I originally had considered waiting to do this until January 1st, but things are almost certainly going to be the same then as they are now, so here we go.
Um, 2023 was a busy year.
The situation that abruptly cropped up over summer was finally resolved, and positively, so that was nice. That being said, I now find myself in a position where me making my writing work, in terms of paying my bills, is more important than ever before. On the whole, I’m good, at this point it’s now more that I want to maintain that goodness. Recent world and economic realities have made me more nervous about the future as opposed to less. Which means continued hard work unrelated to my fan fictions, unfortunately.
I just read over my post from the beginning of 2023 and I’m kind of depressed by how little has changed in these eleven months. Most of it I could have just copy/pasted.
Clearly, I’m still rather distant from my fan fiction. I barely managed to update Bishop’s Lament and I literally haven’t updated Survival once this year. That being said, I don’t have nothing for you, I’ve thankfully got something.
Firstly, I’m launching Episode Four of The DOOM Chronicles on December 10th instead of January 1st. The reason for this is because it occurred to me that the 30th anniversary for the original release of the original DOOM is nearly upon us! So yeah, keep on the lookout for that. I think some people are going to be really happy with the new protagonist, Eric Crowe, because he’s a lot closer to the modern Doomslayer, and it’s going to be a lot darker and more brutal. I very much hope to have Episode Four finished during 2024. When and if I manage that, we shall see what happens. I’m almost certain that there won’t be another big break because the next two Episodes after this one also focus on Eric and also aren’t particularly long. They’ll be closer in length to Episode Two.
Secondly, I am going to try hard to finish Bishop’s Lament in 2024. I feel bad for not having it done by now, but honestly, besides the problems I ran into earlier this year and general business, I am just bottoming out on motivation to finish it. I don’t really know what happened, but that’s the current reality. I’m concerned that I might just finally have moved past Half-Life and I no longer care about it, but…I also thought that back in 2014. And yet I wrote Bishop’s War when the urge came back hard. Will that happen again? I truly can’t say, so I’m reluctant to tear it down and give up, but I’m also reluctant to leave it up in its unfinished state knowing it might take a really, really long time to finish. So basically, I will be trying to recapture the spark and at the very least finish Bishop’s Lament.
I’m still really flip-flopping on StarCraft - Survival. It’s kind of the same situation as with Bishop’s Lament, reluctant to leave it up because my interest might be finished, but reluctant to take it down because I still care about it in some capacity, and may care a lot more in the future. There are parts of the story I still very much look forward to writing, but whenever I’ve sat down to work on it, nothing has come for a long time.
The conclusion that I came to in 2022, about being depressed and it sucking away my caring for fan fiction ideas, still seems very true. I’m beginning to think that perhaps I should try to lean into newer ideas, try writing something new instead of old. It’s hard to piece it together, honestly. Being inside my head is…confusing.
I’m more stable nowadays than I was a few years ago, but it’s obvious that I still have some serious depression and anxiety problems. I’ve been struggling with just kind of…not caring? That’s my biggest problem, it’s hard to care about things these days, and I know to some people that sounds really fantastic, but I assure you, it’s not. That old notion of I’d rather feel pain than nothing at all? It’s mostly true. Depression can seriously just suck the joy out of everything, even the most basic things, and I’m operating under the hope that at some point, I’ll have some kind of massive reversal. That my caring will come back, and I’ll want to write fan fiction as desperately as I used to.
I don’t know if this is a permanent change. I sure hope not. For now, almost all of my focus on writing has to go into my bill-paying writing.
For now, I hope you all have good holidays and a good 2024. I’ll start posting Episode Four - Prison is Hell on December 10th and try to keep up with it, and also try to get more done on Bishop’s Lament.
The final thing I want to say is that, in the vein of leaning more into pursuing new fan fiction ideas, The Callisto Protocol has really been calling to me for the past few months. For obvious reasons, I’m reluctant to promise anything, but I have some (I think) cool ideas for a novelization and for a sequel (since we’re obviously never getting a sequel). I’ll let it marinate some more and see what happens, but if you’re a fan of that game, let me know what you’d think of me taking a shot at writing it.
-Obsidian