User blog:Sunshineandravioli/Still Alive :)

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...and that basically sums up where I've been these past six months. XD

Well, absence no more, fair wikians, I am BACK!

...anyone remember me? Anyone? Well, whatever, I'm back. And whether or not y'all remember me, I've missed you all, and I've got some big plans now that I'm here again :D First, though, I suppose it's only fair of me to provide some explanation on what has been my longest absence ever on the wiki, and there are many factors that caused this...

...and Now Sunshine Attempts to Excuse Her Absence!

 * 1) Life: Now, as a general rule, I don't like to go into depth about my personal and/or "real" life on this site (lesson for the kids- don't post extensive personal info online! :D). But what I will say is that in the time I've been gone, my "real" life has gotten fairly busy and I've had to start putting a lot more focus on matters in this area, not to mention things have started happening which have forced me to put some pretty serious thought into the future. Unfortunately these things are going to continue (in fact, I'm about to get a lot busier - wow, my return timing is terrible XD), so they might take me away from the wiki sometimes, but I've always loved having this site and all of you as part of my life - "real" or not - so I'm going to try and make an effort to get on whenever possible. I'd prefer not to discuss specifics simply due to my personal rule about sharing on the interwebs, but I figured I at least owed it to y'all to let you know life was one of the many reasons I was gone for so long :)
 * 2) Video Games and Poor Timing: I'll admit it. I'm easily distracted, and oftentimes the reasons for my hiatuses are not just other commitments, but also that... I got distracted by something awesome and started devoting all my free time to it. ^^" This time in particular, the distraction in question was a succession of discoveries of cool video games - puzzle games in particular, my newfound love - wrapped up in a big ball of poor timing. My long hiatus was kicked off about six months ago when I made a discovery - an unopened DS game called Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I'd heard of it shortly before then. I remembered a friend playing it several years back. It looked fun. There was a guy in a top hat on the cover. I started playing one day when I had some free time, and instantly I was hooked. I played for hours at a time. Every spare minute - ones that used to be reserved for the wiki, unfortunately - was devoted to playing that game. I was engrossed in the mysteries, I wanted to solve all the puzzles, and to be perfectly honest, the professor's British accent and gentlemanliness won me over pretty quickly (to be more blunt, new unhealthy obsession achieved! XD). By the time I beat the game, I was very much hooked to the series and bought the next one (Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box), spending all my spare time playing it instead. And when I beat that - you guessed it! - I got my hands on the third entry into the series, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. Which made me cry. Like a baby. Which is not as pathetic as it sounds, I swear. ><" So anyway, I had played my way through the entire Professor Layton series. Back to free time and the wiki, right? Wrong, because this is where the aformentioned poor timing comes into play. At this point excuse #1, life, was quite prevalent; I had a lot of stuff going on all at once and couldn't even think about getting on here to write and socialize. This went on for a good month or two, and by the time things were calming down, another distraction was looming on the horizon. Yes, fair wikians, if you hadn't guessed already by the video above... a friend of mine introduced me to Portal. (And yes, I hadn't played Portal until this year. I'm a bit behind when it comes to pop culture, if you didn't realize this long ago... XD) So, I got my hands on the original Portal, played it feverishly, loved it, dug out Portal 2 shortly after beating the orignal (I had it lying around for some reason... I think Owe got it at some point and just never played it) and spent a lot of time playing through that. By the time the Portal mania settled a little, my life had gotten busy again, and when that calmed down... the next Professor Layton game, Professor Layton and the Last Specter, was (FINALLY!!) localized and released in America. Sooo Professor Layton mania started up again. The fact that Last Specter came with not only a bunch of extra puzzles, but an entire second game mode served as a very effective distraction from the fact that I now realized I'd been gone from the wiki for like six months. ><" Needless to say, I've now completed the game, and with Professor Layton #5 not due for an American release until Fall 2012 at the earliest (*sob*), you can at least be assured that video games will not be keeping me from you guys any longer (with the possible exception of The Sims 3, as I got a couple expansion packs over the holidays... LOL JK, I'll make sure to visit you guys before I start spending hours playing that XD). I'm trying to get a handle on my being so easily distracted, so hopefully even if an awesome new game beackons, I'll be able to split my time equally between it and you guys. ^^"
 * 3) Art: You guys all know at this point that I love to create art. Well, in the time I've been gone, I've been working on it a lot more seriously, developing style and experimenting with new media. In particular, I've been learning how to paint. That's right, paint!! Which means as far as most people care, I'm a real, honest-to-goodness artist now!! XD LOL seriously though, I've been working on getting familiar with paint, so this took up a lot of my time. In particular I've been using water-based mediums, with my favorite being watercolor, though I've done a lot of stuff using acrylic. I've been hoping to do a watercolor Sunshine pic, so hopefully I'll be able to do that and show you guys what I've been learning :D

