#ignore the fact I’m kind of late with this😆

[myokk]

2024 in Review

I saw @anomalyaly do this & loved seeing it!!! Since I’m a list girl & LOVE thinking back on my year, here is mine♥️ I read some amazing fics and books, and watched a LOT of amazing movies this year!! I read way less than normal though, because I started writing and drawing fanart in my little free time, and this was a CRAZY YEAR !!!!! Lots of personal art growth (started tattooing actual people this year😳🙏), my personal art style is growing in a direction I’m super happy with, and my little bad fanarts are slowly getting better as I learn this style as well♥️

Hopefully in 2025 I find the time to read MORE fics & especially more HL ones bc there are a lot im looking forward to reading!!🫶🫶🫶

FICS

unsphere the stars - cocoartist (my roman empire)

blood and gold - ObsidianPen (roman empire part 2)

this is how you lose the time war - fleabagshair (I screamed on the train as I read this😆)

no glory - ObsidianPen (SO GOOD😭😭😭)

when we’re older - @writing-intheundercroft ♥️♥️♥️ SO SO SO SO GOOD !!! I’m almost done & the only longfic I’ve read in this fandom so far. I LOVE THEO AND HER SWEET SEBASTIAN SO MUCH !!!!!!

All of @holdmymallowsweet writing🥹🫶

my hl fandom roman empire, Birdie by Laney @crushribbons ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

And other various pneshots I’ve read, commented, and reblogged here. The fandom has so much talent & I hope to have more time to read this year😍🤞

Books

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (my yearly reread♥️)

Final del juego - Julio Cortázar (all of these short stories are SO GOOD !!!!!!)

Rayuela - Julio Cortázar (one of the best books ever written tbh) (¿Encontraría a la maga? 😭♥️♥️♥️)

Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry (my favorite book OF ALL TIME…I had to reread it🫶)

A Little Life - I’m not even going to bother putting the author. This book was the biggest piece of garbage, biggest waste of time, worst book I’ve ever read hands down & now I don’t trust what people think is popular these days😆😆😆 it was bizarre fetish torture porn & idk how I even finished it😭 (@choccy-milky can attest to my hatred….she sends me hate YouTube videos about it now😆)

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen. My breath of fresh air 🥹♥️♥️

The Last Picture Show - Larry McMurtry. Amazing end to 2024♥️♥️

Movies

Eyes Wide Shut

Rashomon

The Irishman

The Seventh Seal

American Beauty

Kiki’s Delivery Service (this is my comfort movie I’ve watched it like crazy since like 1999😆)

Inglorious Basterds

Amanece que no es poco (weirdest movie I’ve ever seen😆😆♥️) (ok maybe not but this year definitely)

Porco Rosso

I just love stories so much & all of the different ways they can be told♥️♥️♥️ I hope for an amazing 2025 & here’s to A LOT MORE READING & ART🥹🤞♥️ don’t be surprised if you start getting monster comments from me bc this is the year I *really* start reading hl fics🥰🥰🥰 & leaving comments/interacting with everyone is my favorite thing in the world!!!!

I love you all & I hope this is an amazing year🫶🫶🫶

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 1: Scintillate ✨

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Scintillate (v.)

to give off sparks; to shine as if emanating sparkle; to twinkle or glow

of a star or other celestial body: to vary rapidly in brightness; to twinkle

---------- Happy October 1st everyone! In case you missed it & it’s not painfully obvious, I’m doing things a bit differently this year, starting off with a personal rare-word favorite of mine. 😉

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk more about my thoughts/process for this piece. ✨

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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And so we begin another October, another month-long daily challenge—This time and even further break from tradition than is typical of me. 😆 So before we go any further, you might want to check the description for the prompt list I'm following this year—and you can follow it too, if you want! There's some background information about how/why that's the list I'm using so I don't have to repeat myself here (or 30 more times this month, for that matter). All done/don't care? Alrighty then, let's continue: As I hinted at before, I normally break from Inktober traditions by doing a mini-magnet poem on an Ink background—So I still get ink in there somewhere, but ultimately my final results look super different from what you'd expect an Inktober to look like. I've done it this way for years, partly to honor the memory of Katherine Mackenett ( better known as @FridgePoetProject on DeviantArt), and partly—most largely, at this point—because I do genuinely enjoy the format and it's proven to be something I can do every day successfully. That's a key point to how I've been able to participate in Inktober at all over the years that loyal Sparklers have probably heard me talk about before: I know I 1000% do not have the hours in the day and the mental stamina to do "normal" art every single day for a month. There's just no way. I'd probably give myself a mental breakdown if I tried. The thing is this has already been a super-duper chaotic year for me, as my super-spotty art uploads should reflect. Add to that there are some obstacles that would make my mini-magnet format more difficult to use this year—External things like my ink supplies being expensive to replenish, not having a dedicated space to lay out the magnets, etc...And as I discussed when I posted the prompt list, I have been kind of feeling like some kind of shake-up was in order anyway.

