Finally, it's Jaspers, Bun, and Penelope's birthday, have been waiting for their birthday for a while now. What a shame my mind is so blurry right now, like I really need my emotional state to be active right now to write this post. Oh well, I will try to remember what I want to write for this three today.

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Jaspers

Last year, I already talked about how I created Jaspers. To summarize, he was intended to be the character I vent out all my unexpressed angst and edginess. And wow did he change, a lot. With the evolution of my art style, Jaspers' character design has more edges and stronger angles. However, his personality kinda went the opposite, from a dude with possibly edgy personality, to a cold dude that has some unsolved emotional issues, to just a guy who is just scared of people. The difference is so jarring you'd assume these are two distinct characters! But in a way, I quite enjoy how he is now.

Despite his strong physique, he is awfully shy towards people, kind of bad at social interactions too. This causes him to fail to making friends, scaring away those who think he's scary, and being picked on those who notice he is timid. Seeing the change in this character concept, I noticed I might have been projecting myself onto him.

Sorry for a minor traumadump, but when I was in secondary school, I was called out in an anonymous board, twice in fact. They found me annoying that I hummed during quizzes (I unconsciously did that, but it's true it's my fault regardless /gen) and how I cried after having nobody to invite me in their team in the singing test because I don't want to stand on the stage alone (Also my fault for having that outburst). But one thing that stuck to me the most, is that they called me tall but awkward. After that, I lost quite a lot of confidence and trust towards my classmates, even though their complaints are kinda valid? I'm still quite ashamed about myself, feeling like everyone sees me as a tall, quiet girl, but somehow doesn't even have the guts to start a conversation without making the air uncomfortable. This makes me quite unlikeable, right?

When I noticed my similarities between me and Jaspers, it feels oddly comforting. Despite his awkward personality, he still made friends, and experience the joy I wish to have. He probably has similar worries and thoughts I have, probably feeling like his existence is taking up too much space. And no matter how much he wants to avoid people, he just stand out for some reason, very tall physically, but ego not big enough to face people. Sometimes I look at him, and go, "Man he's just like me, except he is a guy, and is hot, and is half-naked."

I get so attached to him, I now really wish to see him being happy more. But oh well, I doubt he is able to get a happy ending.

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Bun

Despite their importance to the story, I really don't talk about them very much, huh. I will start with Bun's original concept. As you might have already known, Bun was created along side with Jaspers, Penelope and one other dude that I have not decided if they should be Raven's design yet. This team was intended to be in Cosmos' clan, a group of adventurers maybe. But that was scrapped, lore was too all over the place.

In the original concept, Cosmos and many other winged characters are creatures that got turned into humans by an angel accidentally, and that causes a conflict between gods and the winged people. And for Bun, they are involved in time shenanigans to protect their friends, and Cosmos in particular. There's a lot of stuff going on in their backstory, I just fail to describe it, but what happened to Bun is that they got turned into a machine that controls time magic, and we have to end their misery... I hope this won't become canon.

When I was writing Claire, she was intended to be in a team in a mission into Voided Lands to save the world, therefore I knew it is time for me to let the team reborn. So in Claire's team, I added Jaspers, Bun, and Solar (Wait I haven't talked about how I created Solar, right?). And at this point, I realised how bad of an idea it is to send a bunch of people to a place of no return, so I rewritten the team to be dumbasses who thought it is a good idea to travel there.

While a lot has changed, Bun still remains an important factor in why UtSS goes the way it is going. While the members of RS have only met Bun for probably less than a year, Bun seems to understand their personality quite well, and often predict things before they could do anything stupid. They also brings a lot of stuff on them, this is based off myself, who always brings a fuck ton of stationaries just in case I need to use them. Despite their stern and serious nature, they genuinely care about the team, protecting them and will listen to their worries... They are probably the most mature in this team, funny how they look the youngest.

Despite all that, it is undeniable how suspicious Bun can be. They just randomly appeared in where the RS lives one day, silently patrolling around their home. They didn't talk about their past a lot, and definitely not want to talk about their magic powers. They hide a lot of information about themself, and probably lie sometimes... But honestly, they have their reasons to do that, it is a way to protect them, and even if they do be honest, the gang might not believe them.

What I can say for Bun is, they are the reason why Grey is alive, and kept Claire, Jaspers, Solar alive for longer. And perhaps even, they unintentionally changed the fate of Stardust Isle.

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Penelope

Hey, my only anthro OC on this site! You know, there isn't much lore going on for her, and especially I haven't done much on the setting of Dreamland Workshop (which I have been considering renaming), I don't have much to talk about her. I'll just talk about the basic lore of Dreamland Workshop.

