It's 2019, and I'm Still Here · 8:00am Jan 7th, 2019
2018 sure was a long year, eh? It started off with a promising (at the time) not-quite-a-job-interview the day after watching the Falcon Heavy launch, and then just kinda fell into a seemingly never-ending stream of shenanigans after that. I joined the rest of the world in becoming a little too obsessed with Elon Musk and his companies, and facepalmed very hard at the dumb things he did on Twitter. I passed an accounting class taught by a literal heretic (the fact that he's allowed to preach the kind of stuff in class that would get me escorted brusquely away from the pulpit if I said it at church, while I'm not allowed to have a beard at this school, strikes me as distinctly unfair). I did not end up passing my two upper-division math courses that I had the lame-brained idea to take simultaneously. I went to Hawaii with my family, in the middle of a summer pseudo-internship. I stepped up and led my group by the nose in said internship after our erstwhile "leader" ghosted us. I had a disappointingly jobless summer, despite my best efforts. I finally sought out official support at school for dealing with disabilities. I played a lot of Magic and Warframe.
Oh, and I did some horse-word-related stuffs.
I've released a grand total of four things on Fimfiction in 2018. A chapter of MH:E1 in April, TCatM in June, a new DS chapter in November, and US was released just before Christmas. SNAF has been a huge help the whole way, and Georg pitched in a couple of times (in a big way) when I asked him. I want to reiterate that Georg is an amazing editor, and that to make use of him to his fullest potential you need to know when to say "Heck no!" to a suggestion and when to say "Yes", but really grudgingly. I think I struck a good enough balance there, if TCatM's and US's receptions were anything to go by.
And speaking of editing, SNAF and I went through all of DS for a thorough re-edit. I think that was in late spring. After that, I love how that story reads more than ever. I'd started that story at the very end of my buddy McWeaksauce's tenure as editor, and bounced around between a few editors during the course of the fic before I came across a kindred spirit in SNAF. He's easily the best thing that happened to my writing since Amber Spice took the reins to get her story told her way in TLH.
By the way, you all should totally read this fic by SNAF:
If you like dragons, yaks, archaeology, and the absurd-played-straight (and given that you're following me, it's probable that you enjoy at least two of the above), then it's definitely worth a read.
Also had a couple of firsts: My first fic to debut in the feature box was TCatM, and its sequel US was both my first fic to hit the top of the feature box, but also my first fic to win any kind of contest. So... yay.
As for the future...
Well, I'm still at school. Probably going to be here for a whole 'nother year. I still plan to write horse words, too.
Specifically, I'm hoping to finish writing DS by the time Bronycon rolls around.
I probably won't be able to make it to Bronycon myself, but I'm hoping to participate in the Bronycon bookstore that has been somewhat noised about on this here site. I definitely plan to give them some copies of TLH, but if I can finish DS in time I'll be able to offer that, too. This series, especially DS, is quite near and dear to my heart. I've known, more-or-less, how I've wanted DS to end from the beginning, and I'll finally get to share that with you this coming year. It's kind of exciting.
And then I'll get to move on to the last book in the trilogy, where I bring things home.
I could say more about how long and interesting 2018 was, but then we'd be here until 2020 at least. Here's hoping 2019 is a good year for me, and for the rest of you as well.
Good night, y'all, and best of luck in your endeavors.
- Bonus points if you figure out what each of these initialisms is!
Thanks for the update and luck, and I hope 2019 is good for you and us too. :)
You do know that we can just check your story page, right?
In any case, here's hoping 2019 is a great year for you.
Ah. Another sequel for TLH I presume? Accounting Heresy perhaps?
Best of luck with 2019!
Magic you say? What formats?
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Thanks, y'all.
4992694
But where's the fun in that?
4992701
Nah, that guy wasn't really protag material in my book.
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Commander, primarily, though I did teach a couple of my roommates to play casual 60-card.
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Ah, the best of formats. Truly you are a man of taste. What do you run? I've a bant deck created by hammering the Selesnya and Simic archetypes together. Essentially, go wide and then tall, with tokens and counters and more tokens and more counters. I call it the "fungus" deck.
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I've got... nearly thirty decks at this point. I should be able to give you a quick rundown of some favorites, though!
Probably my favorite deck ever is my Sultai dredge shenanigans deck. What I like most about it is that I can helm it with one of three commanders depending on how I want to play that game: Tasigur if I want to have a casual fun time with politics, Sidisi Brood Tyrant if I want aggro tokens, or Muldrotha if I'm putting my serious pants on and want to be an unstoppable juggernaut of death and rebirth. And all it takes is swapping one from the deck to the command zone between games.
Another Sultai deck I'm fond of is my Damia deck, whose object is to play as many cards in one turn as it can while also skipping my draw step multiple times at once. Also, storm. I don't play it as often, since it tends to take very long turns once it gets going, but whenever I do my opponents are at once filled with revulsion and admiration.
Then there's my Temmet Exalted deck, where I make clone tokens unblockable so they can swing alone for massive damage, my Aurelia mentor deck that's built entirely out of cards in standard, my Jeskai legends/historic deck, an Adeliz deck I refer to as "Taco Tuesday at the Academy", Feldon EtB/LtB, Nekusar group hug (yes, really), Regna & Krav, Najeela warrior spam...
And then there's my Liliana, Heretical Healer deck. It's the deck I play when I decide that people not me need to stop having fun or someone needs to be taken down a peg. I'm the only one that gets to have a hand, a board state, or a life total, and getting rid of one means of control means I'll just search up another. It scales very well into multiplayer, and has tanked the sustained wrath of entire tables without flinching. I only tend to get it out when I'm in a foul mood, though, as I enjoy having friends.
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Ah, reanimator, such shenanigans. I have a daretti "chop shop" deck that tries to assemble a win condition out of random
junkjank I've bought over the years. It usually just goes hellbent on turn three or so and waits for someone to put it out of it's misery, but every once in a while it does something outrageous.Oh, do you have a tombstone stairwell? That thing is gas if you abuse it right.
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I don't, but now I need one. Or perhaps five.
Reanimator is my favorite archetype, after all.