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WARNING While this page does have site updates as well, at this point it is mostly a digital diary. There is some personal stuff in here that not everyone might be comfortable
reading. Nothing graphic or necessarily triggering, just uncomfortable.
Oh wow! It's been a couple months! I haven't had much motivation to update here lately, nor have I had much to say lately... I've been so caught up in a ton of other things. Finding things to talk about here has been hard! I've been thinking about putting more of my art up here in the form of galleries for each story but instead of hosting the images here on Neocities, I would instead host them on File Garden so they don't take up all of my space. It would also give me something else to code. Yayyy (I'm going a bit nuts not being able to code anything I actually WANT to code).
Other thing: I've been trying to find more asexual and/or aromantic literature but it's so hard to find things I'm both interested in and are available to me. I've asked my library to purchase The Invisible Orientation: an Introduction to Asexuality by Julie Sondra Decker and Refusing Compusory Sexuality by Sherronda J. Brown but I'm not sure if they're actually going to buy them or how long it will take if they do. I'm starving! Give me books! Looking for fiction books about asexuality that appeal to me is even harder because the ones I can find seem kind of... boring to me? I tried to read Beyond the Black Door by A.M. Strickland and I got bored so fast. And recently I read a little blurb about it and apparently it has romance in it. As much as I would like to read about an asexual main character, I would rather die than read another YA romance, sex or no. So I'll pass. At this point, I'm more looking for aromantic books than asexual ones. But also I don't particulary want a main character that knows they're aromantic because that's boring! I want to be able to see someone's growth, see them learn about themselves. I'm kind of picky about books if you can't tell. It's not that I hate romance, I'll read a book with romance in it! But I get really tired of a romance centric story very quickly, it's just not a conflic that appeals to me. It doesn't help that I just can't wrap my head around the differences between romantic and platonic relationships sometimes.
I mostly read supernatural horror because it's a genre pretty unlikely to have romance, I like surrealism in writing, and I love a good ghost story, but it can be pretty hit or miss in my experience. Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie was wonderful and actually managed to spook me a bit (a hard thing to do in writing for me!), while This is Not a Ghost Story by Andrea Portes had some amazing surrealism going on but such a disappointing ending that it kind of tainted the whole book for me. I'm reading Piñata by Leopoldo Gout right now and so far it's a little slow, but I'm hoping when the supernatural elements are introduced I'll be more invested. I like Carmen so far, she feels very real!
In relation to the last log: I finished rereading the Crowfield Abbey series! My ranking for it in order of favorite to least favorite is probably Crowfield Curse, The Hob and the Deerman, and Crowfield Demon. I might need to reread Deerman again though, just to get a better feel of it. I guess I can review all of them? This will just be my opinion though, and I have a horrible memory so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Crowfield Curse is the first book in the series and I adore it with my whole heart! William works very well as a sympathetic main character and the fact that the first thing he does is help a creature he knows nothing about really endears him to the reader. Brother Walter is a good introduction to the Fay as well, because not only does he follow the name rule (which sets up for Shadlok NOT following it) but he's also a bit of an underdog. He's not someone important enough to be cursed like Shadlok or Bone, and the only reason he's ever on any villain's mind is because of his proximity to Will. He's not royalty, he's just a normal Fay, which sets us up to know how normal Fay live.
Now enter Shadlok who is NOT a normal Fay. While Brother Walter never tells anyone his real name, lives in a burrow under a tree, and avoids humans at all costs, Shadlok's real name is very well known, he travels, and he specifically travels with a HUMAN MAN.
And speaking of this human man: Jacobus Bone! There's an element of dramatic irony to everyone's interactions with him; I, as someone in modern times with modern medicine, know that it's very unlikely for anyone to get leprosy from touching him or his belongings only once, but they don't know that and so treat him rather cruelly and he almost has to leave Crowfield altogether. At that point, it seems like he's used to it after centuries of living with this disease.
Another important character I would like to touch upon: The Dark King of the Unseelie Court, Comnath, later also called Robin. In this book, he's a serviceable villain. He's not terribly interesting and is a generic sort of evil, but he's not horrible either. He makes for a menacing figure during the angel grave robbing scene, which is all he really needs to be. I have more to say about him later though.
Brother Snail!! I love Brother Snail. He's delightful. He's kind, but ultimately not without flaws, as we see in the next book. The way this book treats its disabled characters is... not always great? Now, I am not disabled in the same way Brother Snail or Peter are so I cannot say whether someone actually suffering from these disabilities take offense to these depictions or not, but I do understand basic human decency, so I'll be using that to judge here. First of all, for Brother Snail, he has severe kyphosis and chronic pain, which is caused by the kyphosis. While he is clearly a valued character with his own personality and flaws, he's also given a rather cruel name, which no one ever questions, including him! His name is Thomas, not that the book will tell you more than once.
Peter on the other hand isn't such a prominent character, but he's implied to have some kind of developmental disorder, maybe a learning disorder. He's nice to Will, but Brother Walter refers to him as the "half-witted brother" with no prompting? I don't think Brother Walter is trying to be cruel here, he clearly wants to be kind, but no one ever tells him off for it, so he just keeps doing it. It's good that he can't talk to Peter in person, I suppose. Small mercies. There is a chance Peter's not supposed to be disabled at all, and simply not educated, but Will's not exactly educated either (he can't even read) and he is never perceived the same way Peter is.
Okay now on a lighter note: the angel! Or should I say nangel? I love this thing!! It's one of my favorite depictions of an angel in ever! It's deeply unsettling, is only ever refered to as an it, and is just other worldly. Shadlok calls it an angel, but that's just because that's what the humans call it. He says angels "have the dust of creation on their feet" (not a direct quote, I'm pulling it from my extremely flawed brain) and while it's described as human-looking, you get the impression that this is not it's true form, this is just a puppet, molded to look like something else. This angel does have a name, which is revealed in the next book, but in this one it's just referred to as the angel, or the nangel if you're Brother Walter.
Um. Okay so I was going to review all three of the books here but this got stupid long so I think I'll just finish this here and do the next two later.
