#like dang username recognition is real actually

[fourteenfifteen]

helloooo fic in a box author reveals just went live!! i wrote a handful of things including two more short fatt fics:

another cori pre-canon fic about her sprouting wings…

…and a post-canon c/w fic about jace, addax, and jamil trying to help mako out

i think they’re both good. so you should check them out!

[redqueenmiku]

A DECADE’S RETROSPECTIVE, REDQUEENMIKU STYLE

Here we are, facing down the start of a brand new decade. This decade has had its ups and downs for everyone. For me, this has been an extremely eventful decade. So much has happened that it’s actually ridiculous.

So, I got to thinking: as we enter 2020, I want to take a look back at my past ten years of existence and really give you guys a peek into my mind. You’re going to learn where I came from and how I got to where I am now. This decade contained my first experiences with the great wide world of posting to the internet and everything that came with it.

Are you ready? Let’s travel back in time to the start of this decade…

2010

2010 started with the final half of my eighth-grade year. I was an awkward child with a million original characters and no friends.

It was pretty sad.

Eighth grade came and went and summer came around. Wow! Look! What’s that?! Toward the end of the summer that year, a certain character named Jake Speed was born and Diametrics, then known as Lightning Speed, officially commenced. If you don’t know about my precious brainchild, Diametrics, don’t worry. I have something big planned for this summer to coincide with the series’ tenth anniversary that’ll answer everyone’s burning questions.

Then, toward the end of the year, after entering ninth grade, something amazing happened. I officially began my long and storied internet posting career.

Where did I start, you ask?...if you have to ask at all, I mean I’ve mentioned this probably a million times by this point but YES. I got my start as Shinymew76 on Nickelodeon’s official Invader Zim message boards. I was just getting my bearings at this time, so I didn’t do all that much of note, but I was getting ready to make my very first power move…

2011

Now, if you don’t know anything about what the Invader Zim message boards were like, we were kind of a hot mess. We were a tight-knit hot mess, though, and dang if we weren’t proud of it. The main activities of the message boards were making OCs and writing fanfiction. You know how sometimes on fanfiction.net you’ll find those really weird stories that are written entirely in script format? That was our bread and butter on the IZ boards. Just about everyone wrote that way. We had to be pretty kid-friendly too. I mean, what you could get away with depended on what our mod, NickZa, was feeling like that day, we were generally pretty restricted.

It’s important to remember that we were also little baby teenagers in a community revolving around Invader Zim.

In 2011, I began to really try to make a name for myself on the message boards. I started a short-lived gameshow series where people could submit their OCs to compete. It was a Total Drama kind of deal but it never really took off all that well. Then, though, I started a fanfiction titled “200 Years From Now”, which told the story of Dib accidentally transporting himself and Gaz to the future, where Zim has been exiled and a new Irken has been assigned to conquer the earth: Miki. Then, Zim returns to earth and something something rebellion to take down the Tallests. I don’t remember most of the story considering a good chunk of it was lost to time, but it definitely existed. The story also featured Zaz and Zelena, other people’s OCs that they submitted to be part of the story.

I don’t know how big that story made it. I really don’t know the scope, so I couldn’t say with certainty how many people read or enjoyed that story. Younger me, however, thought it was THE BEST. Immediately after it ended, I was already planning for a sequel with the same characters, adding villains from the still-thriving Lightning Speed. The story never actually got written and there was no real plan for anything about it aside from what I just told you, but there you go.

I also branched out further, spreading myself to other Nick.com boards with a variety of usernames because I was a coward. One account was 2darcara2, which was meant for the Danny Phantom and TUFF Puppy boards. I never did anything on the latter, the only remnant being an OC for the series known as Agent Darcara Fox. The former, though, came with two OCs, Annette and Aria Spectrelle, and a fanfiction: Eternal Darkness. The story revolved around Danny Phantom meeting Annette, who was being bullied by her older sister, Aria, and something about Aria being ultra-powerful and wanting Danny dead. Again, much of the story is lost to the ages. 2darcara2 also had an Invader Zim OC to coincide with it: Invader Erin, who had dark powers a la Raven from Teen Titans.

In case you couldn’t tell, 2darcara2 was the edgy one.

Then there was the other account: xxpetalxx. This account was meant for the iCarly and Victorious boards and also had her own Invader Zim OC, a human named Miriam. xxpetalxx published two stories, actually. The first was a crossover for Victorious and Invader Zim, where Zim and Dib end up at Hollywood Arts and Dib tries to get Tori to team up with him against Zim. It never finished, but it was something. More importantly, though, there was iMeet a Hero in Hollywood. I can’t even remember which board this went up on, but it was a three-way crossover between iCarly, Victorious, and Lightning Speed. Yeah. I was getting rather crazy here. I’ll talk more about the unfortunates of iMeet a Hero in Hollywood during that big surprise project I teased earlier, but it was a huge mess. Besides the fact that no one cared and I was way out of my element, it just sort of...dropped off the face of the earth.

