2023 ANNUAL STATE OF THE BADGER REPORT

Welcome to the 2023 Annual State of the Badger Report. Or 'State of the Badger Address', which makes a little bit more sense.
If you're not familiar from last year's, the gist is that this is where I reflect on the year and plan for the next one. I write it over winter break, between cramming for finals and playing video-games for hours on end. Sections include a general review of how the year went for me, plans for the site going forward, and some new year's resolutions. Last year, I said to think of it as the Badgersaurus Holiday Special, and that more-or-less holds up.

In this second-ever edition of the Report, we see all the fan-favourites from last year return, plus a reflection on my resolutions from last year and a snippet of the first short story I've written in a long-ass time.

So. Without further ado....

2023 IN REVIEW

This year kinda sucked.
Well, the second half did. I can't really talk as to why on here but if you know you know. Things have been getting better, slowly. But I'm still under a lot of stress.

School has been tough but not beyond what I was expecting for Grade 11 and 12. I've been pumping through it. I worked main-stage theatre lights, which is wicked. Drama society is like a second family to me now. I even got invited out to Denny's (though I didn't go.) I've applied to several universities and am excited to hear back from them soon! Biology departments here I come.
In general I've been trying to be more independent, doing stuff for myself more, being more productive... I started keeping detailed to-do lists and habit-lists this year and it's been a great help. I recently started doing yoga regularly and it's pretty great too.

A friend got me into magical girl anime and by God it is the best thing of all time ever. Actually this is the first time I've really been into anime at all. A whole new world of often-bizarre sometimes-sleazy sometimes-interesting genre entertainment has opened up to me! Not that I have the time for it, really...
I've also gotten into fighting games which probably means I'll develop carpal tunnel in my thirties but at least I'll have fun doing it. Axl Low my beloved (Milia Rage is cool too... the rest of yall on thin fuckin ice)

2023 was alright. I had a good first half and a kinda-bad second half. I guess it was a year of hard work and self-motivation, mostly, without the glamour of the start of high school. But soon I'll be studying plants n' cells n' stuff and all of this will barely matter...

BADGERSAURUS IN 2024

So I didn't get a lot of what I wanted to get done in 2023 done. That's high school for you.
What I did get done, though: a lot of digital art! I started Badgersaurus Comix, though I haven't actually drawn too many. I started the Album Wall, which I'm super proud of--haven't worked on it in a while because of that Discord image-hosting scare that seems to have not been real. I did the main coding for the 'Born Wiffa Tail' page, which also finally has solid character and story outlines and a title. I wrote lotsa foundational writing for various other things. I started using Obsidian for creative writing just recently, which is a godsend. Such a nice environment to work in. I also now know how to use I-frames... which means, you guessed it:

At some point in the future I'm re-coding the site! I'd like to have a similar layout and look overall, with some new graphics, a few rewritten older pages, and fancy-shmancy I-frame code. I'd love to do a style-switcher but I've no clue how hard that'll be with image-based graphics like what I have. If anyone has any good tutorials for making simple style-switchers let me know. I also want to include an 'Idiot Box' page for TV and movies--though it might overlap with my Letterboxd an awful lot, except for the mahou-shoujo section... oh man I won't elaborate on that because if I can do it the way I want to it'll be wicked-cool but I might have to simplify it. Hope you guys like magical mentor talking animal characters.
I'll start on all this soonish--it'll hopefully be done before I head off to university next fall but we'll see.

What else, what else... I'd like to write that Broken Age essay finally. I need to take better notes this time--last attempt was a disaster 'cause I kept chasing after all these random side-notes and little ideas not relevant to my main thesis. That's what happens when you give me more than the allotted Alberta public-school exam-time I guess. I've got another Pokemon page on the backburner right now; it'll be whipped out soon. And there's still the Dragon Field-Guide to finish...
And that's that I guess! I'm starting university and stuff so I don't want to overburden myself.

