoy the new, hopefully better year!
Well then. Buckle up; this is going to be a long, long post.
It’s been quite the year, this first one of the decade of 2020. Had I been told what would would end up happening, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. Yet here we are, three quarters in with the COVID19 pandemic, although since the vaccines are spreading already, I’m feeling hopeful about next year.
Honestly, this year has been too slow yet oddly fast, despite of everything. Things have been going pretty slow but I can’t help asking, “wait, it’s over already?” Funny, right? Anyway, I’m glad that it’s almost over now and we can look towards the new year of 2021, a year of hope.
It’s hard to come up with a proper list of major things that happened this year alongside COVID19 pandemic coming, but such a list does include DeviantArt’s Eclipse becoming permanent, which marked my move to WordPress, ending two projects and starting a new one, finishing Greenfield‘s first book’s first draft and starting to edit it, getting some games done, trying my hand at podcasts and finally starting to work on my FFM collections. A lot has changed and a lot is on hold or in progress for now, but all in all, despite the hardships in both personal life and academic life, I’m fine with how far I got. This is a good stepping stone for continuing onwards.
This year has been a year of unexpected learning and growth. We’ve all had to learn to adapt to a sudden, drastic change in our lives and learn how to do work, studies and other things remotely. We’ve missed out on many things, let it be events, normal gatherings, traveling or something else. It sucks, but you know what? It’s okay. We’ve gotten through tough times and now there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve got hope for returning to normal – a normal where we can once again enjoy the things we’ve missed out on this year – now. How long will it take? I don’t know, but then again I don’t know when in 2021 I’ll get my bachelor’s degree done either, so I think it’s fine. Nevertheless, I feel hopeful that this mess ends during 2021.
What is the biggest lesson I learned this year? I really don’t know. As a writer, one of the FFM challenges made me learn how to improve my skills at “show, don’t tell”; as a student I learned to cope with a failed exam (something I had never encountered before this spring) and figured out how to deal with failed courses; as a person, I learned to deal with the sudden and continuous social distancing; as a game developer, I learned to use Twine and a huge bunch of useful things during my game courses during the autumn semester.
Perhaps there is no single biggest lesson, but a group of major ones: these ones, each of them meaningful to different aspects of me.
It has been a tough year, but if there is one thing I’d like you to get out of my ramblings, it’s this:
Have hope.
Today, on the last day of this year, I faced a daunting challenge: retaking an exam I had failed on my first try, an exam of the very same format that caused me my first fails during the spring. I already had a different course lined up to compensate for the potential failure, so I prepared for the retake and decided to do it on the last day of this year to see if it’d end in a victory or an expected loss.
Against all my expectations, I was able to pass the exam and end this year with a bang I had not seen coming, just dreamed about.
So, even if things look bad, have hope. You can pull through. You just need to keep going.
Keep fighting, brave human! Or if a non-human happens to read this: keep fighting, brave fellow sentient being!
Back on DeviantArt, I had a habit of putting the next year’s to-do in the last Currently on art journal of the year and look through the previous one. It is a tradition I want to continue to see where I was 12 months ago and where those months have led me. Therefore, let’s see how ambition I had a year ago and how much fell flat like a certain Project Moonshot did. The ones struck through are done, while underlined are in progress. Bolded words are comments.
Studying
Revising all stuff I have yet to reviseIn progress
Working on my projects
Doing more references – hopefully including remakes that are direly neededI’ve got several references done this year and the other one of the direly needed remakes is in progress
Finishing the comic I’m working on
Finishing artwork currently standing by
Studying
Reading
Posting art I haven’t yet posted
Ending Behind Armada and putting its trilogy on hiatus until further notice
Losing some weight and getting into a better shape would be healthy Eh, I’m not sure how to address this. I did lose weight during the year, but recently I haven’t worked out at all and I’m pretty sure I’ve put up weight during the Christmas holiday… Let’s try this again next year with some proper scheduling, shall we? :’D
Publishing my FFM collectionsTwo out of six done and the third one is in progress!
Editing and posting speedpaints that are still lying inside my hard driveI posted some but since then it has been on a standstill. I did work on a video essay for a course, though, so I didn’t stay away from editing completely during the autumn semester!