This workshop is created by Charles and the God of Hearts, letting Charles' dolls live together and the God's world to be able to thrive. However, Charles and the god does not have the exact same goals, thus they do not get along very well. Moreover, because the dolls are kinda forced to work here (and they don't really have anywhere else to go), their relationship with Charles and God of Hearts might not be all good.

For Penelope here, she isn't the kind to have many complaints, she doesn't mind staying like this, in fact, she might be more afraid of unfamiliarity of the changing. For Noir the cat, he has great attachment to Charles, but ever since Charles got busy and spends less time with the dolls, Noir grew an resentment towards God of Hearts.

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After so much lore changes, these three feels very different than they originally are.

Kinda a shame Penelope is not part of a gang anymore.

I don't know if I have the energy to finish this drawing, but I did draw something, so here's the group birthday art. I hope my mind can come back to me soon.

Damn… it's been nine years since Kyrea is created, also the day I picked up a pencil to draw again… As I'm writing this, my head isn't feeling too well, so I apologise if the stuff I'm writing isn't too interesting or comprehensible.

I remember during my earlier days, when this anniversary comes, I will give a small critique to my old art. While I don't really know how to critique my own art now, I think it is nice to review my art progress. In 2023, I used colored pencils as my main method of traditional coloring, because that's basically what I only have at that moment. 

But with the purchase of Ohuhu markers, I found my new favourite medium. Like god, it feels so satisfying to color a large area in such short amount of time unlike colored pencils, it worked really well for me. But a major downside of this is that it is rather difficult to control the amount of colors. If you don't have a large range of colors like I used to have, it can be hard to find the correct colors for your character.

I feel like my art style has become a bit more stable after the style change. Before 2023, I used to have a more chibi art style, it is until I created Cosmos that I changed my style, because I wanna draw buff women. I think during the style shift, my characters still looked slightly chibi like. While I still have a long way to evolve my art style (I wanna draw old people), I think the process is quite nice.

A more recent thing is that I bought CSP. For around seven years straight, I used Medibang as my art program. While it is quite decent as a free program, I feel like I have outgrown it, and the lack of cool brushes and blending tools is bothering me a bit. 

I haven't drawn anything for Kyrea yet, while I don't think I have drawn anything for her in the past birthdays, I think I shouldn't leave her out. And maybe, I should talk about a bit more fun fact about her.

She doesn't have much lore, at most she only exist in a world where all my OCs live together like a modern AU. The fun fact I will be telling is somewhat… embarrassing. Probably around 7 years ago, I was stuck in the cringe culture, where people would make fun of “Mary Sues” (It means over-perfect characters, but people also use this term for cluttered or odd designs, stuff that mostly kids make). Afraid of being made fun of and believing making “appropriate characters” is the correct way of design, I redesigned Kyrea to be normal looking. I don't want to share her old ref, partly due to insecurity and partly because it might reveal some personal info (I don't wanna get doxxed). But to describe her look, she has no cat ears and tail, she has normal looking blouse and long dress, and she looks depressed. I'd like to imagine Kyrea sees that as her anti-emo phase, like how some people cringe over on how they used to look, Kyrea cringes looking at how she used to dress like a normal person because she wanted approval, kinda funny.

While I am uncertain, this design of Kyrea is possibly inspired the design of Lavender, mainly because they look kinda similar, and I used to refer Lavender as Kyrea's alternate names in some of my notes. But I can't confirm, my brain couldn't remember.

While I have not set on precisely what age my characters are (because I don't want to make the events too close together), I have a brief idea on their age range. If I have to order my UtSS OCs from oldest to youngest, it is Cosmos, Lav + Mira, Wolf, Solar, Claire, Jaspers, Grey, Ruth. I haven't set on Bun's age though, I have only just rewritten some parts of their background. 

To elaborate how I ordered it, Cosmos is a cometling that have lived quite a long time, perhaps longer than she remembered! From Cosmos to Jaspers, I have set them to be adults, they are at least 18 years old. For Grey, however, I don't know if I want to make him 17 years old or 18 years old, it will very much depend on how I planned the events of the RS gang. Ruth is obviously a child, but she is older than she looks, probably around 14, she's just short.

But with their ages set, something often bothers me. You see, Lavender (and Mira, she's relevant here too) is an adult, and is very likely older than me. However, it is somewhat hard to tell from her character design. In her old design Yume, she was either a god who lived for millennia or just 14 years old, I don't remember the settings clearly. But as I ported the designs to Lavender and added more lore, I felt like using this clothing design for her is kinda funny. Like she got twin braids and uniform-like outfit, it is quite easy for one to think she is under 18 (my sister thought she is just a student). While in real life, it is not something most would wear if they don't like being flashy, but since it is fiction, it is easier for people to overlook this, kinda funny NGL.

