Back in the Saddle

True to my word, I have been doing my best to flourish. It's easier some days than others; on the whole, the past year has been a phenomenal improvement on the few before it, and I'm constantly reminded of that. The human brain, however, is not so easily pulled from its patterns.

I went far, far out of my comfort zone two weekends in a row a while ago, and both ended badly. Was there long-term damage or loss? No, just bad experiences in the moment and a sour memory to look back on. Both times, my brain has wanted to spiral down old, bad paths of hatred and regret and harm. Both times, I have allowed it a little indulgence before dragging it back to We Don't Do That Anymore. Friends have helped, both times; I think a huge enough step is allowing them to.

They're experiences. They're fine. They're markers of progress, and one will be a funny story and a surprise for the next game of Never Have I Ever, eventually.

I've also been playing Disco Elysium for a few weeks, which I am enthralled with of course. I could wax poetic but this is not a game review blog - read Polygon's 2019 review of it and play it yourself. But suffice to say, I have been feeling very much represented by a certain amnesiac detective and his host of inner voices. Ancient Reptilian Brain and Limbic System have a lot to say to me.

You can come an incredibly long way, and then have a minor setback - a mistake or rejection or shock or turn of luck - which sends your brain down a Bad Spiral. The progress from the past is that now, you still have a dog to walk, a cat to feed, a podcast to record, a letter to post, a shop to visit.

One of those setbacks was in February and it meant that I couldn't record for two months. But I am pleased to confirm that Sylvpod is back in full swing and will return to its fortnightly scheduling, starting... earlier today!

So, that was a long-winded way of providing a general update and that notice: Sylvestus: The Podcast is back, should be no further delays on it, go play Disco Elysium ✌️

Flourish

I've never made new years' resolutions. Don't see the point. I'm not someone who revels in their bad habits for a short time with the intention of giving them up at a set date; I'll come to it when I'm good and ready, and when I do decide, I typically don't go back on it.

 

It took me a long time to overcome the shame and dysphoria of going to the gym, but I did it when I wanted to and I haven't stopped. Drinking alcohol petered out over the course of two years or so, and when I decided, "okay, that was the last time," I never drank again. I take up new hobbies with care and research, and I often don't announce plans or start projects until I know I can carry them through.

Lent was a big thing when I was a kid. I'm sure it has more complexity, but the way it was essentially taught to us was that Jesus gave up food and water in the desert for forty days and forty nights, so we should give up things we loved but that were bad for us for the forty days before Easter. I never really got it, because Jesus didn't give up wine or Pepsi or kebabs, and we weren't encouraged to give up all food and water while traveling the desert. I always felt like people were confusing it with Ramadhan.

Teachers would encourage us to give up chocolate or crisps, parents would lament their inability to give up fizzy drinks, my peers would brag about how it had been three whole days since they had eaten cake.

If we were supposed to give up those things because they were bad for us, why did we take them back up as soon as the Adult-Mandated Time of Abstinence was over? It never made sense to me.

So, what I started doing instead, when I was maybe ten or eleven years old, was start doing good things for that period. Things that I thought Jesus would be proud of. If it didn't stick, then I had made the world better for forty days; if it did, I had made myself better in the long run.

One year for Lent, I gave one compliment every day. Another year, I said every nice thing that came into my head. Another, I did one helpful thing for someone every day.

I was ahead of my time, honestly; it's the kind of thing that would be shared on Facebook and get a billion likes on Instagram by people who fall into multi-level marketing schemes now, but at the time, those same people just made fun of me for being too weird. Such is life.

It petered out in my late teens, when no-one did Lent anymore and I was too stuck in my own head to give compliments or be helpful every day. I like to think that nowadays, I try to incorporate those values into every day, regardless of whether it's just before Easter or not - hopefully those Lent years were good practice. And speaking of incorporating them into every day - that's really my whole approach to the idea of new years' resolutions.

Why wait for the Socially Acceptable Cue to make changes? Big or small, there's things you can do every day to make that day better.

For the last few years, my goals overall have been bare and simple. Survive. Get through. Recover. Find a way forward. Escape. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a solid ground beneath my feet. A job I can settle into and stick with, a stable happy living situation, sustainable finances... I can plan. I can create. I can think about short-term luxuries and long-term goals.

So, when I was tasked in my LGBT+ church a few weeks ago with coming up with a new years' resolution... I tried not to be sardonic.

So, what's not sardonic? Sincerity, I guess.

What do I want out of this year? To save money for something. To finish writing something. To get better at something. To have a procedure. Maybe my hesitance to finalise these things, to write them down and hand it in to someone who promises to keep it safe for a year and give it back to me in twelve months' time, is a kind of fear as well as a value.

So, I went with something simpler, but... sincere.

Flourish.

 

Let's revisit next January, I guess.

Back and Forth

I feel recently as though I have been struck with an introspective mood, perhaps because for the first time in a long time, things are just... good. I love my job, I love where I live, I'm emotionally and financially stable - little day-to-day things come up, but compared to the past few years... yeah. It's just. Good.

And it's hard, in its own way, to know what to do with that. I don't want to spend the good times just waiting for the other shoe to drop, but there's also this looming anxiety: Is this what it's supposed to be? Is life supposed to be this easy? Am I allowed to just... be happy?

 

That's a pretty tragic thing to say, I guess, but it's true. I feel guilty for how good things are, as if all the terrible before didn't happen, as if happiness should be earned, as if good fortune is an undeserved reward, unrelated to hard work and perseverance.

