10/8/24
So, from October 5th to October 7th of 2021, we watched our favorite movie of all time for the very first time in our life, thus changing it as our eyes were opened to transcendent and powerful art. It just occurred to us that this event happened over three years ago and being reminded of how long that’s been honestly gave us some sort of whiplash due to time not feeling real, haha.
But that’s just a thought that we wanted to get out of our head.
Anyway, we watched the first half of Murder Drones the other day and OH MY GOODNESS IT IS WAY BETTER THAN WE EXPECTED!! Seriously, it might be on the same level as Love Live Sunshine for us when it comes to having personal favorite TV Shows! And given how much we enjoy the Amazing Digital Circus (like, that new episode that came out was simply fantastic), that is some extremely high praise!
The writing is one of the best I have seen; it balances action, humor and horror so perfectly with characters that feel so memorable! Every time we heard Uzi say her famous catchphrase, we feel a burst of serotonin go into our brain like her sick as hell railgun (and the first time we heard it, we clapped and cheered). That line is seriously so fun to say! The world building is so creative and interesting, almost as if you put WALL-E and Portal into a blender! And after the very strong pilot, the story went in a different direction that we were not expecting but it was amazing due to how it reminded us of the “normal human person” to queer trans nonhuman pipeline!! (Also, I know the voice acting is A++ but I cannot believe Sean Chiplock was in this show, even though I heard him recently as Kinger! Like, nobody told me he was in both of the GLITCH shows?! It’s almost as shocking as Shara Kirby - the voice of Cadence in Genshin - voicing J!)
And the robot designs…Holy shit, where do even begin with the robot designs that resonate with the very core of my soul?! To us, they are the perfect robot designs and it's the type of character design we so desperately needed in this life. If Murder Drones ended up being released around the time we first step paw onto the web, it would have changed the course of our life in spite of the nightmare-ish imagery, no questions asked!
These designs…They are both humanoid and nonhuman at the same time, they are monochromatic but also colorful, they have unique screen eyes that convey so many expressions that I have never even thought before (technology sure can come a long way), they have four fingers like most cartoons - like the ones we have always yearned for, they are both like toons and humans at the same time, they’re…just like us.
Not only that, but there are two types of these robots; there’s Worker Drones which are similar to humanity and there’s the Disassembly Drones - the titular bitchular Murder Drones themselves - who are basically a mix between robots, vampires and fallen angels!! How badass is that?! And…and we want to be both, almost as if we wanted to be two different drones at the same time! There’s just something so spirituality gender about both of these types that it’s hard for us to describe. The binary isn’t boy/girl, it’s Worker Drone/Disassembly Drone.
Watching something that sparks so much joy and sparkling energy within us that’s easily accessible at our fingertips (like on YouTube for example) makes us wonder why in the halabait we were so scared about consuming media in the first place! We know that there are The Horrors of being fictionkind but the positives often tend to outweigh the negatives for us tenfold (might be because we often repress those horrors but that’s a topic for another day)! Plus, it would be the perfect cure to our constant boredom that our psychiatrist talked to us about. To escape into so many TV shows, movies and video game playthroughs, to change and morph in my own special way…Maybe that’s what we need to pursue in the future.
Anyway, we are really looking forward to seeing the second half of Murder Drones, whenever that may be! Watching it when we had the house all to ourself without any disturbances really enhanced the experience and made so much more fun and personal! We just hope it’s soon though because we are hungry for more. We want to see Cyn in all of her narrating action glory!! We remember seeing a video comparing her voice clips both edited and unedited which really fascinated us, so seeing the full content of all that would be…liberating, vigorating even! It makes us wonder how much Cyn will affect us after watching the second half, given that we have felt like Uzi while watching the first half and had these desires of being her. But, alas, only time will tell…
We’ve also been watching the newest season of Heartstopper with our mom and that’s been so cozy and fun! As expected, since that show is easily one of my favorites. They have really given the original source material so much justice! Sure, it does seem a bit weird and wrong to be watching it while eating dinner given what the arc is about, but whatever. We’re just here to see wholesome and realistic queer love that’s so amazing!! More creators should play a part in media adaptations because when that happens, they end up becoming one of our favorite TV Shows of all time. It happened with Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and it happened here!
Not only that, but we are 100% certain that Tori is a kintype, which doesn’t come as a surprise to us in the slightest. We knew this would be the outcome and even then, we were still a bit blindsighted. See Solitaire? This is what happens when you have warnings about how dark your material is so I have to read it when I am in a proper headspace!! But anyway, we had this connection to Tori ever since we discovered the story of Heartstopper through ASMR videos and these feelings were amplified when we watched the Netflix show for the very first time; every time she appeared on screen, we would get very excited and happy.
