Happy New Year! + An Update on the Story and My Plans for 2024

Welcome one and all to the year 2024! Lets hope its better than the last.

...

Eh, who am I kidding? It's a presidential election year here in the states. With the current state of US politics, it'll be all downhill until November lmao. But enough of that, allow me to become slightly egotistical for a moment and talk about me!

The State of the Empire (or, "The Crystal Human" in 2024)

So... "The Crystal Human"... the story that hit the featured list on day one of its public release and was last updated in October of 2023... what's up with that?

Well, I have been working on the next two chapters. I've made a few blog posts about Chapter 17 in November, but I haven't said a word about Chapter 18 so far. That's mostly because Chapter 18 is only 209 words long so far. There really isn't much to say about it, really. Other than the fact that I plan to include a rewritten version of a cut scene from Chapter 16, "A Barber I Am Not", there isn't very much interesting about it thus far.

But back to the big boy. Chapter 17. Hows that little goofy goober doing thus far?

Well, progress on it has been slow. I started writing it on November 6th, and since then it has just barely crossed the 1.2k mark in terms of word count. It's also had five different titles and possibly has the most cut content of any chapter thus far (excluding Chapter 2, "Language Barriers"). I've seriously been considering reviving the Fireside Chat series of blog posts just for this chapter alone. Or maybe I'll just continue my new tradition of rambly authors notes on each chapter. I don't know yet.

One thing I've learned about myself while writing Chapter 17 is that I don't think I'll ever be able to hit the output I had back August/September where I could finish multiple chapters in a week with occasional quiet periods. And to be honest? I'm okay with that. Looking back, it feels like I was taking a more quantity over quality approach with those early chapters anyways. That's not what I want.

It's like I always say whenever I talk about video games: "I would prefer one excellent and memorable side quest over twenty boring and uninteresting ones." Why not apply that philosophy to my witting from now on? Why not write one story or one short series of stories that everyone loves and remembers fondly instead of a poorly written mess of a thirty part series that was made purely to cash in on the popularity of Human in Equestria stories?

So, yeah. I guess you could say I did a little self reflection during my hiatus. And I would say to not expect me to put out sixteen chapters in just under two months from now on. At most it'll probably be one or two, maybe three a month if I've got a "short chapter" in the works.

I think that's about it on the story. Less updates overall, but ones that will (hopefully) be of a higher quality then previous ones.

Anyways, time for boring life stuff.

Stuff That Has Nothing to do with "The Crystal Human"

(This was originally the first segment, but I moved it because it's more of a bonus thing. If you only care about the story itself, you don't need to read past this point.)

So, my plans for 2024 (besides continuing the story) include:

1: Participating in a small project a buddy of mine started called "The 2024 Experience", where we find albums we've never heard before and listen to them, as well as categorizing our thoughts on them and keeping track of them throughout the year. I might post my own personal list on here later this year, but that isn't a promise so don't hold me to that.

2: Finally getting around to reading through that backlog. I did start on it during my hiatus, but then life events got in the way. Now I have thirty three stories in my read later list and twenty three unread chapters in my tracking folder, on top of six physical books that I really want to read soon. Whoops!

3: Finding a new job. As you may or may not be aware, I ended up taking this hiatus in the first place due to the fact that I was moving house, and, due to how far away I was moving, I had to quit my job. This one is more on the back burner since my dog took a little tumble down the stairs in early December which required a visit to the vet. Since then, he's had trouble (well, more trouble than usual. He is fifteen, after all) using his back legs. Especially when it comes to stairs. He's gotten a lot better over the past month and can walk on his own for the most part, but I have taken up the role of his primary care taker since then. I guess you can say that I do already have a job, even if I'm not paid for it lmao.

4: Complete my New Years resolution of "stealing from more orphans" that I loudly proclaimed during a Discord voice chat with some friends of mine while we were playing Grinch Simulator on Hypixel. It was totally 100% serious and not a joke whatsoever. I am known for being completely serious and never joking or being sarcastic, after all.

Epilogue, I guess?

So, uh, yeah. That was the blog post. Once again, happy New Year. Let's see if I can wrap up the story this year.

Sincerely me,
- Phoenix