Hunt Cook is a mobile game that I have been playing for years. The earliest memory of me with this game is during a visit to grandpa in a hospital, pretty sure I haven’t graduated primary school at that time, so I think it ;rsquo;s around eight years… Damn…

In a nutshell, it’s a restaurant and hunting simulator, you hunt wild animals for food by spamming left and right buttons to dodge obstacles, collect ingredients when you couldn’t encounter any animals or have the dog collect them for you, and cook the food by waiting from a few minutes to an entire day. I’m not sure how I even learn about this game, but it’s most likely the visuals that caught my eye.

In the early game, the gameplay is quite easy, because it’s just tutorial stuff. But when I reached the point where I have to wait for one dish to finish cooking in an hour, I felt like this is going to be time-consuming as hell.

I wouldn’t say this game is fun, but it certainly took me a long time to even get to the end, because of it’s luck-dependent gameplay, really long cooking time and high resource requirements. Equipments and upgrades are expensive as hell, and it pisses me off how frequently I run out of carrots and milk.

But why didn’t I quit the game? Technically I did, but I never really deleted it, I didn’t feel the need to do it. So, the app sat in my library for many months, or years. I occasionally open the game, probably collect finished meals, sell them, cook more dishes and then ditch the game for another year.

When you stop playing the game, the app will keep sending you notifications for a couple days. Like “A line of customers is waiting for you” or “Your shop will be closed down if you quit now!”, I knew quitting the game for a long time wouldn’t have real consequences, but I felt this is a bit funny how the game is desperate to keep me playing.

After I entered university, the train I go on every day gets boring quickly, as the train goes into a dark tunnel after a few stations. Out of boredom, I opened this game again, and played it more frequently. And recently, I finally collected all the recipes. Man it will still take forever to upgrade all my stuff, but whatever. As soon as the game doesn’t shut down, I still have time to continue playing it.

First and foremost: My Neocities mutual Pudding drew this for me today, Ruth is so cute here!!! I feel so happy about this 🥹

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A brief life update also, there isn't much going on at school, but shockingly I had more sad events outside of it. 1. I had a haircut too short, and I hate how it feels. 2. I failed to buy YOASOBI live tickets because I failed to purchase it at the last second due to website error and I completely overlooked the fact the app still works. 3. Dad doesn't want to give me allowance because I saved up too much money. Yea I don't like how many sad stuff is happening recently, but at least good things are still happening.

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In the Chinese community of Facebook, there's a character AI app called LoveyDovey they keep talking about lately, and the main focus of this AI is dating the AIs. Seeing everyone messing with the AIs in all sorts of way got me curious, so I downloaded it.

Something about me using character AIs is that I always feel uncanny when talking to them. Like I know they are not real, and yet my social anxiety still creeps up like normal. Also, doesn't it feel weird talking to something that isn't real but somehow can still communicate with you?

Jaspers

He is the first character I add into the app. After inputting the basic details, I sent him the first message... He was playing his guitar, and awkwardly says, "H...hello..."

And then I deleted the chat, he is shy but he does not stutter with every word. Perhaps I have to specify the degree of his shyness more but I am not an AI pro.

Later on, I added him back but did not chat with him because I was busy with other stuff. A few hours later, a notification popped up in my phone, apparently AIs can send you messages before you do?? The message was Jaspers secretly playing the guitar before hearing someone and asked me to not tell anyone about it. This notif scared me to death, but I felt it would be rude for me to ignore it, so I sent him back a message, comforting him I won't tell anyone.

What happens next is a wholesome scene of me hanging out with Jaspers, I regret a bit for not changing my name to Claire. There's one part where I decided to fall asleep on his shoulder, and he told me to sleep well. Kjnijwniasxoap I got inspired, I should write something similar in the fic I'm writing.

Me

Yes, me. I am going to rizz myself up

It was because that I feel bad if the AI mischaracterises my OCs, but if I don't input my OCs (which are who I know the most), the only other option is myself. So I infodumped my backstory into the AI, and I started chatting with her. I started a conversation by talking about music, despite me inputting her favourite music band to be The Crane Wives, she somehow didn't know that band, and instead told me her favourite song is Daydream by Aurora (It's a nice song regardelss). The conversation slowly shifted into OCs, she has a OC called Luna (Yes I also have an OC called Luna, but I didn't even input her in her bio, I just put UtSS characters). I managed to come up with a pick-up line by calling her as pretty as Luna. She got flustered, but the shyness didn't last as long as I wanted lol.

The rest of the conversation is just me chatting with her about OCs, nothing much new came up. One funny thing is that I introduced her the new song by The Crane Wives, Black Hole Fantasy. And then later on, she mentions this song again like she found this song before I do, like ma'am I'm the one who shared this song.