2023 NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS

So. Those resolutions.
I kept 'em! Mostly. To be more specific:

Watch More Movies:
SUCCESS
Checking Letterboxd: I watched 40 movies this year! Way above my goal. Some particular favourites include White Noise (a powerful meditation on the limitless wonders and horrors of the plastic age), Godzilla vs Hedorah (fucking insane in the very best way), Heathers ('My teen angst bullshit has a body count!'), Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (like Edward Scissorhands but French and even more tragically romantic somehow, and it looks like a Mark Ryden painting), and Asteroid City (Wes Anderson does stage-theatre plus the quiet midcentury first-contact movie I always wished for, all in one convenient package.) Some real stinkers: Strays (Literally everything else was sold out and I was there with friends and tickets were four bucks and we weren't gonna go home having NOT seen a movie... as insipid as you can imagine), Nerdy Prudes Must Die (Does this even count? Anyway if you want to watch lameass millennial 40-year-olds make sex jokes and halfheartedly pretend to be 2023-era teenagers this is the free-on-Youtube stage show for you), and Old (I gotta tell you about this beach. It made me old. Or maybe it was the rocks?).
And of course I saw The Menu (2022) again, which is one of the most movies I have ever seen. When The Menu Guy made burger for Sex Worker(?) Woman I clapped. If only there were more evil serial killers/private-island-owners/implied cult-leaders/chefs/former McDonalds employees willing to stand up for the little guy in real life!
I checked a lot of stuff off my list and added even more to said list. I feel like I have a very slightly better grasp on film now! Hurrah. Here's to more random-ass animated kids movies and questionable-quality thrillers in 2024.

Focus More On School:
SUCCESS!
My grades haven't improved but they've stayed stable into Grade 12 and that's about as much as I can ask for. I've been really putting the work in and have done a ton of extracurricular stuff to primp up my university applications; it's been a busy year. But overall I've been able to put aside other distractions and work hard at school the way I wanted to, and I'm pretty satisfied overall. I'll have to double my efforts for university, but I'm sure I can do it!

Less Screentime:
Kind of!
I haven't hit my three-hours-a-day goal with my phone but I've gotten it done to three-hours-and-fourty-five-minutes-a-day which is pretty good. I'll hopefully be able to hit a solid 3 hours in the new year! Not much to say here but the ScreenZen app is really helpful (and totally free).

2024 NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

So, what am I aiming for this year?

More Consistent Website Updates
I haven't been super active on here lately and that is mostly school's fault, but every time I sit down to write I really enjoy myself. It's just getting myself to think of it as a leisure activity and not a 'constructive' one is hard, sometimes. I want to keep a more solid weekly or biweekly schedule here, and work on things like the comic strips and longform articles more than I have been.

Survive the High-School University Transition
I'm going off to school out-of-province later this year, assuming everything goes to plan. Honestly I feel like a lot of new years' resolutions just go hand-in-hand with this... living by myself for the first time at a very young age, studying a formal science in a formal scientific setting, et cetera. So just being able to make it through this adjustment without imploding will be a big achievement for me.

Be More Punk
What does this mean? A lot of things.
I'm sick of kowtowing to other people for no good reason, I'm sick of not being able to express myself properly in conversation, I'm sick of the sense of moral superiority that pervades a lot of modern conversation and thought... I don't have all the answers and neither does anyone else and I don't wanna keep pretending that they don't and I do. I wanna be angry and wild and impossible to ignore and I wanna wear bright colors and speak with conviction and express myself properly and fully everywhere to everyone... I want to understand other people not as behemoths or authorities but as other people who are also fallible and emotional and know lots about some things and little about others.
Maybe it's the teen angst talking or maybe it's just regular high-school-to-college self-reinvention. But I'm ready for a change.

WRITING SNIPPET

I've been writing lots again! I don't have anything *finished*-finished but I have this. A little bit of a short 19th-century fairy-tale story. It's kinda crappy, but it is my first time doing original creative prose in a long time. Please enjoy it!

Some time ago-not long enough ago to say 'once upon a time' but not too recently either-on a little island off the coast somewhere, among the seals and seabirds, there lived a young sea-witch.