Back to the main account, though. I lost the Shinymew76 account somewhere along the way, so I had to take up a new handle for my main account, JS712, named after Jake Speed. After getting bored of trying to maintain two secondary accounts, I cut the whole thing off save for iMeet a Hero in Hollywood and decided to just do things with my main account. That was when I decided to check out the miscellaneous boards. One was a board dedicated to original writing. Of course, I dabbled with posting the first story of Lightning Speed there only to have it rejected the first time around, likely because one of the characters was holding a gun. Yeah. This is how strict things were around there. I got it up the second time, but only by getting rid of the gun. The story never garnered any attention either, so that was a waste of time.

Then there was the video game board. This was a place for discussion about anything and everything video games. I remember everyone there making a big fuss about Chuggaconroy and how he was the best lets-player out there. Simpler times, those were.

On those boards, I attempted to launch a Sonic-themed series known as “Adventures in the Z-7 Station”. The series starred a character named Krystal the Hedgehog, who owned a boarding house called the Z-7 Station, where Sonic, Tails, Amy, Cream, Rouge, Shadow, Omega, Vector, Espio, Charmy, and Eggman lived. I also invited people to submit their own OCs to be included in the story.

No one gave a crap.

Even so, I endured, writing a good number of stories for the series. None of them actually went up, though. Sad, isn’t it?

Finally, I extended myself to the Penguins of Madagascar boards, writing a story known as “Penguins of Madagascar Humanized: Unleashed”. The story revolved around the adventures of the penguins, the lemurs, and Marlene, but as humans. There were also humanized versions of Dr. Blowhole and the android version of Skipper that showed up in, like, one episode of the show. They were the villains of the series alongside an OC named Violet. The story actually garnered a fair bit of recognition...until the whole thing randomly disappeared one day. Considering I didn’t archive it at all, that meant the whole thing was completely lost to time.

Of course, the message boards weren’t the only thing I was doing at this time. I was writing other fanfiction on the side too. One of these things was Shadow’s Story, a mega-crossover where Shadow the Hedgehog journeys across a crud-ton of different worlds to find the Chaos Emeralds to defeat an evil force that has made Sonic into its slave. It was one of the dumbest things in the history of ever, but I wouldn’t be mentioning it if it didn’t become important later.

Then, there came the end of the year, namely the date of November 4th. This was the day that I created a DeviantArt account under the handle KristoonzArtist76, and my life changed forever.

Immediately in the next two months I posted artwork for Lightning Speed, Penguins of Madagascar Humanized, 200 Years From Now, Shadow’s Story, and Adventures in the Z-7 Station. There was also the version of Lightning Speed’s first story that went up on the message boards as well as an attempt to recreate Penguins of Madagascar Humanized in comic form...and it was complete garbage.

I also met back up with people from the message boards during this time, seeing as they also had DeviantArt accounts. The most notable of these were Heidi and Mollie, both of which had been a constant presence on the Invader Zim boards and had actually made pretty significant names for themselves there. Mollie, though, had also been significant on the Penguins boards. I believe she even read the Humanized story before it was deleted.

Anyway, that brings us to the end of 2011. Now we move right into…

2012

2012 was when I started to get really frustrated with the boards...and I pretty much just left. You’re not really going to hear anything about the boards from here on out.

The first significant thing about 2012 happened in February: I bought a thirty-five dollar digital drawing tablet off Amazon. It was a cheap, floppy, plastic thing, but, to a younger me, it was the greatest thing ever. It was with that that I started my grand excursion into the world of digital art, starting with Microsoft Paint.

At the end of February, I decided that I was going to do something special to commemorate the leap year. This took the form of a new original story called The ExPERiMENT, which was about two experimental humans with the absolute worst names in existence, Haretaieto and Aidamizumi, nicknamed Hareta and Mizu for short. The two of them were labelled as defective and scheduled for execution, but are saved and brought to a secret compound for...well...undecided reasons. The story was meant to be told in the form of diary entries dated to the actual days each of them were to be released, but this quickly fell apart and ended up spelling the story’s doom. It stopped after the rescue on April 2nd and was never updated again, despite one or two unreleased efforts on my end to revive it.

In another turn of events, I published what I had for Adventures in the Z-7 Station on DeviantArt. The series went on to introduce Sonia and Manic from Sonic Underground, as well as several new OCs: Spright the Raccoon, Leigh the Hedgehog, and Raven the Echidna. A friend’s OC, Silverdust the Husky, was also included.

Then there was the day I logged on to find children staring me in the face. Heidi, one of the friends I had mentioned earlier, had written a story about her Invader Zim OCs that had also involved characters from Lightning Speed. In particular, the main character, also named Heidi, was involved in a romantic relationship with Dnias Speed, as agreed upon and supported by both of us. Then, one day, Heidi posted drawings of a theoretical set of children for the couple.

Those two children were Dante and Jupiter Speed. They will become extremely important later.

Lightning Speed continued to flourish in this time and I was still keeping up with trying to start getting good at digital art. At the end of May, I opened up five request slots, which ended up getting decent reception...from a bunch of bronies.

