Part of neocities.org
Here, I post updates about art, life, media, and generally what I'm thinking about.
Hourly Comic Day was on February 8 this year and I did it! I was more successful than in previous years, mostly by keeping it very simple. I did everything in just ballpoint pen in my sketchbook and basically didn't redraw anything.
I thought it would be best to collect them in a blog post. Here you go!
Happy New Year! You made it. I’m proud of you.
A lot of people grumble about new year, new me. Not me. I love to read End Of Year lists. I love seeing people talk about what they got done this year… Or what they didn’t get done. That’s okay too. I like seeing everyone come together and go ‘whoa, time passed. How was that?’
And I love Resolutions. I love Goals. I realized this year I’m sort of embarrassingly Self Improvement Pilled— in another life I’m constantly telling you about Atomic Habits. In this life I listened to If Books Could Kill, though, so you’re safe for now. But still, New Year’s is the perfect time to outline big beautiful goals and imagine all the ways I could live my life. I like to set goals and feel like I’m reinventing myself. I also manage to feel generally okay when I don’t hit every goal I set, so the end of the year (usually) is not crash out time. I think this is because I tend to set a ton of resolutions, and don’t really expect myself to do all of them. I view my resolutions as more things I want to explore. I’d like to at least hit a couple, but I mean, I can’t do them all.
I’ve also gotten a lot better about not viewing progression as linear— I think ‘one step forward, two steps back’ has kind of a negative connotation, but less and less I feel like effort is truly wasted on the front of living better. Whether that’s working out, or eating right, or spending less time on your phone or whatever, even if you don’t manage that forever, the benefit you experienced didn’t evaporate. Maybe it will make it easier to go back to those good habits? Who knows.
So anyway, today I would like to A) reflect on how I did this last year and B) tell you some of my plans for next year.
2025 was, as the internet will tell you, a raging dumpster fire of a year for the world at large. But for me it was personally pretty decent.
The good:So yeah, progress, but still I feel like I need to eternally push forward. More Progress! Probably I’ll never be fully satisfied with where I’m at, but this year I feel a bit more satisfied with the effort I put forth, which I think is a change.
Some of this planning kind of relies on my health improving.. Which I think it will. I hope it will. I have some generic self improvement goals that I won’t outline in detail here (‘save more money’, ‘eat better’, ‘exercise more’, etc). But otherwise, some goals:
1. Keep doing game dev stuff.I still like doing this so I shall. I want to finish the project I started last month… Hopefully like in the first quarter of the year? And then do some more game jams. I’d like to push out like… four small games this year. We’ll see if that’s doable. I think deadline helps.
2. Get back into gouache.I have a big set of acryla-gouache that I have barely touched. I want to start painting again… This depends on me being able to comfortably sit at my desk though. But I’d like to do a few paintings this year. I kind of miss working traditionally— so much of my hobby stuff is screen. And work stuff. I think that’s one of the reasons I like swimming, so gouache could be good for that reason too.
3. Volunteer.Did you know the world is bad? Does that knowledge lock you in a rigor mortis state, eyes frozen open, jaw stuck so you can’t even scream? Knowledge continues to stream into you, no matter how much you try to work your frozen muscles, to do something, to make it stop. You can’t stop it. You can’t do anything.
The avalanche of bad is not something I can do very much about. But I can maybe try and make things slightly less bad around me, so I’d like to find some kind of local volunteering opportunity near me to feel like I am contributing to making the world less of a hellhole. I imagine I won’t get totally unstuck doing this, but maybe it will be a little bit of oil in my Tin Man joints.
4. LESS PASSIVE MEDIA. STOP IT. JUST STOP IMan I want to be a cool person who tells you about all the awesome off-beat movies they’re watching, or the niche games on itch they’re playing. Instead I’m out here fucking watching some guy play a mid video game for twenty hours, and not even mid in an interesting way. I’m not even Full Experiencing the mid. This was one of my resolutions last year, and it got better but it could get… Even betterer. I want to keep up with stuff! I want to know what people are talking about! I WOULD LIKE TO WATCH SEVERANCE. PEOPLE AREN’T EVEN TALKING ABOUT SEVERANCE ANYMORE MAN IT’S ALL PLURIBUS NOW AND I’M SO BEHIND ON PRESTIGE TV THAT APPLE TV HAS TWO PRESTIGE SHOWS I HAVEN’T WATCHED??
