Recently I picked up Miitopia again to continue grinding for exp, because I haven't gotten all the achievements yet. Today, I realised that I haven't talked about Miitopia here yet, so here we go.

There were plenty of advertisements in the train stations abut Miitopia, and me and my sister agreed this game looks pretty fun, so my sister bought the game. It might not be a multiplayer game, we are still quite excited, and we spent quite a lot of time creating our miis.

The story of Miitopia is that there is a dark lord that steals Mii's face and puts them onto monsters to control them, and the Mii you use will be the protagonist who saves the world. In my initial team, there is my Mii (Air-headed Idol), my sister (Cautious Mage), Timekeeper Cookie (Laidback Chef), and Pomegranate Cookie (Cool Cleric). The background characters are very funny as well, my sister set Karma and Nagisa from Assassin Classroom as the lovey-dovey couple, because she ships them. Eventually the teams meet someone called the Great Sage, we decided to set it as Pure Vanilla Cookie, it was the best decision we made in the game, because it FITS SO WELL. We thought the strength of Great Mage really matches Pure Vanilla, and is kind of reliable and wise, however, we did not know the future plot will match Pure Vanilla even more...

Here comes the lore spoilers: Eventually, Dark Lord will come to the inn and steal your teammates, multiple times in fact. I was very bummed when I lost my sister, Timekeeper and Pome, but we gotta move on. For the next team, I made Hollyberry Cookie (Energetic Warrior), Golden Cheese Cookie (Laidback Thief because IDK what job to give her), and of course, Cosmos (Laidback/Cool Imp), A.K.A. Kiwi/Kiwy at that time. Seeing Cosmos isn't named Cosmos here says a lot about how long I have been playing this game. I gave Cosmos the imp class but god so many of the outfit look awful.

And again, Dark Lord steals my teammates again. This time, I got Dark Cacao (Stubborn Princess), Croissant (Kind Scientist), and Moth from Sky:COTL (Air-headed Tank). I think this chapter is quite memorable because the fairy dancing sequence is very funny (we set the oldest one as Raymond from Animal Crossing), and our teams starts dancing with them as well.

Dark Lord steals our teammates again, but this time, we have enough powers to save them, and we also met Pure Vanilla the Great Sage again. After saving our friends and confront the Dark Lord, it seems a spirit in the necklace on the Dark Lord is possessing some random guy, and once the spirit came out of the necklace, it rushed towards my mii. But Pure Vanilla came to protect my mii, and he became possessed instead. Me and my sister were so saddened by this, but I was so hyped as well because it was just like Pure Vanilla during the Dark Flour War, where he sacrificed himself to protect his friends.

The final goal is to defeat Pure Vanilla, possessed by the Dark Lord. After finishing the other quests, our team went to the last stage. The form of the final boss is... a giant coin. If you have played Cookie Run: Kingdom, during April Fools, Pure Vanilla was turned into a coin after eating a rainbow mushroom. The fact the game managed to match CRK somehow is absolutely hilarious.

The final goal is to defeat Pure Vanilla, possessed by the Dark Lord. After finishing the other quests, our team went to the last stage. The form of the final boss is... a giant coin. If you have played Cookie Run: Kingdom, during April Fools, Pure Vanilla was turned into a coin after eating a rainbow mushroom. The fact the game managed to match CRK somehow is absolutely hilarious.

After defeating the boss, Pure Vanilla explained the backstory of Dark Lord. Before the Dark Lord became evil, they are just an ordinary mii, but they seemed to unable to be noticed by anyone, so that they blamed this on their unremarkable face. Out of anger, they erased their own face, and slowly faded from existence, and what's left was the evil spirit that would become Dark Lord. We are given two options: Erase the spirit so that it is free from its sins and pain, or give it a new physical body to repent its mistake and live as a mii once again. Me and my sister decided to give it a new form, which is White Lily Cookie, somewhat matching you know. And with that, the story is finished, we saved the world. Despite being a silly game, the story is really engaging, the storytelling is wonderful, and it really makes you get attached to characters, both me and my sister really like Great Mage Pure Vanilla.

What I love how this game is how it keeps accidentally make on-character moments. Other than the Great Sage Pure Vanilla moments, my teammates also do stuff that match their canon counterparts. Like Hollyberry, who blocks enemies to protect her teammates, or Timekeeper, who messes with her teammates just because she can, or Cacao, who is really stubborn. And there are character interactions that are very cute, I set Pure Vanilla and White Lily as teammates, and Vanilla gave Lily a ring, and later vice versa. I think there were more on-character moments, but it has been so long I couldn't remember all of them.

During post-game, I kept grinding for achievements. I added some more characters and OCs to watch them interact. When I added Kiwi (Cosmos) and Yume (Lavender, Cool Mage) into Miitopia, I had very little idea on what their lore will be, but I was very certain that they are very close. The pic below is basically their beta designs, because they haven't gotten a character sheet nor a outfit deisgn. In fact, I believe their current color schemes and design is heavily influenced by my design in Miitopia.

Long time later, I have done a lot more OC designs, and recently, I added my UtSS OCs to Miitopia, the most remarkable ones being the RS team. We have Jaspers the Cautious Vampire, Solar the Energetic Warrior, and Claire the Kind Mage. I can finally see them date, I should grind for dating tickets so that I can make Jaspers and Claire watch the night sky. There is also Bun the Cautious Scientist and Grey the Cautious Elf, but I had to gring exp for my main mii so no space for them. Also, I added Ruth the Kind Flower and Mira the Air-headed Scientist, while I didn't take any pictures of them, I will draw my OCs in the Miitopia outfits in the future.

Ok just give me a few seconds to gush over some Jaspers x Claire crumbs.

Ok I'll stop now

I still have a few bosses to find and a few jobs to max out in order to 100% the game, and I feel like it is going to take a long time to finish this. But I have no need to rush, it is still fun to watch my little miis hanging around and interacting with each other. It will fill my hunger for OC content. Recently I realise even if I draw a lot, the amount of content I can do for them is limited because I am only one person. Anyway, I will end this blog post with a few more screenshots.

Despite saying that I don't like romance in stories, recently I found an exception that doesn't make me feel annoyed (not counting my OC ships), which is when the relationship is already established, like married for example. Recently me and my sister rewatched Hell's Paradise a bit, and it seems I forgot how sweet the relationship between Gabimaru and his wife is, I actually got surprised at myself about how I nearly squealed when I see Gabimaru just loves his wife so much, like he's distant to people but he just looks so happy when he's with his wife, and his wife cares about Gabimaru a lot, my heart couldn't take itttttt.

Another example is the protagonists in Your Turn to Kill (I love the title, it is very similar to a certain game). They are a couple that had just moved into a strange neighbourhood, while they are very lovey-dovey and a lot of the scenes revolved around their relationship, I don't really get annoyed, I just go "yeah makes sense, they love each other a lot." But when the show starts to hint at a new romance between two characters, I immediately go "Ew, get away from my sight". I still don't like the ending, with the fact I hate the side couple, when the ending revealed the girlfriend is responsible in the murders, my enjoyment dropped to 0 because my hate for romance is that strong. Also, there are like two of the dangerous individual's motives are just because they are sociopaths, like huh?? Ok rant over.

I think one of the major difference between established relationship and blooming romance is that there is no need to lure the audience with carrot with a stick, the romance is already here. If the romance is just starting out, the audience will wonder if the love will ever come true, and they would want to keep watching to see the end, while the writers balance the ship on the line between romantic love and non-romantic love. Since giving the ship a ending will make people lose interest in the story (somehow), the writers just won't stop edging the target audience. And as someone with near zero tolerance towards romance, these kind of stuff makes me annoyed.

There are a lot of specualtions here cuz I don't know much romance I enjoy, but I think I would enjoy romance stories that has stable and trustful love instead of uncertainty and shyness. Majority of the romance has characters that get easily flustered when making physical contact with a crush, or worry constantly if the love is mutual. But what I am more interested when a character loves someone in a way that makes them feel protected and confident, like they know they are being cared for as much as they care for their crush. They don't necessarily need to blush when they touch hands, or gets nervous when they are in 5 meter radius within their crush, but when they become stronger during hardships because they know their crush has their back, or become confident to chase after their ideals/dreams because of their feelings toward the person, this is when I get feels.

And if the characters are straight-forward about their feelings (doesn't have to be a confession, just express their trust/hope towards the person), I think I would enjoy the dynamic even more. There are plenty of character interactions like this in Blue Lock, the characters are never afraid of expressing their admiration or rivalry towards another player, sometimes they even pounces onto a player out of excitement. Even if I don't ship some of the characters romantically, I still love how the relationships are portrayed. I feel like this is also the reason I enjoy rivalry dynamics so much (Examples like Hollyberry Cookie x Pitaya Dragon, Isagi x Barou). There is no such thing as "oh no what if the person doesn't feel the same way as I do?" in rivalry ships, the characters are always very straight-forward about their rivalry, like "I WILL BEAT YOU THIS TIME" and followed by "OH I WILL BATTLE YOU WITH ALL MY MIGHT! >:)", despite this dynamic doesn't exist in realistic romance, I can still feel the romantic tension behind all this.

Perhaps my favourite ship dynamic is influenced by how I feel about crushes, I don't really care about wanting to blush when I see someone I admire, or doing romantic things. I just want to feel a sense of security and mutual trust when being with a crush. But anyways, analysing how I view romance stories will probably help me find stories that I enjoy.

Man I have been pushing myself to draw too much, I think I'm having a bit of art block. Well whatever, here's a short update of how I've been

Sensei! I Like You So Much!

I have been playing this game on Steam. However, this game does not support Mac, which is what I use, so I had to download Crossover. It is a fanfic writer simulator where you write fics of your favourite ship for a living, and you can also collect cute merch of your ship. It works by creating two avatars for the character, then the game will put them in the templates of the fanfic or the art. If the avatar creator doesn't have the assets for your character (like if there isn't a specific type of shirt), you can actually create custom assets, but I didn't do that cuz I'm lazy.

As a non-writer OC lover, playing this game feels really funny, like one part of me feels like my hunger got satisfied from all the new content of my OCs, on the other hand, because the fic templates varies a lot, there is a high chance of OOC, I always go like "??? No they wouldn't say that". I also realised how I get embarrassed easily by suggestive content if it is about my OCs. Being on the internet, I kinda have gotten used to all the suggestive or NSFW content, at most I will just get disgusted when my timeline shoves uncensored stuff to me. Though for the time being, the fanfics in the game has nothing too explicit, but when I see my OCs do anything intimate, I just go 😳.

School schedule

The school schedule for next term has been released, luckily Friday is dayoff for me, no more suffering. However, I still have to select one more general course, and majority of the courses either land on my day offs, or it ends on 9pm, which I really don't prefer due to energy and safety issues (not to mention the time I got harassed by a fetish-miner near school). The only course with the most ideal schedule is about the culture of anime and manga, but I heard it requires presentation, and it's in Chinese. Well since last time I lost one day off and got very depressed, that is likely my best choice

Cosmos Shimeji

In the game mentioned above, the game UI has your ship characters avatars idling in the background, like Shimejis. I actually have been wanting to make one for a while, but it seemed like a lot of work. But seeing the little avatars gave me the motivation to draw it. Again, since I'm using Mac, I have no choice but to use the Chrome extension (I had to ditch Firefox). Then, I need to draw 46 images, some of the parts are easier to make if you just move each body part instead of redrawing the entire thing, but it is still a bit tiring. But atlas I have finished drawing the frames. As I am writing this, Cosmos Shimeji is walking on the window, man she is so cute. If you want to download Cosmos Shimeji (Is there anyone who likes my OCs enough to want their Shimeji hanging around their desktop?), you can click this link to my Cosmos Shimeji folder! If not, you can still watch her here!

Everyone has said that books are good for you, but I have never gotten the appeal of books (will be talking about literatures revolves around a story, not biography, textbooks or comics). They are long and often times difficult to understand. People say one book is a fantastic literature, and all I saw was unnecessarily long dialogues that reminds me of the ones in Homestuck (which Homestuck's are easier to understand because there are pictures). I always find myself getting lost while reading long sentences or dialogues midway through, especially when they are very long. I keep forgetting what is happening at the moment or what had happened, and I had to read the previous paragraphs, only to forget it very soon again. I don't have problem reading short writings in exam papers, but when the story is like 100 pages long, my brain will trip and fall like a baby trying to walk.

The only books I really like are The Little Prince and 10 Promises to My Dog. I can actually understand the flow of both of these stories, and the stories are quite enjoyable, and the latter one actually made me emotional (in a good way, not in a traumatising way).

Aside from my struggle with reading, it seems I have a ill fortune finding books I enjoy. The books I picked are either too hard for me to understand, or straight up awful to my sanity, which may or may not be my fault for not checking the target audience of the books. These are so terrifying each of them should get a content warning, I don't remember the titles, and even if I do, I'm afraid if the book is actually considered a masterpiece by people and the fans will come after me.