Did I forget to mention I was in the My Little Pony fandom at this time?

Things continued on from there. I went to prom, I made more Invader Zim OCs, I reached 100 posts on DeviantArt, I quit the message boards, I started learning how to drive, I pared down my ridiculous number of OCs, I read the Warriors series and actually started writing Warriors fanfiction with a whole four clans full of OCs, I made a group on DeviantArt for Lightning Speed, and many things continued as they already had.

Then, September rolled around and everything changed again.

It began with a class trip and the friend I sat next to on the bus. That friend introduced me to many things that day. One of those things was Law of Talos. Law of Talos is a phase in my life that I referenced for two seconds and then continued to haunt me for the rest of eternity.

The more important thing, though, is my first introduction to Vocaloid. On that day in September of 2012, I became a Vocaloid fanatic for the rest of my natural-born life. This would quickly become both a blessing and a curse.

Then, October rolled around and blessed me with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. I immediately ditched MS Paint and embraced the new art program whole-heartedly. It was a whole new world. Suddenly I had layers and a color wheel and drawings that didn’t look pixellated.

Then, when Christmas came along, it also gave me a shot at a brand new tablet: a real Wacom Bamboo tablet.

I got fed up trying to get used to it and went back to my old tablet, handing the Bamboo off to my sister. I can’t tell if that was a terrible mistake or not, but here we are.

2013

In January of 2013, I discovered MikuMikuDance. MikuMikuDance is a free program that lets one pose and animate 3D models, primarily for use with Vocaloid models but with models for just about everything under the sun existing in one place or another.

This program was the worst thing that ever happened to me period.

Slowly but surely my art started to get completely drowned out by constant MMD images. I had MMD OCs, being crappy recolors of Miku and Rin. I had bizarre lore for different models. I put together those stupid Jewel Hearts that people keep downloading to this very day and I get messages of people favoriting them on DeviantArt constantly and it makes me want to scream because all I did was take a half of a heart someone else had made and just slap the two sides together and recolor it a few times yet it’s literally the most popular thing I’ve ever made someone please end meeeeee.

*ahem*

The MMD stuff wasn’t so bad in 2013, but this is where it started, so I’m obligated to mention it.

As for things that weren’t MMD that happened in 2013, we first have Lightning Speed. In 2013, the final material for the first run of the series was posted on DeviantArt. It wasn’t planned to be the last, but that’s how things worked out. The series still continued outside of DeviantArt, but there’s nothing on the internet to show for it.

There was also the X-Factor OC tournament, a tournament run by Heidi where various Invader Zim characters would be put up against each other in a literary battle of the ages. The character I entered was one I had adopted off the message boards before my departure: Quinn. Three of the tournament’s four rounds took place this year, all of which were wins for Quinn and my admittedly lackluster writing.

2013 also happened to be the time of a monumental shift in fandom for me. I voluntarily left behind the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom. To fill the void, though, I turned to...Koopalings. This, again, was both a blessing and a curse.

And, on top of that, 2013 was the year I attended my very first convention and wore my very first cosplay. I was a hastily-put-together Kagamine Rin. The costume was crap and the convention was just a tiny local event, but I still had fun nonetheless.

Then, at the end of 2013, something incredible happened. Heidi had created a shipping meme some months prior. As her friend, I filled out the meme and, in the process, I jokingly decided to pair Miku up with a cloud. Eventually, the joke devolved, said cloud eventually turning into one certain character of mine that had once had a cloud-like form. Then, that Christmas, I produced my very first annual Christmas shipping picture with said couple: Miku and the character known as Red King.

Yes, dear friends. This is where Red Queen Miku was born.

Oh, I also got a laptop for Christmas. That happened too.

2014

The first thing I did in 2014 was start up a challenge that would quickly become the bane of my existence: the MMD 100 Themes Challenge. This absolutely massive undertaking was the death blow for anything non-MMD related on my DeviantArt account. By that point, I was rarely posting actual art. 80 of 100 themes were posted this year alongside many more MMD images, dwarfing all other posts from this year.

Even through the MMD, though, I found the time and energy to start up my very own OC tournament: the Nightmare Manor OCT. Character submissions for the tournament began in February and, after the final audition phase from April to August, 14 characters had been entered and matched up for round one. After that, round 2 began in December, now down to only 6 participants after eliminations.

2014 was also the year that the first run of Lightning Speed finally came to an official close after over fifty quote-unquote “seasons”, ending officially on September 13th. In its wake, though, emerged Cannonfire, the story of Dante and Jupiter and their quest to escape nonexistence after being removed from their world. At the end of the story, Dante and Jupiter return from the city of those that don’t exist, Cannonfire, now existing in a parallel reality to the Lightning Speed series. The story was written early in 2014 and posted that summer.

