Christmas Wishes, Apologies, and Updates · 11:07pm Dec 25th, 2020
Hello, everybody. Long time no... well... anything really.
It's been exactly one year since I've given anybody here any blog whatsoever, and that was just a quick Christmas gag. It's been even longer since I've actually given anybody any updates on any of my stories or what's going on in my life.
So before I get into the meat of this blog, I just want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas. I hope you're all having at least a decent holiday season, despite the circumstances.
And speaking of circumstances, I feel I owe everybody an apology, and a long overdue explanation as to where the hell I've been.
As I'm sure everybody is aware, 2020 has been... a year. Firstly, there's been the virus, which has affected all of us worldwide. No matter what your opinion is on how it's been handled or how it should've been handled or whether or not the response to it was too much or not enough or just generally bungled... I think we can all agree that in general it's a shit situation that affects everybody. Fear of the virus and lockdown fatigue and the growing sense of social isolation has taken its toll upon everybody. Hopefully this situation alleviates in 2021, but I gotta say... 2020 has crushed most of the hope right out of me.
And then of course, to all my fellow countrymen in America we've had to deal with all sorts of political stress over the course of the past year... stress that was SUPPOSED to alleviate in November, but has somehow only gotten worse since. Now, I'm not going to go too hard into this issue, because FiMFiction is a place for pony, not politics, but needless to say, I think all parties involved can at least agree that it's another shit situation - one that has quite literally kept me up at night as I wonder about how this will affect my future, and the futures of my loved ones. I would respectfully ask that people keep their political opinions out of the comments of this blog no matter what side of the aisle they might land on, because my God I'm just sick of thinking about it all.
And finally, on a more personal level, this year has just been shit. Beyond the personal nightmare of self-loathing that is turning 30 and realizing I have very little to show for it, I've managed to get just the barest fraction of a taste of what Estee goes through on a seemingly daily basis. And let me tell you... I do not envy the poor guy. I live with my grandmother, you see. I've lived with her ever since my grandfather died. And I do my best to take care of her and her house. For the past five years it was pretty easy. Change a lightbulb here, feed the birds there, maybe clean out the vents or carry groceries or help carry heavy loads out of the attic... but a couple of years ago she started experiencing knee and hip pain.
And this year it just... exploded. The pain in her leg grew exponentially. She traded a slight limp at the beginning of the year, for reliance upon a cane around March, to needing a walker around May, to having to be pushed around in a wheelchair by July. In the span of six months her situation deteriorated out of control. It got to the point that she literally couldn't walk unassisted, she couldn't get in or out of bed on her own without somebody there to literally hold her upright, she couldn't put on her shoes or even her underwear unassisted. I've had to help her go to the bathroom, and believe me, that's not something I ever wanted to see.
She's needed a hip/knee replacement for the past two or three years, see, but because the medical system in America (and medicare in particular) is fucking broken as shit, no doctor was willing to operate on her until all the cartilage in her leg was basically gone. It didn't matter that her cartilage had been diminished by, like, 98%... that final 2% was still uselessly hanging on, and until it was completely gone, they utterly refused to operate. And none of the painkillers she was prescribed did jack shit.
Finally, around October, I guess that last little scrap of cartilage gave up the ghost and they managed to give her a hip replacement around the end of November, but recovery is slower than normal, and at this point I still can't really let her out of my sight. She still needs help in and out of bed, and she still needs help putting on her shoes and pants. Thankfully, she no longer needs help going to the bathroom so... she IS recovering, but it's slow. Hopefully a year from now she'll be mostly independent again.
I count my blessings every day that my grandmother's mind is still intact. I know some of us sadly don't have that luxury.
But needless to say, everything going on has severely hampered my ability to write.
As soon as Covid came on the scene things became difficult. My writing process has always been to get out of the house and either go to a friend's place, or to go to Starbucks. It's just... very hard for me to write at home. I have so many distractions around the house... piles of manga and comic books, shelves full of DVD box sets, and certainly more than a dozen video games that I keep saying I'm going to play and have never gotten around to. And, of course, the ever-present allure of websites like Youtube.
I'm a very easily distracted person, and it's difficult to write when there's so many things around you that keep calling to you like that. Sure, you COULD write the next chapter of Applejack: Marvelous... but that giant DVD box set of the complete series of Quantum Leap that you still haven't watched yet is sitting right there...