I everyone!! First of all, website updates: A Pokemon page is in the works! So far all it has is a bunch of the teams I've had throughout the games I've played. It's not very detailed yet, but I plan on writing more about my favorite games or pokemon and any sort of notes I have on certain designs or something. I'm also working on giving the SOL maps alt text and long descriptions, which is definitely going to take a bit. So far only the full map is done because I plan on remaking the rest of them, so I'm waiting to finish those to make the alt text and descriptions. If you're wondering, the difference between alt text and long descriptions is that alt text is connected directly to the image and is meant to be a short description, while a long description is located on another page that is linked to the image and is a much more detailed description meant for things like charts and maps. And lastly! The comment section on the Home page had to be removed. It kind of broke? I still have access to all the comments I got before deleting it, but anything you would like to say about the site should be going to the guestbook or the Neocities profile instead!
I can't think of much else to say? I don't have much happening in my personal life at the moment. I've been rereading a childhood favorite book series and dreaming of the third book to come out despite it being announced in 2016 and never coming out. Crowfield Rising is the book version of Silksong to me, I don't care how long it takes it WILL come out. I am NOT in denial. Anyway tomorrow is Valentine's day. My mom and I are making cookies. Side note, Wednesday is the most Valentine's day day it can fall on. None of the other days feel right, Wednesday is the only right one.
First log of 2024! I'm a bit surprised it took so long! First of all: I've been added to the Neocreatives Webring! The link is on the Home page. Unfortuneatly, I don't have any other site updates for now.
New school semester! I have a pretty good set of classes, including a website programing class! I'm pretty excited to learn more about other ways to program a website other than html and css and hopefully this class will help me improve this place too! My creative writing class might actually have a bit of an effect on this site too- throughout the semester we'll be writing blog posts about a theme we picked. My theme is stuffed animals! I saw a lot of people doing movie reviews and a few book or game reviews, so I thought I'd pick something a bit more unique to me. I have a lot of stuffed animal opinions and a few weird little details I've noticed over my time researching brands for the Soft Distortion page, so I might be putting these blog posts up here too (if I like them enough that is). I'm also taking a third drawing class, which is great because I love this teacher (I've had her for four other classes in the past) and since this is my third drawing class I'm kind of allowed to just run wild. I'm not sure how much I'm going to take advandage of this, but it's cool to know.
I had a really long weekend this week and over that time I read through all of Witch Hat Atelier and now I'm a little bit obsessed with Sasaran, the Empty Cloak Witch that turns Euini into a scaled wolf. Of course, I like him mostly because he's a cat, but more specifically he's a villain cat that looks more akin to an oriental shorthair than your average shorthair domestic cat. I love cats in (almost) all their forms (breeds like Scottish folds and munchkins are cute but they make me kind of angry. Why do we keep breeding animals born to be in pain) but I like to see a different cat face shape every once in a while. An oriental shorthair's more long, angular face and big bat-like ears make them visually interesting in a way that I don't see people capitalizing on very often! Back to Sasaran specifically, I also really like the mad scientist-esk feel to his actions towards Agott and Euini, part of it is of course trying to get Coco to do forbidden magic, but he's putting his own spin on it using transformation magic. To me, it sort of feels like he's trying to find a way to reverse his own transformation while still following the wider Brimmed Cap agenda. He calls Qifery's features "winsome" in the translation I've been reading, implying that he doesn't have such a high opinion of his own appearance and Qifery refers to him as the "result of forbidden magic gone terribly wrong", pretty much everything points to Sasaran not wanting to look like this, so I think my theory on him trying to find a reversal spell isn't too far off. Another note on both Sasaran and Euini, it makes me kind of sad to see so many fictional characters get turned into some sort of beast and hate it while I have been wishing to be an animal basically since birth. Just once I want to see one that did this on purpose and very much enjoys it. They don't even need to be a good guy, I just want more characters unsatisfied with how boring human features can be. More characters like Laios Touden I guess... I'm still sad for him that he didn't get to keep any of the monsterous features from his perfect chimera.
Short site update! I've added a stamp section over on Mew's Room and I added alt text to all the visuals on that page. All the stamps also link back to their sources.
12/29/23 UPDATE: even more stamps have been added! I unfortunately couldn't find the sources of a few of the stamps, so I made a page for when I don't have the source for an image. It seems like when stamps were shared around DeviantArt they always automatically linked the source because that's just how DeviantArt's image sharing works, but when people started sharing them off site, sourcing wasn't automatic and no one thought it was necessary, so there's a ton of unsourced stamps floating around Neocities. This isn't against anyone who uses these unsourced stamps, it just makes me a little sad. I found stamp makers on DeviantArt who prefer their stamps not be used off site and I think this is the reason why.
Wow Christmas! It was actually pretty great! I was scared my sister wasn't going to show up because no one's heard from her for a while but she did!!! And it was really fun and great and cool. My gifts include a Warrior Cats AVOS box set, some dnd minis, sculpting tools, a shoebill stork plush, a Mew model building kit that turned out super cute, a turkey vulture enamel pin, and of course Nintendogs + cats: toy poodle and friends for the 3DS!!!!! Very excited about that one! I had a copy back in elementary school but I lost it in a move ten years ago now and I've dreamed of it ever since... I remember it not only having cats, but also have mutts so I could have a dog that wasn't a specific breed, which made me really excited. I've only ever owned weird mixed dogs, so it was cool to have one like that in one of my favorite games as a kid. It also has cats which is cool because I've always been more of a cat person than a dog one.
On Christmas Eve we had a bunch of family over including my brother, my two sisters, my sister's boyfriend, my aunt, and my grandma and we all played Jackbox together! We had a lot of fun!! Now that I'm an adult no one feels the need to hold back on the penis jokes. There were a lot. My favorite was Drawful Animate, but I might have been cheating a bit with my drawing tablet. We also had a lot of fun with Bracketeering.