Anyway yeah. Probably I need to block Youtube for good or something. I’ll think about it.
I hope you had a good 2025. Even if you didn’t, that’s okay too. Tell me if you have resolutions, or reflections from the past year! I’d love to read them.
Here’s to 2026. Over the middle point of this decade, can you believe it? Time does fly. Well, I’m happy to be on this big blue ball with you.
I watched a bunch of movies in October to get into the Halloween mood, and planned to do a big writeup of what I thought of them. But then November occurred quicker than I thought it would (damn you, time). So now this is a general movie writeup. We’ll start with my October picks and then throw some miscellaneous ones in at the end!
OCTOBERHalloween - Really loved this. Could not get over all the teens fucking in random people’s beds— is that what you did as a teen if you had sex? Please let me know. I also really enjoy how dedicated Michael Myers is to the setup. It’s about the kill but it’s also about menacingly standing around and thinking about the craziest way to do something. Bedsheet ghost moment ruled tremendously.
Nightmare on Elm Street - I was nervous to watch this one but it was a sweet spot of not-too-scary for baby me. I loved all the dream sequences— they had this really well done, slightly illogical but inescapable feeling to them. The ending being crazy Home Alone traps was also awesome. I didn’t really love the final zinger dream moment, but other than that (and bugs) this was one of my favorites of the month.
Friday the 13th - For some reason I found this one pretty scary. I think it’s just that the teens are getting mowed down so efficiently while most of them have not a clue is going on. The script is pretty terrible and seeing the killer kind of kills the tension (easily defeated by getting bonked on the head with a wooden beam), but it was the one I found the scariest for some reason. The ending also has a kind of sweet melancholy to it that is then I imagine totally ruined by all the sequels. I could not believe there is no hockey mask in this movie.
Practical Magic - Not a horror movie besides the nightmare of straight people but what the fuck is going on in this movie. Horrible decisions made. If I lived in a town where every single person hates my ass I would simply not live there anymore. Daughters got over their dead dad FAST. Anyway enjoyable watch but really bewildering. I could probably write a much more thorough review of this bizarre movie but I’ll spare all of us from that.
Alien - This was my favorite of the month! It’s a movie that is very embedded in the public consciousness so I pretty much knew everything that was going to happen, but it was still so scary throughout. It’s cool when a pop culture touchstone is actually just super awesome and holds up really well. Makes you realize everyone just fucking wishes they had the sauce that this has. Also, this is an extremely video game movie.
Shutter Island - Also not really a horror movie, more of a thriller — and a capital T Twist movie. I think this would be a fun rewatch, but I won’t say more. I can’t quite give this full marks, because I wanted a bit more on the themes it presented, but I definitely thought a lot about it in the days after I watched it.
The Exorcist - This is an interesting one— I had confused it with the Conjuring which I think has a more clear-cut Catholicism victory, so the ending really caught me off guard. I had to sit and reframe a lot of how I interpreted the movie, which I felt had a pretty conservative lens… And, well, I sort of still feel that way, but I think the conclusion makes that feel a lot murkier and more interesting. I would want to rewatch this one. I also thought all the projectile green goo vomiting was really funny. Probably the doctors should have considered options beyond mental health at that point.
Some other, non-horror/spooky movies I watched that are TOPICAL:Chainsaw Man - Reze Arc - I am one of those annoying people that did not care for the Chainsaw Man anime and will whinge about the manga being better. It feels a bit insane to do this when this is one of the highest-budget, highest-effort anime adaptations in recent memory, but, well, too bad. I will continue to be annoying. I find that the pacing is slow, what the anime chooses to expand upon is bewildering and a waste of screen time, and the hyper-polished art style loses some of the grit and style of the manga. I want the whole show to have the high-energy feeling of its openings and endings and it just does not. It opts for a cinematic, slow approach which I understand but dislike. Also, it’s just not funny. Chainsaw Man manga is so funny.