Besides that, there were also my first full-fledged fanfictions for the Mario fandom. There was The Show Must Go On, a story about Lemmy Koopa getting kidnapped by a gang of thugs and Iggy and Larry venturing out to try to save him, and Cold Wind, a series of short stories about the Koopalings living in a normal neighborhood, going to a normal school, and doing normal things, based off of events from my own past. A few tertiary stories left over from the original run of Lightning Speed were also posted

Also this year, the final round of the X-Factor OCT began. Quinn ended up winning once again, securing victory over the entire OCT with a piece of writing that, honestly, was rushed and kind of lazy. I’m convinced I only got by because my opponent did literally nothing.

August 2014 would also mark the last time I’d open up requests on DeviantArt, this time only being single-character sketch commissions. I believe it was sometime after this that I abandoned the My Little Pony fandom for good, although not necessarily because of it.

And then tragedy struck. 2014 marked the release of my first Youtube videos featuring terrible voice acting that I tried to pass off as being good. People still watch these things to this day. I hate these videos and everything they stand for.

Most importantly, however, 2014 was the year I graduated from high school and the year I started attending college, going for an Associate’s in Simulation and Game Development at the local community college. I spent my first semester learning the basics and getting adjusted, eventually making my first college friend.

2015

2015 is the year that absolutely everything started changing for the better.

...well, almost everything. First, let’s get the bad news out of the way.

Checking back in on the Nightmare Manor OCT, the tournament’s second round of six contestants garnered a grand total of half an entry. After two separate calls to action, the tournament was abandoned in May without an official statement; a mistake on my part, but I was pretty depressed about the whole thing, so can you really blame me?

The MMD 100 Theme Challenge was also abandoned this year, stopping at theme 97 out of 100. Fun fact: the last three images actually exist. I just never posted them.

Then there was Curtain Call, the sequel to The Show Must Go On. Curtain Call was a disaster and it’s probably the worst fanfiction I’ve ever written besides, well, Shadow’s Story. Please don’t ever read it.

Now for the good news.

Firstly, 2015 was the year that I finally stopped using MMD. Even in the beginning part of the year, I was already posting far less of it. This meant I was focusing more on my art and, when I say that, that’s no exaggeration. 2015 was a huge year of improvement for me, from learning new techniques to adopting a vastly different art style that was more fun for me to use to ditching Autodesk in favor of Krita, allowing me to finally move past my inhibitions and actually use things like pen pressure, which I was too afraid to do in Autodesk, where I’d kept my settings the exact same since 2012. I also obtained a new drawing tablet: a Wacom Intuos 3 given to me by my uncle as a hand-me-down.

The things I wrote this year weren’t anything particularly special, for the most part. Cold Wind continued and Surveyor’s Wings, a crossover involving Larry, Wendy, and Roy Koopa getting transported to the world of Attack on Titan, started up, going into indefinite hiatus a short time later. There was also This is Me, a short one about Larry Koopa accidentally switching bodies with Luigi. Above all of them, though, was In Memoriam Vos, a twisted story where the Koopalings are suddenly thrust into a world that wants Lemmy Koopa dead. This was also the year I created an account on Fanfiction.net, named RedQueenMiku, where I posted “This is Me” and “In Memoriam Vos”.

This year was also the year of the Mushroom Timeline, my first attempt at a Mario timeline that also came with its own map. With that also came my first time arguing a Game Theory video, being that I couldn’t just ignore the fact that their timeline came out the day before I posted my own.

This year was also the year I entered another OC tournament: Origins OCT. I entered Dnias from the Lightning Speed series, partnered with his mental companion of cynical disposition, Yang. The tournament was a blast and I had a lot of fun with it, even with all the mistakes I made in the process. The first three rounds took place this year, all of which I won.

Lightning Speed also received a hard reboot this year, transitioning into the short-lived “Lightning Speed 2”. The first story of this run released this year.

This was also the year that I discovered and subsequently adopted a group of bootleg Koopalings I began affectionately referring to as the Bootleglings. Nonexist was created to coexist beside them later that year. The Sesonia AU was also launched, being an AU that shuffles around Koopalings from both the games and the cartoons and Bootleglings, placing them in a fantasy world heavily themed around the four seasons where magic is a prominent feature. Also, there was KoopaDoopa4321, a joke account I made on DeviantArt. I never did all that much with it, but it existed and I posted some art produced in MS Paint there.

This was also the year I created my Tumblr account, RedQueenMiku, this being the second account of mine to bear this name after the Youtube account the year before (because the Fanfiction account came afterward). Because of this, 2015 was my first year participating in the yearly Tumblr event known as Koopalings Week (as well as the year I created my human designs for the Koopalings). Later in the year, I created a second blog, justkristoonzartist76things, for posting small blurbs and generally ranting out of the way of the main blog. It took me a while to find my footing on Tumblr and get comfortable enough to start posting art, but, eventually, my main blog transitioned from reblog city to a mainly art-focused blog. Two more blogs also popped up toward the end of the year: little-red-dolls, which was dedicated to a dress-up game kick I’d had at the time as a big guilty pleasure that didn’t last that long, and frame-by-frame-mario, a blog devoted to weird inbetweens and animations errors in the Mario cartoons.