Studying
Looking into stuff like Patreon I don’t even remember why I was thinking about this last year, although Patreon did come across my mind recently. Odd…
Studying
Less procrastination, more HabiticaI did lessen the amount of procrastination, but I could do better. Hence, I will put this to the 2021 to-do as well.
Studying
Okay, that does look pretty good. I’ve got most of the things done.
Then, what next year?
Studying
Revising stuff
Scheduling my life better
Getting the rest of my FFM collections done and published
Getting my Prose-ject and Tribble Month collections done and published
Studying
Trying to get a summer job
Working on my projects
Getting at least a quarter of Greenfield‘s first book’s editing round 1 done
Less procrastination, more Habitica
Studying
Finishing my bachelor’s degree
Losing some weight and getting into a better shape
Tackling my speedpaint footage pile
Tackling my TBR pile even harder
Studying
Playing some games I’ve got on my TBP pile
Studying a lot if I do not get a job for the next studying year
Studying a little if I do get a job for the next studying year
Honestly? Studying
Watching videos, series and movies in my TBW piles
Taking part in The Gauntlet (Coming up in January!)
Taking part in at least Flash Fiction Month, perhaps Tribble Month and/or Prose-ject
I think that isn’t too ambitious. I’ve got goals that are (hopefully) achievable and I will work towards them during the next year.
I suppose I’ve talked long enough about all this stuff. Let’s focus on art and talk statistics; since this is the second year I’ve been doing them, I whipped up a yearly comparison infograph as well. Therefore, you’ll get the see Q4 2020, the quarterly comparison, the whole of 2020 and the yearly comparison. I must admit that while these take a good bunch of work even now that I’ve gotten a spreadsheet to (mostly) automate the math side, the results are interesting to look at. Definitely worth it.
Now, let’s look into what’s going on right now, as per my project widget:
Exceptional Jedi: Chapter 16 of The Strength of Mind is in editing. All writing is at 1649 days. I’ve finished remaking Arya’s reference, so now I’m working on remaking Jedova’s one. 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. It’s been progressing hardly at all recently, but it’s looking fine; I’ve got a lot of written down. Revising is still in a standtill.
The Fate’s Way: Chapter 42 is in writing. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. Revising needs to be done.
Off-DA projects: Making and releasing a prototype of Project Moonshot, finishing and releasing Ther Person At The Door, now working on the third one!
Greenfield: Due to studies taking too much energy, I haven’t edited this much, but content-wise it keeps getting better whenever I do work on it. Read more about the project here.
Lyokostar: The translation of Lyokostar 1 progresses: Part 8 of story 6 is translation. The monthly Lyokostar 3 oneshots in Finnish are on a hiatus because nobody cares. References need to be done.
A Wandering Aura: To celebrate N making his first game appearance ever since Black 2/White 2 came out (which was 8 whopping years ago) in Pokémon Masters EX, I got around to posting his debut in A Wandering Aura. I’m already working on more stuff to get to some parts I really want to write, but otherwise not much on the editing and posting side.
Gaming: Habitica, Duolingo, Pokemon GO and now Pokémon Masters EX (due to the aforementioned N appearance) keep on going but otherwise I haven’t played much due to lack of time. The last one on the list has me hooked with the story, I must admit.
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. Due to being busy and tired, I haven’t even been reading FFM or Tribble Month stories for some time, so things don’t look good in my watch. I’m not sure what I even want to do about it, so for now I’m letting the stories sit there until I figure out what’s the best course of action. I’m working on my third FFM collection. Reading is still in a standstill on the book side since I’ve spent my reading time on Archive of Our Own, but I hope to change that soon. I’ll have a break from Unity for a while, although I’m quite likely to return to it soon because of a course. I should get back to video editing since I have so much footage to be edited.
Personal life: Studying, studying and studying in addition to the Christmas “holiday”. I got through the tough online course somehow and now I can focus on the spring semester with a little lighter load. I watched through The Mandalorian and a short anime called Girls und Panzer (it was surprisingly good) and now it’s probably time to look into resuming The Clone Wars.
I think this is the best time to end this long post. Thank you so much for reading all the way here. I wish you a better year! Take care and remember, no matter how bad things look, have hope.
I will begin working on the next collection soon, but given all the course deadlines ahead of me, it will definitely be 2021 before that one will be out. So far, the pace has been good, though, so I expect to be able to get the rest of the FFM collections out before 2022! Woo!