Book about cats (Animal abuse/death): I read this book as a child, I only picked the book because it says cat in the title. It is a collection of short stories about cats, however, each of them contains awful stuff that a child probably shouldn't read, like a cat making the owner love the cat more than the pet dog, causing the dog to be forgotten while the cat gets all the love, or another story where I don't remember what happened, but a person's house got splashed with meat sauce, made with a cat. There's probably meaning behind these, like the ugly side of humanity, but I was very upset about cats dying or dogs being mistreated.

Book about girl dying of cancer (Awful mother): I read the book for a homework, which I need to pick a book from a list to read. I assumed the book to be a tearjerker, but if there is one, I couldn't have the patience to get there because THE MOTHER PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH. The mother was outright cold to her daughter, and she even released her pet bird to the wild because the girl didn't behave well or she needed to focus on school or some shit. And I felt so bad for the girl, she kept blaming herself even if her leg bone suddenly broke on stage, and that isn't even her fault. I had the strong feeling that the book is gonna end with "Your mother is cold to you because she loves you and wants the best for you" like what most of society views family, and I just abandoned the story.

Mystery novel (Sexual assult): I actually bought the book from a book store because I wanted to be more productive. Because I was kinda interested in mystery novels, I just looked at the genre, read a few pages, then bought it. I proceeded to read the book at school... Aside from the mentions of bullying, there is a disturbing rape scene, a girl being sexually assualted while unconscious while her boyfriend is being restrained, helplessly watching. After finishing the novel, I decided to put the book somewhere to be forgotten and never touch any literature made by the same author again. Just now I found the book again, and I have checked that there is zero content warning or rating, there is only genres listed, which is mystery and romance. Honestly I should've checked the genre first, then ditch it because it has romance.

Reading a book and starting a new story is already hard enough, and the fact I have to risk reading a mid-ass story or even disgusting stuff makes me not want to read any books. I prefer watching animations or comics, it takes less energy as soon as they don't have disturbing content. However, I still haven't given up reading fics, I still read a fanfic made by a friend, though it takes me a lot of energy to understand stuff, I enjoy watching cookies suffer. And I think I prefer writing more than reading.

Oh and before I end this blog, there is a fic revolves my favourite Blue Lock ship Barosagi called Eyes on the Ball!, while I still struggled to read, there are moments I really enjoyed. I especially love this part “So just so you’ll know — I’ll watch all of it, savour every last image. And I won’t fucking stop until I go blind from having stared at the sun for too long.” It's such a great quote, it fits Barou and Isagi's dyanamic so well.

The dream started in a bathroom in a hotel (my family and I went to Japan, yep Japan again), i was washing my hands and noticed theres cup of acid foaming up and generating heat. I was kinda alarmed, and then electricity started coming off the acid. I immediately called my family to run away, I couldn't even find time to get my phone or wallet.

After we got to ground floor, we wanted to ask someone for help, but theres is a festival going on and nobody seemed to care about us. We ended up walking around, my family placed their belongings (like giant ass plushies) in somewhere safe.

After getting a bit far away, we saw the hotel we stayed in suddenly exploded, and a sentient plane emerged from it. However, another giant dog emerged and ate the plane to absorb its powers. However, the plane could morph its form like a slime, and it was split in half so the dog only ate one of it. And then both of the plane ate the dog, inside and outside. The plane then started flying around and causing chaos around the city.

Afterwards, we decided to find a way to stop the disaster. I was bummed how I lost all my money and couldn't buy souvenirs, but i was like oh well at least i got my insurance.

This is the part where my OCs come in. From what I remember, Lavender, Cosmos, Solar, Jaspers are in the dream. I assumed all the main gang was assembled so I guess I completely forgot about Ruth, Grey, and Claire 😔. I actually don't remember why my OCs suddenly appeared, but I was completely rolling with it, I get to see my favs, and we get to team up to save the world.

While we have split up and were searching for clues, I met Jaspers again on a path and decided to slap him on the back (or probably head i forgor), my sister was like what are you doing, and i was like just saying a playful hi :333, and he just looks back at my really confused. Man i wish i can do that to my ocs again, this still made me very giddly.

A short less interesting part is there is a old lady who is also a scientist. I think she made a car that drives us to the monster. She nearly got blown away by the wind from a tall building tho. Theres a scene where her and her other old friends danced to the monster mockingly, and naked. I was quite uncomfortable.

So later on, we seems to have found a solution to the monster. The true mastermind behind the scene is a girl who seems to have Becquerel’s powers, Bec is a Homestuck character, a dog which is a god. That girl is definitely not Jade Harley tho.

Before the battle, we have to think of another character who can help out the the situation in the car the old lady gave us, the atmosphere made it seem like our success will very much depend on this decision. I cannot remember if I was sitting next to Lavender, or if I was in Lavender's POV, my vision perspective in dreams can be messed up sometimes. We realised Raven might help out, and we drove off to the monster's direction, and that decision about Raven is never brought up again lmao. I also considered Bun and Wolf, now that I think of it, Bun might be more helpful due to their lore-breaking background but I think that would be less fun this way lol.

When the battle started, the bgm got really intense, I remember it playing Save the World from Undertale at the last part. Jaspers, Solar, and Cosmos was the main attackers, and Lavender guides them to battle at the back, this dream is really good at making my OCs stay in character. Also the artstyle changed to Homestuck artstyle, but my OCs are in the Homestuck adult artstyle, only the villain girl is in the homestuck kid artstyle. Cosmos dealt a lot of damage to the girl, and the girl did a lot of damage to Jaspers. The attack to him was a bit brutal, I was like “not again Jaspers! D:”, can't believe the dream even know about a semi-lore-relevant joke.

And eventually, the girl was defeated. Sitting on the floor exhausted, the girl was approached by Lavender, told to see what she had done to the world around them. After the monster’s destruction, the city became a wasteland, every build was destroyed, and the land became inhabitable. The girl was filled with guilt, and started crying. However, the tears apparently have healing properties, and made the land habitable again. Using her tears, we worked to help rebuild the city again. Good end.

At the end, it is revealed that I am watching a movie with my family. My mom was confused, but enjoyed the movie regardless. I was hyped the whole time, especially when the BGM was blasting during the battle.

This dream is about as weird as the one about arson, but I doubt I can take inspiration from it this time. I hope I can see my OCs again in my dreams, I really need some comfort right now.

Today I woke up, and thought of a weird question: Why are teens in media always portrayed as assholes? Like they are completely normal as a kid, and when they became a teenager, they immediately become assholes. They always flock to "bad influence" friends whenever possible, call their mom a old hag, and maybe do drugs, alcohol and sex. Then they grow up and become normal again and realize they shouldn't be such dicks to their parents, so they apologize to them while the parents are on their death bed. Is this what adults see teens?

I wasn't exactly a rebellious teen, just depressed and afraid of adults to the point I feel physically afraid of aproaching relatives. Due to this, relatives always call me rude when I try to hide behind a staircase or not greeting them loud enough (or remember how to call them), and when I get scolded by my parents, my fear only exacerbates and the cycle continues. I think the worst thing I did to my mom is that I chose to follow my sister and dad when they divorced while they are already planning to make me stay on my mom's side. Despite all that, I never called my mom a whore and be a literal asshole to my parents, if the actions mentioned on the first paragraph is normal teenager behavior, perhaps I wasn't not a normal teen?

But if that isn't normal teen behavior, I really wanted to rant about the lack of proper teen representation. When I was younger, I was always shown the films where teens rebel against their parents (in the worst way possible), and then they regret it when they reach adulthood. So when I felt any sort of disagreement and frustration towards my parents, I felt I'm just like those teens in media, assholes and uncaring, and I would feel regret when I grow up, even if my parents were being unreasonable. Like I would eventually cry on their deathbed saying, "I'm sorry for not being mindlessly obedient when you are healthy and young" So a lot of my feelings are invalidated, and I got a lot of self-hatred.

Something that also relates to this topic is society and media seems to portray being mad at parents = bad. I watched a Hong Kong TV show episode, where a character gets mad at his mom, for entirely valid reason because the mom was being unreasonable. But the character had to go apologise to her because she gave birth to him. Like???? Yea birth is painful but shouldn't the mom be the one who apologises, since the mom is whose on the wrong??? I hope many people who watched that episode had the same thought, or else idk how to live in this world.

So glad I'm an adult now, I don't have to deal with that shit anymore. While it's true teens can be absolute assholes, but calling all of them selfish bitches who only care about sex and drugs ain't it. Humans can have a variety of personalities, and being at a certain age doesn't stop that. Even though teens are more likely to disobey their parents, it doesn't mean they would be extremely rude about it, at least not to the point of calling them awful names.

There are times where I see people imagining what their character theme song would be like, and I feel like giving me a theme song might be too much pain in the ass. In my view, I have many facets of personality, each distinct from the other. If I am given a song that is calm and peaceful (which describes my quiet personality like how people think of me), I would be very offended, as this is like the very surface (and lame) part of me. If the song is upbeat and poppy (the artistic part of me), perhaps it can describe a lot of myself, but maybe it doesn't really explain the other parts of me as a character. If it sounds depressing (like how I am 90%), while I appreciate diving deep into my character arc, I'd rather have something else. If you try to merge all these together.... wait wouldn't it be too much information in one song?

What IS a character song though? The character theme song I will be talking about here will be the type that plays every time the character shows up, not the type that plays during a crucial moment of the character. If it describes a character's personality or story arc, which perspective are we using, their companions, the audience, or the character themselves? And also, the character's goals or personality can be ever changing, so characters might not have only one character song, but wouldn't it be too much work? Something I just thought of: If the character song is in the audience perspective, it can be used to mislead the audience into thinking the character has a completely different personality, like the unreliable narrator trope I guess, but I'm not a writer so that idea might be dumb.

If the character song is based of the personality of the character, I wonder: What if the quiet characters don't have songs, and only the ones that show off a lot have it? Perhaps the quiet characters might have their personality hidde due to their shyness or whatever emotional obstacle they are going through, and those who want to show off wants the world to know how awesome they are and thus having a character theme song. Perhaps the quiet character might have their songs unlocked during an important character bonding scene.

Wow this blog is way shorter than I thought, even though I had this question for a couple months.

This has been a rather special ArtFight season, even though it's not saying much because it's only my second year of AF. But considering how I have summer course at the beginning of AF, it's a miracle how I managed to do 73 attacks this year, with some of which being multi character attacks. So let's conclude this AF with a bit stats and my experience this year.

Like I said, I did 73 attacks this year, which is 384% more than last year (19 attacks), and on average I did around 2.12 attacks per day (AF lasted 33 days this season). What's funny is the amount of friendly attacks, which is more than the opposite team attacks this year, so many OCs I prefer drawing on Stardust lol. Among the attacks, 50 of them are alcohol marker drawings, 20 of them are digital art drawings, two of them are simple lineart/sketch and only one is colored pencil. To be honest I don't feel like bringing the attacks to this site, because there is so much of them, and even the yapping master I am cannot yap for every single attack. I think I can still talk about some of the more memorable attacks in this blog...

First attack

So this is the first attack I did after waking up at like 5am because I have to leave for school at 7, it is also a revenge for last year's attack. The artist Realityiswack did one of my most favourite attacks (or click this link if you don't have AF), which is Lavender lying on the floor sobbing with Cosmos just concernedly looking at her at the doorway like the "Are you winning son?" meme. There is just something funny about seeing my OC patheticly suffering like that, but sadly that time I had no energy to draw an attack, so I decided to save my energy for to following year. And when this season of AF comes, I wanted to draw something cool, maybe even a battle pose. The pose took me quite a while to draw, I either draw the pose too broken or not dynamic enough. Thankfully I later got it right, and I started the coloring. I didn't finish the drawing before I left for school, so I decided to bring this drawing and the coloring pencils with me to school, and I finished the drawing during lunch time.

Why the FUCK did I do this to myself!??!

During nighttime, after I finished the second attack, I was planning the pose for the next drawing, for my friend Warm_Espresso. I initially wanted to do more easy drawings as attacks, but my brain was like, "Yo, what if, perspective?" So I drew a pose that I thought is too out of my comfort zone, the entire time I'm drawing, my mind was screaming like the bunny from the fourth of July diet video, volume warning. But somehow, I managed to finish the art, not exactly perfect but it's still cool enough.

My first alcohol marker attack

I had done like 13 digital art attacks at that point, and I was starting to get a headache from all the computer screens I had been staring at. I knew if I keep up like this, I would get burnout very quickly. I decided to switch to traditional art, which did scare me a little because the character I was drawing (by stel or moondvsted on Neocities) had a somewhat complex design. But somehow, I nailed it quite well. Afterwards, I have been doing more alcohol marker attacks than digital ones.

