#Also! This is my first finished/polished piece of 2024!

[ashhollowart]

Hiiii I'm here with a slightly different style and trying some perspective to bring you Gem's lighthouse because I adore what she's doing already this season

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft fanart #hermitcraft season 10 #geminitay fanart #geminitay #digital art #digital painting #queer artist #nonbinary artist #Ash's art #yes this Did take me basically all day and yes I Was shrimping for 50% of the paint time #i almost gave up on this one actually but I'm glad I pushed through because I'm really proud of how it turned out #Also! This is my first finished/polished piece of 2024!

[hexfloog]

2021 - 2022 - 2023 - 2024

Can you believe there's barely 10 days left to the year?? Because I can't! Time to lay my feelings bare again!!!

So I definitely slowed down quite a bit compared to 2022, but I still made enough to fill the template and, in spite of everything else, lots of life development things happened these last 365 days that I think makes 2023 one of my best years in recent memory :)

I have less to say about the art this time. The drop in quantity checks out when I stop to reflect on just how much time I spent on each one. I definitely don't have as many sketchy works to show off this time either (probably in no small part due to the fact that I've also slowed down on Detco) - and that's probably owed to having spent most of my art effort this year drawing for other people, be it commissions or fan projects, and I already know that I'm more inclined to take risks when I have just myself to please. It's not a bad thing, that's just how it is.

I suppose my one observation of this year's body of work is that the vast majority of it is quite ambitious. Real pushing-my-comfort-zone stuff, but it's more of a polished brand of risk rather than the kind you get sketching ideas on the spot. Some examples:

February - both a collab and a thing that became a fan cel intended as an autograph piece at a con

April - simultaneously a gift and a very personal piece

June - silly comic (anything humorous is automatically out of my comfort zone)

August - community project + comic page redraw that really tested my ability to find a new style to play with

September - made to become tangible merch (it did)

October - redraw of my very first digital piece

November* - character design from text description only and formal reference sheet commission (my first ever)

December* - digital watercolor + fake children's paperback cover

*active WIP, not yet complete

It's not that much (really, it's average output for me) but I will take my wins where I can get them, especially since this is pretty much the scope of my art projects this year. Didn't really have much time or energy to write, or make more models, or scan more cards, because... ya girl was too busy getting a promotion/raise, moving out, enjoying the best con experience of her life (so far), volunteering, meeting lots of new people, dating again, having general fun, eating good food, trying new things, finishing a monthly art challenge for once, playing creative romhacks, waking up to new career opportunities, etc. etc. etc! It feels like so much happened this year!!

I tend to be harsh on myself and often feel like my life is not going anywhere, but this year really made me feel like I'm finally gaining some momentum again. And like... I don't expect (or want) to live life in the fast lane or anything, but stagnating isn't good, either, and with every passing year I have to ask myself with a little more sincerity what my future looks like.

So all that said, thanks very much for sticking around and suffering me another year <333 Who knows what 2024 will bring!! But for the first time in a while, I think I am looking to it with more than just a resigned "meh" and I hope the same for anyone reading this, too.

#personal #summary of art #summary of art 2023 #2023 summary of art #queue

[merge-conflict]

year in review

2023 is on its way out, and it's been... a year. First full year that I've actually been active on social media (i.e. not just lurking), and first time in fandom.

My first fic of the year? when her edges soften – the longer I wrote for Valentine and the more her relationship with Johnny got weird and intimate and full of casual innuendo the more I needed to write something where they were reunited. Also my first ever experience writing smut and self-indulgently adding a whole fencing scene. Goddamn that was fun! Feels like it's older than a year.

My favorite fic of the year? thread-safe – I became engrossed with cyberpunk because of Jackie but I imprinted hard on Takemura after that traumatic heist mission and perhaps the rest is history. Valentine's story has had a lot of tinkering and reworking and it was the thing that got me back into writing, but the original story in my head was something bittersweet and angry and grieving, one night only no encores, parting badly– and I finally was able to capture that in thread-safe and it feels so good.