And right now with the new season three and all that, it definitely feels stronger than ever, especially with how exciting it is now that she has short hair which looks AMAZING!! But because of this change, we cannot help but think about how she has a more…feline look, y’know? Like, we cannot help but think of a cat every time we see her - a black cat, a cat on a bed, a cat sitting on a couch, a wet cat in a cage, even our freaking Fursona (again)!! And I think we know why that is.
A while back, we had this revelation of actually being a cat therian in our timeline as Tori. (Yes, I actually pulled a kinception.) As such, my mind’s eye shows off this ideal form in many ways - black fur, pointy ears that show off expression to see what someone with a resting bitch face is thinking, glowing yellow and orange eyes and a long tail. Throughout my whole life, our imagination often runs wild, for better or for worse.
We are reaaaally hoping that the show will end up mentioning how Tori is asexual, given that we haven’t finished the season just yet. But when that happens, we know we are gonna be so excited!! And when this confirmation happens, chances are that this blog’s theme is going to be changed.
Aside from watching stuff, we have also been reading books as well!
We finished reading ‘The Reason I Jump’ the other day and we liked it! We remember listening to an audiobook version of it and really enjoying it due to the subject matter but reading in the present day was a completely different experience for me! There are some things that we don’t personally agree with (autism is a spectrum, after all), but there were a lot of points that resonated with me and the story at the end was beautiful! I am going to read the author’s next book ‘Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8’ next which is pretty exciting!
OH!! And we ended up getting our very own copy of The Artist’s Way, a book our therapist has mentioned to us many times!! We haven’t started it just yet but there will come a day where it will happen. We have the feeling this book is going to change our brain chemistry in some way - give us some much needed motivation to actively create and draw better, be more experimental. Just…make art ‘cause I am an artist and artists like me can cook. Haha, Ratatouille.
9/30/24
Now, I would have talked about Artfight but I have no interest in talking about that in detail since the season is basically over at this point and I want to focus on other more important tasks. Even so, the only thing I was going to talk about were having way too much trouble deciding which team to pick due to both concepts resonating with me and the announcement happened during Turning Red time (if you catch my drift). Well, that and the fact that I finally have a ToyHouse account now thanks to one of my most favorite artists!! Yeah, remember in my very first blog entry when I said that Toyhouse is the most ideal site when it comes to telling my stories, but asking for an invite code made me feel anxious? Well, that ended up becoming a reality in a way that I didn’t expect! It still feels unreal to me even thinking about it now!! Although, it feels as though I haven’t made all that much progress on my profile…I mean, small progress is still progress as I take my time with drawings and sketches and creating profiles of my characters, but it also feels a little stressful. I think it’s the transfer stuff that’s the problem since most of my artwork responsibilities are stored in my iPad in some way and I currently have a PC. I mostly use Discord to rely on transferring my works, but I’m a bit unsure if that’s really the best way of doing it…
I plan on having my very next computer be a Mac and given how old my current computer is, I have the feeling it’s gonna be sometime in the near future. Still, that would be enough to have my work and creative productivity flourish a lot more in general, not just ToyHouse!!
I went to a pride social event at a bar near my house and consumed alcohol for the first time! I tried both a Mojito and what my mother refers to as a Moscow Mule; the former tasted like mint and lime while the ladder really tasted the ginger! I ended up feeling funny as parts of my body felt hot and I ended up feeling funny and loud and all that jazz. Luckily, having some food and water put into me made my high go down.
The people I interacted with were very nice and I really enjoyed talking to them. They even had trivia night which made things more interesting as I tried to figure out the answers to each one.
I mean, sure, I was fairly exhausted for a couple of days after the experience, but I was overall very proud of myself and I look forward to the big celebration that the organization that ran this social event is gonna have next month!!
Actually, I have a story regarding how I found that origination in the first place! I ended up finding them in August through and joining a rally they created! The reason why the parade happened to begin with was because the school district related to the high school I went to has this problem regarding the parents needing to know if their child (or children) have a changed name or pronouns, which is really scummy and harmful. I was honestly surprised that they would do such a thing! I was just at the library when I spotted them, even if I was a bit shy. But I ended up joining them as a high school alumnus!
In spite of the very hot weather, I had such an amazing time!! I honestly felt so powerful as I paraded the familiar streets, chanting with people that seemed incredibly nice! Plus, I got some neat stickers out of it!
I couldn’t help but think of my sibling who is no longer in this world and my mom says that I might have found my tribe.