Object Show Attack

I have never drawn any Object Show characters, until this attack. My friend Karma_Many recently joined ArtFight, and my goal of AF is to attack as many people I know as possible, so I wanted to attack him despite having no experience drawing object show characters. Drawing ordinary objects is not hard, but I wanted to draw something that looks special, so I decided to draw two characters instead of one. I think I did pretty good since it is kinda the first multi character attack.

Red, red moon, keep on rising~

This is the first alcohol drawing with colored background. The artist icecreampizzer has a character that is inspired by the song Red Moon by Will Wood, which is one of my favourite Will Wood songs, so I just wanted to draw a cool background. It did scare me a bit because there is a chance this might flop, but at that point I have done two birthday drawings with background, so I know I have the capability to draw it. Honestly, this is perhaps one of the coolest attack I have drawn?

Best attack

The major reason I attacked this character by LadyLemoon is because this character is also named Cosmos. I don't remember exactly why, but I somehow drew a whole ass scene for this attack. This is perhaps the attack with the highest effort, so I really hope the recipient loves it.

Mass attack

While my original goal of AF is to do 51 attacks (it's a Hamilton reference, yea kinda silly), after I exceed that number, I decided to challenge 69 attacks. After a lot of hard work, I couldn't believe I am able to reach 68 attacks. I wanted to do something special, so I decided to do a mass attack of my Discord friends, at least most of them. I am actually not a fan of doing multi character attacks, because adding another character in a paper often times require a lot of composition planning, which I am bad at. So for this attack, I decided to only do the lineart, and I added my own characters to keep myself sane doing the process. This is surely a way to celebrate 69 attacks, and I'm glad my friends love it.

Attack x2

If you recognise the character on the top-left corner, yep I did an attack for Realityiswack again. Reasons I did that is because I am running out of energy to draw new characters, so doing attacks of characters I already have experience drawing will ease my load a bit, and also because this artist did two attacks for me this year. Like one of their attacks is Lavender in a hero outfit, which is SO BANGER I LOVE IT????!? And my mind was like "Ok we are art-nemesis for life now /affectionate". I did say drawing multiple characters in one paper is difficult, but it wouldn't harm to try it again. The results turned out pretty cool.

Ayyy what's up it's me again

Yes I attacked Realityiswack again. Counting last year, this artist attacked me three times, and I feel like if I need to make this fair, I should attack them one more time, and I also thought it would be funny to attack them twice in a row. To make something special, I decided this should be a character interaction doodle. I am not exactly good at drawing character interactions since it burns a lot of my brain power to think what a character would do, not to mention if the character isn't mine. However, there is enough character description for me to imagine the stuff their OCs might do, I also looked up some silly poses, that's why I stacked them together. For self indulgent purposes I also included my OCs interacting with theirs, and you can see Lavender is in the hero outfit. I think this is the attack I had the most fun with.

Thoughts and aftermath

After doing all these attacks, I noticed there might be a problem with me. I realised that drawing for so much kinda helped me not feel loneliness, and at some point, I felt like if I keep on drawing, I might not need to make friends anymore~ While this can help me get through lonely times, I feel like this might lead to me being a workaholic in the future, so this might not be good. Also, my mom seemed to have noticed how strangelyunsocial I am ever since I'm very young, so she wanted to find me a phychiatrist. Probably a good thing since I haven't made a close IRL friend for a long time.

One thing I love about doing attacks is the comments I get. While yea it's nice if people attacked me back, but there is something so heart-warming about receiving compliments. Like everytime I finish an attack, I wait excitedly how the artist might react, like maybe keysmashes or detailed comment on each part of the drawing? I feel I look kinda like the top Laiosthis meme, looking at the artist hoping for compliements (then I look like the lower Laios being sad when I don't receive any comments). I am going to miss looking for notifications every day after this event ends :(

After doing so many attacks, I think my art skills got a lot better. Looking at my first alcohol marker attack and the most recent ones, I have gotten more control on the usage of markers, and I probably would have a harder time drawing Lavender and Mira's birthday art if it weren't for AF. I also realised how much I prefer traditional drawing than digital art, I guess it is my way of art now. However, doing so many alcohol drawings has made me use up much of my alcohol marker paper, I will need to buy more soon.

Now that AF ended, I now have time to do other stuff, like experimenting with my Clip Studio Paint trial, finishing the popularity poll art, and maybe even draw a celebratory art of the end of AF! You might think "Wait, aren't you burnt out?", well yes, but it only limits to drawing new characters, I am completely fine if I have to draw my own OCs. And so, thank you to all the artists who worked so hard this year.

Yesterday while editing the html stuff, I had a glance over the site creation date, and realised the 1st anniverasry of the site's creation is the next day! I was so focused on ArtFight I completely forgot about this. Time flies too fast man!

While I can talk emotionally that this site is basically a safe space for my mind and helped me talk about my OCs more, I actually have said all that 7 months ago, so no point repeating stuff I already said. But I can go down a simple nostalgia trip with you guys.

The pic above is the earliest backup file of my website. It was so much simpler looking, and pretty sure I used a random picture of the night sky somewhere on the internet.

And this is the earliest file before I added the second sidebar. There isn't a lot of decoration also, so it feels quite straight-forward. Because of how the sidebar always breaks the layout if it gets longer than the main bar, I did some research and modified the layout to add a new sidebar for extra space. I think the current layout looks pretty good.

Despite how much time I have spent on my site, I somehow doesn't have a lot to say, so I think it would be better to talk about what I wish to do in the future.

First of all, I want to include more OC interactions. A lot of my OC content often contains solo art, or I only talk about their dynamics through text alone. The current and only way to express them is through the popularity poll comics. I want to draw art that shows how my OCs interact with each other, and perhaps I can drop some interactions in tiny bits. I saw a cool website by Ninacti0n, which in the main page there is a chatbox that shows her OCs in a live chatbox. I got a bit inspired and I feel like I can do something similar by showing a random short conversation of different OCs everytime you refresh the page. I hope people will get to know and be more interested in my little guys.

Second of all, I want to add even more secrets in the OC pages, which requires for me to story-build even harder. Unfortunately, I am a drawer, not a writer, it would take me quite a long time to write anything comprehensible. One thing I can guarantee is I will always try to update my OC lore.

Finally, something I really want to do is add new refs for characters like Cosmos and Lavender in an alternate outfit, you might have seen those before, but they are still the rough drafts so it will take a while. Also those outfits are semi-spoilers, but whatever Cosmos' human form is also semi-spoilers.

Honestly all of these anniv goals can be shortened to just "Build OC lore". But as I don't know what may happen in the future, I might add stuff that I would never expect myself to add.

Sorry if it is a bit underwhelming, but pretty sure the next post about my ArtFight journey will be a lot more fun, so stay tuned!

ArtFight is ending soon, and I'll talk about my thoughts on this year's results when it ends. I do wanna talk about something interesting about art, it's that I noticed people admire traditional artist quite much. Some people who I attacked was quite surprised about how I managed to handle traditional drawings very well, perhaps since there is no undo button, and the colors are harder to control. So that's what I'm gonna talk about today.

As what I have mentioned before, digital art usually overwhelms me, it doesn't feel as simple as picking up a pencil or coloring tool off a table, but there is a bunch of settings that makes art look better which takes me a lot of brain power to comprehend. I am like a old person using eletric devices, every button can confuse me. Another vital thing is that I enjoy the sensations of traditional drawing very much, like the touch of the paper, the smell of alcohol ink, the little frictions when you draw a line with color pencils, the softness of the marker tips. When you draw with a tablet, it is just the hard tablet and the pen, not gonna lie it feels like nails on blackboard.

I noticed the old art blog didn't mention much about how I draw traditional drawings, and since I use alcohol markers a lot more now, let's talk about how I draw using them!

Drawing process: Alcohol marker Edition

First, I draw a sketch, like anyone would, unless you are one of those insane ones who can do lineart without guides. If I am drawing characters will may tiny details, I usually don't draw them in the sketch, but add them later on. If I get too impatient, I usually jumps to coloring midway and drawing the sketch along the way. When the sketch is done, I need to clean the sketch with moldable eraser, or else the pencil lines might bleed when using alcohol markers, the lines cannot be erased when it is covered by alcohol ink.

Using alcohol markers may be scary, but once I got the hang of it, I find it more fun than any other traditional coloring medium. One, it doesn't need much preparations like watercolor and acrylic, you just need to pick up a marker and you are good to go. Second, unlike color pencils which takes a lot of time to color one area, since alcohol markers can have bigger brushes, it can speed up coloring process (especially the background) a lot faster. The major downside is it cannot be erased like color pencils, but I have a fix for this which I will mention later.

How do I use alcohol markers? I start by coloring the base color, then I add the shading. However, if I noticed I can blend colors by adding the darker colors and blend with lighter colors, so sometimes I color the shading then the base colors. I add whatever colors I find useful, and maybe use the smaller tips of the markers. In some situations, I might not have the color for the character, I can either 1. mix the colors by adding multiple layers of colors. Or 2. Use color pencils, which color density can be controlled by using your strength. I current have 48 color set of Ohuhu, but there isn't enough skin colors, I'm considering purchasing a new set.

After coloring, I start the lineart + rendering process using color pencils. I just pick the darker colors of the area I'm lineart-ing, but I find myself commonly use dark red or dark purple, and sometimes dark brown. If I find some shading to be too light, I can always darken them in this step. I always render hair using color pencils, but I still forget it sometimes 💀.

This one is the details + correction process. There may be tiny details that I cannot draw with alcohol markers or color pencils, like tiny gems and decorations. With that, I can use my white pen, but it rarely does its job because it doesn't work well on color pencils . So more commonly I use correction pen, underrated art tool seriously. But sometimes, details may be hard to draw because coloring on correction pen is a bit difficult, and maybe there is a major fuck up in the drawing. For this, I will go back to what many artist use nowadays, digital art program.

To take a photo of the drawing, I first stick the drawing on a wall using moldable erasers, that way there will be no shadow cast onto the drawing. If there is no details or mistakes to be corrected, I simply add filters to make the drawing clear then I can post it. But if there is, I often times just use the built-in editing function Markup in the photo app and draw with the crayon/pencil brush. Depending how much details I need to add, I might swicth to Medibang instead. After that, it's done!

After feeling both digital art and traditional art, I found out that maybe traditional art suits me better, or at least I thrive better in simpler stuff. I remember when I was drawing on MSPaint, I had quite a lot of fun, so perhaps I should do that again sometime.

There are horror stories that is based off things that is beyond our understanding and perhaps has aftermaths worse than death, like SCP-001 When dawn breaks, being trapped in a world with no way to go back to your home, monsters that is so horrifying you can never describe them. While it can be very bone-chilling, I have a strange fascination towards these concepts. It is like looking at endlessly big numbers, they are so big, our brains cannot process how big it is. Oh you are telling me the biggest black hole is 100 billion solar masses large? Well my brain can't imagine that, I couldn't even think how big our sun already is! Despite how scary these ideas are, I believe horrors are more scary if you can imagine them, like the more commonly found violence and abuse!

Like I have said above, it's exactly because incomprehensible horrors cannot be conceptualised, that we cannot understand the full scariness of the thing. To me, it even brings me more morbid curiosity, I often think of if one is trapped in a indestructable capsule for eternity, how long will the person go crazy, and what happens after going crazy? The fear feels akin to what some people feel when they are on a rollercoaster, they feel more thrill than scared.

But if the horrors are more easily understandable, like watching someone being beaten up by their father, I would feel genuine fear and disgust, kinda like hearing the rollercoaster malfunctioning, here comes the fight or flight response or smth. Maybe because I used to experience being treated badly, and I haven't really processed all these memories yet, it is kinda hard to imagine watching violent scenes without having a toll on my mental wellbeing, like why would you watch an anime where the poor protagonist gets bullied by her classmates and family?

Ugh I wish I can quit venting so much. Anyways, I think staring into deep space and thinking how insignificant we are in this enormous universe is way better than remembering my past, that's all.

Lately, I have been thinking of the scenario if I die tomorrow, I'm not wishing for death, I'm just thinking of the possiblity. As a person in a society, I am quite unknown like majority of the citizens, and especially as a quiet person, I doubt much people would know me. Even in the internet, ever since I became inactive in basically all popular fandoms, I never really get attention when I post art on Twitter. If you look in the perspective in the people I'm closer with, like my family, they only see one aspect of me, which is the air-headed kid who keeps everything to herself. They know that I love drawing, but they never know what I draw because I would scream if they sneak even the slightest peak at my paper. Perhaps the people who see the most facets of me are my Discord friends, because I often ramble about my OCs and interests, but do they know the full me, probably not.

So, what if I die tomorrow, like in a car crash? I wonder if the people in the internet would mourn for me. There is a saying that "Artists become popular after they die", I kinda wish people would pay attention to my art, even after death. However, this saying is like survivorship bias, they only know those who was unpopular that became popular, but never know those who remained unpopular after death, so maybe I would be like the latter one, dying like the silent flame on a tiny candle (insert something poetic).