I also bought Carrion (the game) today as a little treat and I love the art and sound the most but the controls kind of bother me. I understand why the controls are like that but personally my hands Do Not Like It. I keep getting mixed up. Hopefully I can get used to it because I like everything else about the game.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! For this Halloween I read What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher and it was a wonderful book that I would recommend to anyone a fan of Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. I had actually watched all of Mike Flanagan's mini series adaptation of the same story, and walked away a little disappointed in Flanagan's reimaginings. It started off very strong with the first three episodes and Perry's stunning and grotesque death but the cheesy evil grin of the chimp at the end of episode three, Murder at the Roe Morge, was only the first thing that put me off. Episode four, The Black Cat was by far my least favorite episode, which is a true shame because I was so excited to learn that this mini series has an episode based on my favorite Poe story! Something really bugged me about the characterization of the animals in this show and while I understand Verna is behind the deaths, not any real animals, the anthropomorphization still rubs me the wrong way. My first issue is the use of hallucinations; while I understand the cat being hallucionations caused by his drug use is an attempt to connect to the original story's themes of alcoholism, it doesn't hit well with the viewer because I know something is genuinely happening to him. Yes, he should have stopped all drug use after killing Pluto and he shouldn't have lied to his boyfriend, but to me, the appeal of the original is how wildly irredemable the narrator is. He may feel remorse for hurting Pluto or killing his wife, but he is still horribly abusive in the face of unconditional animal love. Leo is... similar? But not enough that it hits quite as hard. His boyfriend puts up with a LOT but the second Pluto doesn't put up with shit, she is constantly attacking him unprovoked (unless you count the original Pluto's murder as provoking. Which it IS but the cat in the original story reacts in a wildly different way) so when Leo gets fed up with it and tries to kill the second cat it feels almost justified, who would want an animal who won't stop attacking you and leaving dead animals all over the house. Personally, in real life, I would have handled it differently because I love cats and I'll put up with a lot for a cat, but Leo does not like Pluto and has never liked Pluto so of course when this downright demonic animal attacks him he's going to start attacking back. When Leo finally dies, it doesn't feel like he had it coming like the rest of the Ushers did. I don't feel bad for him, but I'm not excited about his death like I am for the others. He doesn't even keep his clawmarks as a ghost. So what was the point. From there the rest of the series kind of went downhill. The rest of the deaths were fun in their own ways, but never hit as hard as Perry or Camilla's.
Now that my complaining is out of the way I'm going to sing my praises about T. Kingfisher's own adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher, What Moves the Dead. The first thing that struck me about What Moves the Dead is its love for passion in a subject, seen in Ms. Potter and her mushrooms and the shepard Easton always thinks about and his sheep. The second thing that struck me is the wonderful worldbuilding. I wouldn't consider Easton nonbinary because, to Easton and Gallacia, soldier is part of the binary just as much as man or woman is. This may have been one of the first books I've ever read where the main character is directly stated as neither being a man or a woman. And then the tarn! Gallacia's unique pronouns are only used for two (important) characters; for Easton kanself and the tarn when Maddy refers to van with a child's pronouns, va/van. It's an interesting way to characterize a living fungus! I think about how non-human creatures with human-like intelligance and how they would interact with humans fairly often (it's sort of the basis of my whole brainworld) so this exploration of the tarn learning how to speak and walk and puppet more complex bodies. In the author's note Kingfisher says she imagines a world were humanity and the tarn could be friends, if only the technology allowed for it. This stood out to me because very, very few people have any compassion for parasites. I was deathly afraid of parasitic worms when I was little, I was constantly afraid that every weird thing my body did was because something wriggling around inside me, trying to get out. Weirdly enough, the idea of something feeding on me didn't bother me, just the fact that it had to get out somehow and it would hurt. I think this fear ended up inspiring a lot more compassion for them than I think I would have otherwise. At some point I realized that the things that live inside humans are not monsters. Just animals, trying to survive in the only way they can. But I also realize that humanity is only protecting itself when people kill the thing harming them, but more often than not this extends beyond self defense and into extermination. So many people call for the extinction of ticks and mosquitoes and wasps and for what? Humanity? We aren't the only creatures that live here. We try so hard to separate ourselves from nature but we are part of this planet and expecting nothing to prey on us is so arrogant, it's a wonder so many believe it. People who have been hurt by an animal deserve compassion, but when they start talking about extinction of a whole species, I have to wonder what would happen if people actually took the time to learn about these animals. To learn about their life cycles, the creatures they feed, the creatures they feed on, what sort of courting rituals do they have. Learning about something makes it predictable and so much less scary. Sorry, I get off track like this every time I write here. I think I have a lot of feelings that I just don't talk about. Anyway, go read What Moves the Dead it's really good.
Happy Friday the 13th!!! A very important day for this website, considering its name! The 13th Child actually comes from the Jersey Devil, which is said to have been a Jersey woman's 13th child. I don't live in New Jersey, I was just briefly obsessed with Inscryption's Child 13 card. I haven't updated the site at all since the last entry, sorry! I've been pretty busy with school lately so I haven't found the time to write anything new. I actually completely forgot I had a todo list on this page... I haven't even thought about making species pages. I think I'm going to be moving the idea of a species page to the worlds each species is native to, which would cut down on my work load. I've already done this with the Shadow Monsters over on the Endless Dark page. So really, my todo list consists of finishing the world pages and finishing the story pages. All of the story pages currently up are at least presentable but I have a few other stories I could add to the Library. This was supposed to be a SCARY entry! I guess the real horror is not having the free time to work on your passions...
