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.

Expectation Reality

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.

Shrimp

---

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..."

"Wait a fucking se-"

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?

If you have been around Neocities recently, you might have heard about F+F (FederieFederi), or maybe you were actually part of the project before it perished just like me. While I mostly avoid gossiping and drama, it is something I wanted to talk about because they have been around in my Neocities feed, and it still feels kinda odd not having random people's comments replying to F+F.

F+F is a project to advertise new and underrated Neocities sites, starting from October 2023. They would put the buttons of the sites in a wall, and people can click them to view the websites. Every month, the neighbours in the project can enter the monthly featured section by liking a announcement post, and as soon as they fit the rules, they will be featured on the main page for a month. This is a extremely simplified explaination, you can look up F+F for more information.

My experience with them isn't really special. Sometime around November I think, I saw a red dot on the top right corner, indicating a new follower. I rarely respond to new followers (I appreciate them, but I feel like talking to someone for following me feels kinda weird?), but I always go check their sites. Unlike most sites I see, I noticed many comments saying how they find the project interesting, and only then I noticed it's content is other people's buttons. I don't remember the details, but I was also included in the wall. Since then, I often scroll on their wall to check out any cool art sites.

Here's a little funny thing. Around two months ago, I found that my button being hidden in their wall, and inspecting their code I found that I might have been 'banned' (Can you actually ban or block someone on Neocities? Or is it some other mechanic I'm missing out?). I was a bit confused, but I came up with two possibilities: 1. They made a mistake 2. My content doesn't fit their rules anymore. I rethought what I posted to have them remove button, I didn't put anything inappropriate, I didn't even have topless men at that time yet, the worst thing here is probably the occasional vent posts but it does not violate any rules. I kinda gave up thinking about it for a while cuz I didn't mind, and after a while I saw F+F saying something about buttons, and I realized another possibility. I checked my button, it was somehow 89x32, what?! Perhaps something went wrong when I was editing the borders of my button, anyways I fixed it and F+F added me back. But still, I find it quite funny that my button was just one pixel off from the standard button, as if I'm messing with the button culture... but I wonder why F+F is so strict on the button size?

Occasionally, I would see a few people saying how F+F is kinda suspicious, and there had been rumours about something, and yet the details are incredibly vague, I cannot judge anything so I just moved on with my day. Fast forward to April, where things start to spiral down. F+F announced that they will unfollow everyone since Neocities' default website order is most followed, and Neocities doesn't count mutual followers into the follower count, and F+F decided to do that to get to top 8. I didn't really mind being unfollowed, the project will still work as intended: giving exposure to underappreciated sites.

Then something surprising happened, more and more people commented how they don't support the project anymore and wanted to leave. From what I can understand, the major reasons are that they don't want to chase popularity like modern social media, they don't like F+F's strong tone, and they suspect F+F being a Follow for Follow scheme. Comments were being flooded in F+F's (and many followers') feed, some being against F+F while some still doesn't really care, and then there's some who spams just for fun. Scrolling through the huge line of text, I even saw some familiar usernames, so that's entertaining.

I kept mostly silent in this situation, like how I stated I don't involve myself in dramas. I'm mostly surprised by the amount of people disagreeing with F+F. I don't really feel anything negative about F+F, perhaps due to my nature of listening to anyone even if they had the most unreasonable orders. Even after doing research about F+F, I still don't understand how Follow for Follow scheme is bad, it feels like something I'd commonly see in social media. And I was quite interested how people commented that they came to Neocities to avoid the social media flow. While I have seen people writing that they created their sites to get away from something like Twitter, I did not expect them to actually dislike chasing for views and likes. So that's a new thing I learnt about Neocities culture. For me, it is nice when people view and comment on my stuff, and at the same time I don't mind having low views, having low views means that less people see some embarrassing stuff, it's a neutral thing. Perhaps one thing I understand the most is the weirdly strong tone in their messages, though I assumed that it is just what happens with messages with no tone indicators...