I'm quite sure my family would be devastated if I die young, unless they are just really good at acting like they love me. While in my life, I have kept my drawings away from them, what would they do with my drawings after I die? They might be too sad to see anything that reminds them of me though, but eventually I think they would want to see them out of curiosity and as a way to cope with grief.

Here comes the funny part. If they choose to view the more recent sketch albums, they will see a lot of my OCs and... girls hugging, kissing and other things that isn't very safe for work, I hope they never show the albums to my little cousins. I wonder if they would think I'm not straight, like not even I am sure of my sexuality by the time I'm writing this. They might also think I'm very perverted or smth, and their view of me changes drastically. While it would be genuinely embarrassing if they ever knew about my drawings, but imagining this scenario is absurdly hilarious because death is such a sad thing, yet they would receive a whiplash of people making out in my drawings. Man idk if I should be laughing at this.

While my family doesn't use social media like the way I do, I'm quite curious if they would post some of my drawings if I die, maybe even some that I was too lazy to post. A crowd of people on the internet may come to lament how a young artist dies so soon, and how no more drawings by me will ever be created again. How long does it take before the people on the internet forgets me? I heard that there are three stages of death, the first is when the heart stops, the second is when the funeral is held, the third one is when everyone forgets you. This is the place where the most facets of me are shown, if the traces of me disappear here, it will be like the third stage of death. While I don't really care much if people remember me in the far future, but the thought that the most interesting and colorful parts of me might be forgotten the quickest, it feels somewhat saddening.

I hope this website outlives me, so that people can continue viewing my art for a long time. Maybe it will never gain a lot of attention, but it might catch some artists' eyes and get them to view what's left of me. Perhaps they will notice that I passed away (if anyone ever bothered to mention my death in the chatbox), and say "This artist passed away? That's sad." They might look at my blogs, art, and the OC lore that I haven't even finished typing. While they will never learn of my real life self, at least they will view the artistic part of myself, and my OCs which I hold dear to me heart. I hope this part of me can live long.

And now, it's Mira's birthday. While I don't talk about Mira as much as the other main cast, she is perhaps one of the most important characters in the story. Much of her lore is stil work in progress, but I will just share the parts that are mostly concrete. Also I really need to update her bio after ArtFight, so much of it was outdated.

As a child, Mira was an adventureous girl. No matter the dangers or obstacles, it seemed nothing can stop her from finding every nook and cranny in the world. Because of that, she had uncovered many of the forgotten histories of Stardust Isle, and the secret legends of their magic. As she learnt more about the legends, she believed more and more that the world can be saved. She recuited many talented wizards and historians to study how the magic system works, and analyse the past events in Stardust Isle. As soon as the magic is studied more, perhaps they might be able to find the missing deities, and revert the world to its former glory.

During an adventure like always, Mira heard a sound in a dark cave of some sort, it seemed a person was inside. Everytime she attempted to have a conversation with her, the voice just told her to get away from her home, or threatened to use magic missles on her. Mira being that extrovert unafraid of pain, she continued to come back to chat with her. Eventually, the voice, in a weaker tone, admitted that the cave wasn't her home (it was a shitty lie but I feel like Mira wasn't that bright as a kid), but in fact she was trapped here after running away from being attacked. She didn't have much energy nor faith in humanity to climb outside again, she would rather spend the rest of her time in the dark cave. But Mira wouldn't want to leave anyone behind, she managed to pull the mysterious person, known as Lavender, out of the cave, and promised her that she will bring her the happiness she wished to experience.

While Mira was quite surprised how cold Lavender was to others, she admired how much Lavender knew about magic, and how passionate Lavender was about it. Lavender might sound very unfriendly, but from how she stops Mira from unsafe magic preparations, and how she often shared obscure knowledge of magic, Mira knew Lavender secretly cared about others. Slowly, there's a layer of trust built between them, and the two became inseperable.

One day, Mira was exploring alone, and something... strange, something alarming and horrifying. While Mira came back with her usual attitude and a smile in her face, deep in her heart, she knew the peace she wished to be permanent will be in danger. For the world, for Lavender, she had to do something,

Among all my OCs, I feel like Mira is the hardest to write. Due to personal grudges, I have trust issues towards oddly-friendly people (and especially girls), it feels like they would forget about you quickly, or will eventually stab you in the back, irrationaly I know. So in the early development of the writing, Mira was originally an antagonist who betrayed Lavender to protect the world. However, I really hated this kind of writing, making her a traitor will only paint her as a pure villain (even if she wanted to save the world), and I hated villains who do pure evil (not comedically evil villains). This was gladly scrapped, but I'm still having trouble thinking in Mira's point of view, it's like my personality is too far off from hers. Mira is optimistic and kind, yet reckless and short-sighted.

A really interesting fact about Mira and Lavender's dynamic is how the more I write them, the more disturbingly fitting their lore is to Curses by The Crane Wives (Sorry for mentioning this song for like 100th time). Like how they are being messed with gods and horrors beyond comprehension, and the two desperately wants to be together, but is kept away by fate and death. I have always wanted this song to be the theme of UtSS, mid way in the developement I noticed it would be a bit hard to make it fit, so it was temporarily scrapped, and somehow by complete accident it fits again (Now I'm pretty sure majority of the scrapped ideas will eventually come back to me). Back when I first went to university and after a orientation dinner, I spent the time on the bus listening to this song while imagining an animatic of my OCs, and I walked on the dark silent street singing the song, probably out of tune, but it was one of the happiest memories in the recent years. Maybe just maybe, if one day I become less overwhelmed about animation and video editing programs, I can actually draw an animatic or animation for my OCs...

Interlude

Yesterday, me and my sister went to Shenzhen for a mini holiday trip. There are a lot of new stuff to try there, like how there's a hotpot restaurant with really passionate waiters (can be good or bad depending whether you are an introvert or not). Somehow it also provides free nail service if you eat there, and from what I have heard, it also provides other entertainments like dancing and kitchen tour, like ???? what? It is kinda funny. The food there is pretty tasty, though we felt kinda nervous how the waiters often check if we needed anything. I didn't forget that it was Lavender's birthday, so I took the mini Lavender plushie out to take a picture, whilst that, a table near us was playing a birthday song, comedic timimg. Also, I tried the nail service there, although there are other pretty colors like shiny pearl white, I saw a shiny teal color which reminded me of Cosmos. Although this color isn't very popular, I feel like it's worth a try because it's free.

After that we went to a playground which actually allows adults to enjoy, there are stuff like trampolines, slides that yeet you in the air, something similar to rock climbing, and bumper cars. I always missed playing this kind of stuff, but the last time I was able to play in these kind of playgrounds is back when I'm less than 10 years old, I was a fast growing child and was unallowed to play there anymore because I was too tall :(. Some of these are quite tiring, today I woke up with a sore body, but it was very fun. The best part was we barely needed to queue up, we even played many rounds of bumper cars, so much so we felt pain when we bumped into each other's cars in full speed (My sister: we are old now 😔). We ended the day by eating peking duck, it is really tasty, I wonder why there isn't any in Hong Kong.

And with that, I shall conclude Mira's birthday blog post. I really hope I can create more interesting content for her. Here is the birthday art. There was actually an error in the drawing that is modified using medibang. Originally, the pose, specifically the right hand, was placed weirdly and I only noticed it after I finished the drawing few hours later. It was kinda embarrassing, at least I managed to edit it without making it stand out too much. Happy birthday Mira, and sorry for neglecting you for years.

After so long, the long awaited birthday of Lavender and Mira has come, I WAITED FOR THIS DAY FOR SO LONG

A little bit of tragic and dumb trivia about their birthday is that I have never celebrated their birthdays because I kept forgetting them. I have created them in 2018, despite how much I liked them, I somehow managed to miss their birthdays, only remembering couple days later.

While I could talk about how I created Lavender and Mira like what I did with Ruth, I actually has talked about this last year, so I can't use this idea. Tldr they appeared in a dream and I made them my OCs. But what if, I talk about their lore that is semi-spoilers? Stuff that I kept hidden, until now?

Lavender didn't exactly have a happy childhood, she basically spent a lot of her time being isolated by her peers to put it lightly. You might know Lavender as a cold but collected individual, in the past she was much more unfriendly to people, the other main cast would be surprised if they ever saw her younger self. Never having felt kindness, she resented human beings. Well that's up until she was (involuntarily) saved after being trapped in a pit for days by none other than Mira. While she had no hope in life, Mira promised her that she will bring her the happiness she wished to experience.

Lavender did not have much expectations, but she can't help but notice how peculiar Mira was, like how she always got into the weirdest accidents and came out completely unscathed, and how she created unusual invention just to make adventures more interesting, and how everytime Lavender got into danger, Mira always came to protect her... No matter how cold Lavender tried to be, spending time with Mira had certainly melted that frost in her heart. For the first time, Lavender felt safe...

That's a nice story... but you might remember: Isn't Mira dead? A lot has happened in Mira's team, and many of which I cannot talk about, either due to heavy spoilers or uncompleted storylines. One thing I can say is the death of Mira has took a major toll on Lavender's mental state, the fact she even got the motivation to start a new adventure with Cosmos and the others is due to a large timeskip and built up curiosity/feeling of obligation.

Kind of worried if that is too much spoilers and should've kept it until I officially write the story, but oh well this information aren't the major ones, like Mira and Lavender's powers...

Oh after writing to this point, I finally remembered what I can write: Lavender and Mira has been tied together from the beginning of their creation til now! Because how they are both created in a dream, I had a strong feeling that they have a connection with each other, so the early concept of their story is that their fates are intertwined in some way, and yet opposite to each other, like reality and dreams.

Now to recent years, where I restarted story-building after the creation of Cosmos. I originally thought I have to scrap Mira because I couldn't find a place for her, but like every concept that I thought to be obsolete, I managed to get Mira to be a major character again. Something I want to write in Lavender's story is how when a person finds a loved one, they would gain so much joy and will to live, and become immensely depressed when they loses them, but somehow, the person finds happiness again, with new friends and the things the loved one left behind for them.

The more I write Lavender, the more I feel similar to her, it can feel disturbing how much of her character is based off really personal experiences in my life. But one good thing about writing her that way is now I feel very attached to her, like even when my brain suddenly has a traumatic flashback, I was like mmm Lavender probably has very similar trauma as me too. I love coping by imagining Lavender suffering and having characters and especially Cosmos to protect her, if I ever write a fic, I would definitely write a hurt/comfort fic just for me, but for now I can't write, so it will only exist in my head.

I hope I have written everything I need to say. And finally, Lavender's birthday art.

I never thought I could draw something so high quality in a medium I have limited experience with. Like holy fuck the shadings and details are so good I kept looking at this picture time to time and still can't believe I drew this. Also for some reason this drawing looks better in real life, so if you think it's average it's because you are looking through a computer.

There is so much I wanna talk about, but I will be saving them for part 2. Man I wanna hug Lavender, happy birthday my girl.

Something ingrained in my brain since I was a child is "I am never enough". No matter how hard I try, if I can do that in the first place, I still have many flaws I need to fix before my work is considered acceptable, I still need to work even harder.

I don't receive compliments a lot, and even when I do something I consider to be a pretty good work, those around me tends to find flaws and give constructive criticism. As much as I know these tips are helpful to my growth, some part of me still feels pretty sad, I worked so hard, and yet I am not good enough. It feels like the distance between me and the standard of the passing grade is eons away. What's even worth trying? I became less interested in showing my proud works to others.

I do receive compliments time to time nowadays, it's just that I don't feel that much joy seeing them, it feels like they are complimenting me just for politeness. Do they actually see my effort? Or are they just nice enough to not hurt my feelings? This is what's called imposter syndrome I believe.

Well those I mentioned aren't exclusive to drawing, but it mainly revolves around it. Sometimes I think if I improve even more, one day I will genuinely feel proud of myself, and people will actually like my stuff. Though, how long will it take to become good enough, and how good should I be to be complimented?

I just posted a line art of Lavender and Cosmos, while it didn't take long, I put more effort than usual. I don't know why, drawing this makes me think of the concept of "not being good enough". I think to myself, if I show this to my art teacher, she would probably find a few flaws in the drawing. If I show this to the online art critiques or smth like that, they might point out some of the anatomy errors and call it boring. For me, I feel proud of it, and perhaps one of my best works in a while?

Damn this post is short. What I wanna say is, I wish to be proud of myself without the evil voice telling me my drawing sucks.

Finally, the ever dreaded summer course ended on 9 July. It's been a while I last updated on my academic status, how am I doing, you ask?