Most fun experiments?? There are several of these. When I got stuck and discouraged and tired of working on the longfic and plotting things out I ended up working out a "shenanigans au" (fleeting fits of reason) where I could put Johnny and Kerry and V (and Alt and Rogue it turns out) together and just have them interact without plot. Well the plot crept in, but writing some loosely connected 1-1.5k pieces focused on a single scene or idea with minimal polish was incredibly freeing. Then I recorded some of my own podfic! I wrote a chapter of thread-safe in second-person! I wrote imago and decided to incorporate pieces of it into my longfic. Playing around like this has really kept writing fun for me when I don't have the concentration to play the long game.

Additional musings and personal reflections under the cut:

2023 the year sucked ass. It has been god awful. Just the fucking worst! Cyberhanami was in February? March? I remember finishing up some of my prompts that week while I was in another state with friends who were out and about while I was in bed too nauseated and weak to move. Writing was the only thing keeping me from going insane. My health has been shoddy, I had to cancel a much anticipated two weeks of international travel, spent at least two week long periods this year with anxiety so intense it made me almost physically incapable of eating. I had an incredibly expensive panic attack, and the world... things have been better!

I find it difficult to be honest about that sort of thing– my primary instinct is Not To Talk About any of that shit, because well... it's personal! And I handle reassurance about as well as I handle compliments (awkwardly. half in panic. friendly self-deprecation). But it feels disingenuous to celebrate accomplishments without acknowledging the yawning abyss we all struggle with from time to time. I remain cynically optimistic, as always, and I'm seriously grateful for all the connections and shared art and braincells and excitable messages, especially from folks tolerating my tendency to ramble onto tangents and use an oddly formal tone. I don't know what I'm doing, but who does? It comes easier with practice. It has to, right?

See you cool cats in 2024. :3 😼

#cyberpunk 2077 #year in review #for auld lang syne #seriously though everyone who's ever interacted with me even briefly– I appreciate being a part of the community and connecting #it ain't perfect but it's ours y'know? #also as someone who's horribly time blind it is nice to look back on a year and have date and timestamps and posts #to prove that I was here and doing stuff and it wasn't just a weird blur #highly recommend :3

[thebuckblogimo]

When I was growing up, what parents were made of was more important than what they made.

February 5, 2024

I feel compelled to offer an exclaimer about this piece to old friends who follow my musings: The following essay is based mostly on personal reflections of my "grade school years"--from the fall of 1953 (when I started first grade) to the spring of 1961 (when I finished eighth grade). However, my mind's eye sees the past through a clouded lens. So if you're from the old East Dearborn/Northwest Detroit neighborhood where we grew up, you may remember some of the people, places and things mentioned below differently than I do. So you will know, I made a couple calls to friends and former neighbors for corroboration--where possible--of my memories. No matter who you are, I hope what follows causes you to think. And if you lived in close proximity to the streets where I played or the five-and-a-half block route I walked to St. Alphonsus School every day, I hope this entry brings a few grins to your face.

I regularly monitor several newspapers and periodicals online. I have my own opinions about the issues of the day, of course, but I try to avoid confirmation bias by including opposing points of view among the things I read. With that said, the following is an undeniable fact:

In America today, the single best predictor of whether a young person will attend college, have a good income, get married, stay married, live in a "good neighborhood" and enjoy good health is the performance of his or her parents, based on the same metrics.

When I think about my children and their friends, my nieces and nephews, as well as other young people I know, that statement is indeed true.

But in my experience it wasn't always so.

When I was a kid, I would say the best predictor of how my friends and I would eventually turn out had little to do with the income and education level of our parents. Rather, the metrics of our success was based on the examples set by our parents, the amount of encouragement they provided us, and the quality of caring we received from each other's parents and neighbors in the hood.

Household incomes had little to do with it. Family inheritances, by the way, were minimal, practically non-existent in those days.

In any case, I decided to go back six or seven decades in time and take an imaginary walk down the streets where I lived, and tell you about some of the families I knew and how their children--many of them in their late 70s and early 80s today--turned out in life. I think you'll find it interesting.