Few days into the incident, F+F had cleared all the messages on their feed. They are going on a temporary hiatus, I assumed. One day later, I found out on a message of someone I follow... F+F's site was deleted. I was quite shocked, I initially thought they deleted it out of stress, but turns out their site was reported and Neocities took it down. And so that's it, so far F+F hasn't came back, and from what some sources said, they might not return.

I wouldn't say F+F has much impact on my site, or at least I don't know, because from the messages I've gotten, none of them said they came from F+F. Perhaps F+F's actions wasn't that great, but I kinda miss them? Maybe it's because of a habit where I would scroll their wall to check out cool websites, in fact some people I follow are found through F+F. And also, it might just me not knowing how to manage my followings and feeds, it feels kinda empty here not being spammed with messages. It was kinda annoying, but now it feels quiet. Well at least there is an archive of F+F, so it wasn't too late to continue check out these underappreciated sites, just like F+F said.

It feels like I haven't touched Neocities for the past few days. Yes, it's exam period, but no it's not because I was studying. While I did study, the major reason I didn't touch my laptop for a while is because, I was working on something which I have teased in my Piclog: A plush (of Cosmos obviously).

I actually have been wanting to make a plushie for a while, I have made a paper doll around last year November because I wanted a plushie but I cannot make one. I didn't have the materials nor I knew how to make one, and I don't plan on spending a lot of money so I didn't commission anyone. But recently, I wanted to redecorate my room a bit and decided to buy a dreamcatcher in TaoBao. And that time, I thought, "Why not also buy the stuff for making dolls?" And so, I looked up the materials and tutorials, and half-implusively bought the stuff. It isn't really that expensive shockingly.

I mainly used this video for the steps, and I also used the channel's other videos for some specific parts. In a nutshell the process is emboider the face, make the hair, cut and sew the body parts, then connect the face with the body and the back of the head (which is the hardest part IMO).

After the day I had an exam and accidentally ate a fly in the bubble tea (ugh), I came home feeling ill and a package of threads in my hands. I immediately started the first step. Embroidering isn't exactly hard, but it is very time-consuming, and I really hate how often the thread falls out of the needle, and I have to thread it back over and over again.

I also embroidered her palms and feet with toe beans. Cosmos does not have toe beans in her human form, it's just that it is a common thing among these dolls and I wanted to add them. These might be cute, but embroidering for the entire day feels very boring, I kinda got tired.

Sewing the body and the limbs isn't too hard actually, I think this is the fastest step in all of them. Though when I did the body, it is smaller than I initially thought, very cute.

And finally I finished attaching the head and the back side of the head, now I can finally- wait.

I realised I sewn the head wrong, so I had to undo the part. For some reason, I struggled a lot during this, it feels like the fabric didn't match the other lines, so I didn't know where to sew. Man this is hard. But finally I was done, her head and body are together, and it was time for stuffings.

---

Anddddd drum roll please

Damn this baby lookin kinda ugly

I felt kinda sad about the results not reaching my expectations. As someone who has a passion for art, I feel like I have some sort of talent and tends to learn new techniques very quickly. So when my doll is done and isn't as pretty as I imagined, there's some sort of guilt in me. HOWEVER, why am I putting so much pressure on myself when I never touched embroidery or even made a doll in my life? Anyways I quickly made some clothing for her, and put on the pair of shoes I painted prior the day the I got the embroidering tools.

Vibin

And she's (mostly) done! For her wings and tail, I wanted to make them later on, and a detachable accessory. While in canon, Cosmos can hide her ears and tails but not her wings, being able to remove her doll tail and wings makes it easier for her to wear new clothes. But if the Cosmos in lore wanted to wear something but her wings makes the clothing impossible to wear... too bad for her lol.

I just got an email for the announcement of the summer term (There wasn't summer term last year but I already knew about this year having one for a while. BTW have I mentioned that the dates of the summer term course nearly clashed with my trip to Tokyo? That was scary as hell), and it revealed a brief timetable: It lasts 8 hours starting from early morning, 4 days a week.