The end goal of the course is make a thing and beeps and blinks light, you will need a circuit board and a plastic case as the mini-project. Some students get to finish the product earlier on because their class schedule is different, my group however, is the last to start making the thing, not fair >:(

The first part of the product making is drawing the circuit layout. There are a set of components you would need to put on a PCB (circuit board to put it simply), and it needs a specific set of paths to connect them. While PCBs are allowed to have multiple layers, and that would make drawing PCB layouts a lot easier, my school requires us to draw it on only one layer. I tell you, this shit hard. A good comparison is this game called Flow, you have to draw the tracks without going over another one or the spot where a component leg is placed. The process of drawing the tracks is like doing an infuriating puzzle, you think you are close to solving it, but when you have only one piece left, you have no place to put it. You try to rearrange the order a bit, and again, one piece left and no place to put it. But after a few hours of attempts, like a miracle, I completed the PCB layout. Kinda hard to believe my eyes.

Then the PCB layout is printed onto a paper, get the toner in the pattern of the tracks stick onto a board with a thin copper layer, then the board is soaked in a solution that melts copper, the toner will protect the copper underneath it, the surviving copper will become the circuit tracks. You drill holes on the parts that require it, then you solder the components onto the board. If things go well, the NE555 will make the buzzer and LED go beep and blink.

Then for the plastic case, you use 3D printing. So I measured the dimensions of my tiny PCB board, then made a tiny box with studs that should secure the PCB. I didn't add much decorations for the case, unlike some of my classmates, one drew an octagon??? The next day when we retrieved our cases, because there are some plastic residue under the studs, it secured my PCB tightly, more than I expected. I'm proud of this.

Overall, it is a fun summer course, I enjoy learning while doing stuff rather than sitting on a chair listening to stuff. I still need to submit the project report, but I pretty much finished writing it. Now that I'm free from school this summer, I can focus on Artfight...

Today I have nothing much to do, I was planning to draw cute girls kissing like I have planned to for the past few days. However, due to how tired I am from the classes, I just sat on the table, my brain doing nothing but stare at the computer screen. Suddenly, I got a notification from my blood donation app, saying there's a new blood villager (A cool feature in this app is that every time you donate blood, the home screen of the app adds a little character called blood villagers, different blood types have different designs, and you can trade with others). I'm pretty sure that a bug, because I donated blood months ago. However, that notification did remind me that I have waited long enough to donate blood again. As I have nothing to do, I booked for blood donation at afternoon.

Nothing much special happened during the procedure, except I decided I wanted to try donating 450ml instead of 350ml, which didn't go well last time I tried that. I was quite confident of the state of my body, I ate well, slept well, and didn't feel anything off. Being 169cm tall, I would be surprised if I'm still not large enough to donate more blood. After my blood was collected, I felt well, I rested and ate some snacks, and departed. My body didn't feel sick, challenge conquered!

On my way home, my stomach feels kinda uncomfortable, but I experience stomach aches a lot, so I didn't give much thought, maybe I need to walk fast back home. When my home was only a few streets away, my body suddenly felt weak, just like last time, but this is even more trouble, because I am on the street. Remembering the precautions, I decided to lie down on the street, I could sense people looking at me.

While I was lying on the floor, frustrated I couldn't get back home before I get sick, a person became concerned and gave me some help. She bought me a lollipop and a bottle of water, which I feel bad about since she spent money for me who did something dumb, but she insisted to not take my money. A nearby restaurant also gave me a few cups of sugar water, and gave me a place to sit down. I asked to use the toilet, and when the person was guiding me there, I noticed my vision was dimming, like the feeling when you get up from a chair sometimes. The toilet seat was barely visible, like wow is this how blind people feel? After a trip to the toilet, I felt a lot better. That person proceeded to guide me back to the entrance of where I live, I still feel very bad having her spend so much time helping me out. I still have the stick of the lollipop with me, don't want to throw it out.

All these events reminded me of an insecurity I have, is that I always take from others, but cannot return the favour. As a younger child, I was often spoiled with gifts, but as I grow up, I realised I don't really deserve those gifts. And the fact I am always in need of help, makes me feel kinda awful for not being able to be as helpful as others. But maybe I shouldn't be too pessimistic, this experience also teaches me that humanity isn't that bad after all, so many people there have helped me or at least asked me if I was ok, internet has shown the bad side of humans too many times, we sometimes forget there is still compassion among the society.

Anyways, the place where I got light-headed is a street I often go to for food, I hope people won't recognise me as the girl who passed out on the floor lmao.

Not sure if I have ever mentioned this. While I consider my mental state to be more positive since adulthood, it has been more unstable and sensitive. I find myself to be on the edge of being fine and having a breakdown frequently, it hasn't caused a problem, yet. But one of the major affects is it can be very hard for me to start a new series.

I find myself getting very terrified when very upsetting scenes in a story come up, especially it surronds a certain topic I strongly despise, but since I heard sharing your triggers to public isn't a good idea, I will keep it a secret. Even if the topic is mentioned very briefly or the scene only shows something that slightly reminds me of it, I immediately becomes sick and panicked. There is one time I was watching a movie with my family, and because it shows said topic in the most terrible way possible, my mind kinda snapped. I will never watch any dark movies taking place at school again.

Not sure if the reviewer was wrong or if the review was outdated, but I saw a review of Ousama Ranking (sorry if you enjoy it) that it is a heart-warming show with no truly evil people. Yea how do you explain that when there's a literal child whose limbs and face got cut off and her mother killed just because the village wanted to????? I got very depressed and took a couple of weeks to recover and still feel sick over that, not just because of the content, but also that false advertising. Afterwards I got scared of starting any series, best case scenario is me getting a new fixation and spending around a year burning my energy looking at fan art, but worse case is that it contains that topic in explicit detail and I get traumatised again. I'd rather avoid being triggered honestly, or maybe try searching for content warning of the series online, is there even a site for content warnings?

Ok now this is the part I want to talk about the most, no more gloomy stuff. It may be troubling for me to watch any sensitive topics in shows, but it seems it doesn't have the same effect if I portray them in my own story. I think one reason is that I have more control if I'm the one who's creating the story, pretty sure there's study of psychology that recreating past experiences using drawing and toys helps processing them better but idk. And secondly (which might be the bigger factor) is that I can make the traumatic parts more subtle, and not "HEY LOOK THIS CHILD IS BEING BEATEN TO DEATH AND YOU BETTER FEEL AWFUL ABOUT IT" shock value. Thinking about sensitive things in my mind still stings me a little, perhaps just knowing of it's existence is enough, I don't need to know how bad the situation is.

There are definitely stuff that would make me upset if they were shows made by someone else in UtSS and Dreamland Workshop, does it hurt me? Just a little, as much as the amount of spiciness I can handle. It also feels kinda nice to know that some of my characters share the same kind of pain I had growing up, well except theirs are ten times worse because those got amplified and there's godhood fuckery. There's a joke saying in my head, "God gave me so much pain growing up, and I am going to pass on the generational trauma to my non-existent characters" But really, giving them trauma makes me love them even more, it's certainly a way to make me feel healed some way because my OCs have friends that support each other even if they are being stubborn AF, I didn't write "hurt/comfort" in the description of UtSS in the sitemap for no reason! Honestly, good thing my OCs aren't real, they would have been mad at me. But if they ARE real, uh, sorry, especially to Lav and Japsers.

This part might stray a bit far from this blog but I feel it's still a bit relevant. Recently me and my sister started watching Dungeon Meshi, I'm sure many of you have at least heard of this series. What I love about this series is that despite there being really messed up moments, it can still recover and be comedic and back to the whimsy mood again. When Falin appears to the main team in her chimera form, the first reaction of Laios is being in awe of how cool her new body is. And after the fight with her is over and majority of the team dying a horrible death, Laios and Shuro starts fighting, from reprimanding the use of dark magic to complaining whether eating monsters is being serious to the mission of saving Falin. The fight ends with Laios winning, concluding that eating and resting well makes you the strongest. I love how not only the way the fight esculates is really funny, and also it promotes the idea of taking care of yourself instead of grinding to death. The idea of studying/working til you drop has been stuck deep into many people's minds and they don't often realise how toxic it is, mom scolded me one time for not seeing me being exhausted from studying and I got a bit mad about this stupid standard, so I felt a bit touched when that scene happened. Moreover, when the team realises that the way to save Falin is to eat her dragon part of her body, Laios' first thought is not the ethics of eating a part that somewhat belongs to a human, but questioning how to finish an enormous amount of dragon meat. He proceeds to think about the people he can invite to share and thinks about the types of possible dishes. Man I love this anime. Tl;dr, this anime is a good balance of comedy and dark, I don't really have to worry about the show suddenly turn dark and never go back. While I'm still a bit concerned if this anime will suddenly have topics that make me uncomfortable, but at this topic I kinda established a trust with this show, so the worse that can happen is me skipping some scenes.

Ok I'm done typing it, way less ranting and venting than the draft, that's good!

Have you ever been so fixated on something your mind becomes messed up? I think it is quite common for internet lurkers like me, and I still find it very funny.

One way to know if I’m fixated on something, is whether if my mind involuntarily thinks of said thing at random intervals, maybe during class or walking. Kid me was like “Why am I thinking of that pretty female character again-” while trying to concentrate on school. There are two ways to solve this, it’s either look for the character’s fan art, or let the fixation go away on it’s own. The second option is the more time-consuming but once it’s gone, it’s gone. But if you choose the first option, you are very likely to be fixated on it for a loooong time.

Fixiations make you have weird behaviours. There’s this thing that I thought it only happens to me, which is being too shy to look up a character and be extremely flustered seeing them in the wild. But because some Twitter users also said they experience this, so I guess it might be quite common. Whenever I have a new fictional crush, when I want to look them up or check out their fan art, I need to take deep breaths because my heart can’t handle it. It feels like those anime girls who fell in love with a boy and blushes and squeals when they are within a metre radius with said guy, man imagine feeling like this for a real life person, it would be annoying. To prevent looking like an idiot and being asked why my face is so red, I have to search the character in my room and alone, and maybe find a workaround to avoid typing their name as well.

Good thing (or bad thing) is that my fixiation only lasts around 1-2 years, maybe 4 years max. After that, I would probably lose interest in the media and charcters, but they will still have a special place in my heart.

But one thing about my past fixiations and current fixations (especially the ones I’m five foot deep into), is that I love making weird connections and crossovers. I think the best example is Caramel Arrow Cookie from Cookie Run Kingdom, she reminds me of Mutsu and Hyogo from Dororo 2019 reboot. The fact she is an archer and a loyal guard of Dark Cacao Kingdom just reminds me of Mutsu a lot and my brainrot was consuming me, and the fact her bow can be detached into two I was like “OMG IT’S JUST LIKE HYOGO’s WEAPON TOO” Kinda surprised she isn’t on the blorbo list, well I guess I can’t have that many blorbos in the same media.

When a character has similaries to one of my favs, I have a higher chance of liking them. These past years, this often happens in the Cookie Run games, like how Caramel Arrow reminds me of Mutsu and Hyogo and Hydrangea reminds me of Pomegranate Cookie just slightly. The phenomenon becomes way more common after I started a OC storyline, because I literally get attached to characters that have the slightest similarities to my OCs. The fact I currently have around 10 OCs with some part of personality established, the chances of that happening increases exponentially. Like the reason Rosemary Cookie caught my eye because her vibes are similar to Lavender, who is kinda dead inside /hj. If a random character has something similar, like personality, backstory, appearance or even name, my brain goes crazy. Anyways my brain got messed a bit because I saw a character that reminded me of my OC please help

Second week of the summer term has passed, and surprisingly a lot of things have happened. I decided to complie these events into one blog post.

Cool art by cool person

Recently I got a really cute drawing of my Neocities mutual, Pudding! Man I got so happy receiving a drawing of Cosmos my best girl. Thank you Pudding for drawing this!

School

This week's classes have a lot of crafting, I mean soldering. That was my first time handling hot wires and stuff, and knowing that soldering iron can burn your hand badly makes me nervous (I am terribly clumsy). Luckily, nothing bad happened. While the process can be a bit frustrating, like the solder sticking to all the places except for the spot you want it to stay, or accidentally connecting two wrong spots together, I found it quite relaxing, reminds me of Visual Art classes back in the younger days. I had a few clumsy moments tho, like plugging in the microprocessor incorrectly and nearly killed it. But overall, I had a lot of fun in the class. One exercise is creating a pattern on a LED array, so I got this picture and converted each row into hexadecimal code. It showed up on the LED array like this:

It is a bit blurry because the off LEDs still got affected by the on LEDs, making them look like they are shining as well. I think it does a good job showing it either way. Fun fact: Each row of LEDs are rapidly shone in succession, making it look like all of them are shining at once.

The next topic is network stuff and messing with the equipments. One of the activity is attaching the Ethernet Cables wires with the plugs. You have to cut open its jacket , arrange the inner wires in the correct order, cut the wires so that their lengths are even, then shove them into the plug, and secure the plug with a crimper. However, the stripper couldn't cut the jacket proper for some reason, the inner wires hate being even when being pushed into the plug, and I don't understand how a crimper works and the plug keeps falling off. That is perhaps the first task that got me stuck. Good thing I got it completed before the class ends, it is painful though.