Next door. My family lived at 13117 Tireman, a busy street that marked the borderline between Dearborn and Detroit. The Phillips family lived in the bungalow adjacent to ours. Mr. Phillips was Polish, but had changed his last name. He did not attend college. Yet he had some sort of white collar job at the Budd Company, a supplier of body components to the automotive industry. Before he retired, he surprised me with a brand new set of front bumpers for the first car I ever owned, a nine-year-old '60 Corvette. Mrs. Phillips was a stay-at-home mom. She did not attend college. One of the sweetest ladies I ever knew, she gave me my first baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger (Yogi Berra model), for my birthday. There were two Phillips boys next door: Mike (a.k.a. Mickey), who was three years older than me, and Billy, five years older than me. I played a lot of basketball with them as a kid. There was a backboard and rim on their garage as far back as I can recall. Mrs. Phillips said I could play there any time I wanted. Mike Phillips, a dedicated golfer, attended Lawrence Tech. He wound up in a good job at Chrysler's headquarters. Brother Billy, also a golfer, went to St. Joseph College, a small private school in Indiana. I only know that he ended up in a white collar job.

Around the corner. Located at 7870 Reuter--an address forever imprinted on my brain--was a bungalow with knotty pine paneling in the basement and den where the Conflitti family lived. Mr. Conflitti operated a one-man heating and cooling service. He was a dad who owned his own catcher's mitt and would crouch over a plate marked by electrical tape on the driveway to receive pitches fired by his sons after work. He did not attend college. Mrs. Conflitti was a stay-at-home mom. She was not college-educated. She used to make me toasted tomato sandwiches in her kitchen, which usually smelled of green peppers simmering in an Italian sauce. Mrs. Conflitti was a relative of the owners of Gorno Ford in Trenton, Michigan. As a result, the Conflittis drove a new car every other year. There were three Conflitti children: Mary Jo (who reminded me of Annette Funicello) was a sweetheart and six years older than me; Nick who was three years older than me; and Jerry, my close childhood friend, who was two years older than me.

Living in the modest colonial next door to them were the Dorringtons. Mr Dorrington was a pharmacist (considered a "trade" in those days) for Cunningham's-Kinsel's. Mrs. Dorrington, who worked in administration for Dearborn Schools, died of cancer in 1959 when I was in the sixth grade. Suddenly, Mr. Dorrington was raising four children as a single parent. There was Skip, the oldest child, who was four years older than me, and three girls: Mary, Colleen and Janet. As kids, I played touch football and "running bases" in the street with Nick, Jerry and Skip almost every day. All four of us would go on to become accomplished sprinters on our respective track teams in high school.

Of the seven children who lived in those two homes, four attended college. Mary Jo went to Michigan State, got married and became a stay-at-home mom. Nick attended Xavier University where he played some baseball and attended graduate school at Ohio State. He had a successful career in insurance services. Jerry, on the other hand, was mischievous, to put it mildly, and struggled with "the books." However, he was the only kid I ever knew who registered four years of perfect attendance during high school. He was then drafted into the Army and became a successful electrician after returning home from Vietnam. Skip attended Michigan and ultimately became a member of senior management at Polk & Company, a provider of marketing information to the automotive industry. I crossed paths with him many times during my years in the advertising agency business. His sister Mary went into nursing. She did her undergrad at Madonna University, received her master's at Rush University in Chicago, and earned an MBA at Northwestern. Sister Colleen was a stay-at-home mom. Sister Janet worked in grahic design.

Down Reuter. There were several other kids, many of them older than me, who lived on Reuter before it crossed Esper Blvd. to the south. But on the first block, near the intersection at Diversey, was a large, 1920s brick home with two "flats" where my classmate, Ken Halibozek, lived. He and his family, including sister Charlene, lived upstairs. Downstairs lived his grandparents and two bachelor uncles. Mr. Halibozek packed a lunch every day and worked in the machine shop at the Dodge Main in Hamtramck. Mrs. Halibozek was a bookkeeper at the Edward C. Levy Company. Ken, with whom I played grade school basketball and board games (everything from Candyland to Monopoly), attended Wayne State and earned an M.A. at Eastern Michigan. He went on to run Ford's worldwide telecommunications operations. His sister attended Henry Ford Community College.