Finally, this year had one more significant occurrence: I witnessed my future anime husband, Sakaki Yuya, for the first time over my friend’s shoulder in class. Due to this, I asked my friend to teach me how to play Yugioh. Now you know why I started playing Yugioh. It was all Yuya’s fault for being so handsome.

2016

2016 built a lot upon what 2015 started. In fact, in a lot of ways, I regard it as a continuation of 2015.

2016 was also the year I snagged myself a Core Membership on DeviantArt and finally renamed my account from KristoonzArtist76 to the iconic RedQueenMiku you see today. I also changed the name of my second blog to correspond with this, it becoming justredqueenmiku things. From here on, RedQueenMiku would become a constant handle for me on absolutely everything.

The biggest thing that happened at the start of 2016, though, was me finally playing a certain indie game that had come out the previous year: Undertale. I immediately became obsessed. I drew art for the series, I made a blog specifically for it, rqmundertaleparty, to keep spoilers away from those that didn’t want it, and I undertook the challenge of drawing every single major character from the game, which I ultimately succeeded with, coming out with sixty-two drawings for the challenge.

Then, there were the AUs. Many of my AUs for Undertale at that time were simple derivatives of things I already had, like Sesoniatale, Yangtale (which was planned to have a story, but was scrapped), and Nostritale (based off of the Memoriam series, which had recently gained a new entry in the form of a very basic version of In Memoriam Nostri, which would be expanded upon later). There was also Underfire, an Undertale derivative of Cannonfire that had its own short series of comic strips, and Mariotale, which was my attempt to cast Mario characters in the roles of Undertale characters.

Lastly but most importantly, for April Fools that year, I decided to, as a joke, revive Adventures in the Z-7 Station as an Undertale AU titled Krystaltale. The revival, though, ended up having twisted meta elements that eventually warranted its continuation from the three parts posted on DeviantArt for April Fools. In the AU, Krystal was changed to a skeleton named Lucida, but still retained her memories from her previous incarnation and wished to recreate what she had in this new world she suddenly finds herself in using the powers of resetting and scripting to make events exactly the way she wants them. Sans catches on to them and starts to oppose Lucida, creating the back and forth that would persist for the rest of the series.

Also for April Fools that year, I attempted to start an ask blog on Tumblr for the Bootleglings, titled ask-the-real-koopalings. The blog never took off, however, mostly due to my own lack of motivation.

Also in 2016, Cannonfire received a sequel, Cannonfire 2, in which Dante and Jupiter are brought back to Cannonfire, where this time they would remain alongside another Lightning Speed child, Thicket, and a character that had been scrapped during the transition from Lightning Speed to Lightning Speed 2: Nightmare.

In January of 2016, the final round of the Origins OCT came and went, with myself taking the runner-up spot. Later that year, a second season of Origins would begin, this time with myself entering Dante. After the first round, however, the tournament abruptly ended.

2016 was also the year I finally started watching Yugioh Arc V. I made it through nearly forty episodes this year. I also updated my human Koopaling designs and started doing DeviantArt memes for fun, notably posting the very first version of the first crack lovechild meme I did. My first palette challenge was this year as well and, slowly but surely, I was moving myself away from DeviantArt and toward Tumblr as my primary platform. There was also the first death of KoopaDoopa4321, meant to be on April Fools, but accidentally delayed to April 2nd. This was also the year I changed the anniversary of Lightning Speed from July 12th to July 29th and posted the second and final story of Lightning Speed 2.

Speaking of, there wasn’t a lot of writing that came out from me this year. Besides Krystaltale and Lightning Speed 2, there was a one-shot based on my old headcanons about Bowser’s past titled “Her Name Was Annabel” and a story revolving around Ludwig von Koopa after the birth of Bowser Jr and the subsequent revoking of Ludwig’s birthright that also included elements of Superstar Saga, this one titled “Decomposure”. These went up exclusively on Fanfiction.net along with a cross-post of The Show Must Go On. There was also one more part of Cold Wind that went up on DeviantArt before the series went into indefinite hiatus. Behind the scenes, though, I was already starting up stories for the Sesonia AU, the Bootleglings, the Memoriam series, and multiple things for Undertale including two crossovers and two one-shots. I also received a dare from a friend this year to finally write a sequel to Shadow’s Story in the worst possible way as a great big joke, so that happened too, resulting in Shadow’s Sequel.

On top of all this, I finished the Simulation and Game Development program I was in, our capstone project being producing an RPG titled “Life’s Memory”. It was an extreme prototype of a game, but I believe we accomplished what we set out to do.

Then, at the end of the year, I posted the final awful voice acting video I ever made. It was meant to make fun of the previous ones, but it ended up being cringy in its own right, so I still regret it immensely.