Dear god, travelling to school takes a lot of time, almost 1.5 hours, and the fact it starts at morning means I have to wake up at 6:30 every day. And I have to stay at school for 8 hours, which is something I really hate, especially after the current term. I had to go to school every weekday, and there are two days I had to stay at school for 9 hours due to the stupidly long time gap between classes. The awful timetable this term had me feeling miserable for months, it sucks how I managed through this term, just to suffer another early morning pain again.

One more unfortunate thing, I might have less time for Artfight, or at least put as much polishing in the art. It might be hard for me to keep up with my art skills when I am feeling sleepy, so I might possibly do more sketches instead of markers and other cool materials. One good thing I have learnt this semester is I realised that even if I suck at doing sketches on mobile, my lineart, coloring and shading is perfectly fine there, so I can spend my train time drawing on my phone. That is one positive way of thinking.

Another good thing is that I have one extra day off instead of having all the weekdays occupied, though the amount of hours at school is way more than the previous term, I feel like having one day off makes me feel a bit better about the situation. Also, the course only lasts for a month instead of 3 months like the other terms, so that's a shorter length of suffering!

A short diary and rant on what happened today, while it is not the worst thing happened to me, it is mentally and physically exhausting, and I might just lie down and cry if this happened to me again.

Today is the first exam, which is also the exam of the course I failed last year (Math is hard and the lecture notes sucked). This time, I am tutored thoroughly and actually understand everything. And during the exam, I managed to finish almost all the questions, except like the extremely difficult one and the other that I ran out of time to do, but I'm quite certain I'm going to pass this exam.

After the exam finished, I was quite relieved to get this damned course out of my life, no more eigenvectors. As the exam invigilator reminds us to "Take all our belongings", I mindlessly packed my stuff and left for lunch, then back home.

When I got home, I realised I forgot to print something for my upcoming art project (I will talk about in the future), but I don't want to wait until my next trip to school, so I decided to print it in the nearby library. When I got to the computer room, the personnel asked for my library card or ID card, normal procedure. As I opened my wallet for my ID card... there's no ID card. If you don't know, students are required to show their ID card and student card in exams, and the fact my ID card isn't in my wallet means I must have left it at school. I immediately fell into panick mode. After I printed the paper, I went back home, put down my stuff, took some other stuff and rushed outside.

As I was outside, I tried to calm myself down. Best and most likely scenario is that I find my card in the security room, and worst scenario is I have to spend 500 HKD on remaking my card, again (I lost my ID card last semester). I put on my favourite music despite my phone has less than 30% battery, and I took out the stack of old paper for drawing, and started drawing. Drawing my OCs had really calmed me down, seeing them interact is funny and heartwarming, even if the art isn't as polished as usual. If you haven't seen the drawings, you should go check it out. When I got out of the train, I was relatively calm and not distressed. As I slowly walked into my school, I was glad to know that my ID card is safely kept in the security room, as expected. Crisis averted.

That trip took 2.5 hours in total, times like this makes me wish my school isn't that far away. Anyway, I went back home and kinda sat with my sister and planned dinner with her. She ordered noodles from TamJar SamGor (popular MiXian noodle restaurant in Hong Kong)... And it turns out she forgot about a meeting she need to attend this evening, so she rushed outside unable to eat dinner, and I have to eat alone for dinner, sad.

At the time I'm writing this, bad thoughts are floating into my brain. The situation about my ID card could've been a lot worse if I haven't went to the library and checked my wallet, if I went to the next exam not knowing my ID card isn't in my wallet, I couldn't attend the exam. While the worst is over, I am bad at not thinking about the worst things happening to me, kinda like someone narrowly escaping from death and keeps thinking about that fact. I hope I sleep well tonight.

While I am mostly satisfied with my current hobby, which is drawing, recently I have been thinking of learning music. It is strange really, especially how I used to be afraid of music.