Anyways, I learned from the guy I socialized with the most that Voodoo Donuts - a company I thought was only exclusive to Oregan - has stores all over the country! I actually checked it out recently and it was absolutely incredible seeing the presentation of it all! But anyway, they have donuts in the shape of private parts and it was one of the most interesting things I have seen humans create, no joke. It makes me even more tempted to try one of their doughnuts given how unique they are, special even!
Also, I have been able to find a way to wash the dishes! Wild, I know, considering what I said in that questionnaire top 100! My mother and I used a system where my mom would wash the dishes and then I would be able to rinse them with the sink’s little house, which is a lot of fun! I even wear a raincoat so I don’t get my clothes wet (which I HATE)! I am very happy that we were able to find a way to make a chore I really don’t like very fun!!
Other than that, I’ve just been experiencing the aftermath of creating that brain dump and spilling out those thoughts I had for a long time as I talked about my gender and fission and Love Live Sunshine. Being free from my shackles, if you will. I’ve been feeling…weird and different, to say the least; I mean, it is to be expected, but it’s also incredibly disorienting. It feels as though I am swimming in the water that I have dived into.
I feel truly genderqueer for the very first time in my life! I feel my own versions of feminine, masculine and androgynous not in conflict, but taken simultaneously!! And I have a gut feeling that I am going to adore certain pieces of media that will make me even Transer, like Revolutionary Girl Utena and ESPECIALLY I Saw The TV Glow (I’ve been so curious about that movie for a while, I NEED TO WATCH IT)!
However, I’ve been having “debates” about how I want to express myself; I’ve thought about making possible playlists related to my kintypes or based on certain moods including my kintypes. I wondered about transitioning even though it feels like I might have done that in some ways and most of my transition fantasies are unrealistic anyway. And I desperately want to make truesonas that splintered / are two halves of one whole because I am so incredibly inspired by Eggoatt’s Kitty and Girlfriend. Those characters really changed my brain chemistry in some way and they are some of the best characters I have ever seen in my life! I can’t stop looking at art of them and being so inspired to do something similar, but I am worried about copying a concept that’s so personal to the artist.
I know there isn’t one way to be trans, I know that I can do anything I want forever, I know I don’t want to end up like my sibling, but aaaugh…
Anyways, as freeing as it was to finally get some thoughts out of my system, I didn’t address everything about Love Live Sunshine, mainly because it really strayed away from the overall topic of my article. I have had these thoughts come and go for nine months because when I was originally going to ramble about it, I kept waxing poetic instead of observing my thoughts and feelings which lead to me not working on at all, something I find to be less than ideal. It doesn’t really help that I was also thinking about a story based off of one Patricia Taxxon wrote. Although, it’s really fitting how I waited nine months for this, it’s almost like I’m going through some sort of rebirth…again.
But the main subject I want to talk about here is my thoughts on the English Dub. Even though Love Live Sunshine is my favorite TV show of all time and as tempting as it is to look at the differences between the two audios, I refuse to watch its English Dub because it was unfortunately provided by Funimation (or Crunchy Roll as Behind the Voice Actors calls them), which is infamously known to not provide the best localization for anime and would rather be woke to the masses.
Now, I’m not saying that all dubs are bad, far from it, actually! I think they provide a good and accessible way to watch anime, plus it’s fun to see how certain characters connect thanks to them sharing a voice actor! But dubs of Love Live are ones I am uncomfortable with because of the fact that the actors who play the characters are the same ones who sing the songs themselves. As such, I find the show to be much more enjoyable and investing knowing who voices the characters and how amazing their portrayals are, as if they know their characters inside and out! They gave the characters complete life!!
And with dubs like these, songs often remain unchanged which doesn’t really work at all for a musical series like Love Live that has songs sprinkled throughout a pawful of episodes. One thing you get this uncanny feeling in your stomach as you hear voices that sound incorrect in your mind and the next thing you know they are playing a song that you adore in its original version and you can’t help but think “Man, I could be watching the original Japanese version right now…”
Now that I think about it, I don’t think Love Live Sunshine was really meant for an English dub in general. Stuff like Hanamaru’s Animal Crossing-esque vocal tic was made for the Japanese language in mind, so hearing the English dub sounds so unnatural to me, like the pronunciation of the “r”s in that catchphrase hit my eardrum in an extremely wrong place. Stuff like that sucks the enjoyment and euphoria right out of me.