As promised, I got something playable out of my Game Off 2020 project, Project Moonshot, before the end of the month! Yay!
On the other hand, because life happened, the results of my ambitious project are far from what I’d hoped from the prototype I was planning to get out. What you got is barely serviceable, but it works (mostly) and doesn’t crash, so it’s fine.
I’m going to continue working on this game after Game Off, though, so if you see potential in what’s currently a mess, you’ll eventually see something better. When? I have no idea since the inventory system requires a lot of work before it’s good enough, but someday for sure.
In other news, I also made a tiny game with Bitsy this week for one of my courses: No Escape. If you feel like it, do check it out too!
It’s time for a Currently on art update! This time, I have yet another announcement to make!
As you know if you have followed my posts, I have released two games on itch.io recently, MathQuizand Against Procrastination. I don’t have much to say about them now that they’ve been out for a while, but they are noteworthy enough to be mentioned here. The bigger thing, however, is my first book release, made under the pen name N. WS. Jokela!
My collection compiled of publishable FFM 2015, Flash Prompt and Flash Fiction Day 2016, 2018 and 2019 stories, Modern Problem, is out now as a free ebook on Smashwords! While the stories are the lowest quality I have to offer out of my FFM stories, I hope you take a look!
In other news, I’m working on a new game as a part of a month-long game jam, Game Off 2020. My game, Project Moonshot, is a story-heavy walking simulator where you have to gather text files and figure out what happened in the abandoned research facility you woke up in. I’ve got the minimum of the text files I want to include in the prototype version I’ll submit for the jam and the map is coming along well, so expect to get something playable by the end of the month! I will work on the project more and flesh it out further especially in terms of the number of text files after the game jam during the course of this studying year as well!
Aside from those, not much has been going on recently. I’m constantly swamped up with coursework, stuck inside all day long since I don’t have many reasons to go outside especially now that it’s getting cold. The only reasons I have gotten out recently (aside from going shopping yesterday to see if I could find Christmas presents for my family) have been grocery shopping, taking the trash out and playing Pokémon GO. My university decided to extend their COVID restrictions to mid-March 2021 (can’t believe it’ll be a year since this mess started here by then), so I’m starting to suspect that I might get my bachelor’s degree out before I’ll have a studying-related reason to go to campus. I’m trying to get some humor out of it, but between combatting cabin fever and plain frustration that I should avoid doing normal (but unnecessary-for-survival) stuff like shopping at flea markets it’s starting to get more tiresome than anything else. Sure, if I put a mask on, I could go pretty much anywhere I wanted to but I don’t want to use them unless necessary; those things were a bit expensive when I bought them, not to mention that it’s better for the environment to use as few of them as possible.
In any case, I must admit that getting out to see other environments than grocery stores and the apartment building’s walls did do me good yesterday, although I also had to note that I’ve gone even more out of shape than before recently – oops. I should probably get hold of myself and start working out with Wii Fit again. Making some amazing finds that I’m still stoked about at a flea market and getting some good pizza (I finally got some recommendations about good pizzerias in my area after two years of procrastination on asking my fellow students) was a huge bonus too!
Oh, and speaking of environmental things, earlier this month I took part in a training session on zero waste which was aimed at students. It was super interesting and informative, so I’ve looked into what my boyfriend and I could do better to decrease the amount of waste we produce. Turns out we’re already doing pretty well since I’m a keen recycler! A very important and inspirational bit that I learned from the training was that you don’t have to be perfect and every little bit helps as long as you’re doing something to decrease the amount of waste you produce.
I can’t think of anything else to say, really. Like I said, it’s been pretty uneventful aside from releasing games and an FFM collection.
Therefore, it’s time to see what’s up with my projects, as per my project widget:
Exceptional Jedi: Chapters 5 and 6 of The Strength of Mind are in editing. I couldn’t stop writing when I started working on chapter 5, so I wrote the first draft of both it and chapter 6 in one day. All writing is at 1603 days. Remaking Arya’s reference is nearing its end, so I will soon be able to start working on remaking Jedova’s one. 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. It’s been progressing slowly recently, but it’s looking okay. Revising has gone back to standstill due to studies taking up too much time and energy.
The Fate’s Way: Chapter 41 is still in writing. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. Revising needs to be done.