On the second block of Reuter lived another classmate of mine, Butch Forystek, who came up the street to play sports, hop fences and jump off garages with the other Reuter boys and me. Butch and I were extremely close until he died of cancer a few years ago. I am the godfather of his oldest daughter. Butch's father had served in the Marines Corps and had some sort of white collar job at Cadillac. He did not attend college. Mrs. Forystek, from Indiana, was a stay-at-home mom. She was not college-educated. There were six kids in the Fortstek family. Their home, a modest ranch, was not a particularly happy one. I recall how Butch's folks yelled at each other in the kitchen while we watched cartoons in the living room. Butch was a smart, underachieving kid who was forever pulling stunts and blurting wisecracks in school. His parents divorced sometime between our freshman and sophomore years of high school. Butch did not attend college. He enlisted in the Army and scored so well on tests that he was stationed in Japan to work in intelligence rather than being sent to Vietnam. It took him several years to get established after his military experience, but Butch eventually became a successful sales representative for companies that sold forklifts, conveyors and commercial shelving. For many years he quietly helped to support his mother, stepfather and siblings, several of whom struggled in life.

The walk. My daily trek to school was often filled with adventure and hijinks. On the way I picked up my classmate, Anthony Adams, just a couple of blocks away from St. Al's on Calhoun. I must have entered the side door of his family's colonial a thousand times as a kid. We made that walk together almost every day for 12 years. Along the way we talked sports, school stuff, rock 'n' roll, girls, sex and news of the latest shenanigans pulled on the nuns at school. That walk was an education in itself. We did it twice a day--usually with Ken Halibozek and Tom Flanigan--during the winter because of nightly basketball practice. Mr. and Mrs Adams (the family name had been changed from Adamo) were two of the greatest parents a kid could ever know. Mr. Adams, the general manager of the Foundary Division at Ford Motor Company, was a former amateur boxer and transplant from West Virginia where he attended Salem College. When we were in high school, he earned his doctorate at Wayne State. I liked that Mr. Adams made me feel as though I was more than just "a kid." He started every conversation with "Well, Lenny..." or "Well, son..." He was full of wisdom and just seemed to assume that Anthony and I would be successful one day. As for Mrs. Adams, she just knew everything that every kid was up to in the neighborhood. Unlike my mother, she never freaked out about our adolescent interests in girls or "mixed parties." She simply understood. Mrs. Adams did not attend college. She was the proverbial stay-at-home mom, looking after Pat, Angela, Anthony, Luci and twins Kevin and Karen. Anthony attended Western Michigan (where friends started calling him Tony) and simultaneously served in the Army Reserves. Thanks to his dad's connections, he worked summers at the Ford steel mill when we finished high school. He joined the union and became an hourly worker there after college, building a nest egg by working lots of overtime. When the steel division at Ford became a separate business entity, Rouge Steel, Tony made a transition to its front office where he became a successful purchasing agent. Sister Pat attended Eastern Michigan; Angela attended Salem College; Luci attended Western Michigan; both Kevin and Karen went to Michigan.

On the way to basketball practice we always stopped at the Bonkowski house, a small bungalow on Calhoun, to pick up little Mickey. He was the best grade school free throw shooter I ever saw, consistently making 22 or 23 out of 25 at practice. Before his father worked in the auto industry, Mr. Bonkowski was an engineer on Project Mercury in the U.S. space program. So I assume that he attended college. However, I rarely saw him. I never had a conversation with him. Mrs. Bonkowski, on the other hand, greeted us every night in her kind and genuine way when we came through the side door. She was always baking something and once said to me, "Lenny, have more...It's a compliment to the cook when you ask for seconds." And so I always did. Mickey gave up basketball in high school. After graduation he attended RETS, a trade school. He became co-owner of a small electronics company with his older brother Ed, who attended Wayne State. Sisters Edith and Marlene did not go to college.