Happy Birthday Ruth!

As you can see in the front page, it is Ruth's birthday. To be honestly, I nearly missed her birthday because 1. I was very busy with school and 2. I misremembered her birthday. Just look at my notepad on the top left corner of the blog page, it writes the incorrect date. However, I have (probably) all of my OC's birthday in my phone calendar, and I was notified of her birthday in my phone, I was flabbergasted. The drawing is actually done after class, which isn't very much time. I have considered delaying her celebration, but I felt too bad because it is somewhat my fault for not preparing her birthday art earlier and almost forgetting for birthday. So I decided to put in some hard work and this is the result, which turned out way better than I expected.

The sketch base is from a old doodle I did, which I never shown here despite being pretty good. I intended to add a fox next to her, but I couldn't fit it properly, I can't draw animals well, and the composition is a bit too late to change, so this is what I settled with. The background is paper drawing like, I feel like it matches Ruth, she likes drawing.

Because I thought I wouldn't be able to drawing something good for Ruth, I thought it would be a good idea to compensate with a history of her character creation. Although the results are pretty good, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to share a bit! Ruth was the character created after Claire and Grey. I wanted to have a group of five as the main group, so Ruth was the next member. She was a fox girl who likes naps and telling stories, oh and she's called 狐雪, meaning fox snow, it was hard finding a good name for her. Soon after, don't know how, she became a shy tall girl who enjoys drawing and was implied to be related to my other OC Cupcake, she was also close friends with Grey. I think I gave her a lot of dark story details, but I don't remember anymore. What is sure is that she was my second favourite OC, first being Kyrea, I used to only draw her and Kyrea's OC sheets.

Years later, I started the world building of UtSS. I feel like it is possible to bring back my beloved old OCs into this new world. Few months after redesigning Grey, I started a few drafts for Ruth. She currently looks very different from her old design, she looks younger, shorter, and has darker skin? To explain why, when I was designing each UtSS character, I want to ensure they are distinct enough. Not exactly for diversity, more for me to know they are very seperate characters. My prosopagnosia doesn't affect 2d characters, but my brain seems to mix up characters very easily. When two characters look similar and aren't very memorable, my memory of them may still blend together. So I combat this by making each characters have distinct color palettes and clothing, this is one of the reasons why Jaspers has no shirt (Jaspers: "?!"), and why Ruth's skin color is darker. Moreover, I wanted to experiement more with darker skin tones, and I feel like Ruth's design goes well with this skin tone. I still feel very worried about showing this to my Facebook friends, because they always make fun of Disney's "SJW real life adaptions". Perhaps the movies aren't very good, but I've had heard people making racist comments because some characters who used to be shown as pale are casted by POC actors. Perhaps my FB friends will think I'm a "crazy SJW who makes everything political" as well, but anyways I don't interact with them much anymore.

For her background settings, I think I wanted her to be Grey's figurative younger sibling, just like how Grey is the figurative brother of Claire. I actually long forgotten that old Ruth was friends with old Grey, so how funny time goes in a circle. Unlike all the other main gang members, Ruth has the least tragic backstory. To describe, it is like Hollyberry Cookie in the Ancient team, you wouldn't call her backstory 0% pain, but the other ancient's story is outstandingly traumatic, from losing your son to a cursed sword, to godhood fuckery. Ruth's backstory does give her some personal obstacles to overcome, these are related to the use of magic. I feel like Ruth would be a pretty good candidate for moral support and I do not mean just her magic to tame animals. The main gang is either losing hope in life or is depressed one way or the other, Ruth, being the joy of the team, I think she is able to pull them through. I think there is something heartwarming about a character being positive no matter the circumstances if the story is written well, I like these stories better than a series of poor characters being buillied hopelessly and tell the moral lesson of how humans suck (Note: But if you write a character who's tortured endlessly and still somehow forgives the abusers because PosItIviTy, that's just unrealistic and annoying writing). TBH this is kinda inspired by Kirby, I got touched by a Kirby essay as mentioned in the Tokyo blog, it's like how you go down a iceberg with tons of dark facts, but at the end you somehow see light again, and as you enter the light, you see the little pink ball greeting you with a smile. I don't know if I can achieve this though my writing, but I'll try, somehow.

And I think that's the end. It's 12a.m. when I'm done writing, I should go rest now~

I have been waiting for this month for a while, it might feel a bit more comfortable talking about this during a time for acceptance. I don't know if a semi-come-out post is too personal, but game theory: Kiwi is demisexual.

This is based on my experiences on the topic of romance, which is very few. While I am less confident on determining whether I am attracted to girls too, or how my romantic attraction works, there are slightly more clues that I don't really have much sexual attraction to others. Again, I hope nobody I know IRL is seeing this, but they are, I say please be mature about this.

Demisexual refers to the sexuality of only having sexuality attraction towards people who have very deep connections with. While this sounds like a normal procedure of falling in love, many researches and some of my knowledge says that there are people who would desire sexual acts with someone who they barely met. I believe I was one of the people who thought demisexuality is just describing normal love, until I thought deeper, and what's more is that it feels kinda like it's describing me?

There are a few crushes in my life, and majority of them are guys (I'm still thinking if I had a crush on a girl). Considering the possibility of my type being "a guy who is kind and doesn't hate me on first sight", I cannot confirm if I'm demiromantic. And among the list of crushes I have, there's only one crush I had sexual attraction to, not only is it very low, that person is the one I'm closest with.

If I am actually demisexual, it would explain a lot of mysteries about my online experience. In social media, I see a lot of people tend to make sexual jokes to characters/people they consider "hot damn", I just thought "haha funny" and maybe make similar jokes in my head when I find a character who I believe to be hot in social standards. But after a while, I realised "wait you guys actually want to bang this person?" The aesthetic attraction I experience the most is when I see pretty guys or strong girls, but romantic attraction is very rare (they have to not make me think they dislike me), and sexual attraction is just barely exists in my brain. Also, it feels like it is very common in ace communities that they tend to not enjoy romantic stories as much, while it might not be the same for individuals, but it feels kinda funny if me hating romance plots is a clue of me being not allosexual all this time.

The reason I call it a semi-come-out post and not a full on come-out post is because I don't feel very confident about it. The evidences are there, but it's not that many, which might be a dumb reasoning because waiting for new crushes will not solve the mystery if I'm not allo. Moreover, I'm kinda afraid of embracing a label, because what if I'm wrong? I know that it is completely normal to change labels over time, but the fears in my head tell me the internet is going to attack me if I one day realised I'm actually not on the ace spectrum. I'm sure the audience here are quite accepting, so I hope you can understand I'm still struggling.

While I might still be struggling over my sexuality, one of the main reason is that I want to speak up during Pride Month. Talking about one's identity should be normal, and it can be suffocating to just keep it inside. Though I don't talk about my labels really much, it is nice to discuss this once in a while, and show to the world that exploration of identity shouldn't be shut away.

As I have mentioned in the blog post in 24 April, I have to go to school for summer term. Not only I have to wake up 6:30 a.m. almost everyday, I have to stay there for around 8 hours. It sounds quite painful, unless you have to work longer than me and you wanted to complain how weak the kids of this generation are. The first week of this term has past, let's talk about what I did there.

To combat my sleepiness, I decided to buy a can of coffee everday. However, after a few days, it doesn't feel like it did anything except of morale boosting. I believe the classes are simulating my brain enough to not let it fall asleep. What did my teacher teach then? For now, the teachers has taught my team two topics. The first one is just jotting down the key points into the logbook, a small fun fact about me is that I kinda enjoy the feel of writing with a pen. It might be not so good for my hands if I write for a long time though, I hope less classes will involve writing tons of words.

The other topic is learning to use LabVIEW, a graphical programming platform. If you have already learnt about coding and programming, it isn't really very hard to understand how to use it, especially majority of the exercises are just following the instructions. I initially got worried because I had no teammates (My team had odd number members, and I happened to use the computer alone). However, I swiftly understood the concepts in the tasks, and finished all the stuff first. My teacher got a bit concerned about how fast I was going, and when all the tasks are done, I basically was free to do whatever. Though my teachers gave me some other tasks to do, like helping my classmates with their tasks, and checking for broken cables. There was this cool device that can check the inner wires, if there is one or more wires broken, the light for the respective wire number(s) will dim out. Honestly the current topics weren't too hard, but I'm still tense about having to be punctual every single day and having the risk of failing the course if I happened to miss a day.

The one thing I want to complain about the most is the lack of short breaks. For my past courses, there is a ten minute break for every hour. However, in the 3.5 hour sessions, nearly zero breaks are given. A bit frustrating I must say. There is a 1.5 hour lunch break though, but it isn't long enough for me to walk to the nearby district, so my choices are limited. I decided to revisit a certain nearby restaurant, it is only five minutes away, but I had not so good experiences there (The meals always contain mushrooms). However, few months ago my dad took me to a branch in our district, and it didn't taste as bad as I remembered. And when I went there, the orders are taken via QRcode, and only then I noticed there is an option to order without mushrooms. The meals tasted way better with this option. To be honest, the bills are a bit pricey, but then again, my sister said the restaurants in where we live in are usually cheaper than most places, so I shouldn't feel too bad about spending more money outside.

I hope I don't get bored of the food I eat too quickly, which I usually do. There are like four restaurants I enjoy going nearby, but I feel like the food in the next district has more choices and tends to be more tasty. There is one restaurant that I might have enough time to visit and go back, but it feels a bit risky, and I'd want to save a bit more free time to charge my phone at school. Another choice is to bring my own food. I can cook the food one day prior and take them with me the next day, but I am not a fan of overnight food (especially veggies, they get very soggy and I hate that). And if I were to cook my food in the morning, I'm going have to wake up even more early. So I'ma stick to my current schedule.

In total, the semester lasts 1 month and 1 week, with one week past, the term is about 20% over. There are three dayoffs every week, so when Artfight starts, I still have some time to have fun. So wish me the best~

I don’t like cutting my hair. Ever since I was a child, I felt like short hair looks ugly on me, a bit of confidence drops when my mom cuts my hair in any way. As I grow older, I get a bit more freedom in my appearance, so I refrain from cutting my hair whatsoever. While I can’t entirely avoid haircuts, my hair is often kept very long.

Currently, my hair length covers my entire back. I kinda want to let it continue growing. Though, recently my mom kept asking me to cut my hair, because my aunt questioned why my hair is that long. I thought the strange rule of hair might be kept short only applies to men, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with growing long hair, right? I’m not a fan of someone caring about my appearance, so I got a bit irritated.

During my Tokyo trip, I only then noticed the inconvenience of long hair. When carrying multiple bags, my hair often got stuck in the straps, very uncomfortable. And in onsen, it is required to keep your hair above the water, but because my hair is very long, my hair kept touching the water, it was a bit hard to fix it, but I found a good fix to this problem at the end.

After the trip, I concluded that it might be a good idea to cut your hair short before a trip. But do I want to cut my hair now? I might want to wait a bit longer. But if I would cut my hair shorter than waist length, please don’t make it mushroom hair, it was the source of my insecurities. It matches some people but definitely not me. From the internet, I heard there is something called wolf cut, it looks very cool but I wonder if it is high maintenance, I’m not the kind to take care of my hair much.

If you haven't heard of it, yes you can download a NDS emulator in Iphone now, it's called Delta, it also support games for other consoles, go check it out.

I have had my NDS as long as I could remember. I remember when I was in a hospital due to asthma, I played with it to spend time. A lot of games weren't in Chinese or English cuz my dad downloaded them from the internet, and yes we have been pirates for a long time. Remarkable games include Solatorobo (Never finished it), Jewelpet: Cute Magical Fantasy (The game that introduced the franchise to me), Nintendogs (Absolute classic). As I grow older, I played with my NDS less. However, I managed to find a charger for my NDS, so I could play it now and again. Unfortunately, around a year ago, when I felt like playing it, I noticed that the top LCD got white corners, it wasn't very noticeable few years before, but now the screen is barely viewable. It is kinda sad, and the best change to play these games, was to buy an NDS online, or so I thought.

Yesterday, my sister sent me a reel on Instagram, about the NDS emulator. I was estatic, and quickly downloaded the app and the required files. These are the games I immediately played: Nintendogs, Ochaken no Heya 4, and Solatorobo.

Nintendogs

I bet most people are familiar with this game, it is a game about having dogs as your pets and training them. I remember spending hours playing with my dogs and throwing items at them, and I definitely remember naming a chihuahua after myself, and donating it because it was too hard to train, a wonderful owner I was.