So, those are really the main reasons I've been gone so long. And yes, I realize how pathetic it is that the main reason is that I was distracted by puzzle games about robots and/or men in top hats. XD But the point is, I'm back now, I'm trying to be less easily distracted, and I've got big plans now that I'm here again :)

So What's New?
FYI, this is a question to you guys as well as a way to explain what's new with me, as I really have very little idea what on earth has happened here in the six months I've been absent, aside from what little I've gotten from Owe (mainly "I got promoted to admin", "Nalyd keeps asking where you are" (missed you Rennie! :D), and "I've finished two stories and you haven't even written a thing; when are you going to go back on the wiki?!" LOL you all have Owe to thank for me being back on here, or alternatively, Owe to blame, as based on the new story organization and ressurected newsletter I saw on the front page, you're all more productive with me gone ><"). If anyone would like to take on the massive task of helping me get caught up, it would be massively appreciated. :D

So... what is new? Well, as I mentioned above, I've become a puzzle-game junkie and I've been learning to paint. I've started sewing, a lot more than I have in the past (usually I just did it for the occasional gift, but now I'm making little knicknacks and doll clothes and household items and stuff), and if I do say so myself, I've gotten pretty good at it. I've been trying to learn to sing the opera "Cara Mia Addio" from the end of Portal 2. I am not good at it. XD I have gained a certain affection and admiration for funny British men, inlcuding Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant (Wheatley!!) and Daniel Radcliffe. I spend a lot of time watching Adventure Time, Regular Show, and The Amazing World of Gumball on Cartoon Network, my current favorite probably being Regular Show (it's wonderfully weird, written surprisingly well, I love studying the backgrounds since I'm getting a feel for painting and they appear to be partially watercolor, and the voice work is absolutely incredible. How could I not like it? XD). I've recently become a gigantic Community dork; as I type this I'm sipping tea out of my "Troy and Abed in the Morning" mug. Also, I've managed to beat a terrible bad habit that has been troubling me for some time - that's right, I stopped watching Glee. (Apologies to all the Glee fans who are probably glaring at me right now; I watched loyally for the first season and a half, that ought to count for something XD)

What I'm sure you all want to know, though, is have I been writing? Well... yes and no. Yes, I have been writing. No, it's not any of the stories I have on this site. ><" There's a fairly good reason for this, though, which I'll go into below.

Sunshine's Ultra-New Writing Plans
As I've stated above, while I haven't been working on any of my currently published fics, I have been writing and planning, and there is a major reason why my current stories haven't seen much progress. And this reason is what I've taken to calling the Great Flash Drive Crash of 2011.

A bit of background - up until recently I stored all of my writing on a flash drive, as all the computers I used were shared and it was too much of a pain having different stories saved in different places, or even worse, the same story at different levels of completion in different places. By keeping them all on a flash drive, I was able to bring all my stories wherever I needed without having to worry about whether or not it was the most recent version. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that keeping everything on a flash drive makes it extremely easy to lose the data; about a month or two ago my flash drive crashed and I lost quite literally every file on it. While I managed to recover quite a few files, there were several more I was unable to get back, including about half of a new Total Sonic Island chapter and, more importantly, the outline I had for the rest of the story, along with the outline for a new story I was working on. Subsequently, I'm going to have to not only rewrite the TSI chapter, but plan the entire story out all over again, so unfortunately it's probably going to be a while before it is updated. Don't fret, though - I know TSI is probably my most popular story, as well as one of my favorites, so it will absolutely return as soon as I can redo these plans (I still remember some of the elimination order, and the challenges are based off and in the order of the original TDI challenges, so this should help get it back up quicker). In the meantime, I still have the elimination chart for the aformentioned new story (if not the outline) and an old hand-written outline for a story that I've been reworking, so perhaps I can start working on these and getting these out while TSI is in damage control. I'll also continue to contribute to "Ex" and my collaborations (...if the other authors will still let me after being MIA for so long ><").