On a completely different note, it's now just past the ten year anniversary of what I think of as the start of my novel-writing... phase? Experience? I wrote about it extensively here, just before the eight year anniversary, and re-reading that post back today I'm struck by how wise 22 year-old me is. He had a reeeaal rough two years ahead of him, in which he went back to barely writing and making no art, and I feel like I only now have the space to begin moving forward again. And by moving forward, I'm moving backwards: back into who I was two years ago, before I was knocked so hard back into trauma and doubt.

It's okay, my friends keep reassuring me. It's okay to react like this. You spent over a year being deeply traumatised. You're still recovering. You recovered before and you'll recover from this. I fall back into habits I thought I'd left behind, repeat bad cycles I worked years to overcome. Things are a lot better, but I still feel further behind than I did two years ago. And that's okay, that's okay, that's okay.

It's a back and forth.

I think that's where I am at the moment. Back and forth. In time, in my own head. My Chemical Romance is back and listening to them again in some ways brings with it the headspace of ten years ago, when I had barely started writing The Red Prince, and in other ways is a whole different experience shaped by what's happened in that decade. I listen to Panic! at the Disco for the first time in a few years and think about characters I haven't thought about since they slid out of the front of my brain. I see North from Dying Ember in a whole new light, feel my chest clench up with an understanding I didn't have when I actually wrote him. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is the best time of my life and it cannot stay and what could go wrong and things never stay right. I do not have to repent for happiness.

I do not have to repent for happiness.

Historically, things have always changed for me in September. Between it being my birthday and it being the start of the academic year, it was always a much more significant indicator of change than the meaningless transition from December to January - I even managed to keep that pattern after leaving education, getting my first full-time job in September, then changing it next September. The September after that was quiet and I planned to not change anything else again until the coming one, but things did not work out that way and everything was instead uprooted at the end of March. Like, March? What the heck ever happens in March?

So, I still feel like I'm waiting in a way. Like this is the interstitial period, like nothing good can stay so don't worry lad, just hold on another two months or so and it'll all go tits-up again. I am trying to be more optimistic than that, though. I will endeavour to hold on to what is good, to let go what does not serve me.

Re-playing games I first loved two years ago. Writing the novel I started five years ago. Re-listening to music I loved eight years ago.

Putting away the harmful habits of six months ago. Leaving behind the trauma of one year ago. Planning, for maybe the first time in my life, the future two years from now.

Back and forth.

I should do another digital portrait again soon.

On Some Level

It's been... a heck of a few months. Exactly what those few months entailed will, I'm sure, be the subject of some meta-analysis post about my own writing at some point, when it's all a little less fresh.

Suffice to say, I'm in a new house, in my old city, working a new job, living with an old friend. Some days I'm overcome with how much better things are now, other days I'm still knocked low by the burden of simply recovering from what was before.

But I talked months ago about feeling trapped and not knowing where to go. I don't feel like that any more. It's not perfect, but it doesn't have to be. It's enough. I'm happy, I'm safe. I have the time and energy to do what I love. I'm stable. I can write again. I owe more than words can say to the friends who were there for me in those few months and all the times before and since.

It's a short one, but there's not all that much else to say right now. I just wanted some way to acknowledge where I was and where I am, because I feel like that's owed.

In recompense for the months of quiet and the short post, please enjoy a song I haven't been able to get out of my head for weeks, which also apparently was in Our Flag Means Death, which sounds to me like an excellent excuse to watch it all the way through again:

30/90

I feel like a few years ago, tick, tick... BOOM! (oh wow i'm only going to type that once) would have become my obsession, in the same way Hamilton did in its hayday. Heyday? Anywayday-

It has a lot of things in similar, which makes sense given LMM's involvement, and those similarities - mainly in its message, its sense of urgency - are part of what brought me so close to Hamilton at the time. I was living it up in sixth form, excelling academically, thriving with a group of friends I adored, and writing my little heart out with the first draft of what would become Sylvestus. I was going through some terrible sh*t, but I still look back on that time fondly. Ahh, nostalgia. But something I really miss is... how driven I was. Write like you're running out of time, that was the mantra of those two years - writing for passion, revising, studying, all of them, I did with a fervour I had felt for most of my teen years but never quite so strongly, and have felt only in comparatively muffled, sporadic bursts since.

I didn't super click with tick, tick... BOOM! (i lied) when I watched it a few weeks ago - I enjoyed it, but it didn't lodge right in the brain like Hamilton did. But to be honest, musicals don't tend to for me. I'm... not that huge of a musicals person. I dunno. I'm fairly neutral on them beyond a few phases of the usuals.

But I have been listening to the soundtrack on loop the past week, and it's really starting to dig right into that psyche, and I think I'm getting why. For those who haven't seen it and don't mind spoilers - it's a film about Jonathan Larson, who wrote Rent, before he wrote Rent. Specifically, it's about the week before his 30th birthday and the first workshop for the musical he's written, Superbia, which he's certain isgoing to be his break into the industry and eternal call to fame. He feels like this will be his last chance to be successful because of the impending deadline a 30th birthday brings and how much time and love he's put into Superbia.

The workshop goes well, but he has to move on from Superbia to continue his career and eventually finish Rent and have the legacy we know today. His agent affectionately reminds him that the heartbreak of abandoning projects you've poured years and hours and lifetimes into because they're never going to be The One is part of being a creative.

Yeah, it hit home.

I was considering naming this post 25/22 to make it more personal, but it doesn't have quite the same effect (too many syllables), plus to be honest, I'm not especially stressed about turning 25 in the year 2022 in the same way Jonathan is about turning 30 in 1990. But it... definitely still rings true for me in other parts.