When I downloaded the game, I got a golden labrador and named her Cosmo, no particular reason why I named her that. When the tutorial started, I only realised how much of the gameplay uses voice commands. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that the dog might not hear you calling their names or commands. The best solution I have is to use my earphones' microphone, so that most background noises will not be sensed. Even then, it feels like it takes a lot of effort to have my dog understand simple commands such as "sit down". Perhaps it is due to the commands not being clear enough I guess. Then I had an idea, what if I teach it to sit in Cantonese. After reteaching it, it somehow works way better, it sits down almost everytime I speak "坐低". Somehow the sit command didn't do anything during the contest, but maybe she just needs more time.

My favourite part of Nintendogs is walking. I love seeing my dog pick up random gift boxes from the streets. I'm quite surprised to know you can walk your dog multiple times a day though, I felt like most games nowadays tends to lock game modes behind time locks.

Ochaken no Heya 4

Ochaken would've been one of my greatest childhood fixiations if the anime had been broadcasted in Hong Kong like Jewelpet, though I think Ochaken anime is more of a mini series than a full on story. The NDS game is a home decoration game where you collect furnatures in mini-games and you can have your tea dog/cat interact with them. Because I don't know Japanese, I don't know much about the cutscenes and had to learn the gameplay by clicking random buttons. I haven't spent much time in the game yet, I remember the second generation of the game has gacha, and it was my favourite mode, so I might check that out when I play other games first.

Solatorobo

It is a game with anthro canines and felines in a world with mechs. The story is about the protagonist Red meets a mysterious young boy during a infiltration mission, and a lot of shit went down and he needs to save the world. What caught my eyes the most was the art, the animation looks like the kind of anime I would love to watch, and the models and maps looks very charming, even after all these years, it is still very good. Sadly, when I was playing the game in the emulator, the controls didn't respond well and isn't exactly user friendly (How the hell can my fingers reach the L and R buttons?), I got stuck on the plane race segment and gave up. So I watched the story through playthroughs, sorry.

Actually, I have read some of the story points years before, but the spoilers isn't really the most major ones so it isn't really bad. I don't really enjoy rating stories unless it is from my fixiations, but here's some thoughts about the story. Spoilers for part 1 and a bit of part 2: I have been messed with about Elh's gender, but not in the usual way. When I was a kid playing the game, I always thought Elh was a girl at the beginning, I guess I didn't know how to read at that time. When I grew older and watched some of the cutscenes, I was like, "Oh Elh was a boy, I have been wrong this whole time." BUT THEN, apparently Elh was revealed that she's a girl this whole time???? Damn you really have to bamboozle me twice huh. A somewhat disappointing plot point I learnt as a kid is Red becoming a humanoid. There's a type of male anime characters I find very attractive, I don't know what this type is called (uhh... really confident men?), but the catagory includes the male protag in Yattaman, the protag from the second generation of Beyblade, and of course, Red in his usual form. I don't remember Red's human form before I watched the playthrough, and when I did, damn he kinda ugly- It's kinda sad to go from a cool anthro dog with red clothes to a furless and shirtless dude and his hair isn't even tied. Then I realised I don't have the right to judge because I kinda did the same with Cosmos, ahahahah.... The reason Red can turn into a humanoid is very interesting though, had fun watching the tension rise and seeing his insecurities, also he can change his form back so no worries.

Before I can even try out all the games I want to play, I have to deal with school tomorrow. Stay tuned for my next blog post (Likely about my long hair), and good luck.

A month ago, I have made Cosmos plushie, as you can see in the blog page. At that time, I said to myself I didn't want to make another plushie for a long time, it's too energy consuming... However, I got the urge to purchase materials for Lavender plushie anyway. Sad thing is that I couldn't find a correct fabric color of Lavender's skin color, so she looks paler .

As I have made two plushies before, my skill of making them is a bit better, so the process felt a bit smoother. However, when I was embroidering the face, somehow I still didn't tighten the ring enough (even though I tightened as tight as I could), so Lavender's eyes are a bit squished. However, her eye shape isn't really that far off, so it isn't a big problem, though she would be constantly squinting at you now.

That aside, her paw embroidery went smoothly, it doesn't feel as clumsy as Cosmos', also I sewed the fabrics of the body more carefully this time, so it didn't look like it's falling apart this time.

And because Lavender has braids, I looked for a plushie tutorial with a plushie that has braids. I think it is way easier to make Lavender's hair than Cosmos'. It is a bit hard to sew hair to the head because it always come out shorter than expected.

And done~

After I finished Lav plushie, I noticed how soft she is, maybe because her fabric is brand new. I'm surprised how quickly Cosmos plushie got less soft, maybe because I played around with her too much lol. Also, Lavender is noticeably lighter than Cosmos. When putting them on a weight with no accessories, Lav is 47.2g, Cosmos is 71.7g. The reason is that I stuffed extra cotton into Cosmos to make her face less wrinkled, and also her body as well for some reason. Moreover, there is a bit of height difference between the two plushies, I don't know the reason for this. Anyways, this is somewhat close to canon so it isn't that bad lol.

Afterwards it's just clothing making. I have ordered the shirt online because I don't feel like making this much clothings. So I just have to make the dress and the vest. I had no experience making dresses, I just looked up online and followed the instructions. I grabbed an iron and almost burnt the fabric, but other than that things went well.

I finished the dress, made the vest and attach a few buttons from a shirt I don't wear at all, and done!

Now Cosmos is not alone anymore! And with that done, I think I'm prepared for the summer term classes. I hope these two plushies will protect my sanity.

You might have noticed I haven't updated this site for days, it was because I went to Tokyo with my sister! Just like last year, I'm going to share some of the fun bits about my trip.

Around 4 months ago, my sister sent me a link of a flight ticket giveaway, and for whatever reason, I felt like trying it. Because of how many people wanting it, the queue was quite long. I opened the link in my phone, Ipad and laptop, the waiting time was over an hour for my Ipad and laptop, but for some reason, the waiting time on my phone was only 15 minutes, oh shit a miracle. When it was my turn, I quickly wrote down my info and my destination, which is Tokyo because I heard you can buy a lot of stuff there. I kinda had to rush typing the stuff in because I was worried if they will run out of tickets if I'm not fast enough, and I picked a flight time that is a bit awkward (The flight to Tokyo arrives to the destination at 12am). At the end, I was lucky enough to get a free ticket*. I also had to think about the problem of going there alone, because when I try to get another free ticket, all the tickets to Tokyo had sold out. My sister volunteered to spend her own money to accompany there, which was nice of her. However, she accidentally bought a ticket to the wrong airport, which is still in Tokyo, but it takes a bit longer to meet me, oh whatever.
*Additional fees were reqiured to pay

First day(?)

Fast forward to 5 days ago, my sister went to the airport hours before me because her flight is earlier. I was supposed to have lunch, but because I was too worried about forgetting to bring something important, I barely have any apetite. I had a bit of snacks, and a cup noodle, then my clumsy ass spilt the soup all over the floor. Good thing I still have a lot of time, I cleaned up before going out, hoping I cleaned the house enough to not attract bugs. As I was riding the bus, the plane decides to delay the departure time by one hour and ten minutes, I was quite pissed, it's not even enough time for the insurance. So for a couple hours, I kinda just walked about the airport mindlessly.

Then fucking finally, the plane arrived. Unlike my previous flight experience, because the ticket is quite cheap, the service isn't really the same. There are no plane food unless you spend extra money, and I feel a bit more motion sickness, which didn't really happen to me before. After ages of waiting, I got out of the plane and met up with my sister. Despite being midnight, I still wanted to eat ramen. I finally got the opportunity to eat in Ichiran, which so many people said it is worth a try. It is somewhat expensive, but the smell is very nice, also customers have minimal interaction with the waiters if you have heard of it, so it is very good for introverts (like me).

Second day

We went out at 11am to the Ueno Park. It is very fun looking at any birbs, probably because I have a friend who really loves birbs, and that interest has spread to me. But I think the cutest are the prairie dogs, I only knew this animal through memes, but they are shockingly small, and adorable. There were so many of them, and the babies look so smol, and the way they eat looks so much like hamsters, it melted my heart. I also heard this zoo might have capybaras, but we couldn't find where they are, and many parts of the zoo was closing, so we gave up

When we were walking to the park, we noticed the nearby stores sell nice clothes, so we went back to check them out. I usually have not much interest in clothings, it takes too much time to find one I really like, and they tend to not have my size, pains of being tall. But shockingly, there is a really pretty dress, AND it actually fits me comfortably, fuck yeah.

This next thing we did is something I wished to do in Okinawa, but didn't because I couldn't find anyone to go together. It's maid cafe. My sister said she gets embarrassed very quickly in the maid cafe, but I still wanted to give it a try. It turned out the vibes were quite nice, I get why people might get embarrassed from trying to go with the moe moe energy, but it seems I have left my cringe, and truly enjoyed the moe. Both of us ordered a drink and curry rice. The maid asked to draw something on our drinks, I kinda wanted to ask for a hamster, but it is not really a common thing to draw, so I asked for a cat instead. When it was my sister's turn, she actually asked for a hamster. While the maid struggled a bit drawing the hamster, I think she did a good job capturing the rotundness of a hampter.

The curry I ordered is a bit special, you will need to cast a special spell to turn the curry pink. They gave us a wand and we followed what the maid said, which was difficult because it is a bit long and felt like a tongue twister lol. As for the taste, I was surprised a curry rice from a maid cafe would make me feel like the guy who had a flashback from Ratatouille. There is this restaurant chain that used to sell really tasty omurice curry, but over the years, the quality slowly dropped. And recently when I tried it again, it just taste like rice with flavourless sauce. The maid cafe curry is ridiculously good (or curry in Hong Kong just sucked), I felt kinda heartbroken knowing I wouldn't be able to eat something like this when I get back home. I told a maid that the meal was very tasty... wait did the tasty curry make me overcome my social anxiety? That was a magical experience.

Third day

Despite not having much sleep last night, we had to wake up early for DisneySea. I believe majority of the time we spent there was just standing and waiting, it is normal, but man I could feel my legs and ankles breaking. Going on the rides, I realised I have mostly overcome my fear of rollercoasters and fast rides, the parts I still struggled with are gravity, and especially going upside down, that is way out of my comfort zone. I could tell I'm not that afraid anymore because I ranted that one of the rides is too boring and it only contains fast turns and too many pure darkness moments. I think the most memorable ride is the mansion, whose owner got cursed by a statue. We went on the esculator, which was the ride. We expected it to be story-oriented and less movement, so my sister just placed her bag and phone in front of her. but I held onto my backpack strap, just in case. In front of us, it showed a few scenes about the owner and the statue, then we were quickly sent upwards, and there was a window, showing the view of the park. I was like, "Oh that's a nice view..."

And just like a classic drop tower ride, right after showing you the brilliant view, it drops you at high speeds. Being unprepared, my mind immediately went blank, my feet held onto the back of the seat in front of me, my hand held my backpack straps tight, and my mind just barely had the thought of worrying if my sister's phone is ok. After the ride ended, we laughed, and my sister said during the fall, she saw her phone floating in zero gravity before she rushed to hold it back in the hands. That was terrifying, but it was the funniest thing of that day.

Oh and also, my sister uses Cosmos as an excuse to have me take more pictures. The conversations often goes like this:

Sister: "Hey wanna take a pic here?"

Me: "Nah don't wanna"

Sister: "What about Cosmos? :3"

Me: ""

Me: "Sure :3"

My legs were extremely sore that day, and it was distressing when I knew that we had to wait in a queue for a popular restaurant. While the roast beef bowl is very tasty, I don't think I would want to spend so much time standing after walking for a whole day.

Fourth day

We rented Yukata for our visit to Kaminarimon. I wanted to look for a pink yukata at first, but there wasn't much options that I enjoy. I tried the purple ones because they looked quite pretty, but when I wore them, it felt kinda off, as if I look older when I tried them on... I picked yellow yukata next, and despite my doubts, it looked wonderful on me, I could feel my inner child smiling upon me. For my sister, purple or black yukatas match her really nicely, and even the purple one which doesn't match looked good on her. Perhaps there is some reasoning that some colors might or might not match someone? I must do some research on fashion later.

The next stop is going around the streets near Kaminarimon. I must say, this might be the most stressful event of this trip. One, I am not very fond of taking pictures. Yes, we look splendid that day, but I have associated photo-taking time with endless purgatory after the many school trips I had, seriously they always take so long I hate it. Secondly, we have to focus on not dirtying our clothings, eating chocolate ice cream under hot weather is very difficult if you are trying to keep your yukata clean. Pretty sure I was a bit irritated the whole time, but a nice thing is I bought a good health charm, because lately my stomach feels off, maybe it can protect my health a bit (maybe my mental health as well?). Also we found a Kaminarimon exclusive Chigiri keychain!