Other walkers. During the last few years of grade school, Anthony and I were joined on the walk to school by three other classmates: Tom Flanigan who lived on Ward, a block north of my house, on the Detroit side of Tireman; Sam Bitonti who lived a couple blocks east on Oakman Blvd. And Patrick Rogers who lived "out of parish," east of Wyoming Ave. in Detroit, and walked about a mile to get to my house.

Tom came from a family of 11 kids. I was close to him and his brother Brian who was a year ahead of us in school. They were both scrappy athletes and really smart. Mr. Flanigan, a former Marine, always called me "Buckey." He was a sales analyst at Ford. He was not college-educated. Mrs. Flanigan was another one of those genuine, loving, stay-at-home moms who populated our neighborhood. She did not go to college, either. Tom attended Western Michigan while simultaneously serving in the Army Reserves. He went on to work in labor industrial relations at Chrysler, sitting in on contract negotiations with the UAW. Brian enlisted in the Marines after high school, saw combat in Vietnam, then attended Notre Dame University. He went on to become perhaps the best crime reporter in the long history of the Detroit Free Press.

Sammy lived in a huge Spanish revival home on Oakman, the street where doctors, dentists and successful business owners lived. His house had a four-car garage. Sam was the catcher on our Dearborn Recreation baseball teams. We used to joke that "he was even slower than he looked" on the base paths. Mr. Bitonti was said to "own properties." It was also said that he had connections to the underworld. I rarely saw him around. I never had a conversation with him. Mrs. Bitonti, on the other hand, was talkative, gregarious. She once drove us to the Goodfellows Football Game, the annual showdown between the Detroit Public School League champion and the Catholic League champion for the city championship at Briggs Stadium (before it was known as Tiger Stadium). I liked her. We lost Sam several years ago. I don't believe he attended college. I think he worked in a lab that dealt with solvents and paints. He had an older sister, Kathy, and a younger sister, Joanne. I know little about them.

I don't remember what year Patrick Rogers started school at St. Al's, perhaps the fifth or sixth grade. He was the last one to join us in "the walk." He was a rough-and-tumble kid who never mentioned his mom or dad. I once rode my bike to his house, a wood frame home in need of paint, but was asked to stay outside. I remember feeling as though he, or someone inside of the house, was trying to hide something from me. Pat was a feisty grade school football player. He left St. Al's during our freshman year. I never saw him again until he surprisingly showed up at our 20-year high school reunion.

Yours truly. My dad reached the eleventh grade at Detroit Northwestern High School before dropping out to help support his family. After returning from the Army during World War II, he purchased the marble business where he had been employed before the war from its owner, for whom my dad had great respect. Len Sr. was a risk taker. Before his marble business struggled due to differences with his partners (a brother and a brother-in-law), he did well and owned several acres of land on the east side of Detroit with a couple of big shots in the tile business. He also invested in a grocery store (with liquor license and fresh meats) in Dearborn Heights. My dad liked to tell the story about his partners in the land deal and how they asserted that he would have been a force in business if only he had attended college. My mother, a stay-at-home mom, reached the tenth grade at Detroit Chadsey High School before dropping out to do housework to help her family. She told me that she was a voracious reader before she and my dad got married. I'm sure she would have done well in college, if only she'd have had the opportunity. I, of course, went to Michigan State and achieved my dream of becoming a writer. My sister Mary moved to Albuquerque after getting divorced at a young age and eventually earned her degree in journalism--at age 40--at the University of New Mexico. She became the development director at KUNM, the public radio station there. Sister Betty did not attend college, but had a long career in various capacities at American Airlines. Brother Mark did not attend college, either. He and a friend wound up owning a small pneumatic tool repair company. My youngest brother, Paul, attended the Specs Howard School of Broadcasting. He still works in radio today.

Epilogue.