That being said, I do find that the approach worked a lot better for me in movie form— maybe that’s the arc working well in this style, maybe the cinematic approach works better… in cinema, but also I think it’s just better paced and directed than the anime was. Still, every once in a while I get a whiff of my Ideal Chainsaw Man adaptation, and I go, ‘man, wouldn’t that be cool…’ but I sort of feel insane talking about it. Like I’m sitting in a high class steak restaurant staring wistfully at the burger joint across the street. But I feel as I’ve mostly accepted what this adaptation is trying to do, and it’s doing it well. I still feel like my complaints about the TV series are fair though.
K-Pop Demon Hunters - Watched this late, but pure bubblegum fun. I enjoyed the songs and animation! The girls are cute and the conceit is funny (although I did lol when I realized that this movie basically goes ‘the K-Pop industry has to exist or the world WILL END). I wish that it was more girls and less het romance as an allegory for oppression, especially when that allegory ends with all demons getting killed anyway? But it was a fun watch.
I also really liked the tiger. I would say a good 30% of my fondness for the movie is because of this tiger.
Wicked: For Good - Pretty much nodding with everyone that says, ‘this is not as good as the first one’, which is not really the movie’s fault. The politics of this movie are also fascinating, in a way I’m not 100% sure is intentional? The moral truly does seem to be ‘change is only possible granularly inside the system and radical revolution does not work, and also you need to be hot’. Some of the details about people who do the actual work not getting their flowers is accurate, but… I don’t know. Left a bad taste in my mouth.
I also think the added songs are pretty much a miss— Glinda’s is pretty painfully obvious, although I guess that’s par for the Wicked course. And Elphaba’s song about the United States— I mean Oz makes her ending even more of a downer. She tells all the animals to Never Leave and Never Stop Fighting for the home that they love… And then at the end of the movie she leaves and stops fighting. That sucks! I guess the movie is supposed to be a tragedy, but still.
On the other hand, Elphaba and Glinda sing For Good and say they love each other. So who can say if this movie is good or bad.
Thursday Murder Club - A movie made for watching with your family while you are home for Thanksgiving, which I did. It’s about a group of retirees solving murder mysteries, which is a fun premise but this movie is honestly pretty bad. I only mention it mostly because I want to tell you (spoilers I guess) that this movie has the most blasé murder-suicide I have ever seen that our fun little main character crew basically signs off on? It was a bewildering moment. They do let the human trafficking ring continue though. This sounds insane out of context but that’s because it is insane in context. Oh well, my mom liked it, so that’s something.
That’s the movies I watched over the past few months, besides some rewatches I won’t go into! This is really more movies than I’ve watched the entire rest of the year. Movies: they’re pretty fun. I recommend them.
I haven’t been up to much besides that. I recently picked up the GDQuest Learn 2D Game Dev from Zero course, and I’ve been making good progress through that. Hopefully I will feel more confident in my abilities and maybe join some game jams at the other end… Well, maybe this is a way to continue to procrastinate and avoid Scary Project Work, but oh well. Time honing skills isn’t wasted anyway.
Oh yeah, and I also added some sketchbook drawings to my gallery. You should check those out if you haven’t already.
See you next time!
Hi there! After finishing up the Toxic Yuri VN Jam, I have been tinkering away at this website. I was inspired to do so because of the payment processor/itch.io debacle that started shortly after the end of the jam and is still ongoing. My work was unaffected, as it was not explicit in nature, but I still saw the value in having your own space… Something I’ve wanted to have anyway for a while. And I got inspired seeing a lot of other people’s cool sites! Hamaonoverdrive started a server for making your own site, and it was cool to lurk… So here I am.
I also always love reading what people I follow are up to. For example, I’ve really been enjoying Meredith Gran’s blog. As well as the newsletters/blogs of some of the mods for the Toxic Yuri VN Jam, like Thursday’s Patreon post feed (which you can read without being subscribed, if you are interested in checking that out). And it seems like a useful way to check in on yourself and what you’ve been up to! So what’s another little creative project? I’d like to write little monthly blog posts. We’ll see how that holds up.
Toxic Yuri VN JamTerms of Assembly is officially an award-losing visual novel! That’s okay. I frankly would have been shocked and confused to have won. I’m pretty aware of its shortcomings, and it was also my first visual novel. I’m glad I finished it and do think it’s pretty good, but have some mixed feelings about its development.