Stop the clock

Take time out

 

I'm trying.

Can you be optimistic?

You're no longer the ingénue.

 

Man, was I ever?

Cages or wings,

which do you prefer?

Ask the birds

 

When I was young, I was so desperate and driven to write. I was determined to be the youngest person to ever x, or the best to ever y - I knew I had a talent, a gift, and I was going to blow the world away. When I finished writing The Red Prince, I was certain that this was it, I had done it. It was going to change the world.

It was pretty rubbish and had no deep significance at all. It took me a long time and a lot of heartbreak to move on and start writing something else. After I finished Seeking and Dying Ember, I felt like... like I'd done what I needed to with them. I'd written them, I'd published them, I'd shared them, it was time to move on.

It was different when I finished Sylv. I was terrified to lose him. I felt like there was so much more but I didn't know where it was.

I still don't. I don't know what I want.

The time is flying

and everything is dying

Thought by now I'd have

a dog, a kid, a wife

 

I want to settle down and be stable and not constantly be stressed about money, I want a house I can stay in for more than a year and can paint and put shelves up in, I want to save up for a nice sofa and to buy new bedding without feeling guilty because my five year-old bedding is technically still usable even if it's a little faded and yellow, I want to be a stay-at-home dad, I want to walk a dog twice a day, I want stability, I want a life.

I want to study for a living, I want to discover new things, I want to be out in nature learning and teaching, I want to make a difference, I want to save a species, I want to tackle climate change, I want to save the world, I want to work with animals, I want to be active every day and excel at something and enjoy what I do.

I want my stories to reach a million eyes and a million hearts, to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, to have fanbases, to be adapted, to be discussed and hated and adored, to be someone's comfort book, to inspire someone else to write, to touch more people than I'll ever meet.

I read a short story once, about a fae who could see the want in people reaching out, could take it like a hand and guide them away into nothingness; it warned about wanting too badly, about yearning for something you weren't and not being grateful for what you were. I recognised the feeling it described because I felt it so strongly every day. I think I've been afraid to want too loudly since I read it. I try not to want, to yearn or to desire or to long, but instead to plan and schedule and work - but it's hard when you won't let yourself acknowledge what it is you want to work for.

Johnny has no guide

Johnny can't decide

Can he settle down

and still not drown?

 

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I've wasted another evening watching TV, I've wasted another week putting off writing, I've wasted another year in a job I like well enough but that doesn't fit any of my goals. I could work harder or try for a higher-earning job where I make even less of a difference and care about it less, and begin to save money to achieve Life Plan A, but I can't quite bring myself to sell out like that. It's literally like, the villain of every story about a creative person. I could give up on the proverbial a dog a kid a wife for another few years and live off the skin of my teeth with no time for writing doing a course in something I really care about and am passionate for and work towards Life Plan B, but I can't quite bring myself to go back to that. I already served my time as a p*ss-poor student, I'm tired of that life. I could continue as I am now but shift my priorities and actually try to get Sylvestus or another of my books into the mainstream and actually work towards Life Plan C, but... well, why not?

I don't know.

Is it fear of rejection? Is it avoidance anxiety? Is it all the practical considerations - "publishers never accept a first novel over 100,000 words, the publishing industry will force you to sell out, mainstream publishers won't let you keep those aspects of your story, blah blah blah"? Or is it a bigger, deeper, vaguer fear, unnamed and all-encompassing?

 

I don't know. But this week I ordered a bulk bunch of copies of both volumes of Sylvestus to try and get distributed and sold in local bookshops where I live, the first significant (and even then, barely anything really) financial investment I've made in my writing in years. I plan to do a run of flyers and business cards soon - again, I used to do those for Seeking, never really got any instant feedback from it, never even bothered since then. I'm prioritising writing itself and Getting It Done again.

Fear or love baby,

don't say the answer

Actions speak louder than words

 

I can't promise that This Will Be It. It takes a lot to acknowledge your deepest anxieties and take action on them. But it's a step, eh? I'll try not to wait til the week of my 30th birthday, at least.

Shadows and Values

Another few months, another long hiatus, another swathe of the same excuses: no time, no inspiration, no energy. I want to blame time most of all, because there are weeks when I have no time to breathe it seems, let alone write novels and posts about novels; or energy, because after two weeks where I haven't so much as had half an hour to just sit and watch some TV or play a game, sometimes you need to just take a nap in that half-hour you do have; or inspiration, cos it's not like I'm burning with it at the moment.

But I know the truth is that recently it's just been... my values. Not that they're in the wrong place, but they aren't in this place.

It's easy to get bogged down in... all of it. I work like, a regular full-time amount, but it's been sapping my energy to spend on other stuff, which is why I'm dropping down to four days a week after Christmas. I go to the gym or swim four times a week, which is only four hours out of 168, but it's still a big commitment, y'know. I run D&D once a fortnight and each session takes a few hours to plan, and more brain energy outside of that to come up with the fun stuff; I play most weeks on top of that which is a few more hours; I go out to board game nights or date nights or walks in the park or to see movies; until recently, I had a partner to give my time and energy to.

I could have carved more time for writing, by telling him more firmly that I wanted to write tonight and wouldn't be watching Grey's Anatomy today. I could have saved my energy for writing, by cancelling gym one evening a week. I could have generated more inspiration, by dropping D&D and using my crucial creative brain space for writing instead.

