Hey gang, it's been a while, and it's most certainly been a hell of a lot that I can only imagine a lot of you have been through since the last update in regards to this. I hope that all of you guys are doing okay and have been safe during these difficult times.
So let's cut right to the chase... what's the status on this?
To be frank, it's still pretty much in the state I left it in as before. As you can imagine, a lot of has been piling up on my plate in terms of tasks and priorities this year, and with the rise of ongoing world events, it's been pretty difficult to work on this. Never the less, I intend to stick to my guns and hopefully have this project out and completed before the end of the year.
As I've said before, the outcome for while now has been locked in and all that matters now is finishing up the final portions of the fight, working on the results and getting visualizations of the story prepared. The first two things along with some of the visuals are already tangible things that I've made and prepared over the past couple of years, but there are still things I need to have made and make sure they are up to par with what I'd like to tell in the story.
That being said... let's address the elephant in the room.
If you're reading this in mid-2020, take a look around this webpage right now. As you can see, DeviantArt has finally made the long-intended switch to Eclipse. Evidently, the change to this new website layout has made it a bit difficult for fellow versus writers to continue making new entries in their respective written series, and unfortunately the same goes for me as well. I can no longer create new written text entries as regular "art submissions" on here, making it impossible to upload the fight or results for Timmy VS Twilight. It is always possible to overwrite past Sta.sh files I've made for other things, but I'd rather not do that. Especially given that, in all honestly, I was never really a big fan of the limitations presented here on the website when it came to submitting written work. While it definitely is a decent platform to get your work seen (thank you to everyone who have followed me for either my fights or my art over the years), I can't say now it's a great place to be submitting fights as meticulously lengthy and detailed as Timmy VS Twilight. Especially given the size limitations of what you can upload (Bowser Jr VS Spike's fight from way back was never intended to be 2 parts, but Sta.sh's limitations unfortunately made it that way; and even then, I had to later reupload the results elsewhere). So you can only imagine how many parts TvT would've been given its surpassed that fight in length. The prelude alone had to be divided in two.
All that being said... what now? ...Fortunately, like with my fellow colleagues, I was well-prepared in advanced for this situation, and I have the solution.
The Gauntlet is making the move over to WordPress. In retrospect, I'd been thinking about making something like this for a while as I was searching for alternatives for writers such as myself. I'd like to thank my CX-coworkers who had already made WordPress blogs in advance as well for bringing this to my attention.
WordPress's writing system, from my experience so far, has definitely shown much more promise compared to what Sta.sh was able to allow previously. I can use as much images as necessary without overloading pages or breaking a file-storage limit. I can divide portions of my writing into segments on the same blog post without having everything on completely separate pages. Most of all, Timmy VS Twilight can be better realized on here, as its much more fit for what I intended.
In that past few weeks, I have been working on making the site presentable and a good home for The Gauntlet in general. Due to my busy tasks, I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update the site, but best know any project relating to this series will find a place on here from now on. In fact, the prelude for Timmy VS Twilight has already made the move on there as well, though it is not currently live.
Something I should make all you aware of is that when it does go live, you will notice some significant changes. Aesthetically, the entire prelude's assets have received an update in design (with much thanks to my best friend and business partner, DJTiki). I figured this would be appropriate mainly because of the jump from DeviantArt to WordPress allowing The Gauntlet to become its own thing. While it is still very much a DB-inspired project, and while it was a blast getting to use the assets I recreated from the early seasons of the show, I feel it's time to move on and graduate past those assets to really set it apart. (It's also worth nothing it was starting to become incredibly harder to add new information with the font being used before making everything illegible as text shrunk, and trying to make new slates to make space for it would look weird; also, the information I would be presenting would differ significantly than that of Death Battle's; this is particularly why I did not want to utilize Wiz and Boomstick or refer to this as a traditional Death Battle.)
On top of that, both Timmy and Twilight have received updates to their preludes. Timmy's information is more or less the same (just revising and also correcting a few misconstrued tidbits from the previous version; not much has really come out since The Fairly OddParents ended a while back), while Twilight now has information from Season 9 of FiM (given the show having ended last year, I figured to cover bases, it'd be appropriate; it also allowed me to add extra info I wasn't able to include last time and give closure to Twilight's story).
As I've said, in spite of the updates to the analysis, the results are still more or less the same. Though being able to get those last pieces of info in on both of them really helped to further solidify my thought process. It'll definitely be an interesting (and hopefully more streamlined) overview when we cross that path.
I should also note I unfortunately will not be updating the prelude here on DeviantArt. While I still love what I was able to publish on here, it would be too much work to go in and fix everything to be uniform with WordPress, and ultimately, it wouldn't matter anyway. But at least it can be looked at like a time capsule of sorts.
That said, I implore you guys to read the new prelude when it is up as it'll definitely be a familiar yet entirely new and enriching experience while getting you accustomed to what WordPress is like.
In general, if you are a follower of my DeviantArt specifically for my researched/written battles, I encourage you to go onto The Gauntlet's WordPress (https://crossgauntlet.wordpress.com/) and give it a follow so you can be up to date with stuff on there, as that'll be where the action is from now on. I'm sorry I couldn't have the fight ready in time for DeviantArt, but ultimately, I feel as though this is for the best. (I also wanna stress that if you want real-time updates from me, follow me on Twitter @m3Atl0afman.)
As for what's going to happen with this account... to be honest I'm not sure at the moment. While I'm not big on the changes here, it is still at least a decent platform for art, so if it interests me, maybe I'll put some stuff up on here later on. Until then, I'll try to at least update anyone still on here about when new stuff is coming, if I'm able to.
That said, thank you everyone for reading this and look forward to reading the prelude when it's out. Like I said, be on the lookout. It may hit sooner than you think. Cheers fam, be safe.