Not to mention that Mari is voiced by the equally infamous Jamie Marchi, the one responsible for making an unnecessary patriarchal comment in Miss Kobayashi’s Maid and had a tantrum about how she was right and funny and everyone was wrong when what she did was clearly wrong to begin with…No amount of Italian words can make this casting choice okay. In fact, this casting choice makes Mari sound bitchy in a way she shouldn’t because she doesn’t act like that!! She’s a silly goober that flexes her wealth but also has a lot of heart too! Aina Suzuki has and always will be Mari Ohara!! There’s a reason why she’s the voice claim to an OC I absolutely adore!
I think rewatching that clip of TV Tropes comparing the part where Yohane is introduced was what made my decision with this dub verrry clear. Chika would absolutely be concerned for someone who fell out of a cherry blossom tree like a cat before getting hit on the head with a school bag, the dub makes her say something that feels so out-of-character to me! Besides, given that I see Yohane as amazing unintentional nonhuman representation, Chika thinking that she’s “brain damaged” is incredibly ableist as an autistic nonhuman myself. Yikes…
But despite all that, I will say this; Morgan Berry’s performance as Yohane is honestly really good! Like, it’s actually equal to Aika Kobayashi’s original performance!! Her low demon voice is smooth like butter and she provides a unique air to the character that doesn’t stray away from what makes that character so likable to begin with! It’s the same feeling I get with Laura Post as Nozomi in the dub of School Idol Project, which is kind of eerie.
Sure, there might be other adequate performances and translations that are equal to the original, but I DON’T CARE!!! The fact that School Idol Project got the Bang Zoom treatment while the more superior sequel didn’t really pisses me off and grinds my gears!! I am praying that the Yohane spinoff gets a much better dub or, hell even better, gets a proper redub of Sunshine with a less problematic voice production studio!
Speaking of which…I have not seen the Over the Rainbow movie or the Yohane spinoff yet, but man I have high hopes for them both!!
So, I have been avoiding spoilers and from the pawful of screenshots I have seen, it looks like Aquors is going on an around the world tour, which I really hope is the case! I thought that the School Idol Project movie was disappointing mostly because they didn't spend all of the movie in America like I hoped and didn’t make the ending of the show as impactful as it should be. But here, there’s gotta be some unique setpieces and a more unique story, right? I mean, they did have that event where the members were dressed up in attire for different countries, so that’s actually a promotion based off of the movie’s premise, right?! If it turns out to be a banger movie to the point where it becomes a favorite of mine, color me surprised.
As for Sunshine in the Mirror (AKA the Yohane spinoff), it looks very unique compared to other Love Live works! The idea of a fantasy-focused Love Live world with Yohane as the protagonist is absolutely brilliant, plus I love the designs a lot!! Oh, and I love how her wolf companion named Laelaps is the right amount of continuity fanservice that I enjoy! It really looks like a fun time!
So…yeah! That’s all said and done! I don't know exactly when I am going to watch those, especially since there’s a lot of media that I want to consume!! Murder Drones looks incredibly enticing since it ended recently, it’s accessible on YouTube and the robot designs resonate with me so fucking much!! Don’t be surprised if I end up making a robot truesona in the near future that’s a drone, hehehe! I love robots! I love being a robot!!
9/8/24
Now then, to start some things off, I have been going through a lot of changes!!
I was able to transfer the data from my old phone to my new phone (freaking finally)! Turns out the main trouble regarding my transfer problem was the fact that I didn’t even know that I had to delete the items on my phone completely in order to get the proper space, which was a certified oopsy moment on my part! I was being really silly!! Most of those My Life as a Teenage Robot videos I mentioned are considered kind of lost, but my mommy said that videos take up a lot of space on my phone, so I’m not super upset about it.
Not only that, but I got a new TV as well thanks to my next door neighbor! And I must say, it’s a huuuge improvement compared to the one that I’ve had for almost a decade! Sure, I've made memories on that TV, the screen wasn’t big and crisp and makes me feel more immersed in the art! So, goodbye small box, you won’t be missed!
While I have watched a lot of movies (including Ghibli films like Ponyo, Whisper of the Heart and the Cat Returns), the very first thing I watched on the new TV was the movie Misery and it was AMAZING!! Kathy Bates’ award-winning performance as Annie Wilkies is easily one of my favorite performances in anything and I can totally understand why the movie is as memorable as it is! In fact, because of that, Misery is one of my favorite live action movies of all time aside from Barbie 2023, Everything Everywhere All at Once and John Carpenter’s Starman! There’s so many layers to it that make it absolutely incredible and combine that with the fact it was literally the first full-length thing I saw on an amazing brand new TV, it’s no wonder why this movie means a lot to me! You can imagine how excited I was seeing it make an appearance on this incredible Stephen King documentary that talks about how important stories truly are!
