End of the Year!
Once again, it’s that time, and like the last few times I’m still not sick of starting with ‘once again, it’s that time!’ It’s been a long, long year with a whole lot of updates, developments, and ventures that may or may not have gone the way I wanted them to. At the end of the year though, this website is now bursting with content, youtube and twitch are both humming along, and progress is being made on all fronts! There’s a lot I could cover this week, but, since we’re at the end of the year, let’s do a bit of an update followed by a retrospective of all that was achieved! One last time for 2024, let’s get it going!
Adecial
Next week, on Christmas, the Adecial short story will be going live! Join Tearna as she explores the depth of a massive city on the northern coast of Falador! This city has a rich, thousand year history, and while much of it was destroyed during the Crisis, it has been rebuilt to much of its former glory! We’ll see its sprawling harbor, burgeoning bazaar, and even a play at a theater! This will be the last short story of the year, so make sure to check it out before we hit the ground running next year with our brand new schedule!
Additionally, to go along with Adecial, the next bookmarker is already out! This time, it’s for the Golden Plains, a long stretch of flat landscape covered in an ocean of golden grass, hence the name. Like some of our previous entries, it will be primarily focused on being a dossier to cover the wildlife one can find in the Golden Plains, but it also starts to really delve into the Clockwork Crisis themes started by Adecial and Spiritmarsh! It should be going live early in January, but the date is still TBD.
As promised in a previous blogposts, short stories will be entering a regular bi-weekly cadence starting with the new year, and enough content is already written to last us all the way to July. Once we hit that point… well, we’ll see what else ends up rearing its head, but there’s stuff already planned! Get ready for one heck of a trip!
Social Media Shift
As the last few weeks have gone by, I’ve become extremely aware that I am massively underutilizing youtube. As such, theFlyingFennec channel will be getting an overhaul going into the new year with, hopefully, regular videos. Expect some more Pokemon themed stuff as well as a journey through Ark’s Scorched Earth expansion. I’ve already begun the process of laying out the groundwork for how all of this will be achieved, so hopefully sometime shortly after I get back from Christmas vacation I can hop on this and start pumping out videos to go along with the livestreams. HOWEVER, do NOT expect these videos to have content outside of the livestreams. Everything I do for Youtube content will be livestreamed both on Youtube and Twitch, so feel free to stop by!
Story Stuff
One quick update on the Sapphire Verdict, queries have been halted for the time being due to an epiphany that was a long time coming. While I have cut down the Sapphire Verdict by almost half of what it was originally, it is still way too long. As such, a huge chunk of January will be spent trying to get it down even further in what I’m referring to as a ‘blitz,’ after which I will hopefully be acquiring an editor. So, it’s still coming, just a bit delayed as I try to get this further off the ground. Oh, and if something wild happens and Youtube ends up taking off and I get a huge following, this could end up getting expedited. Fingers crossed!
Year in Review
There was a LOT done this year, and while its hard to appreciate, let’s go through the full list so we, and by we I mean mostly myself, can see all that was achieved, because it was a LOT more than I realized.
The Sapphire Nexus launched: The Sapphire Nexus existed well before this year, but only in a sort of stasis. It wasn’t really going anywhere or doing anything until I completely overhauled it this year and finally kicked it off back in April. This first version was very light, but ended up becoming quite beefy! After a whole lot of renovations and overhauls throughout the year, I’m quite proud of what it has become, and it’s nowhere close to being done!
Ship Gallery: To support the Universe page, a gallery of ships from the story was meticulously created by myself in Blender, bringing to life some of the designs that have lived in my head for over EIGHT YEARS! Getting them published was a huge achievement for me, and laid the groundwork the rest of the website has now been built upon, and they can freely be viewed in both the gallery and the universe page!
Character Art: This year marked a MASSIVE leap for me in the form of digital art. After cowering away from it for so long, I finally bit the bullet, bought Krita on Steam, and finally got to work. It was rough at first, but I’ve noticed a huge improvement in my work even in such a short span of time, and, through it, many faces have appeared in the Sapphire Universe page! We still only have two, but some work is being done even as we speak to bring a few more to life shortly after the new year begins! For anyone wondering just how far I’ve come, take a gander between the two below images and appreciate it!
The Sapphire Verdict Concept Art: Over the course of a full month and a half, I painstakingly brought what I see in my head to life as a Sapphire Verdict concept cover! This cover was the culmination of all I had learned over this year and represented what I saw as a fitting cover for this first book. It was an immense effort, and I’m proud of what it came out looking like, but I definitely still have plenty of room to grow as an artist!
Twitch and Youtube: Talk about a massive leap! I am NOT a confident person. I do not like being social, and I get extremely nervous and uneasy around strangers, so making the leap to streaming out of nowhere was a HUGE step forward for me. I’m still not overly comfortable with it, but even though the growth has been small, we’ve come a long way from those first streams! Now to take it even further in the new year and see just what we can make happen!
Book 3 Revision: The full revision for the third book, which I haven’t talked on here about, was actually finished this year! This marked the end of a complete rewrite, front to back, of both the second and third books in the Sapphire Verdict to bring them up to speed with all I’ve learned about writing… and was immediately followed by a huge edit to shrink their sizes back down! Book 2 has already received its first cutting pass, and book 3 reached its halfway point already which will be finished sometime this year, though it’s a massive question of when given all the other things entering my priority list. Stay tuned!
Tearna’s Journal and Other Shorts: Possibly the biggest effort overall was the writing of all the short stories now available on the website! There was only one to start off with, which was already a massive achievement, but then expanded to include Vargoth’s short story and ALL the work available to be read in Tearna’s journal. Alongside this was all the art to support these stories, such as the book spines as well as the bookmarkers! This was a colossal effort, and the fruit will continue to be shown off as this next year continues, though, there may be a lot more to come alongside it as I get more momentum with this new process!
Conclusion
There was a LOT that happened this year beyond even what was listed out above, including a massive endeavor in terms of an Ark server, me finally retiring from WoW (Thank god), and everything that you can see within the Sapphire Universe page! It was hard for even me to really appreciate all that’s been accomplished in such a short amount of time, but I am grateful this year went as well as it did, and I hope beyond hope that next year proves to be even greater in every single regard! I’m going to do my best to continue growing this website, create some killer Youtube content, and hopefully FINALLY bring the Sapphire Verdict to life! It’s been a long journey to get to this point, and there’s a lot more to get through before it’s over, so, with all that being said, I will see everyone in the new year with new stories and adventures in tow!
CHEERS!
The Flying Fennec