Now, for what it's worth, what I've settled on here is nothing like what I spent most of September wracking my brain over. The general idea here didn't really fully occur to me until a few hours after I posted the prompt list, if you can believe that. 😅

Don't get me wrong, I did still want to use and heavily considered my usual mini-magnet format, but to make a long story short and hopefully not give any of you Sparklers the same headache I spent most of September with: Ultimately, I decided what I need for October this year is something simplebut it also does get me back in a creating & posting habit [since that's been a bit of a struggle for me lately; That's largely why I felt the need to still do some kind of daily challenge at all this year instead of just skipping out.]

And—again, to make a long story short—I've decided the best format to accomplish that is to simply, digitally, make a mandala and abstract background that relate in some way to the prompt word for each day, accompanied by the word/definition itself. I just thought the word-inclusion part was a cute idea, plus I'm also kinda posting the word as a "reminder" for anyone else following along with the prompt list. [...Y'know, ignoring the fact that today and probably many more days I'll be posting too late for it to really be a "reminder" for most people, but I digress...]

The last time I was making mandalas regularly was actually for NaPoWriMo 2020 and while I do genuinely enjoy making them, I was pretty burnt out on them for a while after that. 😆 But I've already talked about why I may never attempt NaPoWriMo again at length before, so I'll spare you those details here. (Suffice to say it was mostly the poems that were the problem, not the mandalas!)

Note that this is my first year tackling an October challenge digitally, as well. I did seriously consider sticking with traditional, but I may be doing more traveling this October than I'm used to, so I need something that can travel with me as easily as possible, just to be safe. Remember—I'm a "smarter, not harder" kind of gal with these daily challenges. But, as a bit of bonus, that does mean I may be able to re-purpose some—maybe even all!—of these pieces as mandala coloring pages when it's all said and done. We'll see! And I'm explaining all of this not because I'm worried about criticism from others—It's my challenge and I'll do what I want!—But to give the insight that I'm used to giving when I make things, and also partially as reassurance to myself that while this is so different from how I'm use to October looking, I'm trying to do what I feel is best for my own well-being. Best to complete the challenge successfully, best to not unnecessarily stress myself out, best to still get me back into more regularly creating and posting things, etc. "Work smarter, not harder," includes taking care of yourself so you can both be smart and work hard when you need to, after all. So yeah. We're starting off with one of my personal favorite obscure words—I just love the way "scintillate" sounds, and would you really expect anything less when you're talking to someone who's middle name is literally "Sparkle"? 😆

I do think this will be one of the "less involved" mandalas since I could only think of so many shapes/lines that reasonably fit with the idea of sparks, twinkling, stars, etc. So the background has to help sell the theme more, but that is part of how this format will still actually be a challenge. 😉 Although, it is probably better that leaves me with not as much to say about the mandala today so I could give you Sparklers all that additional context as to how we got here. And for the record: I do not intend for every piece to look this similar to the design I chose for the prompt list! 🤭 That was just a not-super-well-thought out coincidence on my part. And, to be fair, it actually looked even closer to the prompt list at first until I realized what I had done and shifted the background colors around a bit. 😅 Still, I'm very pleased with how it turned out and when I finished the image, I have to say I felt a pretty strong sense of, "See? It's going to be okay," in response to the constant, "OH NO WHAT AM I GONNA DO??" I was feeling for most of September. I cannot emphasize enough how much I needed that feeling; So I'm much more confident now that this is the way to go. If today was any indication, my biggest challenge this year is probably going to be getting these descriptions done in a reasonable amount of time...and not delayed 50 times by other things in my life. 🙃 But I'm hoping the rest of them won't take quite as long as this one did, now that we've gotten a lot of context out of the way...But there's only one way to find out...!

I think though that's everything I wanted to say for now, so I'll leave you Sparklers to it—Here's to (hopefully) starting October off strong, everyone! 🙌

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See the Prompt List

Artwork  © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️