But I haven't been doing any of that. And it sounds like I'm whining, but... I do love all of those things.

Thinking about my writing and this blog makes me feel like a shadow, and I think that's made me realise that my values right now aren't exactly where I want them to be. I don't know - ironically, it's something work has been big on lately. My line manager told me to move a meeting, even though it inconvenienced her, because I off-handedly mentioned I'd have to cancel my ritualised Monday evening gym session, and she could tell that it was important to me. It's for the same reason that I asked them to drop me back down to four days a week: I'm doing my best on every front right now, but my best isn't what I want it to be. I talked about wanting more time to rest or relax, wanting to be able to do things I love on weekends and clean and run errands and see people and still have energy for work on Monday morning, and that's all true - but it's an example of a shift in my whole values.

And another example is that I want to start writing again.

I miss Sylv. I miss him so much. Writing hasn't been the same since I finished him. Finishing a novel always leaves a hole in my life, and I'll take a break and fill the hole with D&D or partying or art or a new relationship, and then eventually, there'll be another hole, and writing will fill it. I don't really like that analogy, because my whole thing is about accepting the empty space inside you and not trying to fill it, but... I don't know.

I miss Sylv. I'm burned out. I balance my life as best I can. I want to write again. I don't want to stop doing anything I'm doing right now. I don't know what I want to do with my life. I'm happy where I am. I want to be somewhere else.

I'm a shadow at the moment.

I'm trying.

I'll start writing again.

Keepin' Busy

There are definitely phases where this blog is kept much more active than at others, huh? They correspond to a few things - how much I'm writing, how excited I am about writing, how busy I am in other parts of my life, my mood and energy - and that means that the fluctuations aren't easy to predict. I could be low on inspiration to write but high on time and energy and able to put out a lot of content; I could be free on time but low on energy or interest in things adjacent to writing; I could be super busy but inspired enough to write up posts on commutes and while making dinner. But the combination for the past two months or so has been a scarcity of time, energy, and inspiration - I've not been writing much, I've not been drawing at all, and I haven't even really been able to keep up with the promo for the publication of Sylv Vol II, which is a huge shame, because I am genuinely still super invested in him.

Like I predicted, it's been weird... losing Sylv. I knew the saying goodbye would be gradual and yet take me by surprise, that I would look up one day and realise I had lost contact with him some time ago, and I can already feel it happening. It's happened before, but that's always been with the promise that I would find him again - I would have to, because I was going to finish that damn novel whether he or I liked it or not. But Sylv is finished, never and no more, and while I'll keep drawing on him a little over the next few years to promote the books and produce art, and while he'll always have made an impact on my life... there's no immediate goodbye. But I know he's fading. It's hard.

I moved up to full-time at my job administering behavioural therapy to children with learning disabilities at the end of March, which has definitely been a kick to the energy and time fronts. I'm also in a relationship again, which is great but means that I have another priority to balance against the all-day drawing/writing/editing sprees you can do as a single person who lives alone. Oh, and I passed my RBT qualification but still have to do a two-year, 1000-hour apprenticeship on top of my work, and now that the pools are open I go swimming 2-3 times a week, so it's like, aaaAAaaAaaaaa y'know?

No, seriously, I get up at 6am for work and one day a week I go for a swim before that. Like, what the f*ck? I'm functioning? Phenomenal. No time or energy to spend 40 hours on a painting or write a 150,000 word novel tho.

Because of these things, I took a writing break for a while, though for the past two weeks or so I've felt it slowly coming back, and I've been scraping out the time to dedicate to what I think can soon be announced as the next official novel.

In the meantime, I've been channeling my creative energy into the D&D campaign I run, and some practical projects that I figured I'd also share!

[Image ID: a photograph of a narrow corner wall with a notice board and a whiteboard just visible on the surrounding walls. All of the walls are painted white, but the narrow wall has one red stripe painted down the far left, and a thick orange stripe surrounded by masking tape next to it. End ID]

[Image ID: a close photo of the same wall. The orange stripe has a yellow stripe next to it, and a hand holding a brush and a small pot of paint is in the process of painting a green stripe over masking tape next to that. End ID]

 

[Image ID: another photo of the same wall, now showing a stepladder with a large pot of paint on the ground next to it, as well as a leather satchel and a box of toiletries on a side table. The wall now has red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple stripes in a rainbow painted on it, however the green, blue, and purple are messy and chipped and overlapping. End ID]

[Image ID: another close photo of the hand holding the paintbrush, this time tidying the border between the yellow and green stripes. End ID]

[Image ID: a photo of the completed rainbow wall. The lines are all tidied and bright. The stepladder and whiteboard are just visible, and fully in view is also the noticeboard and three small framed pictures. End ID]

This whole thing took about a month, doing one coat of a new colour every 3-5 days. It only cost like £9 using tester pots from Wilko and some brushes I already had, and it was a pain in the ass to actually pull off. But! It makes me very happy every day and I am extremely proud of it. I learned from this that regular tape does not work like masking tape and masking tape will still rip off the paint underneath and you'll have to re-paint the edges every f*cking layer. Also straight lines are for straights.