2017

2017 for me started with news of an upcoming move that summer, which immediately sent me into a depression over having to leave behind the place I’d been living for nearly ten years by that point. As a result, I feel into a rather extreme slump. I took on an expression challenge to try to cure my art block, not posting a single finished piece outside of that until the end of February. I started several sketches for images that I never completed and subsequently threw out. I abandoned the frame-by-frame Mario blog after trying to hand it off to someone else with no reception. I didn’t return to DeviantArt until April due to anxiety about the amount of messages piling up from a posting flood at the end of the previous year. Generally, I was just feeling like a piece of garbage.

There wasn’t much that happened in the first part of the year. I was certainly writing more than I was drawing, though. I started two more Cannonfires and a project named “I Can Fix You” that was supposed to go up at the end of that year, but ended up being shoved back. There was also the next story in the Krystaltale saga, “The Mispersonification Ray” which actually did go up on DeviantArt. I did also create the Barian Koopalings AU at the start of this year as well.

Over the course of the year and especially during the move, I started watching more Yugioh Arc V, eventually finishing the series by September. I also watched Yuri on Ice this year. I also got back into the crack love-child meme and, after finishing my second one shortly after the move, I came up with the premise for “The Great S.T.O.R.K. Machine” and created worlds for all the children to live their lives, quickly revamping the first meme shortly after.

Then, on July 29th, I officially revealed Lightning Speed’s final reboot to Diametrics. I’ll talk more about Diametrics in that thing I keep teasing, though, so keep an eye out for that later this year.

Then Koopalings Week 2017 came around, I set unrealistic standards for myself, and it crushed my soul again.

This year also just so happened to be the year that I looked back on my rant on the Game Theory Mario Timeline and said “Yeah, I could have done better”. This led me to start writing theory rebuttals that would eventually turn into full-fledged videos. I created the first version of a video on Game Theory’s Rosalina Unmasked video this year, as well as wrote the first draft of a script on Game Theory’s Mario Timeline and a couple other theories.

Things proceeded as normal into the end of the year. I drew more Arc V art, I started writing my first Arc V fanfictions, I posted the somewhat-sequel to In Memoriam Vos, In Memoriam Eius, I made a Wattpad account that I posted Cannonfire 1 and 2 on and then swiftly abandoned, I drew a piece for Hatsune Miku’s tenth anniversary, I posted a Christmas special for Krystaltale, I made an account for the Yuri on Ice Amino, and…

...oh...right...

that drama started this year…

So, in December of this year, I was approached by a user I’ll keep anonymous for her own sake. This user, who I’ll call “T”, directed my eye toward her DeviantArt account, which contained uncredited drawings of her characters wearing some of the outfits of my Bootlegling designs and Nonexist. I asked for these to be credited and they weren’t. This doesn’t escalate, though, until…

2018

In 2018, the T drama escalated from an argument to an all-out war. I did some things I’m not proud of, but I tried to come at the situation with as much grace and dignity as I could muster. I’m not going into detail because, in the end, it doesn’t matter to the present day—the whole thing is over and no one needs to bring it back up like that—but the only thing worth knowing is that I unintentionally stoked a fire I was ill-prepared to deal with and, somehow, I gained a crud-ton of followers on DeviantArt because of it.

Finally, in April, after T had been ignoring large majorities of my messages and the situation moved far beyond needing my input, I dropped out of the whole thing, making my final statement and leaving it be.

Now I can talk about everything else that happened in 2018. Gracious.

The beginning of 2018 was slow because of the drama debacle, but I started a palette challenge on Tumblr and I drew pieces for Yuri Plisetsky’s fictional birthday and Mar10 Day, along with a third crack love-child meme for The Great S.T.O.R.K. Machine, finally revealing the whole thing on DeviantArt toward the end of the year and even starting on a fourth entry, and I entered a contest on the Yuri on Ice Amino with a picture of Otabek that didn’t end up placing.

April Fools then rolled around and, for 2018, I decided to re-release Shadow’s Story alongside the sequel I’d written two years prior on my newly-acquired AO3 account. The whole thing was massively ridiculous and even included pictures every few paragraphs, just like the original had so many years ago. I don’t know if anyone even caught chapter 19, though...

Summer came, I moved Diametrics’ anniversary to July 31st, I started up a challenge called the RedQueenMiku Redraw Bonanza where I redraw, like, a bajillion old pieces from my past, and I drew pieces and wrote a whole slew of bios for Koopalings Week 2018. Fall came, I went off on Nintendo’s announcement of New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe and the existence of Peachette, I started on a brand-new Mario timeline, I finally posted Roy, I started and subsequently failed my first attempt at a Goretober after only three days, I played Deltarune, I posted a redraw of an image involving Karl from Castle of Nations and Law of Talos that was actually a huge mistake to post, I started a Twitter account, and I created and started taking requests for a brand new challenge called the Yuri Expression Challenge, where I draw characters with expressions from various screencaps of Yuri from Arc V. Brilliant, I know. Praise me for my intelligent brain.

2019

And we finally come to the year we’re leaving behind us tonight: 2019. 2019 has been a heck of a year on its own.

2019, in itself, was a lot like 2017. I started off massively depressed, then, in the summer, we moved again.