The sea-witch was a small, curious-looking creature; she had a long pale face and mousy-brown hair, and always wore the same expression of cool wide-eyed detachment. Over her outfit she always wore the same long blue coat-dress, lined warm enough to keep out the ocean-breeze; it had a wavy skirt and a wavy collar that flared down into a whale-tail shape over her chest and back. On her head she wore a witches' hat; a proper leathery one, tipped with a seashell tassel, as is the custom for sea-witches. If she pulled the brim down it would cover most of her ears, so that she could avoid listening to unpleasant noises or conversation--I write 'most of' because her ears were quite unusual indeed. Like all proper witches, she was not entirely human; her ears were long and furred, a bit like a rabbit's, and furthermore her feet were tipped with claws, though you would never know this on account of the little black boots she always wore. Around her waist she wore a great leathery belt, from which hung her magical pouches and charms, and sometimes a few fish for her winter neighbours, the puffins, with whom she tried to maintain an amicable but impersonal relationship. (This was difficult, as puffins are notoriously clingy creatures.)

The sea-witch, as stated before, lived on an island inside a little cabin. It is not likely that she built it herself, but if it had belonged to someone else before she refused to say. Inside the cabin she had a little wood-burning stove, and a round wooden table with a few good chairs, and a little record-player with a few good records. Her bedroom was upstairs, furnished with a dresser and a vanity and a great big bed, which seemed to her a veritable ocean of blankets and pillows. And across the hall from her bedroom was her study; a cozy little place with one tall bookshelf stuffed nearly to bursting, a sturdy desk carved from dark oak-wood, and a great amorphous mass of scrabbled notes and scribbled diagrams, covering every available surface. The witch spent most of her spare time in this study, working on spells and charms and such, as witches do; and she was often so absorbed in her work that she would not rise from it for hours unless interrupted by something--or someone, as was the case this spring morning.

It may seem to you, reader, that the sea-witch was lonesome, and that such visitors would be few and far between. Not the case! You would be forgiven, being incapable of speaking with pinnipeds and puffins and other beasts besides; but you must remember that these creatures have looser tongues around witches, being as they are slightly beastly, too. So the witch spoke often and well with the other residents of her little island, the seals and puffins and petrels and gulls, and sometimes with migratory creatures also; and so when one of the puffins flew straight through her study window she was not shocked at all (though she was rather miffed at having to put down her work.)

"Well, Mister Puffin," said the sea-witch, not recognizing this particular bird. "What brings you here?"

"It's terrible, Miss," started the puffin, a bit out-of-breath. "The skuas, you see; they're terribly cruel; they refuse to fish for themselves; they take our breakfasts and lunches and after-dinner tea; they pester us puffins persistently. You ought to do something, at least."

"Well," said the witch, "the petrels do that too, don't they? And the gulls. It's nothing unusual out here, not really."

"The petrels, at least, keep to themselves mostly; they bother the seals when they come for their dead, but that's not our business; the gulls bother the pelicans, but the skuas come for us--it's awful, Miss, really. You really ought to do something."

"I'm sure it will sort itself out," said the sea-witch.
And she would have left it there and returned to her work, but the puffin was so insistent, and the weather so lovely (by coastal springtime standards), that in the end she acquiesced to his demands and went and got her belt and boots. (Witches, of course, always wear their hats, even indoors.)

THANK YOU!

So, another year of Badgersaurus... hard to believe it's been nearly two years since I stuck this site up for the first time. I still love working on it and I still love showing it to people. I still love the super-sweet messages people leave for me and the occasional E-mail I get about it. I still love having a non-algorithmic web-outlet where I can put anything I want whenever I want, with all the freedom of form and presentation I can imagine. I still recommend doing the same to anyone and everyone with the free time and will to learn HTML.
This time last year I was at 16,000 views. I'm now at 66,000-ish. I know those numbers don't mean nuffin', but wow.

Thank you everyone--real-life friends and family, random acquaintances, internet strangers, people who check my Discord bio and proceed to DM me asking about how I made it--for visiting this little pit-stop on the information superhighway, even if just for a moment. It means a lot. Here's to even more Badgersaurus in 2024 and beyond!