I've also been doing these:

[Image ID: a photograph of a window box planter laid on its side on some sheets of kitchen roll on a wooden floor. In the background is visible a pair of black and white trainers. The planter has a red tulip, a cat coloured like a rainbow with its paw in the air, and a sunflower painted on it. End ID]

[Image ID: a photograph of another planter like the first on the same floor on kitchen roll. In the background are some loose cables. This one is painted with Blathers from Animal Crossing, a brown cartoon owl with a plaid chest and a green bow tie, and Wisp from Animal Crossing, a large round blue-white ghost with a silver crown and a wide brown smile. End ID]

[Image ID: a photo of the second planter being painted by Tatiana AS Webb, a white person with dark brown hair and glasses, wearing a black t-shirt, kneeling over the planter holding a paintbrush. In addition to Blathers and Wisp, the planter now has a silver watering can painted on it. Visible in the foreground is a table with some lip balm and a glass of water, on the floor is a cat toy, and in the background is a bag of compost, a box with some folders and a blanket in it, and a snake tank resting on a cabinet. End ID]

 

These were a lot of fun! I love working in acrylic but I haven't been able to afford traditional art supplies since I bought my graphics tablet a few years ago, and slowly I've shifted exclusively into digital as my years-old boxes of pro-markers, Indian ink, and watercolour pencils have run out.

We live in a nice but fairly plain block of flats surrounded by other identical blocks of flats, and a lot of them have fairy lights and window boxes - I wanted to be able to contribute to brightening the community in the same way! The first planter has bee-friendly wildflower seeds in it that we sowed about a month ago and that have just begun sprouting, and the second has pansy and dwarf sunflower seeds that we sowed a few days ago. It's one of those good good feelings to see them every time I leave and come home.

So I think that's about all I've got for now! Nothing huge planned for the near future, but remember to follow Sylvestus on Facebook if you haven't already, and buy your paperback copy of Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise exclusively at bit.ly/SylvVol2, or as an ebook by searching for "Sylvestus" in any ebook store!

Have a good half-term, folks. Summer is on its way.

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.

Oops! All Poems!

Yaaaaa apologies for the fact that every single dang post since like September has been as a poem; I queued them early on expecting to have other content to post in between, and then... life. Y'know. Everything.

 

So I figured I at least owed an update on everything, if nothing else than at least to space out the ding-dang poems.

Except not really. 'Cos y'know. My life is kinda private and stuff. So just some things. We'll see how it goes.

 

Poetry Corner

 

I recently performed in a poetry event organised by the awesome Sierra Moulinié, of Poems from My Hospital Bed. Check them out on Facebook and Youtube; I adore their work and had missed seeing them perform regularly at my local poetry evenings, so it was great to reconnect. Their Poetry Corner event also features a bunch of other great writers! I perform first in the video below:

 

On Sylv, Spoilers, and Triggers

Yet again, I find myself preparing to start a post along the lines of "This seems like a dumb excuse to write a post, but..." but...

 

Okay, I got nothin'.

 

Sylvestus Vol II is currently undergoing a beta-read by a good friend and fellow writer. It's weird for a couple of reasons, all of which kind of come down to this being the first time in a long time someone with investment in the characters and world has read something I've written pre-publication, and as such has creative and editorial input... as well as just being able to yell "OMFG THEY DIDN'T" and spam me with exclusive memes sometimes. Friends used to read chapter-by-chapter as I wrote and vice versa, but as we all grew up this became impractical, and the last few times I've asked a non-professional to do a formal beta-read, things have gone badly (mostly in terms of them making promises and never coming through, which we all do sometimes, but it puts a strain on relationships and creativity, and made me hesitant to ever ask anyone i cared about to do it again). I'm glad I did, because she's great and it's going to be really healthy for the final product, but it still has weirdnesses.

 

For one, it's nerve-wracking as f*ck; I care deeply what she thinks as someone who I know has investment in the world and characters, and also as another good writer. The first time she sent anything approaching a negative piece of feedback (pointing out that a paragraph i already knew was sh*t was, though she phrased it much more politely and professionally, sh*t), I had to sit motionless and regulate my breathing for ten minutes so I wouldn't throw up with anxiety. I still have to manage that response every time it happens though it's gotten easier, and that's in no way a criticism; I wouldn't want someone who pulls punches, because sometimes as a writer you need to be punched out of your annoying foibles and punctuation habits (listen, i know i overuse the "mid-sentence ellipses to indicate a thoughtful or hesitant pause in the narrator's thoughts", but consider sylv makes a lot of thoughtful or hesitant pauses altho i will concede, yes, yes that is far too many, you could turn it into a drinking game and be unconscious by chapter 10).

It's also exciting, and the best feeling when she picks up on exactly the hint I was laying down, and amusing when she picks up exactly the red herring on the next page, and perplexing when she points out a character's response I barely thought about when writing it, and frustrating when she questions something I thought was obvious...

All of which are super important and the exact reason for a beta-read of someone who understands and cares about the story and characters. It was definitely the kind of care that was missing from Vol I, but there was just no-one I trusted who also had the time, and while a professional paid editor can point out your ellipses obsessions, they just don't have the same dedication to the story as a friend and, dare I say, fan.

That feels weird to say. Fan. Do I have a fandom?? It has like four people and a German shepherd in it if so, but I'll take it.

Anyway, there is one specific weird thing I wanted to highlight because it's relevant at the point she's at, and also kind of... where I'm at in the write/edit/publish/live journey. As the title says: Sylv, spoilers, and triggers.

Writing Vol II was triggering as all hell at points. It's triggering to read. In a couple of different ways. I want to talk about it when I'm on the bus listening to the Sylvestus playlist. I want to talk about it when I'm writing those parts. I want to talk about it when I re-read them. I want to talk about it when she reads them. I want to talk about it when a new reader mentions the allusions in Vol I.

