A Year in Media

It's a post about all the sh*t I made and did this year. Idk, I thought it would be interesting.

Like, you don't have to read it.

I would I guess like to preface that if you didn't get anything done this year, that's more than okay. You survived! You made people smile! And those are worth infinitely more than a wordcount or new job. But even if I repeatedly failed at stuff like "reply in a timely manner to important emails" and "do the washing up", I did make a fair amount of sh*t, and watch and read and play stuff too, so I'd like to celebrate those. It was a pretty phenomenal amount of stuff, too, more than I've done since I was in high school, which conclusively of course proves that capitalism stifles creativity and innovation.

Anyway.

Compared to all the artists I know, I barely made any art, which is one of the reasons I think it's important to gauge and celebrate only yourself, without comparison. Especially considering that I recently tried a bit of the ol' self-flagellating woe-is-me "I'll never be as good as you" on an artist friend I admire, and he retorted with the exact same thing at twice the intensity about his own art. It really do be a pointless circle of comparison and imposter syndrome. So here's a thing everyone was doing in like November: all of the art you did this year, and how you felt about it (obvi, red is "oh bad", yellow is "yeah that's aight", and green is "this is an acceptable piece of art" (jk, green is "this is good", but that's still a thing i struggle to accept)):

ID: a watercolour of a magpie in flight with a red squiggle over it; a digital painting of an elf's face with a green squiggle over it; a digital painting of a an elf with a bow with an orange squiggle over it; and a digital painting of a qunari and dracolisk from Dragon Age (a tall grey-skinned person with horns, and a creature the shape of a horse with a dragon's head), with a green squiggle over it. End ID

ID: a watercolour of Sylv from Sylvestus, a white man, in a bath with a tiger leaning around him, with an orange squiggle over it; a marker pen drawing of an orc's head with an orange squiggle over it; a marker pen drawing of three elves and a tiefling walking, with a red squiggle over it; and a marker pen drawing of Sylv illuminated by firelight seated on a throne, with an orange squiggle over it. End ID

ID: six marker pen drawings of Cillian Murphy, with a red squiggle over it; a digital painting of the She-wolf from Sylvestus, a white woman in a pink dress and long brown hair looking down onto the camera, with an orange squiggle over it; a digital painting of Sylv with contrasting shadow and light huddled in the dark, with a green squiggle over it; and a digital painting of a man's torso with the heart replaced with a moth, with a red squiggle over it. End ID

ID: a digital painting of Sylv and Lavi, a southeast Asian woman, from Sylvestus back-toback, with a green squiggle over it; a digital painting of Romulus from Sylvestus, a cream and brown dog, running, with an orange squiggle over it; a digital painting of a gnoll, a hyena-person, stabbing a sword into a giant heart, with a green squiggle over it; and a digital painting of a tiefling, a person with grey skin and gazelle horns, holding a flame, with "have you heard the news that you're dead?" written behind them, with a green squiggle over it. End ID

ID: a digital painting of a bald dwarf woman wearing heavy grey armour and black tattoos on her face, with a green squiggle over it; and a digital painting of an elf woman looking over her shoulder, with an orange squiggle over it. End ID

Overall, I'd say I'm happy with how my year in art went! It feels like it's been slow progress, but also I do feel like I made a breakthrough in like... technical skill in the middle of this year, developing my style and stuff. I'm excited to continue and try and develop more skills and create more art. That can definitely be seen as the general vibe moves from orange interspersed with red, to green interspersed with orange. Even if my art doesn't look like all of the "artsy animal paintings" artists I follow on Instagram, or the ten minutes of fanart in the Critical Role streams, doesn't mean it's not good, it's just different and mine. Someone called it a "unique style" and I took it as a compliment.

Of the pieces of art I've done this year, therefore, eight were related to Sylvestus, five were related to D&D, four were related to Dragon Age, and one was... literally just a bad painting of a magpie.

Obvi, the big one is next: a year in writing.

This year, I wrote just over 90,000 original words of Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise, as well as about 10,000 stray words in other projects. I also re-wrote and edited large chunks of Sylv, but that's much more difficult to quantify. I've also read it more times than I care to think about.

This is phenomenal compared to previous recent years; I have less of a clear division, but I believe I wrote about 55,000 words in 2019 (just over half of this year), and maybe 30,000 in 2018. Before that it gets shaky as I was spread across a much greater range of projects over multiple platforms (now I write almost exclusively on BigHugeLabs' Writer software, which is perfectly minimalistic for my needs, but before that I skipped between dA Sta.sh, Word, physical notebooks, and more).