The older I get the better I understand that the '50s were a unique time for families with young children in America. Most of the dads were little more than a decade removed from a world war in which upwards of 85 million people (both military and civilian) were killed.

And practically all of the moms and dads in my day had been kids during the Great Depression. So they raised us while possessing a sense of what it meant to be poor. My Dad used to tell stories about how ashamed he was to go to school as a child wearing pants provided to him by "welfare."

I've long thought that experiencing both a world war and the most devastating of economic times are the primary reasons that my parents and those of my childhood friends seemed to be such resilient people, so high in personal character (although not without their faults).

And consider that when my friends and I were in grade school, Detroit's economy was sizzling. Many dads had good jobs at the Big Three--or at automotive suppliers--at a time when GM, Ford and Chrysler really were the Big Three. Meanwhile, very few mothers worked outside the home.

With thoughts of war and memories of hard times in the backs of their minds, our parents wanted us to have better lives. So they encouraged us to "get an education." If not that, then to pursue a trade. And if that wasn't an option, well, there were always good paying jobs--with benefits--to be had at one of the Detroit auto plants in those days.

Ultimately, many of my friends and I received the college educations our parents wanted for us. And for the most part we wound up enjoying good careers in our respective fields. As did those who became police officers, fire fighters, carpenters, electricians, etc. Most of my friends--at least those who did not move out of state--eventually moved their families to exurbia--into lovely homes in the outer ring of Detroit suburbs such as Plymouth, Rochester, Bloomfield Hills, Northville, Farmington Hills, Milford, etc. My wife and I moved our family to Clarkston.

And life was good.

In my opinion.

The kids that I grew up with turned out to be good people, solid citizens. We didn't have to fight in a world war, thank God, but my generation did have Vietnam. We didn't suffer through a depression, but we experienced our share of serious recessions. And, generally speaking, my contemporaries turned out to be more tolerant than our parents in regard to skin color, the role of women in society, religious affiliation, etc.

When we made our moves away from the old neighborhood, we took with us our IRAs, mutual funds, 401ks, etc. And many of us became real estate rich with the appreciation in the values of our homes. So when we encouraged our own children to go to college, most of us could come up with the money to cover the rising cost of education.

But without realizing it, I think we were also building barriers to the good life for those left behind in the city and older suburbs where blue collar, less educated workers tend to live. In general, their children are unlikely to attend college these days. And if they do they're usually burdened by tons of debt from student loans.

Now, let's return to the fact in the second paragraph when I started this essay:

In America today, the single best predictor of whether a young person will attend college, have a good income, get married, stay married, live in a "good neighborhood" and enjoy good health is the performance of his or her parents, based on the same metrics.

Also consider that young people with college educations today tend to marry other young people with college educations, thereby doubling (usually) their wealth. Plus many of them are in line to receive inheritances that were unheard of 60 years ago.

Passing along privilege is fine, but we may be doing it at the expense of other people and their children.

Bottom line, we seem to be unconsciously building roadblocks to the ladder of success for people lacking education. Maybe that's why we have a growing disparity in wealth, social immobility, political instability and a "great divide" in America today.

I'm not sure where it's all headed for our society. I just wish our government and business leaders would put their heads together to create an economy that works better for more people.

I'm talking about people on the lower rungs of the ladder in the "land of opportunity," including those who are less educated--people like maybe your parents and mine.

[duskydrawz]