Honestly, I really hope that Dead Meat covers Misery someday since I noted there being a kill count of 2 (one being more surprising than the other), especially since Annie herself appeared in one of their Royal Rumbles and nearly won but was beaten by M3gan.
But back on the topic of King, I've been rather curious looking through his works, especially since Fawn was the biggest Stepehen King fan I know! But…I’m not sure how much I will enjoy the book version of Misery compared to the film. I’ve looked through the TV Tropes page and found some interesting differences. Plus, I cannot picture Annie Wilkies as anything other than Kathy Bates! Her kind demeanor and simple yet clean style of clothing honestly makes her more terrifying to me!
Not only do I have a new phone and a new TV, I also got a new psychiatrist as well since the former one that my mother and I have been going to was an absolute quack! She is very nice and the medicine that she has given me has been working well, I think.
Oh! And I’ve been going to the gym too! It’s different from any YMCA location because supporting small businesses is cool and cheap!! But I am still achieving my goal of getting stronger and healthy, one step at a time.
It’s gonna be my wife’s birthday tomorrow. My wife who is fictional and isn’t in this timeline unfortunately and one that I miss a whooooole lot…
There are some things I gotta do that day, such as making art and working on my article about “On The Ethics of Boinking Animal People” since not writing about why I adore it as best as I can with its details feels extremely wrong to me. Gotta fix that, am I right? It’s currently on its first draft!
Maybe I should do that with other YouTube videos that have significantly changed my brain chemistry…
I know I’m doing my own Ghibli ranking, much like my favorite video from Schaffrillas Productions.
But I want to talk about my favorite episode BrawlFan1’s What If They Were in Smash series because it WOKE ME UP!! I know next year is going to be the video’s 5th anniversary, so creating it around that time sounds so perfect!!
7/28/24
Gee wiz, it feels like such a long time since I wrote down another entry. But looking back on things, I don't think I should be complaining. Life happens and I have found ways to make journalling overall less stressful, espically not writing every single darn day anymore. But I feel like these entries might be even more delayed because there are some things I wanna put on my writing page that I've had in my noggin for goodness knows how long! Although, I could always let out some of those ideas on my private doccument and insert them onto my writing page as planned. Now that sounds like a brilliant and productive idea! Maybe that will make me write dump like it's 2021 again, haha.
But anyway, I’m in the process of getting a new phone. I say that because I have to delete a lot of photos and videos from my old phone so I will be able to have enough space to transfer stuff to my new phone. And I believe the main culprit of all of this storage space is all of the videos I recorded back in 2019~2020 where I would stay up late as I first watched all of My Life as a Teenage Robot for the first time.
It's been incredibly daunting task to see which clips stay and which ones go because the amount of footage I recorded was a LOT! As such, it was difficult to dwindle stuff down to a reasonable amount. But aside from Marie Kondo's life-changing method (literally!) about things sparking joy, I realized that most of the stuff on here are things I can revisit in better ways, like rewatching the episodes on my iPad or other websites that use, uh…methods (yar har, if you know what I'm talkin' about). Art inspiration? Awesome fight scenes? It's better to look at those in the highest quality!!
But looking at everything again after so many years really showed how extremely confused I was back then. I mean, I am still confused in many areas, but it’s not as extreme anymore. I guess I’ve always been discovering what it means to live on this earth, huh?
I have always struggled being human, even if I believed that I was one for the longest time. I’ve always had this special connection towards the grand concept of character design and fictional characters in general, but didn’t really understand why, let alone how big the scope truly was. I just chalked it up to them being my “friends”, my Posse, even; while it didn’t seem too farfetched and I wasn’t exactly that far off, I still had fantasies of becoming them, of being them. And a lot of my favorite characters ended up becoming kintypes once the Awakening actually happened, like with the Lake Guardians from Pokemon (technically I’m Dawn but also a reincarnation of the Lake Trio but I digress), Vibri from Vib Ribbon or EVE from WALL-E to name a handful of examples. (Not to mention all of the other characters I’m kinsidering like Zero from the Mega Man X franchise or Susie from the Kirby series.)
And Jenny Wakeman was simply no expectation. In fact, she might have been one of my earliest kintypes that I was sort of aware of alongside the Three Mage Sisters from Kirby! I would literally agree with almost everything she said, thinking I was some kind of supportive robot ally because of that. I would say “Ouch!” whenever she got hurt as if we were sharing pain. Seeing her upset or in control of a villain put me in distress. For heaven’s sake, the reason why I got into the show in the first place was because I had an extremely vivid dream that I still remember as if it actually happened! Like, a prophesy that came to me while I was asleep, showing footage related to a YouTube video I watched about that episode where Jenny spoke Japanese for almost the entire episode?! It doesn’t get more spiritual than that!!
