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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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 🥹

---

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.

---

[This part is originally about messing with character AI, though now I feel like it might not be very good to discuss it too much out here, to not encourage more people into using it. So this part is hidden, I apologise for talking about this despite the controversies of genAI, it was insensitive of me (Edit: 10 Dec 2024)]

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.

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

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

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

Even the vibes feel similar to canon

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

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

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

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

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

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

I somehow didn't take a pic during the first playthrough of the ending, this is the second one, where I replaced Moth, Cacao and Golden Cheese with Kyrea, Lavender and Millennial Tree

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

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

Man remember when Cosmos's skin is white Pic so old their names are different Precious bby

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

My fav trio + My mii

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

"Favourite Party Member: Claire" ...hehe "Jaspers, who like Claire, secretly saw this" hehehehe

Ok I'll stop now

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

The most recent Mii designs for Cosmos, Lavender and Kyrea Jaspers is a cutie pie I love their expressions here

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

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

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

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

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

Strong and firm rivalry my beloved

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

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

---

Sensei! I Like You So Much!

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

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

---

School schedule

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

---

Cosmos Shimeji

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

First attack

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

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

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

My first alcohol marker attack

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

Object Show Attack

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

Red, red moon, keep on rising~

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

Best attack

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

Mass attack

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

Attack x2

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

Ayyy what's up it's me again

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

---

Thoughts and aftermath

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

Drawing process: Alcohol marker Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I forgot to share this photo last post, the cake is originally for my sister, but I took the picture with Lavender because her birthday was quite close

---

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

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

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

I think this is the first time I've shown Lavender smiling? God I'm so normal abt them

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

No matter what it takes

---

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

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

---

Interlude

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

lol mini Lavender is so angy

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

---

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

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

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

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

---

The original drawing for Lavender and Mira's birthday made months ago, but my art has improved a lot and I think they deserved more.

---

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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