It's a little late, but happy New Year Everyone! I hope you enjoyed the holidays, whatever you and your culture celebrates. It's the time of the year where we go over goals and make new ones! I had a few art goals for last year; > One full art piece a month (continued from last year) > Aim to draw more full-body pieces > 3 sketches a month I did manage to achieve the first two, though I never posted a finished December piece here and instead kept it for personal use. I'm fine with that, I'll forgive the difficult last few months I had and try and be kind to myself. As for the sketches, I have to confess, I didn't keep up with those past March. I think it's actually quite challenging to keep up when you don't have a dedicated theme or idea each month. I also got a bit conscious about posting them when I'm still not super happy with my understanding of human anatomy. I think I'll re-set the goal for this year, but not put the pressure of posting on myself until year's end. Some goals for this blog for the year ahead: > I'd like to do more new comics! (at least 4 this year would be nice, double last year's) > I want my months to have different arts, instead of only doing love live icons / birthday pieces. I want to move away from those to give myself chance to do more with the characters. > I want to post more sketches, or less-polished drawings in general. I think I can get more done if I don't have to worry about it all being perfect and finished, and I have some fun ideas I just never get around to being able to do otherwise. I also want to continue trying to branch out with poses, and more full-body (or at least not just face or bust-upwards art) this year. (It would also be really neat if we could get up to 100 followers! But that's a little out of my control.) We'll see what the tides bring, though hopefully this year will be better than the last. I so very much appreciate everyone who has supported and joined my blog this past year <3 As well as those of you who stuck with me when some months have been on the quieter side. I love drawing, and trying to be consistent with a full time job on the side is difficult. But I don't feel like this blog is hard work. It's always just been a place for my casual enjoyment to post and challenge myself when I can. I think that's important. Anyways, sappy things aside, may your 2024 be better than the last year. And may you achieve all the goals you want to in the continuous strive for improvement! - Dusky x

#love live sunshine #love live #honkai impact 3rd #elysia #dia kurosawa #kanan matsuura #hanamaru kunikida #you watanabe #mari ohara #ruby kurosawa #yoshiko tsushima #new year goals #art goals #riko sakurauchi #eden #2023 art summary #furina #genshin impact #comics

[ilovedthestars]

✨ Fic Writing Review 2023 ✨

I was tagged by @dendrochilums and @blessphemy !

Words and Fics On AO3

29,868 words, of which 27,560 were actually fic (excluding meta and fanart image descriptions)

12 fanworks, of which 8 were new fics, 2 were fanart, 1 was meta, and 1 was a new chapter to a previously existing fic.

All for Murderbot, except for Things in the Shadows, my Witch King fanfic (and first foray into non-murderbot fic!)

My lifetime AO3 wordcount (since spring 2022) is 55,365

My lifetime actual written wordcount of Murderbot fanfic is somewhere on the order of 250,000 (give or take some duplicate drafts that are getting counted twice in scrivener)

Top Fics by Kudos

My actual top fics by kudos are mostly from 2022

Of the ones published/updated this year, An Unexpected Quarter wins. This is the one that I originally published in 2022 and updated with a surprise second chapter in 2023, so I think the age bias for kudos is still showing

The highest fic originally published in 2023 is Operation Parsec, which is 10th on the overall list. It's also the literal first fic I posted that year, as it was written for the New Years gift exchange. Yeah, I think my kudos rankings are almost entirely based on age

Fics and Fanart on Tumblr

By my count I made 12 fanart posts in my #stars art tag! This includes Many-Colored Strings and Ghosts of the Pressy, the two fanart pieces that I posted to AO3. (Ghosts of the Pressy is technically from 2022, but I didn't share it outside of discord until 2023)

Because I didn't have a tumblr until this year, I decided to go back through my list of ao3 works and post links to them under my #stars ao3 reruns tag

I posted snips from nine unpublished Murderbot fic wips for the Trick or Treat ask game (which are all linked in this post)

And had fun with lots of other ask games, tag games, and rambling about my wips in general! More can be found in #stars fic, #stars wips and #stars ocs

Fandom Fic Events 2023

Last year's Murderbot Diaries New Years Gift exchange ( @mbd-gift-exchange ), for which I wrote Operation Parsec for Lillow and received this gorgeous artwork from @acornwizard!!

The Aspec Murderbot Diaries event, for which I created Many-Colored Strings based on a prompt about platonic soulmate AUs

The Murderbot discord's AUpril event, for which I created several snips and small artworks that were shared only on discord

And several other less formal events/collaborations on discord, like the fictional art exhibition in the future of the MBD universe (i should get around to archiving the snips i wrote for this, I don't think I ever posted them, but I did help organize the ao3 collection)

Upcoming 2024

My gift project for this year's New Years gift exchange!