In poetry, I've actually gone down from the two years or so previous; I think I moved away from novel-writing into poetry in a big way 2018-19, but have since migrated my focus back to novels, though I still retain love for the format. I'm going to avoid word counts for this one, but I believe I produced nine original full poems this year, which isn't bad going, even if half of them were about the same thing (see: the entire previous series under the "actual poem" tag on this blog). More than volume, though, I'm genuinely quite happy with how my style has progressed and become cemented. Compared to what I had previously considered my best work, Churchyard, my more recent pieces have, I feel, a more... Like, the format looks better without sacrificing flow. They retain my narrative style and colour without being just sprawling trains of thought like my earlier work. I like that.

Finally (for the creative side), I published 23 (including this one) posts on this blog, the first one ironically when first lockdown hit and everyone was publishing new creative stuff, and somehow managing to keep up almost to that pace even when I started working again. Four were readings from Sylv or Dying Ember, eight were poems (though several of them had been written in 2018-19 and only published this year), three were housekeeping/life/Sylv updates, four were fun Sylv things, and two were general unquantifiable talking to myself about myself. One was this, obvi.

This is up from four posts in the entire of 2019 and three in 2018. Lmao. We ignore 2017 bc even though it had even more posts than this year, they all like... Sucked.

Onto stuff I did when I wasn't working or creating!

According to Roll20, I played just over 160 hours of D&D this year, although that doesn't account for the fact that one time we played a non-D&D game. Including the one I'm gonna be playing on NYE, this was with five characters (an elf cleric, a gnoll warlock-ranger, a tiefling warlock, a tiefling cleric-rogue, and a goblin artificer, for those curious) across two campaigns and three one-shots. I also ran five one-shots and one campaign which is still ongoing. I wish I had like... Been counting how many dice rolls I did and how many crits I got. Might do that next year cos that'd be pointless but joyful, innit.

Further, I played about: twenty hours of Mass Effect (one playthrough); 45 hours of ME2 (two playthroughs); forty hours of ME3 (one and a half playthroughs (second ongoing rn)); ninety hours of ME: Andromeda (one playthrough); forty hours of Dragon Age: Origins (two playthroughs plus Awakening); 25 hours of DA2 (one and a half playthroughs); and like ten hours of DA: Inquisition (dipping back into my third playthrough of 2019). Stepping away from BioWare, I also put about ten hours into God of War (2018), five hours into Amnesia Rebirth (i wanna go back but too spoopy!!), fifteen into Dream Daddy, nearly a hundred into Stardew Valley, and maybe twenty hours into Among Us and Jackbox Party Pack 7 with friends. There were also negligible amounts into a dozen PS2 games and bored forays back into games such as Hollow Knight and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, that I have previously blitzed but couldn't quite pick back up when I was so dang busy with BioWare RPGs.

Spotify Wrapped had, as usual, its time in the spotlight, but I do not desire to share the intricacies of my listening habits with everyone, so you can just have my total listening time:

ID: a blue square with "minutes listened: 30,534" in green, with the Spotify logo in blue against a green rectangle below. End ID

This is much less important to me, however, than my Podbean listening stats:

ID: a screenshot saying "Listening Level" along the top. Below, it says "2014h 46m, Total play time" and "3h 5m, Intelligent speed saved" in green. End ID

... yeah. That's all since December of last year. I like podcasts a lot. In case you're curious, that amounts to about 5.5 hours a day. This year, I wanna say those were mostly Sawbones, My Dad Wrote a Porno, Hello from the Magic Tavern, The Besties, This Week in Parasitism, The Adventure Zone, Wonderful!, My Brother, My Brother and Me, and very recently, Dungeons & Daddies.

Watching is less quantifiable, so I'm gonna go for impact rather than volume. My biggest associations for watching habits this year are Community (all of it, twice), Critical Role, Awful Squad, Gill & Gilbert, Taskmaster, Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Aggretsuko. I really moved into YouTube and back into Netflix this year, having never been huge on YouTube before, and not having really touched traditional ""telévision shows"" since like 2016.