Off-DA projects: Releasing MathQuiz, making and releasing Against Procrastination, finishing and releasing Modern Problem. Now it’s time to work on the next FFM collection! I’m also working on a game jam project, Project Moonshot, which I will have a playable prototype of released by the end of November.
Greenfield: Due to studies taking too much energy, I haven’t edited this much, although I have finished editing the first chapter and I also got it to its wordcount target, which is cool. The story went onto pretty different rails while editing, but definitely on far better rails! Read more about the project here.
Lyokostar: The translation of Lyokostar 1 progresses: Part 7 of story 6 is in rebuilding and translation. I’m writing monthly Lyokostar 3 oneshots in Finnish (except that I haven’t done that for a couple of months because I don’t have the energy and I’m pretty sure that no one cares anyway). References need to be done.
A Wandering Aura: Little progress has been made on the posting side, although I have gotten some decent progress on my end. I just haven’t gotten around to posting anything since I’m pretty sure no one cares.
Gaming: Habitica, Duolingo and Pokemon GO keep on going but otherwise I haven’t played much due to lack of 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. Due to being busy and tired, I haven’t even been reading FFM or Tribble Month stories for some time, so things don’t look good in my watch. I’m not sure what I even want to do about it, so for now I’m letting the stories sit there until I figure out what’s the best course of action. Since I got my fist FFM collection out, I’ll start working on the second one now. Reading has halted to a standstill on the book side as well and for now, it’s probably going to continue like that. I got back to Unity after learning to do lots of stuff on Twine before the game jam I’m taking part in as I decided to use that. I should get back to video editing since I have so much footage to be edited.
Personal life: Studying, studying and studying. My timetable management experiment, which has taken the form of simulating a normal university day, has given out mixed results because I haven’t fully stuck with it most of the time. However, my most urgent online course is progressing well now since I had to count how many exercises I need to do in one day to get everything done in time, and so far I’ve been well ahead of he schedule. I hope it’ll stay that way as well. Oh, and I’ve also watched The Mandalorian and am now following it as new episodes come out. It’s even better than I expected!
I suppose that’s all for this post. Stay safe and well and take care, as usual!
It is time for yet another announcement! My Twine project, named Against Procrastination, is finally ready, tested by two testers whom I recruited locally and now available on itch.io!
In Against Procrastination, you need to clear your to-do list while avoiding tempting procrastination activities. It features numerous randomized activities, descriptions and variables that make small changes to the description – for example, in the reading activity, the genre variable has 21 different choices while the book type variable has 11! With randomized values for the length of the to-do list and the time you begin your game as well, no session is the same! Or if you do somehow find two identical sessions, you should go catch Shiny Pokémon before your god-level luck runs out.
I don’t know if new portfolio posts trigger any notifications, but I figured that an announcement would be good in any case.
Anyway, a sequence of events involving forgetting to copy my current Twine project into cloud before rebooting my laptop from Ubuntu to Windows for an extended period of time ended up leading me to finally looking into the game my boyfriend and I made two years ago for our programming course, MathQuiz. After a night and a morning’s work with things, I got it released on itch.io!
In the MathQuiz, you need to solve (more or less) tough equations with or without a timer, depending on the mode you choose and get as many points as you can.
It’s currently only available for Windows, as the Android version we made lacks in functionality due to the limitations of Jypeli, which we used in addition to C# to make this game. A Mac version will not be made because we lack the means to make and test it. When it comes to the Linux version, the answer is “perhaps someday”. Tools for making it exist, but we are unfamiliar with them, so for now it’s not on the to-do list.
Unless of course there is demand for it. Then it will, naturally, be added to the to-do list. 😉
Please check out the launch trailer as well!
Like I mentioned above, I’m working on a Twine project at the moment. There will be more info about it when I’ve gotten it finished and released, so stay tuned!
Q3 2020 is now over. It’s hard to believe three thirds of this horrible year have already passed and we have only one left to go! The first Tribble Month ever is also over, and while I had fun and got some good stories written, I’m suuuuuuuper glad that it’s over. I started to run out of steam and ideas during the second half, so I’m certainly not into the idea of doing any more months of flash fiction this year. With Prose-ject in June, Flash Fiction Month in July and Tribble Month in September, I spent a quarter of this year writing daily flash fiction!
Is that way too much flashfing? Probably. Do I regret it? Absolutely not.
Anyway, I’d say that’s enough about flash ficcing for a while. I need a break from it.