Buuut it's all huge spoilers for late-game Vol II, so I've kept my mouth shut for about four years, because precisely one (1) person knows the full story of Sylv, and it's not fair to overload them every time you listen to the playlist on the damn bus. And I'll have to keep my mouth shut for another four months or so, or basically as long as I can last after publication. I've considered writing something and just saving it as a draft to publish when the time is right, but it doesn't feel appropriate because things change so much; I could have done that dozens of times in the past four years, and my views and feelings now are different to what they were then. Yet I also want to capture how I feel about it now, y'know?

I don't have answers, which is why, yet again, I'm writing a rambling blog post with a roundabout point on the subject.

I'll be very honest, too; another reason I'm writing this now is that I encountered a fairly big trigger in my regular life, and Sylv is a big refuge for me from that. I've gotten into the habit of re-reading the chapters I know are triggering for me when I already feel bad, because together they form a cathartic arc. But I did that like two days ago and I didn't want to saturate myself by reading them again because that way lies madness and "every word i write is incomprehensible garbage" - aaand she's about to hit that point, which means that in the next two weeks or so I'm gonna have to go through them all in deep discussion/edit/ellipses-removal anyway.

And I wanted to tell her about it and what was going through my head, because it was very personal but also interesting in relation to him and the story, but I... didn't, because... it was spoilers. And it kind of reminded me of everything around this *gestures to previous paragraphs* which is weird for me.

I think it will be good to eventually be able to talk about Sylv in all the full truth of his story. Both books are, but especially Vol II, about openness, with oneself and others, with becoming known, with vulnerability and its rewards. Yet ironically, I've been uncharacteristically careful with guarding his secrets, perhaps because everyone I would want to tell makes up the biggest base of people whom I want to experience the story without spoilers or preparation. Sylv has become a huge intersection of coping mechanism, personal project, and professional interest, and the boundaries are hard to define and maintain. And it has been interesting, to see what people pick up on and miss, bring up and skirt around, but it will be good to be able to finally talk openly on this blog about Sylv and, idk, sh*t like the ending of the book.

Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise is going to be extremely good, and it's going to be in no small part because of this experience and the person behind it. But it's also going to be good for me, I think. I said when I was racing through the second half of the novel in April-ish that I was terrified of the end and what that meant - letting go of Sylv - but as that approaches, I see the catharsis it will bring. I am Sylv sinking into the blood-tinted water: he seems at peace, but in Epilogue, we do not know why, cannot yet understand what brought this man to this point.

By Prologue, we understand. Or, I hope we do. I guess I'll find out when she gets there.

Until then, it will keep being weird. That's nothing new, though, for me or this book.

Undramatic Leave of Absence

I wrote this post and it came out very long and dramatic and more an emotion-vent, and then I didn't publish it cos it was a long dramatic emotion-vent, and I don't have the time to re-draft it a few times for the reasons to be shortly made clear, so this one is gonna be hella concise lol.

 

T-dawg moved house! To a different city, even, which is like three degrees more stressful and eight degrees more time-consuming. They also left their job and got two new jobs, which they started within like a week of each other and also moving. They only recently got WiFi in their house, and on top of moving and working two new jobs, their free time is currently largely occupied by studying for the exam they have to pass within like three months to keep one of their new jobs, as well as a second unrelated exam. What free half-hours remain are given to laying on the sofa playing Mass Effect: Andromeda because while they love Sylv with all their heart, good golly they do not have the energy to make fun videos or art about him right now. Oh, and they're playing D&D tomorrow. Hells yeah.

Things are starting to settle, so hopefully they'll have the time to do a little more housekeeping for their writing, and hopefully once the exam/s is/are passed, get back to normal (i aim for fortnightly blog posts and at-least-weekly FB content, so we might not quite hit that for a while as this was my on-furlough-in-quarantine target, but at least it gives u an idea of the goal).

They have to go and get ready for work now but they wanted to tell u all that this absence has only been for good things and they apologise for lack of regular content but like, don't stress, Sylv Vol II is still on target for early 2021.

To summarise that overly long unpublished post: all my life I've moved house because I wanted to get away from where or who I was before. For the first time, I feel like I'm moving towards something, letting go of something good with the bittersweet hope that it will be to reach something even better.

And no, I don't know why most of this post was in third-person but not all of it. Suck it.

K thx see u in two weeks bye xox

Life After Sylv

Well folks... I only went 'n did it. Finished Sylv Vol II. Nbd 🤷

I actually finished it three days ago, about an hour and a half after telling everyone I was gonna take the rest of the day off and finish it tomorrow, and I didn't then tell anyone I'd finished it. It's... Every time you finish the first draft of a novel, it's... Sure something. I remember feeling underwhelmed the first time, especially because I'd been writing it in secret for years, and I distinctly recall that I finished it on Christmas Eve at my dad's house sat on the sofa opposite my aunt, who asked what I was doing and tried to start a conversation, only for me to quietly rebuff her because I was extremely keen to finish this f*cking novel. I feel quite bad about that in retrospect, and I no longer write novels in the corner of family gatherings while ignoring everyone, although I think sometimes my family wishes I would. I don't remember finishing the next few, except for maybe the first draft of Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum, which was upstairs at the house of a friend's family I think, who were hosting me while I visited other friends where I used to live. Generally... Yeah, there's never been much fanfare to finishing novels.