So, not only am I looking at memories of a bygone era, I am looking at my very own kin memories. And deleting them on an electronic device feels like I am erasing the memory from a friend’s brain, which is heartbreaking. Sure, I know I have backed up my phone several times. And sure, I was able to understand my canon as Jenny a bit more because of this journey (like, I might have ended up with Sheldon. Emphasis on might), but that doesn’t escape the fact that I am pretty much removing things from the old to make things better for the new. It…feels weird, but it’s something I gotta do in order to have a new and improved phone instead of one that could shut down on me if it isn’t in a chagrining cable and has a phone case that basically shows a popular anime that I see as an ex-boyfriend. No, I will not elaborate.
As for my Ghibli marathon, I watched From Up on Poppy Hill! I know that I watched it not long after How Do You Live? - the reason why watching every single Ghibli film is my ultimate goal this year - and it was overall the last piece of media I saw in 2023, so I am not really sure if it counted for the marathon even though it was started this year, but whatever.
And spoilers for my future Ghibli ranking, but I ADORE this film so much!! If Poppy Hill has a million fans, I’m one of them. If Poppy Hill has ten or five fans, I’m one of them. If Poppy Hill has one fan, I am that one. If Poppy Hill has no fans, I am in the stars. If the world is against Poppy Hill due to its mentions of incest, I am against the world. This movie is very special to me and made me feel touched in ways other Ghibli films haven’t. But, of course, I’ll discuss all of that and then some when I get to my ranking.
Also, Umi Matsuzaki - one of the protagonists of the story - is definitely a kintype! It’s honestly kind of funny that I had that revelation about a couple of months ago, considering that I thought that she was a heartype when I first watched the film. Oh, I was so close yet so far! But it did bring up some interesting feelings that I’m not sure I have felt before…Maybe I have but it wasn’t as strong as before…Honestly, I don’t even know if other nonhumans have experiences like this or not!
So, for those who don’t know, From Up on Poppy Hill takes place in 1963 Yokohama, one year before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. And over these past few days, it felt like I was mentally from the 1960s and I time traveled to the current year. My surroundings looked so modern, out of place, foreign even. It’s kind of disorienting knowing how to work with modern technology and the familiarity of your house but also seeing it like you’re exploring for the very first time again. Kind of wild, if you ask me…
Hmm…I remember there were instances where I thought I was Umi Sonoda from Love Live! and to this day I’m still questioning it. Were these feelings misidentified or do they intercept this new kintype that I have due to a handful of similarities they have? Then again, were the kin feelings I had with Muse members like Umi and Nozomi actually misidentified Aqours feelings this whole time? After all, I know I have been wrong about certain things several times over. I could go on, but honestly, that whole questioning thing is its own can of worms that I don’t want to open yet.
Still, I am extremely super happy I rewatched From Up on Poppy Hill!! And since I have the Steelbook DVD, I could watch the entire film without any day breaks if I wanted to! Heck, this will give me an opportunity to look at the subbed version as well and see all of the differences there! I know Sarah Bolger did a fantastic job portraying me and I believe that’s exactly what I sounded like in my timeline, but who knows? Maybe the original Japanese audio will surprise me in some way.
7/17/24
It’s my birthday!! And it’s on a Wednesday, the same day of the week in which I was born. That won’t happen again until 2030, which is so wild to me! Time is such a silly little thing.
I got a lot of amazing presents this year, my favorites being an Aqours plush set and zines made eggoatt (one of my favorite online artists), which I will show right here!
My mother and I also tried to go to a Japanese Garden that's downtown, but it was closed thanks to Beryl. So, the two of us went on a really cool train ride instead, which was a nice compromise. I spend the rest of the afternoon resting and recharging before calling my dad. Like, I would have done it earlier, but my anxiety got the better of me. I never really liked talking on the phone...
And for dinner, I got pizza from Russo's (since they gave me some birthday money to spend). Their margarita pizza is so freaking delectable!! I also tried two flavors of ice cream cake, which tasted alright.
A lot of great and exciting things really happened today! It was no wonder why I felt extremely tuckered out in the end. That’s the sign of a very good birthday!
7/10/24
Happy July! My birth month, wahoo!! It’s honestly kinda hard to believe my birthday is gonna be in a week, aah…
Now I originally was gonna talk about Artfight, but I’m gonna put all of that in a separate entry since it’s rather lengthy. I do have a life outside of creating art and being on the web, after all.
