Heyo! So I've been keeping up to date on my Twitter a lot, but admittedly I've kinda forgot about being here because most of my recent work involves Twitter. not so much Newgrounds. So I do wanna provide an update especially considering the last one on here was a large response to events and stuff.

For those who are also wondering, for the most part I'm doing fine. I know a lot of people have formed opinions on the issue since then, but I personally have been going (or at least attempting to go in many cases) with the separate art from artist route. I think it's possible knowing that the OCs the person made have basically taken a life of their own with alternate universes and whatnot, but I realize that it's also still drawing attention to the person and that's why many people don't like to separate. I've said my fill for if they decide to come back, but if their first return to someone's stream was anything I don't think he'll have a stable platform on any place. Regardless, I'm doing alright.

I guess I'll talk about FNF first since that's what's been happening the most recently. I've mentioned that I've become a part of thirteen to fourteen mods total, one of which I'm going to lead myself. It might increase depending on how a situation pans out, but I've been making a lot of music for it as of late. In fact, that's been what's taking up a lot of my music-making time. I don't mind it too much, but a change of pace is something I'll hopefully look forward to.

Being in the fandom has its ups and downs. I feel the current state of the fandom entire right now is that they're at a bit of a civil-war "boy who cried wolf" state. A lot of this has to do with sexual allegations toward others, and a lot of it started with the situation that I was heavily impacted by.

If you look around, there's a lot of "he said she said" when it comes to drama, especially involving large figures. I haven't really seen too many people legitimately owning up to themselves, but when they go after others it doesn't feel grounded. There's especially been quite a few situations where I don't feel enough evidence has seen the limelight - and mind you, we're talking about allegations involving sexual relations. Unfortunately, this has led me to naturally become skeptical of allegations unless there's some pretty hard and convincing evidence, which is kind of a sign to me that something bad's happening.

It reminds me a lot of a previous state Geometry Dash's community went through. While it's died down as of recent, there was a time where people would make all these allegations against others for being genuinely scummy people, a lot of which were true and a lot of which were staged. Not everything's healed up, but it seems to be turning into this phase for younger communities to go through, especially when a large figure is legitimately called out. Suddenly everyone wants to point fingers and get clout to exploit the masses on how horrible a person X is - and it muddies the real accusations from the fake. In some respects it's a larger problem in FNF's community than it was in GD's (or at least I've seen it become a bigger problem), but it's a problem that needs to be addressed nonetheless.

But honestly, my biggest thing I'm conflicted on with the community is this.

I'm sure it's common knowledge I've been friends with ninjamuffin for almost 3 years at this point. Knowing him, I think the reason why FNF was made in the first place was to be a fun challenge with friends - after all, it was made for a Ludum Dare and wasn't even the winning centerpiece. It just so happened that it became big in the process and is now Newgrounds's most popular thing ever. But in becoming big, what I'm seeing is that it's lost its charm in the modding fandom with a lot of people. It can be easy for a mod to get popular really quick, and that's what people are aiming for - fame and fortune.

My question is, what happened to having fun?

Don't get me wrong, I know there's a lot of mods I don't know about that have this goal in mind. But I guess the community's become overall greed-hungry and want to push quantity over quality, at least from my perspective. I'm in mods where time is of an essence and things need to be done before X, but I'm also in mods where the focus is on having fun and no rush to it. It seems like the community, especially on the smaller side of things, is focused on working for a big shot spot in a temporary fandom where the focus should be on making friends, coming together and having fun.

I want to go for that in the mod I'm leading. Yeah we have some unique ideas, but the goal for it is to toss stuff against the wall and see what sticks with others. I don't want to regard the people working on the mod as a team, but rather as a group of friends passionate on what they work on. And that's what I want the mod to live off of - passion. If it isn't there, why drag people through the mud to make it happen, especially if it isn't gonna have fun and effort put into it and is just gonna be something to give to people?

But, I digress. I have no plans to leave as of yet, but I do want to get stuff done and shake off some of the things I've been worried about. There's a bunch coming and a lot I can put here on Newgrounds, so be on the lookout for that.

In terms of competitions and Newgrounds-related stuff, I'm planning to keep myself involved on the judging side of things.

I'll actually share that my original intent back in 2018 was to flip-flop between competing and judging in audio competitions. That way, I could improve my skills and help others improve theirs - give a little, get a little. I stuck on to the panels after 2019 though because I had so much fun judging and being on the other side of the table. I guess I'm more of a giver than a getter, hehe.

Last year, I organized and ran the Audio Death Match. It wasn't a huge hit, but it was a learning experience especially in the face of what was going on at the time. This year, someone else expressed interest in running it and I've allowed them to take it on and keep the fire going. I'll still be on the judging panel for this year, but given their current plans things are in the right hands and I would not be surprised if we hit the marks that we had in 2019. I'm excited for this year's competitions and am hopeful that you all will keep posted here on them.

There's also been another competition that I hope will lift off the ground sooner rather than later to avoid conflict with the train of AIM, ADM and UAC. It's really unique and definitely something I hope will become tradition, and this year I'm glad to hop on the judging side of things. Listening to music is such a good experience since it gives you a good palette for what's happening around you and can even inspire you to challenge yourself. This competition especially is a good challenge for myself and others, so again I hope it gets a good liftoff.

I also helped in running the ADVENTure calendar last year, which was a pretty good success. There were things I wanted to implement that never saw the light of day, but I still think things went well in terms of leadership. I stepped up since it was a possibility Geo and Brandy weren't able to lead it due to real-life conflicts, so I'm more than happy to step back down from organizing if they request for this December. Like the competitions though, I'm gonna apply again to be a member of the team and I even have ideas of things I want to do in this next ADVENTure. They're a bit ambitious, but it would be interesting to see them happen if I have the chance.

Speaking of ADVENTure, I do wanna mention something as well. Those who are familiar with Pixel Day, we were actually planning to include an advert for it in the theatre. I talked with @ThatJohnnyGuy , who had the idea for the tradition in the first place, and they got art from @DrOrcham to put in. We got as far as placing it in the game, but the client started blocking the image when we created builds so we unfortunately couldn't place it in an official release. However, we do have this image from testing so please give love to both Johnny and Orcham for their work on promoting Pixel Day:

Again, I seriously cannot thank all of the people who worked on the calendar enough. This year may not have had all of our ideas, but it had a good amount of charm and solidified ADVENTure as a tradition that I'm happy to be a part of in the future.

I'm hopeful I can catch a bit of a break with my current things. Right now I'm grinding out for FNF mods, but I hope to make a song sometime that isn't FNF related. While my priority is on the mods especially considering a lot of them are good songs, I know a lot of people can get tired of the FNF mod songs, and I kinda have been too. I wanna see if what I've learned from FNF can work well with making music outside of the community, and I'm hopeful that it can work. I just need the time.

So for those wanting the regular music, bear with me for a bit. I will make sure to deliver. <3