Finally, I read I think seven and a half books in the entire year: The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss in the space of eight days (which lemme tell you is a helluva feat); Tevinter Nights, a collection of short stories from the Dragon Age franchise; The Sight by David Clement-Davies, which I read over and over again as a kid but couldn't finish this time around; A Darker Shade of Magic and A Gathering of Shadows by VE Schwab (i love them but this was my third re-read so i lost steam before hitting the last book in the trilogy); The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, also by VE Schwab; and Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers. I'd say that I kinda wish I had read more, but in truth I tried to and just couldn't get into it (as evidenced by getting halfway into The Sight, and two thirds of the way through a trilogy by one of my favourite authors).

And I think that's the thing with rating a year by how productive or whatever it was: it's always subjective; and it's never enough. Many people, including Younger Me, would count reading seven and a half books in a year as an appalling display of anti-literary laziness; just like many people can produce a piece of art like the ones I've rated as my rare I'm-actually-happy-with-this pieces as a warm up sketch every day before doing their real art; and many people play a diverse range of games rather than seven RPGs by the same company over and over again; and many people count 100,000 words in a year to be the low side of average...

But many more people read no books, because it just isn't their thing, or produced no art in 365 days, just looked at other people's and wished they had the talent, or are kind of ashamed of how many games they played and TV shows they watched, or wrote 10,000 words in the entire year and are still happy they managed to write any at all.

And those are good too.

'Cos you made it. Even if all you did was play Animal Crossing for 400 hours, showered eight times since January, and play D&D once a fortnight. Even if you didn't get out of bed, or get a job, or do the dishes. Like, I'm kind of proud of listening to over 2000 hours of podcasts in twelve months, even if objectively it's Not Really an Achievement. Despite the fact that most people would count it as much more important, notice that I haven't yet mentioned I got two jobs this year, as well as passing an exam and doing most of a professional qualification. I'm not really proud of those, they just kind of happened because they had to, because capitalism. I enjoy parts of my job and it's important and stuff, but my year for me has been defined by it being the one where I got back into D&D, and made a breakthrough in my art style, and played ever so many Mass Effect and Dragon Age games.

So, what did you do this year? It doesn't have to be "an achievement". It doesn't have to have advanced your career or been impressive. You're alive, so it was enough. Go forward with kindness. Try playing a podcast in the background.

Poem: Hands

CW: mention of suicide, mention of self-harm, dementia

 

This is my most recent poem, dated 14th October 2020. The previous series of poems all about the same theme/person is over, and I wanted to post something more recent before I go back to old poems. This poem contains one brief mention of suicidal thoughts and self-harm.

 

Hands:

Children, famously, ask awkward questions,

especially when I never know where to draw

the line between my policy of gentle honesty

and what their parents want them to hear.

I’ve only known her for a day and a half when

the little girl puts her hand happily in mine and

asks me what I think the point of life is. Unlike

with her other forays into an eight year-old’s

philosophy, I don’t hesitate before my answer:

It is to be kind.

I can’t blame her for her quiet dissatisfaction;

it’s a boring answer, but in this case at least,

it is truth. I’d say I wish someone had told me

when I was her age, but in the same lines of

truth, I don’t think I would have believed them.

I went to science for my answers, decided that

if I could determine why the first cell transferred

ions with its neighbour, I would understand why

I had wanted to die since I was eight years old.

She leaves my hand for a moment, running

to a tree to pluck the seeds from its branches,

and I pull my coat tighter instinctively. We are

teaching her to feel the ground beneath her

feet, the wind on her face, to savour the cold

of each indrawn breath; I know all too well how

easy it is to become lost when the injustices of

childhood shake through her tiny body, and I

do wish someone had taught me this before.

I once wept for all the pillows I had punched,

though I never cried for the bruises I left on

my own skin. I have learned to let anger pass

through me, to take injustice from the air and

metabolise it, break it down in my lungs so

all the exhale offers is calm. I want my walls

to say, They were kind to us, my floors to feel

no stamp but the warming of cold feet. There

is a time to fight, and there is a time to grow.

Love, that overused poem, does both, and I

have fought enough times, been my own tiger’s

claws when cornered, to know that the greatest

act of love can be taking up a sword. But I have

also lost so much of myself to the bonfire of

fury that I will always choose gentleness where

possible, forgiveness when that is a braver act

than violence. I want even my decay to be the

fertiliser for flowers to grow beneath my feet.

