Shoot the Rookie is Three!

Hello dear readers and welcome back to Shoot the Rookie! Today is a special day for the blog as August 1st 2020 marks Shoot the Rookie’s 3 year anniversary! I hope you’ll join me for this little celebration while I recount some of the highs (and lows) of the last year!

So! What have I been up to this year? Well, mostly writing blog posts. I’ve written 40 of them in the last year despite taking a bit of a break between March and May! I’ve done a good mix of anime and gaming posts, come up with some new ideas and taken part in a number of community events despite the fact there has been a bit of a downturn in them lately.

One of the awesome things that has started this year is Just Geeking By’s Seriously Geeky Sundays event. Created by the absolutely awesome Heather who I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know a bit better this year, it asks a series of themed questions each week and bloggers respond with their answers. It has been fantastic to take part in this, both as a writer and a reader and I am super grateful to Heather for putting this on at a time when I think many of us were looking for some fresh inspiration (cos, like, virus). I’ve done 9 of these prompts so far, with my favourite being the one about summertime (mostly because I got to turn Todoroki from My Hero Academia into an ice cream)!

I’ve also taken part in a couple of other awesome events in the last year, including the Well Red Mage’s epic collaboration, The Super Mario Multiverse where I discussed Captain Toad as well as Normal Happenings swan song collaboration, The Characters That Define Us, where I talked about my affinity for Reyn from Xenoblade Chronicles. It was an honour to take part in each of these events, especially considering the other awesome bloggers that were involved and I ended up really happy with my contributions, even if the idea of me being defined by Reyn is a bit far fetched!

Outside of collaborations, I’ve really enjoyed continuing to write sbout anime and was quite pleased with my review of Scotland Loves Anime 2019. I also really enjoyed sharing my games and animes of the decade at the end of last year. I do love a good list and those ones were really fun (and tricky!) to put together. I’ve also had the honour of contributing articles to other sites this year, which is something I’d really like to do more of (if you’re looking for a guest contributor just hit me up!). These articles include a piece on Tekken 3 for Super Chart Island and a look at why I love Xenoblade Chronicles for Miketendo64.

So what is my biggest achievement of the last year? Well there really is no competition for that! My biggest achievement has undoubtedly been winning the 2019 Blogger Blitz Shipping Wars competition hosted by the truly awesome Adventure Rules! I was absolutely stunned to have won the thing I had been following for years and thinking I’d never be good enough to win. It was kinda just like the stars aligned, as being able to write about my favourite ship – Itsuki and Yashiro from Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE for a writing competition was a dream come true for me!

What’s next then you may be wondering? Well largely more of the same, but in the next few weeks all my attention is going to be on my new community event, The Great JRPG Character Face-Off, so make sure you check it out and get involved if you haven’t already. For this event I have had the pleasure of working with the totally awesome Winst0lf who I’ve been chatting all things JRPG with quite a lot over the last year. Thanks dude, you have definitely made these weird times more bearable and taught me that there is no such thing as too many Morgana gifs!

In the longer term I’m just going to take things as they come. As I said earlier, there has been a lot fewer community events and collaborations in the last year and I don’t think that is going to change, but I’m still looking forward to contributing to anything that does come up and I’ll possibly arrange another one myself. Maybe even an anime one this time! Although the vibe in the community has changed a bit, and that has at times made me sad, I still love blogging, love the blogging community and am immensely grateful for all the friends old and new I have made through this hobby. Thank you to all my blogging friends and to everyone that has read the blog. I’m still shocked that you keep coming back, but please know that it means the world to me. Finally I just want to say a huge thank you to my partner for continuing to support me in this hobby, even when it eats up our evenings and weekends. I couldn’t do it without you ❤️

Here’s to another year!

Thanks for reading,

Pix1001 x