In both primary and secondary school, the music teachers were always intimidating, in some way they would always make me cry or terrified. Thanks to the incedent of being humiliated in front of my class then consequently being bullied for it for three years and being threatened when making the smallest mistakes (having to copy an entire music book if you forget to bring it for one class), my perception of music is something unapproachable and scary. Imagine having to learn an entirely new language, mixed with a little bit of Math, yes that’s how I view music.

Fast forward to university, where I don’t have to study compulsory music subject anymore. With freedom, I am able to try new things that I used to avoid or just forget about, like eggplants, tofu, going out to eat, or doing household chores… Life has been quite nice actually. And I also found myself listening to more new music. It feels as if the older I get, the better music gets, which is different from the saying that the current generation of music is getting worse. While there are songs I would fixiate for a long time and imagine OC animatics in my head, I feel like my fixation for songs is much stronger, as if I can connect myself with the songs. I believe The Crane Wives is where this phenomenon started, their songs are so good it changed me. Perhaps in some degree their songs inspired my OC lores?

Around last year, I also stumbled upon Will Wood. While his songs vary a lot, many of them got my heart. But in this blog, I will focus on Cicada Days. The first time I didn’t think of much except for the fact the song suddenly gets loud during the climax and shocked me a bit. But when I relistened to it a couple more times, I became to love it even more (a common process of listening to Will Wood songs). But what’s different from the other songs, there is a stranger feeling. The song starts out relatively peaceful and quiet, and it slowly builds up, and it reaches the high point, the video went from lush green forest to burning ashes, the yells in the singing is like cries of realisation on how the reason everything’s messed up because of one’s self.

"Here at the end of days, my God, what have I done?"

As the song is ending, it reverts to the quiet tone, and with a bit of exhaustion, getting back up from the pain and depression.

From the more common interpretation of the song, it feels like it’s about your relationships breaking because of yourself and feeling immense guilt about it. I don’t have much connections with people so from the sounds of this, it may seem like it isn’t too relevant to me. But for some reason, I can feel some sort of resonance. It feels like you growing up full of pain and problems, and realising that the reason why there’s so much obstacles in the first place all stems from you. With the frustration, anger, futility, it kinda feels like experiencing my emotions of my life in a song, so much feeling I have bottled up my whole life, and it managed to throw them back to me. Man if only I’m better at writing, just go listen to this song it’s so good.

After a while, a thought appeared. I may have hated learning music for the majority of my life, is it possible for me to learn music? Currently my best skill is drawing, while it is possible to draw something full of expression, I kinda of wished to create something powerful with sounds instead. The problem is that music feels way unfamiliar and abstract compared to drawing, both music and drawing are art and have various sets of rules, but perhaps the fact I have been drawing my entire life and seen music as incomprehensive horro, it feels like there's a mental block between me and music. Learning drawing was relatively simple for me, just pick up a pencil and draw a circle to draw a face, but I have absolutely no idea how to start learning music or even create a song.

It might take a while for me to start learning how to music, or never if I realise music isn't really my thing. What I know is that I should at least try and not give up before starting thinking that I do not have the talent.

From I often see in medias, childhood is often seen as a time of innocence and joy, they have nothing to worry about until they grow up and become depressed from work. And for me, the older I get, the most I feel icky about this trope.

There is nothing wrong about missing childhood, everyone has different perspective. But from my perspective, how the stories portray growing feels kinda… violent? Like I saw one representing becoming an adult with murder? Is this what many people feel about growing up? Because of my personal experiences, I tend to feel less connected to these type of stories, and enjoy them less.

Another thing I don’t really like about it is how it often hows growing up equals to leaving your childhood behind. The most recent story with this trope is Blue Lock, where Bachira decides to leave behing his imaginary friend and his old ideology of playing for others. I might be entirely missing the point, but I was extremely sad during that scene, because I was focusing on how he is leaving his imaginary friend and the fact he said his imaginary friend is gone now in the anime. Leaving behind the stuff you once enjoyed as symbolism of growing up isn’t that great, I see childhood as one core of one’s personality, abandoning it will make you empty. A bit of spoilers: His imaginary friend didn’t disappear contrary to what the anime said (Common Anime L), it made a reappearance.