Hi everyone!!! It's the scarriest month of the year and I'm pretty hyped! I don't really dress up anymore but I do plan on wearing my cape to school. But that's not what I'm here for, I want to talk about scary stories! I love urban legends and how morbid kids can be about it. The Licked Hand urban legend has apparently been around since the 80s but it must have been pretty popular because I heard it in the 2010s. It seems to have several versions but here's the one my older brother told me when I was around 8 or so:
A young girl is home alone with her dog and lying in bed. Then, she starts hearing a dripping noise. She goes to check the kitchen sink and makes sure it's fully turned off. Then, she goes back to her room, gets in bed, and drops her hand down the side of her bed and feels her dog lick it. But the dripping noises haven't stopped. The girl checks one bathroom and makes sure the sink is off. She goes back to her room, gets in bed, and feels her dog lick her hand again. But the dripping noises haven't stopped. The girl gets up and checks the other bathroom, this time the one with a bath and makes sure both the sink and bath are turned off. She gets back to her room, gets in bed, and feels her dog lick her hand again. But the dripping noises haven't stopped. This time, she finally realizes that the dipping noises have been coming from her closet all along and when she opens it she finds the bloody body of her beloved dog hanging there, with a message written in blood: "Not only dogs can lick"
The original version of the story has the girl not investigating the dripping noises and instead being scared by them, being reasurred by her dog licking her hand and waking up the next morning to find her dog's corpse hanging in the shower with the message "Humans can lick too" Personally, I like the slower buildup with all the sinks in the house being investigated only to find the corpse in a closet in her own room the whole time. Also, "Not only dogs can lick" is more vague and could be a monster or a human, while "Humans can lick too" makes it clear who the culprit was. Also it sounds lame. I also heard a variant of the shower version from a friend in elementary school but it was specifically a bathtub instead because we were in elementary school and all taking baths instead of showers.
My elementary school also had its very own urban legend! Basically, we had a little plaque on the ground on the playground that said something along the lines of "in remembrance of [girl's name]" and everyone said that she was strangled by a swingset because she was twisting the chains together. Every time I get on the swings I think about her now. I'm not actually sure how true it was but I have a vague memory of a teacher telling us it wasn't true, but I may have made that up. It certainly discouraged us from twisting the chains together, but honestly I never really believed it. I actually tried looking to see if it was a common urban legend but I ended up finding real stories of real kids dying in the same way so I stopped looking pretty quickly. I go into these urban legends with a light heart, not expecting to find any real tragedy.
Honorable mentions include: Bloody Mary (for reasons people who know me irl know), my dad's story about a hill that makes your car go uphill when you put it in reverse, the inn in my city that's haunted, and the hiking trail in a nearby city that's also haunted. Unfortunately I can't name the inn or trail for fear of doxxing myself so just trust me that the trail has a kickass name.
And that's it for my first SCARY log entry! Next time I'm going to be talking about ghost stories! If I do make a next one. No promises.
Site updates first! The A Story of Everything page has been completely overhauled!! I'm pretty proud of what it looks like now! But yeah, that's about it for the site updates.
IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!! I'm 18 now! Crazy! I had a pretty good birthday :] I loved all of my presents! My friend at school folded me an origami vulture! From my parents, I got a silver fox plush who I named Shadow, all of Invader Zim on dvds, Live Everlasting by Bernd Heinrich, and a vulture t-shirt! The silver fox plush is much bigger than I thought she would be when I asked for her but she's PERFECT and I love her dearly. Leading up to my birthday, my mom was also giving me little glass dog figures which I of course added to my collection. They're very cute, five of them are bulldogs, and one of them is a French bulldog. She also got me a little wooden hog. My mom likes getting me little animal figures because they're easy to find at antique stores and I'm always really happy to get them so I have a pretty extensive collection!
Site updates! SOL page was updated with new lore, plush collection page has more plushies now, and the home page now has a plush of the week, which is randomly selected from the plush collection page.
Now for my life updates! I'm back at school and I'm pretty happy with most of my classes! I'm taking AP art with a lot of other really cool artists and I'm so excited to see everyone else's work and show them mine all year! It's definitely the class I'm most hyped for. I've also got a class with Eggs!!! We sit across the classroom, but it's nice knowing they're in the classroom with me anyway, even if we can't talk.
I've started production on 13 Beware!!! The first chapter is completely written and thumbnailed and chapter two is currently being written! It's a little harder to work on now because of school, but I hope to have at least written and thumbnailed the whole thing by the end of the year. I'm so extremely excited about this, it's hard to even put into words.
I've been listening to a lot of power metal lately! So far my favorite bands are Powerwolf, Gloryhammer, and Cain's Offering. I think Cain's Offering is my favorite out of the three and even though they only have two albums, both are really good. I wouldn't go as far as to call myself a metal head, but I certainly love this style of music. I always hesitate to call myself a fan of anything because I'm always worried someone will ask a really specific question about it and I won't be able to answer, thus outing me as a fake fan. Maybe that's why I mostly focus on my own characters. No one can say I'm wrong about things that I wrote. But anyway, I've also been reading the Fellowship of the Ring, which is related to power metal music I promise. Power metal sounds like the most wizard music genre I've ever heard and it evokes the feeling of Middle Earth better than any other music in my library. I don't have anywhere else to go with that, I just think it's interesting.
I keep trying to write longform reviews on Tumblr and then getting side tracked because I want to scroll through my dashboard and then I remembered that I have an entire page on here for that exact thing. So! I went to see the Barbie movie last week with my bestie for their birthday, me in all black, them in all pink and we had a grand old time. But now thinking about it the movie just didn't do it for me. But starting off with the good things: the overall Look of the movie was stunning, all the costumes were amazing, the sets and props were fun and the actors did a wonderful job. The soundtrack was amazing and i listened to it on loop for the rest of the day when I got home. I thought it was pretty funny too! I thought Ken's obsession with horses was funny, I liked the CEO and his gaggle of businessmen, and I liked all the dolls immune to the Kendom takover with Weird Barbie. Plot! I liked how Kendom was a criticism of hyper masculine podcast type bros, I liked the Gloria (the mom character) using Barbie to vent her anxieties about her life, I liked Barbie choosing to be human at the end, and I liked Ken realizing he doesn't need to define himself by how other people have defined him.