My anxiety is really bad at the moment, which isn't helping. I've been trying to be more positive with, y'know, everything, but especially celebrating my achievements and creations, but it's... Hard to write this post in a celebratory tone while my gut has been clenched so tight I can't take a deep breath for five days and counting. It's why I haven't really told anyone. I occasionally get a burst of excitement, the realisation that I did an amazing thing and I can be so proud and happy, but it's like my brain automatically shies away from it before it can properly fill me up with happy chemicals because any strong emotion is dangerous when you're in survival mode.

Plus, finishing and letting go of Sylv is... Well, it's a fairly big thing. The Red Prince and Seeking were both hugely personal; in comparison, Each Separate Dying Ember... It's still a very good story, and I love the characters and world, but it was a step back from personal writing if that makes sense. It was about bird people and death-VR and social justice, an exploration of a cool world idea with some moral preaching. It wasn't... For me.

Sylv is different. It feels cheap to say that it's the ~novel I've put most of my soul into~ because I feel like I'll say that again every time I write something bigger, but... Like, it is. It started out like Dying Ember, just a big story me and a friend had come up with that I wanted to write because I was lonely and bored and had nothing else to write, but it became so much more. I've never been as supported by friends writing something, never had so many people I'm excited to share it with, never known that there was an audience waiting who love this character and this world. I was going to say that Sylv means a lot to me despite having only been with me for x years...

But I wrote the first chapter of the first draft of Sylv in November 2014.

Nearly six years.

And I made him and wrote for him on the original website that was Anteria before that, I don't know exactly how long but most likely 6-12 months.

So, six years.

I guess I need to take a step back and re-orient my position. Until I checked just now, I genuinely thought I'd had Sylv for 3-4 years. Not six. I started writing him at the end of high school, and wrote him consistently through sixth form, three long complicated years of uni, and my first year of post-education adulthood. Sure, Rheimer has existed for eight years, but I write a few thousand words of Red every two years; I've been actually actively thinking about and writing Sylv through all of that. First kiss, first love, first heartbreak, sexual assault, suicide attempts, getting into uni, graduating uni, drunk blackouts, hangovers, moving time and time again, new jobs, volunteering, travelling... And he's always actively been there. And so much of that has bled into him and how he's written, his story. I want to talk in detail about the ending of Sylv, and especially the changes made from original story to first draft to final product, but I'll hold off on that until after publication at least - but...

Damn.

Okay, yeah, I'll say it sincerely this time: Sylv is the most important and personal character I have ever written. A 40 y/o ancient Roman man who has been with me, influenced me and vice versa, through the most formative and tumultuous six years of my life.

And now he's dead. No, that's not spoilers, it happens in the first chapter of Vol I. In fact, that first chapter - re-written more than anything else - is the first thing I had. Everything about it has changed, except for the simple certain fact: Sylv dies at the end.

I don't know what the future holds for him. I feel like I had Tas, North, Kiah, Dany, etc. all with me low-level while I wrote, while they were on my mind, but after I'd finished their stories, they faded away, locked between the pages. Rheimer, in comparison, has been growing and changing, with me but always in the background. I don't know what's going to happen to Sylv now. I don't know. He's been at the forefront - the first thing I think about when my mind drifts, the first comfort I turn to in uncertainty, the first face I try to put to every cool new song I hear - for a long and impactful time.

There's still a long way to go before Vol II is published. I had anticipated a late 2021 publication date, now we're looking at early 2021 because being on furlough and having all day to write has coincided with desire and inspiration to write, so I've blasted through the latter half of the novel three times as fast as I expected to. There's still a lot to do - countless re-reads and edits, the entire cover design and formatting and proof copy ordeal, publication, marketing, pre-orders... But before any of that, it needs room to breathe. The first step after finishing a novel is to put it away for a few weeks, work on something else, then come back with a fresh mind and pretend you're starting from scratch to take it apart critically. That's like, a genuine writing tip I stand by. And that's where I am at the moment, in those few weeks, waiting for it to sink in that...

I did it. Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise is done, and therefore so is Sylvestus as a whole, and therefore so is... The entire chapter of my life where Sylv was with me. Which is a bigger chapter than I realised.

In one of my first counselling sessions in high school, I mentioned how anticlimactic finishing The Red Prince was. As I have mentioned many times before, it was a problematic badly-written garbage fire, and none of the friends I asked to read it could get into it, and I felt like a failure and was getting more and more frustrated and upset - the counsellor compared it to another of her students who was upset her One Direction fanfic wasn't popular, which I tried not to take offense at (or rather, I took offense at the time, but now I'm like, that's fair), but then did make a very good point. I had been using The Red Prince to channel my insecurity, anger, anxiety, trauma, and creativity for eighteen months. Practically, this had involved hours of writing every day where I now just went home and sat on my beanbag staring at the wall lost for what to do, which worsened my dissociation and depression, but emotionally it had also provided a huge important service where I didn't have other outlets. I would learn to channels these in other ways, but in the meantime, she gave me a single important task:

Write something else.

So, I picked up Seeking (i'd already done like five chapters a few months before, but nothing really substantial). Finished Seeking and went straight to Dying Ember. Finished Dying Ember and had already been a year deep into Sylv. I have two stories that are hanging there, both with ~20,000 words to them waiting to be picked up as the next main project, and I still don't know which I'm running with. Neither of them... Well, neither of them is a Sylvestus. But that's okay, because they can still be an outlet for creativity and emotions. Just... Not yet.