Another thing I've been considering doing... as you might have guessed from the previous sections, I've been doing a lot of video-game playing and TV watching recently, and quite like a lot of them. Based on this, I've begun considering doing little reviews and reccomendations on some of these things I enjoy on my blog (perhaps I can "compete" with Owe, who also loves doing and reading reviews - LET'S CRITIQUE THE WORLD, OWE!!) These would probably be written once a week and posted on Fridays or Saturdays. Anyone else like this idea?

Speaking of blogs, I had another blog-based idea - as you all know at this point, my fanfictions are not just limited to TDI fanfictions; in the past I've written fanfictions for Sonic the Hedgehog, Jak and Daxter, Pokemon, Megatokyo and, most recently, Professor Layton. Unfortunately, though I put a lot of effort and passion into these writings, I never post them anwhere since, one, I'm reluctant to join a larger writing community like fanfiction.net since I know I'd lose the closeness I love so much about this wiki, and two, no other fanfiction wikis are really quite as successful or frequented as this one. This can cause some issues, as there are some days where I just don't feel like writing TDI and spend time on these fanfics instead, but because I don't publish them, to you guys it's as if I haven't written anything. I'd like to change this by perhaps choosing one of my non-TDI works to publish on my blog as if it were just another one of my wiki works (which is a nice way of saying chapters would be posted as they're finished and updates would probably be relatively sporadic...). Keep in mind though that several of these works are a little bit darker than what I've published here before, more in the PG-13 realm than the more G/PG-ish stuff you've seen from me thus far. Let me know if this idea interests you, and if it seems like there'd be enough support, I'll create another blog to let you guys vote on which story you'd like to see.

...and in Closing, Sunshine Gets Mushy
First of all, wow this blog post is long. Let me finish up so you can all go back to your lives. XD

I'll be honest: I have missed this place. I have missed the incredible writing and the ever-developing artists, and, most of all... I have missed you guys. Really. Truly. When I first came on this wiki, I was innocent and I was afraid. All of you seemed so... intimidating. You were strong, you were confident, and I didn't think any of you would ever bat an eye at me, let alone accept me.

I was wrong. Thank goodness. XD From the moment I posted the first chapter of EX as an anonymous user (not the anonymous user, a anonymous user. XD Hi, TAU, wherever you are! :D) I found myself welcomed by this ever-growing but ever-so-warm community, even by those I thought would be the least likely to accept me *glances good-naturedly at Renny*. I watched you guys come, go, and come back again, as I guess you're doing with me now. I saw new users rise to become stars, I saw old users grow to accept the ever-changing community, and I saw the confused and uncertain new users arrive that... reminded me of me.

But most importantly, you've all become my friends. Not just internet friends, either - many of you I consider my real, true friends, in spite of the fact that my personal rules about the interet and sharing really ought to keep that from being a possibility. I look forward to speaking with you and hearing from you. I look forward from the things you have to say about my work, I look forward to seeing your most recent creations and delving into discussions about that. And if we get to work together on something? It's just a blast, man. The things we come up with when we put our heads together are just fantastic. And being gone for so long, I really did miss you all. I found myself wondering what fantastic new work Sprink was in the middle of, or if Gideon had released a new masterpiece yet, or if Chimmy had been on recently, or if Zekie was wondering where I was, or Kenny had exploded anything recently or Gigi had finished LAL or Nonny and Turnertang had colaborated on yet another fic of awesome or if Nalyd really was missing me as much as Owe insisted. But most of all, I found myself wondering why on earth I hadn't gone back on yet.

If you guys remember me after this long, I'm sorry for disappearing and I hope you're as happy to see me as I am to see you.

And if you don't remember me... hi. I'm Sunshine the Ravioli Pixie. Let's be friends all over again. :)

~Love and Ravioli, Sunshine <3