Now that that's out of the way, here's the things I didn't like. First of all, Ken's arc felt a lot more fleshed out than Barbie's. I understood Ken's thought process throughout the entire movie; I get why they all turned to the patriarchy and I get what the movie's trying to say with him. But what exactly is the movie trying to say with Barbie? Barbie becomes human at the end of the film and this theme of painful humanity in place of the flawlessness that defines Barbie follows her the whole movie. And I like this! But it doesn't quite land for me... As humans of course we like the idea of a doll picking the human world over Barbieland but in practice it didn't make much sense with her character. Why would she pick the human world after being sexually harrassed, chased all over, and overall put down for her feminity there? She didn't have a single signifigant positive experience in the real world. You can say it's because she's accepting humanity with all its flaws but and you would be right, that's what is intented to happen, but it just doesn't feel Barbie was given enough developement for this decision to make sense. And that really is strange isn't it? Giving more attention to Ken over Barbie in the feminism movie? Speaking of feminism, let's talk about how Mattel handled the criticism Barbie has recieved in the real world using this movie. First of all, Sasha brings up Barbie's unrealistic body standards and generally how Barbie is not nearly as empowering as this movie wants you to think she is. And then the movie doesn't ever adress this again. The drop it and Sasha learns to think Barbie is cool or something. An on that topic, Sasha and Gloria don't get the screentime they needed to flesh their characters out more in favor of a little too much Ken and largely pointless Mattel executives.
Overall, Barbie just felt shallow. It looked and sounded fun but looking a little closer, it feels a little halfassed and like it could have used a few more drafts to be really good. I also need to say that Barbie was not made for me. I didn't play with Barbies and I don't relate to traditional femininity much. This movie was meant for people who were already fond of Barbie, who played with her as a kid, who will fall for this shallow version of feminism. EDIT: I feel the need to say that I don't think people who liked Barbie are stupid or actually fall for this shallow feminism, I was just really bitter when I wrote this. I think it's a fun movie and liking it isn't a bad thing, but I also think it has a lot of flaws. Okay back to my original writing. Barbie isn't a person, her feeling's aren't being hurt by criticisms toward Mattel, and she's not a feminist icon. I'm sure a lot of people have a lot of fun with Barbies but in the end, this was a brand movie. Mattel is trying to sell you Barbie and its working.
Good news! The Science, Spiders, and Murder and The Brightest of Hearts pages are both done! Now I'm going to move onto working on the asoe page, which is going to be a much larger undertaking because of how big the story is. I might split it into the separate arcs the story goes through just for convienience. There are a few other stories I would like to put up here but for now I'm focusing on the things already here. I'm going to be removing the Pit of Dogs page because it would be formatted differently from the other story pages and so would require more work that I'm just not up to at the moment.
Site updates! The Jackal Page now has character icons and descriptions and the Science, Spiders, and Murder page has in progess character icons and descriptions. Mew's Room also had an overhaul to reflect my new sona, Sincerely.
Not much other news! I've mostly been working on artfight all month. I went to florida last month? That was fun. I got some neat sunglasses.
I don't have much to say right now! My brain is mostly empty. I've been preparing for Art Fight lately! Here's my profile! Also, I mostly finished the Endless Dark page but I'll probably be updating it when I think of more things to say.
Other news: I played DnD on Thursday! It was fun! It was nice to be around Eggs and Book again. I've been drawing a lot. I can't think of anything else to say.
I went to the mall today! I was with two people that I already know pretty well and one other person who I only sort of know. We went to Spencer's first! My first time in a Spencer's and definitely my first time in the back of a Spencer's. It was actually kind of underwhelming. But I would like to go back! I didn't realize Spencer's had so many things in my style and I couldn't get all of it in one trip. We went to Hot Topic too and we met someone else who apparently dated someone at our school. She ended up going with us for a few other stores but honestly she was kind of pushy and tried to ask a guy out even though she apparently is dating someone...? And the worst thing she did was misgender one of my friends. He presends very masculine, his name is masculine, and he had a blue gay pride flag sticker on his forehead the whole time. He's not exaclty subtle and I know we were all gendering him correctly so I don't know what was up with her. She did call my other friend a badass though, so I guess everyone has redeaming qualities. She left while we were in an Earthbound store and we never saw her again. Thank god. We ended up going to a few clothing stores but by then I didn't have the money to buy anything. I ended up with a necklace, a beanie, and two stuffed animals! I don't normally wear beanies, but I've been thinking about diversifying my wardrobe a bit. By the end I think we're all better friends and I had a lot of fun! I even got a nickname! How cool is that!
I've never really had this many friends at the same time before. In the past I've only ever had one or two close friends at once and I never really went out with them, but now I've got so many people to talk to and spend time with, it's so nice! These people think I'm funny and cool and want to spend time around me! Something that I didn't really realize before is that sometimes you talk about different things with different friends... With these three I mostly just joke around, tell funny stories and tease each other a bit but I don't really talk about my interests with them as much. They know I like animals, vultures, stuffed animals, Warrior Cats, and Invader Zim, but I don't talk about it much around these people. Other than Sandy of course; anyone who spends that much time around me is going to hear at least a few Warrior Cat rants. If I'm honest, I'm a little afraid of scaring them off. If I'm a little too annoying about my art or stories I feel like they're going to get irritated and leave. Logically I know they're better than that; people who care about you should care about all of you, not just the funny parts. But, for now, that's a problem for future me. I do still have friends I can talk to about the things I really care about, so it's not a huge problem or anything. Though I do also worry about spending too much time around some friends and neglecting others. Though, when summer comes around I will of course have a lot more time to spend with everyone I know. Specifically, I really can't wait for DnD with Eggs and Book to start up again. With school going on all the days Book is free is also a day we have school, so there's never any time. But with the summer there will be so much time to do so many things!
Something about Five Nights at Freddies always captivated me, with its secrets hidden so carefully and its community so deticated to finding those secrets. FNaF was a big part of my childhood. I was never very good at playing the games myself but I watched Markiplier's let's plays and Mat Pat's theory videos religiously and I even made an AU of my own characters replacing the animatronics before I knew what an AU even was. I really cannot stress enough how big of an impression this franchise left on me. I kind of left off after Pizzaria Simulator; it felt like such a fitting end and the introduction of Glitchtrap in Help Wanted really rubbed me the wrong way. Let the dead stay dead, if you will. After Security Breach came out it took me a while to go looking for playthroughs, ratings, and explainations. I did not hear good things and the only playthrough I watched was one attepting to play it without glitches (which was impossible. They had to put a cat video over the screen so an unavoidable glitch wasn't technically seen). I've been watching Sagan Hawkes's retrospective video, so these things have been on the mind.
