Been a bit busy lately! Doing productive things such as art? lol. Umamusume released in English finally and I've been absorbed in it! Good lord I forgot how difficult this game was at launch.... despite knowing a lot more about the mechanics and skills, I'm not having a whole lot of success in the PvP events, but I'm enjoying the game nonetheless!
Also been struggling with various mental health issues but what else is new :p

I've also been musing far too much on my relationship with the iDOLM@STER series as a whole....it's been tough to grapple with, but I feel like I'm finally able to feel comfortable putting it slightly aside as a main interest at this point in my life. My past memories of it and older game entries bring me far more joy than nearly anything new coming out at the moment. Uma does so much better at what iM@S embodies as a whole to me as well as bringing the formula in a fresh direction and making it more accessible to a wider audience.
Anyone who knows me well is aware of my feelings regarding Gakumas and the idea that it was supposed to be an answer to Uma is fucking laughable to me. No gender option? You hired WHO for the writing team?? And the entire existence of Mao.... that was the ultimate sign that this was the first time iM@S created a branch that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with.
Between the rancid vibe of what is now the new golden child of the franchise and Bamco letting most of the other branches to rot, it's been hard to even feel happy about the series' 20th anniversary, especially with no new console game in sight (considering how undercooked StSn was, it probably wouldn't be good either lbh).
I've been having moments where I think "Fuck it, let's just cut ourselves off from this series and let it belong to the absolute worst otaku creeps you can imagine", but I still have a lot of fun when playing L4U, SP and OFA. The things I enjoyed from these entries have slowly been stripped away in recent games, but I can still revisit them. It's just so much emotional bandwidth to continue clinging onto the modern state of the series when the new stuff doesn't bring me joy.

It's depressing when something you love is being mismanaged by an incompetant corporation and to see it not being used to its full potential, watching it slowly rot away. I've seen this happen to various series over the years; things I have somewhat of an interest in, but not to the degree I had with iDOLM@STER. I suppose it's almost inevitable with almost anything that's a longtime series owned by a corpo nowadays, with very very few exceptions. When it comes to hobbies and interests, this whole thing has been a hard lesson in keeping them varied and not putting all your eggs in one basket.

I'm still trying to be active in SideM friend circles, but it's been difficult to be on the same page as others with the new paywalls and not being physically present in Japan for concerts. Saisuta's sudden closure is also something I still feel powerful grief over and ended up affecting my creative output. It's not as easy to be an M-P these days, especially as a kaigaiP, but fuck man, the character brainworms haven't left me. Something about the way M does its characters makes us hard to let go, especially if you're yume and/or yaoi-brained about any of them. Even if things aren't quite the same as they were when Saisuta was alive, my feelings towards Kogado are still just as strong and playing dollies with them inside my head still bring me joy.

On a lighter note, the other thing I've been busying myself with is getting into Lolita Fashion for real! It's something I had an interest in it ever since I first saw Mana-sama and MOON Kana years and years ago (Those names definitely date me, huh....) , and I bought my first dress already and have a 2nd one on the way :p What made me finally take the plunge? Trying to fill the M-shaped void with a new hobby might be part of it, lol. Also to help with my longtime dislike of being photographed and self-confidence in general.
But a big one might have been how much I enjoyed dressing up Renyu (my Munyugurumi plush of Ren) and thinking "Damn I wanna wear cute dresses too".
It's been a rough couple of months with a lot of roadbumps but I'm trucking along~

Been having a rough couple of weeks....
Had a bad mald session over Gakumas' existence and also been having a lot of body image issues :(
Long story short I was always skinny as a teen/young adult and was the type who could eat anything without weight gain, but that all came crashing down when I began antidepressants and I've been struggling with extra pounds ever since.
And this hasn't helped with my gender issues either....
All things considered, the antidepressants have otherwise had a positive effect on me, I hated myself a lot even when I was skinny, lol
And even though I have a great partner who loves me just as I am, it's unfortunetaly not enough to cure all my brain problems.

The thing that's been helping me the most with this besides my husbands' support is drawing my favorite characters fat. In fact, I've discovered drawing more NSFW art has been overall making me happier.
For a long time I've felt shame over my enjoyment of anything less-than-wholesome (Not to mention the worry that I was fetishizing certain groups) and felt pressure to draw things I can show to as many people as possible. My relationship with art has a long history of basically just creating because it's something I would get attention and praise for. I haven't gotten much success with art outside a few specific time frames/fandoms, and I've been slowly learning to finally create what truly brings me joy.
I've been wrestling with the idea of displaying or linking any of my NSFW stuff here, and just remembered what JP artists used to do before the dawn of pixiv! They would make an ura (裏) section of their site that would be either linked in a slightly hidden area, have the url for it be written out where you would have to copypaste it yourself into the address bar, or provide a puzzle of some sort to be solved in order to figure out the url yourself.
I think I'll work on doing that....

Long time no see!

I've been neglecting this place for a while but I'm doing my best to get back on track!
(Long story short, Bamco killing all of SideM's games fucked me up. Gakumas' release further fucked me up. I also finally realized I'm probably autistic during this time. Fun!)

First of all, apologies for anybody who has tried to email me, the first email I used, well... got deleted from inactivity :') I will try to not make the same mistake again!
I also worked on making the site better viewable on mobile! I can't say it's perfectly optimized, but it seems to look okay on the mobile devices I tested on!

NOTE: Both the birthdays and colors pages will NOT be adding characters from va-liv or Gakuen because, quite frankly, I have a vendetta against these bitches. Feel free to steal my HTML, add them yourself, and host on your own page if you wish to see them, because I sure ain't doing it here.

I will try to keep an online diary here! I need to put my thoughts in a place where I won't be tempted to be numbers-brained and also isn't beholden by a character limit.

A big part of why I haven't touched this place in a long time was me spending too much time sitting on my phone.
I got a new (used) laptop specifically to get me back into using a PC casually and also installed Ubuntu for the first time ever!
I read a post somewhere that said something like "Smart phones don't have souls, but computers do. They're like horses, clumsy but capable of love." and I'm inclined to agree, lol.

Whether you've known me for years, or only just discovered my page, welcome! I hope to keep this corner of the web alive for a long time to come!