We went shopping near Tokyo station. Although many stores were almost closing, there were still a lot of things to buy. We found a Kirby store and Rilakuma store. My sister really loves Kiiroitori, and often complains about the lack of Kiiroitori products. Luckily, there are plenty of Kiiroitori stuff in the store, but she's still reluctant on buying too many stuff, as she already owns many of them, she bought a Kiiroitori shirt though. And for me, I wouldn't say I love Kirby as my favourite character, but Kirb has a special place in my heart, especially after watching this video essay. There are plenty of cute plushies and other stuff, but I decided to just buy a Kirby pudding, and I kept the jar, I have it in my home now. We also went to a anime store, and got a chigiri plushie, but that wouldn't be the last time we see Blue Lock merch.

We went to spa at the end of the day, thank god my legs can finally heal. It is really nice to soak myself in hot water, there is no bathtubs at home. However, it feels kinda weird being naked within the vicinity of other people.

Fifth day

After checking out, we went to Shibuya for lunch. We had to queue again, but it wasn't that bad since I had much more energy. The food was fried steak, and the meat is SOOOOO GOOD. The meat is tender and there are many sauce you can choose. Also one thing I noticed in this trip is that the wasabi here is sweeter than the ones I normally taste. I find wasabi's spicyness very addicting, and the fact it's sweeter here is even better.

We then went to Ikubukuro for anime merch. What shocks me the most is the amount of Blue Lock products there, AND the Blue Lock statue is there too!!! I thought I would never see this in person!!!!!! It is such an honour to meet Barou the GOAT. And of course, I bought Chigiri and Barou plushies. I also bought a transparent acrylic bag for Cosmos plushie, now I can carry her around without hiding her in my bag.

In Harajuku, there are plenty of stores and stalls. We visited an small animal zoo, my favourite animal there must be the ferrets. Most of the ones we held are quite sleepy, but one of them seems to be quite active, and keeps walking towards the gate, kinda reminds me of my hamster.

My sister had to leave early because she had different flight schedule than me, so I kinda walked around without much planning. I went back to Shibuya to check out the Hachiko statue, it's story still make me sad.

While people may think it is important to have special meals during trips, I think it is better to have meals from convenience stores, it just hits different, especially when the convenience stores in your homeland doesn't have much tasty food. I bought fami-chiki, a corn dog, and a few sweets. SERIOUSLY, fami-chiki is soo good, as I'm typing this, my mouth is drooling from missing fami-chiki. If it weren't the fact I couldn't find a seat, I would've bought cold noodles as well, those were bangers.

When it was time to go to the airport, I have to drag my heavy ass luggage. With my legs being painful, it was so hard carrying the luggage down stairs and squeeze into the busy train. The train trip was painful, but eventually I got there. After checking in, I refilled my water, and finally had time to rest.

When I got into the plane, I was terrified to learn there is a moaning toddler in the plane. I was quite worried about not being able to sleep under such loud noise. I guess I underestimated my exhaustion, because I fell asleep soundly with my jacket on my neck and my head on the table.

There isn't anything really remarkable after I returned to Hong Kong, except for the fact it started raining after I got on the bus. I was planning on sleeping on my bed right after I get home, but since my clothes were half-drenched, I guess I had to go shower, sigh.

And with that, my trip to Tokyo has officially ended. I feel like trips like this might not suit me very well, even if the schedule was relatively loose, it still caused me a lot of stress. I think I enjoy the times I go to convenience stores for food or restaurants with very little people more. If there are ways to reduce waiting time, perhaps travelling would be a lot more relaxing?

As you may know me, I am a passionate OC writer + artist. If I have to be bold, I'd say I'm somewhat good at drawing, I have gathered a large amount of knowledge in colors and anatomy I suppose. As for writing, I am way less confident. It feels like I have a mental block when it comes to imagining character's personalities.

I have always dreaded writing homeworks, I really dislike writing more than a hundred words, or making up stuff that I never experienced. "Write a story based off the phrase 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you'" Yea my brain ain't good enough for this shit. Maybe because of that, I don't often get high marks on writing stories. Though I admit, when I'm feeling it, I do enjoy writing sometimes. Very occasionally there are prompts that get my brain juice working, I won't say my writings were good, it's just that I have more fun writing them.

Moving on to my current biggest interest. It was hard for me to build anything for my OCs at first, especially during my depression arc. Dissociating for the entirety of secondary school made my brain feel like a thick, grey fog, and it may have affected my creativity a bit. I remember worrying about whether this brain fog was in fact have always been here, and it will last forever. Good news though, the fog went away, and I think I have a better time creating stuff now. It still took me a lot of effort, it was similar to doing exercise to gain muscles, and I regularly imagined OC scenarios to reactivate my brain.

While now I have better ideas on how my OCs act and do, it still takes me a lot of energy. Perhaps due to the little amount of people I interact with, my understanding of different personalities is very weak, the largest reference of human behavior is myself. If I have to write a character differ from me, whatever I write, the character will feel alien. So currently, every OC will share at least one characteristic with me, trust issues, fear of abandonment, wishing to be stronger etc. Now that I typed it out, if I can understand one of the actions of a person, and that leads to me understanding said person overall, I might actually know more about humans than I expect?

Not sure if it is a good thing or not, but I tend to loop thoughts over and over again. It might be good for checking loopholes and fleshing out plot points, but might not be so good for building new stories. It often takes many loops for me to finally get out of it and find a new idea, hence it takes me a lot of time. But even then, there's no need to rush, I still have plenty of time, and there is no deadline to 'publish' this story.

My ideas for my OC ideas come very randomly, usually when I'm in a train going to school, or sometimes, after I drank coffee. When a good idea hits me like an apple, the inspirations roll to me like a flood. The previous inspiration flood was triggered during a Python class, I decided to write down the lore of each characters, and ended up fleshing out the personalities of the RS gang. But a very interesting way of getting ideas is through dreams, though there are only two occasions I used them as inspirations. Like I mentioned before, the origin of Lavender is from my dream. And the other one is about me committing arson, which was mentioned in the 1st quarter of 2024. I can't mentioned where this idea is used (spoilers duh), and I feel like the lore would sound ridiculous if I execute the idea poorly, so when I try to write a proper series, it might be years and years later...

If you have been following my updates, you might know about a interactive art series, the popularity poll arts. Initially the poll thing is just a way to get people's attention, but I eventually came up with the idea to force get my OCs to respond to the votes. You guys get UtSS content, I get to train my lore-writing skills (+ satisfaction from being noticed). I'm not sure if I'll eventually get a writer's block, but it is quite fun seeing my OCs interact, my favourite moment is when Ruth chases Grey while holding Cosmos in her cat form. I'm not sure if I can draw the main story in comic form in the future, but for now, I will show the OC content in bite form.

When I was a kid, I was always taught to be kind and humble and obedient, and when you do that you will be rewarded with kindness as well. I wasn't perfect, but I often tried to be the best student at school. I tried to listen to everything my teachers and adults say, pay attention to class, don't be a picky eater, be obedient, do all your homework etc. However, I seem to fail at these, basic student obligations as they say. I kept thinking to myself, how come I could not follow these simple orders, where did I even fail? The more I try to be a good kid, the more I fail and hate myself more.

Few blogs ago I mentioned I got into a cult when I was a kid. I have been watching some videos about people ranting about them, like how the cults expect kids to do tasks that are stupidly difficult to do. They said that it is normal for kids to have shorter attention span, or lower energy because they were busy with school, or have 100% faith in the higher authorities... There's a thought in my head: "They're overreacting, don't most adults do this to their kids?" Then I thought of another possibility that, the adults in my life have unrealistic expectations on children.

Adults aren't perfect in any means, there are adults who hate fruits and vegetables, there are adults who are really bad at being on time, there are adults who slacks off a lot... And for some reason, they expect children to not do any of the stuff above, or else they will yell at them and call them a failure. Because I am so good at following orders, I'm not so good at questioning my life, I would blame myself for not being able to eat some food even though my dad doesn't eat most fruits and nobody reprimanded him for that. I guess that's one of the reasons why I fell into that cult so easily, despite how ridiculous the rules were, I expected myself to do all that, thinking that's normal, people should learn to be perfect. Even if there were contradictions, I would make up excuses in my head, that they know better than me, that they are explainations that I failed to understand...

With some consultaions, I realised how harsh I was to myself, and became more aware of my self-hatred. Sometimes I think, I wish that I were more rebellious instead of trying to be a people (or just adult) pleaser. Yea these people wouldn't be liked by the adults as much, but they were free, they could do whatever they want without their mind judging themselves. This was what I had in mind for Wolf, and maybe a bit for Cosmos. I used to imagine Cosmos to be a bit too prideful, boasting about her strength and appearance, this can be a flaw but I kinda wanted to be like that, I don't see the use of being humble anymore, it only led me to self-hatred. And as for Wolf, while he is based of the bullies I've seen in the past, I can imagine one positive quality about him is that he doesn't follow what most people think is correct, like who cares if people says you are being annoying or you are wasting your potential? Following your orders only makes me suffocate, I feel the greatest when I am on my own!

I sometimes feel amazed by my sister. When I struggled to eat something (like abalones), she would subtlely ask me to give it to her. When I was being scolded by my mom for half an hour, my sister will tell my mom that I was in fact listening to her even though my body is fidgeting and I wasn't making eye contact. She might also try to cheer me up when my mom was scolding me for something I did wrong on the phone. I used to wonder why my sister would help me even though I was on the wrong, but as I grew up, maybe my sister realised sooner that it is ok to be imperfect. I'm very thankful of her, self-care would've been much harder if I was never encouraged.

Anyways, nowadays when I hear some advice that are said to be good for me, but if the vibes are off, I will remind myself that I don't have to follow them, stuff like "You will thank me in the future" or "I do this for your own good" doesn't mean much anymore. Even if my desicion is wrong and I end up in a bad place, at least it's my own choice instead of being fucked by someone else's advices.

I went to the nearby bookstore to buy some double sided tape roller, the ones I bought stick more gentler, like a sticker should. And since bookstores are my favourite place to walk around, I decided to check out the cool stationeries. And on a slot, I see those small one ringed notepads. These thing brought a smile on my face, just like the random items that sparks joy (Miniature toys, pill cases, towel cases etc).

Well unlike the three items mentioned above, I can explain why I like these notepads so much.

Before university, I never really understood how to study, which I might have mentioned somewhere in the blog, probably. My 'study' strategy is just, 1. Pay attention at class, 2. Do homework, 3. Remember the shit without revising. I will pick up the book and memorise the stuff if it's a dictation, otherwise I'll just do the exam without much studying. It wasn't that I'm lazy, perhaps it was a gifted child thing, when you learn quickly, you will not understand how to study when it gets harder.

Sometime between 5th-6th grade, I had a really close friend. One or two recesses before exam, I saw him looking at his notepads, what contained was four-lettered Chinese words, which I never took time, or bother to memorise, and thus always get zero marks on that part. After some chatting, he offered to lend me his notepads, and we took turns looking at them. And when Chinese exam started, I managed to fill in all the boxes, it's surprising that before this, this part was always empty. I think I also got very high marks that exam.

Honestly marks didn't matter much to me, especially if it's from primary school. However, there is something heartwarming about bonding this experience. It might just be me having too much attachment towards that friend, but it feels really nice, being supported and creating a bond during hard times. Now, I made a connection between these tiny notepads and happy memories.

It is impressive to think that he made my whole primary school experience worth while even though majority of it is hell and the memories with him ony consist of like 20%. I almost forgot my painful memories because how happy I was with him, or maybe it was because brains tend to bury trauma. Well let's not think too much about my mental state, and conclude that even the smallest things can make someone's entire year.

Have you heard of Aphantasia? It is a condition where a person cannot imagine any images in their head. It feels a bit abstract, my visual (and auditory and taste) imagination is very strong, songs get stuck in my head so hard they become ear worms and I often hum them unintentionally, and my taste imagination stacks up so tastes that doesn't match will mix together, ew.

There aren't much people talking about it, in Reddit I see many people saying they couldn't imagine smells either, so maybe it's a common thing but people don't care much? Anyway, smell isn't a big thing in my life, having blocked nose constantly made me think having perfumes isn't that special, and there isn't a specific flower scent I particularly like. However, on random occassions, like walking in a shopping mall, there might be nostalgic smells, perhaps body shampoo scent? I might try to find the source, or try to remember what memory is my brain trying to remind me, but alas, the scent goes away and the investigation comes to a halt.

It feels weird, when I try to imagine any smell, I often describe it like, it feels fluffy, or disgusting, or sweet. However, I don't really feel it in my nose, which is very unlike how I can 'see' with my imagination, or 'hear' with my imagination. I wonder if it correlates with me not remembering scents that much. It is only when the scent comes up, that I recognise the smell. And you take the smell away, my brain says, "Smell? What smell?"

So now and then I might stumble onto nostagia without warning, I feel like as a kid, my home and my kindergarten might have used a specific kind of baby products/perfume, that might have stored deep in my memory. But what is that smell? Yea I can't tell.

Can you guys imagine smells, or can you imagine other senses?