So as soon as Starbucks closed, my productivity took an immediate nosedive. What's more, living with an octogenarian, I haven't been exactly keen on risking going out to friends' places to try and write either. If it were just me living alone, I probably wouldn't care quite as much. I'm pretty sure I could survive the virus. But Gramma? ...I'm not so sure.
So, obviously, the beginning of the year wasn't exactly a walk in the park, but my goodness did things get worse. Really, July was just about the worst month for me in a very long time.
Goddammit, July was just an absolute clusterfuck. First, my pet sugar glider died (on the 4th, no less), and then on the 10th, I was... well... "laid off" isn't exactly accurate, since I'm technically still employed, but I was basically informed that I won't be getting any more assignments until "further notice." In the end, though, perhaps it's for the best that I was no longer getting any assignments, because by the end of July I was pretty much playing full-time caretaker to my Gramma. And let me tell you... that's not a one-man job. For months I was barely getting any sleep because my Gramma needed help multiple times a night to get out of bed and needed help going to the bathroom. I had to sneak in naps during the day, only for them to be interrupted... so I could help her go to the bathroom. For several months I was getting maybe 20-30 hours of sleep per week... all of it broken up and constantly interrupted, and all of it on couches and in easy chairs. I don't think I slept in my bed once throughout the entire months of August and September.
My mother and sister finally braved the virus and came down to visit in mid-October, and I finally started feeling like I had some energy again... only for them to leave in early November and for everything to go right back to where it had been.
Thankfully, my mother returned again to help when my Gramma finally had her hip-replacement surgery at the end of November, and she's been recovering (albeit slowly) ever since. We've been trading off responsibility for helping Gramma, and it's definitely getting better, but we're all still exhausted most of the time.
And really, the lack of sleep has been the worst part. It's been having noticeable psychological effects on me. I've always dealt with some minor anxiety issues and depression, but this year, the stresses of the virus and the ongoing American political fiasco, combined with my constant, utter exhaustion has caused them to morph into full blown paranoia, panic attacks, and suicidal ideation at times.
As you can see, this year has not exactly been conducive to writing.
I really do, sincerely apologize for having gone so dark, everybody. It was never my intention to completely drop off the radar like I have. It's just... my god, this year. Time has basically lost all meaning in 2020. On the one hand, it feels like we've been locked up for an eternity... but on the other hand, it feels like I just blinked and suddenly it was December again! It literally feels like it was only a couple short weeks ago that I posted the Applejack: Marvelous side-stories to Spacebattles, and yet it's literally been a full goddamned year since I've posted anything!
Just... how?! How did that even happen?! How did we lose a whole fucking year to this bullshit?!
But anyway.
I want to assure people that... well, I'm not exactly fine, but I am improving. As my Gramma improves and slowly becomes more independent, with my mother's help, I'm definitely doing better. I'm getting more sleep, and while certain outside factors (that I continue to request we not speak of in the comments) still play heavily on my anxiety, the past couple weeks have been better than pretty much anything since May or June. It's not exactly a "Merry" Christmas, but at least it's not a "Miserable" Christmas. And that on its own almost makes it "Merry" in comparison.
Hopefully, as things straighten out both for my grandmother and, God willing, my country in the coming months, I'll feel up to writing again.
I want to stress that my stories aren't cancelled.
No, not even Super Smash Bros. Disharmony or Applebloom: Transform and Roll Out.
(Truth be told I've actually been thinking a lot about SSBD and A:TaRO recently, and I've been somewhat eager to go back to them, but they'll probably be rewritten)
But yeah. Applejack: Marvelous, Miss Fluttershy's Draconequus Maid, and even Applebloom: TaRO and SSBD are all things that have been on my mind over the past year. None of them are cancelled. Some of them will probably be rewritten or otherwise heavily edited, but all of them are still alive.
I'm hoping that 2021 will be something of a year of redemption for me. A return to productivity.
In the meantime, I hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas, and a happy new year. I'll try to have a good one too.
Keep on sweeping, everybody.
Don't worry. Your and your grandma's health are much more important than some stories. Take all the time you need. Me and most other people on this site are patient and don't mind waiting longer if it means you can feel better. And of course Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for you.