When it comes to my own stories, I just can't resist spelling out how this web is weaved, though not always publicly. Information is spread out across my Tumblr, DeviantArt, Toyhouse, PMs with Ken, Google Docs, text files, and my own mind. I hate being known directly, yet desperately want these stories that harbor pieces of me to be seen by masses. People talk about their characters having minds of their own, but I've never quite felt that. They aren't people separate from me, they are aspects of me. I may not know them inside and out, but I do not think I know myself that well either. Even the worst of them are part of my heart, like Loom and his inattentiveness. Like usual, I don't remember where I was going with this. Today, while talking to my friend, she told me that I may not feel romantic love, but I do have a lot of room in my heart for my characters. Recently, one of my Tumblr mutuals told me that the love and care I have for my characters is really cool. I'm not always sure if I actually care about things. I'm not always sure I'm capable of loving things. But these appraisals of me from people that know and don't know me show that maybe I can love something, even if that something is part of myself.
Sorry I've been so inactive lately! The problem with having so many ideas involving writing is that I am not a writer.. my writing is dry and I'm a little insecure about it so I haven't been able to make any new pages or improve the old ones. I planned on adding a lot more to Valrik's page but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
I do have a lot of other things happening in my life though! I've been playing Pokemon Y but my 3DS keeps crashing, specifically right after a Pokemon evolves. It's kind of scaring me. I love this 3DS, I've had it since I was little and I really don't want it to be broken behond repair. Since I've been having so much trouble with Y, I started playing an Explorers of Sky emulator. It's a little finicky and I haven't been able to get far but all the sprites are really cute! I chose Meowth as my friend and I named it Thyme, it's my best friend.
I'm not really sure how to start this section. I was introduced to Welcome Home through Night Mind's video (even though I stopped watching Night Mind ages ago... he's friends with the Lackadaisy crew so I figured I would check out what he's up to now). I was really charmed by the website, primarily because a website is the way I would go about making a story online and its just really fun to click around and find some secrets. But now that I know about all of this I also know about the mistreatment from the fans the creator has gotten and it's just so disheartening to me. If this is the precedent for how the internet is going to treat original works in the future I'm not sure I want any sort of following. The blatent disregard of Clown's boudaries is just so sad and frustrating to see. I can't imagine how scary it must be to have so many eyes on their story and I really really hope they feel better. And I hope the fans that ignored those boundaries either learn from their mistakes or get pushed out of the community.
I have a lot of other opinions on shipping and fandom in general but I'm not sure if I have the energy for it right now. To clarify though, I'm not against shipping. Nuance exists everywhere and it's not like it's morally reprehensable to ship a character. But the way the internet treats it makes me so incredibly angry. There's this precedent that everyone needs to be shipped and shoved into a little trope box so people can write an out of character coffee shop AU. On the surface this isn't harmful at all, but there's this awful idea that every character has to be paired off and that romance is inherently more important and interesting than other relationships... and maybe it is to other people! But as someone who's never felt romance its just sad. Imagining a world where I can't be happy or complete without a romantic partner is sad. I don't want to live in a world like that.
It was this site's birthday yesterday! It was created on March 12th 2 years ago now. I haven't updated much lately, but I have added a few more backgrounds and I have begun working on some art for the possible species page(s?). A portrait was added to the Hell page. I really want to make the SOL page more compact but figuring out HOW has been difficult.
In other news, my brother is visiting for spring break. I don't have anything to say about that I'm just telling you. YouTube keeps advertising what I can only assume is an anime porn app and its kind of driving me up the wall. Get these too perfect and smooth women off my screen. I've been playing Skyrim a lot lately. It's not always fun nesessarily but it is a way to kill time. I've been thinking about making a Skyrim page but I don't know what I would put there. The one save file I use has become kind of personal to me so I'm not sure how comfortable I would be putting it up here. I think it's nice to have something I keep to just myself. I don't think I have anything else to share for now. I hope everyone has a good night.
The Mew's Room page has been changed a lot! I think it is now a more accurate introduction to me. I have also begun making unique backgrounds for more of the pages. The Valrik Gallery is done and has been "hidden" somewhere on another page. Not much else to say! I got really sick last weekend which sucked because it was a long weekend and I had plans to go shopping with friends on Friday. They ended up going without me but I hope we make plans for doing something similar in the future so I can actually go. I've been rereading The Prophecies Begin and putting reviews up on the Warrior Cat page! It's been really fun to reread these books, they hold such a special place in my heart.
THE GALLERY LINK IN LOG 14 NO LONGER WORKS SORRY. I got frustrated with it so I made the whole thing Valrik themed. I'm not linking it here because its not really done yet and I want to link it to the Dead Whispers page instead. Umm let's see other news... I'm planning on revamping all the story pages and giving them all their own unique look. I've started with Dead Whispers because its been on the mind a lot lately but its not done yet.
School things now! I've been reading The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver for class and I'm really liking it so far! All the characters feel very real to me, like I could meet them in real life just on the street. I've been working on a tryptic project for my drawing class, which does feature Valrik so I will be putting it in his gallery when its done. For my sculpture class I recently made a mold of my hand! Making the mold itself was a very strange experience due to the gelatinous nature of the thing. The actual product is even stranger. You know how in horror stories when someone meets their dopleganger they immediatly want to kill it? Yeah I'm feeling that for this sculpture of my hand. It is unsettling to say the least. I don't have much else to say about my other classes.
EDIT: FUCKED THIS ONE UP LADS SORRY. ITS FIXED NOW.