So, this kitty cat (me) was affected by Tropical Storm Beryl, a power outage more specifically, and boy did that MAKE HER SO STRESSED!! Even though it lasted for two days, it felt like an eternity. It made me realize how truly helpless I am without electricity and the internet due how big of a role it plays in my day-to-day life. I don’t get to work on any of my fun little projects, I can’t talk to my friends or text my father who lives in a different state. Heck, I can’t even draw on my iPad without worrying about the battery draining and having no way to charge it!
And without those types of things to keep me busy, I am only left with my anxiety filled brain to keep me company…All of the burdens I carry and worrying how the world will go on without me. It’s…kind of isolating, honestly. And it doesn’t really help how restricted life can get with a lack of refrigerated food, most shops were closed and certain areas actually had lights. But at least I’ve been seeing people talk to each other more often!
It’s no wonder why I ended up crying tears of relief when the power finally came back on because it felt like I didn’t want to feel like I was suffering anymore. My mother and I prayed multiple times to the Universe for us to have our power back as soon as possible, so the fact that it did return later on the same day was something of a miracle! I went to my favorite ramen place to celebrate and got some noodles in tomato broth, which was a lot saliter than I remember it being. I don't really know if only having nothing expect the noodles and broth in ramen would be considered a sin, but hey that's just the autism food palette for ya; I hate it when foods touch each other, so I often have certain foods in seperate bowls.
Now that I think about it, I’m not entirely sure whether or not the world wide web in its modern state is a benefit or a detriment when it comes to social interaction. Like, it helps you make new friends that are miles away from you but so many people would rather look at their phones instead of working their jobs or talk to one another at the dinner table, y’know? If we didn’t scroll through Tiktok 24/7 everywhere we went, we would have better and more healing silver cords, but I’m just rambling at this point.
Still, it feels oh so good to be back!!
But an extremely great thing came out of this whole ordeal; I was finally able to set up my brand new desk!!
It’s one of those desks that elevates so you can stand up while still being productive! I really wanted to get one ever I heard Athena P talk about in one of her videos. After all, I do spend a great chunk of my days on the ‘puter, so it would make perfect sense to make a change that would benefit me in the long run, right? And my father - being the rich man that he is - was generous enough to buy it for me!
I must say, I am already loving this table to bits already!! The elevation is so fun and smooth, plus I know for darn certain that it will help me regarding my executive dysfunction since I can still do tasks even when I want to move around! And it’s made of bamboo too, which I know seems rather predictable of me, but at least it's better than regular ol’ wood! Sure, it is certainly not as big as my old one, but a reduced space is a sacrifice I am willing to make!
Speaking of tasks, there is something that I forgot to talk about in the previous entry! One of the reasons why I feel incredibly grateful making this website is that I get to write about stuff and be able to share them instead of letting them rot in doccuments for goodness knows how long! I know this is something that will be repreated once I spiff up my writings page, but any topic that I feel like would be way too long will not be on this blog. There are just a plethora of writing ideas that have been on the back-burner for quite a long time, for the lack of a better word. It makes me so excited that I actually have the reason and motivation to actually write down things I am very passonite about, like artciles and stories and maybe even poetry! Ooooh, just typing all of this down is getting me excited!! So what if I don't really know where I am going with this website sometimes?! I just gotta enjoy the journey!
6/29/2024
Wow~! My very first blog entry! I honestly don’t know why it took me so long to actually get that off of the ground. Life was simply getting in the way. Then again, you could say the same thing about this website entirely. Guess it’s a habit of mine to delay things until the stars align, given how many pieces of media I desperately want to consume but don’t have the motivation to actually start them, let alone return to the ones I left behind.
It also doesn’t really help that I had to redo the presentation of this blog multiple times because certain themes didn't have the things I wanted (having multiple paragraphs and the ability to actually make multiple entries at once is a necessity, don't you know)! Luckily, I found another theme made by the same person (the credit link is found at the bottom right corner) that is absolutely perfect!! But I always knew that I just had to theme it around my Monika kintype because it's just too dang fitting not to (after all, this is just as healing as expressing yourself through poetry, right?)!! Although, I have the feeling that may or may not change if I find out about any...revelations, some of which I know I will talk about in a later entry. We'll see what happens (much like everything else on this site), but for now, I am very happy with this.
As freeing as this website is to me, I still don't know what else to do aside from the basics, even if looking at others sites would give me inspiration. Should I make shrines about my favorite things like everyone else? Or write love letters dedicated to the fictional woman that awakened my queerness to begin with? I know I really want to talk about my non-humanity - almost to the point of it being a need - and possibly give it is own page, but should I really go all in with pictures and memories and all that jazz? AAUGH!! The possibilities are endless, I tell ya!