And a question for SSBD: If you decide to rewrite it, would you stick with the same cast or go over to Ultimate for characters? Just curious
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If/When I get around to rewriting SSBD, the cast is almost certainly going to change, but I haven't finalized what it'll look like.
I made some odd choices for new characters when I first wrote SSBD that I'm almost certainly going to drop. When I went to choose "new" characters to include in my smash fic, I chose them not because I was necessarily super attached or familiar to the characters in question, but because I felt that the characters fit what I had then identified as the "criteria" that a character needed to meet to potentially be included in a Smash game.
The thing you have to understand is, when I was first writing it, Smash 4 hadn't even come out yet, and I had no idea that Sakurai and the Smash team were going to basically say "fuck it" and throw all "criteria" out the window.
So I did a lot of research back then, looking for characters that fit what I thought at the time met the "requirements" to be in Smash. This led me to characters like Bayou Billy, who first appeared on the NES and hadn't appeared since (sort of like Pit from back in Brawl), and Professor Layton, who appeared almost exclusively in DS/3DS titles.
Every character I included, with the obvious exception of the ponies themselves, fit into one of several categories that I meticulously charted out. Yes, there was a chart.
...then Smash 4 came along and put Cloud into the game and threw everything out the freaking window.
What this basically means is, when/if I rewrite it, I'm no longer going to feel especially beholden to characters fitting certain "criteria," and I can instead focus on including characters that I'm actually familiar with and can actually use properly.
Will I bring the cast entirely in line with Ultimate? Absolutely not.
For one thing, that's eighty-plus characters we're talking about, on top of juggling the four equestrians. Can you imagine trying to write a fic with that many characters in it?
No, the fic will probably still have about fifty to fifty-five characters in it, and a good chunk of them will mostly be window dressing. Background characters who maybe say one or two words and then just generally don't do much.
Second of all, I'm... still not entirely 100% satisfied with the entire roster of Ultimate. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have a game where "Everyone is Here," and some of the recent inclusions like Ridley and Simon Belmont and King K. Rool and Banjo/Kazooie and Sephiroth are characters that I absolutely love... but then you have characters like Duck Hunt and Dark Pit and Greninja and Steve who I'm straight-up not fond of... and characters like Shulk or Terry or Bayonetta or Hero or Joker or literally any of the Fire Emblem characters that I know next to nothing about and wouldn't be able to properly write/characterize.
So there's a good chunk of the cast that I'm probably going to drop, and I'm likely going to fill out the ranks with a few more characters that I think would make good Smash picks. I don't intend to go crazy with newcomers, but there'll probably be 10-15 "new" characters, (not including the ponies) and about 40-45 "veterans" who have appeared across the five official smash titles.
Even then, that still seems almost like too much. I could end up juggling 65 characters at the end of it all, which isn't altogether much better than the 84 characters running around Ultimate. I might have to make some regrettable cuts just to manage it all.
Don't rush over it, mate. As shit as this year's been, and despite all the trouble I've had to go through myself, I hope with all my heart that the year ahead of us is at least better than this one. Take all the time you need and come back when the opportunity opens, we can wait.
Also, if interchangeable spaceships are your thing, check out Snap Ships sometime, I've been obsessed with'em.If you ever wanna collab or exchange ideas, let me know. Fan art won’t be far behind
(Yes, i know that i am late. Just resently checked the radar for activity.)
Wow, and i thought i had a rough year. I only posted 3 times this year. (On all the websites i am active on together.) And i didn’t even start about school.
I hope you recover and continue the good work. Thought people last, but though times pass. All we have to do is continue and we get to better times eventually.
Anyway god love’s you and so do i, best wishes to everyone.
I hope this year has been kinder to you so far. I can't wait to get some new updates
Do what you must to keep yourself safe, sane, happy, healthy, and productive. Even if that productivity isn't here.
...still rooting for A:TaRO and AJ:M though.
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Seconded.
... and rooting for SSB:D
A bit late in mentioning this, but since my last comment I now also own the Quantum Leap boxed set.
Anyway, looking forward to the next Christmas blog update. Hopefully the more general Life stuff has taken an upturn, even if Pony Words are still on the back burner.