The gallery is up! I tried to make one yesterday but I hated it. Like a lot. So I started over today! And I don't think it's perfect, but its close enough. I think I'm only going to put more major pieces on there, just to save space. I don't have much to report other than that. I finished a painting today. I am currently cooking a pizza. I had kind of a bad day yesterday. Maybe I should only update this when I actually have things to say. Okay bye.
First log of 2023!!! I'm in my second semester of junior year and I'm already a little stressed! Not that it's not my own fault, but I think I'm allowed to complain on my own site. But I do not want to think about school right now so I will not. About the site! I've added a sitemap!!!! I'm sure at least one person who's visited was annoyed by the kind of hellish navigation so I figured a sitemap could only do good, and it didn't take long. I also added a links box to Home. I'm also debating on putting an actual gallery here? For my art I mean. For one of my classes we're doing artist trading cards and I plan on putting this website as my contact of sorts, so if I went through with that and you're from the future and found me through those cards, hellow!!! That's so cool!!! But anyway, not having a gallery makes linking to here for art make no sense. So I'm probably going to be adding a gallery. I also want to make some secret pages! I'm not sure what they're going to look like yet but I really like secrets and it seems fun. Anyway I am procrastinating a drawing while writing this so I should get back to that. See you tomorrow!!! I have a snow day so I might be doing some updates since I have the free time!
Happy holidays and merry Christmas! My family has a tradition that every Christmas we head over to my grandparents house for breakfast and it's always what I look forward to most. My grandmother makes really really good french toast. Also it's hard to go wrong with french toast, I'll eat an entire loaf of that. The whole family wasn't there this time, it was just me, my parents, my brothers, my cousin, and my grandparents. Normally my aunts and my sister are there too but they had other things going on so everyone's meeting up on New Years instead. It'll be nice to see my sister again.
I'm really happy with all my presents this year! I got four plushes: a red kneed taratula, giratina, slugma, and a dreepy keychain. I'm not a huge dreepy guy, I never even caught one in my Sword playthrough but this keychain is maybe the cutest thing. He has a little hat and bow. I also got Pokemon Scarlet and Ultra Moon! As well as a Rise of Darkrai dvd, aka the best movie in existance. I've been playing Scarlet all day and honestly it's a lot more fun than I thought it would be! A lot of the designs are still really bland and boring to me and I don't think I'll be using a lot of Paldean pokemon, but it's still fun. I love my Floragato, his name is Shadowsight. Speaking of Shadowsight! I also got two Warrior Cats box sets! The Prophecies Begin and The Broken Code! I know have three including those two and Power of Three, which I got last Christmas.
Off topic from holidays, but my computer "set up" is just a laptop on the dining room table, which involves sitting on a bench which my mother also tends to sit on! The only problem is that this bench is wobbly as hell so every single movement either of us makes the other can feel and it's driving me up the wall I hate it so much but I can't move because this is where my computer is and she can't move because its the only empty spot and I don't even think it bothers her at all, this is just a me problem so I just have to Deal. Also it's really really cold.
Another off topic thing but I think there's something horribly wrong with my sleep schedule. When I go to sleep at a reasonable time I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot fall back asleep so I end up being tired all day. When I go to sleep late, I wake up at a reasonable time but I'm still tired all day. What is wrong with me? I just realized that the way I phrased this makes it sound like a riddle. Help.
Hiiiiiii I'm in a much better mood compared to the last two logs. I'm still playing Pokemon Platinum and I caught Giratina! I'm on my way to the elite four now but honestly I'm not sure if my team is ready yet. My espeon especially is pretty under leveled.
Finals season approaches and it is making me very nervous. I haven't done great in the homework departement this semester so I'm a little scared that I'm going to fail something. I'm working on a Surlmog sculpture for one of my classes and I'm really excited about it he looks downright perfect, I just need to sand and paint him now.
Other stuff happening in my life includes: I've been seeing my sister a lot more lately! Her birthday was last month and I got to see her on Thanksgiving AND she's here now! She's helping our mom make cookies. It's nice to have her around again. She lived out of state for a while so it's been a bit. Also! I really like how my art's been looking lately. Something about the way I've been drawing fur makes it look very silky and nice. My tablet started being a little weird on Thursday and I'm a little scared it's going to get worse but right now the problem is managable. I'm not really sure how to describe what's happening though.
Sorry about that last post I just really needed to talk about everything. I'm glad I have a place I feel like I can do that. I wanted my next update to be happy or something but unfortunately it is Thanksgiving. Well now it's the day after Thanksgiving but my family celebrated with my mother's side of the family yesterday so now my father's family is visiting. Luckily we're doing this at our own house this time so I plan on playing Pokemon in my room until everyone leaves. I really hate Thanksgiving, yesterday I didn't eat anything until 3 pm and even then it was just some bread because eating in front of people is weird and it was at my grandparents' house so I couldn't just hang out on my room like I can today. I did get to see my sister and her boyfriend though that was nice.
Anyway on a lighter-ish note, I've been playing Pokemon Platinum and it's been really fun! I picked Chimchar as my starter and I named him Hephaestus. The rest of my team currently consists of a Swablu named Simon, a Gastrodon named GORB (in all caps), a Snover named Warlock, a Luxray named Shott, and an Eevee named Elias. I plan on evolving Elias into an Espeon. After everyone evolves I plan on keeping this team for the rest of the game, I'm pretty happy with it.
I'm gonna be honest here I'm a little bit tired of sacrificing my own comfort and happiness for the sake of others, its frankly exausting and it just makes me wish I could be rude and mean and capable of standing up for myself without feeling embarassed and terrified of retaliation. On one hand I hate people who are inconsiderate of others feelings but on the other I envy them so much for being able to do that. I wish I felt more things than just exaustion and annoyance I wish I wasn't a violently angry and bitter person inside I wish I wasn't a coward I wish I could express my own rage without feeling juvinile and stupid. I always was kind of a goody two shoes kind of kid. Nowadays if I see someone else breaking a rule or something I mind my own business but even the idea of doing something wrong make me stressed. I'm scared of teachers going near me because they might want to talk to me about missing work, every time my parents walk by my closed door I tense up thinking they're going to open the door and talk to me about school. I'm terrified of the adults in my life and I'm not even sure why. I don't have any real reason to be so scared of them and everyone else but I can't stand up for myself to people my own age because what if they tell what if my teachers don't like me what if they make everyone else stop liking me. Sorry about all this it doesn't really matter at all. This isn't going to stop any time soon and there's nothing I can do about it right now. I'm kind of just stewing in my own hatred and rage right now.