When I first joined the jam, I intended to do it solo, but then met some potential teammates and got excited about some ideas that way. Because of life’s ability to get in the way, though, people couldn’t do a lot of what they originally wanted to do. So I ended up doing… Probably most of the game on my own. That’s fine, it happens, and I’m still grateful for the help I got. However, one weird thing about it is that Terms of Assembly was actually my idea. I definitely helped develop it— I wrote the outline/script and did some of the initial brainstorming— but the germ is definitely Not Mine. So I feel a bit like I spent a lot of time working on something that isn’t… Fully mine?
That’s how collaborating works, I guess. But I think it felt a little different when it was a project I sort of took over. I could have dropped it and just done my own thing, but I didn’t want to give up on all that I had done. I don’t regret it, exactly, but I think it I had known from the outset what would happen I definitely would have taken a different direction.
One thing that made me feel a bit better about the game as a whole was KillJill’s remark in her postmortem/retrospective that she felt that a lot of people pushed their own boundaries and got out of their comfort zone and viewing that as a success. I definitely did that! Terms of Assembly is definitely baby mode compared to some of the intense content that other entrants made, but it pushed me. That definitely is a success.
Life StuffOutside of the game jam, the main thing dominating my life has been trying to fix my health. I’ve been going to a lot of doctor’s appointments for my back pain at the tender age of 27… And my foot pain… And whatever the hell else is wrong with me. Did you guys know that healthcare in the US is expensive?
It’s okay, I’m making progress towards feeling better. If it works, the money will be worth it… So hopefully it works. There are things that are Good Signs and I’m not getting worse, and in some ways I’m better off than I was a few years ago. So we’ll take that as a net positive. I do not always feel positive about it, so it’s nice to zoom out and remember the progress.
I’m also getting back into lap swimming. I like it because it’s a form of physical activity that DOESN’T make my body hurt. My technique is pretty abysmal. I think pretty constantly about that bit from Golden Boy while I am in the water. But I am doing it!
Another reason I like lap swimming… I think it’s nice to do something that’s totally unplugged from any form of Screen. A lot of my life is Screen in a way that kind of distresses me but I don’t know how to solve. My work is Screen. My friends live in Screen. Many of my hobbies require use of Screen. So I like to find ways to divorce myself of that. In general, I think my screen time usage is down… Some of that is a bummer, because that required me to delete a lot of stuff on my phone like social media and discord. So I miss out on some of the fun stuff that social media is actually good for, like making new friends and funny stuff and seeing cool art. But I do think it’s a net good for me.
…My screen time is also still way too high. But baby steps!
Things I’ve Been Keeping Up WithI also want to dedicate some time to things I’ve been reading and watching and whatnot on my blog posts. This is already pretty long, so I’ll try to keep this short, but a few things…
CITY: The AnimationThis is the next big thing from Nichijou creator, Keiichi Arawi. You can definitely feel the similarities between the two in their humor style. Overall, I really liked the animation, and there were some standout moments for me, but I don’t know if overall I like it as much as Nichijou. …I also watched Nichijou with a friend, though. I think sometimes with comedy stuff things are funnier if you’re with someone who’s having a good time.
There are a lot of really great moments. Probably the stupidest joke I laughed at is the conclusion of the band bit where they’re trying to think of a name for a band that hasn’t been used before. There’s also Episode 5, which is a little difficult to explain without looking at it, but basically they have multiple scenes occurring concurrently in different panels. Something I could watch a lot of times and find something new and charming each time.
This video isn’t subtitled, but it’s a good visual reference… But it gets much crazier than this!
And of course I have to mention Ecchan and Matsuri.. Their ‘friendship’ (lesbianism) is incredibly sweet and cute. They had a lot of my favorite moments in the show. The few emotional gut punches of the season rest with them, and it’s incredibly sweet.
Also, the tsuchinoko is really good.
..Actually, writing all this out just made me like it more… I might have to reassess my earlier statement about liking Nichijou more.
Knights of GuinevereThis made a pretty big splash as the first 2D animated series from GLITCH. It’s helmed by Dana Terrace, who is on a mission to shit all over Disney after the end of The Owl House, and indie animation is her path forward. The pilot was frankly… Really impressive to me! I think it’s absolutely worth a watch.
I remember thinking, ‘this animation is really impressive from an indie studio… Actually, it’s just impressive overall.’ It looks really good. I admit I’m curious to know how this was made with the level of polish it has, and if it can keep it up… Pump those merch sales, GLITCH.