Like y'all, writing Sylv Vol II has been exhausting. Y'know how I said a few posts ago that it's been way easier than Vol I? True. But also bullsh*t. Sylv Vol II has more personal... Experience and care and meaning in it than anything I've written before. It's emotional and heavy. Still funny in parts, and the slog of editing going forward is going to be making sure that there's balance of dark and light, drama and chill. There's a part that I hated writing both times, because from a storytelling perspective it's extremely good, but from an emotional perspective it's harrowing. There's two not insignificant sections that I planned and first clumsily wrote in ~2016 when I had not experienced those circumstances, and have now personally experienced and as such devoted a large amount of emotional energy into writing in the most powerful and sensitive way possible. Sylv Vol II doesn't pull punches, which is A Lot to write.

Frankly, I need a break from Powerful and Heavy and Emotional and Harrowing. And although both of my other possible projects feature adult themes and content, they're much less personal than Sylv. But again... I'm not in a place to get properly into those now. I frequently dip in and out of other stories and projects while writing my main novel at the time - hence why Sylv existed long before Dying Ember was finished, among other examples - but it's different when you start writing something with the knowledge and intention that this will be The Next Thing. It'll be like... Well, it'll be like acknowledging that I'm done with Sylv, that he is dead, and that it's time to move on. Which is scary and I don't love it. I still plan to write and write and write, but I need a hot minute to get my feet under me again, y'know?

So, what am I doing? I'M GLAD YOU DIDN'T ASK. This was what the post was originally going to be about, before I realised how old Sylv is and got all emotional.

• I re-watched Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency s1, and watched s2 for the first time (Netflix). 11/10 recommend. I don't typically watch much, given that both when I was studying and when I'm working in a restaurant most of my time is occupied by those, and the remainder of my time is typically split between gaming, housework, and writing f*cking novels, but oh boyzy there's only so much you can write and clean the bathroom every day
• I'm now watching Avatar: The Last Airbender for the first time, because I never watched it as a kid and everyone touts about how it's amazing and it's been on UK Netflix for a few months. Everyone's right, it is amazing. I love Zuko too much to be healthy. This is all
• I'm watching Community, because it's easy and doesn't require much attention and is good in the background of doing art and other stuff. I watched sixty episodes in the space of a few days and then decided to take a break lol. It's not groundbreaking hilarious, but it's had a huge meme cultural impact and it's definitely funny. The meta jokes get me in a good place. I'm very worried Jeff x Annie might be endgame couple though, which I don't love, although admittedly it's better than Jeff x Britta. Obviously Troy x Abed is the best couple and OG bromance, no competition
  
• Speaking of "in the background of doing art", I blitzed through Polygon's content on YouTube long before lockdown started because I was off work with a broken foot for a month before that, and Gill & Gilbert, Monster Factory, Unraveled, and the Video Games, Explained series got me through tbh. I've now started Awful Squad because I didn't expect to like it but I wanted familiar Polygon voices and now actually I love it. Hard to focus on for extended periods exclusively, but good as background
• Speaking of "in the background of doing art", lots of art! My fine-point black pens are all nearly run down to nothing, which sucks because I use those constantly, and several of my more-used colour markers are running out, which also sucks because they're very difficult to replace (want to support my art/creating? remember i have a ko-fi!), so I'm focusing on digital art at the moment. Trying to be more positive and constructive rather than constantly tearing myself down for everything not being perfect. I've done some really neat Sylv pieces recently, which can be found exclusively on the Sylvestus Facebook page!
• Podcasts. Podcasts. Obviously podcasts. I live and breathe by podcasts. I have genuinely listened to almost everything ever produced by a McElroy or a Smirl (Sawbones, MBMBaM, TAZ, Shmanners, Wonderful!, Still Buffering, Besties, The Empty Bowl...) but also am currently on My Dad Wrote a Porno and Hello From the Magic Tavern. Taking a break from Critical Role because it turns out I tended to listen to it while doing specifically work-related activities, and... Lockdown. Furlough. Sigh.
• D&D. Love it. Ran a one-shot loosely based on the Dalish origin of Dragon Age Origins, now playing in a game every week which I haven't done in years, bangin'
• Not really been reading tbh, it was one of those periods where nothing new I read could really hold my attention and I just wasn't enthused about re-reading old stuff - just before lockdown I breezed through both The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear in just over a week, and then my reader-brain crashed from overuse so I gotta wait until the next big thing restarts it
• Gaming! I re-played Dragon Age Origins, and I've just bought Awakenings so I can do that before I re-play DA2 and Inquisition yet again. I also bought Stardew Valley which I've played to death, and continued Hollow Knight, which I started in January but then kind of lost touch with just through life interfering. I also started Mass Effect 2 the day after I finished Sylv, so that's holding my obsession at the moment. Before that, the best thing I was enjoying was Avatar: The Legend of Aang for PS2, which was far more entertaining than it had any right to be

That's... About it. For the past few months, my life has been writing from when I wake up until about 4pm, then either gaming for a few hours then putting on Community or Awful Squad while I do art until bed, or watching something properly for a few hours then gaming until bed. For the past few days, I've had a non-stop migraine so it's mostly consisted of trying to ignore that as much as possible to play ME2, or trying to nap it away. For the future... Who can say?

Sylvestus is done. I may re-read a thousand times, edit, re-write a few scenes, and continue to think about and do art of him, but his story is done. Concluded. He's dead, Jim. I want to reference the "He's dead, go away, he's dead!" bit of Bob's Burgers but I don't think there's enough of an audience who'll get it.

Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum would die on Anteria. Nothing Sylv hadn't done before.

Nothing I hadn't done before. But forreal this time.

Six dang years of my life, and I finished it on a Monday afternoon, then ate pasta and watched The Last Airbender.

Sure is something.