What I dislike the most is childhood is always shown to be perfect and conpletely happy. While many children are free from most adult responsibilities, they are definitely not as perfect as some people make it out to be. Personally, I wasn’t as anxious and depressed as a kid, but much of the stress isn’t very visible because adults kinda neglected my emotional needs and I unconsciously hid them away over time. And for some reason, many people think it is impossible for kids to feel stressful and therefore it is invalid for them to feel negative emotions. “Man I wish I am a student again, so I can play all day and date cute girls.” “You will miss your childhood once you grow older.” “You should not feel stressful when I had to work all day!” God I hate these.

In my perspective, adulthood has been treating me well. While I don’t have controlling parents, I don’t have much freedom in expressing my emotions, being with certain people, and personal space. When I became an adult, my parents didn’t pay attention to me much anymore. After I went to counselling, I got to take care of my mental health, and got more courage to show discomfort when a close one says something I don’t appreciate. I have the choice to go out for dinner to be alone for a while, I can spend all day doing whatever without being judged. Most importantly, my brain doesn’t feel like there’s a permanent fog anymore, I actually feel alive! I feel like I can genuinely enjoy the things in life ever since then.

Being an adult is still hard, university is stressful, I often slip back into bad memories, and I sometimes still fixiate on that one memory of a good friend. If I am to compare my childhood and my current life (even though my childhood memories feel detached from my identity at this point), I think it is fair to say I am at the happiest point of my life. But who knows, I am only a few adult years old, maybe some years later I will miss being a mistreated, bullied child, just like what those adults said LOL.

This is the day I decide to leave Twitter for good. I didn't really like the thought of leaving social media before, I was often told that 'social media bad' all the time, so much so I became sick of this idea, as I see internet being more kind than real life people. But thanks to Elon Musk, the updates get worse every time. For You tab is the default tab, even if you click the tab you want, it is very easy to swipe to the For You tab. For You tab shows random popular tweets, and some of them I would rather not look at them much, like medical malpractice, child abuse, and humans being assholes in general and you can’t do anything about it. While I acknowledge humanity is awful, I still don’t want myself to lose the remaining trust in people I have left. Even if I try to hide the posts, they still keep showing up, as if Twitter wants us to feel miserable. So I decided to take care of myself more, and look for an alternative, possibily exclusively use neocities.

I hesitated a bit about leaving a social media that I stayed for so long, here’s some history kinda worth sharing. I first created a twitter account for Mineplex, but I didn’t use it much for a while. During my Danganronpa or Houseki no Kuni phase I think, I decided to go there to search for fanart of my favs, I will spend hours to collect any fanart that includes my blorbos. And that became my main reason to use Twitter.

During the early Cookie Run days, I started to post fan art. I lost the account because I was underaged when I created the account, so I created another one. While it only gets ton of likes once a blue moon, it is nice when people enjoy my Pome fan art. It was fun while it lasted, and I’m really grateful there are followers there who always like my art, and the fellow Pome fan is awesome, I feel kinda sad I didn’t have the time back then to repay them a birthday art. At some time I reactivated my old account, so I used it for Blue Lock instead. For some reason, I didn’t feel like drawing the fan art as much, so I just go there for viewing the new content and leaks instead.

With me leaving Twitter, I would probably decrease looking at fan art more, but I am in my Original Content phase, so it isn’t a big deal. However, it will have a big impact in my interest in Blue Lock, as it is where I get all of the news. Although I am less interested in the new chapters, it feels kinda sad because it feels like I am leaving this fandom. Well we still have season 2 coming up this year, I hope it will give me as much excitement as season 1. Another positive note is that some of the people I follow on Twitter, I also followed them on instagram. Unfortunately, there are cute hamster account which only posts exclusively on Twitter, I have to leave them behind 😔.

If you are viewing this from Twitter, it will be nice if you try to make a Neocities site. It’s quite fun :3