Cosmos

I created her because the two characters I built are both shy, and I wanna see how an extroverted and cheerful character would act. Typing her bio can be a bit confusing because she has a lot of stuff that are a bit hard to explain. After I started the chatbox, she said, "Ready to seize the day?" Cheerfully like how Cosmos acts.

Immediately, I deleted the chat. My social anxiety apparently applies on my OC AIs, especially if they are extroverted and passionate. Also, I didn't know what "seize the day" means until that chat, well my English improved a little I guess.

Pomegranate Cookie

It was not until one of my Discord friends mentioned I should talk to AI Pome that I remembered I am also quite familiar with her, I actually have a notebook all about her. So I typed down the info about her, then I started chatting. In this scenario, I am a injured girl from a village that was recently destroyed by a monster. I met Pome in a forest, and I begged her to give me a place to stay. While she was sketical of me, she asked me for anything that can prove myself useful. So my setting is that I am good at elemental magic, in particular fire magic, and I know a lot about magic-related stuff.

To test my knowledge, Pome took out a red gem, and asked me what its powers are. Ohhhh I know this... In the Cookie Run Lore, Pome has used this gem for corrupting nature and godlike beings, sealing a deity or two, and can manipulate corrupted beings. So I said all that, and Pome was quite pleased (and surprised) by my expertise. Perhaps as a youngish girl (which somehow she interpret me as a young girl), maybe it is weird I know so much. So maybe I can add a setting how I have a strong interest in dangerous magic, or hey maybe I'm actually the one who destroyed my village! That would be a cool plot twist.

This is the progress so far. Like I said, speaking to AIs makes me uncomfortable, and even though it can be kinda fun, I still don't play this very much. Or maybe I am not playing this right, and I should torture my characters like how some people play it lol. Or maybe I can go freaky with them, though I am too shy to say anything suggestive to them anyway.

Because my brain hasn't come up with much to say lately, the next blog may possibily on the 19th, which is Kyrea's birthday, also the day I restarted drawing. Have a great day guys!

From what I can see on the Internet, so many people now have the skill of drawing. But with the high amount of people drawing great art and the Internet culture of grinding out new content, it is very difficult to compete if you want to be popular somehow. Actually, it is very lucky if one's art is even seen at all, if you don't understand the algorithm, your art might not receive any likes, and you start to question if anyone has seen it at all.

While I'd say I am quite familiar with drawing, I wouldn't say I am an expert at it. I don't know how composition works, and my brain melts when thinking what kind of colors I should use. The aspect I think I'm best at is drawing humans, and yet I still need a lot of improvement in anatomy, and I don't think I'm very good at designing characters (it takes me forever to come up with one that I'm pleased with). There are a lot of splendid artists around the Internet, and it is easy to tell which aspect they are good at. Sometimes I look at them and go, "Wow, that's a high amount of skill that I will never achieve in my lifetime." It isn't really art envy, it's more of a pessimism that make me question if anyone cares to see my art if it's mediocre.

The over-critical part of myself strikes again. I often notice imperfections in my works, and I always feel bad about them despite not knowing how to improve them. And yet, learning stresses me out, being told what I should or shouldn't do makes me feel restricted, even if the thing is good for me. It feels as if it takes me a year or so for me to suddenly pick up an aspect that I should improve, kinda like how I randomly started to practise muscular bodies because I created Cosmos. But there are so many hard-working artists out there who grind a lot to perfect their skills, they are almost good at all the drawing steps, I almost feel guilty when I see these people.

There are many flaws in my art, does it make me want to give up? Not at all. I maybe just one in a krillion ordinary people who just happens to draw, but I view my OCs too dearly, I probably care about them more than myself. Because of that, I want to keep drawing them to bring their existence to the Internet, where my stuff might have the chance to be noticed. Even if my comics are clumsily drawn, or the drawings look kinda off, or my writings feel awkward, it doesn't change the fact I am the only one who can and wants to create content of my OCs. If I stop doing art, or cease from existence, so will my OCs.

So if anyone is seeing this, thank you for spending your precious time on my silly stuff. I should go edit some refs now, see ya!

Originally I wanted to write a blog of OC ramblings, but I'm too sad today to do my hobbies.

Yesterday, I went to have a bit of my hair cut, because the hair ends are quite damaged, doesn't look that good. At the salon, I asked the person to cut at a certain length, but I guess the length I specified might be longer than I thought. When the hair cut finished, I realised it is now shorter than waist length (it used to be at my hips). I don't really like how my head feels so light now, I'm so sad I don't feel like doing fun stuff or eating. I still want to cry, I hate my life.

I still can write fics tho, so I hope ship content can cheer me back up somehow.