In January, we lost our dog and I spiraled into depression again. Between that and computer issues, I didn’t actually do a lot in January. I did, however, join an art group on the Yuri on Ice amino in this time: Artevivo. I posted one more piece for the Yuri Challenge before my desktop failed on me and I was forced to either do art on my quickly-dying laptop or go traditional. The latter is what I did for the first Artevivo prompt post, though I took the former route to make a doodle post announcing my sort-of official return to the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom.

Next up was February. I did a few more traditional doodles, one set of them revealing an Arc V AU known as the Dragonia AU, before I finally got my desktop back online. I drew a couple more pieces after that, including an Artevivo prompt for Valentine’s Day involving Otabek and Mila.

March came with Mar10 day once again and an Artevivo prompt about boy bands in which I made a stupid joke by drawing Yuuri, Victor, and Yurio as Dreamboat Express a la Sonic Boom. I also entered a contest on the Amino for St. Patrick’s Day and, while I ended up just shy of winning the whole shebang, I did place first in my category, earning the title of Emerald Princess. Most importantly, though, I dropped a bunch of titles for future writing projects. Some of them, like “I Can Fix You”, “Yu-Gi-Oh: Arc INFINITE”, “Sesonia: The Dark of Spring”, “In Memoriam Nostri”, and Cannonfires 3 and 4 had already been previously announced, but others like “Tales from a Dark and Stormy Night”, “49”, “Jump Up, Superstar!”, “Memory to Hunt her Down”, and, most notably, “In Memoriam ihr Zerbrechliches Ego”, were brand new announcements.

April came around with a half-hearted failed attempt at an April Fools event that we don’t need to talk about and not much else. There was an Artevivo prompt about Cherry Blossoms, another entry in the Redraw Challenge, and I drew some bears. That was really about it.

In May, I traveled for Animazement 2019, which ended up being a heck of a lot of fun. There was also an Artevivo prompt about sea creatures AND the release of the first real story in “The Great S.T.O.R.K. Machine”’s series on AO3. At the end of the month, though, I had a real scare. I backed up everything on my laptop onto an external hard drive then, about a week after that, my laptop sang its final hurrah, dying to a critical hard drive failure.

June was a much slower month. I drew a few pieces at the beginning of the month, but, by the end, we had already begun our next big move. I managed to squeeze in a Sonic birthday sketch dump before we left and I even got the Artevivo prompt for that month done ahead of time. The rest of the month, though, was pretty much completely dead, as I had to pack up my only remaining computer for the move. At the very end of the month, though, I bought a brand-new laptop, meaning I was officially back in business and better than ever, at that.

July started with me taking on a style challenge on the Amino and just generally drawing a whole heck of a lot. This continued all the way through July.

Then, August came. I kept up with Koopalings Week like I never had before, ending it out with the least fatigue I’d ever felt coming out of a Koopalings week. I also finally finished an enormous piece for Diametrics that I had planned to finish for the anniversary, but that took much longer than expected due to the sheer scale of the piece. There was also an Artevivo prompt about fruit somewhere in there too.

September was a month that I vowed to be productive for considering the previous year’s September I did absolute bupkis. What a productive September it was too. I drew some Sonic characters in Vocaloid outfits, released an Undertale two-shot called “Vodka en Rouge”, added another three entries to the Redraw Bonanza, completed an Artevivo prompt for Fall, and started preparing for another crack at the Goretober I’d failed the previous year by drawing six different practice pictures. We also finally got into our new house this month, so that was great too.

Then, Goretober finally came. Did I succeed this time? Well, no. I managed to get most all of them done, but 27, 28, 29, and 30 were never completed. Even so, I produced a grand total of 25 images this month, which is still absolutely insane. I also made a rule for myself that I couldn’t draw for the same fandom twice, meaning the variety of pieces was vast and I even drew characters that I had never previously drawn like Twelve from Zankyou no Terror, Katara from Avatar the Last Airbender, Sakura from Zombieland Saga, Luluco from Space Patrol Luluco, and Kaoru from Ouran High School Host Club.

When November rolled around, I swore to myself I wouldn’t let myself slump into inactivity like I had after previous challenges like Koopalings Week 2018. With that resolve, I kept drawing. I drew a piece celebrating the new Sonic movie trailer drop. I did a short livestream only one person came to. I drew a piece of steampunk art for the Artevivo prompt. Finally, though, I started the Youtube channel I’d been preparing for for two entire years, RedQueenMiku2, and I started with newly-revamped videos on Rosalina Unmasked and the Game Theory Mario Timeline, just like I’d planned to do years ago.

Finally, we come to the present. December came with three more videos, a Silvaze Christmas piece, a Christmas Aretevivo prompt, and the retrospective you’re reading right now. Really, looking at 2019 as a whole, it’s like what 2017 could have been if I’d done things right. In 2017, I let depression get the best of me and let my work suffer because of it. In 2019, though, I pushed through and vowed not to quit, bettering myself because of it.

