2022 Retrospective, State of the Author and Pokemon · 8:33pm Jan 1st, 2023
Part 1: State of the Author
In my goal to finish all of my stories on Fimfiction, I managed to complete my goal all except for one. Office Love. The world collectively laughs at the meme. But I'm serious in saying that I would like to accomplish it by the end of March at the latest. It's on the docket and I am working on it. When it's done, all chapters will be released at once.
Once that is done, That will be the conclusion of all planned and long story projects on Fimfiction. People have wanted details on original writing, when i get to it. I will blog about it here and will likely release it through patreon.
Part 2: 2022 Retrospective
In the last three weeks of December I had to have genital surgery for concerning skin growths. What this has meant was a lot of time to sit, think, lose blood, ice, feel pain, and generally consider my past year as well as what my upcoming year is going to be.
Overall -- 2022 was a massive year for me. Not for pony though. For a lot of my major other aspects of my life. For once I find myself completely credit card debt free. Which makes me feel somewhat fiscally responsible considering ive been renovating my house to sell, and move cross US to the beautiful state of California. I can't express how excited I am to genuinely start life over and be able to pursue Music and my other dumb creative hobbies in an area of the US that doesn't hurt my face to exist in for 6 months of the year. 2 is way better. Plus the beauty. the people. Just so many aspects of my life are going to dramatically improve in exchange for a lot more hard work to establish myself and try to be social with real people. I've done well where I am now. Now it's time to apply it somewhere else.
There's so much more though. My crafting skills have gone up. I feel comfortable doing a whole lot of different home repairs. I've learned so much about cooking, decor, managing my emotions. A lot of therapy happened this year and it's helped me build a self-image that isn't (as) influenced by others think or percieve of my abilities. I'm... honestly pretty proud of myself. That doesn't mean the depression has *poof* disappeared. There's been hard times during this winter. But even after (content warning) pushing roughly a cup of dead jellied blood out of stitches yesterday with the help of an on call nurse. Out of my genitals. -- I'm in fairly good spirits. And not at a place where I feel like I need to beg for sympathy online. I'm more sharing these details to help explain why OL isn't done.
Moreover - I generally feel good. And given i spend incredibly little time on this website -- I think it's a sign that I'm generally winding down from fanfiction. As I said before though, I'm still doing Barcast. I'm never gonna leave that space. And that doesn't mean I'm done writing period. Nobody can predict the future yo.
Part 3: Pokemon
I do feel a fandom biting at my heels though. Pokemon. Oh man. Where do I begin. So. Scarlet and Violet came out. And in general I obsessed hard over that game for about two weekends. And after that... probably for a good week. I can say it's the first pokemon game that I have completely 100%'ed. Without Meltan BS that is occuring in Pokemon Let's Go -- Or the Frustrating Path of Solitude in Arceus -- Not only was it a semi-reasonable goal and Completionist itch, but it was also a lot of fun. And even now I find myself itching as I have put together some builds to fight the limited time raids to consistently beat Charizards and Cinderaces online with groups for resource farming. Is there a resource I want really? No! I just like playing the raids.
Scarlet and Violet are probably my favorite Pokemon game generation ever. Which is hilarious, because they are -terrible-.
Anyone who has been connected to pokemon already knows the deep frustrations the fandom has felt about the games, but frankly -- nothing I encountered in my playthough was bad enough to make me want to slam down the game and say "NO. BAD GAMEFREAK. STOP."
Hell, even with some texture pop in for Arceus, it wasn't too bad. And patches later on have really given the game life. Does it have replayability and longevity? In my opinion -- Arceus doesn't. Opening the game back up after a long time away, all I had left was to do Path of Solitude missions and a few other things I left over from getting all of the "battle stars." But once I opened the game back up, I realized I didn't really "feel" much for the Pokemon in that game. Sure, my main party felt great, but After learning about the Path of Solitude's crazy battle's/end game content. I honestly felt fine just shrugging and leaving it for another day. I didn't get the same 'itch' that S/V have.
And that even goes back to the Let's Go games. Those games gave me the itch almost immediately. Before I even had them in my hands. Let's Go singlehandedly got me back into playing Pokemon and that is a serious thing to consider. Now, I'm not so down the rabbit hole that I want to figure out what Pokemon Home is or how it works (like, a way to transfer/save pokemon from games? idk.) or even how to learn doing "Matsuda Method" or crazy shiny hunting -- but Honestly Its beginning to give me that itch. Where I feel like I am beginning to -want- to learn these things.
Previously I complained about the pokemon fanbase being too competitive when I was interested in joining back in during the X and Y days. And I still hold firm to that original thought. But now, maybe thanks to pokemon showdown and some of the interesting romhacks for pkmn ive played recently -- I just feel a passion for this particular style of game. More than anything else I've wanted to play lately.
Hell. If someone said "Write Pokemon fanfiction, you idiot." -- I would have some ideas. Do I wanna do them? Nah, not really. I don't think there's probably a good Pokemon Fanfic space. Among other cringey reasons.
I could write the FUCK out of some guardvoir / trainer porn tho.
Point to all of this being -- I picked up Brilliant Diamond, and been catching up on pokemon that I have missed out on over the years. In retrospect -- I think Pokemon has done a really great job at winning back it's core audience and finding ways to lasso back in the people that were once passionate about this.
My Little Pony could learn a lesson or two from it.
Just sayin.
Happy 2023, you buncha nerds. Let's make it a good one.
I hate to be a joik, but what about The Zest of Life? It's on hiatus, not cancelled.
I'm really happy to hear you're in a good place, other than the bad things. Hope your health recovers there.
I really hope one of these days I'm able to do what you've done. Strike out on my own, and learn some more life skills.
I'll miss seeing new stuff from you, but I still have a big backlog of your stuff to read, and I can always tune into the Barcast.
You finishing you’re projects on fimfic doesn’t mean you’ll be leaving the site does it?
5706398
Oh wow, thanks for the reminder. I genuinely forgot. Yes. Cancelled. Man. That one was one hell of an inspiration that burned out quick.
5706415
I wouldn't really say "leaving". I'm not taking anything down storywise. Nor am I closing my account. And I'm sure we're still gonna interview fimfic authors from time to time on barcast. And if this place turns into genfic ever -- well. Then the game has changed.
5706398
AINT ANYMORE. TAKE A STORY UPDATE, NERD
5706445
Glad to see you aren’t erasing everything but over never heard of Genfic ever. What’s that? I smell a story behind that.
5706518
at one point in time Knighty considered taking Fimfiction and turning it into a site that handled ALL kinds of fanfiction -- dubbed genfic. But now it sounds like that will likely not happen.
Love to see all the personal accomplishments in 2022. I'm so happy for you, man. Good luck with the house sale and move!