She comes running back, takes up my hand

again, and I am humbled by the easy trust of

it. I am eight years ago or so, on a school visit

to an old people’s home; we drift, bored teens,

between the senile elderly, muffled giggles and

awkward mumbles, when a woman’s fingers

twine in mine from nowhere. I still remember the

texture of her hands, delicate, soft wrinkled skin

over bones, guiding me to kneel like a knight.

Time stops as I smile and, with the wonder of a

newborn child, she smiles back. She touches

the pin on my blazer, an owl, coos and pats,

fascinated. Our time is too short; in moments I

am called away, and her face falls as this brief

connection wavers – unpinning the owl and

folding it into her hand is the first time I have

felt absolutely at peace in this world. I think now

I knew God for the first time in her joy just then.

This hand, equally fragile, at the opposite pole

of life, brings me back, letting go to point out a

robin on the near fence with glee. I truly believe

that we were put on this earth to make others’

lives better. When I am gone, I do not hope that

people will say I was kind, but rather that I was

simply kind, without want of reward. I never want

my careless fault to be someone’s last straw;

intentional kindness can be all the difference.

One time, I stood in the rain for six hours with

a woman I had never met before because she

had asked me, sobbing, for help. On the phone

with charity after charity, they kept asking who I

worked for – unable to believe that someone

would be so generous for free. I don’t know her,

I kept repeating. She just needed help. Time and

time again she begged me not to leave, and I

won’t pretend it didn’t occur to me, but I stayed.

When finally she was safe, she clutched my

hands for twenty minutes, repeating again: you

saved my life, thank you, thank you, I can’t

believe you stayed. We had been pushed out

from doorway to doorway, denied and turned

away all day, and every time, all I thought was,

Good God, what is the point of life if not to be

kind to one another? All my friends asked me

why I did not walk away, and all I could say was:

She just needed help.

I cannot fathom a philosophy that is not rooted

in simply being kind to one another. Fuck! What

purpose do you have if not making the world

better for your being there? I want the mark I

leave on this world to be a wildflower meadow

fertilised by every worm I picked off the pavement

and moved into mud with my bare hands. What

even are we doing with every step we take, if not

making the path easier for the next person to walk it?

As the path winds back toward home, her steps

slow, the offer of a hand turned down as she climbs

to balance along a low wall. She is of an age where

independence is the greatest gift, yet I hope she

learns before I did how to say, I need help. There is

a lot I hope she learns, of course, but above all else,

this: that the greatest gift of all is simply to be kind.

Look after yourself when you must, but offer your

whole heart to the world every single time you can.

On the bus home, an insect from the bush we

brushed against rounds my sleeve. I cup my hands

like a cradle for the whole half-hour ride, release it

onto grass first chance I get. It will never know the

kindness, but regardless, a kindness was done. I

think of the woman in the rain, of the hundreds who

walked past without pausing, of the pin badge, of

bruises, of hands. I look around at the people looking

for answers in their phones, and pray that they know:

It is to be kind.

Poem: After August

This poem has no content warnings and is dated 16th September, 2020.

 

After August:

 

Eight months later, you're still fresh enough

that my heart tries to turn the calendar

back to March every morning; maybe a

global pandemic alters everyone's perception

of time this year, but we burned so bright

my eyes still aren't convinced it's been

dark for this long, your silhouette a ghost

on my skin I swear has always been there,

in the same breath as doubting it was there

at all. We had that effect - togetherness so

natural that closing the door after my rigid

goodbye unwound the years of therapy

that had finally taught me I was complete

on my own.

When the love of my life left, I counted

every day of a year, so certain was I that

I could not survive twelve months alone.

Compared, eight months has raced by,

as perhaps appropriate for a few weeks of

explicitly-not-a-relationship, but in truth,

I've only felt human skin on my skin a

handful of times in the past eight months,

so for all my scolding it as weakness, I

think I can't be blamed for feeling your lips

brush my eyelids still some nights when

I close my eyes.

I blocked you on social media one week

ago, after writing three poems about why

I couldn't block you on social media; it

finally hurt less than the alternative, and

only when a new city did what eight months

couldn't. Typically, I can't stop writing

poems about something until my heart finds

a new anvil to shatter on; I know it isn't

healthy to look for one, but I'm sick of

writing about you, and my new paycheque

doesn't cover therapy. Perhaps this is your

final appearance, or perhaps I'll see you

in another few months' time. Either way,

best wishes; eight months has at least faded

my anger.