That’s the big thing here, really. 2010-2014 was all about me trying to find myself as a young, impressionable teenager, 2015 and 2016 were me discovering where I wanted to be and how I wanted to present myself, and 2017-2019 were me coming to terms with myself and pushing through my own mental roadblocks. Looking at where I started and where I’ve ended up, the difference is staggering. Of course, it has been ten years, after all. Now, as we look ahead to 2020 and the start of a brand new decade, I can only hope things will just keep getting better from here.

Happy 2020, everyone. Cheers.

[ask-jungshook]

Can I repost your art on Twitter? (W credit)

// Hi there guys! Gonna be kinda blunt with this (so sorry if it comes off as kinda rude, it not my intention at all lol)

I’m sorry, but the short answer is no.

I’ve been like super tentative about posting a reply to this because it can be a touchy subject to some, but either way, I have to respond – please just keep in mind that this is my own person stance on the matter.

As stated in my FAQ, I do not allow for my art to be reposted or edited without my permission on any social media other than my own. (The only place where I post up my stuff is this blog, my artblog, and occasionally my personal IG & twitter– the latter two are really rare though) I mean I’m OK if you use it for your own personal use like phone bgs, but only to that extent. And I just try to stress with everyone PLEASE RESPECT an artist’s decision on how they want their art handled.

If it helps, I can explain a bit on why that’s my stance on my artwork right now. I ran into issues in the past with people reposting my art without my permission and without credit (someone even posted their own watermark on top of one of my pieces lol) and some even had the audacity to call me a variety of colorful names when I asked nicely for them to take it down since my social media pages clearly state that I do not allow repostings of any of my works. (To give you context, I asked them nicely if they could take down the picture, then when they didn’t respond, I simply filed a DMC claim stating my violation of a copyright, they got salty and then started slandering me once their post got taken down because I was the ‘bad guy’– real mature stuff guys lol)

That event actually made me stop drawing for awhile because of how negatively it affected me (and honestly it made me stop drawing anything for kpop because of how nasty some fans can be – which is ironic because the fanart didn’t belong to them in the first place?? like why would you attack the original artist for just trying to protect their own work????) But thankfully the BTS community has been a delight to be a part of, so I’ve been slowly recovering from that mishap– seriously tho, bless you guys

I’ve also seen a lot of artists that I admire post similar posts to this regarding their stances on their art and I just want to paraphrase one of the things that I read that was written by one of them (the username escapes me rn im sorry, but I really liked how they phrased it): Every time an artist posts something, there’s always a risk involved. We trust our viewers to respect our decision about how we want our works handled, but once that trust is broken it’s really hard to regain it back. Please remember, we are also human, we have our breaking points. So please do not be that last straw that breaks the artist.

Right now, for me at least, I’m like slowly working out my insecurities over this topic with this blog and slowly once again starting to re-share my art online. It’s not really that much of a publicity/recognition thing for me, it more about what my pieces mean to me emotionally so any misuse of my art feels like an attack on part of me? Not sure if that makes sense, but that’s the best way I can explain about what my art means to me.

And if you’re one of those people who are like ‘no, I post what I want idc’, you have to put yourself in the artist’s shoes.

Like I don’t do art as a living, but a lot of other artists out there do. So let’s say you spend X amount of hours working on a piece that you think looks pretty dang nice and that you’re potentially looking to sell as a print or something. You post it on social media to show your friends and followers, only to have it taken and REPOSTED by someone else and the only credit towards you being “ctto” (which I learned meant ‘credit to the owner’). How do you think that makes the artist feel? (This also create a chain reaction of people reposting that repost and all goes to hell especially in this digital era since shady people can start selling art they stole as their own, but that’s a completely different topic)

It’s honestly can be really discouraging as an artist because it turns from a ‘I’m really proud of this piece that i drew’ to a ‘why is someone else claiming/taking my work’ which can lead to ‘I never want to share my art again’.

Some artists may put larger watermarks on their pieces to counteract that, while others may just delete their blog and all of their works completely. But it honestly sucks the most for artists who do sell their work as a living, because they can’t take down anything because it’s literally their job. Instead they have to worry that every time they post something up– will it get stolen by someone else? Things like this can potentially mess up the way they want to promote their works. (Or worse, impact their sales if someone steals it completely– but once again, art theft is a completely different topic haha)

So I’m sorry if I sound ‘selfish’ about my stance, at the end of the day it’s a mental battle between me and my conscious. Right now, I’m not comfortable with having my things reposted or edited (even if you offer to credit me– thank you for asking me first btw!), but maybe that will change in the future. I just ask for you guys to respect my wishes because while I think I’m at a pretty good place emotionally, if the wrong buttons are pressed, it doesn’t take much for me to go back into full seclusion mode.

However, if you really want to share my work, please just share a link to my tumblr instead of my actual pieces, I would be very appreciative if you did that instead. Hope that makes some sort of sense, & I hope you understand that it’s nothing personal against you guys. I really do appreciate all of my followers, but I also need to think of myself and my mentality first. 

Thanks for reading