Now for the fun part: the annual self-deprecating whining and valiant but likely vain efforts to have less to whine about by the end of this year!

After reviewing last year's goals, it looks like I actually kinda-sorta met some of them! Whoo! The "Big Project" (a.k.a. Turquoise) was finally kicked out the door, and I did actually post a fic to Serebii (the "Best at Second-Best" ficbit I posted a little while ago). It only went up on December 31st with minutes to spare, and I was all ready to chalk that resolution up as a moral victory because a) I did post something and b) I was a judge for Serebii's "Interpretations" one-shot contest, which probably isn't eligible for/wouldn't be nominated for any reviewer awards but was still a nice chunk of hopefully-not-too-soul-crushing fic reviewin', but then, miracle of miracles, someone actually did nominate "The Best Game" for two separate categories. This is both absolutely hilarious and extremely flattering. God knows if it'll actually win anything, and I'm not getting my hopes up, but I wrote a thing and someone cared about it and yaaaaaay. (In the future, though, I should probably modify similar resolutions so that they don't hinge so much on other people; people could have still liked the fic without actually nominating it. But still, yay!) On the other hand I never did get around to picking up the pace with Phoenixdex updates after Turquoise's opening (largely because Gen VI had to go and ruin all the things with its awesomeness), and as for Altered Origin updates... well. Uh. Yeah.

All that in mind, in 2014 I resolve to:

  • I am hardcore nervous about announcing this right now because I feel like I'm jinxing it into the "nope never gonna happen" bin by talking about, but I'm going to try my damndest to complete at least a first draft of The Best at Second-Best, the chapterfic from which the aforementioned scene/one-shot comes (granted I'm not sure I'll actually be able to fit it in when I'm finished, in which case that would just be an aside). Actually saying this where actual people can actually see it is hella scary for me you guys you don't even know, but it shouldn't be a super-long story and I'm currently trying to do what I can to give myself a good foundation and set of options to work from. There are obviously other projects I'd like to get some more concrete work done for as well, for example some of my previous NaNovels, the worldbuildy trainwreck thing, some one-shots and another chapterfic I'm not going to discuss in detail atm because I'm still superstitious about the never gonna happen bin, but I figure I'll do better with just one primary focus and Second-Best is probably the most logical one to ease myself into the water with.
  • Update Altered Origin, etc., etc.. To set some more concrete goals than "...idk just add a thing somewhere", at the very least I'd like to update the fic rec list, finish up the webcomic rec list I mentioned a while ago and maybe, and I stress the maybe because it may not end up being feasible, putting together an LP I've been kicking around for a while. It's not for a Pokémon game, but hopefully it should be entertaining anyway if I end up with enough room on my plate to handle it. All this in addition to 721 mini updates coming more regularly, along with any other stories, art and surprises that may happen, of course.
  • Gen VI and some Turquoise updates heaped a lot of extra Phoenixdex changes on top of me, but if I can sort most of it out I really would like to give that "every two weeks" update schedule another go. That'd be one new fakemon/evolution line/possibly other thing every other week, then. I've had a lot of cool ideas recently and I really need to make sure I'm able to get to work on as many of them as possible!

Another short list, then, but one with goals that are hopefully well-defined enough and have concrete enough milestones to actually inspire progress.

Here's to less whining come 2015!