As the second topic of this update, I want to discuss two of my fanfiction projects: Code Lyoko: Foes & Friends Remastered duology and Transformers: Armada-Energon trilogy.
Let’s start with the one I’ve been working on longer: Armada-Energon. Like I discussed in the previous Currently on art update, I had been struggling with its first story for long and thus put the trilogy on indefinite hiatus, with deciding its future postponed until dust had settled. I gave it some thought at the end of the quarter and made the decision I would’ve made back then already: discontinuing the trilogy. I didn’t have much planned for the next stories and whatever I had in plans no longer sparked any kind of interest, so it was the natural choice. I don’t regret taking on the ambitious project that it was but I certainly won’t miss it. It ran its course – the course just turned out to be shorter than I’d planned.
Foes and Friends Remastered, on the other hand, is a more painful thing to let go of. It’s ambitious as well, and also close to my heart as the remastered, greatly improved version of an old fanfic I wrote years ago. I was pretty damn proud of it back when I started translating it. Later on, however, I developed an even more critical eye to it and ended up where it got stuck: to a plot point I cannot get rid of anymore because it’s deeply ingrained in it. A plot point that makes me cringe at my old self when I look at it and think about posting it as my recent work.
As much as it sucks after getting about a third of New War Remastered translated, I decided that it’s for the best to cut my losses and abandon the project, leaving its English iteration into an incomplete state. I will continue working on Lyokostar, though, since it needs active nuking and reworking. There are some deeply-ingrained things I regret but I can work with them, so that project will keep on going.
Two projects out, but something new has also happened: during the quarter, I started to edit Greenfield, although progress has been sporadic at best, not to mention that with the quality of both the dialogue and the narration in the beginning, there’s a lot of work to do before the whole thing is going to be anywhere near presentable.
Another thing is that as FFR and A-E phased out, I began a new project: A Pokémon fanfiction named A Wandering Aura, the rehashed version of my initially planned Pokémon fanfiction project, The Adventurer Girl’s Journey. I ended up scrapping a lot of things I’d thought about, including the name of the protagonist. Since it’s a project I’m working on whenever I feel like working on it, it will not get any statistics unless I start to schedule when I write it. If you’re interested, the story is on Archive of Our Own: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1936330
I’m still quite in the beginning with it, but I’ve got tons of things planned and inspiration for writing it, so hopefully I can keep it going better, maybe even all the way to the finish this time. The future is in motion, however, so it might be that I end up being wrong and discontinuing it as well, but for now things look good.
Aside from projects and Tribble Month, I’ve been terribly swamped-up with studies throughout September, so my artistic productivity has sunk drastically. All my courses are fully online and the transition from the summer holiday to full-time studying hasn’t gone without a hitch; my timetables have been in shamples pretty badly. I think one of the things that cause trouble, alongside the fact that most of my courses don’t have anything at fixed times, is that I’m constantly stuck inside my apartment without being at the campus giving any kind of a rhythm to my life. I considered starting to go there to study at least once a week, but then the COVID19 situation here got worse and now there’s a city-wide recommendation to wear a mask in all public buildings, so I’m stuck inside until further notice. I bought masks back when they were still relatively expensive (and to think that compared to what the prices had been all spring and summer, they were supercheap back then) so I don’t want to waste them. There’s also the matter of the ecological impact of disposable masks, which came up in a discussion about not visiting the campus today, so there’s another reason to stay at home even though I’ve started to get some cabin fever.
The plan of hanging out with people on campus is out of the question for now, so I’m going to go back to utilizing the voice channel on Discord that my subject association has used for hanging out ever since the pandemic started for regulating my days more especially now that one of my two courses with live lectures is ending. I had a rather brief chat there today and it already made me feel better, so I believe that simulating a day at the university will both get me back on track with my neglected online courses and dispel some of the cabin fever when I get to talk to people (and hear their voices!) who are outside my apartment’s walls. It might also help my productivity if I get my headspace to “ok, I’m virtually at uni, so I’m working like I would work if I were physically there” instead of September’s “welp, I’ll just do this thing now and that thing later-oh, I could do some dishes/cleaning/whatever first”. If I remember, I’ll report how the simulation attempts went in the next Currently on art update!