And it's very much like any other creative ambition I've considered under the sun aside from drawing!! I feel like making and presenting zines would be a rather fun way to make some money and I have thought about making twines on itch.io every once in a while. I even had some ideas regarding a Smash Bros. Machinima, but that also makes me think about how copyright trigger-happy Nintendo and YouTube are, so it's no wonder why I only thought about that once or twice. Heck, I'm working on my very own story world but I don't really want to put it on this website...Toyhouse is literally the most perfect way to get said-story out into the world (as well as archive all of the characters I make)!! Unfourtanely, you have to get an invite for it and there's no way my anxious tail is gonna ask for some special code to a bunch of strangers!! Oh, the woes of having such a soul that's so passionate about art...
But anyway, it's honestly a little bit strange actually having a journal outside of a Google Document. I mean, I feel like I always have been talking to someone else as I write down each entry, so it kind of feels like I've been preparing for something like this in a way? Okay, okay, let me explain...
I started journalling thanks to having a traditional one back in 2020, around the time when I was starting to attend college. Buuuut, that only lasted from late August to mid-September because I kept forgetting to write down entries. Not to mention that my handwriting is wonky and kind of big which makes it hard for me to write more than, like, 10 sentences at least. So, I pretty much stopped working on that right then and there. But then 2021 rolled around, that was basically where I made my Schrodinger’s Journal; it wasn't a journal, but I used to it to vent out frustrations or talk about big positive things that happened, especially since this was around the time of my nonhuman awakening as well as going through an extremely rough time regarding an ex-friend of mine. But even then, I only wrote thoughts that were incredibly festering, for better or for worse. And finally, I started to get back into the habit of journaling in 2022 and have been doing it ever since. I used to write every day but that led to making list formats on days when I was low on energy. Because of that and the stresses of having to write constantly, I decided to only journal every so often starting around the middle of last year (2023).
But even so, I feel like there will be a lot of diffrences between this blog and my afformetioned doccument since the latter has and always will be private. As much as I love to do everything I want forever, even weridos like me have a line that you just don't cross!!
Aaaaaand that's basically all I have to say in terms of introducing this page. There might be a few things I missed here and there, but I am confident that will be addressed in the future. As for today, it was relatively uneventful, those types of days where I spend a good chunk of time on my browsing and listening to music on my computer. Even my trip to the gym was short because I completely forgot to take my meds in the afternoon (as usual...My mom suggested setting reminder alarms for both the afternoon and night) and it was a couple of hours since I last ate.
BUT one of my most favorite YouTubers, Athena P, posted a video talking about Tangled the Series! I completely forgot that it was gonna be uploaded this week! Honestly, I thought it was gonna be delayed to July or something! And I must admit that this is honestly one of, if not her best episode in the LORE series so far (in case you're wondering some of my other favorites are the ones about Oobi, Team Umizoomi and the Octonauts)!! Tangled is one of my favorite Disney movies, so hearing how layered its world really is and the depths this show goes through was incredibly interesting!
Plus, this video has what’s possibly the best makeup on her channel! It is so gorgeous and compliments the ever-changing wigs super well! Oh yeah, did I mention that Athena had wigs to symbolize how Rapunzel’s hair changes throughout the show (and to some small extent the movie)? It is so peak, I honestly never seen anything done like that (in the LORE series anyway). It's honestly my favorite part of the video because it adds so much variety and life! Well, that and the many mentions of the sun and moon; Athena defending the moon due to the series portraying it as evil honestly gave me so much euphoria because it feels like she was defending my home land!! The moon can control tides, it represents sexuality, it’s a lesbian, it…explains a whole lot about myself now that I think about it, ahaha. Not to mention the sun and moon stones working together in the finale was so cool and very yuri-coded!! I am honestly kind of surprised that Rapunzel and Flynn didn’t end up in a poly relationship with Cassandra, but whatever.
Gosh, I am really looking forward to what Athena's contents are gonna be next month!!
Also, a big thing I wanted to mention is that my ultimate goal for 2024 is to watch every single Studio Ghibli film thanks to watching How Do You Live? last year! As of the time I am writing this, I think I have completed six films - bordering on seven since I am making my way through Ocean Waves right now, so the path will be rather tough but I feel like I'm making some great progress! Once this goal is completed, my ranking on all of them will also be complete, so expect to see that in the future!
I would love to go on and on and on, but I've already covered a lot of ground already, so I'm gonna save what else I want to say about this journal (among other things) in the next entry! Oooh, I am so happy and grateful I am making this!! Until next time, bye bye~