At least a dozen wips I'd like to get finished, and have no idea when or which order that will happen in, but among my top priorities:

The final 3-ish chapters of Old Unit, Young Unit

Several follow-ups to Salvage or Repair, ft. Yuma and Crowbar, particularly an immediate follow-up fic and a spinoff fic featuring two new OCs with an angsty past

Various other Polaris things that I can share after I finish OU,YU, including Niri POVs, some past & future spinoffs, and OldUnit's official company file

maybe that "Murderbot has a cat" fic that I already wrote most of but have been wanting to polish up for months now?

A revisit to my semi-abandoned Three time travel fix-it where One and Two live, perhaps? I'm low on energy but SC did give me some new ideas...

This was very fun, thanks for the tag! Rules copied below, I added some new categories but the main ones seem to be Words and Fics, Top Fics by Kudos, Fandom Events, and Upcoming 2024.

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass, just keep on scrolling.

I'll tag @specialagentartemis, @every-eye-evermore, @all-all0s-eyes, and anyone else who's interested!

#stars fic #tag game #year in review #i spent so much time putting this together it was so fun! #thanks for the tags!!

[angieowlie]

Happy 2024!~!! ☺️

Hope your new year has gone off to a kind, gentle start <3

This year my main goal is to pace myself. In all aspects of life, including writing, working, exercising, and resting. I've been thinking a lot about what I want my day-to-day life to look like, and I've drafted a rough schedule of what I would like to follow.

I feel as though the stress of the holidays has fallen away and, with it, the emergence of the bright new start of January have slowly eased away my winter blues. I feel safe and rested and ready to write regularly again, to come back to where I left off and return to the story like returning to a warm group of friends. I've been allowing myself space to write little drabbles of whatever comes to mind, not thinking too much of grammar and wording, only of creating a small piece of happiness before I start the day.

Despite the (freezing) weather that is Canada, I've been bundling myself up and driving to my favourite park and making sure I get out of the house for a breath of fresh air, even just 15 mins. Slowly, it's begun to do wonders for my mental health and I feel myself, well, feeling like myself again.

Working from home is amazing, but sometimes you feel trapped by the walls of your room and the walls of your mind. That's why I've been coaxing myself to go outside, even just for a bit, because it does help. I often worry about wasting gas or catching a cold or what-have-you, but all of that pale in comparison to looking after my mental health.

I realized last year that, because I've gotten to know my bbs more now, I actually feel like redoing parts of vol 3's plot XD So that's what I'll do after finishing up my current task of editing vol 2 draft 2. I also want to start brainstorming vol 4, mostly because I've been editing and rewriting since September of 2022, and, creatively, I am yearning to write something new X'D It's fulfilling to go back and polish up a draft, of course, but I do miss the magical feeling of coming up with something new. The excitement and wondrous joy of discovering where a new plotline will lead to, you know?

Towards the end of 2023, I began reading The Creative Act by Rick Rubin and, oh my goodness, it's now my creative bible (after Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way Every Day). It's filled with such gentle words of wisdom and, like, permission to just create and have fun.

I also reread the first 2 volumes of The Dangerous Convenience Store, and my most joyous discovery is that the fandom has nicknamed Gunwoo as "Ah-juicy" 🤣 I have the Mandarin version from Taiwan, so I had no idea what the English fandom was up to. That being said, still no word of the other volumes being translated in Taiwan 😭 pLEASE put me out of my misery, I need to know what happens next!!

I also started watching (of all things) All Creatures Great and Small, and it is just the wholesomest show ever! (The 2020 version.) Peaceful village life and cuddly animals~ Sigh~ Yes please~

Anyway, I hope this year you read and write and create things that make you happy! And look after your mental and physical health. And drink lots of water! And look at stars. And laugh big deep belly laughs. And accomplish one goal on your list (you can do it! 💕)

Until next time, here's to more magic 🧚🏻‍♂️✨✨

#writing #personal #progress 🦉 #happy new year!