On the subject of studies, I also had another crisis with my minor; this time, I ended up changing it to game research and game design. It caused a bit of a problem because I had to move things around in my plan and find some new courses to fill some gaps and fit them all in to this year, but I ended up succeeding at it. Why all of them this year? It’s because I’m trying to get my bachelor’s degree done this year, although with the frightening amount of coursework I have upcoming in addition to writing a paper, it might be that I won’t be able to finish everything I need for finishing the degree before the next autumn. We’ll see how it goes; the spring is going to be full of work, but I hope I’ll manage.
I think that’s enough about what’s up in my life. I made some statistics about Tribble Month and also put Q3 2020 stats together. Here, have a look!
Exceptional Jedi: Chapter 26 of Crystals of the Past is in editing. All writing is at 1558 days. I’m also working on remaking Arya’s reference, with Jedova’s one standing by untill I’ve got Arya’s own ready. 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. It is coming along well. Revising has gone back to standstill due to studies taking up too much time and energy.
The Fate’s Way: Chapter 41 is in writing. 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: The Armada-Energon trilogy has been discontinued after being on indefinite hiatus for around half a quarter.
Off-DA projects: I haven’t done much aside from working on my first FFM collection weekly. It’s coming together slowly but surely.
Foes & Friends Remastered: After halting to a standstill because of a cringe-inducing plot element, the project has been abandoned.
Greenfield: Due to studies taking too much energy, I haven’t edited this for a good while. Read more about the project here.
Lyokostar: The translation of Lyokostar 1 progresses: Parts 5 and 4 of story 6 are waiting for betareading. I’m writing monthly Lyokostar 3 oneshots in Finnish (except that I didn’t do it this month because I didn’t have the energy and I’m pretty sure that no one cares anyway). References need to be done.
A Wandering Aura: A new project I started. I’m writing its Chapter 5 because that’s what I want to write right now, with Chapter 1 in early stages alongside it. So far, things are looking good.
Gaming: Habitica keeps on going. I played my old Pokémon Black 2 save file’s story to its end and I’ve played some Trine 2 for a game course recently, but otherwise I haven’t played much as far as I can recall.
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. Due to being busy and tired, I haven’t even been reading FFM or Tribble Month stories for some time, so things don’t look good in my watch. I’m not sure what I even want to do about it, so for now I’m letting the stories sit there until I figure out what’s the best course of action. I hope my first FFM collection will come during this year. Reading has halted to a standstill on the book side as well and for now, it’s probably going to continue like that. I got back to Unity but now I’d like to learn by doing stuff with it, but I have no idea what to do. I’ll hopefully figure something out at some point, though. I should get back to video editing since I have so much footage to be edited.
Personal life: My smallish work gig is over and my studying year has started with all sorts of messes from COVID19, crises about what I want to do (yes, that’s intentionally plural, but I don’t want to talk about the crisis I have in addition to my already resolved minor crisis) and bad timetable management. Things will hopefully get better soon, though, once I get a hold of everything.
I suppose that’s all for now. Please act responsibly with this pandemic so that we’ll get back to normal at some point (I’d really love to have things back to normal before I finish my bachelor’s degree) and as usual, take care!
Friat watched as her former mentor, Ezidretim, gasped in pain. She could do nothing. Even the best healers in the whole world could do nothing to save him even if they were right there beside her.
The injuries were too severe.
“Ezi, is there anything I can do to ease your pain?” Friat’s voice was hardly louder than a whisper. “No, Kindling. Just say with me… until the end,” Ezidretim croaked. “I’m… sorry you had to see me go like this… but I’m glad to I got to train you. Just know… that no matter what… I’m proud of you, Friat Brann.” “Ezi…” Friat fought the tears. “Thank you for everything.” “Thank you, too, Kindling.” Despite of the intense pain, Ezidretim managed to put a smile untainted by pain on his face. “Take care, always remember what I taught you and follow your heart.” “I will, Ezi, I promise.” Ezidretim could already feel himself fade away. “Burn brightly with the dragons, Kindling. Farewell.” “Farewell, Ezi, the bright dragon fire that lit me up,” Friat breathed, smiling through the heartache.
Ezidretim’s eyelids fell over his eyes and stayed there. They would stay that way forever.
Once the injured fire sorcerer’s heart stopped beating, tears blurred Friat’s eyes.
Then, for the first time in her life, the fire sorceress wept openly in front of a crowd, her tears soaking her former mentor’s clothes for the last time in her life.