Its theming is not exactly subtle (Disney Bad), but also yeah, fair enough! I think there are a lot of interesting plot threads and I really like the main two characters thus far. Frankie is the easy and obvious favorite, along with her imaginary friends. I love this Disney adult. I’ll be keeping up with this one.
The Summer Hikaru DiedThe hottest new tragic horror yaoi. I’ve been reading this slowly as I get volumes from the library, and coincidentally, the anime ends at the point that I’m at in the manga… I really like the manga. I also like the anime, and I think it does some things better and some things worse than the manga.
The main things about the anime that perplex me are that it moves things around a bit— not enough to really change the overarching story, but enough to make character motivations feel different and the tone of certain scenes really different. The biggest thing to me was the last episode— though I had literally just read the volume that episode mostly covered, so maybe I was more sensitive to editorializations?
Without getting into specifics (though I guess it will still be fairly spoilery because it’s hard to talk about vaguely), the end of volume 5 has a big Emotional Fight with the two main characters, with the last page revealing something that upsets the reason they’re fighting by another character. If that character is right, it’s a pretty big shakeup to a lot of assumptions the characters are making, and definitely reads as a twist.
The anime, instead, chooses to have the character make the reveal… Tell someone else five minutes into the episode with pretty much zero dramatic tension. So the whole time you’re watching the rest of the episode, you’re thinking, ‘but I know that this doesn’t matter’. Dramatic irony is of course A Thing, but I really don’t feel like it works this way! I don’t know. Maybe the intent is you’re worried they’ll act on their incorrect information, and the fact that I know they will find out just kills the tension overall. It didn’t really work for me.
Otherwise, I thought the adaptation was pretty good… I thought it made some weird choices on the way it composes certain scenes— what it focuses on for certain shots. But I think it also gives it kind of unsettling feeling which matches the subject matter and tone. And I think it does a good job expanding on Yoshiki’s gay teen anguish and terror, which is one of my favorite aspects of the manga. So I was happy about that. Overall, I do think it’s worth watching and reading.
Boku no Natsuyasumi 2Around the end of July, I saw a post suggesting playing through this game with Hilltop’s english patch in the month of August. The game takes place over the month of August, with a daily calendar format, so the suggestion was each day, you would play one in-game day. The game really appealed to me, and I liked the concept of playing a bit every day, so I picked it up.
The general premise of this game is that you’re a kid in Japan who has been sent to stay with your aunt and uncle for a month in the summer of 1975. It’s meant to keep you out of your mom’s hair since she’s due to have a baby soon. You explore this small island town, make friends with the locals, catch bugs, and basically do whatever you want for your summer vacation.
First off, the patch is really impressive— given the amount of text the game has, it definitely was a labor of love. I’m very appreciative of everyone who worked on this game so English speakers could enjoy it!
I also really enjoyed the story elements of the game. There are a lot of different plot threads you can explore, depending on what characters you talk to. I think there are things I likely totally missed on my playthrough. My favorite plot threads were Yasuko and her relationship with her mother, and the ghost girl you can talk to in the clinic. Really sweet and thought provoking moments there. Towards the end of the game, there’s a more Suspenseful and Action Packed story… That one doesn’t work as well for me. But I still like all the characters involved.
Gameplay wise… I kind of struggled with some of the things you were supposed to do! I never really figured out fishing, I don’t think, and the bug fighting was a bit incomprehensible to me. I feel like this is the kind of game that probably came with a detailed manual that I don’t have, so some of the things were a bit inaccessible. But it also kind of didn’t matter. You just do what you want, and I mostly wanted to catch bugs, talk to people, and look around. Pretty good summer vacation.
I mostly kept up with playing every day… But really fell off for the last few days. Maybe I wanted my summer to last a little longer? I actually only finished the last few days recently. It does feel like it really would benefit from that once-a-day approach. I could see it being a game I revisit next summer, too.
What’s NextThis was a long post, and I still feel like I could talk about other things! But I’ll stop for now. This month, I want to spend some time figuring out what’s next creatively… And also, I have a goal to watch some classic horror movies. Hopefully my next blog post I’ll tell you about what I watched.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading. You can subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with what I’m up to. Let me know if there’s anything you want to specifically talk about! More reviews? Creative stuff? Something else entirely? My blog is your oyster, as they say. Thanks again!