A few things have happened since last time: for one, I added a little guy to this page! Its not a character at all, just a doodle I thought would look nice here. On Thursday I got locked out of my house because I didn't have a spare key so I had to wait outside in the cold for 30 minutes for my dad to get home it was horrible. I have a spare key now though so that's nice. Today's my brother's birthday! Happy birthday to him! He's visiting from college for it and he's getting a cookie cake which is nice I love cookie cakes. In other news! I've been attempting to brainstorm more things for Jackal so I can actually work on it but I'm not having much luck. I have a vague idea of what's happening but not nearly as much as some of my other stories. Some of them like Brightest of Hearts and Science, Spiders, and Murder are completely outlined. For both of them I had a brief moment of clarity that got me to write everything out in one sitting and I really need that to happen with Jackal, I want to work on it so bad. My library still doesn't have the newest Warrior Cats book and it's driving me up the wall I want to read Sky so bad.
I think the most important part to realize about having a personal site is that really I can put whatever I want on here. I think I've been conditioned by the rest of the internet to try and appeal to an audience of some kind, even though I don't have very big followings anywhere. Even Tumblr, which I now view as a kind of digital diary, I still don't post things I think cross a certain line of being more annoying than usual. I do think I have a right to be annoying on Tumblr considering they chose to follow me and thus must tolerate my strange text posts. But the long personal monologues I tend to keep to myself. There are of course exeptions, like my rant about modern Pokémon, but for the most part I keep those to myself. All this to say that everyone reading this is about to be cursed by my many thoughts.
So like. I have a lot of issues watching shows for some reason. There are certainly shows I like and have gotten far in or even finished but I always have so much difficulty watching them. Movies and, weirdly enough, several hour long video game stream VODs that take multiple sittings to finish keep my attention far better than shows ever do. And an extention of that, cartoons tend to be much easier to watch than live action for whatever reason.
As a child I was never allowed to watch TV. For the most part, my only exposure to any sort of cinema was regualted to DVDs my family owned and things I checked out from our local public library. The few times I did watch TV it was supervized and primarily consisted of M*A*S*H, Shawn the Sheep, and Micky Mouse Clubhouse. I suppose I might just be very unused to watching shows in place of movies.
I think I might just need to aim for one or two episodes a week of something because I think I get kind of overwhelmed watching more than just one a day. I think shows are kind of meant to have breathing room between episodes so I can sit in the new revelations for a bit. I dunno, I say I'm going to do this but in reality I am far more likely to keep watching really long video essays instead.
It sure has been a bit! I just haven't been sure what to add lately and while I WAS trying write for the SOL page I kind of lost any kind of motivation for it. I'll get to that later, for now I've added alts to all the planet icons and the page dolls for Space. I've been trying to think about how to describe the maps but I have no idea whatsoever so I think I'm going to do some reaserch? I'm not entirely sure where to look for this sort of thing so I'm just going to wing it for now.
In other news, school sure does exist! I really love my art classes, they tend to be my favorite parts of the day. This week my teacher put on Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice for Halloween which was really fun. I'm debating on adding an art gallery here so I can show you all my school work since I'm so proud of all of them. I'm kind of failing my AP Language class? I'm really really bad at turning things in its kind of a problem. I have been reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson for class though and I really like it so far! Bryson's writing is really entertaining I reccomend it. I'm also on the cusp of failing Algebra because my crazy teacher gives us quizes online even though the class is in person AND even though the quizes are open all week, everything on them we learn by the end of the week so the only real time to take them is friday through sunday which is just ridiculous, what kind of teacher genuinly expects a bunch of 17 year olds to do a QUIZ on SATURDAY. Worst teacher I have.
I'm also taking Applications of Biochemistry, which is really fun and nice because all the work is in class labs so there's no homework. The ...bad? Annoying? Part is that my lab partner keeps copying my work, even when it's stuff that he can very easily do himself and I'm not really sure how to feel about it? I feel kind of used but ultimately him copying isn't going to hurt either of our grades since we're going to get the same results anyway. It's just kind of frustrating when I put in the effort to do something and he just gets to reap the benefits too.
Hellow! Sorry I haven't updated anything lately, unfortunately school has taken a lot of time out of my time for hobbies like this and I've been putting most of my attention into making art. Good news though! I have a drawing class at school right now, which is incredibly exciting and so far it has been very fun. I also have a sculpture class that's a little less fun but still entertaining. I recently Disco Elysium, which has been very fun so far. Normally, I wouldn't like a game with so much dialogue but I think its balanced out with how entertaining the style is and all the options there are to choose from. The last thing I really have to talk about is how I've been changing a lot about my stories lately that I think might take a bit to update. As for the stories that don't have concrete plots I think I will just put notes and ideas and such on their pages instead of just leaving them blank. In the future, I think most updates on here will be done on weekends since that's when I have the most free time.
Neocities was down for a while so that was sad. I think I'm going to turn this page into more of a blog page. Its still going to include updates on the site but its also going to include what I did that day or something. Just anything I feel like saying. There will be some appearance changes but I think that will mostly be color.
Finished Hollow Knight fan page.
Oragnized files, a lot of links have changed.
Added playlist to index page. I'm not sure it works though as I couldn't get it to play; could just be my browser though.
Moved todo list to this page and removed it from the home page.
Changed cursor image for the Mew's Room css style.
Slight wording change to Mew's Room.
There's a logbook now!
Several other pages have been edited because of the new Logbook; mostly just figuring out where to connect it to (I ended up putting it in the Library).
Changed cursor image for home css style (need to change it for the rest of the styles as well).
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