This post is a mirror of a tumblr post I made at the end of 2024. I wanted to bring it over to the blog for posterity's sake.
hi there, long time no talk. if you don’t remember why you’re following me, it’s probably because i wrote a lot of mp100 fanfic like five years ago. i haven’t posted much on this blog this year besides reblogging some fundraisers and i want to try and use this more. hope you’re doing well!
i think i tend to be pretty precious about what i put on this blog, because in my mind i wanted it to be creative updates and art only, but more and more i realize that i really enjoy reading what artists i follow are up to and thinking about whether it’s creative or not. so i want to try and post more casually too. sharing what im up to + occasional reblogs. i hope you enjoy that kind of stuff too.
i made a tag on the blog for stuff ive made called.. #stuff ive made. so it’ll still be easy to find my art and writing. ill probably make a pinned post with that info in a little bit.
ok, so other orders of business, how was 2024 for me?
2024 was pretty good for me. it was not quite what i thought it would be– i had a few different goals at the beginning of the year that i ended up shifting on. i also cannot find my new year’s resolutions from last year which is surprising because i pretty much always make them.
however, i made some general accomplishments that im pretty happy with, such as:
so i’m pretty pleased. however, as i think at the end of every year, i still feel my creative output is not what i wanted it to be. admittedly i did draw more than i have in a while. i worked on several projects and got a few things off the ground. but not much i feel i can share. i feel like i consistently did more, but my output was just very slow. this is partly from working on larger projects and things that are time consuming, but man, i want to prioritize this stuff more.
i also find that i am struggling a bit about what i want to be working on creatively. i have ideas but everything’s a bit half formed. i think this year i’ve unearthed some insecurities about the quality of my work and ideas– i think previously i just told myself that if i sat down and did stuff i would be a savant, i just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. this was definitely just from a fear of failure. ok, so i did sit down and do some stuff and it was kind of just ok– at least to me. what now?
so, i need more time to work on stuff and i need to develop my Artistic Voice or whatever. point one is a bit easier to find a solution for, even if it’s scary- im planning to cut back my work hours in the new years and set aside fridays for personal project time only. this is mostly stressful because everything on earth is only getting more expensive but i think i just need to do this. if i don’t i will always wonder what if.
…point two is vaguer. how do you develop an artistic vision and goal? admittedly, i think i put way too much pressure on myself to have consistent creative styles and interests. but at the same time, out of all the things i love, there has to be something im drawn to creatively, right? even if i haven’t realized it yet? besides anime fanfic epics?
well, probably just in the doing things will emerge. i’ll focus on that for now. this seems like a similar question to high schoolers asking how you get an Art Style, and not realizing that’s just something that naturally emerges when you draw a lot. you can certainly point it in certain directions, but it won’t settle and be yours unless you do it a lot.
okay, what else. i have some other personal goals i won’t share here, but one more i WILL share here is i think in 2025 i really want to engage with less passive media. i love to put on a youtube video essay and play a game on my phone. lots of half attention to things that don’t deserve my whole attention. i think that’s ok sometimes to relax and unwind, but i feel like i missed out on so many cool stories by doing that. i feel good about this goal because it’s less about Reading Twenty Five Books This Year Because That’s Good For Me and more about experiencing stories because i want that.
this year i read stone butch blues and i remember thinking at the end of it, why am i not reading things like this all the time? why am i not devoting myself to experiencing beautiful works of art? why am i more likely to put on ten hour let’s play of a mediocre PS2 game that no one has ever heard of than to watch a two hour classic movie that will emotionally resonate and maybe change my life?
…well, it’s partially because that gets emotionally exhausting. it’s ok to chill out some. but i don’t want to pacify myself all the time. i need to think about how to make this a Measurable Goal or whatever, but i’m excited about it.
i think that’s all i will put here. i hope you have a good new year’s and that 2024 wasn’t too painful for you. i feel as though most of the internet was cruel and disheartening this year- endless windows into the worst of humanity. things that were painful to read, while also knowing they would be thousand and thousands time worse to experience. even so, i saw a lot of kindness too– people reaching out to help, and the generosity of my friends and family. i hope you saw some of that too. here’s to 2025.